Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni
The Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni (also known as Portrait of Giovanna degli Albizzi) is a painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Domenico Ghirlandaio, executed in 1488 and located in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. The portrait was commissioned by Lorenzo Tornabuoni after his wife's death in 1488 and includes many symbolic details. Description The painting portrays Giovanna degli Albizzi, a Florentine noblewoman who was married to Lorenzo Tornabuoni. She died in childbirth in 1488, the year specified on the cartellino (Italian for a slip of paper) in the background. It was commissioned by her husband, Lorenzo Tornabuoni, and the portrait was actually painted about two years after her death, around 1489-90, for the Tornabuoni family. She has been identified thanks to her other portraits in the Tornabuoni Chapel and a medal of Giovanna, also by Ghirlandaio, where she has the same hair style. It depicts the young woman from the side in a linear, ornamental arrangement which was common for the time. This profile portrait was the common style of 15th century Florentine portraiture. The figure is wearing precious clothes including a gamurra vest. On the right, behind her, are a hanging coral necklace (perhaps a rosary), a partly closed prayer