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51 Portrait of a woman, known as La Belle Ferronnière

The woman in this portrait is dressed in a style that was fashionable in France during the reign of King Louis XII (r. 1498–1515). However, the profile format and the type of wood used for the panel suggest that the artist was a painter active in Lombardy in northern Italy, where the Duchy of Milan was located. The Duchy of Milan was under French rule from 1499 to 1512. The sitter may have been a French woman living in the region at the time.

The earliest historical record mentioning this portrait is an inventory compiled in 1683 of the painting collection of King Louis XIV. The work was listed there as a portrait of La Belle Ferronnière by Leonardo da Vinci, and this identification persisted until the eighteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century, during the French Revolution, this and other works in the royal collection, which had been dispersed among various châteaux, were brought together at the Musée du Louvre. Around that time, confusion arose between the titles of this work and Leonardo’s three-quarter-view Portrait of a Woman (no. 56), with the result that Leonardo’s portrait came to be commonly known as La Belle Ferronnière, a title it retains today.