Lady with an Ermine (Cecilia Gallerani)

Cecilia was about sixteen when she was painted. She was well educated, wrote poetry and later kept a literary salon. Ludovico Sforza, the ruler of Milan, had been honoured with the Order of the Ermine, and the Greek word for the animal, galê, also echoes her surname.

Her body faces one way and her head another, as if someone has just entered on her left. The ermine copies the turn. Its paw and her hand are drawn with the same long bones and tendons, and the hand is one of the most anatomically exact he ever painted.

The dark background was repainted later; the original may have had a window or a blue-grey ground. In 1498 Cecilia wrote to Isabella d'Este that the portrait no longer resembled her, since she had changed so much since it was painted.