Portrait of a lady, bust-length

The sitter for the present painting can be compared to a portrait by François Clouet of a half-length, nude aristocratic woman with two servants and two children in a sumptuous interior (National Gallery, Washington D.C.). Though she was considered in the nineteenth century to be Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of Henry II, the style of the lady's coiffure post-dates Diane's death in 1566 and scholars have suggested other possible identities for her, among them Gabrielle d'Estrées, mistress of Henry IV; Marie Touchet, Mistress of Charles IX; and most interestingly, Roger Trinquet's theory that she may even be Mary Queen of Scots and that the nude portrait was intended as satire. Though the anonymous lady appears to be idealized, her almond-shaped eyes, small mouth and aquiline features closely resemble those of the sitter in the Washington painting and they may be portraits of the same sitter.

The Fontainbleau School refers to art produced from the 1530s to the first decade of the seventeenth century at the French court. The Fontainebleau school is characterized by elegant, elongated figures, mannerist tendencies, and intricate, elegantly-detailed ornamentation; the principal artists of the school included François Clouet, Rosso Fiorentino and Francesco Primaticcio.