Ginevra de' Benci was an aristocrat from 15th-century Florence, admired for her intelligence by Florentine contemporaries. She is the subject of a portrait painting by Leonardo da Vinci. The oil-on-wood portrait was acquired by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1967, for US$5 million paid to the Princely House of Liechtenstein, a record price at the time, from the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund. It is the only painting by Leonardo on public view in the Americas. It is known that Leonardo painted a portrait of Ginevra de' Benci in 1474, possibly to commemorate her marriage that... year to Luigi di Bernardo Niccolini at the age of 16. However, according to Giorgio Vasari's "Lives of the Artists" Ginevra was not the daughter of Amerigo de' Benci but his wife. The painting's imagery and the text on the reverse of the panel support the identification of this picture. Directly behind the young lady in the portrait is a juniper tree. The reverse of the portrait is decorated with a juniper sprig encircled by a wreath of laurel and palm and is memorialized by the phrase VIRTUTEM FORMA DECORAT .
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| Artist: | Leonardo da Vinci |
| Artform: | Painting |
| Date begun: | 1474 |
| Date completed: | 1478 |
| Genre: | Portrait |
| Height: | 1' 3" |
| Width: | 1' 3" |