Ritratto di donna con un uomo al davanzale (c.1440)

Lippi, Filippo (1406-1469)

Ritratto di donna con un uomo al davanzale (Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement)
c.1440
Tempera on wood, 64.1 x 41.9 cm
Metropolitan Museum of ArtNew York

In Italian painting, this is the earliest surviving double portrait, the first to show sitters in a domestic setting, and the first with a view onto a landscape. The woman is dressed in French-inspired attire and her sleeve is embroidered with letters spelling “lealta” (faithful), a clue that the man appearing in the window is possibly her betrothed. He holds the Scolari family’s coat of arms, evidence that the two figures may be Lorenzo di Ranieri Scolari and Angiola di Bernardo Sapiti, who married around 1436. (MET)