After the death of his father in 1540, Allori was adopted and trained by the artist Agnolo Bronzino, the preeminent Florentine portraitist of his day. Bronzino and his pupils portrayed the leading members of Florence’s aristocracy, chief among them members of the city’s ruling Medici family. This is the finest of all surviving likenesses of Lucrezia, the fifth child of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici and Eleonora di Toledo. In 1558 Lucrezia was joined in an important marriage of state to Alfonso II d’Este, the future Duke of Ferrara. This portrait was painted in 1560 for her brother Francesco on the eve of Lucrezia’s departure for her husband’s court. The pendant portrait of Francesco, in which he is shown holding a miniature version of the present portrait, is in a private collection. Lucrezia, who had been in fragile health for most of her life, died of consumption a year later at the age of sixteen.
