Battista Sforza

The Dalmatian Laurana was an international sculptor. He worked in Naples, in France, in Sicily and finally until his death in France. His stylized and hypnotically ethereal portraits of women are related to earlier Florentine busts but are even more idealized. All share certain physical characteristics - frontality, rounded faces with high cheek-bones and eyes with heavy lids - which reflect an unrelenting abstraction based on geometric forms that keep individual traits to a minimum.

The portrait of Battista Sforza, the wife of Federico da Montefeltro, is identified by an inscription on the base; her features are also recorded in the profile painting by Piero della Francesca. The bust may have been posthumous (she died in 1472 in childbirth) and modelled on a death-mask.