Bust of a Princess

Laurana is best known for his female portrait busts, but these pose the greatest problem of attribution. None of them is documented, signed or dated. The busts of only two sitters can be positively identified by their inscriptions, those of Battista Sforza (Florence, Bargello) and Beatrice of Aragon (New York, Frick). The latter was probably executed in Naples before 1476, before the Princess’s marriage to Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, and her departure for Hungary. The chronology and identification of the other busts are as yet unproven, and little is known about their function and original location.

The bust in the Louvre is usually identified as a posthumous portrait of Infant Eleonora of Aragon, on the basis of the funerary portrait now housed by the Galleria Nazionale della Sicilia at Palermo.