Quintilia FischieriFederico Fiori Barocci · 1600

Shown from about the knees up, a woman with pale skin and honey-brown hair stands in the center of this vertical portrait painting. She turns her body slightly to our right and looks down to read a small, chocolate-brown book held up in her left hand, to our right. The book is decorated with gold bands and medallions on the spine and both covers. Her eyes are hooded under faint brows. She has a straight nose, and her small, coral-pink lips are closed. Her hair is pulled back and braided up along the side of her head. Small, translucent tendrils curl over her right temple, to our left. She wears a long, topaz-blue gown with gold trim down the high-necked bodice and the front of the skirt. The dress has dusty rose-pink sleeves edged with white ruffles at the cuffs. A white collar, pleated into figure-eights, nestles around her chin and the base of her skull. Her right arm, to our left, hangs by her side and she grasps a silvery white handkerchief bordered with thin fringe. She wears a gold ring with a red stone in a square setting on the third finger of that hand. A table covered in a scarlet-red tablecloth angles toward us to our right. Almost falling off the edge is a second book in a parchment-gold binding. The two ties at the edges of the pages are loose, and a sheet of folded paper sits on top of the book. Black script on the paper reads, “All'Ill re mia s rae p rona Oss ma la sig ra quinti lia fischieri de Bon a Urbino.” A fern-green curtain is bunched along the left side of the painting, and the rest of the background is olive green.