Quite possibly Raphael’s most beautiful portrait (And without question, the most beautiful of his works that I have seen in real life) - La Donna Valetta is perhaps only rivalled by Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Johannes Vermeer’s “Woman with a Pearl Earring” as being the most beautiful portrait of a woman in western art history.
Only, unlike the former two . . . we actually know who our lady here is!
Margarita Luti - otherwise known as La Fornarina (the baker’s daughter) - was Raphael’s Roman Mistress. And though Renaissance writer/art historian Giorgio Vasari tells us that Raphael had always been “an overly amorous man ., . . very fond of the ladies” . . . it seems Margarita was the woman our artist came to adore the most.
They met for the first time in Rome, where Raphael would often find her bathing her feet in the Tiber . . . only a stones throw away from the garden of his own house in Trastevere.
And quite possibly, the young Margarita purposely sat there, hoping to engineer a meeting with the famed artist!
But, equally, it may all just have been entirely a quirk of fate. After all we can imagine such a beautiful woman would only have had to stay there for a short time anyway, for a man like Raphael to soon pick up on her presence.
So many times before, the artist would have met a beautiful woman - asked her if she ever considered modelling . . . and invited her to visit him at his studio.
But on this occasion- it seems he found something very different about Margarita!
Raphael claimed that he fell in love with her from the moment he realised "her mind is even more beautiful than her body”
And it seems his infatuation quickly became so overwhelming - it actually affected his ability work properly !
Indeed, while working at Villa Farnesina, his patron Agostino Chigi became so frustrated with the lovestruck Raphael being unable to concentrate enough to complete his frescoes . . . in order to make him work faster, he agreed to allow Margarita to stay at the Villa too; if only so that the artist could stop hopelessly missing her!
Sadly, their time together was never as long as it might have been.
Due mostly to social pressure, Raphael would eventually go on to become engaged to another woman named Maria Dovici (The daughter of one of his more important patrons!).
And, right up until his tragically early death in 1520 (aged only 38) - it seems the artist really showed no serious desire to give up on his former overindulgent and amorous ways.
Yet still, in spite of a lifetime of love affairs - perhaps even numbering as many as the paintings he produced . . . it seems Margarita was always the woman who truly captured his soul.
And, in this painting, perhaps we can see why
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