Restoring a portrait held by the Carnegie Museum of Art revealed the true appearance of its subject, Isabella de' Medici. The painting was touched up in the 1800s with "Victorian biscuit tin features" to make her more conventionally attractive to potential buyers. Previously thought to be a 19th-century confection, the masterpiece is now attributed to the late 16th-century Florentine mannerist Alessandro Allori.
X-rays revealed an altogether less glamorous figure hidden beneath the surface: an older, jowly woman with "droopy eyes and hands that [were made to play] basketball", Baxter says. X-rays also showed traces of a halo and revealed that the woman originally held an alabaster urn; both are attributes of Mary Magdalene. The sitter's face and hands were probably painted over in the 19th century, after the work was transferred to canvas, to make the piece more saleable.
Lippincott traced the painting to the 19th-century railroad magnate and art collector Collis Potter Huntington, who bequeathed the bulk of his collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Carnegie acquired the picture in 1978. After that Lippincott focused on the woman's clothing—the most authentic part of the painting—to help identify the sitter. Searching through a catalogue of paintings of the Medici family, she spotted the woman's dress in a portrait of Isabella de Medici (1542-76), the free-spirited daughter of Eleanor of Toledo and Cosimo de' Medici. Isabella was strangled by her husband after he learned of her affair with his cousin.
Here's a video showing later stages of the restoration, after the overpainted features were removed.
While the talents of Carnegie chief conservator Ellen Baxter cannot be doubted, she's got a long way to go before achieving the exalted results executed in Spain lately, such as the technical master behind the refreshed Immaculate Conception of Los Venerable, the restored Head of Polencia, and of course the magnificent work of Cecilia Gimenenz.
Previously: What's under the yellowed crust of varnish on renaissance paintings
