La Belle Ferronière

La belle ferronnière is a name often applied to a portrait of a woman in the Musée du Louvre, traditionally attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. It is also simply known as Portrait of an Unknown Woman. The Louvre currently ascribes it to the school of Leonardo da Vinci in Milan. The painting's title, applied as early as the seventeenth century, identifying the sitter as the wife or daughter of an ironmonger (a ferronnier), was said to be discreetly alluding to a reputed mistress of Francis I of France, married to a certain Le Ferron; the tale is a Romantic legend of revenge, in which the aggrieved husband intentionally infected himself with syphilis, which he passed to the king through infecting his wife. Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine, has...