Engagement Portrait of Princess Margherita Gonzaga

This portrait focuses more on the features of the sitter, rendered more graceful in the proportions of her face. She wears a Spanish-style dress with oversleeves on a blue background with gold bands. The embroidery, reminiscent of the Gonzaga emblem of the trunk, is clearly visible, a motif also used on another dress by her sister Eleonora in 1622. Margherita also displays the ring and bracelet of her mother, Eleonora, clearly seen in the portrait now in the Palatine Gallery in Florence, a double strand pearl necklace interwoven between her fingers to signify her name (Margarita means pearl in Latin), described in the 1626–1627 inventory of Gonzaga jewels, and two star-shaped diamond brooches with central settings and pearls, which Margherita would take with her when she married the following year9. The geometric shape of these two dress brooches is echoed in the intricate lacework of the wrist and collar, valuable both aesthetically and economically, like the jewels she wears.