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Pontormo (called by the name of his birthplace) was esteemed by the ruling Medici family for his ability to capture the individuality of his sitters, while emphasizing their aristocratic demeanor. Maria Salviati was the widow of famous military leader Giovanni delle Bande Nere de’ Medici (d. 1526) and the mother of Cosimo I (1519–1574), grand duke of Tuscany. The little girl holding her hand here is surely Giulia, a Medici relative who was left in Maria’s care after the murder of the child’s father, Duke Alessandro de’ Medici (1511–1537). As Alessandro was the child of a Medici cardinal and an enslaved African servant, this formal portrait of his daughter may be the first of a girl of African ancestry in European art. The child was painted over sometime during the 19th century—apparently to sell the painting as the portrait of a childless woman—but was rediscovered in 1937 when the painting was cleaned. Maria still wears the sober clothing of mourning for her deceased husband, while Pontormo’s elegant style of painting conveys her aristocratic grace through the rendering of her impossibly long fingers. Furthermore, her fashionably pale skin, made matte by overcleaning in the past, was meant to indicate a privileged life led out of the sun, but it is also known that she was ill. Giulia has also been painted as pale, extremely so, perhaps to draw attention away from her African ancestry.