The present picture was sold in 1935 as the work of Paris Bordon, an attribution which Remigio Marini, loc. cit., was inclined to accept. Vertova and Berenson both regarded it as an early work by Veronese, while Pignatti considered it closer to Fasolo. The attribution to Brusasorci was first suggested by Professor Roger Rearick, who identified the present painting as the pendant of the well-known Portrait of Francesco Franceschini in the Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida, which he also considers to be the work of Brusasorci. Inscribed with the sitter's name and dated 1551, that picture had since 1928 been universally accepted as one of the earliest securely datable works of Veronese (see, for instance, P. Tomory, The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Catalogue of the Paintings before 1800, Sarasota, 1976, pp.118-20, no.123, illustrated; Pignatti, op. cit., I, p.106, no.19, and II, fig.27; R. Cocke in the catalogue of the exhibition, The Genius of Venice 1500-1600, Royal Academy, London, 25 Nov.1983-11 March 1984, p.237, under no.138). Dating to the early part of 1551 Veronese's pendant portraits of Iseppo da Porto with his son and Livia da Porto with her daughter (Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Contini Bonacossi Bequest, and Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore; see, for instance, Pignatti, op. cit., nos.20-21, figs. 28 and 30; Rearick, op. cit., 1988-9, pp.39-40; and Rearick, op. cit., 1990, figs.283-4), Professor Rearick suggests that Brusasorci executed the portraits of Franceschini and his wife later in the same year under the younger artist's strong influence. While his attribution of the present picture to Brusasorci has been confirmed by Mr. Terence Mullaly (private communication), his suggestions about the Sarasota portrait have not found general acceptance. The attribution of that painting to Veronese has been emphatically re-endorsed by Dr. Richard Cocke (in The Burlington Magazine, CXXXI, no.1030, Jan.1989, p.63), Professor Lionello Puppi (in Nuovi Studi su Paolo Veronese, op. cit., pp.342 and 345, note 20) and Filippo Pedrocco (in T. Pignatti and F. Pedrocco, Veronese. Catalogo completo dei dipinti, Florence, 1991, p.44, no.21, illustrated).

The sitter is shown wearing a zibellino, a sable or marten's fur with a gold and jewelled head, a luxurious article of dress widely adopted by prominent ladies in the sixteenth century. It served as a neck-warmer during the cold months in the poorly heated stone palaces of the period. Zibellini are shown in Titian's portrait of Eleonora Gonzaga della Rovere, Duchess of Urbino, in the Uffizi and in Parmigianino's portrait of her daughter Camilla, Countess of San Secondo, in the Prado, as well as in drawings by Giulio Romano (one at Besançon, another sold in these Rooms, 9 Dec. 1982, lot 146)