Catherine de’ Medici, artist unknown
The portrait on the left hangs in the Louvre, because although she was born in Florence (500 years ago this April!) Catherine became Henri II’s queen when she was 14 and lived her adult life in France. The portrait on the right is of her father, who, aged 26, died, “worn out by disease and excess”, when his daughter was just three weeks old. (The mother had died a week before.) We don’t know who painted her; it was attributed to the atelier of François Clouet, but not any more. Lorenzo’s painter was unknown when the work was sold for $325 in 1968. In 2007, it was bought by an anonymous private buyer for £18.5 million.
Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino by Raphael (1518)