Portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci by Leonardo da Vinci. Oil on panel. Painted around 1474-1478. The painted surface is about 1 foot 3 inches square.

This description is about 2 minutes long.

A young white woman is shown from chest up, in front of a landscape with trees and water in the distance. The color palette is dominated by coppery shades of brown, with touches of pale blue.

We’ll start by describing the woman and then move on to the background.

The woman’s shoulders are angled away from us to our right, while her head is turned so she looks towards us: she has heavy-lidded, hazel eyes, under delicate, faint brows. Her skin is chalk-white and porcelain smooth. There are faint shadows under wide, rounded cheekbones. She has a straight nose, and her pale pink lips rest in a line. Copper-colored curls frame her face and fall to her jawline. Behind the curls, her hair is smoothly pulled back under a chocolate brown scarf or headdress at the back of her head.

She wears a russet-brown garment with a low-cut, square neckline edged with gold; her upper chest is covered with a transparent white fabric, like muslin or gauze. The bodice is laced at the front with sky blue laces – which echo the blue in the background.

Immediately behind the woman’s head and shoulders is a dense and prickly bronze-colored bush. To our right of the bush, a landscape stretches into the misty distance. There are a couple of slender trees with rust-colored leaves. Beyond them is a stretch of blue water reflecting trees on the far shore. And, even farther, layers of misty hills become more and more indistinct under a pale, smoky blue sky.