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Laurana is best known for his female portrait busts, but these pose the greatest problem of attribution. None of them is documented, signed or dated. The busts of only two sitters can be positively identified by their inscriptions, those of Battista Sforza (Florence, Bargello) and Beatrice of Aragon (New York, Frick). The latter was probably executed in Naples before 1476, before the Princess's marriage to Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, and her departure for Hungary. The chronology and identification of the other busts are as yet unproven, and little is known about their function and original location.
The Dalmatian Francesco Laurana was one of the great traveling artists of the Italian Early Renaissance. He probably created this bust during his third stay in Naples. It represents either Ippolita Maria Sforza, the wife of King Alfonso II of Naples, or her daughter Isabella, who married Gian Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan in 1489. Laurana formed the bust in a highly abstract way in simple, smooth spherical shapes and then breathed life into it with coloured wax. Even the red flowers in the network of the gold bonnet are modeled from wax, while a real jewel needs to be added over the graceful lady's forehead. None of the other portraits of Laurana has the polychrome finish.
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