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Bianca Maria Sforza (5 April 1472 – 31 December 1510) was the third wife of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor. She was married when 21 months old to her first cousin Philibert I, Duke of Savoy, and became a widow at the age of ten, when he died of tuberculosis. After her father Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, was assassinated when she was a child, her education was neglected. Her marriage to Maximilian in 1494 was unhappy; she became pregnant several times but failed to produce a living child, and he compared her unfavourably to his first wife, describing her as uneducated, talkative, naive, wasteful with money, and careless.
This picture is an oil-on-poplar portrait of Bianca by Italian Renaissance artist Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis, probably painted in 1493. The work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.Painting credit: Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis