Bust of a woman

Copy of a niello print from the Durazzo Collection (n. 2860)

The image also exists in at least three other variants : a Lombard ( ? ) drawing in the Uffizi ( inv . no . 209F ) , falsely inscribed as a portrait of Beatrice d'Este by Leonardo ; a painting in the Metro politan Museum of Art with a forged Dürer monogram ( the painting may itself be a forgery ) and the date 1506 ; and an engraving formerly attributed to Zoan Andrea ( see TIB 2509.026 ) , apparently a fictitious artist now identified with Giovanni Antonio da Brescia ( TIB 2511 ) . Although Dutuit and Blum called the work Venetian , the composition is clearly Lombard , and the print was probably produced in Milan at the end of the fifteenth or the beginning of the sixteenth century .

The nielli of the Durazzo collection were reproduced in engravings by the owner himself, between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, in Venice - as also specified by Malaspina in his catalog of 1824 - constituting a series that was circulated and collected by amateurs. Bartsch describes these copies in his volume published in 1811, a date that therefore constitutes the terminus ante quem for the execution.