Does anybody agree with me that this portrait
could easily be the actress Joanne Froggatt, of Downton Abbey fame?!
I knew she reminded me of someone the moment I saw the portrait! What is it – chin, eyes, expression?!
A portrait of an unknown Renaissance lady, painted around 1460 by the Florentine artist Antonio del Pollaiuolo, usually in Berlin but presently in a magnificent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York called The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini; Joanne plays Anna Bates in the Downton Abbey series.
I came across the portrait (and a few others up this week) on The Persephone Post blog (http://thepersephonepost.blogspot.com/) but also enjoyed the recent selection of George de la Tour paintings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_de_La_Tour), which are later, 17th century.
The Little Wash-House 
YES!!!!
There’s a news reader on Midlands TV here , Suzanne Virdee, who could easily have been Botticelli’s model for Venus arising from the waves and a couple of his Madonnas.
Beautiful, isn’t it?