This delicate pastel may be a commemorative portrait of Pisana Conaro after her marriage to the Venetian politician Alvise Giovanni Mocenigo. In The Dogaressa, a history of Venetian women in politics by Pompeo Molmenti, we get a window into the personality of Pisana Conaro Mocenigo: “whose nobleness of character, piety, and learning were unrivalled, and besides amusing herself with astronomical observations and natural history, took a singular pleasure in the study of anatomy, in which she made such great progress that she excited the admiration of the illustrious Frotomedico Santorini, and also of the immortal Giambattista Morgagni, prince of the anatomists of our time.”
