Focus on La Scapigliata and explore the History.
No records of a commission survive for the painting, but its intimacy suggests that it may have been for a private patron. Bambach cites a note by the Florentine official Agostino Vespucci that mentions Leonardo, and describes the appeal and beauty of the unfinished bust of Venus by the famous ancient Greek painter Apelles. She believes that La Scapigliata may be the result of Vespucci commissioning Leonardo to execute a work along the same lines.
A more widely accepted theory is that the work was commissioned by a known patron of Leonardo and a member of the Gonzaga family of Mantua, Isabella d'Este. She was one of the leading women of the Italian Renaissance, a major cultural and political figure, who had asked Leonardo for a painting of the Madonna for her private studio in 1501. Isabella d'Este probably gave the painting to her son Federico II on the occasion of his wedding to Margaret Paleologa. This is evidenced by a 1531 letter from the secretary of the Mantuan Gonzaga family, Ippolito Calandra, who suggests that a painting (with very similar features as La Scapigliata) be hung in the bedroom of Federico II and Margaret Paleologa. A 1531 inventory of the Gonzaga family art collection in the ducal palace also records a painting that could be La Scapigliata. Another inventory from 1627 likely refers to La Scapigliata and is likely to be the origin of the nickname for the painting since the record describes it as follows: "A painting depicts the head of a dishevelled woman... by Leonardo da Vinci." This record implies that it was not sold among a large sale of paintings from the Gonzaga collection to Charles I of England in 1626–1627. It is possible that the painting was stolen from the Gonzaga collection in July 1630 when, under the pay of Ferdinand II, an imperial army of 36,000 Landsknecht mercenaries sacked Mantua.The next (and first certain) record of the painting is in 1826, when Francesco Callani offered the collection of his father, the Parmesan artist Gaetano Callani, for sale to the gallery of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Parma. In a list of the works in the collection for the gallery's director, Paolo Toschi, La Scapigliata appears listed as "A head of Madonna painted in chiaroscuro". The sale implies that it entered the collection of Gaetano Callani at some point, probably during his 1773–1778 stay in Milan, but other than being in Milan, there is no information on the whereabouts of the painting prior to that notation. The sale took place in 1839, but the painting identified as La Scapigliata entered the gallery of Palatine Gallery of Parma (now the Galleria Nazionale di Parma), where it was listed as "The head of Leonardo da Vinci" and described by Toschi as "a very rare work to find today". It has been housed in the National Gallery of Parma ever since.
Isabella d'Este Agostino Vespucci Leonardo da Vinci National Gallery Federico II Margaret Paleologa nickname Gonzaga family of Mantua patron Gaetano Callani Galleria Nazionale Galleria Nazionale di Parma Accademia di Belle Arti di Parma Parma Ferdinand II Mantua Landsknecht Charles I of England Paolo Toschi ducal palace Venus Apelles