The Countess Bianca Vivaldi Castiglioni Visconti (1564-1649) asked, in her will, to be buried with a used habit of the Reformed Fathers of the Monastery of the Annunciata of Varese, leaving 100 lire to buy a new one. Imitating her husband Giovanni Castiglioni, who had left 200,000 lire to the Ospedale Maggiore, she made the holy place heir of her property. About 30 years earlier she had paid 6,000 lire to the Ospedale Maggiore, as a sign of thanks, because she had been granted the use of an income on the property of her husband, even though she remarried. The portrait is one of the three that the Quadreria preserves by Bernardo Ferrari and which today constitutes the only existing paintings of the painter.
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