Her name is Alba Camelli. She is married at the age of seventeen to Pietro Camelli. She is the daughter of Luigi and Francesca Gazzi. Although her marriage was a business arrangement made for the advancement of her family and she does not love her husband, she is content. He is a generous provider and allows her to be involved with Santa Verdiana, a convent in northern Florence. When she is twenty years of age her husband passes away. She does not want to remarry, instead choosing to enter the convent of Santa Verdania. She chooses to enter the convent in order to keep land that had been granted to her by her husband prior to his death. She has been a patron of the convent with her husband’s approval (before his death) and land that was left to her by her husband is going to be used to expand the convent. 

   While living here, she becomes well versed in calligraphy and makes quite the name for herself, eventually landing the job of chief scribe. She is given the task of writing a manuscript commissioned by Abbot Giovani de Benci. His family has ties to the Medici bank as did her family. Giovanni de Medici becomes aware of her work and is so impressed with her work that he wants to meet her. They become involved and she becomes pregnant. The convent passes her child off as an orphan as was the practice. He is named Vincenzo and is adopted by Giovanni who sends him to live with relatives. 

  Alba Camelli has this portrait commissioned for her son in the hopes he will have some insight to who she was. 
   I wanted this portrait to portray her as wealthy but not overly so because she would give a lot of her wealth to the convent. I wanted a connection to the Medici's as a way to  acknowledge Vincenzo's father. I put in the Holbein carpet and the pottery that would suggest she had wealth of her own. I added in the upper left hand corner a portrait of her deceased husband. And lastly she is holding a quill and a page from a manuscript to show what she does.