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| La Bella Principessa by Leonardo da Vinci |
My favorite painting by Leonardo da Vinci surfaced a few years ago and was sold at private auction. It is a picture of a girl, in profile, with beautiful wavy hair. It is believed to be the portrait of a fourteen-year old Italian noblewoman, Bianca Sforza, commissioned for her marriage. She was married and then died just a few months after the portrait was painted, probably from complications from pregnancy.
Such deaths were common then. They are not common now in the developed world, largely because of a network of women's healthcare that includes, but is not limited to, access to abortion for those who require it.
Bianca Sforza had few human rights. Noblewomen's marriages were arranged. She was, in essence, sold, just as her portrait was sold centuries later. Her father, and then her husband, made the choices about her body that led to her fate.
Many more deaths like hers will now occur, and there is now no da Vinci to immortalize them.
