The bush behind her is juniper — ginepro in Italian — and her name is Ginevra. Leonardo put the pun in the picture. Look closely at the edge of her curls and the museum will point you to something else: the ridges of a fingerprint, pressed into the wet paint while he softened the outline with his hand.
This is the only painting by Leonardo in the Americas. It is also two paintings: on the back is a wreath of laurel, palm and juniper around a scroll that reads Virtutem forma decorat — beauty adorns virtue. The panel was cut down at some point below the picture we see; what was lost, the gallery does not say.
A portrait you can turn over — and a painter who signed it with his thumb.
The idea that the missing lower part showed her hands is a common interpretation and is deliberately left out.
