Portrait of Ginevra de Benci by Leonardo Da Vinci

Ginevra de' Benci (1457–c. 1520) was an aristocrat from 15th-century Florence, admired for her intelligence by Florentine contemporaries. She is the subject of a portrait painted by Leonardo da Vinci.

It is known from three written sources that Leonardo painted a portrait of Ginevra de' Benci in 1474, possibly to commemorate her marriage that year to Luigi di Bernardo Niccolini at the age of 16. The painting's imagery and the text on the reverse of the panel support the identification of this picture. Directly behind the young lady in the portrait is a juniper tree. The reverse of the portrait is decorated with a juniper sprig encircled by a wreath of laurel and palm and is memorialized by the phrase VIRTUTEM FORMA DECORAT ("beauty adorns virtue"). The Italian word for juniper is "ginepro", which suggests that the juniper motif was used here as a symbolic pun on Ginevra's name. Fittingly, juniper was also a Renaissance symbol for chastity. 

A strip from the bottom of the painting was removed in the past, presumably due to damage, and Ginevra's arms and hands were lost.

It is believed Ginevra's hands removed from the painting were inspired on Verocchio's Portrait of a Woman sculpture. Leonardo was Verocchio's apprentice when young and had an opportunity to see this work very closely.

Portrait of a Woman by Verocchio

Below is one of Leonardo's sketches of  hands today in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, it exemplifies Leonardo's intense attention to, even fascination with, anatomical correctness and the effects of light and shadow. At the bottom, one hand is folded underneath another, more developed one, as if resting in a lap. That lightly-sketched hand seems to be the ghost of the top hand, which holds a sprig of some sort of plant, the outline of the thumb is nearly identical. These two highly developed hands are worked up with dark crosshatching and white chalk highlights, creating a sense of mass even on a sheet of paper. In each, everything from the muscles of thumb-pads to the wrinkles of skin along the joints of the fingers is depicted with the utmost care. Even when Leonardo lightly sketches the rest of the forearm or the "ghost" hand, his lines are deft and confident, showing how much he strove to depict the human form correctly.

This is a simulation on how the portrait would look like if it had not had its bottom part removed.

“Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first understood.”
― Leonardo da Vinci