Clarice Orsini (on the left) with her sister-in-law Bianca Maria de' Medici
When Clarice's husband, Lorenzo, was in Milan as the godfather of the Sforza Prince Gian Galeazzo II Maria, he wrote the following letter to her: „I have arrived here safely and am quite well. This, I believe, will please you better than any other news, if I may judge by my own longings for you and home. Be good company to Piero [Clarice's father-in-law], Mona Contessina [her grandmother-in-law], and Mona Lucrezia [her mother-in-law], and I will soon come back to you, for it seems a thousand years till I can see you once more. Pray to God for me, and if there is anything you want, let me know before I leave. Your own Lorenzo dei Medici, Milan, July 22, 1469.“ (in: Christopher Hare: The Most Illustrious Ladies of the Italian Renaissance. London and New York 1904, pp. 63-64)
Clarice Orsini (on the left) with her husband Lorenzo de' Medici
Lorenzo de' Medici is depicted as a woman, because on this fresco the birth of Saint John the Baptist is celebrated – in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance all men were forbidden to enter the room where a woman has given birth, if the painter wanted to show Lorenzo de' Medici in this religious scene he had to depict him as a woman which was by the way a normal practice in the painting of the Renaissance
Clarice Orsini
She died at the age of 35 of tuberculosis