Ilaria del Carretto

Ilaria del Carretto (1379 – 8 December 1405) was an Italian noblewoman, and the second wife of Paolo Guinigi, the lord of Lucca from 1400 to 1430.

She is mainly remembered for her very fine (though empty) tomb, sculpted by Jacopo della Quercia in Lucca Cathedral.

[2] Upon her death, Paolo commissioned the sculptor Jacopo della Quercia to create a marble sarcophagus, still in Lucca Cathedral.

The sarcophagus was not actually used, and Ilaria del Carretto is buried in the Guinigi chapel of Santa Lucia in San Francesco.

[4] In 1991, James Beck, an American art historian and authority on the sculpture of Jacopo della Quercia, severely criticized a 1990 restoration of the tomb which removed the patina.

The face of Ilaria del Carretto from her tomb, sculpted by Jacopo della Quercia .
Tomb and monument of Ilaria del Carretto by Jacopo della Quercia, ca. 1413 (plaster cast in Moscow)
Coat of arms of the House of Del Carretto