Agostina

In 1875, soon after Corot's death, the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris gave him a memorial exhibition, and this canvas hung there under a plain working title, Study of a Woman. He had painted it in 1866 from an Italian model called Agostina, probably a newcomer to Paris from the countryside near Rome. Within three years it belonged to Jean-Baptiste Faure, a star baritone of the Paris Opéra, who sold it at auction in 1878. In 1909 it went on show again, now titled after the model, in a retrospective of Corot's figure paintings at the Salon d'Automne. Picasso and Braque saw that show, and historians connect it with the women holding mandolins that both of them painted the following year. She stands square to us in blue sleeves, an embroidered apron and strings of coral and pearls, one hand resting on a low wall, with a hill town behind her.