Gypsy Girl

In the early years of the 16th century almost every painted woman was a saint, a Madonna or a named noblewoman, her likeness made to record a family or a marriage. This small panel is none of those. A young woman in an exotic striped veil looks out with clear, sea-green eyes, wearing modest gold jewellery threaded on heavy cord, and no inscription tells us who she is. That very anonymity is why she has been known for centuries simply as La Zingarella, the gypsy girl. Boccaccio Boccaccino was a painter from Cremona who had spent time in Rome and absorbed the soft, rounded manner of Perugino, and you can feel it in her calm. She is best understood as a picturesque type rather than a true portrait, an early taste for the exotic head that later painters would build into a whole genre.