Italian Woman

Corot's last stay in Italy had been in 1843, almost 30 years before he painted this, around 1870. In his Paris studio he kept pieces of Italian costume, chosen for how they looked rather than for any accuracy, and in the last years of his life he would put landscape aside now and then and dress a model in them. Here the pieces are easy to tell apart. A white blouse, a black velvet bodice edged with red, and over the arms separate yellow sleeves made to be detached, finished with a blue bow and its hanging ribbons. A red scarf is knotted into her dark hair. She sits turned three-quarters toward us with one hand raised to her shoulder, and her face has the withdrawn, faintly melancholy look that runs through many of these late figure studies.