Italian Woman

This carries the date 1898, the year Georgi Mitov finished his studies in Turin and came home to Bulgaria in failing health. The woman he painted is Italian because he was still living in Italy when he made her portrait, a student at the old Accademia Albertina in the northern city of Turin. His teacher there was Giacomo Grosso, an Italian painter known for exactly this kind of confident, close-up figure. A Bulgarian of Mitov's generation who wanted real training had to go abroad to find it, and the sitters he practised on were the people around him. He was 23 when he painted her, and he had two years left to live.