Portrait of a young lady with a sheet of music

Look at the sheet of music in her hand, because you can still read it. The lines come from a romance, a sentimental song of the day, and they run roughly, scorned, I would wish to conquer my own self. The painter did not leave the music blank as a pretty prop. He wrote out real verses, so the sitter is caught in the middle of a private feeling rather than simply posing. He signed the canvas plainly, Teodoro Matteini made this in Bergamo, 1797, which places it in the Lombard city in an unsettled year, before he moved on to Venice. The portrait was bought for the Accademia in 1922, from a Venetian dealer named Barozzi, for 1,000 lire.