Portrait of the woman artist Frederica

By 1908 Marinov and his wife Frederica were back in Sofia, a few years home from Turin in northern Italy, where the two had met as students. She was the only woman to finish their course there, a Swiss-born painter and pianist who spoke several languages. The title still names her a woman artist, and that is how he presents her, composed and self-possessed. Within a few years she would set aside her own painting and music to teach Italian and the piano in the Bulgarian capital and to keep their home, becoming the face he painted more than any other. This is among the earliest of those portraits, made while the couple were still close to the Italian years that had shaped them both.