Женщина перед зеркалом

Giulio Romano was Raphael's right hand, the pupil who ran the great workshop in Rome and finished pictures the master left undone. Around 1520 he painted this half-nude woman at her table, a mirror and a little perfume jar beside her. The pose comes straight from Raphael's famous Fornarina, the portrait said to show the painter's Roman mistress, but Giulio makes the body more open and frank than his teacher ever did. For centuries collectors wanted it to be a Raphael, and it hung under his name until the middle of the 19th century. Raphael himself died in 1520, and for a long time no one wanted to believe his own hand was not somewhere in it.