Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Italian Woman

A supremely poised young woman is painted in three-quarter view. Her right hand curls around the handle of a mirror, while she appears to be caressing a lock of hair with her left. She wears a white blouse under a black velvet bodice which is trimmed with red ribbon, and over her arms yellow detachable sleeves, decorated with a blue bow from which three blue ribbons fall. This study is one of a number that Corot painted during the last years of his life, many of which are characterised by an air of introspection and melancholy.

According to an early biographer, Etienne Moreau-Nélaton, he would take a week out from painting landscapes to concentrate on capturing on canvas the special qualities of a particular model, the identity of whom is often not known. The origins of these studies lay in his first visit to Italy in 1825–8, when he not only painted the landscape but also made studies of the people, including several of women dressed in traditional costume.

The different pieces of clothing included here also appear in other paintings by Corot. The black bodice actually belongs to a dress which can be seen in its entirety in The Reader (1868, Minneapolis Institute of Art), and the sleeves, sometimes minus their blue ribbons, can be seen in a number of studies of women, of which the earliest is The Woman with a Pansy (1855–8, Denver Museum of Art). These sleeves were part of Italian traditional costume, and were tied over an undergarment allowing it to show, and in some cases billow out over the top. Corot kept assorted articles of dress in his studio with which to clothe his models. He was particularly interested in Italian costume, and in 1857 he asked for items to be sent from Albano, near Rome. In his depictions of such dress he was not interested in authenticity, but took delight in mixing up the different pieces to create a pleasing juxtaposition of colours and textures.