Domenico Induno, La pittrice
In this work, Domenico Induno explores a highly modern theme within the genre of female portraiture. Here, in fact, the protagonist is not a passive subject as in academic portraiture – that is, a model to be portrayed or a literary heroine to be idealised – but, on the contrary, is elevated to the role of creator and active participant in the act of painting.
At the centre of the scene, absorbed in her work as a painter, the woman wears a sumptuous dress that attests to her high social standing: a refined dark velvet jacket, embellished with a light blue ribbon that elegantly echoes the bow in her tied-back hair, and a full skirt rendered with extraordinary attention to the texture, folds and sheen of the fabric. In her left hand she holds her palette and hand rest, whilst with her right she raises her brush, captured at the very moment just before she touches the canvas positioned on the large easel before her.
Behind the woman, the painter is creating a painting within the painting: an imposing landscape, rendering atmospheric details of great intensity and beauty. On the right, one can see the tools of the trade: a paintbox and a container with rags and discarded palettes, details that convey a sense of tangible, everyday industriousness.
Induno documents the emergence of a new kind of woman – an intellectual and a professional – capable of gaining access to spheres historically reserved for men, such as the art academies.
Finally, it is well known that the painter Federica Gervasoni, wife of the painter Bartolomeo Giuliano, was Domenico Induno’s lover. At the time the painting was created, the woman was thirty-two years old, having been born in 1838, which makes it entirely plausible that she was the model for this highly evocative composition.