Woman’s Head or “Gabbrigiana”

The beautiful young woman’s head, fiercely painted against a dark, neutral background devoid of spatial references-which serves to isolate the Pre-Raphaelite face, posed in a thoughtful pose of romantic vitality-is one of the earliest female portraits, dedicated to the simple peasant figures, the so-calledGabbrigiane, executed by Lega in the last years of his life, when he retired to Gabbro, in the Livorno hinterland.

The proud and expressive image, datable to 1885, marks a moment of great modernity in the artist’s production because of the concentrated impetuosity of the execution and the guarded choice of colors. According to Durbé, the work is not far, in stylistic characters, from the brilliant Portrait of the sculptor Rinaldo Carnielo (Florence, Museo Comunale R. Carnielo) made years earlier, and would be taken up in a softened form in the 1887 Portrait of Giuseppina Bandini.