LAURA, 1506, ART HISTORY MUSEUM, VIENNA. Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli) (c.1478-1510)
Giorgione – LAURA, 1506, ART HISTORY MUSEUM, VIENNA.
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Painter: Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli)
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This portrait of a beautiful stranger was painted a very long time ago, back in the 16th century. If you compare its size with other famous paintings of those times, you will notice that it was quite small. Both the length and the width of the canvas were less than half a meter. It was painted with oil. And now let’s put aside the technical side of drawing and move directly to the content and composition of the canvas. When we see such light and shade transitions, we immediately associate them with Leonardo’s sfumato.
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Description of Giorgione’s painting "Laura"
This portrait of a beautiful stranger was painted a very long time ago, back in the 16th century. If you compare its size with other famous paintings of those times, you will notice that it was quite small. Both the length and the width of the canvas were less than half a meter. It was painted with oil. And now let’s put aside the technical side of drawing and move directly to the content and composition of the canvas.
When we see such light and shade transitions, we immediately associate them with Leonardo’s sfumato. This was indeed something similar, because in Leonardo we see a similar coloristic and softening of halftones. In general, if you study the work of these two great artists, it is impossible to do without comparison.
They interestingly solved the problem of depicting the image transitions in the picture from soft to sharper and harder. It is this technique that we can see on this canvas. This kind of animates the picture, gives it a sense of movement, breathing. When you look at the canvas, it seems so real that there is no doubt the presence of the viewer somewhere in the picture itself as a secret observer. With the soft shimmers, Giordano managed to portray the fullness and softness of the female body.
There is a certain prosaicism in this image, but all the same the girl is beautiful in spite of her simplicity. She is portrayed on a black background, which contrasts with her pale skin to the maximum and emphasizes the harshness of her expression. The girl’s head is covered with a kerchief that carelessly hangs over her chest, enveloping the young beauty’s waist like a snake. Her attire is quite at odds with the bloom and riot of greenery behind her. She is wearing a red fur coat. But what can clothes mean when we have such a contradictory image of the face itself? Those stubborn eyes, the focused gaze, the thin pursed lips... What is the girl so offended by, or perhaps hardened by fate?
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The picture has something of this: people, portrait, crown, Renaissance, woman, engraving, royalty, wear, bonnet, retro, veil, vintage, queen, antique.
Perhaps it’s a close up of a painting of a woman in a red dress with a leafy tree in front of her and a black background behind her.