Noblewoman

Hayez is a key artist in the transition from Neoclassicism to Italian Romanticism. A very solid painter, endowed with a masterly technique, he was unjustly overlooked by twentieth century criticism, and his greatness was only recently rediscovered. Venetian by birth, and thus able to absorb the influences of the eighteenth century lagoon masters, Hayez was also Milanese by adoption, coinciding with the formation of the national identity of the Risorgimento by completing works that represent the realism suffered by many generations of artists. He is particularly effective in portraiture, and in fact we must at least remember the famous painting of Alessandro Manzoni. But his romantic sensibility is combined with an honest and indefatigable attention to the most meticulous details of life. In the work that we admire here, the unknown noblewoman, wrapped in her cap and lace, seems to stand in a conventional position. But the intensity of the face, with the big eyes full of goodness, combined with her complexion and feminine and contrite mouth, gives the character who returns to us from the past a sensitive effectiveness worthy of an excellent painter.