Portrait d’une jeune femme devant un lointain paysage de montagnes brumeuses

Portrait of a young woman against a backdrop of distant, misty mountain landscapes. She is shown in three-quarter view, from the waist up, including her arms and hands, looking directly at the viewer. The woman wears a dark green silk dress, pleated at the front, with yellow sleeves. It is adorned with gold interlacing and embroidery at the neckline. A translucent black veil covers her hair and is clearly visible across her forehead. This mantilla-like covering conceals her crimped or finely curled hair, which falls over her shoulders. Her narrow eyes are distinctly outlined, and her gaze seems to follow the viewer even as they move, as it is perpendicular to the picture plane. The low-cut bodice exposes her throat and chest to the tops of her breasts and the outline of her left shoulder, softening the severity of her veil. Her face is completely hairless, with no eyelashes or eyebrows. She is seated on a sort of semi-circular wooden chair, positioned in profile, with armrests and a semi-circular balustrade supported by railings. Her arms are folded and her hands clasped, her left arm resting firmly on an armrest and her right hand loosely on her left wrist. She is probably on the terrace of an arcaded loggia: a parapet can be seen just behind her in the first third of the painting, as well as the beginnings of the bulbous bases of two columns. In the background is a mountainous landscape in which a winding path and a river spanned by a stone bridge stand out. A break in the horizon line is noticeable: the young woman's head divides the painting into two parts, a humanized landscape in brown and an imaginary landscape of opaque blue whose horizon line coincides with her gaze, in which the horizon is not at the same level. The soft light source comes mainly from the left of the picture and gives the woman a luminous complexion in contrast to her dark clothing.