Description of the picture:
Female Portrait – Correggio (Antonio Allegri). Around 1518. Oil on canvas. 103×87.5
The portrait genre is quite rare in the works of the Italian master of the Renaissance, and the picture presented is the only work of Correggio (1494-1534), stored in the Hermitage.
Mysterious image of a beautiful young woman in contrasting brown and white mourning clothes under the canopy of laurel, which probably symbolizes her poetic talent. A tree trunk entwined with ivy means love and marital fidelity. The vessel, on which the name of the grass of oblivion from ancient Greek mythology is written, hints at the loss of a loved one. Of the many versions of who is represented in the portrait, the most likely is Ginevra Rangone, the wife of Gangaleazzo da Correggio, who belonged to the Franciscan order and was widowed in 1517. According to another assumption, this is the poetess Veronica Gambara, the patroness of the artist, the wife of the ruler of the city Correggio Giberto, who died in 1518."
