| The "Portrait of a Lady" probably dates from c. 1500 and is attributed to Bernardino Zaganelli. It shows a young woman in an elegant red dress with a fine hairnet, delicate circlet and an impressive pearl necklace with a pendant jewel. Her light skin tone contrasts effectively with the dark background. It was customary both in the Netherlands and Italy to use a panoramic landscape as a background. In Italy, Zaganelli’s contemporary Giovanni Bellini popularized portraits with neutral backgrounds. Albrecht Dürer adopted the idea and helped circulate it in Germany. In such portraits, the viewer concentrates entirely on the sitter’s features, which are modelled by subtle shades of grey in the skin tones. The incident light from the direction in which the subject is looking is also shown in the decorative detail; it makes her pearls shimmer and is also caught in the blood-red pendant jewel. This naturalistic approach to art focuses essentially on tangible, threedimensional details, however; the large, flat areas of the sitter’s dress do not reveal similar organic understanding. |
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