Portrait of a Woman

Correggio's Portrait of a Woman (c. 1520) at the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, is one of his rare female portraits, depicting a woman of evident refinement with the soft atmospheric modeling he applied to all his figures. The work's attribution to Correggio has occasionally been debated, but the quality of the flesh modeling, the warmth of the atmospheric treatment, and the psychological directness of the gaze are characteristic of his approach. The sitter may be a specific individual connected to the Parma or Mantua court milieu that provided Correggio with his principal patrons, though her identity has never been established with certainty.

The warm, atmospheric handling of the face and the soft, brown tonality create an intimate, almost dreamy quality, with Correggio's sfumato lending the sitter a mysterious, Leonardesque ambiguity.