Italian Woman (La Morieri)

Italian Woman (La Morieri), at the National Gallery of Art, is a late Corot figure study from around 1872, connecting his final years' work to the studio figures he had been producing since the 1850s — Italian women in folkloric costume that combined his memories of Italian travel with an interest in figure painting as a tonal rather than narrative exercise. The subject's Italian identity places the work in the long tradition of French artist sojourns in Italy, where peasant women in regional dress were standard studio models.

Corot renders the figure with the same tonal softness he applied to his landscapes — the Italian costume and face emerging from a neutral background through careful value relationships rather than hard contour. The overall chromatic warmth of the figure contrasts gently with the cooler, more silvery atmosphere of his landscape work from the same period.