Portrait of a Young Girl

Portrait of a Young Girl, painted around 1515 when Correggio was establishing his mature style in Parma, demonstrates the soft sfumato modeling that became his signature. The girl's face, modeled in the manner he absorbed from Leonardo's work in Milan, achieves a warmth and psychological intimacy unusual in northern Italian portraiture of the period. Correggio's use of Leonardo's atmospheric modeling was more sensuous and less cerebral than his source: where Leonardo's sfumato creates mystery and intellectual depth, Correggio's creates tenderness and emotional approachability. The result is a portrait tradition of exceptional warmth that was enormously influential on subsequent European painting, particularly the seventeenth-century Dutch portrait tradition and the French Rococo.

The intimate portrait shows Correggio's early soft modeling and warm palette. The gentle sfumato in the treatment of the young face already suggests the tender approach that would distinguish his mature religious works.