Contadina de Asís

Joaquín Sorolla's Contadina de Asís (Country Girl from Assisi, 1888) is an early work by the Spanish painter who would become the supreme exponent of Mediterranean light and color in European art. Sorolla was studying in Rome on a scholarship in the late 1880s, absorbing Italian academic painting while beginning to develop his instinct for outdoor light. The Assisian contadina — a peasant girl from the Umbrian town associated with St. Francis — participates in the tradition of Italian peasant girl painting that stretched from Corot and Gérôme through a hundred academic painters, but Sorolla's eye for light already distinguishes his treatment.

Sorolla's early Italian works show his academic training and his emerging sensitivity to the specific quality of Italian light. The contadina is rendered with careful academic observation — the specific dress of the Umbrian peasant girl, the face modeled with academic competence. His palette is warmer and more light-saturated than northern European painting — the Mediterranean quality of Umbrian light already evident in his outdoor treatment. The handling shows the foundation that would develop into his incomparable mature Valencian light painting.