The painting is an outstanding example of the classical spirit and poetry with which Corot imbued his finest figure paintings of the 1860s. The pose and modeling of the figure evoke the iconic female figures of the Renaissance. Corot tempers her monumentality with a pensive intimacy drawn from the Dutch seventeenth-century masters. Yet her enigmatic expression is that of a very real woman, not an idealized "type", and her elusive gaze lends her a psychological complexity. It was his trips to Italy in 1825-28, 1834 and 1843 that inspired Corot's distinctive Italian peasant girls. Corot enthused that: "In them, I saw the beauty of life. This beauty is in every creature, it is everything which breathes and which is impregnated with light."
A Pensive Girl
oil on canvas • 46.3 × 38.1 cm
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Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot