Noia italiana

Italian girl

Italian girl is a watercolour painted by Josep Tapiró y Baró (Reus, 1836 - Tánger, 1913) during his stay in Rome between 1862 and 1871, a period in which the painter consolidated his style and acquired a certain recognition, sharing his subject matter with his friend Mariano Fortuny, as well as a taste for romantic art.

With the rise of Romanticism and an interest in neo-classical and archaeological studies, many areas of the Italian region of Lazio attracted the interest of artists and engravers owing to the abundance of monumental ruins from the Roman era, as well as the folklore of these regions.

European artists made the men and women of Roman and their surroundings the subject matter of portraiture, thanks in part to the richness and colour of their traditional clothing.

This is the case with the work Noia Italiana, which depicts a portrait of a rural girl in painstaking detail. With a descriptive subject matter relating to Roman customs, the girl is wearing a typical Italian suit from the Lazio region, in the south-west of Rome, also known as a Ciocario, because of the geographical region it represents.

This full-length portrait places the feminine figure at the centre of the work. The ambiguous background merges with the ground and offers us no information as to the location, causing us to focus all our attention on the rich and colourful clothing of the figure.

The clothing of the Italian girl is made up of various garments. The wide-sleeve shirt narrows from the elbow; this part could be detached and removed or worn as required. A blue corset streamlines her silhouette and is attached below the bust. An embroidered apron with floral motifs is attached to it, over a blue dress which reaches her feet. A stand-out feature is the shawl, also embroidered with flowers, which covers her shoulders, as well as the white headscarf which appears to be attached to her gathered hair. Finally, a red coral necklace is placed around her neck and rests over her bust after several turns.

The light illuminates the girl from the top of the work, and places special emphasis on her face and her bust. Blushing and with her eyes closed, she is inclining her head slightly to one side as if wanting to escape the gaze of the onlooker. Her hands clasp her skirt, so that she can step forwards, as if Josep Tapiró had taken a photograph in a fleeting moment, capturing Italian girl walking along a street in the Lazio region.

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