1474~76, 42*37cm, Oil on wood
The young woman looks past us with a wonderful
luminous sulkiness. Her mouth is set in an unforgiving line of
sensitive disgruntlement, her proud and perfect head is taut
above the unyielding column of her neck, and her eyes seem to
narrow as she endures the painter and his art. Her ringlets,
infinitely subtle, cascade down from the breadth of her gleaming
forehead(the forehead, incidentally, of one of the most gifted
intellectuals of her time). These delicate ripples are repeated
in the spikes of the juniper bush. The desolate waters, the
mists, the dark trees, the reflected gleams of still waters, all
these surround and illuminate the sitter. She is totally fleshly
and totally impermeable to the artist. He observes, rapt by her
perfection of form, and shows us the thin veil of her upper
bodice and the delicate flushing of her throat. What she is
truly like she conceals; what Leonardo reveals to us is
precisely this concealment, a self-absorption that spares no
outward glance.
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