Portrait of a Young Woman by Botticelli

In Portrait of a Young Woman, a fine cord is knotted at the girl’s throat which disappears into the neck-line of her dress, from which a sacred image presumably hangs.

Portrait of a Young Woman

This detail combined with the complete lack of jewelry suggests that she is a maiden. There is greater insistence on the stylization of the features, more intensely rhythmic qualities in the one woven into an elaborate counterpoint of harmonic variations.

The delicate and supple skin is eternally young. No imperfection whatsoever disgraces this ethereal beauty.
Portrait of a Young Woman by Botticelli

Lady with a Unicorn

The three first female portraits of Raphael, The Lady with a Unicorn, the Gravida and the portrait of Maddelena Doni, each placed around 1505-6, closely belong together as they are part of the same meditative process.

Of the three portraits, the first and most significant was the Lady with a Unicorn. In it the woman holds a diminutive unicorn perched directly on her lap. It was the ‘very first’ live person Raphael depicted and furthermore, the ‘most personal of the Florence portraits’.

Raphael painted the face and figure following the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, the lady portrayed is decidedly Florentine given the style of her clothes, and of high lineage based on the jewelry she sports.

The original rendition (1506) is thought to have been altered at least four times. The current version is the result of restorations made in 1936, 1959 and 1960.
Lady with a Unicorn

Portrait of Dora Maar, 1937 by Pablo Picasso

Dora Maar was the model for Picasso’s Weeping Woman. In 1937, Picasso had just fallen in love with Odra be still seeing another mistress (Marie- Therese-Walter).

Dora Maar, was Yugoslav, had lives many years with her parents in Argentina. She was a photographer who he invited to his studio to photograph his new painting Guernica. They soon became a lover.

Picasso offered multiple views in portraiture. In the painting of his mistress and muse Dora Maar, facial features are simultaneously depicted in profile and in frontal view.

Some art critics believe these paintings represent both frontal and profile views equally; others believe they represent a profile view primarily with some degree of frontality.
Portrait of Dora Maar, 1937 by Pablo Picasso

Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa
Also known as La Giocondo is a portrait of the wife of Francesco del Giocondo. The painting was painted by Leonardo between 1503 and 1505. It was painted in oil on a poplar panel.

It was sold to Francois I. It was greatly admired and considered the prototype of the Renaissance portrait.

The painting is half length portrait and depicts a woman whose expression is often described as enigmatic. Mona Lisa has slight smile which enters into the gentle, delicate atmosphere pervading the whole painting. This because Leonardo uses the sfuma technique, a gradual dissolving of the forms themselves, continuous interaction between light and shade and an uncertain sense of the time of the day.

Mona Lisa dressed on the Florentine fashion of her day and seated in a visionary, mountainous landscape. Mona Lisa subject has been adapted in turn as an aesthetic, philosophical and advertising symbol, entering eventually into the irreverent parodies of the Dada and Surrealist artists.
Mona Lisa