Portrait of a Woman
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
29 7/8 × 23 3/8 in. (75.9 × 59.4 cm)
Classification
Paintings
Department
European Paintings
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Álvaro Saieh Bendeck, Jean-Luc Baroni, and Fabrizio Moretti, in honor of Keith Christiansen, 2014
Accession Number
2014.277
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the opulent world of 17th-century Rome with *Portrait of a Woman* by Giovanni Battista Gaulli known as Il Bacic (1639–1709). Painted around the 1670s, this oil on canvas captures the grandeur of the Baroque era, a time when artists like Gaulli dazzled patrons with dramatic flair and emotional depth. A Genoese prodigy who trained under the sculptural genius Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Gaulli rose to fame for his illusionistic frescoes in Rome's Chiesa del Gesù, blending architecture and painting in breathtaking trompe-l'œil effects. Yet, his portraits, like this one, reveal his mastery of i...