Richard Wollheim wrote about this picture by Manet. He said that this figure is somehow real to you, though you cannot get her attention. Somehow, there is a spectator in the picture (the top-hatted figure in the mirror, perhaps) and there is you . . . she is looking at you, or failing to. Somehow (perhaps because of her intense preoccupation with her own thoughts or her own despair) you can't get closer.
Today, I saw the Leonardo exhibit at the National Gallery in London. And I thought some of the same things about . . .
You can't get at her because she is behind a parapet. You can't see her hands whatever you do . . . stand on tip toe, crouch under . . . whatever. And yet she stares at you with an unsettling intensity.
The standard theory is that this is Lucrezia Crivelli, a mistress of Leonardo's patron, Ludovico Sforza. The National Gallery catalogue, however, offers a different identification: that she is Beatrice d'Este, Ludovico's wife. If true, this explains the gaze. As you can see, she is looking fixedly to her left. If you follow her gaze in the room at the National Gallery, it falls on the portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, her husband's 16-year old mistress, the "lady with an ermine". No wonder she looks cross. And no wonder you can't get to her.
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