Portrait of Mme. Lina Cavalieri 1901

Giovanni Boldini made this oil painting of Madame Lina Cavalieri sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. Look at the sweeping brushstrokes, how they capture not just her likeness but almost her essence, the sheer drama of her presence. I imagine Boldini, brush loaded with paint, circling the canvas, capturing the light as it skims across the pearls around her neck and the feathered confection on her head. I wonder if he felt the pressure to capture not just her beauty but her spirit too. There’s a tension in the way the soft grays of the background meet the blacks of her dress. This contrast is so arresting, a reminder of how painting is a conversation, a back-and-forth between intention and accident, control and release. It’s a dance, really, with each stroke building on the last.