French school, 1814.

French School, 1814.
"Female portrait".
Oil miniature
Brass frame.
Signed "Vernisy" and dated.
Measurements: 16 x 9.5 cm.

Oval portrait of a young woman with black hair that falls in free waves and frames an ivory face that is shown in a recollected and self-absorbed attitude.

Since the Renaissance, miniature portraits were pieces for private contemplation. Considered as jewelry, in the seventeenth century they became pieces of personal adornment or a gift object, when they were mounted as jewelry. They were made in a great variety of techniques, such as oil on copper, tin or ivory, gouaches on parchment or cardboard and, since the 18th century, watercolor on ivory. This delicate art will be lost since the second half of the 19th century, in parallel to the development of photography.

The portrait we present here picks up the spirit of the eighteenth-century portrait-jewel to apply it to modern times, capturing the image of a real woman of her time, no longer an ideal recreation of a romantic type.