Bolognese school; end of the XVII century.

Bolognese school; late seventeenth century.
"Female bust",
Oil on canvas. Relined.
It has a frame of the nineteenth century.
Measurements: 72 x 58 cm; 89 x 75 cm (frame).
Female figure represented bust, turned in three quarters to the left. The model appears with her hands clasped on her chest and her face slightly raised to the left side, while her hair, moved by the wind, brings dynamism and theatricality to the composition. The work has been related to representations of sibyls, although it also maintains iconographic affinities with images of penitent saints, Magdalenes or sibyls widespread in Italian Baroque painting.
Ascribed to the Bolognese school of the late 17th century, the piece is a representative example of the pictorial sensibility developed in Bologna during the late Italian Baroque. The painting reveals a clear link with the devotional and idealized models spread by the great Bolognese masters, especially Guido Reni and his circle, whose influence was decisive in shaping the Italian painting of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The work fully responds to the aesthetic ideals of the Bolognese school. In contrast to the dramatic naturalism developed by Caravaggio and his followers, the Bolognese painters defended a painting based on classical harmony, idealized beauty and compositional clarity. This trend, initially promoted by the Carracci and later refined by artists such as Guido Reni, sought to reconcile the study of nature with an ideal of formal perfection inherited from the Renaissance. As a result, female figures in this tradition are often characterized by delicacy of features, softness of illumination and a serene spirituality far removed from dramatic excess.