Charles Bellay - Portrait Of An Italian Woman

Ouris probably one of the portraits Charles Bellay made in themade in the 1850s in the Rome region, of which the finest known exampleis preserved in the Musée des Beaux Arts de Grenoble.gouache portrait of an Italian peasant woman"

Thepainter made his "study of painting in the studio of ÉdouardPicot, and he learned the delicate technique of intaglio engravingwith Louis Pierre Henriquel-Dupont, the great renovator of Frenchrenovator of French engraving in the 19th century."it was in this specialty that Bellaywon the Prix de Rome in 1852 and entered the Villa Médicis for five yearsfive years, from 1853 to 1857."

"CharlesBellay was no exception to tradition, but while he regularlypieces at the Salon, such as Portrait de M.Schnetz, director of the École de Rome, he also regularly sentwatercolors based on Raphaël's masterpieces, in theRaphaël, in the "Drawings" section, and a few paintings.

TheGrenoble painting of an "Italian Peasant Woman", done inRome, is probably the "varnished gouache" that Bellay presentedat the 1861 Salon in the "Peinture" section under the title"Paysanne des environs de Rome". For although the artistleft the Villa Medici in 1857, he seems to have prolonged his stay in thestay in the Eternal City, as the catalog for that year's Salonyear informs us that he resided in both Rome and Paris.

"Ain-4 collection of Italian Types, published by Goupil in 1869, includesten female figures: Menicuccia, Laura, Louisa, Nunziatina,Stella, Antonia, Pascuccia, Nonna, Vittoria and Rubinella. Fourheads (Types des habitants de la campagne de Rome) appeared at the same1861 Salon in the "engraving" section, the first of a collection of ten platespublished a few years later."