Portrait of a Woman with Attributes of Diana
The painting is of a lady wearing a dress in the French style, the predominant fashion for virtually the whole of the eighteenth century, with a pointed diadem and a hairband decorated with pearls. This seigniorial appearance is mixed with elements typical of hunting, such as a light leather cuirass, a bow and a quiver full of arrows. It is a curious combination of naturalism and symbolism, halfway between a portrait and an allegory of the goddess Diana, praised for her strength and beauty. The work, which once belonged to the Modernista interior decorator and furniture maker Gaspar Homar, and which was also in the collection of Oleguer Junyent, is dated and signed by Pere Crusells, a Catalan artist who in this case takes his inspiration from the painting of France and northern Italy (Turin and Genoa).Crusells's painting clearly shows an excessive reliance on engraved graphic sources, to which he resorted somewhat repeatedly. Despite his technical limitations, that fact that he signed a large number of works suggests that he was an artist with a high degree of self-esteem who took advantage of his commissions to advance himself.
1725
105.5 x 83 cm
Purchase, 1931
024269-000