Romney and Raphael The portrait by Raphael (1483-1520) known as 'La Fornarina' (the baker's daughter) was painted at the end of the artist's career, c.1518-20, and is part of the collection of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica at the Palazzo Barnberini in Rome, Italy. The picture is in oils on board, and is 87cm tall by 63 cm wide. The subject is a seated young woman, almost nude, against a dark background of foliage. The upper two-thirds of her body are visible; her legs are clothed in a piece of deep red-pink drapery, and she holds a filmy, semi-transparent piece of fabric up against her stomach and chest with her right hand. Her left hand is resting in her lap. Her breasts, shoulders and arms are bare, and her body is visible through the fabric which she holds in her right hand, giving this picture an erotic quality not typical of Raphael's work. Her hair is wrapped in an elaborate patterned scarf or turban, with a jewelled brooch or other feature visible at the front. She also wears a ring on the third finger of her left hand and a bracelet on her upper left arm, upon which Raphael's signature is visible. The woman's eyes are large and dark, and are looking, not out at the viewer but to the viewer's left, and she is smiling slightly. The finish of the portrait is smooth, with rich colour built up within finished and well-defined forms. The identity of the subject is not known, but it has been suggested that she was a lover of the artist. It has also been argued that this work is only partly by Raphael and is a product of his studio in which other artists, in particular Guilio Romano, had a great deal of involvement.

The English artist George Romney (1734-1802) painted many portraits of the celebrated beauty Lady Emma Hamilton,...

The first of these pictures, 'Lady Hamilton as Nature' was painted in 1782 and is now in the Frick Collection in New York. The picture is oil on canvas and is 75.8 cm tall by 62.9 cm wide and shows Emma dressed in a russet-brown or dark red dress, her hair loosely tied with ribbons or strips of cloth and falling freely down her back, her head tilted downwards and towards the viewer, and looking straight out of the canvas at the onlooker. She holds a small dog, a spaniel, under her left arm; her right hand is positioned to half-hold, half rest upon the dog's chest and left leg. She is outdoors, in a wild landscape with high ground in the background, a tree directly behind her, and a tumbling sky of white and gray clouds. The sitter is placed off center, towards the right of the canvas, strengthening the sense of movement that fills the canvas. The brushwork is vigorous and almost hurried, suggesting quickness and energy; surfaces textures range from the smooth and rich (the left sleeve of Emma's gown) to the rough and sketchy (the trees and bushes in the middle ground). There is a general falling-away of definition from the foreground to the background of the scene; the figure of Emma is far better defined than the tree behind her, or the landscape in the background.
There are a number of common features that bind these pictures together. To begin with the most superficial points of comparison, both are portraits of individuals; the subjects in both cases are women; both pictures depict only their subjects, with no other figures; both use an outside background consisting largely of natural foliage; both adopt a broadly representational approach, rather than one of abstraction…