The Odalisque, Sofia Grancini, (Late 19th century)

Sofia Grancini, “The Odalisque”, 19th/20th century, oil on canvas.
Signed lower left “Sofia Grancini”.
82x55 cm.

“The Odalisque”, a beautiful portrait that can be dated approximately to the late 1890s, depicts a fascinating woman dressed in oriental clothes, sharing nothing, except the title, with the works of the same subject by her male colleagues: the female figure is not simply a model dressed in oriental clothes, absorbed in her chores, treated by the superficial eye as a simple decorative object within the canvas.
Her humanity is conveyed by her confident and intense gaze, her natural and casual pose, as if she wanted to show the observer that she has nothing to envy from a man: she is a real woman, proud of being one and of existing not for pleasure, whether visual or sexual, male, but for herself and no one else; she is a leading woman, totally cleared of the male gaze.
The figure’s proud attitude is accentuated by the act of smoking a cigarette, a gesture probably unbecoming for a lady of the time; she is portrayed at the very moment in which, nonchalantly, she lets the smoke slip from her full heart-shaped lips.
Grancini demonstrates great chromatic knowledge, his is a warm, clayey but extremely elegant palette; the artist manages to perfectly render the texture of the oriental carpet in the background, while the ochre velvet sofa, where the figure is softly sitting, shines almost gold.
The light coming from the right defines the woman’s delicate face, dampening the sweetness of the cut of her eyes, half-closed in an almond shape. The clothes are reproduced in every minimum detail, from the soft striped turban to the shirt in very light and transparent silk crepe, to the chrome green vest, to the gypsy sash wrapped around the waist.
The jewels are then painted with equal mastery: the pearls shine with a cold, almost lunar whiteness; as does the silver slave bracelet, along with the other jewels that adorn the woman. The metal and enamel buckle dominates the scene with a powerful charge, almost a second vanishing point; the earrings and the jewel on the forehead, probably a maang tikka, a typical female ornament of Indian tradition, whose golden glow is enhanced by the blue of the lapis lazuli and the vermilion of the coral beads.

BIOGRAPHY

Sofia Grancini was a Milanese painter active in the last decade of the 19th century and unjustly forgotten; the painting presented here is an unpublished work that will surely succeed in taking such a talented artist out of the oblivion into which she has unfortunately ended up.
Grancini not only possessed innate pictorial qualities, but also an excellent artistic education, obtained at the Brera Academy, in years in which women students at the institution were very few, even less than a fifth. It is therefore probable that the painter had certain means to study painting: behind her, a family that supported her vocation, perhaps not without a considerable patrimony; Grancini could have been the descendant of some nobleman, a student or daughter of a minor artist who allowed her to practice during her childhood and adolescence in his studio. The artistic influence of the Verist school of Giuseppe Bertini is evident in her other known work, a still life with a devotional subject currently preserved in the Civic Museums of Macerata, probably prior to the work presented here.