The Woman with the Pearl

This picture is one of the depersonalised figures that Corot painted in the third part of his career. The position and the expression of the sitter, Berthe Goldschmidt, posing in an Italian dress that Corot had brought back with him, is almost a pastiche of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. The small leaf standing out on the young girl’s brow, formerly thought to be a pearl, gave the picture its title.