The Secret Letter
by TRAVERSI, Gaspare, Oil on canvas, 131 x 146 cm
This painting illustrates a young woman receiving a letter from a secret lover, delivered by a page and observed by her two elderly parents and an older gentleman dressed in the French style and with a cane, possibly a well-to-do suitor. The subject pertains to the long sixteenth- and seventeenth-century tradition of genre painting, as does its companion piece The Concert.