The artwork, depicting a portrait of a woman elegantly dressed and adorned with jewels, is a typical example of a classic typology of the Lombard-Emilian portrait of th seventeenth century, and as such can be approached to the canonical examples of the painter Pierfrancesco Cittadini known as the Milanesi.
After a first education in Lombardy with the painter Daniele Crespi, the Cittadini moved to Bologna, where he followed the teachings of Guido Reni, the latter painter who profoundly influenced his entire artistic career. Although he soon succeeded in getting rid of them and soon reached an autonomous style.
Author of works of sacred, mythological and allegorical subjects for important commissions, the citizen also specialized in portrait painting, a field in which in particular he excelled, managing to express himself with great freedom.
In our painting, of outstanding pictorial quality, typical of the citizens are the refined and precious dresses adorned with red bows, the feathered ornaments in the hair and the rich jewels, that the woman seems to want to turn away from hersel as a gesture of liberation.
It is precisely this gesture that leads us to think that the portrait, idealized by the face of renian memory and turned to heaven, hides in reality an allegorical meaning, almost religiousm, so much so that it can be said that it may be an allegory of vanitas.