"La signora in rosa" by Giovanni Boldini at Gallerie d'Italia - Milano

Thanks to the collaboration with the Museums of the Municipality of Ferrara, the Gallerie d’Italia in Milan are hosting one of Boldini’s most famous portraits, La signora in rosa, which has never left the Museo “Giovanni Boldini” in Ferrara, except once in 2022, for the major exhibition at the Petit Palais in Paris. At the same time, Boccioni’s Factories at Porta Romana, which belongs to the Gallerie d’Italia – Intesa Sanpaolo Collections, is on temporary loan for the important exhibition From Monet to Van Gogh to Kandinsky. New Perspectives on Nature and Modernity organised by Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara in collaboration with the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, until 10 January 2027.

La signora in rosa is one of the most extraordinary works from the late period of the artist’s career and portrays Olivia de Subercaseaux Concha, the niece of Emiliana Concha de Ossa, who had posed for the magnificent White Pastel (Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera) in 1888.

Boldini had been so pleased with the painting that he considered it to be one of his greatest masterpieces. The canvas stands out for the exceptional technical skill and expressive power with which the artist experiments with a series of chromatic variations on the dominant colour, pink. Meanwhile, the white flourishes with which he renders the folds of the dress lend the image a truly modern dynamism.

This self-assured young woman, who seduces with her beauty and intense gaze, represents the epitome of a new femininity which emerged during the Belle Époque, of which Boldini was perhaps the greatest interpreter.