Provenance
Florence, Baroni
Paris, de Larouisille
Milan, Giorgio Bocca and Silvia Giacomoni

Literature
D. Fonti, Gino Severini. Catalogo ragionato, Milan 1988, p. 98, n. 89

An elegant lady is depicted frontally, displaying beneath her fur collar a generous décolletage. On her head she wears a striking Parisian hat — a true status symbol of the early twentieth-century haute bourgeoisie across Europe. The portrait thus stands as a radiant testament to the culture (and fashion) of the twilight of the Belle Époque, a moment when the continent was already beginning to sense the signs of an impending transformation.

The work is dated 1911 and signed by the painter Gino Severini. Born in Cortona, Severini trained as a youth in the studio of Giacomo Balla in Rome, before moving to Paris in 1906, where he became one of the leading figures among the Italiens de Paris — a circle that included Boldini, Modigliani, De Chirico, and many others.

The portrait of Madame Fernande Costa-Torro, a friend of Severini and the owner of a boutique in Rue Damrémont, Montmartre, was executed in pastel during the period following the artist’s adherence to Futurism. The nervous flicker of light upon the mink collar and the sunlit sky behind her reveal a profound kinship between Severini’s style and that of his close associate Umberto Boccioni, with whom, just a year earlier, he had drafted and signed the Manifesto of Futurist Painters (1910).