File:Artgate Fondazione Cariplo - Bazzaro Leonardo, Ciociara o Giovinetta.jpg

This painting is one of the artist’s rare early studies, but it has not been possible to establish its provenance due to a lack of documentary sources. Dated 1877, it displays similarities with the two Half-length Figures shown the following year at the Esposizione dell’Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera. This was the first time that Bazzaro had shown studies of figures in Milan, after achieving considerable success with the perspective view in previous years. This success was actually crowned in 1878, when his painting Room in Palazzo Verri was awarded the Fumagalli Prize, and another of his works, set in the church of S. Maria delle Grazie, won the perspective painting competition organised by the Istituzione Girotti.

Nonetheless, he also seemed to have a feeling for portraiture when he was still a student: sources of the period recount that he was always immortalising his companions at the Academy in dashed-off sketches, even earning himself the nickname “Little Velázquez”. One of these early pieces was Portrait of the Milanese Artist Amero Cagnone as a Youth, now in the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan.

In Young Woman from Ciociara the figure is enriched by the interest in traditional costume; in fact, very early on Bazzaro followed a line of research similar to that pursued by other exponents of Lombard Naturalism such as Filippo Carcano and Emilio Gola, as can be seen from two of their works inspired by the places and traditions of popular life, Peasant Family in the Veneto Region and Washerwomen on the Naviglio, featured in the Collection. By contrast, the pictorial handling – on unprepared canvas – reveals a close affinity with the approach of the Scapigliatura movement: the face has a subtle quality that overtly reprises the lesson of Tranquillo Cremona, while the rapid touches of bright coral red accentuate the ribbons of the costume and the necklace worn by the young woman from Ciociara.