In La Scapigliata, how is the Description discussed?
The true intention for the work's creation is unknown, and it has been variously referred to as a sketch, a drawing, or a painting. Due to the use of paint, it is correctly described as a painting, but scholars continue to discuss its sketch- and drawing-like qualities, often linking it to Leonardo's early works such as the Adoration of the Magi and Saint Jerome in the Wilderness, as well as later ones such as The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist. The art historian Carmen Bambach suggests that it should be described as a "brush drawing", or as a "painted sketch".The painting is executed on a small  24.6 cm × 21.0 cm (9.7 in × 8.3 in) poplar wood panel with oil, umber, and white lead pigments. It portrays the unfinished outline of a young woman whose face gently gazes downward while her loosely drawn, dishevelled hair waves in the air behind her. The woman's eyes are half-closed and completely ignore the outside world and viewer, while her mouth is slightly shaped into an ambiguous smile, evocative of the Mona Lisa. Other than her face that takes up most of the painting, the rest of the painting is barely even sketched in, with a primed, but unpainted, background. The differences in the face and the rest of the painting are effectively blended by a mastery of sfumato. The art historian Alexander Nagel notes that the sfumato results in the shadows concealing any strokes or marks, and points out how the shadows are softened by careful lighting around them, such as on the left side of the jaw. The appeal in this contrast of the unfinished and finished parts has provoked speculation that the painting is not incomplete, but was left in a sketchy state on purpose.The subject of the painting is unknown and no theory has proved convincing enough for modern scholars to reach a consensus about it. One theory is that the work is a study for Leonardo's lost painting of Leda and the Swan, but this is discredited by existing copies of the painting showing Leda with hair more elaborate than that of the woman in La Scapigliata. It is also claimed that the painting was a sketch for a painting of Saint Anne that never was completed, or a study for the London version of the Virgin of the Rocks. According to scholars at the Galleria Nazionale di Parma, the subject of the painting may be a portrait of an anonymous woman.
white lead Saint Jerome in the Wilderness Galleria Nazionale The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist Leda and the Swan Galleria Nazionale di Parma Parma poplar wood oil sfumato Adoration of the Magi umber Virgin of the Rocks panel Saint John the Baptist left Saint Anne Mona Lisa Carmen Bambach lost