GIOVANNI MARIA DELLE PIANE known as MULINARETTO (Genoa, 1660 - Monticelli d'Ongina, 1745) Portrait of a Lady Oil on canvas, 94X71 cm The canvas depicts a young lady and the style clearly suggests attribution to Giovanni Maria Delle Piane, here intent on employing the successful canons of Genoese portraiture. The artist, a pupil of Giovanni Battista Gaulli in Rome and returned to his homeland in 1684, became the most contested portrait painter, active for the Bourbons and in great demand by the Genoese aristocratic patrons, especially women, who, enthusiastic about the sensibilities inferred from the examples of Rigaud and Nicolas de Largillierre, elected the artist as the director of the city's dynastic iconography (D. Sanguineti, Giovanni Maria Delle Piane, il Mulinaretto: tavole storiate e ritratti di indicibil grazia e giusta naturalezza, in Studi di Storia dell'Arte, 12, pp. 113-134). The wide consensus that he gathered amongst his contemporaries, accurately reported by his biographer Carlo Giuseppe Ratti (Delle vite de' pittori, scultori ed architetti genovesi. Tomo secondo scritto da Carlo Giuseppe Ratti Pittore, e Socio delle Accademie Ligustica e Parmense in continuazione dell'opera di Raffaello Soprani, Genoa 1769, pp. 146-154) was attributable to a language that, while updated on the innovations imparted by the Roman environment, welcomed both formally and technically the new developments that were radiated from the court of Louis XIV, thanks to the political relations that linked the Genoese Republic to France at that time. The felicitous handling that characterises the refined stroke can be appreciated here in the ability to smoothly render the light on the robes and parts of the face.