Young Girl Carrying a Pumpkin, Fausto Zonaro
Link is to zoomable file on Google Art Project; there is also a downloadable version of that file on Wikimedia Commons.
The original is in the Sakıp Sabancı Museum in Istanbul, Turkey. The museum also has a zoomable version of the file, but it looks over-saturated to me. The real appearance of the painting could be somewhere between the two, but given the choice between them, I feel the Google file is likely to be more accurate.
Fausto Zonaro was an Italian painter who spent a good part of his career in Istanbul. In this simple subject, he has contrasted the orange of the pumpkin against the background greens and muted color of the girl’s dress, but kept the contrast in check by adding the green area of the pumpkin and having the girl’s hand and forearm cover a good bit of the surface.
I love Zonaro’s painterly approach to suggesting the texture of the ground and the strewn bits of other plants.
