Portrait of the Marchesa Casati 1912

Léon Bakst made this Portrait of the Marchesa Casati with paint, and you can see the process right there on the canvas. It's like he's thinking out loud with his brush. Look at how the paint is layered, thin in some spots, thicker in others, building up to create this textured surface. The hair, in particular, has these swirling, almost sculptural strokes that give it a life of its own. The limited palette keeps it simple, focusing our attention on the form and the expression. That intense gaze, those dark shadows under her eyes—it's all so dramatic. The marks almost look like he’s scratching at the surface. It reminds me a bit of Schiele, who also had this way of capturing a raw, almost unsettling emotional intensity. You get the sense that Bakst wasn't just painting a portrait, but trying to capture something deeper, something about the subject's inner world. It's this openness to interpretation that makes art so endlessly fascinating.