Dancer in Florence

This subject is in a position reminiscent of a classical Greek sculpture type that traditionally depicts athletes or heroes. She is in the famous "contrapasto" pose that Renaissance artists loved so much and appropriated from the antiquity surrounding them. The background contains some motifs from Alhambra, in Spain, but mostly comes from a courtyard in Florence. But for all these classical references it is clearly a painting of a real person - a dancer, exhausted, resting only for a moment before the rigorous exercise of her discipline begins again.