The work is part of a project inaugurated in 2014 at the Maramotti Collection entitled Portrait of women which put the artists Alessandra Ariatti and Chantal Joffe in dialogue: both have concentrated their artistic research in portraits, a figural tradition that has been continuously traversed Western art (but not only) from the fifteenth century to today. The portrait, as an investigation of the interiority, as well as of the features, of a person or character, dates back, even before the modern era, to Greek and Roman marble portraits; while adapting to the evolution of styles and forms, it has always maintained the historical need to bear witness to instances of social cohesion or dissociation. The portraits of these artists are anchored on the one hand to the aesthetics, or rather to culture, of contemporary art and on the other, perhaps even more intimately than for the artists of the past, to the 'milieu' in which they live and work. Their formal connection, however, ends here. In fact, Joffe insistently, almost obsessively, represents a single, full-field figure - whole or almost, immersed in a defined environmental space - with extremely loose brushstrokes, which blend the details of the face, clothes and environment in a single pictorial flow. In this nucleus of works, in which the artist admittedly recalls Edvard Munch's paintings on puberty and which he titled "Moll" (hence the title of his exhibition), the subject is the now sixteen year old niece - who portrays from birth - now reached an age in which the inner dimension is full of dreams and at the same time of inscrutable mystery. This existential condition can be extended to the way in which the artist presents female identity in general in his other works, with an “ambiguity” that generates complexity. Moll's eyes, in these four portraits made in just five months, do not let themselves be captured, his gaze points beyond: stylistically Joffe recalls the all-over, the soft contours, the decorative value of the fabrics in Matisse in an emotionally painting dense.