a noble viscanti lady with a mysterious smile, in classical oils

A stately viscanti noblewoman rests against a low, wrought-iron railing, her beauty rendered all the more commanding as her fair complexion strikes against a dim, layered background of tiled rooftops, domed towers, crenelated walls and soot-veiled streets that surround her in shades of ash and smoke. Skeins of delicate vines climb iron pillars along the sides of the foreground, unfurling delicate leaves and tiny white jasmine flowers like stars in orbit around her. A diaphanous veil of faint grey hemmed with swirling ammonite cloth shades her brow and encloses her shoulders in an airy shroud, bleeding some of the depth of colour from curls dusk-dappled ebony hair, rendering her thick horns indistinct, and stealing the starlit sheen of her red and gold satin chemise. Pale skin, as bright and clear as the floral elements of the foreground, illuminates her in repose, filamentous veins colouring her eyelids with shades of blue beneath manicured eyebrows, and faint shades of colour contouring her soft countenance. With a smile in her twilight-hued eyes, a curl of the lips that is not quite a smirk, and an arched brow only a hair higher than the other, the viscanti’s face speaks of some secret known to her alone. Long, golden sleeves stop just shy of the wrist, with silver metal gleaming just out of sight as the lady folds her arms across her lap, fingers resting protectively upon a small, age-stained dragon skull, no larger than a kitten.