The Gypsy Girl (Hals)

The Gypsy Girl
The Gypsy Girl, c.1628 Oil on wood, 57.8 x 52.1 cm
Artist	Frans Hals
Year	1628–1630
Catalogue	Seymour Slive, Catalog 1974: #62
Medium	Oil on wood
Dimensions	57.8 cm × 52.1 cm (22.8 in × 20.5 in)
Location	Louvre Museum, Paris
Accession	M.I. 926

The Gypsy Girl, also known as Gypsy Girl^[1] or Young Woman (La Bohémienne)^[2] (and sometimes erroneously referred to as Malle Babbe) is an oil-on-wood painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals, painted in 1628–1630, and now in the Louvre Museum, in Paris. It is a tronie, a study of facial expression and unusual costume, rather than a commissioned portrait.

The display of cleavage was not a common feature of costume seen in public in Hals' time and place. For this reason various art historians have assumed a painting of a prostitute was intended. There is no reason to assume the model was Romani, a 19th-century decision.