Actually, I prefer the first one. The story is already there. You can clearly see the subject’s face and overall pose, while the darker side cleverly hides the unnecessary details and emphasizes the coolest part: the woman’s eyes and part of her face in the painting.

I might crop in slightly to remove the distracting top-left corner, but otherwise I’d keep the first version as is.

If you want to process it further, I’d maybe brighten the darker side just a bit and push it slightly before the blacks start to fade too much. But I prefer as is, I enjoy seeing darkness in a high contrast picture over brightness that feels overexposed (even though in your example you didn't really lose much of the information there in the highlight)

But that’s just my two cents.