Portrait of a Lady (van der Weyden)

Rogier van der Weyden, Portrait of a Lady, c. 1460, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 34cm x 25.5cm

Portrait of a Woman (or Portrait of a Lady) is a small oil on oak panel executed c. 1460 by the Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden (1399 or 1400–1464). The only known portrait of a woman signed by the artist, the work is built from a series of geometric shapes created by the angles from the light pouring from above the right side of the picture, as well the lines of the woman's veil, neckline, face and arms. Its vivid contrast of light and shade creates the almost unnatural beauty and Gothic elegance with which the model is portrayed. The painting was not titled by Rogier, nor is the sitter's name recorded in inventory.

In the portrait, the woman is slender, with elongated features indicated by her narrow shoulders, tightly pinned hair, long forehead and the elaborate frame set by her head dress. Although Rogier did not adhere to the conventions of idealisation, he generally sought to flatter his sitters. He depicted his models with highly fashionable clothes, usually with rounded—almost sculpted—facial features, some of which deviated from natural representation. He adapted his own aesthetic, and his portraits of women often bear a striking resemblance to each other.

Rogier was highly regarded for his penetrating descriptions of character. In this work, the woman's humility and reserved demeanor are conveyed through her fragile physique, lowered eyes and thightly grasped fingers. Since 1937, the painting has been held by the National Gallery of Art, Washington. It has been described as "famous among all portraits of women of all schools".

Description

Petrus Christus, Portrait of a Young Girl, after 1460, Berlin State Museums. Christus' work was highly influential on van der Weyden. Note the similarity in expression and the model's sculpted features. Further influence can be seen in its colouring, lighting and use of a representational background.

The painting is a half-length, three-quarter view of a young woman, probably in her late teens or early twenties, set against a two-dimensional, diamond-shaped, deep blue-green background. The background is flat and lacks the minute attention to detail common in other works by Rogiers, instead it used to suggest the woman's quite self-possession. The background has darkened with age; it is likely that the contrast between its sharply pointed angles but plain tone and the sitter was once much sharper.

The woman wears an elegant, low-cut, black dress with dark bands of fur at the neck and wrist. Her clothes are of the then-fashionable Burgundian style, which emphasise the tall and thin aesthetic of the Gothic ideal. Her dress is buckled by a bright red sash pulled in below her breasts. The buff-coloured "hennin" headdress is draped with a large transparent veil, which spills over her shoulders, reaching her upper arms. The way van der Weyden pays attention to the structure of the clothing, carefully detailing the pins pushed into the veil to fix its position, has been described by writer Lorne Campbell as typical of the artist.

Workshop of Rogier van der Weyden, Portrait of a Lady, c 1460. National Gallery, London. This similar painting with much less detail is from his workshop and may date from as late as 1466.

Echoing the form of the background, her veil forms a second diamond shape, balanced by the inverse flow of a light vest worn beneath her dress. She is shown at a slight angle, but her pose is given a centered look by the interlocked broad lines of arms, décolletage and veil. The woman has a long, thin face, plucked eyebrows and a forehead likely shaved to create a fashionably high, artificial hairline. Her hair is tightly pinned back on the rim of the bonnet and rests above her ear. Her high headdress and severe hairline accentuate her elongated face. These elements give her face a sculpted appearance. The woman's left ear is set unnaturally high and far back, parallel to her eyes rather than to her nose; this position is likely an artistic device used to continue the flow of the diagonal line of the veil's inner-right wing. In the 1400s, veils were normally worn for modesty, to hide the sensuality of the flesh. In this work the veil has the opposite effect; the woman's face is framed by the head-dress to draw attention to her beauty. In contrast, although her dress would have been the height of fashion in early 1450s aristocratic circles, it was likely somewhat conservative by the time the portrait was painted, c. 1460.

The woman's hands are crossed tightly as if in prayer, and positioned so low in the painting as to appear to be resting on the frame. They are minutely detailed; Rogier often indicated the social position of his models through his rendering of their face and hands. The sleeve her dress extends beyond her wrists. Her slender fingers are folded in layers and their intricate portrayal is the most detailed element in the painting.

Her eyes gaze downward in humility, contrasts with her relatively extravagant clothes. Her piety of her expression is achieved through motifs common to Rogier's work. Her eyes, nose and lower lip are elongated by the use of tone and more pronounced finish. Some vertical lines around these features are emphasised, while her pupils are enlarged and her eyebrows slightly raised. In addition, the contours of her face are emphasised in a manner that is slightly unnatural and abstract, and outside the usual scale and spatial constraints of 14th C human representation. This methodology was described by art historian Erwin Panofsky: "Rogier concentrated on certain salient features—salient both from a physiognomical and psychological point of view—which he expressed primarily by lines."

The identity of the sitter is unknown, although some art historians have speculated. On the grounds of similarity of facial features, writer Wilhelm Stein suggested she might be Marie de Valengin, daughter of Philip the Good of Burgundy from an extramarital relationship; however, this is a contentious assertion.

Idealisation

Rogier worked in the same tradition of portraiture as contemporaries Jan van Eyck and Robert Campin. In the early to mid-1400s these three artists were amaong the first generation of "Northern Renaissance" painters, and the first northern Europeans to portray members of the middle and upper classes naturalistically, rather than in a medieval Christian idealised form.

Rogier van der Weyden, Portrait of a Woman, c 1435, Staatlichen Museum, Berlin. This is a more natural depiction, with larger breasts than the typical extreme slenderness of his female subjects. She is older and her clothing less elegant. That her gaze is not averted may indicate a lower social class. Unusually for a van der Weyden, she faces to the right and looks directly at the viewer.

Despite this new freedom, Rogier's portraits of women are strikingly similar in concept and structure both to each other and to female portraits by Campin. Most are three-quarter face and half-length. They typically set their models before a dark background that was uniform and nondescript. While the portraits are are noted for their expressive pathos, the facial features of the women strongly resemble one another. This indicates that although Rogier did not adhere to the tradition of idealised representation, he sought to please his sitters in a manner that reflected contemporary ideals of beauty. It is known that in his Portrait of Philip de Croÿ, Rogier complimented the young Belgian noble by concealing his large nose and undershot jaw. Describing this tendency in relation to the 1460 portrait, Norbert Schneider wrote, "While van Eyck shows nature 'in the raw', as it were, Rogier improves on physical reality, civilising and refining Nature and the human form with the help of a brush."

However, Rogier was more concerned with the aesthetic and emotional response created by the pictures overall than in the specific portraits. Campbell suggests that the popularity of Portrait of a Woman is due more to the "elegant simplicity of the pattern which [the sitter] creates", more than the grace of her depiction. While Rogier did not stay with in the traditional realms of idealisation, he created his own aesthetic, which he extended across both his portraits and religious pictures.

Most of Rogier's female portraits were painted on commission from nobility. Portraits were at the time a common means of initiating marriage alliances. Christus, van Eyck and Rogier were known to have been employed for this reason. In particular, the extent and level of detail that Christus and Rogier undertook to make their subjects appear attractive suggest this was often a primary motive.

Condition and provenance

see caption and text

This 1937 radiograph of the painting shows that the woman's waist was at first more narrow, and her bust more pronounced. There is no evidence of underdrawing.

The style of of the sitter's dress has been used to date the picture very late in Rogier's career. The circa 1460 dating is based on these high-fashion clothes and the work's apparent chronological position in the evolution of Rogier's style. However, it is possible that it was executed even later (Rogier died in 1464). It was painted on a single oak board with a vertical grain and has an unpainted margin on each side. As of 2010, it is in relatively good condition, having been cleaned a number of times, most recently in 1980. There is some loss of paint on the veil, kerchief and sleeve, and abrasion in the ear.

Infra-red reflectography reveals that Rogier did not sketch the work on the board before he began to paint. It does show that the lady was portrayed as more slender before changes were made as the work progressed; thickly applied background paint underlies some of the belt, demonstrating that the original silhouette was widened. These changes also can be seen in x-ray images.

The provenance of the painting is unclear, and there is doubt as to which painting is referred to in some early inventories . An Anhalt prince, likely Leopold Friedrich Franz (d. 1817) of Wörlitz, near Dessau, Germany, held it in the early 19th C, after which it may have passed to Leopold Friedrich (d. 1871). Possession was held until Friedrich II, Duke of Anhalt, Wörlitz sold to the art dealers Duveen Brothers "of London, New York and Paris" in 1926. They in turn sold it that year to Andrew W. Mellon. He willed the work to his Educational and Charitable Trust in 1932, which in turn donated it to the National Gallery of Art in 1937.

Exhibition history

The high quality of the painting was shown clearly when it was hanging in London alongside the very similar National Gallery's workshop painting for a few weeks in the 2000s, as the London information display caption freely admitted. The London subject has softer, more rounded features and is much younger and less individually characterised than the c 1460 model. The technique also is less subtle and fine in the London work.

Gallery

• 
  Robert Campin, Portrait of a Young Woman, 1430-1435, National Gallery, London. Van der Weyden may or may not have served in Campin's workshop from 1428, however there is strong evidence of his influence in his Washington portrait
• 
  Rogier van der Weyden, Portrait of a Young Woman, 1435. British Museum, London. In this drawing, the woman's social rank is indicated by her plain clothes.
• 
  Rogier van der Weyden, Seven Sacraments Altarpiece, 1445-1450, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp. This formal work shows a group of high-ranking women dressed in the contemporary fashion of high (in this case, divided) hennin and low neck-lines.
• 
  Hans Memling, Portrait of a Woman, 1480. Oud Sint-Janshospitaal, Bruges. Memling was a follower of van der Weyden and utilised the older artist's distortion of natural representation in pursuit of beauty.
• 
  Portrait of Philip de Croÿ, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp. It is known that van der Weyden's depiction of Philippe hid real life physical imperfections.

See also

• Hennin

Bibliography

• Campbell, Lorne. Van der Weyden. London: Chaucer Press, 2004. ISBN 1-90444-9247
• Campbell, Lorne & Van der Stock, Jan. Rogier van der Weyden: 1400-1464. Master of Passions. Leuven: Davidsfonds, 2009. ISBN 978-90-8526-105-6
• Grössinger, Christa. Picturing women in late Medieval and Renaissance art. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-7190-4109-0
• Hand, John Oliver & Wolff, Martha. Early Netherlandish Painting. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1986. ISBN 0-5213-4016-0
• Kemperdick, Stephan. The Early Portrait, from the Collection of the Prince of Liechtenstein and the Kunstmuseum Basel. Munich: Prestel, 2006. ISBN 3-7913-3598-7
• Kleiner, Fred S. Gardner's Art Through the Ages: The Western Perspective. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing, 2009. ISBN 0-4955-7364-7
• Schneider, Norbert. The art of the portrait: masterpieces of European portrait-painting, 1420-1670. Taschen GmbH, 2002. ISBN 3-8228-1995-6
• Smith, Jeffrey. The Northern Renaissance. London: Phaidon, 2004. ISBN 0-7148-3867-5
• Van Der Elst, Joseph. The Last Flowering of the Middle Ages. Kessinger Publishing, 1944.
• Wilson, Jean. Painting in Bruges at the Close of the Middle Ages: Studies in Society and Visual Culture. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-2710-1653-1

External links

• Exhibition history, National Gallery of Art