Portrait of a Lady

She lowers her eyes and clasps her fingers tightly, yet a transparent veil frames her face like a jewel. Nobody knows her name, but she has been called famous among all portraits of women.

The story behind the painting

Rogier van der Weyden painted this small oil-on-oak panel around 1460, near the end of his life, when he was much occupied with commissioned portraits. It is the only known portrait of a woman accepted as his own work, yet he gave it no title and the sitter's name was not recorded. Early in the 20th century, Wilhelm Stein suggested she might be Marie de Valengin, an illegitimate daughter of Philip the Good of Burgundy, but this idea is contentious and not widely held. Because her hands rest on the lower frame, scholars see it as an independent portrait rather than part of a devotional work.

What to look for

The woman, probably in her late teens or early twenties, is shown half-length in three-quarter view against a flat blue-green background that has darkened with age. She wears a fashionable low-cut black Burgundian dress with dark fur bands, cinched by a bright red sash. A buff-coloured hennin is draped with a large transparent veil, fixed with carefully painted pins, which spills over her shoulders in a diamond shape. Her hairline and eyebrows are plucked to create a high forehead. Her hands, folded in layers and set so low they seem to rest on the frame, are the most detailed part of the painting.

Meaning and intent

Van der Weyden builds the image from geometry: lines of veil, neckline, face and arms, and the fall of light on her face. Her lowered eyes and tightly grasped fingers convey humility, in contrast to her extravagant clothing. Veils were normally worn for modesty, but here it frames her face and draws attention to her beauty. Erwin Panofsky wrote that Rogier concentrated on salient features expressed mainly through lines, and spoke of a smouldering excitability. Her high forehead and full mouth have been read as hinting at a nature both intellectual, ascetic and passionate, an unresolved conflict in her personality.

Legacy

Van der Weyden belonged to the first generation of Northern Renaissance painters, with Jan van Eyck and Robert Campin, who portrayed people naturalistically rather than in idealised medieval form. Still, he flattered his sitters, and his women often resemble one another. Norbert Schneider observed that while van Eyck shows nature in the raw, Rogier improves on physical reality. His penetrating evocations of character were admired by later painters. The panel, 34 by 25.5 cm, has been in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. since its donation in 1937, and it is number 34 in the de Vos catalogue raisonné.