Katharina of Bora, half-length, facing left

In the years 1525/26 after the marriage of the Augustine monk Martin Luther to the former Cistercian nun Katharina von Bora a number of pendant portraits were created as propagandistic gifts (see Koepplin). These show Luther bare-headed and his wife in dark but fashionable clothes with a hairnet and can be considered within the tradition of marriage portraiture. [...] the painting in Schwerin, which has been much neglected in the literature to date thanks to the erronious dimensions recorded by Lilienfein, belongs to this rare type of small format rectangular double portrait. Other paintings belonging to this series include the panels in the Wartburg (19.2 x 12.5 cm); (Luther deviates slightly), the panels in a private collection in Switzerland and first published by Koepplin (Pl. 26, 503 f; Luther 13.3 x 13.9 cm; Katharina 19.2 x 13.7 cm) and a single Katharina in the Adolphe Stein Colllection in Crans-sur-Sierre (Fig. 157; 20.5 x 13.3 cm)

[Hegner 1990, p. 19]