Portrait of a Woman

This Portrait of a Woman is dated to 1539, a period when it is difficult to distinguish the different hands in the family workshop. A number of different attributions have been proposed since it was first published by Campbell Dodgson with an attribution to Lucas the Younger. In his initial study of the work Friedländer gave it to Cranach the Elder, and it appeared as such in the early catalogues of the Collection and in the exhibition at the Neue Pinakothek in Munich. At the present time the painting maintains the attribution of Isolde Lübbeke who compared it in detail with the Portrait of a Man of 1539 in the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, which she suggested forms a pair with the present panel.

The sitter, whose identity remains unknown, is presented standing, half-length, against an attractive blue background. She is elegantly but discreetly dressed with various rings on her fingers and a gold chain around her neck. In addition to the elegance of her clothes, embellished by the fur trimming on her collar and hat, she is further distinguished by the delicate manner in which the face is constructed using soft tones and an emphasis on the bone structure.

To judge from her clothing the sitter would have been a member of the patrician class, although Zimmerman attempted to identify her with the wife of Duke Frederick of Saxony, a suggestion that has been rejected. With regard to its relationship to the panel in São Paolo, both are the same size and are visually well matched. They also share technical and stylistic similarities. The painting in Brazil, in which the man has a wreath of pinks on his head, has been tentatively identified as a nuptial image. On the bodice of the present sitter is an abbreviated inscription that has been related to the motto A bone fine.

[Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, revised 2012]