Portrait of a Woman (1620s): Art, History and Details

Portrait of a Woman (1620s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jan Anthonisz. van Ravesteyn (Dutch, c. 1570–1657).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

How do you conserve a painting when portions are missing? The mid-treatment image (below) shows the painting after cleaning, when earlier restorations had been removed. In the painting on view, notice how the conservator reconstructed portions of the sitter’s lace collar and elaborate necklace. She re-created missing passages after studying the artist’s technique in other works and carefully emulating his treatment of the remaining lace and elements of the twisting, three-dimensional necklace. Conversely, there was not enough information to reconstruct what was probably another ornament at the back of the sitter’s head, so the decision was made not to speculate and invent something in that space.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of a Woman
• Date: 1620s
• Creator attribution: Jan Anthonisz. van Ravesteyn (Dutch, c. 1570–1657)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on wood
• Dimensions: Framed: 86.5 x 77.5 x 7 cm (34 1/16 x 30 1/2 x 2 3/4 in.); Unframed: 53.2 x 45 cm (20 15/16 x 17 11/16 in.)
• Collection: P - Netherlandish-Dutch
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1916.1055

A detail from the museum

The sitter wears several transparent and translucent white collars that become opaque when layered.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Wade

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1925.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1928.
• Cleveland Museum of Art. Catalogue of the Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition of the Cleveland Museum of Art: The Official Art Exhibit of the Great Lakes Exposition : June Twenty-Sixth to October Fourth 1936. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1936.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.