Portrait of a Woman (c. 1490–95): Art, History and Details

Portrait of a Woman (c. 1490–95) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Master of the Holy Kinship (German).

The work and its context

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

This portrait represents a woman in her later middle years holding a rosary made of coral with gold medals. Her identity remains unknown, but the richness and elegance of her black woolen gown with fur-trimmed cuffs and her coif of white sheer linen attest to her comfortable social standing. The prominence of her rosary is perhaps meant to suggest her personal devotion. The panel has been attributed to the anonymous Master of the Holy Kinship the Younger, a painter in Cologne (Germany) with a flourishing workshop in the years around 1500.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of a Woman
• Date: c. 1490–95
• Creator attribution: Master of the Holy Kinship (German)
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on wood
• Dimensions: Framed: 44 x 34.5 x 5.5 cm (17 5/16 x 13 9/16 x 2 3/16 in.); Unframed: 30.3 x 21.3 cm (11 15/16 x 8 3/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Medieval Art
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1962.259

Collection credit

Bequest of Jane Taft Ingalls

Further reading listed by the museum

• Sperling, Emil M. Catalogue of a Loan Exhibition of French Primitives and Objects of Art: In Aid of the French Hospital in New York. New York: Kleinberger Galleries, 1927.
• Tatlock, R.R. "Shorter Notices: An American Exhibition of French Primitives, The National Gallery", Burlington Magazine LI (1927).
• Goldblatt, Maurice H. "Jean Perreal Thirty Portraits Identified," The Connoisseur Vol. 123 (March 1949).

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.