Portrait of a Woman (c. 1540): Art, History and Details

Portrait of a Woman (c. 1540) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Corneille de Lyon (Netherlandish, 1500/10–1574).

The work and its context

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

Corneille de Lyon worked both for the French court and wealthy merchants. His distinctive northern style stood in contrast to the taste for Italian Renaissance painting and connected closely to portrait miniatures and manuscript painting. Recent conservation treatment has restored the smooth, enamel-like background and the meticulous rendering of detail.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of a Woman
• Date: c. 1540
• Creator attribution: Corneille de Lyon (Netherlandish, 1500/10–1574)
• Culture: Netherlandish, active France, 16th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on wood
• Dimensions: Framed: 39 x 26 x 5 cm (15 3/8 x 10 1/4 x 1 15/16 in.); Unframed: 16.5 x 14.8 cm (6 1/2 x 5 13/16 in.)
• Collection: P - French & Austria 16th C. and earlier
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1942.48

A detail from the museum

Gold leaf was applied to the details of the sitter’s headdress and embroidery on her dress.

Collection credit

Gift of Grace Rainey Rogers in memory of her father, William J. Rainey

Further reading listed by the museum

• Francis, Henry. "Paintings in the Rogers Gift." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 29, no. 4 (April 1942): 66-67
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

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.