Portrait of a Woman (c. 1670): Art, History and Details

Portrait of a Woman (c. 1670) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jean Petitot (Swiss, 1607–1691).

The work and its context

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

Unlike fragile portrait miniatures painted in watercolor on vellum or ivory, which are prone to cracking, fading, and flaking, enamels are resilient, impervious to the effects of light, and retain their striking original colors over time. Partly for this reason enamel was considered ideal for reproducing famous paintings and treasured portraits in a reduced and luminous form. The complicated and labor-intensive process of enameling required the artist to fire numerous layers of colored metal oxide at different temperatures, which made it difficult to produce a faithful portrait likeness, though masters of the medium were able create portraits of remarkable subtlety imbued with the sitter's personality. The heyday of enamel painting was the late 1600s and early 1700s. Among the enamel specialists was Petitot, who was patronized by King Charles I of England, King Louis XIV of France, and King John III Sobieski of Poland.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of a Woman
• Date: c. 1670
• Creator attribution: Jean Petitot (Swiss, 1607–1691)
• Culture: France
• Type: Portrait Miniature
• Technique: enamel in a silver gilt frame
• Dimensions: Framed: 2.9 x 2.2 cm (1 1/8 x 7/8 in.); Unframed: 2.3 x 2.1 cm (7/8 x 13/16 in.)
• Collection: P - French 17th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1942.1152

Collection credit

The Edward B. Greene Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Edward Belden Greene. Portrait Miniatures ; The Edward B. Greene Collection. 1951.

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.