Three Studies of a Woman Wearing an Elaborate Headdress (c. 1500): Art, History and Details

Three Studies of a Woman Wearing an Elaborate Headdress (c. 1500) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Anonymous; Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640).

The work and its context

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

This young woman’s long, conical hood is tucked under and pinned, with the front folded over to create wide, sloping flaps. Such headgear kept heat and cold away during outdoor labor, but around 1475, the style was adopted as a fashion statement by middle- and upper-class women, with the fabric starched for exaggerated effect. The drawing was likely made for a model book in an artist’s workshop of costume details for reference. More than 100 years later, the Antwerp artist Rubens acquired the drawing for his own model book and even drew over it.

Object facts

• Title: Three Studies of a Woman Wearing an Elaborate Headdress
• Date: c. 1500
• Creator attribution: Anonymous; Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640)
• Culture: Netherlands(?), 16th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Pen and brown ink; retouched with brush and brown wash, lead white (partially oxidized)
• Dimensions: Sheet: 12.9 x 12.8 cm (5 1/16 x 5 1/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - Dutch
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1987.31

A detail from the museum

In the 1600s, the artist Peter Paul Rubens made additions in ink wash and white paint to this c. 1500 drawing by an unknown Netherlandish artist.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Thöne, Friedrich. "Zu Peter Paul Rubens Als Zeichner." Berliner Museen 61, no. 4 (1940): 63-67.
• Belkin, Kristin Lohse, and Peter Paul Rubens. The Costume Book. Brussels: Arcade, 1980.
• Logan, Anne-Marie. Review of Julius Held, Rubens: Selected Drawings, in Master Drawings 25, no. 1 (1987): 63-82. A

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.