Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index

Title: Portrait of a Woman
Creator: Lippi, Filippo, painter
Description: This woman wears a fur-lined dress and stands in a room before a window. She wears rings on her fingers and a headdress that is adorned with pearls, and a choker of white pearls. Portraits in which the female sitter displayed her material wealth were typically commissioned at the time of her wedding or as a commemoration of the event. Rendering the female sitter in profile drew from the majesty of classical portraiture but also served an ideological purpose: the woman's beauty and confident expression make her the embodiment of humanist virtue, in which outer beauty reflects inner merit, but her gaze is averted from the (likely male) viewer, thus encoding a sense of voyeurism into the work.
Source: WikiMedia Commons
Rights: Public domain
Subject (See Also): Classical Influences Jewelry Nuptial Imagery Portraits Windows
Geographic Area: Italy
Century: 15
Date: ca. 1440-1442
Related Work:
Current Location: Berlin, Gemäldegalerie
Original Location:
Artistic Type (Category): Digital images; Paintings
Artistic Type (Material/Technique): Panel paintings; Tempera
Donor:
Height/Width/Length(cm): //
Inscription:
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