Master of the Female Half-Lengths, 'A Female Head', about 1540
About the work
Overview
A young woman with brown hair and plucked eyebrows gazes modestly downward. Her hairstyle is Italianate: her plaits are wound around the top of her head and are entwined with a semi-transparent scarf that falls across her right shoulder. She wears a semi-transparent ruched chemise and a blue overdress trimmed with brown fur. Behind her is a green textile, with patterns in pale yellow, probably intended to represent threads of gold.
She is possibly the Virgin Mary: she very closely resembles the Virgin in the Adoration of the Kings (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin), also attributed to the Master of the Female Half-Lengths, and in his The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, also in our collection.
Very large numbers of paintings are attributed to the Master, but this one was probably by the artist himself. He had some rather idiosyncratic painting techniques. Here, for example, he blotted the paint layers in order to depict the semi-transparent fabric of the veil.
Key facts
Details
- Full title
- A Female Head
- Artist dates
- active second quarter of the 16th century
- Date made
- about 1540
- Medium and support
- oil on wood
- Dimensions
- 26.3 × 18.7 cm
- Acquisition credit
- Presented by Queen Victoria at the Prince Consort's wish, 1863
- Inventory number
- NG721
- Location
- Not on display
- Collection
- Main Collection
Provenance
Additional information
Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Lorne Campbell, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings: With French Paintings before 1600’, London 2014; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.
Bibliography
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1848Descriptive Catalogue of a Collection of Ancient Greek, Italian, German, Flemish and Dutch Pictures (Belonging to Prince Ludwig Kraft Ernst Von Oettingen-Wallerstein) Now at Kensington Palace, London 1848
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1854G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain: Being and Account of the Chief Collections of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Illuminated Mss. […], vol. 2, trans. E. Eastlake, London 1854
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1857G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain: Being and Account of the Chief Collections of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Illuminated Mss. […], translated from German by Elizabeth Eastlake, 3 vols, London 1857, vol. 3
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1904L.H. Cust, 'The Royal Collections. Article I: Hrh Prince Albert as a Collector', The Burlington Magazine, V/13, 1904, pp. 7-348
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1908E. Durand-Gréville, 'Notes sur les primitifs néerlandais de la National Gallery', Gazette des beaux-arts, XXXIX/607, 1908, pp. 59-72
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1924W.M. Conway, 'The Master of the Half-Lengths', The Burlington Magazine, XLIV/252, 1924, pp. 142-3
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1925A. Pappé, 'Two Unpublished Flemish Pictures in the Hermitage', The Burlington Magazine, XLVII/273, 1925, pp. 334-5
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1945Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: Early Netherlandish School, London 1945
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1955Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: Early Netherlandish School, 2nd edn (revised), London 1955
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1957G. Marlier, Ambrosius Benson et la peinture à Bruges au temps de Charles-Quint, Damme 1957
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1967M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, eds N. Veronée-Verhaegen and H. Pauwels, trans. H. Norden, 14 vols, Leiden 1967
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1980M. Díaz Padrón, 'Nuevas pinturas del Maestro de las medias figuras', Archivo español de arte, LIII/210, 1980, pp. 169-84
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1985R. Genaille, 'A propos du Maître dit des demi-figures féminines', Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, 1985, pp. 137-76
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1987Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: The Early Netherlandish School, 3rd edn, London 1987
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2001
C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
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2014
L. Campbell, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings: With French Paintings before 1600, 2 vols, London 2014
About this record
If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.
Images
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