Bildnis einer Dame

Around 1460, near the end of his life, Rogier van der Weyden painted this young woman, and she is the only portrait of a woman that scholars are confident he painted with his own hand. We don't know who she was. He didn't record her name or give the picture a title. She wears the fashion of the Burgundian court, a fur-trimmed black gown pulled in by a bright red sash, and a tall linen headdress with a sheer veil that spills down over her shoulders. The dress is cut low, the veil almost transparent, yet everything about her pose is held tight and composed, her fingers laced in front of her, her eyes lowered but turned toward you. Rogier has narrowed her face and lengthened it slightly beyond what nature would give, the way he liked to, to make her look more refined. The whole panel is smaller than a sheet of paper.