Portrait of a Woman from Southern Germany

The back of this panel carries a brand, a crown over the letters CR, the mark of King Charles I of England, who owned the picture before his execution in 1649. The front has had a harder time keeping a painter's name. When the collection of the Hague collector Govert van Slingelandt was sold in 1768, the catalogue called it a Leonardo da Vinci. Later it went under the name of Hans Holbein the Younger, who painted similar portraits. The Mauritshuis now lists it only as formerly attributed to Holbein, and dates it around 1520 to 1525.

Nobody knows who the woman was. Over a finely pleated blouse she wears a fur-lined jacket laced with a red cord, and on her head a cap and veil already rather old-fashioned, of the kind worn by townswomen in southern Germany. Her pale face stands out against the blue background.