Portrait of a Woman with a Parrot

This woman and the man doing sums in the companion panel were painted as a pair in 1529, and Barthel Beham tied them together with a piece of furniture. The same table runs along the foot of both panels, so that hung side by side they seem to sit at it together. A parrot perches on her arm, and there are grapes on the table in front of her. Beham also gave the two sitters more space than German portraits of the time usually allowed, a wider framing the museum counts as a new departure in German portraiture. Her seal ring shows a coat of arms and the initials KS, his shows HS, and the couple behind those letters has never been identified. The gallery's records first list her portrait in 1772 and his only in 1783.