Portrait of Margaretha von Mochau, Wife of Gerhard von Westerburg

For almost 500 years the woman in this panel was known by the wrong name. She was catalogued as Gertraude von Leutz, until, in the spring of 2021, researchers reading a Frankfurt decree of 1524 found that the wife of Gerhard von Westerburg was in fact Margaretha von Mochau. So the sitter got her name back the same year the portrait was painted, only 497 years late. That year matters. Her husband, Westerburg, was a radical reformer, one of the restless preachers of the early Reformation, and 1524 stood on the eve of the Peasants' War that would soon tear through the German lands. Bruyn gives none of that away. He sets her at half length, hands quietly folded, dressed for her station. Turn the panel over and the mood changes completely: on the back he painted a skull.