Sanguine Temperament (so-called Head of a Woman)

This young woman, eyes lowered beneath a band in her curls, was painted in 1511 as a round picture. At some point the circle was cut out and made up again into a rectangle, and the museum's record notes that the added corners are alder, while the original panel is limewood. She stands for the sanguine temperament, the type ruled by blood and thought to be warm, cheerful and sociable, though for a long time she was known only as the head of a woman. In 1659 the inventory of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm's collection listed her with her melancholic companion and noted that both had come from a place it called Königstatten. The pair has stayed together in Vienna ever since.