The Lacemaker

A small girl works at a lace pillow hung with wooden bobbins, and a young woman in red leans over her, guiding her fingers. Beside them an old woman spins thread and looks straight out at us. Lessons like this went on in many homes in the first half of the 18th century, when bobbin lace was a craft girls learned young and could earn money by.

Of the painter, almost nothing is known. The museum lists him as Lautter, active roughly from 1700 to 1750, and is unsure even of his initials, E. K. or perhaps E. R. The picture's own path is clearer. It belonged to the Habsburg imperial picture gallery, and in 1922, four years after the monarchy ended, the Kunsthistorisches Museum passed it to the Belvedere. It was formally inventoried there only in 1948.