Profile Portrait of a Lady is oil on panel painting by an unknown Franco-Flemish artist, dated to about 1410. It is housed in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.[a]
The woman is wearing an early form balzo headdress over her hair, which has been plucked above her forehead to the point at which the balzo rests.
References
Notes
^ Hand & Wolff note that Charles Sterling lists the surviving independent portraits from this period, in addition to Profile Portrait of a Lady, as:[1][2]
Hand, John Oliver and Martha Wolff. Early Netherlandish Painting. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, 1986: 90–97, repro. 91.
Panofsky Erwin. Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass., 1953: 1:82, 171, 392 note 2; 2: pl. 43, fig. 92.
Sterling, Charles. La peinture de portrait à la cour de Bourgogne au début du XVe siècle. Critica d'Arte 6, 1959: 289, 299, 304,306, 308, 312, fig 193.
Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo's Ginevra de' Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2001–2002: no. 1.
Further reading
Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 72–73, no. 53, color repro.