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A Lady Reading (Saint Mary Magdalene)
Historical Context
This painting of a lady reading, identified as Saint Mary Magdalene, by the Master of the Female Half-Lengths dates to around 1530. This anonymous Antwerp workshop specialized in half-length paintings of elegant women reading, writing, or making music, creating a distinctive pictorial type that was enormously popular with collectors. The subjects blur the boundary between portrait, genre painting, and religious image, reflecting the secular interests of the urban middle class.
Technical Analysis
The oil on panel demonstrates the refined, polished technique of the Antwerp workshop tradition. The careful rendering of the woman's costume, the book, and the landscape background visible through a window create an intimate, contemplative atmosphere characteristic of this workshop's production.
Provenance
C. J. Nieuwenhuys, Apr. 20, 1823; sold to Willem, Prince of Orange, later King Willem II of the Netherlands (d. 1849), as Barend van Orley [Hinterding and Horsch 1989, p. 63]; sold, The Hague, to Christoph Rhaban Ru_hl, Cologne, 1850 [Hinterding and Horsch 1989, p. 63]; sold, J. M. Heberle, Cologne, May 15–18, 1876, no. 30, as Bernard van Orley, to Heinrich Vieweg (d. 1890), Braunschweig; sold, Rudolph Lepke, Berlin, Mar. 18, 1930, no. 44, to Julius Böhler, Munich [Friedländer 1935, reprinted 1975]; sold to Max Epstein (d. 1954), Chicago, 1930 [undated note in curatorial file]; bequeathed to the Art Institute, 1954.
