Portrait of a Female Donor
Petrus Christus·c. 1455
Historical Context
Christus's Portrait of a Female Donor from around 1455 completes the pendant pair, the wife's portrait facing her husband's in the standard paired format for devotional donor portraits. Female donor portraits were less common than male ones in the Flemish tradition, reflecting both the social conventions of fifteenth-century Flemish marriage and the devotional practice that typically placed the husband as primary patron while the wife appeared in a secondary role. Christus's female donor is treated with the same careful observation as his male sitters, her specific physiognomic character preserved with the precision that made Flemish portraiture the admiration of Italian painters who could not match its observational accuracy.
Technical Analysis
Christus's oil on panel matches its pendant in luminous technique, with the careful rendering of the white linen headdress and the subtle atmospheric light that unifies the portrait with its companion piece.
Provenance
Possibly private collection, Genoa.[1] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence, by 1937);[2] purchased 1937 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1961 to NGA. [1] There is no basis for the Genovese provenance of the panels beyond an unattributed statement in the NGA curatorial file from the Kress Foundation. No donor portraits or triptych positively identifiable with 1961.9.10 and 1961.9.11 are listed in Carlo Giuseppe Ratte, _Instruzione de quanto puo' vedersi di più bello in Genova in pittura, scultura ed Architettura_, 3 vols. (Genoa, 1780), or Federigo Alizeri, _Guida artistica per la Città de Genova_, 2 vols. (Genoa, 1846). [2] The Count lived in Rome until 1931. [3] See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1668.
