Bildnis der Barbara Schellenberger, geborene Ehem

Hans Burgkmair the Elder painted this Portrait of Barbara Schellenberger, née Ehem, around 1507 for the Wallraf-Richartz Museum. Burgkmair's portrait practice served the prosperous patrician families of Augsburg, one of the wealthiest cities in the Holy Roman Empire thanks to its banking and trade connections. The tempera medium required careful preparation on a gessoed panel and a disciplined layering technique that produced precise, durable surfaces suited to the intricate detail expected of devotional painting.

The portrait presents the sitter with careful attention to her elaborate headdress and costume, rendered in Burgkmair's precise Augsburg manner that combines Italian-influenced spatial awareness with Northern attention to surface detail.