Portrait of a woman , formerly identified as Claude of France

This portrait, formerly identified as Claude of France but now catalogued simply as Portrait of a Woman, reveals how provisional the identification of sitters in Corneille de Lyon's work has always been. Claude of France, wife of Francis I, died in 1524, over a decade before the portrait's likely date, making a secure identification impossible. The uncertainty reflects the broader challenge of Corneille's portraiture: his sitters were mostly identified by inscriptions or chains of ownership that have frequently been disrupted. What survives when the name is stripped away is a masterpiece of intimate observation—a woman of evident refinement and composure, captured with the meticulous detail and psychological presence that made Corneille the defining portraitist of the French Renaissance court.

The delicate female portrait maintains Corneille's consistent format and technique, the sitter rendered with characteristic refinement against a colored ground.