Memorial Panel with Nine Female Portraits, inner right wing of an altarpiece

The Master of Alkmaar painted this Memorial Panel with Nine Female Portraits around 1517 for the Rijksmuseum. The panel served as a memorial for female members of a family or confraternity, combining portrait documentation with devotional function in the manner of Dutch civic painting. The tempera-on-panel medium required a carefully gessoed surface and was painted in fine, precise layers, yielding a luminous, jewel-like surface of great durability.

The panel arranges nine female portraits in a memorial format with the careful individual characterization and precise rendering expected of Dutch memorial painting in the early sixteenth century.