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A pale-skinned woman wearing a voluminous, garnet-red, long-sleeved dress kneels at a low lectern in a dark gray room, in front of a window opening onto a grassy landscape in this vertical painting. The woman’s body is angled to our left, and she looks off in that direction. She has a high forehead, thin, arched brows, light brown eyes, a round jawline, and her pale lips are closed. A cone-shaped, gold headdress covers her hair. On the headdress, pearls mark the intersections of a grid made by lines of white dots, and there is a red flower in the center of each square. A gauzy, translucent veil covers her forehead to her brows and hangs off the back of the headdress. Another sheer cloth covers the woman’s chest down to the neckline of her dress, which is edged with gray fur. A gold-colored belt gathers the full skirt, which pools on the ground around and behind her. Gray cuffs cover the backs of her hands to her fingers, which touch in prayer in front of her waist. She wears a gold ring on the ring finger we can see. The gray lectern at which she kneels is cut off by the left side of the painting. Pages flutter across an open book laid on the angled top of the lectern. The floor beneath is a checkerboard of veined, muted, pale pink and ivory-white tiles. A print showing a crowned woman holding two more crowns is affixed to the gray wall with red dots, presumably wax. In the print, the woman’s robe has been colored pale pink, and she stands on bronze-colored grass. Words printed in red and black letters beneath the woman are partially legible, and include “O s a elisab. O.” Above the print hangs a shield-like object that curls away from the wall in a shallow C shape. The shield is rectangular and made up of four vertical, fluted sections. Two to the left are bright red and the two to the right are white. In the top third of the shield, a stylized black bird extends its wings against a copper-red background. The shield hangs from a gray cord on a substantial iron nail. Behind the kneeling woman, a window opening is bisected by an pair of columns. The view beyond shows grassy hills rolling back to spindly trees, a body of water reflecting the pale, nearly white sky, and distant trees and mountains, blue along the horizon. Tiny in the sky, seven birds, presumably geese, fly in a lopsided V near the top left corner of the opening.

Petrus Christus

Portrait of a Female Donor, c. 1455

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 39

Medium

oil on panel

Dimensions

overall: 41.8 x 21.6 cm (16 7/16 x 8 1/2 in.)

framed: 54.3 x 35.5 x 9.2 cm (21 3/8 x 14 x 3 5/8 in.)

Credit Line

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Accession Number

1961.9.11

Artists / Makers

Petrus Christus (artist) Netherlandish, active 1444 - 1475/1476

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Inscription

center left on woodcut: O s...a elisab. / O... / ...

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.

Associated Names

Contini Bonacossi, Alessandro, Count
Kress Foundation, Samuel H.
Private Collection (NGA Former Owner)

Exhibition History

1994: Petrus Christus: Renaissance Master of Bruges, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1994, no. 12, repro.

2001: Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo's 'Ginevra de' Benci' and Renaissance Portraits of Women, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2001-2002, no. 14B, color repro.

2002: Jan van Eyck, de Vlaamse Primitieven en het Zuiden [Jan van Eyck, Early Netherlandish Painting and Southern Europe], Groeningemuseum, Bruges, 2002, no. 12, fig. 125 (with NGA 1961.9.10), repro. (catalogue titled The Age of Van Eyck, 1430-1530: The Mediterranean World and Early Netherlandish Painting).

2005: The Origins of European Printmaking: Fifteenth-Century Woodcuts and Their Public, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, 2005-2006, not in cat. (shown only in Washington).

2018: Colard Mansion: Incunabula, Prints and Manuscripts in Medieval Bruges, Stedelijke Musea Brugge, Bruges, 2018, no. 99, repro.

Technical Summary

Wooden strips appx. 0.5 cm wide have been attached to all sides of the original oak panel, which has been planed down, mounted on a thin layer of softwood, and cradled. Both this panel and 1961.9.10 are made from single boards, each cut from the same tree. The painting was restored by Stephen Pichetto about 1938. The paint surface is in general in very good condition. There are scattered small retouchings in the face, robe, and background, as well as some larger areas of repaint. These are in the wall just above the figure's hands, at the left edge of the painting above the book, and at the bottom of the dress. Infrared reflectography and infrared photographs show that the prie-dieu was painted over the floor tiles and the robe of the donor. Guidelines for the tiled floor also extend beneath the donor's robe. Before the inclusion of the prie-dieu, the wall of the chamber met the tiled floor appx. 10 cm from the bottom edge of the panel. This junction is also visible in raking light.

Bibliography

1924: Friedländer, Max J. Die altniederländische Malerei 14 vols. 1924-1937. Leiden, 1937: 14:78-79. (English ed., 14 vols., 1967-1976. Leiden, 1967: 1:104, 110, pl. 104.)

1938: Burroughs, Alan. Art Criticism from a Laboratory. Boston, 1938: 250.

1946: Friedländer, Max J. "The Death of the Virgin by Petrus Christus." The Burlington Magazine 88 (1946): 159, pls. IIA-B.

1948: Puyvelde, Leo van. The Flemish Primitives. Brussels, 1948: 27, pl. 53.

1951: Frankfurter, Alfred M. "Interpreting Masterpieces." Art News 50 no. 7 (November 1951): 100-101, repro. 103.

1951: Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1945-1951. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1951: 170, no. 75, repro. 173.

1952: Bazin, Germain. "Petrus Christus et les rapports entre l'Italie et la Flandre au milieu du XVe siècle." La Revue des Arts 2 (1952): 199, 208.

1952: Frankfurter, Alfred M. "Interpreting Masterpieces: Twenty-four Paintings from the Kress Collection." Art News Annual 16 (1952): 100-101, repro. 103

1953: Panofsky Erwin. Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass., 1953: 1:313, 430-431, 491.

1957: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Comparisons in Art: A Companion to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. London, 1957 (reprinted 1959): pl. 58.

1959: Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 279, repro., as A Donor's Wife.

1960: Broadley Hugh T. Flemish Painting in the National Gallery of Art (Booklet no. 5 in Ten Schools of Painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC). Washington, 1960: 5, 20-21, color repro.

1961: Walker, John, Guy Emerson, and Charles Seymour. Art Treasures for America: An Anthology of Paintings & Sculpture in the Samuel H. Kress Collection. London, 1961: 72, 208, fig. 64.

1962: Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. Treasures from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1962: 52, color repro.

1963: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 304, repro.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 27.

1966: Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. New York, 1966: 1:78-79, color repro.

1968: Cuttler, Charles D. Northern Painting, from Pucelle to Bruegel: Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Centuries. New York, 1968: 133, fig. 158.

1968: Gandolfo, Giampaolo et al. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Great Museums of the World. New York, 1968: 106, 108, color repro.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 20, repro.

1968: Ward, John L. "A New Look at the Friedsam Annunciation." The Art Bulletin 50 (1968): 187.

1969: Blum, Shirley Neilsen. Early Netherlandish Triptychs. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969: 117.

1970: Lane, Barbara G. "Petrus Christus: A Reconstructed Triptych with an Italian Motif." The Art Bulletin 52 (1970): 390-393, figs. 1, 3.

1971: Schabacker, Peter H., and Barbara G. Lane. Exchange of letters. The Art Bulletin 53 (1971): 281-283.

1972: Schabacker, Peter H. Review of Rogier van der Weyden by Martin Davies. In The Art Quarterly 35 (1972): 424.

1974: Schabacker, Peter H. Petrus Christus. Utrecht, 1974: 51, 55, 108-109, 112-114, 120, 136, no. 18, fig. 18.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 68, repro.

1975: Gellman, Lola B. Review of Petrus Christus by Peter H. Schabacker. In Simiolus 8 (1975/1976): 33.

1975: Upton, Joel M. "Devotional Imagery and Style in the Washington Nativity by Petrus Christus." Studies in the History of Art 7 (1975): 52, fig 2.

1976: Sterling, Charles. "Tableaux espagnols et un chef d'oeuvre portugais méconnus du XVe siècle." Acats del XXIII congreso internacional de historia del arte. ... Granada, 1973. 3 vols. Granada, 1976: 1:501-502, fig. 6.

1977: Eisler, Colin. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian. Oxford, 1977: 51-54, fig. 49, text fig. 17, as Donatrix.

1977: Eisler, Colin. Review of Petrus Christus by Peter H. Schabacker. In Art Bulletin 59 (1977): 141.

1978: Panhans-Bühler, Ursula. Eklektizismus und Originalität im Werk des Petrus Christus. Vienna, 1978: 118-123, fig. 75.

1979: Campbell, Lorne. Review of Eklektizismus und Originalität im Werk des Petrus Christus by Ursula Panhans-Bühler. Burlington Magazine 121, no. 921 (December 1979): 802.

1979: Collier, James M. "The Kansas City Petrus Christus: Its Importance and Dating." The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum Bulletin 5, no. 5 (September 1979): 27, 31, 36, fig. 6.

1980: Paolini, Maria Grazia. "Problemi antonelliani Rapporti tra pittura fiamminga e italiana." Storia dell'arte 38-40 (1980): 164-165.

1980: Scott, Margaret. The History of Dress Series. Late Gothic Europe, 1400-1500. London, 1980: 165, 241, fig. 96, pls. 6-7.

1981: Lurie, Ann Tzeutschler. "A Newly Discovered Eyckian St. John the Baptist in a Landscape." Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 67 (1981): 115, 118.

1984: Eisler, Colin T. "A Nativity Signed PETRUS XPI ME FECIT 1452." In Liber Amicorum Herman Liebaers. Brussels, 1984: 465.

1984: Sterling, Charles. "A la recherche des oeuvres de Zanetto Bugatto: une nouvelle piste." In Scritti di storia dell'arte in onore di Federico Zeri. 2 vols. Milan, 1984: 1:177.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. Washington, 1984: 122, no. 105, color repro., as A Donor and His Wife.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 88, repro.

1986: Hand, John Oliver and Martha Wolff. Early Netherlandish Painting. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, 1986: 49-55, repro. 51.

1995: Fronek, Joel. "Painting Techniques, and Their Effects and Changes in the Los Angeles Portrait of a Man by Christus." in Maryan Ainsworth, ed.Petrus Christus in Renaissance Bruges: An Interdisciplinary Approach, New York and Begium, 1995: 179.

1995: Gellman, Lola B. "Two Lost Portraits by Petrus Christus." in Maryan Ainsworth, ed. ) Petrus Christus in Renaissance Bruges: An Interdisciplinary Approach. New York and Begium, 1995:107, 108.

2001: Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo's Ginevra de' Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2001-2002: no. 14b.

2002: Parma, Elena. "Genoa--Gateway to the South." In Borchert, Till-Holger. The Age of Van Eyck: The Mediterranean World and Early Netherlandish Painting 1430-1530. Exh. cat. Groeningemuseum, Bruges, 2002. London, 2002: 106, fig. 125.

2004: Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 47, no. 34, color repro.

2005: Schmidt, Peter. "The Multiple Image: The Beginnings of Printmaking, Between Old Theories and New Approaches." In The Origins of European Printmaking Exh. cat. Washington 2005. Edited by Peter Parshall and Rainer Schoch. New Haven, 2005: 41-42, color fig. 1.

2012: Jacobs, Lynn F. Opening Doors: The Netherlandish Triptych Reinterpreted. University Park, Pa., 2012: 122-125, fig. 46.