Portrait of a Lady

This portrait represents a lady, bust-length, in a gold embroidered black dress and a white headdress, holding a sprig of nightshades and forget-me-nots.

The portrait has its roots in the portraiture of Hans Holbein the Elder. It is however more closely comparable with portraits by Strigel, such as the Portrait of a Woman (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

The sitter would appear to be of a high social standing, probably the wife of a rich burgher. The headdress, with its stitched band reminiscent of those in many other Swabian portraits of the late fifteenth century, such as the anonymous Portrait of a Woman of the Hofer Family at the National Gallery, London, denotes her married status. She holds a sprig of forget-me-nots (as does the sitter in the Hofer portrait) and bittersweet nightshade, the former the traditional signifier of remembrance, while the latter though more ambiguous in its meaning is also included as a decorative motif on her dress.