This mid-18th-century Bavarian oil painting depicts an unknown young woman at the age of 21, dressed in a display of exquisite finery.
She wears a sumptuous red dress with broad lace cuffs and an elaborately embroidered stomacher, worked with scrolling foliage, flowers and gold thread. A soft white scarf is gathered around her shoulders, while jewels appear almost everywhere the artist can reasonably place them - rings upon both hands, pendant earrings and a close-fitting jewelled choker with a suspended ornament at its centre.
Her hair is drawn tightly away from the face and partly enclosed beneath a delicate regional headdress. Such headwear belonged to the distinctive dress traditions of Augsburg and the surrounding southern German world.
In an age before photography, portraiture offered prosperous families an opportunity to record how they wished to be seen. Fine lace, jewellery, embroidered textiles and fashionable regional dress communicated refinement and wealth immediately. Whatever her precise identity, the sitter almost certainly belonged to a family with sufficient means to commission an accomplished portrait and, equally tellingly, to dress their daughter magnificently for it.
In the top left, an inscription reads: Ihres Alters 21 Jahr - her age, 21 years - followed by the date of 1743. At 21, she had reached adulthood and may have been entering a new stage of life.
Held in a gilt frame.
Medium: Oil on canvas
Overall size: 28½” x 34” / 73cm x 86cm
Year of creation: 1743
Labels & Inscriptions: Inscribed upper left "Ihres Alters / 21 Jahr / 1743"
Provenance: Private collection, France.
Condition: Cleaned. Revarnished. Canvas relined. Faint stretcher marks. Later stretcher. Craquelure throughout. The paint layer is stable. Frame with various marks and showing its age.
Our reference: BRV2348
