Master of the Female Half-Lengths

With Edouard Jonas, New York, 1930;

With E. and A. Silberman Galleries, New York;

With Lawrence Steigrad Replica Handbags s, New York, 2007;

Thereafter acquired by the present collector.

Among the most successful artists working in Antwerp in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, the Master of the Female Half-Lengths, so named by Max Friedländer, specialized in half-length depictions of elegantly attired young ladies reading, writing, or making music in intimate interiors. The present work is unusual among the artist's oeuvre and almost certainly originally comprised a larger ensemble. Indeed, its depiction of Saint Ildefonso suggests that it may have been produced for a Spanish patron.¹

The nephew of Saint Eugene of Toledo, Ildefonso was born in that city in 607 and in 657 succeeded his uncle as Toledo's Archbishop. Particularly devoted to the Virgin—his treatise De Cirginitate Perpetua Sanctae Mariae was dedicated to her—Ildefonso is shown here receiving a chasuble from her.

¹ In the past the subject has erroneously been identified as Saint Anslem of Canterbury.