This painting is called "Portrait of a Young Woman" and painted by Lorenzo di Credi in between the years of 1490 and 1500. In this paining is depicted a young woman, what a surprise, dressed in black. As well as her black clothing she is surrounded by a dark cloud and a bleak backdrop containing a sparse tree and almost rainy sky. While all of this darkness is in the painting, she is also holding a ring in her hand.
From this painting I see a widow facing a long road ahead of her. As we learned in class if a woman is widowed her husband usually makes an effort to have her taken care of after his death by giving her money. But in this painting I see a widow that seems not only sad, but in a bad place scared and not knowing what to do. All of the dark around her and lack of fruitfulness usually depicted in Renaissance art, to me, represents despair. I wonder what kind of hardships this woman is about to face. Did her husband leave her any support for the long years ahead of her?
Image and information: http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/436910
Super interesting image that I had not seen before. Paintings (and modern photographs by our families) are always projecting an ideal, but maybe not always reality. She very well could have been sad, absolutely. That would be tough to know w/o a primary source text. Humanity tells us however that most people find death sad. Maybe not the young woman married to the 40 year old, but probably. But these images also project an idea about the loss of family, particularly the patriarch. So we feel for the woman, but truly it was about the loss that the woman feels because of WHAT she lost.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this image because I think it conveys how difficult losing a women's husband was in those days. When I look at her I see a women who is lost, and almost in shock of what happened. I imagine her thinking "What now?" I would curious to see if there are any portraits of men that have lost their wives.
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