Attributed to the Master of the Half-Lengths.... Lot n° 10

Attributed to the Master of the Half-Lengths (Documented in the second quarter of the 16th century). Portrait of a Lady Oil on wood. 46 x 35 cm. As the biographical index card notes on the website of the Museo del Prado, this painter was: 'An Anonymous painter of half-figures, religious and mythological scenes, being related successively with the painters Lucas de Heere, Hans Vereycke and even the French painter Jean Clouet, although his true identity is still unknown. He has received his name from a series of stereotyped paintings in which a young woman, depicted from the waist upwards, is occupied with reading, writing or music in an affluent interior. The physiological uniformity of these ladies rules out the possibility of them being portraits. This type of painting calls to mind a productive Antwerp workshop which worked especially for exportation. The influence of French courtly poetry on these paintings makes other writers link the Master of the Half-Figures with the court of Mechelen and Brussels, which was open to French culture at this time. His religious scenes, such as that of the Madonna and Child (Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg) or The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (National Gallery, London) reflect the sweetness characteristic of the last phase of the painting of the Bruges School.'