In this artist’s self-portrait, a woman sits before an easel painting her deceased husband. As attributes of her mourning the artist wears black embroidered bead bracelets on each of her wrists. She sits upright, a red velvet cloak draped from her left shoulder across her knee. Around her neck, she wears a string of pearls. On the palette in her left hand are daubs of yet unmixed oil colours. Both the artist’s face and gaze are directed out of the picture and towards the viewer, while from the oval canvas the man’s eyes look beyond both artist and viewer. His gaze is no longer in this world.
Traditionally, the painting has been described as English school of the late seventeenth century, but no further attribution has been made. Only a few female artists of that period are known and most of them are quite well documented. Our artist has been well trained as a painter, but her main occupation lies elsewhere. A closer inspection of the highly detailed and delightfully painted embroidered beads indicates that she might have worked as a jeweller. Much less is known about female jewellers than of women artists of the period.
The model of a female painter sat at an easel originally derives from two well-known sources; the self-portrait by Caterina van Hemessen (1528–after 1587) in Basle and one of the most important early female self-portraits by Sofonisba Anguissola (c. 1532–1625) in Łańcut, Poland. Like ours, both paintings depict the palettes holding still unmixed colours.
The idea and composition would have been taken from the engraving of the Portrait of Bartholomew Spranger and his Wife, engraved by Aegidius Sadeler (1570 Antwerp - 1629 Prague (Hollstein 332), fig. 1). In this thoughtful allegorical double portrait Spranger commemorates his wife Christiana Müller who died in 1600. While he himself is shown looking out at the viewer, surrounded by representations of the Arts and of Fame, fending off death as a spear is aimed at his heart, she is depicted with a pensive expression, in an oval picture above a sarcophagus, amongst symbols of Faith and Wisdom.
In contrast to our painting, the Spranger composition is overloaded with rich symbolism and complex picture puzzles; our image is clear, simple and sober, a more direct statement of loss and sorrow. In Spranger’s work, the pain and grief over the death of his wife can only be overcome by his self-expression as an artist of fame. Our artist is much more modest in her own depiction, only her black arm bracelets convey a dual reference to her possible profession and the death of her husband. This couple was young and had no need to surround themselves with status symbols. The austerity in our painting gives the image a deeper emotional charge, reflecting the affinity both wife and husband had for each other.

Fig. 1. Aegidius Sadeler (engraver), Portrait of Bartholomeus Spranger with an Allegory on the Death of his Wife, Christina Muller, 1600.