A Lady Reading (Saint Mary Magdalene)

Exhibition history

Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, Max Epstein Memorial Exhibition, 1955, no. 9.

Publications

Johanna Schopenhauer, Ausflug an der Niederrhein und nach Belgien im Jahr 1828, vol. 2, Leipzig, 1831, pp. 148–49. Franz Wickhoff, “Die Bilder weiblicher Halbfiguren aus der Zeit und Umgebung Franz I von Frankreich,” Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlung des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 22 (1901), pp. 226, 228, 236, 244. Max J. Friedländer, Die altniederländische Malerei, vol. 12, Leiden, 1935, p. 174, no. 89; rev. English ed., Early Netherlandish Painting, Brussels and Leiden, 1975, p. 99, no. 89, pl. 42. The Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection, 1961, pp. 299–300. John Maxon, The Art Institute of Chicago, London, 1970, pp. 251 (ill.), 283. Erik Hinterding and Femy Horsch, “‘A Small but Choice Collection’: The Art Gallery of King Willem II of the Netherlands (1792–1849),” Simiolus 19 (1989), pp. 10 n. 19, 63, cat. 31. Susan Frances Jones in Martha Wolff et al., Northern European and Spanish Paintings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 2008, pp. 246-50, ill.

Quick Overview

Artist: Master of the Female Half-Lengths (Netherlandish, active about 1520–1540)
Date: c. 1530
Medium: Oil on panel
Dimensions: 52.4 × 37.5 cm (20 5/8 × 14 3/4 in.); Framed: 65.1 × 50.2 cm (25 5/8 × 19 3/4 in.)
Type: Painting
Classification: oil on panel
Style: sixteenth century
Place: Netherlands
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Credit line: Max and Leola Epstein Collection
Accession no.: 1954.290

Provenance

C. J. Nieuwenhuys, Apr. 20, 1823; sold to Willem, Prince of Orange, later King Willem II of the Netherlands (d. 1849), as Barend van Orley [Hinterding and Horsch 1989, p. 63]; sold, The Hague, to Christoph Rhaban Ru_hl, Cologne, 1850 [Hinterding and Horsch 1989, p. 63]; sold, J. M. Heberle, Cologne, May 15–18, 1876, no. 30, as Bernard van Orley, to Heinrich Vieweg (d. 1890), Braunschweig; sold, Rudolph Lepke, Berlin, Mar. 18, 1930, no. 44, to Julius Böhler, Munich [Friedländer 1935, reprinted 1975]; sold to Max Epstein (d. 1954), Chicago, 1930 [undated note in curatorial file]; bequeathed to the Art Institute, 1954.

Data retrieved from the Art Institute of Chicago on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.