Portrait of a Young Girl

Portrait of a Young Girl was completed towards the end of Petrus Christus's life. It marks a major stylistic advance in contemporary portraiture; the girl is set in an airy, three-dimensional, realistic setting, and stares out at the viewer with a complicated expression that is reserved, yet intelligent and alert. Christus's portraits are the first in Netherlandish painting to show the subject in concrete spatial surroundings, which adds a great deal to the immediacy of their appearance. Neither Robert Campin nor Jan van Eyck took the opportunity of presenting the subject in appropriate surroundings. 

The girl has pale skin, almond and slightly East Asian eyes and a petulant mouth. She reflects the Gothic ideal of elongated facial features, narrow shoulders, tightly pinned hair and an almost unnaturally long forehead, achieved through tightly pulled-back hair which has been plucked at the top. She is dressed in expensive clothing and jewellery and seems to be uncommonly elegant. She looks out of the canvas in an oblique but self-aware and penetrating manner that some art historians have described as unnerving. The headdress is a variant of the truncated or bee-hive hennin, then fashionable at the Burgundian court. Christus painted the girl as aristocratic, haughty, sophisticated, and exquisitely dressed.

Help us and donate so we will be able to release the new version of DailyArt this autumn: http://support.getdailyart.com