A Female Saint (Alternative Title: A Saint)

Dutch School

Summary

This heavily retouched panel, once attributed to the Flemish painter Rogier van der Weyden (ca. 1399-1464), may be a Gothic revival, a seventeenth-century pastiche of a fifteenth-century original (or originals). Much of the drapery has been repainted. The figure owes a clear debt to the type of Dieric Bouts (ca. 1415-1475), but she relates uncomfortably to the architectural background. The vista to a wall on the extreme left of the painting seems to make no sense architecturally, while the dimensions and perspectives of both the floor tiles and the bases of the columns appear confused. The lack of correspondence between the figure and her surroundings suggests that the background may have been adapted to fit around her. The setting recalls church interiors by Hendrick van Steenwijck the Younger (1580-1649). The painting is in a Dutch 17th century ebony frame. The identification of the figure as a saint also seems improbable and she may have been adapted from an image of the Virgin kneeling in worship after the birth of her son.