Portrait of a Lady

Faber employs a meticulous oil technique, rendering the facial features with subtle modeling and a lifelike texture. The fabric and jewelry are depicted through fine brushwork that captures intricate patterns and the reflective quality of metal. The overall composition balances realism with the stylized elegance typical of early sixteenth‑century German portraiture.

Long misattributed to an anonymous “Master of Holzhausen‑portraits,” the painting was later identified as the work of Conrad Faber von Kreuznach, a noted painter and woodcut designer of the period. It entered the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp’s holdings in the twentieth century, where it remains on display.

Faber’s career unfolded during a time when northern artists were integrating Italian Renaissance ideas of naturalism with local traditions of detailed surface rendering. This portrait reflects that synthesis, combining a realistic likeness with the symbolic language of dress and accessories that communicated the sitter’s status within a burgeoning bourgeois culture.