Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement
ca. 1440
Filippo Lippi captures a quintessential Renaissance beauty standard here: notice the woman's incredibly high forehead? That was highly fashionable in 15th-century Florence, achieved by plucking the hairline! She sits in profile, dressed in luxurious red velvet and an elaborate headdress, while a mysterious man in a red hat peers through a window, perhaps a suitor trying to catch her eye. The detailed landscape visible through the open casement adds depth to this intimate scene, which is believed to be a marriage portrait, possibly of the artist's own wife or a patron's bride.
Location: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
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