Portrait of Mrs. Leneve
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
unframed: 126.7 × 101.3 cm · framed: 157.5 × 132.5 × 13 cm
Classification
Painting
Department
European Painting and Sculpture
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Gift of Mrs. Otto Miller
Accession Number
1942.247
Tags
About this artwork
This woman’s heavily lidded eyes, fleshy chin, and slender fingers conform to 17th-century ideals of beauty, but when the museum acquired this painting in 1942, her features had been extensively overpainted to bring her more in line with modern standards of beauty. This later intervention included lowering the sitter’s eyebrows, reducing her prominent eyes and lips, and adding curls to make her forehead appear smaller. Mrs. Leneve now appears as the fashionable artist Peter Lely originally inten...