An Entire Epoch Within Her: Portraits of Unknown Women

Portraiture was a vehicle to elevate the sitter’s identity through associations with intangible ideals and the magnificence of spiritual tradition.

"Portrait of an Unknown Woman," 1883, by Ivan Kramskoi. Oil on canvas. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Public Domain

The enigmatic, nameless woman has long been a fascination of the collective consciousness. In the ancient world, the female figure embodied various virtues and domains of art, leading to recognizable personifications like the Five Senses, Liberty, the Four Seasons, and Victory.  

In Peter Paul Rubens’s famous cycle of paintings documenting Marie de’ Medici’s life, the painter drew on Christian symbols and the Greco-Roman pantheon to glorify the queen. His allegorical and mythological figures meld with historical scenes to portray the queen of France in many virtuous roles, naturally linked to the transcendence of the divine order and the best of classical culture.  

The following three portraits of women—Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun’s from 1803, Ivan Kramskoi’s from 1883, and Leonardo da Vinci’s from 1489 to 1491—are all of unidentified women. But rather than causing viewers to lose interest, the sitters’ anonymity amplifies the paintings’ enigmatic and mysterious appeal. Much scholarly ink has been spilled in speculating about their identities. In the absence of certainty, the women become Rorschach tests, tabulae rasae, or personifications of the eras when they were painted.

Vigée Le Brun

"Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat," after 1782, by Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun. Oil on canvas. National Gallery, London. Public Domain

Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842) was best known within the Kingdom of France’s Ancien Régime as the beloved portrait painter of Marie Antoinette. A prolific and highly successful artist, Vigée Le Brun benefited from the patronage of European aristocrats, writers, and actors, creating 660 portraits and 200 landscapes throughout her career. She was appointed to art academies in 10 different cities, including an election to Paris’s elite Royal Academy (France’s premier art institution) by the French queen herself.

Vigée Le Brun was trained in art by her father, Louis Vigée, a member of the Academy of St. Luke, a Parisian guild of painters and sculptors. Vigée specialized in oil painting and pastel portraits, which became his daughter’s preferred artistic media. Vigée Le Brun exhibited a natural inclination toward art at a young age, an aptitude that her father delightedly nurtured, exclaiming, “You will be a painter, my child, if there ever was one,” upon seeing her first sketches.

Vigée Le Brun’s father passed away when she was only 12 years old. By the time she was 15, she was earning enough money from portrait painting to provide for herself, her younger brother, and her widowed mother. After a couple decades of great success during which her social, artistic, and political life blossomed, Vigée Le Brun’s public visibility increased so much that she was forced to flee Paris at the dawn of the French Revolution.

After the revolution’s march on Versailles, Vigée Le Brun and her daughter spent the next 12 years in various European cities while the painter completed portrait commissions of the nobility of Naples, England, Switzerland, Poland, Germany, Austria, and Russia.

Grecian Nostalgia

"Portrait of a Woman," 1803, by Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun. Oil on canvas. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington. Public Domain

“Portrait of a Woman,” painted in 1803, is a product of Vigée Le Brun’s time exiled in England. A young woman rests against a stone parapet at sunset, gazing wistfully into the distance. She wears Grecian-inspired ochre drapery over a gauzy crepe blouse, her sleeves cinched with gold rings. Honey-toned ringlets frame her forehead while a rich midnight-blue veil envelopes the rest of her hair. The veil’s texture appears simultaneously velvety and chiffony, matching the color of the tasseled band overlaying the ochre drapery at the woman’s chest.

A dramatic value contrast is set up between the young woman’s fair skin and the dark surroundings, rendering her figure aglow. The peach of the sunset complements the blush of her cheeks, and the light reflected on her hair harmonizes with her golden drapery and jewelry.

While the identity of the beauty in the painting is unknown, some art historians think that she might be Anne Catherine Augier Vestris, a French dancer who was known onstage as Aimée.

Encapsulating an Era

Artist's self-portrait, 1867, by Ivan Kramskoi. Oil on canvas. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Public Domain

Ivan Kramskoi (1837–87) was a Russian oil painter and art critic who was born into a poor family of the petite bourgeoisie. He studied at the prestigious St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, which promoted the neoclassical painting style.

While Kramskoi and some of his fellow classmates rebelled against the classical subject matter that the Academy of Arts upheld, the high level of technical skill that the academy taught through its traditional principles shines through in Kramskoi’s paintings. He was particularly skilled at conveying the inner life of his sitters, something that he cultivated in his portraits of celebrated writers, artists, and public figures such as Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Shishkin. He also painted portraits of Czar Alexander III and his wife, Maria Feodorovna, the highest level of patronage.

By 1883, the year he painted “Portrait of an Unknown Woman,” Kramskoi was at the height of his career. When first exhibited, the painting created quite the sensation, leading to lots of speculation about the sitter’s identity, particularly her vocation.

"Portrait of an Unknown Woman," 1883, by Ivan Kramskoi. Oil on canvas. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Public Domain

In response, Kramskoi commented: “Some people have said it is not known who this woman is. Is she decent, or does she sell herself? But within her is an entire epoch.” The enigmatic reputation of the painting only grew with time, as Kramskoi’s letters and diaries revealed no mention of the woman in the painting.

In an open carriage riding along Nevsky Prospect, the main street in St. Petersburg, sits a woman wearing a black fur coat, leather gloves, and a velvet hat with ostrich feathers. Anichkov Palace is visible behind her. Rather than having the contemplative, faraway gaze of the woman in Vigée Le Brun’s painting, the woman in Kramskoi’s painting looks directly at the viewer with a penetrating, confident stare. The perspective of the composition positions viewers beneath the sitter’s eye level, as if we were walking alongside the elevated carriage and must crane our necks to look upon her.

Textural details in the foreground of the painting are rendered in incredibly high detail, such as the deep-buttoned leather upholstery of the carriage seat, the satiny sheen of the ribbon at the woman’s neck, the pearls and riot of ostrich feathers lining the brim of her hat, the reflection of the beads at her wrist, and the tufts of animal fur lining her coat. Even her eyelashes are painted with extreme attention to detail, her eyes’ waterline sensitively adorned with thin streaks of white paint, elevating the lifelike quality of her eyes.

In contrast, the painting’s background is rendered with much less clarity, and with a much more muted and light color palette. This contrast between saturated, dark, detailed foreground and subdued, light background serves to draw more attention to the woman’s face. The sky is a pale butter yellow, suggesting that it’s sunset on a snowy winter’s eve, which would explain the blush in the woman’s cheeks. The reflected light on her face is also clarified by the setting. With snow blanketing the streets, sunlight reflects all over, illuminating the woman’s face from below.

A testament to Kramskoi’s comment on there being an entire epoch within her, “Portrait of an Unknown Woman” has been used as the cover for various editions of Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina.” Valerie Hillings, a curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, said of the woman in Kramskoi’s painting: “Many people just think she’s sort of like Anna Karenina. She has that kind of special feel, that special Russianness.”

Centaur Classics' 2016 publication of Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina." Public Domain

Enigmatic Expressions

Much lore surrounds Italian High Renaissance artist and polymath Leonardo da Vinci’s small, unfinished poplar wood panel nicknamed “La Scapigliata” in Italian, or “The Lady With Dishevelled Hair.” Painted in umber, oil, and white lead pigments, the subject, history, and purpose of the panel remains shrouded in mystery.

"La Scapigliata," circa 1506–08, by Leonardo Da Vinci. Oil on panel. The National Gallery of Parma, Italy. David Vives/The Epoch Times

A woman with wavy, tendril-like hair is featured in three-quarters view, her gaze downcast. Rendered in an umber monochrome, the woman’s face appears like a highly refined sculpture. The panel’s purpose has been the subject of much speculation among art historians. Some believe it is a portrait sketch for an unfinished painting of Saint Anne; some maintain it is a small study for Leonardo’s “Virgin of the Rocks” at the National Gallery, London; and some think it was created in preparation for the lost painting “Leda and the Swan.”

In any case, the mystery surrounding the painting’s purpose matches the mystifying quality of the woman’s expression. With a soft, barely visible smile similar to that of the “Mona Lisa,” the woman looks oblivious to the world around her, certainly unaware of the world of the viewer. In keeping with his signature technique of paint application, Leonardo uses sfumato (technique of softening the transitions between forms) to blend the features of the woman’s face, creating gently rolling forms with subtle gradations.

An unfinished backdrop brings out the sfumato’s elegance even more. The woman’s tousled curls are barely massed in, their character and arrangement framing her face hinted at by sparse, dry brush strokes. Her shoulders and neck, like her hair, are but two umber brushstrokes, and the rest of the panel is primed but unpainted.

Da Vinci, Kramskoi, and Vigée Le Brun each created an image of a woman that became more enigmatic with time. Although the artists’ sitters are unknown, their anonymity only heightens their mysterious appeal. In all three paintings, the women embody more than their surface beauty. With time and the development of lore, they encapsulate a golden-age nostalgia, a love of country, and an entire era.

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