Provenance

Diego Velázquez

Velázquez, Diego Rodriquez de Silva y

Spanish, 1599 - 1660

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Shown from the waist up, a woman with pale skin and brown hair, wearing a dark corset and white fabric over her shoulders, looks down at needlework in her hands in this vertical painting. Her cheeks are rosy and her dark hair is pulled back, though it seems looser down the sides of her face. A small, coral-red, crescent shape at the back of her head could be covering her hair or holding it in place. White, nearly translucent fabric lies loosely across her shoulders over a dark, moss-brown, long-sleeved dress. Her breasts swell over the squared, lace-trimmed neckline. She holds white fabric and perhaps a needle in her hands, which rest on a tan cushion on her lap. The scene is loosely painted throughout so some of the details are difficult to make out. A darker spot along her right index finger could be a thimble. The background is the same olive-tan of the cushion.
Diego Velázquez, The Needlewoman, c. 1640/1650, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.81

The Needlewoman

Diego Velázquez · c. 1640/1650 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1937.1.81

Bibliography

1979

  • López-Rey, José. Velázquez; the Artist as Maker. Lausanne and Paris, 1979.

1982

  • Harris, Enriqueta. Velázquez. Ithaca, 1982.

1986

  • Brown, Jonathan. Velázquez, Painter and Courtier. New Haven and London, 1986.

1990

  • Brown, Jonathan, and Richard G. Mann. Spanish Paintings of the Fifteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1990: 116.