Mourning portraits

These were not rare in European homes of well-to-do people as a way of remembering and honoring the dead.

Today these portraits give insights into old funeral customs, but also various types of information regarding folk costumes.

Recent research on deathbed portraits, which can be found also in prints and photographs up to today, shows that they became popular after the Protestant Reformation but were never treasured as family heirlooms in the same way as other artworks and thus relatively few early examples such as this one have survived.

In the Netherlands, complicated wreaths of greens were placed around the heads of unmarried people, who were mostly children.

She is wearing the costume of the former Hungarian region of Levoča and the closefitting cap she has on is probably not the headgear she wore when she was alive.