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Portrait of Mrs. Leneve
Peter Lely (British, 1618–1680)
c. 1657
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 157.5 x 132.5 x 13 cm (62 x 52 3/16 x 5 1/8 in.); Unframed: 126.7 x 101.3 cm (49 7/8 x 39 7/8 in.)
- Culture
- England, 17th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Gift of Mrs. Otto Miller
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
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 intended.
