Frans Floris (Antwerp 1519-1570)

This beguiling work belongs to the series of head studies which Frans Floris painted throughout his career, each one an exercise in fixing a particular character or unusual pose. Such heads often reappear in Floris's major multifigural works, providing intriguing evidence of his use of models ad vivum in developing complex compositions. Close in spirit to the present work is the Head study of a reclining lady formerly Wuppertal, private collection, and now in the Rubenshuis, Antwerp, capturing a pose which occurs in the Banquet of the gods, Graz, Landesmuseum Joanneum (c. 1556-68); and the Head of a lady in Coburg, Schloss Ehrenburg (c. 1565).