Portrait of a Young Woman in a Pinned Hat

Rogier van der Weyden completed this portrait between 1435 and 1440, also known as "Lady Wearing a Gauze Headdress." The oil on panel measures 47 by 32 centimeters and depicts a woman with unusually bright, large blue eyes who looks directly at the viewer with striking intimacy.

Unlike Van der Weyden's typical female portraits where subjects bow their heads or gaze into the middle distance, this woman engages the viewer directly. She wears a wide white hennin (a fashionable headdress) over a brown dress with a black-lined, v-shaped neckline. Her hands are clasped in prayer, her expression humble yet confident. The downward folds of the wimple frame her face and accentuate her features rather than concealing them.

Scholars believe the model may have been the artist's wife, Elisabeth Goffaert, though this remains unproven. The painting now hangs at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, Germany, a prime example of Early Netherlandish portraiture.