Portrait of A Young Girl (Christus, Berlin) - Provenance

Provenance

When the painting was first recorded in a 1492 inventory of the Medici family, it was described as a small panel painted with the head of a French lady, coloured in oil, the work of Pietro Cresci from Bruges. However, it seems from other identified works that the scribe was uninformed and described any piece of northern art in the collection as "French". It seems to have been highly valued; it commanded an unusually high price, and was prominently displayed within the collection. The record does not address the matter of the girl's identity beyond her nationality, indicating that their interest was more in the painting's aesthetic rather than historical value.

In the 20th century Panofsky, who was instrumental in furthering Christus's reputation as a major 15th century northern painter, described the work as an "enchanting, almost French-looking portrait"; perhaps noting the resemblance to the virgin in Jean Fouquet's Melun Diptych. Sterling picks up on this, noting the many similarities between the two women, including their tightly pulled back hair, acutely drawn cheek bones, slanted eyes and sulky expressions.

It entered the Prussian royal collection with the purchase in 1821 of the Edward Solly collection, from which the recently formed Gemäldegalerie, Berlin was allowed to take its pick, including this work. It was positively identified as an original by Christus in 1825 when Gustav Waagen established the lettering on the (now lost) frame "" as shorthand for "Petrus Christophori", which he associated with the "Pietro Christa" mentioned by Giorgio Vasari in the 1568 edition of his "Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects". In this way, Waagan also identified the Saint Eligius panel, now in New York, marking the painter's rediscovery after centuries of obscurity. Previously, a number of his paintings had been attributed to Jan van Eyck. Waagan established that Christus had been a pupil or follower of van Eyck. He had signed a number of other works as (Petr Xpi made me), hence the confusion with the older painter who often signed his work with similar phraseology, mostly closely with . Over the next century sketches of his biography were put together, while art historians slowly disentangled his works from those of van Eyck.