Isabella Wolff1803–15
This portrait depicts Isabella Wolff, one of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s closest friends. More about this work
About this work
This portrait depicts Isabella Wolff, one of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s closest friends. Shown contemplating a printed image of the Delphic Sibyl from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, Wolff assumes a pose that cleverly echoes another Sibyl from that same work. Sibyls, priestesses of Classical legend who made enigmatic judgments and prophecies, were often pictured according to Western fantasies of the Near East, hence Wolff’s elaborate turban.
Text from the Art Institute of Chicago.
What you’re looking at
A light-skinned woman in a long, shiny white dress sits at a desk reading a book. The book is propped on a large red pillow. Her head is propped in her hand.
Description from the Art Institute of Chicago.
How it was made
- Oil paint
- Pigment ground in a drying oil, usually linseed. It dries slowly, so painters could blend on the canvas, build up thin translucent glazes, and rework a picture over weeks. Canvas replaced wooden panels in the 1500s because it is lighter and can be rolled.
Thomas Lawrence
English, 1769–1830 · Born in Bristol; died in London.
Lawrence was a child prodigy in pastel portraiture and largely self-taught. He moved to London as a teenager, exhibited a full-length of Queen Charlotte at the Royal Academy at twenty-one, and succeeded Joshua Reynolds as Painter in Ordinary to George III. After 1815 the Prince Regent commissioned him to paint the leaders of the alliance against Napoleon for the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle. He became President of the Royal Academy in 1820 and was the leading portraitist of his day.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Art Institute of Chicago has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 1922.4461
- Credit
- Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Type
- Painting
- Department
- Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
