Petrus Christus – Portrait of a Young Girl

Petrus Christus, Portrait of a Young Girl (1465-70), oil on oak wood, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

The squint, or more correctly the strabismus of the subject in this painting is a little disconcerting. Her apparent look back at the viewer combined with a simultaneous look to the side, feels like she enjoys a wider comprehension of the world, as if in possession of some kind of quiet superpower. Known medically as exotropia (where one eye is directed outwards), the condition is relatively common in young children, and the artist deliberately chose not to ignore it to flatter her. One of the reasons why this work is considered one of the great masterpieces of early Flemish art is that ambiguous look of cool appraisal that Petrus Christus (1410-1476), has captured so subtly, and that slight dark-eyed squint is I think a significant contributor to this.

Her ermine-trimmed robe, her tri-layered necklace and particularly her flowerpot-shaped hennin headdress all suggest high status, and there is something amusing about seeing these attributes adorning such a very slender frame, as if the encumbrance of them might be too much for one so young. The fashion is typical for the female Burgundian hoi polloi - the House of Valois-Burgundy ruled the low countries, including Bruges, the artist’s place of business, at the time - and complements the slightly entitled expression of the sitter. With her scraped-back hairline, plucked to magnify the size of the forehead, her narrow eyes and slight moue mouth shape, she seems to hold our gaze with slight disdain, real or pretend. The hennin looks unwieldy, its chinstrap chokingly constricting and while the young girl might resent having to dress in a manner antithetical to the freedom of childhood playfulness, the artist has recognised its beautiful framing effect to the facial expression.

Much has been written about the depiction of the girl placed in a real physical setting, in front of a wall which is wood-panelled below and plastered above, and her positioning in three-dimensional space is one of the earliest examples of a portrait which does this rather than showing a figure free-floating or against an imagined landscape, like the Mona Lisa (1503). This innovation certainly adds depth of field – it looks as if she is positioned a metre or two from the wall – but it also makes her appear more real, occupying a domestic sphere which, however much grander than our own it might be, is nevertheless concrete, tangible. It signifies that the figure herself is un-formularized, occupying as she does a position in an indubitable place and time and not idealized as in for example, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (c.1486) or Primavera (1482).

The composition is compelling too. It’s a very small work, just 29cm x 22cm which seems apt for its exquisitely fine-boned subject shown in a three-quarter view but manages to focus our gaze even more concentratedly within its confines. The horizontal line of the dado rail behind the girl is drawn almost at the midway point of the work and in line with her unparted lips and is echoed by a second horizontal at the top of her chemise while the vee-shape formed by the ermine trim of her gown is reflected in the outline of her hat strap and the right side (left as we look at it) of her face. These diagonals direct our scrutiny towards her puzzling mien. Is she happy or sad, or fed-up or annoyed or anxious? The little frontlet loop that protrudes onto the forehead from the hennin (and which was used by the wearer to make what we can imagine having to be frequent repositioning adjustments to it or to hold onto in windy weather) is like a little unspoken invitation for the viewer to tug on, to elicit some kind of answer.

The head seems disproportionate to the shoulders, even without the size-exaggerating effect of the hennin, while the pallor of the skin and the almost invisible Venetian blonde eyebrows, although no doubt fashionable, are troubling – is her constitution robust enough for this world? Anachronistically, the portrait reminds me of little Paul Dombey in Charles Dickens’ Dombey and Son, whose consumptive frailty was made strange by his uncommon precociousness and the other characters’ descriptions of him as ‘old-fashioned’ in his seriousness. He was like a hothouse flower forced artificially to grow up (mentally at least) too quickly and before his time and whose unnatural development led to weakness and susceptibility to disease. The young girl of the painting seems similarly both juvenile and at the same time prematurely adult, a porcelain-skinned adornment to the status and expectations of her family rather than a fun-loving and guileless infant. She is an inviolate and coldly polished commodity, like a valuable gemstone. Will she succumb to the undue stress placed upon her by early arranged marriage and the risk of death in childbearing too soon? It may be fanciful of me, but I feel like the shadow cast by her headdress to the right of the painting is a harbinger of this possible outcome for this girl-woman, a literal pictorial foreshadowing of her early demise.

There has been much speculation as to the identity of the girl, with some scholars suggesting she was a niece or daughter of John Talbot, the English Earl of Shrewsbury but as none of the evidence for this is conclusive, I don’t propose to add to it other than to agree with the view that her age is approximately fourteen; a liminal age when innocence may soon be lost yet when any anticipated adult experience to come may be worrying.

The hair is barely visible and where it is drawn back at the side of her head, her dainty ear is tenderly revealed. It seems shaped to hear what the gaze of those eyes can also take in and presents us with another acute sensory capacity. This is a figure alert to what is going on in front of her; she is attentive and watchful, vigilant, a little wary perhaps but also wise.

The painting is remarkable for its dualities, for the way for instance that it depicts flawed flawlessness; the squint is a defect which only serves to underline the delicate and precious beauty of the sitter, and not to detract from it. She looks at us and beyond us, with a stillness and composure that is unsettling for the viewer, but which seems entirely natural for the girl herself. She is enchantingly beguiling but also seems unpossessable, despite any plans her family may have for her future. Her poise is born of a certain self-awareness – her looks, her privilege and her prerogative are birthrights – and yet she is vulnerable. Her exposed neck and shoulders, notwithstanding the decorative covering of her jewellery, and the easy-to-miss gossamer-gauzy material that drapes almost invisibly over them, seem ready for the chopping block rather than constitutive of undeveloped female allure. We feel protective towards her, aware of her susceptibility to unwanted advances, while her apparent projection of detachment results in a kind of push-me-pull-you emotional tussle with her viewers. Her face seems radiantly luminous, but the adumbration of the room is ominous.

Petrus Christus’ genius lies in him making you feel that you want to know more about his subject, what she is thinking, her attitudes, her history, her future, while depicting her as hermetically sealed off from any such presumptuous and intrusive inquisition