Portret van een vrouw, staand bij een stoel, aangeduid als mevrouw Lemoine 1861

This is a portrait of a woman, identified as Madame Lemoine, captured in a photograph by Charles Billotte & Cie. Note the beads she holds, draped elegantly in her hand: a string of pearls. Pearls, since antiquity, have been associated with purity, wisdom, and even tears. In Renaissance paintings, we often see them adorning the Virgin Mary, a symbol of her immaculate nature, yet, we find them also in portraits of noble women, a display of wealth and status, a visual echo of power and influence. The pearls in Madame Lemoine’s hand are not merely ornaments. They speak to us of the layers of meaning imbued in these objects—a chain of cultural memory linking the sacred and the secular, the past and the present. As symbols, pearls invite us to explore the psychological currents that influence how we perceive and interpret images. The cyclical nature of symbols reflects the ebb and flow of human experience, constantly resurfacing and evolving throughout history.