Young Woman Wearing a Scarf 

Martin Schongauer made this metalpoint drawing of a Young Woman Wearing a Scarf sometime in the late fifteenth century. Drawings such as this one provide art historians with valuable insights into the economic and social conditions that shaped artistic production in this period. Schongauer, who lived in what is now Germany, ran a large and productive workshop. Drawings such as this would have been produced as patterns for use by other members of the workshop in the production of paintings or engravings. This drawing gives us an insight into the fashion of the day. But it is more interesting as a record of workshop practice. The status of the image is contingent on its institutional setting, as a record of the division of labour within an early commercial art business. To understand more, a historian might look to surviving business records, as well as other drawings and finished pieces from Schongauer’s workshop.