Portret van een onbekende vrouw 1874 - 1894

Karl Meunier etched this portrait of an unknown woman, capturing her in profile with remarkable detail. Notice her high-necked dress, a sartorial choice that speaks volumes of the era's social constraints, yet also of a burgeoning sense of individual identity finding expression within those boundaries. The profile view itself is a symbolic reduction, stripping away the direct gaze, the window to the soul, inviting us to contemplate the external presentation, the facade. We see echoes of this profile motif across centuries—from ancient coins bearing rulers’ likenesses to Renaissance portraiture. Each iteration is a careful negotiation between public persona and private self. The subtle rendering of her hair, swept up and away from her face, hints at a tension between freedom and control, a visual metaphor for the internal dialogues women have always navigated. This image, with its delicate lines, evokes a sense of memory, a connection to the collective past, and a quiet contemplation of identity.