The Armour Archive

I have a couple little paintings I am working on. They are panel painting versions and variations of Martin schongauer's print titled "A Foolish Virgin".

I don't know much, if anything, about various ways to put on a turban in period, so I'm unsure about the part on one side of her head where there seems to be a big knot with some hair hanging out of it.

I've included a couple colored pictures of the original to show where my confusion is...


those are the two options I see - red is hair, green is turban - I kind of think it should be the one on the left, but I'm just not quite sure... I'd say it certainly looks more visually balanced on the left, but I'm still thinking that big knotted wad of of stuff could be her hair wrapped through/around part of the turban. Any turban experts (or anyone else really ) out there have input?

Here's a pic of what I have done so far on the painting that is furthest along (please excuse the glare, and the color in the photo is a bit off):

Not an expert. My opinion is that your illustration on the left most closely resembles reality. A 'turban' doesn't need to have a top of the head component. That 'turban' is probably a wrap intended to keep her hair up rather than a 'proper' total head cover.

I agree.

thanks for the input, I also thought that the one on the left seemed like the most realistic option, and started painting it that way, but every time I started working on that section I would begin to wonder about it and then move on to painting another area... then I'd go back to that spot again, and again wonder about, then set the painting aside for a few months and work on other projects. But now it seems like I'm back to focusing on painting again - I have four or five different variations of this in process, with only this one being a painted version of the original print. The others are one where she's turned into a momento mori holding an hour glass, another where I've appropriated the ermine from da Vinci's "Lady with an Ermine" and given it to her in place of the oil lamp, a self portrait of myself as the head of Holofernes and her as Judith (or maybe I'll be the head of John the Baptist and she'll be Salome, haven't gotten that far with it yet), etc...