Undoubtedly one of the most successful Swedish artists of the 19th century, Amalia Lindegren is best known as a genre painter, but was also a skilled portraitist. She combined an accomplished technique with compositions that were at once simple and monumental. This is clearly in evidence in her portrait of an unknown woman, where the focus is on a cameo reproducing the famous Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen’s relief of Cupid leading a lion.