In this portrait of Jenny Lind, the “Swedish nightingale”, she has the music for Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s song Bei der Wiege (Beside the Cradle) in front of her. The painting is by Louis Asher, who was active in Hamburg. Lind sat for it in the salon of Mathilde and Carl Theodor Arnemann, patrons of the arts who associated with her and Mendelssohn. Family tradition has it that the singer gave the portrait as a christening gift to their son, Leo, born in 1846.