Netherlandish, 'A Woman with Prayer Beads', 1540s

A well-dressed young woman gazes out from this portrait. The young woman is set against a green backdrop onto which her silhouette casts a dark shadow. Her chemise seems to be embroidered in black and gold at the neck and cuffs, and she wears a golden necklace and gold rings set with stones. The golden beads among other whitish ones that hang from her girdle are probably a rosary, a devotional aid often used for prayer.

The green background consists of several layers of paint. The oak panel was prepared with a chalk ground, covered with a light pinkish-grey priming of lead white containing a fine black pigment and some red lead. The underdrawing, executed in a carbon-containing, possibly dry medium, is rapidly drawn onto the panel and serves a rather cursory positioning of the figure.

We do not know the identity of the sitter; her turned-back sleeves and the girdle tied around her waist with the beads attached were fashionable in the 1540s. The painting entered the National Gallery Collection as the work of Antonis Mor, court portrait painter to the Spanish king Philip II. In the early 20th century, it was tentatively attributed to Jan Sanders or his daughter, Catharina van Hemessen, who is known to have painted similarly fine small-scale portraits. Compared to the signed Portrait of a Lady (NG4732), dated 1551, this portrait has more compact, rounder shapes and a different proportioning of head and hands in relation to the body. Despite the open question of its attribution, the type and execution suggest that it was painted in Antwerp or elsewhere in the south of the Netherlands