Workshop of François Quesnel, 'Portrait of a Young Woman', about 1585-9

A young woman, her lips curved into a slight smile, looks sideways. Her eyes are blue, and her hair – which has been overpainted greyish brown – seems to have originally been light brown. She wears a striking black and white outfit; her bodice is extremely tight and her large ruff has points. The small cape over her shoulders is perhaps what was known as a partlet, and the white fur around her arms appears to be the turned back lining of her dress.

We don‘t know who she is, but the style of her dress was fashionable in France in the second half of the 1580s. Two drawings – Nicholas Quesnel’s Madame de Villequier, dated 1589, and Catherine Charlotte de la Trémouille, Princess de Condé, dated 1587 (both in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris) – show women wearing similar clothes. The lady in our painting is more simply dressed than Madame de Villequier, who had been a maid of honour to Catherine de’ Medici and married one of the favourites of Henry III, King of France. She is evidently not a lady of very high rank or great wealth.

The picture is painted in oil on an oak panel. There is a chalk ground covered with priming, the brushstrokes of which are clearly visible in the infrared reflectograms. The underdrawing revealed by the reflectograms is rather hesitant and the broken contour lines are frequently corrected, but the outlines may be based on tracing or the pouncing of a cartoon. Freehand hatching in short strokes suggests areas of shadow. The background was originally purplish but has been overpainted with grey paint.

The picture’s condition makes accurate assessment difficult, but it has much in common with portraits by François Quesnel: the modelling of the lower eyelids and mouth is very similar to a signed drawing by Quesnel of Marie Bourdineau, dated 18 April 1587.