Portrait of a Woman

With her elaborate black satin dress, trimmed in white silk and expensive lace and encrusted with jewels, this woman styles herself as a lavish widow. She looks out at the viewer with a modest expression, her face fashionably pale. Her jewelry—ropes of pearls at her neck and wrists, an intricate gold chain set with rubies and pearls, and a coronet of yet more pearls beneath a fine net veil—indicates her great wealth and high status. Later artists adopted the full-length format and emphasis on sumptuous costume seen here in their own portraiture. Anthony van Dyck, Joshua Reynolds, and Thomas Gainsborough, whose works are on view nearby, use this formula to lend glamour to their images of British aristocrats.