Portrait of a Seated Woman

Antonis Mor, who worked in Spain and the Low Countries, was court painter to Spanish king Philip II. He used a seated three-quarter-length format for sitters who did not belong to the nobility, making them appear more approachable. The woman represented here (along with her husband, whose portrait is now in the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh) probably belonged to the merchant elite of Antwerp. Her cap and braid-trimmed bodice were fashionable for Flemish women in the mid-16th century.