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Portrait of a lady

Follower of Anthonis Mor

Dutch, 1512/16 - c. 1576

 

c. 1560

Oil on oak

 

Purchased 1928 (no. 3569)

 

Mor, as portraitist to the Hapsburg court and as a favoured painter of the merchants, clerics and scholars of the Netherlands, helped form the elite's self-image. His portraits are both seemingly truthful and simultaneously ennobled - their careful, almost objective description balanced by a sense of grandeur. Self-consciously posed, the woman turns her head to confront us. For all the sense of character, the unknown sitter is very much a type: a dignified, virtuous woman, posed decorously, her gestures restrained, her dress sober but costly. It is both a portrait and the image of an ideal - the embodiment of how elite women were the act and wished to be perceived. Frans Pourbus the Elder (1545-1581) has been suggested as the artist.

 

Frame: Running moulding with carved and gilded ornament. Britain, late 17th - first half 18th century. Made for the work.

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Uploaded on July 23, 2018
Taken on July 21, 2018