This portrait is an extraordinary achievement by Frans Pourbus the Younger, completed the year he entered the painter’s guild in Antwerp, before his successful run as a court portraitist throughout Europe. Pourbus depicted this unidentified fifty-four-year-old woman with an exacting realism, her features set off against the meticulously rendered structure of her starched ruff and bonnet. She exudes commanding elegance in a damask dress trimmed with lace. The son and grandson of painters, Pourbus demonstrated an early command of his craft with this engaging portrait and its pair, a likeness of the woman’s husband now in a private collection.