This enigmatic picture belonged to a seventeenth-century viceroy of Naples, then a possession of the Spanish crown. It hung in his palace with a group of portrait-like paintings portraying women of different social classes, but the class affiliation of this subject— and, more important, the reason why she holds a chicken—is a mystery. Roosters were associated in  early modern Europe with sexual jealousy and marital  infidelity, but is this fowl so fraught with moral import? And what to make of his bearer? The shape of her costume suggests she is a Neapolitan peasant, but its sumptuous materials tell another story.