Portrait of a Lady

Nicolaes Maes

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the knees up, a pale-skinned woman with gray hair and wearing a scarlet-red, velvet dress looks at us in this vertical portrait painting. The woman’s shoulders and face are angled slightly to our left so she gazes out of the corners of her dark blue eyes under sloping brows. Her pink lips are closed, and jowls soften her chin line. She wears a black cap over her gray hair, and gold, jeweled earrings hang from her ears. A double strand of pearls is around her neck. The bodice of her dress is cut straight across the shoulders, and white cloth covering her decolletage is tucked into the neckline. A muted gold cloth wraps around the woman’s left shoulder, to our right, across her back, and down over her other elbow. The red dress’s sleeves split over the puffy white sleeves of her undergarment. The woman rests her right elbow, to our left, on a ledge, and her other hand hangs by her side with those fingers nestled into the fabric of her skirt. An iridescent, gold-colored cloth drapes over the ledge to our left and behind the woman. A stone column is along the left edge of the painting and a sunset sky over a grassy, tree-filled landscape is visible to the right. The artist signed and dated the lower right corner, “NMaes 1676.”