Portrait of a Lady

Dated 1538, this early portrait of an unknown lady at the Prado represents Antonis Mor near the very beginning of his career, before his consolidation of the Habsburg court portrait formula. Mor had trained under Jan van Scorel in Utrecht and this early work reflects the influence of Scorel's cooler, more restrained approach to portraiture compared with the warmer, more Italianate style Mor would develop after his Spanish and Italian travels. The sitter's costume and the relatively spare background suggest a prosperous but not ultra-elevated subject — perhaps from the merchant or professional classes of the Low Countries. The painting is among the earliest dated works attributable to Mor and is therefore of significant importance for understanding the genesis of his style.

The canvas ground of this early work shows slightly less consistent preparation than Mor's mature pieces, with occasional traces of ground showing through thin paint layers at the edges. The face is already handled with considerable finesse — smooth transitions in the flesh, careful observation of reflected light under the chin — but the costume passages are less differentiated than in his later work.