Portrait of a lady with a Moor

Portrait of a Lady with a Moor from 1684 by Nicolaes Maes includes an attendant figure that was a fashionable accessory in late seventeenth-century European portraiture. The inclusion of a Black page or servant was a convention that signified the sitter's wealth and connections to global trade. Maes trained with Rembrandt in Amsterdam in the early 1650s before establishing himself as an independent master. His mature portrait style absorbed Flemish elegance — producing fashionable likenesses ...

The two figures create a compositional pairing, with Maes rendering both with his characteristic attention to individual features and costume.