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This half-length portrait depicts an unidentified lady wearing a dark brown velvet overdress luxuriously ornamented with gold chain-stitched embroidery, slit sleeves, and a high collar open in front in the Flemish style. It is a notable example of Spanish portraiture during the reign of Philip II. Its support, a fine-grained reddish tropical wood, was quite unusual in sixteenth-century painting. Another remarkable element is the folding Japanese-type fan the lady is carrying, a nod to the customs and portrayals of women from Portugal, where the first Oriental fans arrived in the late fifteenth century.
The arrangement of the sitter's arms, the fact that the right hand has been partly cut off, and the irregularities in the perimeter of the painting indicate that the work was originally larger and possibly conceived as a seated portrait.
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