Portrait of a Woman

The elegant details of this woman’s elaborate costume of sumptuous gold embroidery, fine lace cap, and ruffled collar contrast with her casual pose and setting. This type of portrait conveys an informal yet dignified quality characteristic of the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens. Soutman worked in Rubens’s Antwerp studio and later collaborated with him in the early 1620s. While he was inspired by Rubens, Soutman’s presentation of the woman in a sumptuously detailed dress and forthright gaze is very much his own.