ATTRIBUTED TO BRITISH SCHOOL, 17TH CENTURY
Portrait of a Young Girl
c.1625-35RCIN 401363
This young girl’s stomacher, paned sleeves and petticoat are covered in foliate embroidery, a popular style of surface decoration for fashionable clothing of the early seventeenth century. The curling stem at the base of each flower suggests that they are slips, cuttings of flowers taken for cultivation. In one hand is a folding fan, a relatively new introduction to England from the Far East, first recorded in the accounts of Queen Elizabeth I during the 1580s.