This unique portrait in Burne-Jones's oeuvre, was one of his first attempts, if not the first, at formal portraiture. His wife, Georgiana, whom he had recently married, was the sitter, and her appearance belies her age of just twenty-two. The entire composition, including the inscriptions above the sitter, are reminiscent of Renaissance and Northern Renaissance portraiture. While the sitter's pose and costume mirror work of Italian artists, to a certain extent, the portrait seems indebted to the portraitists of the Henrican, Marian and Elizabethan courts, such as: Joos van Cleeve, Hans Eworth, and Nicholas Hilliard.