A Young Princess (Dorothea of Denmark?)

When this little girl sat for Jan Gossaert, around 1530, her family had lost a kingdom. The National Gallery thinks she is probably Dorothea, daughter of Christian II of Denmark, who was deposed in 1523 and went into exile in the Low Countries with his children. There they were looked after in Mechelen by Margaret of Austria, who governed the Netherlands for the emperor. The girl looks about nine or ten. Pearls are sewn over her cap, her collar and her sleeves, and those sleeves, blue today, were originally purple, a royal colour. In her hands is an armillary sphere, a model of the heavens made of golden rings, and she holds it upside down. Her finger rests near 55 degrees north on the outer ring, close to the latitude of Copenhagen, perhaps pointing to her father's lost country.