Portrait of Anne Fernely, Wife of Sir Thomas Gresham

Anne Fernely was already a widow when she married Thomas Gresham in 1544, and by the early 1560s he was the English crown's financial agent in Antwerp. She joined him there in the autumn of 1563, and Anthonis Mor probably painted the couple as a pair soon afterwards. She sits in a black gown with white satin sleeves and a white linen hood, a long gold chain falling almost to her lap, her chair upholstered in green. Hers is the portrait with the harder life. Both pictures later belonged to Catherine the Great of Russia, and in 1872 restorers there transferred Anne's image from its wooden panel onto canvas, a procedure that has affected its condition. In 1931 the Soviet government, selling art to raise foreign currency, sold the pair to the Rijksmuseum.