 Further, while the first generation of Early Netherlandish painters benefited from the patronage of the newly emerging middle class, secularising portraiture, and removing it from the preserve of royalty, Christus renders the girl as aristocratic, haughty, sophisticated, and exquisitely dressed.In a letter dated 1824 or 1825 Gustav Waagen, later Director of the Berlin Museums, gave his interpretation of Latin inscriptions he had seen on the original frame of the portrait, which was subsequently lost.As well as a Christus signature, he found an identification of the sitter as "a niece of the famous Talbots" ("eine Nichte des berühmten Talbots").