popular across Europe. The ropa could be worn all in a loose version, and was then known under various names: the "sumarra" in Italy, the "marlotte" in France and the "vlieger" in the Low Countries. The fitted silhouette commonly seen in the 1540s remained popular, however. Women could choose between loose ropa-style gowns and more fitted ones, such as the one our noble young lady wears. Worth also noting is the fact that her fitting gown is black. Black clothing was particularly expensive, an intense deep black colour being costly to produce and hard to maintain over time. It was a colour much favoured at the Habsburg court and was commonly worn at weddings in the sixteenth century. She also wears an elegant ruff. Ruffs were highly luxurious garments, a visible symbol of status and wealth, and not anyone could afford to wear it. They could also only be worn once as body heat and the weather would cause it to droop and loose shape. As a result, persons doing manual labor were not wearing them. The wearer of a ruff had also to keep chin up and assume a proud and haughty pose, which also explains why they became rapidly popular among nobility. Her hair is not covered with the traditional white coif often seen in continental Europe, and particularly in the Seventeen Provinces at the time, which even rich merchant women would wear (such as in the Portrait of a Woman, of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, or also the Portrait of an Unknown Lady, holding a pomander on a Gold Chain of 1560 (see the gallery of portraits in the article about Pieter Pourbus). But she wears instead the fashionable French hood, particularly preferred by noble women, and in her case ornamented with pearls. Underdrawings and pentimenti Pourbus had a systematic style of underdrawing, as noted and studied by Anne van Oosterwijk in her article dedicated to "Pourbus' style in terms of paint and underdrawing". Pourbus always prepared his overall compositions using long contour lines and long parallel hatching for the shadows. For darker shadows, or growing darker, he used more closely spaced hatching. For the darkest shadows, he used cross hatches. Also in this portrait, the careful preparation of the composition is also shown by the underdrawing, which appears in some areas. These hatches are present and well visible on the portrait, even sometimes