Pregnancy portrait

Outside of royalty, very few women had their portraits painted; only those who were very affluent could afford this expensive and time-consuming show of vanity and wealth. Even rarer still is the “pregnancy portrait", a ‘bump photo," if you will, made to commemorate a pregnancy. Of the handful of surviving ones, Mildred Cooke, wife of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, is probably the most well-known and one of the oldest examples of an English portrait of this type.

It was painted by Flemish painter Hans Eworth c. 1563, presumably in London. Mildred and William were married for nine years before they had their first child in 1554, a daughter named Francisca, who did not live long. Between 1556 and 1564, Mildred had five more children: another daughter, Anne, and two sons, both named William, who died in infancy. Her third son, Robert, was born in 1563, and it is thought that it is him in utero depicted in the portrait, or possibly his sister Elizabeth, who was born in 1564, when Mildred was 38.

The portrait is still in the possession of the Cecil family to this day.

Sources:

https://www.britishportraits.org.uk/.../professor.../...

https://www.codart.nl/.../mildred-cooke-cecil.../...