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This young woman offers a pink (or dianthus, related to the carnation) to someone on her right, probably her betrothed. The sweet-smelling pink symbolized a young woman's hopes for marriage. At her waist is a gilded girdle, or belt, from which hangs a pomander, a pierced container for sweet-smelling herbs to combat the foul smells of crowded cities.Bruyn was a portraitist to the prosperous merchants of Cologne, Germany.Attributions to him must take as a point of departure the single known signed portrait by him, that of Peter Ulner, dated 1560 and signed BARTHOLOMEO BRVN FECIT (Rehinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn). The Walters' portrait shares characteristics of pose, stiffness, lighting, and dimensions with a Portrait of a Woman of the Slosgin Family of Cologne dated 1557 and attributed to Bruyn the younger (though not signed) in the Metropolitan Museum (32.100.50).