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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Any Jewelry, post: 9612155, member: 2844&quot;]The earliest New World pearls the Spanish were interested in were the &#039;black&#039; pearls of Baja California. I doubt that in the late 1500s Mexican pearl diving had evolved to such a scale that they had found this many matching large pearls. Besides, although the painting is dirty, it looks to me that the pearls are meant to be white, not grey like the black pearls.</p><p>Given the period of the portrait, the pearls are all likely to be Asian saltwater white pearls, from either South India or Sri Lanka.</p><p>If she was lucky, maybe Basra pearls from the Persian Gulf, but with the current condition of the portrait we can&#039;t see if they were painted to have the Basra pearl lustre.</p><p>These West and South Asian regions have a tradition of pearl trade dating back a few thousand years.</p><p><br /></p><p>As an aside, sitters didn&#039;t always own (all) the jewellery they were painted with. On Rembrandt and Rubens paintings you see the same jewel on different sitters. Rembrandt even painted non-existent jewellery to make the sitter look more special.<img src="styles/default/xenforo/smilies/wink.png" class="mceSmilie" alt=";)" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>The beads are strung in a repetitive pattern of two white beads, two dark beads, which means it isn&#039;t a rosary.</p><p>It was customary to wear a string of beads either around the neck, around the wrist, or in the hair. So the same string of beads could be worn three different ways.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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