Catherine of Braganza is here portrayed as St. Catherine of Alexandria, with a martyr's palm in her right hand and her left resting upon the broken wheel on which the saint was tortured. The Queen had been born on the feast of St. Catherine and being painted as the saint became a fashionable way for female courtiers to demonstrate respect to the new Queen, as in the portrait of Elizabeth Hamilton, Countess of Gramont (RCIN 404960).

Catherine of Braganza patronised the Flemish artist Jacob Huysmans over the fashionable court artist Lely, perhaps to distance herself from her husband's mistress Barbara Villiers, for whom Lely was the artist of choice. The sitter's shining silver coloured silk gown is arranged to imitate classical drapery, and to this are added other pieces of fabric of various colours and textures - such as the gold scarf around the neckline and the blue fabric upon which she rests. The wide sleeves and cuffs however do echo contemporary fashions of the 1660s.

Pepys records seeing the portrait in Huysman's studio on his visit there on 26 August 1664, 'the Queene is drawn...like St. Katharin, most like and most admirably'.