The sitters are unidentified, since the purpose of the painting was not to convey the character of a specific woman with her child, but rather to describe an ethnic New World type.

[1] The painting featured as the cover of the book Albert Eckhout, Court Painter in Colonial Dutch Brazil in 2006, and then it appeared in the 2008 exhibition in Amsterdam called Black is beautiful: Rubens tot Dumas.

[2] Eckhout was one of six scientific artists invited by John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen to go to Brazil to document life there.

The doctor Willem Piso, who was on the expedition team as a naturalist, later together with Marcgraf wrote and published the book Historia Naturalis Brasiliae in 1648.

[4] The pose with a tree is based on the ethnographical prints in the standard work on Guinea by Pieter de Marees.