This portrait is part of José Lerma’s series of “re-paintings,” for which he paints stylized, simplified, whimsical versions of existing paintings that are in the collections of major museums and institutions. Lerma selects paintings that offer oversimplified visions of subjects that supposedly represent the Spanish diaspora. This piece has as its title one of the most overused titles within the art historical canon: “Portrait of a Lady.” Literally thousands of such paintings exist. Lerma has reduced the original composition down to a small number of thick, painterly brushstrokes, using the bare minimum of marks to convey the essence of the image. There are different reasons Lerma deploys this method: one is simply to evoke a childlike state of mind in the viewer with the odd scaling and whimsical colors and forms; another is to allude to the non-proportional representation of Spanish diaspora artists in major international museum collections. Lerma is giving us a caricature of an actual painting, which serves to satirize the entire museum experience. It is an oversimplification of an existing work, which echoes the oversimplification of non-majoritarian identities and histories that so often happens within institutional settings.