Jacquet has placed the unidentified sitter in front of a tapestry and costumed her in late sixteenth-century dress. The panel is painted with Jacquet's soft but highly finished touch, which carefully distinguishes between the starched lace of her collar, the blue velvet of her dress, and her flawless skin. The light source is non-specific-a quality learned from his teacher, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, who enveloped his figures in a soft, dusky twilight. Bouguereau was the late nineteenth century's most influential upholder of the conservative values of French academic painting. Jacquet's early works closely resembled those of his master, to the extent that his first Paris Salon entry, an allegorical work, bore Bouguereau's signature. However, by the following year, Jacquet began submitting to the annual Salons the subject matter for which he is now best known-highly elaborate costume pieces with a gallant or romantic theme, set in the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Many depict young women playing musical instruments.

The Madonna of the Carmelites was the focus of immensely popular devotion in Spain, Mexico, and throughout Latin America during this period. In this painting the Madonna has bare feet, indicating that the work may have been intended for an Unshod (Discalced) Carmelite order, or it may be intended to represent Mary's humility. The small badges that she and the infant Christ hold are scapulars, which imitate the apron-like coverings that some orders of monks wear over their tunics. The artist was born in Valencia, Spain, the son of a silversmith and the nephew of a painter. He trained at the Academy of San Carlos in Valencia as well as at the Fine Arts Academy of San Fernando in Madrid before coming to Mexico as Director of the Fine Arts Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City in 1794.