3-075-341 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Portrait of a Woman, 1634. The figure wears the conservative outfit typical of a seventeenth-century upper-middle-class Dutch citizen complete with a broad-shouldered black jacket and stiff white ruff. Her only adornments are the subtle flower embroidery on her white cap and the delicate edging of lace visible at her wrists. This sober style of dress underlines the liveliness of the sitter’s face, with its amused smile and slightly skeptical look in her sparkling dark eyes.