Description
This piece is a pair with Walters 38.553. This painting depicts a wife, and the companion painting depicts her husband. These tiny little miniatures were surely intended for personal contemplation, perhaps as a reminder of relatives who lived too far way to visit.
While the husband's collar and the wife's starched ruff were worn throughout the Dutch Republic during the mid 17th century, the woman's bejeweled headdress points to the taste for more local "folk" styles common in the northern part of the country. Especially in more provincial areas, the portraits of wives were often more conservative in style and execution than those of their husbands.
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