Portrait of a Lady

NARRATOR:
The portrait painters of 17th-century Holland had an uncanny ability to suggest the living, breathing, physical presence of their sitters. Just how they achieved this is beautifully illustrated in this meticulous portrait by Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck. The young woman’s direct gaze and warm smile immediately establish a personal relationship with the viewer. Her body is turned away from us, so that her enormous ruff seems to project beyond the surface of the canvas, into our space. Don’t miss the tiny hairs that halo her brow. Or the lustrous pearls dangling from her fine linen cap.

The sitter is almost certainly a new bride. When women of good family married, it was customary to commemorate the occasion with a portrait. On her forefinger, she wears a simple, jewel-studded wedding band. Her other ring, with its square-cut stone, her dark plumed fan, and her elaborate lace cuffs were all traditional bridal gifts.

But such details are secondary to the vivid impression Verspronck gives us of a vital, handsome and happy young woman embarking on married life. Indeed, she seems to epitomize the qualities of the ideal Dutch wife enumerated in this 17th-century contemporary poem:

ACTOR:
“A wife not proud of her high birth, yet from a line of solid worth.
A wife that by all virtue goes, yet of her gifts but little knows.
A wife, a still and peaceful wife, a foe to all that’s woe and strife.
A wife that never grunts with food, nor goes into a pouting mood.”