A Young Woman

Gerrit Dou (Dutch, 1613–1675)

1640

Medium
oil on wood
Classification
Painting
Dimensions
Framed: 35 x 31 x 5 cm (13 3/4 x 12 3/16 x 1 15/16 in.); Unframed: 16.3 x 12.1 cm (6 7/16 x 4 3/4 in.)
Culture
Netherlands
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art, European Painting and Sculpture
Credit line
Bequest of William G. Mather
Rights
Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed

View at the Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

This painting may depict a specific person as in a traditional portrait. The less formal costume and the tight focus on the head, however, may mean that it is a tronie, a popular category of painting among Dutch painters in the 1600s. While painted from living models, tronies represent more general types of people, designed as beautiful images rather than accurate likenesses of people known to their patrons.