Dutch school; c. 1695.

Dutch School; c. 1695.
"Portrait of a lady".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Presents inventory number and date in the upper area.
Measurements: 45.5 x 46 cm; 67 x 67 cm (frame).
Portrait of young lady that represents the long bust of the protagonist who is in the center of the composition, dressed in white clothing that further highlights the light of her pearly skin. The amplitude of the clothing and the gesture of the lady who calls one of her hands to her chest, holding the folds of the tunic, show us a portrait of greater intimacy, surely conceived for a private room.
Undoubtedly, it was in the painting of the Dutch school where the consequences of the political emancipation of the region, as well as the economic prosperity of the liberal bourgeoisie, were most openly manifested. The combination of the discovery of nature, objective observation, the study of the concrete, the appreciation of the everyday, the taste for the real and material, the sensitivity to the seemingly insignificant, made the Dutch artist commune with the reality of everyday life, without seeking any ideal alien to that same reality. The painter did not seek to transcend the present and the materiality of objective nature or to evade tangible reality, but to envelop himself in it, to become intoxicated by it through the triumph of realism, a realism of pure illusory fiction, achieved thanks to a perfect and masterful technique and a conceptual subtlety in the lyrical treatment of light. Because of the break with Rome and the iconoclastic tendency of the Reformed Church, paintings with religious themes were eventually eliminated as a decorative complement with a devotional purpose, and mythological stories lost their heroic and sensual tone, in accordance with the new society. Thus, portraits, landscapes and animals, still life and genre painting were the thematic formulas that became valuable in their own right and, as objects of domestic furniture - hence the small size of the paintings - were acquired by individuals of almost all classes and social classes.