Portrait of a Young Girl

This hauntingly simple and direct portrait of a young girl has been attributed to Pieter Dubordieu, a portrait painter who worked in Leiden, but was born in the French-speaking part of the ancient province of Flanders. The attribution to him is based on a comparison to two slightly later signed-and-dated portraits of women in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, that share the same direct, solemn gaze, crisp silhouetting of the figure, and strong pattern of light and dark.