An elderly woman in a brown garment with a fur mantle and a black headdress, leaning on a stone ledge with glasses in her right hand

With its great attention to naturalism, the delicate rendering of the various textures and its subdued palette, this study of an elderly woman reveals the esteemed tradition of Leiden painting led by artists such as Rembrandt, Gerrit Dou and Frans van Mieris I. Dr. Susanne H. Karau, to whom we are grateful for supporting an attribution to Jacob Toorenvliet on the basis of an image, mentions a copy after this composition (op. cit.) and a very comparable picture of an old woman holding glasses, measuring 27.5 x 25 cm. was exhibited in the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, Nederlandse kunst in Mexico uit de 15e, 16e en 17e eeuw, April- May 1964, as Frans van Mieris, no. 59 (collection of the Museo de San Carlos, Mexico).

The panel may well have been painted in the 1660s, with the delicate brush handling and the bright-lit figure against the dark background being typical for Toorenvliet’s early works.