Portrait of a Woman

This portrait with a special charm first appeared in the collection as the work of Rembrandt, then for a long time as that of Vermeer van Delft, and it is only in recent years that it has been accepted in the literature as the work of Willem Drost. Signed analogies to it dating from 1653-54 are in the Bredius Museum in The Hague, in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and in a private collection, Switzerland. Drost is an obscure pupil of Rembrandt; this portrait is outstanding in his oeuvre for its extraordinary quality. All we know of the sitter is that she was unmarried, which may be deduced from the positioning of the figure.