A Boy Blowing Bubbles

Van Mieris painted the date below the window as if carved in stone, in Roman numerals, 1663. A century later the little panel came up at auction in The Hague, and in July 1763 it was bought for Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony. Augustus died that October before the painting could leave Holland, so it went instead to Govert van Slingelandt, a local collector. Five years later Prince William V of Orange bought his entire collection. Apart from 20 years in Paris, after French troops took the prince's pictures in 1795, the boy has stayed in the city ever since. Bubbles that float for a moment and burst were an old reminder that life is short, though 18th-century buyers cared more for the finish, each vine leaf and the plumed velvet cap on the sill. A small snail is crawling across the carved date.