A Young Woman Warming her Hands over a Brazier, Allegory of Winter

In Dutch painting of this period, the cold season was usually shown as an old man or woman in shabby clothes, old because the year was running out and poor because nothing grows in the cold. Caesar van Everdingen went the other way. His young woman wears a pink cloak trimmed with fur, pearl earrings, a pearl necklace and a lace-edged white cap. She bends over an earthenware dish of glowing coals, her hands hidden under a grey-green cloth draped across it. The Rijksmuseum describes her as probably an allegory of Winter. Everdingen signed her with his linked initials at the bottom centre. When he died in Alkmaar in 1678, the inventory of his estate listed a painting called simply "a winter", which may be this canvas. The museum bought it in 1991.