Man in Oriental Dress

Frans van Mieris signed this little panel at the upper left and dated it 1665. It is about 15 centimetres tall. The man wears a red velvet turban with a yellow plume and a gleaming orange robe, the exotic costume Leiden painters liked for single-figure pieces, and no one has put a name to him.

Its 20th-century history is written in the museum's record. Between 1936 and 1940 it was with the Katz gallery in Dieren. In 1940 it passed through the Goudstikker firm, by then run by the German banker Alois Miedl, to the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. After the war it came back to the Netherlands and joined the NK collection, the works the Dutch state recovered from Germany, where for a time it was catalogued as the work of Arie de Vois, another Leiden painter. It was lent to the Mauritshuis from 1977 and transferred to it in 2010. Today it belongs to the Mauritshuis and hangs in the Gallery Prince Willem V.