Portrait of a Widow

By 1667, when he made this, Nicolaes Maes had left behind the quiet household scenes of his younger years and turned almost entirely to portraits. It comes from that middle stretch, before his manner lightened: a dark, plain ground and a sitter shown soberly, with no flattering setting.

She is a widow, and in the Dutch Republic that carried a particular standing. A woman who outlived her husband often came into a real independence a wife rarely had, control of property, a business to run, money of her own. Her black is partly mourning and partly the plain good dress of a respectable household, which leaned to black anyway. Maes sets a white linen collar and cap against the dark and gives her almost nothing else, no props and no room, just the face and the black.