Portrait of a Woman Standing

This woman was painted in Haarlem around 1618, and she has been in Kassel since at least 1749, when the landgraves' gallery listed her in its inventory. In 1806 Napoleon's army occupied Hesse, the ruling landgrave fled, and the director of the Louvre came through to pick out the best of the Kassel pictures for Paris. She went with them and came back in 1814. Nobody knows who she is. The coat of arms beside her carries three swimming swans, which ought to have settled it and so far has not. She is about 30, in a lace cap, a millstone ruff and a stiff silk dress, and she has a companion in the same museum, a man standing in the same pose, painted as her pendant.