Portrait of Lysbeth van Duvenvoirde

On 19 March 1430 Lysbeth van Duvenvoirde, from a noble Dutch family, married the knight Symon van Adrichem, and this small portrait on parchment belongs to that moment. She holds a long S-shaped scroll with a line in Middle Dutch, which the Rijksmuseum renders as 'Long have I yearned for the man who would open his heart.' The museum thinks she is wearing her wedding jewellery, a necklace, five rings and a belt hung with little bells. The parchment was once one wing of a pair, and no one knows where the matching portrait of her husband is now. An old inscription on the back records the wedding date and her death in 1472. The painter is unknown, possibly working in Cologne. The picture belongs to the Mauritshuis in The Hague, which bought it in 1944 and has lent it to the Rijksmuseum since 1959.