Portrait of Petronella Dunois

The dolls' house standing near this portrait was hers. Petronella Dunois, a woman of considerable means in 17th-century Amsterdam, assembled it piece by piece, ordering its rooms and furnishings from a range of craftsmen. When she married Pieter Groenendijk, the cabinet was one of the most valuable things she brought to the marriage, along with the usual securities and an impressive store of linen. Nicolaes Maes painted her sometime between 1677 and 1685. She leans on a low stone ledge in a wooded landscape, in a blue silk gown with a bright orange wrap, pearls at her throat and a flowering branch in her hand. Her husband was painted as its companion.