Shepherdess singing with Shepherd

Around 1630, Utrecht painters were turning out Arcadian scenes almost by the dozen, shepherds and shepherdesses lifted from the popular Dutch pastoral poems of the day, dressed in silks no real herder ever wore. This is one of them. A young woman sings straight at us in a wide red hat and a blue-and-gold dress, a clay flask in her hand, while behind her a shepherd raises a flute and keeps his eyes on her rather than the music. The light settles on her face and leaves him in shadow, so your eye goes to her first. What the picture has never held onto is a firm name. Since it came to Basel in 1865 it has been catalogued as a Honthorst, then a Santvoort, then a work from Bloemaert's studio, then a van Bijlert, then a Mijtens. Today it hangs as a Johannes Moreelse, a young Utrecht painter who died in 1634, though the museum still marks the attribution with a question.