Young Woman with Pigeons (Venus?)

This panel measures 21.5 by 16.7 centimetres, about the size of a page in a small book, the kind of picture a collector held in his hands to look at. A young woman is shown with pigeons, and that is where the question mark in the title comes from. Doves were the birds of Venus, the goddess of love, so she may be the goddess herself, or simply a young woman with her birds, and the Mauritshuis leaves the question open. Schalcken painted it around 1680 to 1685. Its first known owner was Govert van Slingelandt, a senior official of the Dutch Republic in The Hague, whose small cabinet of Dutch paintings was among the most admired of its day. After his death in 1767 his collection was sold to Prince William V, and this panel came with it the following year. It belongs to the Mauritshuis and hangs in the Gallery Prince Willem V.