La Dentellière

In the Dutch Republic of the 1660s, fine bobbin lace was a luxury good and a serious industry, worn as a mark of wealth and traded across Europe. Metsu painted this lace-maker around 1663, at the height of that trade. She sits with the lace pillow on her lap, the bobbins and pins laid out, and she looks up directly at us, caught in the middle of the work. He gives her a grey satin dress and a fur-trimmed jacket, good clothes for close, patient labour. It is a small canvas, barely more than a foot high, meant to be held and studied closely, the way you would examine a piece of lace itself. A cat sits quietly at her feet.