青い服を着た少女の肖像

We do not know who she is. A girl of perhaps seven or eight, painted in Haarlem in 1641 by Johannes Verspronck, dressed far beyond her years in grey-blue silk with gold lace, a jewel, and an ostrich-feather fan. Her family were plainly wealthy enough to commission it, but their name is lost. Verspronck made no attempt to prettify her; he simply set down every texture as convincingly as he could, the sheen of the silk, the stiff lace, the small serious face. For a quiet portrait of an unknown child it went on to an oddly public life. In 1945 the newly liberated Netherlands put her on the 25-guilder banknote, and she became one of the best-loved children's portraits of the whole century.