Display: Portrait of a Woman with a Book

The EUROPEUM exhibition space presents a new acquisition of the National Museum in Krakow – an impressive portrait of a woman titled Portrait of a Woman with a Book (Dutch Patrician) and probably painted by Willem van der Vliet.

This 56-year-old woman – according to an inscription in the painting – with not a very beautiful austere face, dressed in a dark dress with white cuffs and a white ruff, with a white bonnet on her head, holding a book – probably a prayer book – in her right hand, is presumably a representative of one of the patrician families in Del- ft. The portrait is characterised by austerity and seriousness, simple composition drawing the viewer’s attention to the sitter’s face and hands and a limited colour palette – typical features of the portraits of the Dutch bourgeoisie from the 2nd half of the 1620s to the 1650s. It was probably painted by Willem van der Vliet, a student of Michiel van Miervelt (1567–1641), who worked in Delft almost all his life.


The painting was purchased by Jan Feliks Tarnowski at the Gallery in Dresden. In 1939, it was deposited at the National Museum in Krakow. In 2015, it was bought as part of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage programme 2015 “Collections – priority axis 4 – Museum Collections”, subsidised by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.