Until now this painting has wrongly been regarded as a portrait of Sophia Hedwig of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, and thus as the pendant of Wybrand de Geest’s Portrait of Ernst Casimir I of 1633 (SK-A-571). That the two paintings were not originally companion pieces is clear, among other things, from the fact that the portrait of Ernst Casimir is a bust while that of the woman is a half-length. In addition, the styles of the two portraits are different. De Geest’s is characterized by the powerful modelling of the face, which was built up with visible brushstrokes, and by the transparent paint in the clothing. Such virtuosity is totally lacking in the present work, which is slick, precise and rather harsh. Finally, the woman bears no resemblance to likenesses of Sophia Hedwig, but is derived directly from a portrait of Amalia van Solms painted by Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt around 1632. It is known in a three-quarter length version (fig. a),3 but there are others that are half-lengths.4 The harsh execution of the Rijksmuseum portrait is far removed from the Van Mierevelt versions. Yvette Bruinen, 2007 See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 205.