Girl at the Mirror

Inscriptions

signature and date, upper right, in ligated monogram:PM / 1632

Technical notes

The support is a fine, plain-weave canvas lined with glue. The tacking edges have been let out at the top, bottom and left side. The double ground is composed of a grey layer, made up of lead white and charcoal, over a red layer, made up of a red earth pigment and clay. Lead-tin yellow was used for the girl’s shawl and indigo for the table cloth. A substantial amount of brushmarking and impasto is present.

Scientific examination and reports

paint samples: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. 105/1-4, 16 december 2002
technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 26 maart 2003

Condition

Fair. Retouching covers minor areas of abrasion. The background on the left behind the figure has been painted over. Red lake used in the figure’s costume has become transparent. The varnish is somewhat discoloured.

Conservation

M. van de Laar, 2003: cleaned; retouchings and varnish reworked; retouched

Provenance

...; ? sale, Paris (A.J. Paillet et al.), 13 August 1798, no. 48 (‘Une belle Femme, montrant son profil dans un miroir’);...; collection Pieter van Winter (1745-1807), Amsterdam;¹Six Archives, Amsterdam, V-F-II V 2, Tauxatie van het kabinet schilderyen nagelaten door wylen den weledlen heer P. van Winter Nsz., 31 January 1815; see Priem 1997, p. 221, no. 104. his daughter, Lucretia Johanna van Winter (1785-1845), Amsterdam;²Six Archives, Amsterdam, VIII-F-3 I D, Verdeeling schilderyen tusschen Lucr.a Joh.a v.Winter en haar zuster A L A. van Winter 20 Dec. 1815 getr. met Willem van Loon, fl. 960; see Priem 1997, p. 224. her husband, Jonkheer Hendrik Six (1790-1847), Lord of Hillegom, Amsterdam; his sons, Jan Pieter Six (1824-99), Lord of Hillegom and Pieter Hendrik Six (1827-1905), Lord of Vromade; purchased by the museum with support from the Vereniging Rembrandt from the heirs of Pieter Hendrik Six, 1908; on loan to the Centraal Museum, Utrecht, 1924-42

ObjectNumber: SK-A-2330

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The artist

Biography

Paulus Moreelse (Utrecht c. 1571 - Utrecht 1638)

De Bie was the first author to give Moreelse’s year of birth; the artist’s baptismal record has not come down to us. His father, Jan Jansz Moreelse, was a cooper from Louvain. According to his 17th- and 18th-century biographers, Moreelse studied for two years with Michiel van Mierevelt, probably in Delft, and then spent a long period in Italy, where he received numerous portrait commissions in Rome. None of the paintings executed by Moreelse in Italy are known today. He returned to Utrecht by 1596, when he reportedly joined the saddlers’ guild, to which painters also belonged. In 1602 Moreelse married Antonia van Wintershoven. Because the ceremony took place in the town hall of Utrecht, Moreelse would not have been a member of the Reformed Church at this point. Later, however, he did join that congregation. His first dated painting, a Portrait of a Man is also from 1602.³Domela Nieuwenhuis 2001, II, p. 348, no. SAP2. In the spring of 1611, Moreelse was elected dean of the saddlers’ guild and in September of the same year he became the first dean of the newly founded Guild of St Luke. He held this post again in 1612, 1615 and 1619. Twenty-eight pupils are recorded as having trained with Moreelse from 1611 on, more than with any other guild member. Together with Abraham Bloemaert, Moreelse was also one of the principal teachers at the drawing academy set up in Utrecht some time after the painters’ guild gained independence. Among Moreelse’s pupils were Dirck van Baburen (1594/95-1624), Pieter Portengen (c. 1612-43) and Jan ter Borch (?-1676). Two of his sons, Johan (after 1602-34) and Benjamin (before 1629-51), also became painters, and one of his daughters is reported to have assisted Moreelse with the execution of a portrait.

Moreelse was chiefly active as a portrait painter. In addition to his many portraits of Utrecht’s leading citizens, he received commissions from court circles, such as the 1621 Portrait of Sophia Hedwig, Countess of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, as Caritas, with her Children.⁴Apeldoorn, Paleis Het Loo; illustrated in Braunschweig 2000, p. 60. Moreelse’s 1616 Officers and other Civic Guardsmen of the IIIrd District of Amsterdam, under the Command of Captain Jacob Gerritsz Hoyngh and Lieutenant Nanningh Florisz Cloeck (SK-C-623) is the only civic guard piece by a Utrecht painter to have survived. Moreelse also painted histories and genre pieces, and is credited with introducing the single-figure shepherdess into Dutch painting. His activities as an architect include a plan for enlarging Utrecht (executed posthumously in 1663) and the design of the Catherijnepoort (1621-25; destroyed), one of the town gates. After having supported Prince Maurits’s dismissal of Utrecht’s town council in 1618, Moreelse was given a seat on the new town council, which he occupied until his death. He also served as churchwarden of the Buurkerk, headman of the civic guard, an alderman, and chief treasurer of Utrecht. Paulus Moreelse died on 6 March 1638 and was buried in the Buurkerk.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

References
Van Mander 1604, fol. 280v; De Bie 1661, p. 131; Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), pp. 171, 178; Houbraken I, 1718, p. 49; Hoevenaar 1778, p. 9; Swillens 1926; De Jonge 1938, pp. 1-7, 139-53 (documents); Bok in Utrecht-Braunschweig 1986, pp. 322-25; Bok in Amsterdam 1993, pp. 311-12; Bok in San Francisco etc. 1997, p. 386; Domela Nieuwenhuis 2000; Domela Nieuwenhuis 2001, I, pp. 13-60, 203-50 (documents)

Entry

This is one of four paintings by Moreelse showing an attractive young woman at a mirror. With his 1627 painting now in Cambridge (fig. a), Moreelse introduced this vanitas subject into Utrecht painting.⁵Domela Nieuwenhuis 2001, I, p. 168. For interpretations of the iconography of this painting see Amsterdam 1976, pp. 190-93, no. 47; Sluijter 1988, p. 162; Domela Nieuwenhuis in San Francisco etc. 1997, pp. 193-96, no. 21; Domela Nieuwenhuis 2001, I, pp. 168-72, with a discussion of the meaning of all four paintings of women with mirrors. According to Domela Nieuwenhuis, the young women in all four paintings should be interpreted as personifications of Luxuria (Sensuality) and Vanitas (Vanity).⁶Domela Nieuwenhuis 2001, I, p. 169. While they may represent the same things, there are obvious differences in Moreelse’s treatments of the subject. Unlike the other depictions, the sensual aspect plays a less important role in the present painting, as neither the breasts nor the shoulders of the young woman are exposed. The type of accessories also differs from those in the other versions; instead of showing jewellery, Moreelse has depicted a timepiece and a telescope. The timepiece is an obvious allusion to the concept of transience. Moreelse, perhaps, intended a juxtaposition between the ephemeral images seen in mirrors and telescopes – a rather unusual object in such vanitas genre scenes – and the more permanent nature of images fixed in paintings.

The mirror, the telescope and the painting itself are associated with visus, or sight. It seems significant, then, that the Rijksmuseum painting is Moreelse’s most successfully illusionistic rendering of a woman at a mirror. Her shawl has been draped over the edge of the table, which is parallel to the picture plane, and she appears to lean out of the picture space. Whereas the young woman’s reflection in Moreelse’s first rendering of the subject is much too large, that in the Rijksmuseum painting is smaller, thereby adhering to the principle that the distance between an object seen in a mirror and the mirror’s frame is equal to the distance between the actual object and the mirror.

Although lot 48 in the 1798 Paris sale⁷See Provenance. could have been any one of the four paintings by Moreelse showing young women with mirrors, the first certain owner of the Rijksmuseum painting, Pieter van Winter, is known to have had dealings with Alexandre Joseph Paillet (1743-1814), one of the organizers of the sale.⁸For Van Winter’s connections with Paillet see Priem 1997, p. 121.

Jonathan Bikker, 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. 221.

Literature

De Jonge 1938, p. 122, no. 279; Domela Nieuwenhuis 2001, I, pp. 168-72, II, pp. 609-10, no. SAH198, with earlier literature

Collection catalogues

1911, p. 260, no. 1661a; 1976, p. 397, no. A 2330; 2007, no. 221

Citation

J. Bikker, 2007, 'Paulus Moreelse, Girl at the Mirror, 1632', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4643

(accessed 10 June 2025 04:58:06).

Figures

fig. a Paul Moreelse, Allegory of Vanity, 1627. Oil on canvas, 105.5 x 83 cm. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, inv. no. PD. 32-1968. Photo: Fitzwilliam Museum / Bridgeman Images

Footnotes

¹Six Archives, Amsterdam, V-F-II V 2, Tauxatie van het kabinet schilderyen nagelaten door wylen den weledlen heer P. van Winter Nsz., 31 January 1815; see Priem 1997, p. 221, no. 104.
²Six Archives, Amsterdam, VIII-F-3 I D, Verdeeling schilderyen tusschen Lucr.a Joh.a v.Winter en haar zuster A L A. van Winter 20 Dec. 1815 getr. met Willem van Loon, fl. 960; see Priem 1997, p. 224.
³Domela Nieuwenhuis 2001, II, p. 348, no. SAP2.
⁴Apeldoorn, Paleis Het Loo; illustrated in Braunschweig 2000, p. 60.
⁵Domela Nieuwenhuis 2001, I, p. 168. For interpretations of the iconography of this painting see Amsterdam 1976, pp. 190-93, no. 47; Sluijter 1988, p. 162; Domela Nieuwenhuis in San Francisco etc. 1997, pp. 193-96, no. 21; Domela Nieuwenhuis 2001, I, pp. 168-72, with a discussion of the meaning of all four paintings of women with mirrors.
⁶Domela Nieuwenhuis 2001, I, p. 169.
⁷See Provenance.
⁸For Van Winter’s connections with Paillet see Priem 1997, p. 121.