Miniature Portrait of a Young Man

Thanks to the boom in the production of art in the larger Dutch cities, local schools of painting developed with their own stylistic and thematic characteristics. One of the most famous of these was the so-called fijnschilderij (fine painting), founded by Rembrantdt’s first pupil, Gerard Dou, in Leiden. Motifs depicted in great detail on small cabinet-sized formats, using very fine brushes, a delicate palette and an enamel-like lustre, invite close-up inspection. The Miniature Portrait of Young Man by Pieter Cornelisz. van Slingelandt shows the fine, enamel-like smoothness of this manner of painting as applied to a portrait.