Provenance 
Private collection, Europe 
 
Comparative literature  
Anita Jansen, Rudi Ekkart en Johanneke Verhave, De portretfabriek van Michiel van Mierevelt (1566-1641), exh.cat. Museum Het Prinsenhof Delft, 2010  
 
Michiel van Mierevelt was born and died in Delft, as a son of a goldsmith, who apprenticed him to the copperplate engraver Hieronymus Wierix. He subsequently became a pupil of Willem Willemz and Augusteynof Delft, until Anthonie van Montfoort (Houbraken calls him Antony Blokland), who had seen and admired two of Mierevelt's early engravings, Christ and the Samaritan and Judith and Holofernes, invited him to enter his school at Utrecht.
 
He specialized in portraiture, in which he achieved such success that the many commissions entrusted to him necessitated the employment of numerous assistants, by whom hundreds of portraits were turned out in factory fashion. Today over 500 paintings are or have been attributed to him. The works that can with certainty be ascribed to his own brush are remarkable for their sincerity, severe drawing and harmonious color, but comparatively few of the two thousand or more portraits that bear his name are wholly his own handiwork. So great was his reputation that he was patronized by royalty in many countries and acquired great wealth. The king of Sweden and the count palatine of Neuburg presented him with golden chains; Albert VII, Archduke of Austria, at whose court he lived in Delft, gave him a pension; and Charles I vainly endeavored to induce him to visit the English court. 
 
After first hand inspection Rudi Ekkart has confirmed this painting to be by Miereveldt, executed in the year 1619. This is one of the paintings fully painted by his own hand in the period before he became so famous that he needed assistants to do most of the work.