FRANS VAN MIERIS THE YOUNGER | Joseph and Potiphar's wife

Private collection, France;

With Galerie Sankt Lucas, Vienna, 1995;

Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Paul Brandt, 27 November 1979, lot 59 (as Willem van Mieris) for 9,000 Dutch Guilders, where acquired.

H.-J. Raupp (ed.), Niederländische Malerei des. 17. Jahrhunderts der SØR Rusche-Sammlung, vol. 4, Historien und Allegorien, Münster/Hamburg/London 2010, pp. 240-44, cat. no. 38, reproduced in colour.

Frans van Mieris the Younger was the son of Willem van Mieris, and grandson of Frans van Mieris the Elder, the leading member of the family of artists working in Leiden. Leiden was the centre of the fijnschilder tradition of painting, developed by Gerard Dou, and practised by artists including Van Mieris, Gabriel Metsu and Godfried Schalcken. Fijnschilder - literally ‘fine painting’ - is the term that, in the 19th century, came to define these meticulously-executed paintings with their exquisite details and smooth surfaces, typically painted on a small scale, with some features purportedly executed with brushes made from a single hair.