Attributed to Wybrand de Geest the Elder

With Herdhebaut and Latreille, Paris;

From whom acquired by Hans and Marion König, 1987.

This charming depiction of a young child typifies the popularity of portraits of children in seventeenth-century Holland. Both the small dog and the pair of cherries hold symbolic meaning. The well-behaved pet underscores the power of education to impart good behavior and the ripe fruit indicates the family's hope that the child (much like an unripe cherry) will blossom, or "ripen," into adulthood.