This is portrait depicts an unknown woman. Although there has been some speculation as to her identity, it is likely that she was one of the models the 17th-century artist Ferdinand Bol regularly used in his work. Ferdinand Bol painted this woman in the mid-17th century—at the time that the Dutch Empire was at its height, thanks to a powerful naval forced and the control of maritime trade.
Doris Duke purchased it in (1971) and put it on display in the Great Hall—a room full of other objects representing her family’s success and reflecting her family’s taste in art. It is one of the first objects you encounter when you enter Rough Point and it hangs today right above a 17th-century curiosity cabinet—another object that points to sea exploration and European empire-building. The painting—and the cabinet—are a part of a much larger thread leading to American imperialism and how the Dukes saw themselves as heirs to an older European cultural and political legacy.
