Bust of a Young Girl

This is a characteristic early painting of the artist from his Leiden period. It is certainly not a portrait. Some experts assumed that it is a fragment of a larger composition, perhaps Mary from an Annunciation, but it is not convincing. The painting is probably a tronie of a young girl. (Tronies are representations of particular character types, such as soldiers, orientals, old men or young women.) The upward gaze lends many of Lievens’s tronies a theatrical character emphasizing their position between portrait and history painting.