A courtesan with a lute

At one stage attributed to Hendrick Terbrugghen (as is evident from the label on the frame), this would rather seem to be the work of a Utrecht artist of a later generation; the present lot is here catalogued, as Dr. Paul Huys Janssen has kindly suggested, as the work of Jan Gerritsz. van Bronckhorst who worked in the style of Bijlert and Honthorst. A young woman with a not dissimilar face appears in Bronckhorst's musical groups on terraces at Brunswick and Utrecht, the latter dated 1646. A young woman with a similar pearl headdress appears in his Solomon worshipping false idols of 1642 in the Bob Jones University Art Collection. A picture of a courtesan, procuress and admirer by Bronckhorst is in the Bruckenthal Museum, Hermannstadt.