Portrait of a young lady with a spaniel, possibly Dina Margareta de Bye (1680-1740), a landscape beyond

Willem van Mieris, son of the Leiden fijnschilder (fine painter) Frans van Mieris, probably executed this engaging portrait of a well-dressed woman standing behind a balustrade around the turn of the eighteenth century. The sitter may well be Dina Margareta de Bye, the second daughter of the Leiden lawyer Johan Paeuw de Bye and his wife Anna van Oorthoorn, based on similarities in her facial features with those found in a securely identified portrait of her dated 1705 and today in The Leiden Collection, New York. Indeed, an estate inventory drawn up following de Bye's death lists three portraits by van Mieris – one of her deceased husband, Peter van der Dussen, and two of de Bye herself – decorating a large room in her fashionable house on the Rapenburg in Leiden. The relief at lower center depicting Diana and Callisto is based on a work by Francis van Bossuit known today through a drawn copy by van Mieris (sold Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 24 April 1997, lot 109).