# A Young Maidservant [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [SWEERTS, Michiel]() - Date: 1651-1700 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 61 x 54 cm ## Commentary This painting is not a portrait in the conventional sense. It is a tronie in which the figure represents a certain character or type. The Young Maidservant is among the largest of Sweerts's tronies which are all thought to have been painted in either Brussels or Amsterdam where the artist stayed between 1655 and 1661, Sweerts painted the maidservant with his typical mixture of realism and idealisation. Her body is turned to the left, while she looks over her shoulder to the right with a rather dreamy look, as if loss in thought. This painting has often been compared with Johannes Vermeer's iconic <a onclick="return OpenOther\('/html/v/vermeer/03b/22pearl.html'\)" href="/html/v/vermeer/03b/22pearl.html">Girl with a Pearl Earring</a> which is dated c. 1665, some five years after the present painting. Until 2011, the paintings by Sweerts and Vermeer were in fact displayed together in the Vermeer Room of the Mauritshuis. ## Related artworks - [A Hunting Company Resting]() - [Boy with a Turban]() - [Portrait of a Boy]() - [Portrait of a Young Man]() - [Roman Wrestlers]() - [Self-Portrait]() - [Soldiers Playing Dice]() - [The Drawing Class]() - [The Great Laundry Day]() - [Young Artist Drawing Bernini's Neptune and Triton]() - [Young Man and the Procuress]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()