# Portrait of a Woman with a Balance [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [KEYSER, Thomas de]() - Date: 1601-1650 - Technique: Oil on wood, 23 x 17 cm ## Commentary This picture has a pendant, the Portrait of a Man with a Shell, also in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Two other versions of the portrait and its pendant are known. The compositions are reminiscent of Italian Renaissance and Early Netherlandish portraits. The object of the woman's hand is a balance or scale, of a type usually used for weighing gold and silver coins. As in genre paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as Jan van Hemessen's <a onclick="return OpenOther\('/html/h/hemessen/jan/weighing.html'\)" href="/html/h/hemessen/jan/weighing.html">Woman Weighing Gold,</a> and Vermeer's <a onclick="return OpenOther\('/html/v/vermeer/03b/20balan.html'\)" href="/html/v/vermeer/03b/20balan.html">Woman Holding a Balance,</a> the balance symbolizes the virtue of temperance. ## Related artworks - [A Lady]() - [A Musician and His Daughter]() - [Apostle St John]() - [Constantijn Huygens and his Clerk]() - [Equestrian Portrait of Pieter Schout]() - [Portrait of a Gentleman]() - [Portrait of a Gentleman]() - [Portrait of a Man]() - [Portrait of a Man with a Shell]() - [Portrait of a Silversmith]() - [Portrait of a Young Boy]() - [The Militia Company of Captain Allaert Cloeck]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()