Bust of an elderly woman

The unidentified painter known as the Monogrammist IS was long believed to be synonymous with the Leiden-born genre and history painter, Jacob van Spreeuwen (1609/10-after 1650). More recently, Werner Sumowski (op. cit., IV, p. 2549) and others have suggested that his style instead argues in favor of a Germanic or Baltic origin. Though it is difficult to formulate a precise chronology of his artistic development owing to the small number of dated works, his extant oeuvre suggests that he only began to introduce exceptionally naturalistic tronies (head studies) with rich, liquid brushwork like this painting – works that have now come to define his painterly reputation – in the mid-1640s.