The painting has been recently conserved with funding from the Getty Foundation. The costume suggests that the sitter is Dutch. The suggestion that thte artist, Pieter Nason, was in England in 1663 (and that consequently this painting might be of an English sitter) depends on a signed and dated portrait of the Earl of Shaftesbury. However, Alastair Laing states that that portrait is not of the Earl. Therefore there is no reason to assume that Nason was ever in England. A similarly-dated female portrait in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore may be a pendant.
