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Mentioned in the 19th-century inventories as an Allegory of Meditation by Gerard van Honthorst, this painting was given later to a follower of Honthorst, and it was connected with a group of paintings dated to 1630-33 and attributed to the so-called "Candlelight Master".
Other scholars, on the other hand, attribute the painting to Bigot even though the chromatic range, the classicising purity and the treatment of form would suggest that this vanity is a Parisian work of around 1630.
The attribution becomes highly problematic, however, in the face of stylistic comparison with secure works of Bigot. In the volumetric rendering of form and the use of light, this extraordinary picture seems very different from the certified works of Bigot.
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