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Hendrick van Vliet, the nephew and pupil of Willem van Vliet, is best known for his many interior views of actual churches in Delft and other cities, which he began to paint in the early 1650s. Before 1650 he was a moderately successful portraitist and an occasional painter of history pictures. This family portrait, which came to light only in 1986, is Van Vliet's finest work in this genre.
The sitters were recently identified as members of a distinguished Catholic family: Michiel van der Dussen (1600-1681), his wife Wilhelmina van Setten (1605-1683) and their children.
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