Meisje uit Enkhuizen by http://www.wikidata.org/.well-known/genid/50260b87e36e2d3c194966f4f05d1e7c
Girl from Enkhuizen is an oil portrait painted around 1550 by an unknown Dutch artist, now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. She wears gold, holds a white flower, meets the viewer's eye. No record of her name or the painter's identity survives.
At her right hand: a single white flower, the era's symbol of purity. Gold ornaments lace her hair and throat. Beside her, in painted script, a single word: Macht. It means power or might.
Enkhuizen in the mid-1500s was a prosperous port town in the northern Netherlands. Someone paid to have this girl immortalized in oil paint, her face lit from the front with soft chiaroscuro. The work is unsigned, the girl unnamed. Whoever she was, and whoever loved her enough to commission this, has faded entirely.
Nearly five centuries later, she still looks out from the canvas. A girl from a Dutch port town, whose face outlived her name.
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Around 1550, a painter in Enkhuizen made this portrait. Her gaze is direct. But her name did not survive. She holds a single white flower, a sign of purity. Beside her, one word: Macht. Power, or might. Gold laced through her hair, gold at her throat. Nearly five centuries. She is still here.