England/Netherlands, ca. 1650-1660Rare miniature with transformationsA young
woman in a pink dress with a white lace collar, necklace with large beads, and
her disguise outfitsOil

on copper, with 11 painted mica plates

(small accidents

)in her original embossed leather box decorated with stripes and flowers, inside lined with green silk, oval 7

x 6 cm (worn).
Rare "miniature with transformations" from the 17th century, consisting of a box with a fixed portrait of a young woman on one side and 11 mica plaques on the other side, which allow her to be dressed up or disguised
.

These portrait boxes, made in England and the Netherlands for a princely or very high-ranking clientele [some of them would represent Henriette of France (1609-1669) wife of King Charles I of England], are known today in a very small number, less than fifty listed (in France, one in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs de Paris, one in the Musée Carnavalet, another in the Hermès collection). Our copy is very close to those preserved, one in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (inv. 0272), the other in the Colonial Williamsburg Museum, Virginia, which includes 16 mica painted in the same predominantly green colours. The mica, transparent when cut into thin strips, allows, like a tracing paper, a play of juxtaposition of different costumes (here queen, nun, moustachioed man with chapka etc.); but it is very brittle, which is why so few of them remain today.