Pieter Codde, 'A Woman holding a Mirror', 1625

Pieter Jacobsz. Codde specialised in small-scale genre paintings showing interior scenes such as games of backgammon, music-making or ‘merry company’ pictures of tavern revellers. His pictures show him to be a close observer of human life and he often set his figures in grey-brown rooms in which they stand out against the buff background.

A Woman Holding a Mirror is a calm and reflective work showing a fashionably dressed young woman who has paused from trying on outfits (a discarded dress lies on the table) to check her appearance in a mirror. She looks out at the viewer as if to seek our approval for her choice. It is just the sort of simple and comforting domestic scene that would have been familiar to Codde’s buyers.

It is perhaps tempting to see the presence of the mirror as a symbol of vanity and the painting as an allegory of transitory beauty. However, the woman does not look at the mirror so it is more likely that Codde was not aiming for layers of meaning but intended the scene to be taken at face value. This is also a painting about the artist’s skill. He enlivens what could be a static scene with bright touches such as the flash of the gown’s red lining and the elaborate and expensive lace. In the corner he adds a small, jokey aside of a cat staring fixedly at a mouse. He also invites us to look at the paintings on the walls, pictures within a picture.

As well as painting genre scenes Codde was also a portraitist, so the woman in the picture was perhaps based on a real person. But whoever she was, it is a pleasure to observe her as she goes about her daily routine.