Portrait of a young lady wearing a red cloak at a fountain

Portrait of a Young Lady at a Fountain from 1675 by Nicolaes Maes places the sitter in an outdoor setting with a fountain, a fashionable portrait convention imported from French and Flemish painting. The fountain setting elevated the portrait above mere likeness to suggest an arcadian ideal—the sitter as a figure of refinement in a cultivated garden landscape. Maes trained with Rembrandt in Amsterdam in the early 1650s before establishing himself as an independent master. His mature portrait style absorbed Flemish elegance—producing fashionable likenesses with looser brushwork and warmer flesh tones that satisfied the demand of Amsterdam's prosperous class. The Indianapolis Museum of Art holds this work as part of its collection of Dutch Golden Age portraiture.

The outdoor setting with its fountain provides an elegant backdrop, with Maes rendering both the sitter's features and the architectural elements with balanced attention.