A Saint

This painting of a saint from around 1700 in Dou's circle reflects the continuing influence of his refined technique on Leiden painters who worked after his death in 1675. Religious subjects were less common in Dou's own output than domestic genre scenes, but they appeared regularly throughout his career and were imitated by his followers. The attribution to Dou's circle rather than to Dou himself places this in the tradition of Leiden fijnschilder painting that his example had established — a group of painters including Frans van Mieris the Elder and Gabriel Metsu who maintained the miniaturist standard Dou had made the defining quality of the Leiden school.

The religious figure is rendered with the fine, polished surface and controlled lighting characteristic of the Leiden school, though the somewhat broader handling suggests a follower rather than the master himself.