The Dutch officer depicted here wearing the orange sash of the army of the Dutch Republic has been identified as Michiel Pauw (1617-58), who became page to Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange and was Captain in the Noord Hollandsche Regiment in 1638 and in the Hollandsche Guards in 1654. The miniature may have been painted on the occasion of his marriage in 1652 to Anna Maria Fassin (1628-65); the initials in monogram on the enamel reverse of the locket can be read as M[ichiel] P[auw] [Anna] M[aria] F[assin]. Alexander Cooper is known to have visited Amsterdam in 1642 when Sandrart recorded that he showed him a selection of miniatures either of members of the English court, or possibly of the circle surrounding Frederick V and Elizabeth Queen of Bohemia. Cooper must have returned to the Netherlands to paint this miniature some years later as part of a peripatetic career which also took him to Sweden and Denmark before his return to England c. 1656.