This figure a woman holding an arrow is of a picture type known as an allegory, or symbolic figure. The arrow refers to the fortunes of love. It was more common to find a variety of picture types in Dutch colonial homes in New York and the Hudson Valley than in other colonial households. This wide-ranging taste was inspired by Dutch cultural traditions, which for two centuries had prized the production and display of landscapes, still lifes, and allegories, as well as portraiture.
