Rijksmuseum

Object data

black chalk, with brush and black ink; framing line in brown ink

height 136 mm × width 98 mm

Inscriptions

signed: lower right (in the frame), in black chalk, Corn. Visscher ad viv
inscribed on verso, in pencil: centre, c; below this, 23
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

Watermark: Foolscap (fragment)

Provenance

…; collection Dirk Vis Blokhuyzen (1799-1869), Rotterdam;¹ his sale, Rotterdam (D.A. Lamme and A.C. van Wijngaarden), 23 October 1871 sqq., no. 638 (‘C. Visscher. Portrait de jeune fille. A la pierre noire’), fl. 3;² …; collection Willem Constant Pieter, Baron van Reede van Oudtshoorn (1812-74), Utrecht;³ his sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 27 October 1874, no. 335, fl. 8, to the dealer A.G. de Visser, The Hague;⁴ anonymous sale, The Hague (A.G. de Visser), 31 January 1877, no. 298, fl. 20;⁵ sale, A.G. de Visser (The Hague), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 16 May 1881, no. 491, fl. 160, to the dealer R.W.P. de Vries, Amsterdam;⁶ …; from the dealer F. Muller, Amsterdam, fl. 160, to the museum (L. 2228), 1882

Object number: RP-T-1882-A-166

The artist

Cornelis Visscher (Haarlem 1628/29 - 1658 Amsterdam)

Little is known about his early life. Information regarding his birth is based on two surviving self-portraits, one from 1649 in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1895,0915.1343), and the other, dated 10 April 1653, in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. RP-T-1902-A-4624). He was presumably born in Haarlem, where he became a member of the Guild of St Luke in 1653. His father – who cannot be identified – must have been an artist as well, because in the admission book of the guild Visscher is described as ‘plaetsnijder en Meester outste zoon’ (‘engraver and the master’s oldest son’). Two younger brothers, Jan Visscher (1633/34-1712) and Lambert Visscher (1630/32-after 1690), also pursued artistic careers. The relationship between Cornelis and the relatively unknown painter Cornelis de Visscher (c. 1530-c. 1586) of Gouda is unclear. According to Van Mander, the latter was a skilled portraitist, but had some mental issues and died in a shipwreck on the North Sea.⁷ Perhaps the same person can be identified with Cornelis de Visscher, whose money was managed (presumably on behalf of his under-age children) by the orphans’ board of Gouda because he was considered mentally ill; in 1622, the widow of Cornelis’ brother, the painter Gerrit Gerritsz. de Visscher II (c. 1559-before 1622), collected the money from the orphans’ board on behalf of Cornelis’ two nephews, her sons Gerrit de Visscher III (?-?), a goldsmith living in Gouda, and Barent de Visscher (?-?).⁸

Cornelis Visscher probably received his first artistic training from his father. Later he must have been apprenticed to the Haarlem painter, engraver and draughtsman Pieter Soutman (1593/1601-1657), with whom he collaborated on several print series in 1649/50. Shortly after his admission in the Guild of St Luke in Haarlem, he moved to Amsterdam. In the 1650s, he received numerous commissions for portrait drawings and engravings of Haarlem and Amsterdam scholars, clergymen and writers, including Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679) (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-H-P-41). One of his last commissions was an engraved portrait of Constantijn Huygens I (1596-1687) after a lost drawing by the sitter’s son Christiaan Huygens (1629-95), which was included as the frontispiece to Huygens’ poem book Koren-bloemen (1658) (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-27.428). It was finished in the last months of 1657, when the artist was presumably suffering from ‘de steen’ (kidney stones). Visscher died the following year and was buried on 16 January in the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam. Despite his short life – he was only twenty-eight years old when he died – Visscher left an extensive oeuvre, consisting of more than 100 drawings and some 185 prints.

Marleen Ram, 2019

References
R. van Eijnden and A. van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst, 4 vols., Haarlem 1816-40, I (1816), pp. 71-77, IV (1840), pp. 96-97; P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, pp. 100-01; R.E.O. Ekkart, ‘Visscher, Cornelis (de)’, in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., London/New York 1996, XXXII, pp. 622-23; J. Hawley, ‘An Introduction to the Life and Drawings of Jan de Vissccher’, Master Drawings 52 (2014), no. 1, pp. 59-94; J. Hawley, ‘Cornelis Visscher and Constantijn Huygens’s Koren-bloemen’, Print Quarterly 32 (2015), no. 1, pp. 51-53

Entry

The museum’s Portrait of a Girl with a Cap can probably be considered as one of the earliest drawings by Cornelis Visscher.⁹ Compared to his looser and more fluently drawn portraits of the second half of the 1650s, the present work is executed in a slightly stiff and somewhat laboured style. Every detail, from her eyelashes to the neatly knotted ribbon on her collar, is drawn with the greatest care – as if the young artist were afraid to make any mistake. According to the annotation ‘ad viv’ after Visscher’s signature in the decorative frame, the portrait was made from life.

Visscher’s presumed teacher Pieter Soutman (1593/1601-1657) made highly detailed portrait drawings in chalk in a similar fashion. To create contrast, he sometimes touched up the drawing with pen or brush and dark ink, especially in pupils, nostrils, shadowy parts of the hair and the folds in clothing (e.g. inv. no. RP-T-1886-A-612).¹⁰ The same is done in the present sheet, in which the pupils, the left nostril and the folds in the girl’s dress are accented with a brush and some black ink. Other works that are comparable to the museum’s drawing are, for example, the print series with portraits of members of the House of Orange, which were engraved by Visscher under the supervision of Soutman in 1649.¹¹ In these works, the sitter is also depicted half-length and placed within an oval frame. This portrait format was in fashion in the first half of the seventeenth century. After 1650, portraits are generally set within a rectangle without a frame.

Marleen Ram, 2019

Literature

Getekende Nederlandsche portretten, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1905, no. 53 or 54

Citation

M. Ram, 2019, 'Cornelis (II) Visscher, Portrait of a Girl with a Cap, c. 1645 - c. 1650', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200145414

(accessed 11 December 2025 19:26:20).