Object data
oil on panel
support: height 67.7 cm × width 51.6 cm
Cornelis van der Voort (copy after)
Portrait of Pieter Dircksz Hasselaer (1554-1616)
after c. 1610
Inscriptions
- label, on the reverse: [...] Dirkz Hasselaar. / Burgemeester in Raad der / stad Amsterdam Vader van / Dirkz Hasselaar, die Vader was / van Aagje Hasselaar: welke de Moeder was / van Bregje Hooft: Huisvrouw van / Harman van de Pol Secretaris ([...] Dirkz Hasselaar. Burgomaster in the Council of the city of Amsterdam, Father of Dirkz Hasselaar, who was the Father of Aagje Hasselaar: who was the Mother of Bregje Hooft: Wife of Harman van de Pol, Secretary)
Technical notes
The support is an oak panel consisting of three vertically grained planks and is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1591. The panel could have been ready for use by 1602, but a date in or after 1608 is more likely. The thin and smooth ground layer is ochre-coloured. The figure was reserved in the grey-green ground. The background was touched up along the outlines once the sitter had been painted. The paint was applied very smoothly, and brushed out wet in wet in the face. The outlines are very hard and taut. The final touches were made with a fine brush, partly over a wet and partly over a dry surface. There is some impasto in the buttons of the clothing and in the highlights of the ruff.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 4 April 2005
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 27 September 2005
Condition
Fair. There is a crack in the panel at lower left. The sitter’s beard is abraded and there are areas of discoloured retouching to the left of the sitter’s head and along the edges. The varnish is also discoloured.
Original framing
An oak box frame with gilt sight edge and transitional section
Provenance
? Dirck Hasselaer (1581-1645), Amsterdam, eldest son of Pieter Dircksz Hasselaer and Aecht Pietersdr; ? his daughter Aegje Hasselaer (1617-64), Amsterdam; her husband Henrick Hooft (1617-78), Amsterdam; ? his daughter Brechje Hooft (1640-1721), Amsterdam; ? her son Jan van de Poll (1668-1745), Amsterdam; ? His son Harmen Hendrik van de Poll (1697-1772), Amsterdam; ? his wife Margaretha Trip (1699-1778); her son Jan van de Poll (1721-1801), Amsterdam;1 his grandson Jan van de Poll (1777-1858), Amsterdam, 1802 (stored with other family portraits in his aunt’s house, Herengracht 479 in Amsterdam); his son Jan Stanislaus Robert van de Poll (1805-88), Arnhem (stored with 25 other family portraits in his sister-in-law’s house, Herengracht 450 in Amsterdam); by whom donated to the museum together with 34 other family portraits, as by Paulus Moreelse, November 1885;2 on loan to the Amsterdams Historisch Museum since 27 February 1973
Object number: SK-A-1249
Credit line: Gift of Jonkheer J.S.R. van de Poll, Arnhem
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Cornelis van der Voort (? Antwerp c. 1576 - Amsterdam 1624)
Cornelis van der Voort, who was probably born in Antwerp around 1576, came to Amsterdam with his parents as a child. His father, a cloth weaver by trade, received his citizenship in 1592. It is not known who taught the young Van der Voort to paint, but it has been suggested that it was either Aert Pietersz or Cornelis Ketel. On 24 October 1598 Van der Voort became betrothed to Truytgen Willemsdr. After his first wife’s death he became betrothed to Cornelia Brouwer of Dordrecht in 1613. In addition to being an artist, Van der Voort was an art collector or dealer, or both. In 1607 he bought paintings from the estate of Gillis van Coninxloo, and after an earlier sale in 1610 a large number of works he owned were auctioned on 7 April 1614. Van der Voort is documented as appraising paintings in 1612, 1620 and 1624. In 1615 and 1619 he was warden of the Guild of St Luke. He was buried in Amsterdam’s Zuiderkerk on 2 November 1624, and on 13 May 1625 paintings in his estate were sold at auction.
Van der Voort was one of Amsterdam’s leading portrait painters in the first quarter of the 17th century. Several of his group portraits are known. It is believed that he trained Thomas de Keyser (1596/97-1667) and Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy (1588-1650/56). His documented pupils were David Bailly (c. 1584/86-1657), Louis du Pré (dates unknown), Pieter Luycx (dates unknown), Dirk Harmensz (dates unknown) and his own son Pieter (dates unknown).
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
References
Van Mander 1604, fol. 300r; Orlers 1641, p. 371; De Roever 1885, pp. 187-207 (documents); De Roever 1887; Thieme/Becker XXXIV, 1940, p. 544; Briels 1997, p. 402
Entry
This bust-length portrait shows Pieter Dircksz Hasselaer, captain in the Amsterdam civic guard, magistrate, merchant, shipowner, one of the founders of the Compagnie van Verre (Company of Distant Lands) in 1594 and director of the Dutch East India Company.3 He was born in Haarlem, where he was an ensign in the civic guard in 1572-73, during the Spanish siege of the city. He was living in Amsterdam in 1583. After the death of his first wife, Aecht Pietersdr van Persijn van Beverwaerde, he married Margriet Benningh. His eldest son was Dirck Hasselaer.4
In the 19th century several attempts were made to attribute this painting variously to Hendrick Goltzius,5 Paulus Moreelse6 and Werner van den Valckert.7 A publication by Van Dam van Isselt in 1919 made it clear that there are three versions of this portrait, the one in Muiden being the superior in quality.8
The Amsterdam work, with its orange flesh tones, the eyes that are much too large and the clumsily painted ruff, is definitely a copy, either of the Muiden portrait or of an earlier version. None of the known versions is signed. At first it was thought that the painting in Muiden was by Werner van den Valckert,9 but nowadays it is attributed to Cornelis van der Voort.10 Van der Voort is indeed the most likely of the two on the evidence of the affinity with the signed portrait of Jan van den Hoek of 1624.11 As yet it is impossible to suggest an attribution for the Rijksmuseum painting.
Another problem is the portrait of Hasselaer’s wife Margriet Benningh (SK-A-1245), which is attributed to Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy and is regarded as the pendant of this one. That portrait is a copy of the painting hanging in Muiden as the companion piece to the painting of Hasselaer. That Muiden version is dated 1629, and was thus made 13 years after Hasselaer’s death. Margriet’s portrait was evidently painted to accompany an earlier portrait of her husband, although it is worth noting that she is seated considerably closer to the picture plane than Hasselaer. Since the copies in the Rijksmuseum are clearly by different hands, they were probably painted to commemorate different occasions.
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements
This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 325.
Literature
Six 1887, p. 20, note 20; Van Dam van Isselt 1919
Collection catalogues
1897, p. 170, no. 1469 (as attributed to Werner van den Valkert); 1903, p. 266, no. 2358 (as copy after Werner van den Valckert); 1934, p. 286, no. 2358 (as copy after Werner van den Valckert); 1976, p. 589, no. 1249; 2007, no. 325
Citation
G. Wuestman, 2007, 'copy after Cornelis van der Voort, Portrait of Pieter Dircksz Hasselaer (1554-1616), after c. 1610', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7238
(accessed 27 November 2024 13:58:50).