Portrait of Sophia de Vervou (c. 1613-71)

Entry

The woman in this portrait is identified by the family coat of arms and the inscription as Sophia de Vervou, a Gallicization of Saepck van Vervou.¹ The date 1630 and the inscription ‘AETATIS SVAE 17’ at the top show that she was born around 1613. Sophia was the only child of Jonkheer Hessel Raes van Vervou (1588-1619), Sheriff of Franekerdeel, and Sjouck Joostesdr van Ockinga.² She and her parents lived in the Martenahuis in Franeker with her father’s parents, Frederick van Vervou (c. 1551-1621), an army commander in the war against Spain, and Jel van Oostheim (?-after 1631).³ Frederick made his will in 1620, designating his wife as his principal heir.⁴ Sophia was named as ‘heir to the title of my immovable goods’, and it was stipulated that she was to be raised by her grandmother.⁵ So when the portrait was painted Sophia was living in the Martenahuis, which she was to inherit on her grandmother’s death, not long after 1631.⁶ This and the fact that the Martenahuis is the earliest known provenance of the painting makes it likely that her portrait always hung there.⁷

Some time before 1634 Sophia married Wijtze Sickes van Cammingha (1592-1641), who succeeded his brother Pieter in 1638 as Baron and Hereditary Lord of Ameland.⁸ Upon his death Sophia laid claim to the government of Ameland, which brought her into conflict with Watso van Cammingha, who eventually bought her off for 30,000 guilders.⁹ Not long after 1645 she married Professor Joachim Martijns van Andrée, who died on 11 May 1655.¹⁰ Both marriages were childless. One salient detail in her biography is that in 1664 she cared for Prince Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen for a while after he had an accident on a bridge in Franeker.¹¹ She died in Franeker on 28 January 1671.

There are two other known portraits of Sophia. Wybrand de Geest painted a monumental full-length of her in 1632 that became the pendant to the portrait of Wijtze Sickes van Cammingha of 1634.¹² A half-length portrait of 1667 shows her as a widow.¹³

In the Rijksmuseum portrait Sophia is wearing a costly gown with a lavish display of jewellery and accessories.¹⁴ In view of the naive composition, expressionless face and fairly coarse style, the merits of the painting lie in the depiction of the details of the costume and the sitter’s historical background. This portrait owes some of its interest to the fact that the unlined canvas is stretched in the original frame with the original cord, which is a rare survival.

Yvette Bruijnen, 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. 348.