Object data
oil on panel on plywood
support: height 122.3 cm × width 89.8 cm
sight size: height 121.5 cm × width 88.8 cm
frame: height 139.4 cm × width 106.2 cm × thickness 7 cm
Cornelis van der Voort
Portrait of Dirck Corver (1587-1633)
1622
Inscriptions
- inscription and date, upper right: Ætatis.suae 35. / Anno.1622.
Technical notes
The support is an oak panel consisting of three vertically grained planks. It was thinned and transferred onto plywood. The panel was primed with a smooth white ground layer. The figure was reserved in the greyish green background, and the sitter’s face was painted very smoothly and softly. The paint appears to have been applied more freely in the costume, but the heavy retouching makes judgement difficult.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 25 April 2005
Condition
Poor. There are several vertical cracks in the panel. The joins and the cracks have been filled with a white filling, but they were not retouched. There is much discoloured retouching and overpaint in the sitter’s face, his right hand, his costume, his hat on the table, and in the background. The varnish layer was applied unevenly.
Conservation
- Instituut Collectie Nederland, 1998: blisters consolidated, panel joins and losses filled
Provenance
...; bequeathed to the museum by Jonkheer Ernest Louis Willy Marc Hoeufft van Velsen, Meeuwen (near ’s-Hertogenbosch), as attributed to Cornelis van der Voort, Portrait of a Man and Portrait of a Woman, 1965; on loan through the DRVK, since 1965
Object number: SK-A-4764
Credit line: Jonkheer E.L.W.M. Hoeufft van Velsen Bequest, Meeuwen
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
These three-quarter length companion pieces from 1622 would have been painted for the marriage of Dirck Corver (shown here) and Maria Overrijn van Schoterbosch (see SK-A-4765). Corver was a merchant on Amsterdam’s Keizersgracht and a governor of the St Jorishof. On 9 July 1621 he married Maria van Schoterbosch, who was 12 or 13 years his junior. Corver is standing by a table covered with a Persian rug on which he is resting one hand, while the other is on his hip. His wife holds a fan in her right hand. Care was lavished on the depiction of their clothing and accessories.
The sitters’ identities were unknown when the two paintings entered the museum.1 They were identified by the Iconografisch Bureau on the basis of the provenance of the paintings and the sitters’ ages.2 The two portraits are closely related to those of Dirck Hasselaer (SK-A-1242) and Brechtje van Schoterbosch (SK-A-1243) painted eight years previously, which are also in the Rijksmuseum. The portraits of Brechtje and Maria, who were sisters, are remarkably similar. Distinctive features are the pose, the soft brushwork and the pale, matte flesh tones. The style and quality of these portraits warrants Six’s traditional attribution to the Amsterdam portrait painter Cornelis van der Voort.
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. 322.
Literature
Six 1887, pp. 9-10, 22; Six 1911, p. 132
Collection catalogues
992, p. 91, nos. A 4764, A 4765 (as attributed to Van der Voort); 2007, no. 322
Citation
G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Cornelis van der Voort, Portrait of Dirck Corver (1587-1633), 1622', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6482
(accessed 26 December 2024 21:52:52).