Rijksmuseum

Object data

black chalk, on vellum; framing line in dark brown ink

height 177 mm × width 146 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed: lower left, in brown ink (effaced), Visscher
inscribed on verso: centre, in pencil, 3; below this, in pencil, H; lower left, in pencil; N 5532; below this, in black chalk, C Visscher; lower centre, in black chalk, 82
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228); lower right, with the mark of Pitcairn Knowles (L. 2643)

Provenance

… ; sale, Stephen Hendrik de la Sablonière (1825-88, Kampen) and Dr Cornelius Ekama (1824-91, Haarlem), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 30 June 1891, no. 237, fl. 50, to William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94), Rotterdam and Wiesbaden (L. 2643);¹ his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25 June 1895 sqq., no. 706, fl. 60, to the dealer C.F. Roos for the Vereniging Rembrandt;² from whom on loan to the museum, 1895; from whom, fl. 69, to the museum (L. 2228), 1902

Object number: RP-T-1902-A-4625

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

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.³ 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 (?-?).⁴

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

In the nineteenth century, it was suggested that this drawing was a portrait of the famous Amsterdam cartographer Willem Jansz. Blaeu (1571-1638).⁵ This assumption is probably based on a comparison with the engraved portrait of Blaeu by Jeremias Falck (c. 1610-1677) (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1920-920),⁶ a contemporary of Visscher with whom he worked together on the series of prints after paintings in the collection of the brothers Jan Reynst (1601-1646) and Gerard Reynst (1599-1658).⁷ Such an identification is implausible, however, since Blaeu died in 1638, when Visscher was only nine years old; nor is it likely that the portrait would be posthumous. The drawing lacks inscriptions and the clothing is too informal to speak of an official portrait of a historical person.

The decorative oval frame around the portrait is comparable to another drawing by Visscher in the museum’s collection (inv. no. RP-T-1882-A-166), which is presumably one of the earliest surviving works by the artist of circa 1645-50. Compared to that sheet, the handling of black chalk in the present drawing is more confident and fluent, especially in the rendering of the old man’s face. Therefore, a later date of circa 1650-54 is suggested here.

Bonny van Sighem, 2000/Marleen Ram, 2019

Literature

Getekende Nederlandsche portretten, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1905, no. 56 or 58; W. Wegner, Die Niederländischen Handzeichnungen des 15.-18 Jahrhunderts, 2 vols., coll. cat. Munich (Staatliche Graphische Sammlung) 1973, I, p. 142, under no. 1029

Citation

B. van Sighem, 2000/M. Ram, 2019, 'Cornelis (II) Visscher, Portrait of a Man, c. 1650 - c. 1654', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200145392

(accessed 10 December 2025 20:32:37).