Object data
oil on panel
support: height 122.4 cm × width 89.2 cm
sight size: height 121 cm × width 88.4 cm
frame: height 141 cm × width 108.4 cm × thickness 7 cm
Cornelis van der Voort
Portrait of Cornelis Pietersz Hooft (1546-1626)
1622
Inscriptions
- inscription and date, upper right: Ætatis Suae. 76. /Ann. 1622 (the first 2 changed into a 4)
Technical notes
The support is an oak panel consisting of three vertically grained planks. It was thinned and cradled. The ochre-coloured ground is thin and smooth. The grey-green background, in which the figure was reserved, was painted first, and then the figure was filled in. Details like the edges of the ruff and the fur of the clothing extend beyond their reserves and cover the edges of the background. The paint was applied opaquely with visible brushstrokes. The shadows in the flesh tones are indicated with a warm reddish-brown. There is some impasto on the nails in the chair and along the edges of the ruff.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 4 April 2005
Condition
Fair. There are several vertical cracks in the panel, especially along the left panel join. The contours of the eyes, nose and mouth have been strengthened. There are some losses, two of them in the sitter’s forehead. Retouching in the background, along the edges and to the right of the sitter’s nose has discoloured. The yellowish varnish layer is abraded in the sitter’s face.
Provenance
...; ? widow of ‘Schepen Corn. Hulst’, 1760;1...; sale François Nieuwenhuys (Brussels), Paris (Hôtel Drouot), 28 April 1881, no. 27, as Vliet (Willem van der);...; sale, J.H. Cremer (Brussels), Amsterdam (F. Muller et al.), 21 June 1887, no. 147, fl. 1,300, to Roos, for the museum;2 on loan to the Amsterdams Historisch Museum since 4 December 1972
Object number: SK-A-1416
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
Cornelis Pietersz Hooft first became a member of the Amsterdam city council in 1584. He was a burgomaster on no fewer than 12 occasions between 1588 and 1610, four of them as first burgomaster. Today he is mainly known for his memoranda and opinions, which were published in two volumes in 1871 and 1925. The famous poet Pieter Cornelisz Hooft (1581-1647) was his son.3
Hooft is shown seated in this three-quarter length, which is a fitting pose for someone aged 76.4 He is wearing a black, fur-lined tabbaard and a skull-cap. In 1972 this painting was given on loan to the Amsterdams Historisch Museum, where it was reunited with its companion piece, the portrait of Hooft’s wife Anna Jacobsdr Blaeu, which the Amsterdams Historisch Museum had bought in 1965.5 Like its pendant, Hooft’s portrait was dated 1622, but for some unknown reason the first ‘2’ (which is still faintly visible) was changed into a ‘4’, which would make it a posthumous portrait.
The painting, which Hofstede de Groot called ‘solid but with a smooth technique and not very individual’ (‘solied maar glad van techniek en weinig individueel’), has been sold as a work by the Delft portraitist Willem van der Vliet in the past,6 but after its acquisition by the Rijksmuseum it was rightly attributed to Cornelis van der Voort.
There are prints with Hooft’s portrait by Jacob Houbraken (1698-1780) and Reinier Vinkeles (1741-1816). According to the inscription on the print by Houbraken, which is of a detail from the composition of the Rijksmuseum panel, the original painting then belonged to the widow of the magistrate Cornelis Hulst. It is not clear whether that was the work now in the Rijksmuseum or another version, for several copies have been documented.7
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. 324.
Literature
Six 1887, p. 22; Six 1911, p. 132; Van Zeil in Amsterdam 2002a, p. 87, no. 2a
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 290, no. 2591; 1934, p. 308, no. 2591; 1976, p. 588, no. A 1416; 2007, no. 324
Citation
G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Cornelis van der Voort, Portrait of Cornelis Pietersz Hooft (1546-1626), 1622', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7376
(accessed 27 November 2024 16:51:21).