The plain-weave canvas support has been lined. Cusping is visible along the top and bottom. The canvas was primed with an ochre-coloured ground. There are pentimenti in the outline of the sitter’s shoulder and in her cap.

Fair. The paint layers have been flattened during a lining procedure. The painting is moderately abraded, and there are scattered losses throughout. The varnish is very discoloured.

Scotia frames of conifer with brown ebony veneer painted black at a later date¹¹De Bruyn Kops 1984, p. 61, fig. Q 5; De Bruyn Kops in Amsterdam 1984b, p. 155; De Bruyn Kops 1995, p. 85, fig. Q 5; De Bruyn Kops in Van Thiel/De Bruyn Kops 1995, p. 200.

? Commissioned by or for Pieter Anthonisz van Bronckhorst (1588-1661) and Jacobmina de Grebber (?-1666), Delft; ? their son, Anthonij van Bronckhorst (1615-70), Delft; ? his widow, Helena Stavenisse (1636-90), Delft and Utrecht; ? their daughter, Jacoba van Bronckhorst (1670-1700), Utrecht; ? her daughter, Sabina Jacoba Mogge (1700-68), Utrecht; ? her son, Dr Bonifacius Mogge Pous (1731-1802), Zierikzee; ? his son, Marinus Mogge Pous (1771-1814), Zierikzee; ? his widow, Johanna Mogge Pous, née Van der Wolff (1776-1862), who bought ’t Huys Moermont, Renesse, 1827; ? their daughter, Anna Hoyer; ? her son, Willem Hoyer; by whom sold with ’t Huys Moermont, Renesse, to Cornelis van der Lek de Clercq (1811-86), 1871; his son, Johan François van der Lek de Clercq (1854-1934), Rotterdam; from whom, fl. 700, as Portrait of a Man and Portrait of a Woman, to the museum, 1894²²RANH, ARS, Kop, inv. 290, pp. 79-80, no. 1122 (5 October 1893); RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 174, no. 67 (4 June 1894); RANH, ARS, Kop, no. 290, p. 111, no. 1207 (13 June 1894); RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 174, no. 74 (17 June 1894); RANH, ARS, Kop, no. 290, p. 112, no. 1209 (19 June 1894); RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 174, no. 80 (25 June 1894); RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 174, no. 98 (21 July 1894).

Object number: SK-A-1616

In contrast to his innovative group portraits, in which families are depicted in a genre-like setting, Palamedesz’s individual portraits of the 1640s and 50s are mostly traditional and standardized.⁴⁴For his group portraits see Kolfin 2005, pp. 113-14, and Laarmann 2002, pp. 68-69. That is also the case with these companion pieces from 1652, in which the sitters are shown half-length in conventional poses against an undefined grey background.

The 64-year-old couple was identified in 1903 by the Zeeland archivist P.D. de Vos as the Zierikzee burgomaster Pieter de Witte and (see SK-A-1615) his wife Caecilia van Beresteyn (shown here).⁵⁵Annotation in the 1903 museum catalogue. De Vos’s identification was generally accepted,⁶⁶See, for example, Van Beresteyn/Del Campo Hartman II, 1941, pp. 50-52. and in the 20th century the paintings were copied by Willem Karel van Rees (1880-1962), who added the De Witte and Van Beresteyn coats of arms in the corners at the top.⁷⁷Rijswijk, ICN; coll. cat. RBK 1992, p. 235, nos. 2028-29 (ills.). However, recent research has shown this identification to be untenable. Caecilia van Beresteyn was born on 8 February 1589, so she was not yet 64 in 1652, and her features as depicted in two earlier portraits by Michiel van Mierevelt do not resemble those of the woman in this painting.⁸⁸One of the portraits by Van Mierevelt, from 1615, is illustrated in Van Beresteyn/Del Campo Hartman I, 1954, p. 51, no. 101. The other, from 1640, is in the Rijksmuseum, SK-A-2067.

Ekkart discovered that the portraits discussed here belonged to a group of at least eight painted by Palamedesz that were hanging in Moermont Castle, Renesse, in Zeeland in the 19th century. He also made a plausible case for them being of members of the families of the Delft merchant Anthonij van Bronckhorst and his wife Helena Stavenisse, who came from Zierikzee. The genealogical trees of both families enabled Ekkart to identify the 64-year-old couple in the Rijksmuseum paintings as very probably being the parents of Anthonij van Bronckhorst: Pieter Anthonisz van Bronckhorst and his wife Jacobmina de Grebber.⁹⁹Ekkart/Wuestman 2006.

Pieter Anthonisz van Bronckhorst was a Delft painter of history and architecture pieces. He married Jacobmina de Grebber, the daughter of the well-known silversmith Nicolaes de Grebber, in 1614. The couple had been married 38 years when Palamedesz executed these portraits in 1652. It is likely that other members of the family also sat to the artist on that occasion. Ekkart has suggested that a third portrait of 1652 with the same provenance may be that of their daughter Anna van Bronckhorst, who was born in 1628.¹⁰¹⁰Ekkart/Wuestman 2006, p. 354, fig. 8. The portraits probably arrived at Moermont Castle in or after 1827, when it was bought by the widow of one of Pieter Anthonisz’s descendants.¹¹¹¹See Van den Broecke 1978, pp. 85-95, for Moermont Castle and its inhabitants.

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. 229.

Van Beresteyn/Del Campo Hartman II, 1941, pp. 50-51, no. 99 (as Portrait of Pieter de Witte), p. 53, no. 104 (as Portrait of Caecilia van Beresteyn); Ekkart/Wuestman 2006

1903, p. 204, nos. 1835 (as Portrait of a Man), 1836 (as Portrait of a Woman); 1904, p. 241, nos. 1835 (as Portrait of Pieter de Witte), 1836 (as Portrait of Caecilia van Beresteyn); 1934, p. 218, nos. 1835 (as Portrait of Pieter de Witte), 1836 (as Portrait of Caecilia van Beresteyn); 1960, p. 237, nos. 1835 (as Portrait of Pieter de Witte), 1836 (as Portrait of Caecilia van Beresteyn); 1976, pp. 434-35, nos. A 1615, A 1616 (as Portrait of Pieter de Witte and Portrait of Caecilia van Beresteyn); 2007, no. 229

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Anthonie Palamedesz., Portrait of a Woman, probably Jacobmina de Grebber (?-1666), 1652', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20025973