Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been preserved. Cusping and corresponding holes from the original stretching are present on all sides at intervals of approx. 2.5-3.5 cm. Judging by the crack pattern parallel to the edges, the bars of the original strainer were approx. 3 cm wide.
_Preparatory layers The ground consists of two layers, the first extending over the tacking edges, the second up to them. The first, coarse, beige layer consists of large lead white particles, black pigment and fine orange pigment particles. The second layer is a muted orange and is similar to the top layer found on the pendant (SK-A-2417).
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the tacking edges. Scant, dark underpainting is visible beneath the face and the thumb and forefinger of the sitter’s right hand. This underpainting cannot be made more visible with infrared examination. The composition was built up from the back (including the hair and table) to the front, reserving the figure and hair. Within the figure, reserves were left for the hands and white sleeves. The colour transitions were carefully closed and the flesh tones were softly blended wet in wet. Final details exhibit precise brushwork built up with small strokes. Diagonal scratches were made in the wet paint to prepare the surface for the pattern on the underskirt. Small adjustments were made in the upper paint layer, for instance to the contour of the sitter’s right, white upper sleeve, which extends beyond its reserve over the background. A slight halo effect was caused by reworking the background around the contour of the figure.
Gwen Tauber [publication date 2026]

Fair. The dark blue of the tablecloth is discoloured. The upper corners of the composition are overpainted. The paint is flat along all edges, approx. 1 cm into the picture plane, possibly due to lining.

For both the present painting (SK-A-2418) and its pendant (SK-A-2417)
? Commissioned by Nicolaes Pancras (1622-1678) and Petronella de Waert (1628-1709), Amsterdam; ? their son, Gerbrand Pancras (1658-1716), Amsterdam; his daughter, Agatha Maria Pancras (1700-1761), Amsterdam; ? her son, Pieter Nicolaas Rendorp (1732-1773); his son, Salomon Rendorp (1767-1824), Amsterdam; ? his son, Ferdinand Rendorp (1797-1878), Amsterdam; his son, Salomon Rendorp (1824-1903), Amsterdam; by whom bequeathed to the museum, but kept in usufruct by his widow, Brechtje Agatha Cornelia Henriette van Notten (1830-1910), 1903; transferred to the museum, 1910¹¹Provenance reconstructed in C.P. van Eeghen, ‘Het huis Heerengracht 476’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 39 (1942), pp. 35-88, esp. pp. 39-40, note 3.

Object number: SK-A-2418

Credit line: S. Rendorp Bequest, Amsterdam

The couple in this portrait and its pendant (SK-A-2417; also fig. a), which are both dated 1670, are Aletta Pancras, daughter of the Amsterdam burgomaster Nicolaes Pancras,⁹⁹J.E. Elias, De vroedschap van Amsterdam 1578-1795, I, Haarlem 1903, no. 161. and François de Vicq, son of the wealthy physician and regent of the same name.¹⁰¹⁰See J.E. Elias, De vroedschap van Amsterdam 1578-1795, II, Haarlem 1905, no. 219. They were married on 30 August 1667. The sitters’ names are recorded on the reverse of the stretchers. An inscription on the front of the woman’s painting states that she was 21, and on the man’s that he was 24 years old. Since De Vicq was born in August 1646, this indicates that both works were executed in the second half of 1670. The Centraal Museum in Utrecht has two late seventeenth-century portraits of the couple which, together with the statements of age and the information about the provenance,¹¹¹¹See Provenance. confirm the identification listed on the stretchers.¹²¹²Illustrated in C.J. Matthijs, ‘De portretten uit de families Van Bredehoff en De Vicq’, Jaarboek van het Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie 37 (1983), pp. 151-92, esp. p. 182, nos. 36-37. Gudlaugsson and others reported inscriptions on the reverse of the Rijksmuseum pictures wrongly identifying the sitters as Nicolaes Pancras and Petronella de Waert, Aletta Pancras’s parents.¹³¹³S.J. Gudlaugsson, Geraert Ter Borch, II, The Hague 1960, p. 216. Remnants of paper indicate that these had been probably applied over the correct names.¹⁴¹⁴In addition to these pendants Salomon Rendorp (1824-1903) bequeathed five other portraits of his ancestors to the Rijksmuseum, two by Johann Friedrich August Tischbein (SK-A-2414 and SK-A-2415) and three by Tibout Regters (SK-A-2420, SK-A-2421 and SK-A-2422), four of which have reasonably reliable inscriptions specifying the sitters.

In 1670, the year in which Gerard ter Borch painted the two portraits, François de Vicq’s career was in full flight. He had been appointed churchwarden of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam in 1668, commissioner in 1669, and dike-reeve and magistrate of the Watergraafsmeer and Diemermeer polders in 1670. He then followed in his father’s footsteps by occupying various official posts in Amsterdam, including that of burgomaster in 1697, 1700 and 1706.¹⁵¹⁵J.E. Elias, De vroedschap van Amsterdam 1578-1795, II, Haarlem 1905, no. 226. S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, Van Amsterdamse burgers tot Europese aristocraten: Hun geschiedenis en hun portretten: De Heijnen-maagschap 1400-1800, II, The Hague 2008, p. 670. See C.P. van Eeghen, ‘Het huis Heerengracht 476’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 39 (1942), pp. 35-88, esp. pp. 36-40, on his house at 476 Herengracht. In 1670 Ter Borch also made three equally large portraits of Aletta’s mother and father and her brother Gerbrand.¹⁶¹⁶S.J. Gudlaugsson, Geraert Ter Borch, II, The Hague 1960, pp. 217-18, nos. 242, 243, pp. 215-16, no. 239 (with erroneous identification). For the identification of Gerbrand Pancras see S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, ‘In presentie van de Heer Gerard ter Borch’, in A.M. Logan (ed.), Essays in Northern European Art Presented to Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann on his Sixtieth Birthday, Doornspijk 1983, pp. 66-71, esp. pp. 66-67. He may have come into contact with this regent family through his brother-in-law Sybrand Schellinger, husband of his youngest sister Jenneke, who was related to François de Vicq.¹⁷¹⁷H.R. Hoetink et al., Gerard Ter Borch: Zwolle 1617-Deventer 1681, exh. cat. The Hague (Mauritshuis)/Münster (Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte) 1974, p. 184. It is possible that the pendants were commissioned by Aletta’s parents, because they probably later remained in the possession of the Pancras family.¹⁸¹⁸See Provenance. This was suggested by C.P. van Eeghen, ‘Het huis Heerengracht 476’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 39 (1942), pp. 35-88, esp. p. 40, note 3, who reports that the portraits could not be traced through De Vicq’s descendants in Hoorn. However, the paintings did not feature in a nineteenth-century list of portraits of members of the Rendorp family. See SA, PA 231, Archief van de Eigenaren van het Huis Marquette (…), no. 8, ‘Lijst van familieportretten met korte levensbeschrijvingen van leden van het geslacht Rendorp en verwante geslachten, 19de eeuw’. The paintings were bequeathed to the Rijksmuseum in 1903 by Salomon Rendorp,¹⁹¹⁹See Provenance. whose ancestor Pieter Rendorp (1703-1760) married Agatha Maria Pancras (1700-1761) in 1731, and Ter Borch’s portraits could have passed to the Rendorps at that time.

Both sitters are depicted off-centre, and the artist stressed the symmetry of the pendants with the tables, which unite the paintings into a visual whole. The technique and precise manner are similar, which confirms that they were made at the same time, as the dates indicate. Unlike in his earlier portraits,²⁰²⁰SK-A-1784, SK-A-1785, SK-A-1786 and SK-A-3842. no underdrawing in a dry black medium was found. The technical examination of Ter Borch’s portraits in the Rijksmuseum allow us to draw the provisional conclusion that the way in which he prepared them changed in the course of his career. In addition, the technique of the later ones became increasingly controlled, and the faces and attire were rendered more painstakingly wet in wet, resulting in a paint surface with a silky finish.²¹²¹See also SK-A-3963.

Ter Borch made several portraits for the De Graeff family a few years later. That of Cornelis de Graeff, which is almost the same size as the present pendants, shows him in an almost identical position within the picture surface and in the same pose as François de Vicq.²²²²The Hague, Mauritshuis; illustrated in Q. Buvelot (ed.), Portraits in the Mauritshuis 1430-1790, coll. cat. The Hague 2004, p. 52. The hand on the hip is an expression of male self-assurance.²³²³On this see J. Spicer, ‘The Renaissance Elbow’, in J. Bremmer and H. Roodenburg (eds.) A Cultural History of Gesture: From Antiquity to the Present Day, Cambridge 1991, pp. 84-128. There is a difference in the presentation of the sitters between Ter Borch’s Overijssel customers, who mainly had themselves painted full length in small, portable works, and these Amsterdam companion pieces, which demonstrate that the three-quarter length was preferred there.²⁴²⁴See A. McNeil Kettering, ‘Gerard ter Borch’s Portraits for the Deventer Elite’, Simiolus 27 (1999), pp. 46-69, esp. pp. 66-69. As in all his portraits, Ter Borch depicted small figures in both types, but the ones from Deventer have an air of austerity and restraint, whereas the more fashionable dress in the Rijksmuseum pendants highlight the aristocratic pretensions of his Amsterdam clientele.

Around 1670 Gesina ter Borch made a drawn copy of Aletta Pancras’s portrait in which she left the background neutral. In another sheet she copied François de Vicq’s body but replaced the head with that of her brother Moses, who had died in 1667. Gudlaugsson assumed that that drawing was executed after a lost original by Gerard ter Borch, but it is possible that Gesina used his painting of De Vicq as a model and drew Moses’s head on top.²⁵²⁵S.J. Gudlaugsson, Geraert Ter Borch, II, The Hague 1960, pp. 219-20, no. 246; A. McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate in the Rijksmuseum, II, The Hague 1988, pp. 644-45, fols. 87, 84 (ill.). See ibid., p. 645, fol. 88, for a copy after Ter Borch’s portrait of Aletta’s mother, Petronella de Waert.

Gerbrand Korevaar [publication date 2026]

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

For both the present painting (SK-A-2418) and its pendant (SK-A-2417)
E. Plietzsch, Gerard ter Borch, Vienna 1944, pp. 18, 52, nos. 84, 85; S.J. Gudlaugsson, Geraert Ter Borch, I, The Hague 1959, p. 149; ibid., II, 1960, pp. 216-17, nos. 240, 241; A. McNeil Kettering, ‘Gerard ter Borch’s Portraits for the Deventer Elite’, Simiolus 27 (1999), pp. 46-69, esp. pp. 66, 67

For both the present painting (SK-A-2418) and its pendant (SK-A-2417)
1911, p. 80, nos. 573a, 573b; 1934, pp. 55-56, nos. 573a, 573b; 1960, pp. 48-49, nos. 573 A1, 573 A2; 1976, p. 130, nos. A 2417, A 2418

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2026, 'Gerard ter (II) Borch, Portrait of Aletta Pancras (1649-1707), 1670', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026691