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.

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.

…; ? widow of ‘Schepen Corn. Hulst’, 1760;¹¹According to the inscription on a print by Jacob Houbraken.…; 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;²²RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 167, no. 196 (28 June 1887, no. 1336); RANH, ARS, Kop, inv. 289, pp. 148-49, no. 329 (13 July 1887). on loan to the Amsterdams Historisch Museum since 4 December 1972

Object number: SK-A-1416

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.³³The Rijksmuseum has a drawing dated 1585 with the portrait of Cornelis Pietersz Hooft that is attributed to Pieter Soutman, RP-T-00741. See Kretschmar 1981 for other portraits of members of the Hooft family.

Hooft is shown seated in this three-quarter length, which is a fitting pose for someone aged 76.⁴⁴Cf. also Van der Voort’s portrait of Jacobus Rolandus, illustrated in Amsterdam 1937, no. 147a, of which SK-A-953 is a partial copy. 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 1965.⁵⁵For an illustration see Amsterdam 2002a, p. 87. 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,⁶⁶See Provenance. 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.⁷⁷See, for example, the bust-length dated 1622 that was in a private collection in 1971, which may be a replica by Van der Voort himself; photo RKD.

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.

Six 1887, p. 22; Six 1911, p. 132; Van Zeil in Amsterdam 2002a, p. 87, no. 2a

1903, p. 290, no. 2591; 1934, p. 308, no. 2591; 1976, p. 588, no. A 1416; 2007, no. 324

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: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200108797