The support is a copper plate prepared with a greyish ochre ground, which is visible around the rosette. Brushmarking is visible only in the figure’s face.

Fair. There are small losses throughout in both the ground and the paint layers. The red lake glazing pigment on the rosette is heavily abraded, as are the darker passages in the figure’s face. The varnish is very discoloured.

…; from the dealer, P.C. Huybrechts, The Hague, fl. 80, as Portrait of Maria van Reygersberg, to the museum, 29 November 1806¹¹Moes/Van Biema 1909, pp. 84, 207.

Object number: SK-A-16

The painting was purchased by the museum in 1806 as a ‘portrait of Maria van Reigersbergh (1589-1653)’, wife of Hugo de Groot. Bruyn was the first scholar to question this identification, but it was not until 2001 that the sitter was recognized to be Aertje Witsen.³³Bruyn 1951, p. 160; the correct identification of the sitter was made by K.E. Schaffers-Bodenhausen and R.E.O. Ekkart; see dealer cat. Haboldt 2001, p. 40. There are two signed drawings from 1625 showing the same woman, one of which carries an inscription on the reverse in a 17th-century hand that reads ‘Jufvrouw van Swieten’ (fig. a). The second drawing has a diameter of 128 mm and was with the dealer Nicolaas Beets in 1934; photo IB, no. 40734.] Aertje (or Aertgen) Witsen was a daughter of the Amsterdam grain merchant and burgomaster Gerrit Jacobsz Witsen (?-1626) and his second wife Grietge Appelman (1563-1601).⁴⁴See Elias I, 1903, p. 168. In 1617, she married the merchant Cornelis Bicker, who acquired the seigniory of Swieten near Leiden in 1632.⁵⁵For Cornelis Bicker’s biography see Elias I, 1903, p. 175. Bailly’s teacher, Cornelis van der Voort, portrayed the young couple at full length the year after their wedding.⁶⁶Formerly with the dealer, J. van Haeften, London; see Dudok van Heel 2001, pp. 1-3, figs. 56a, 56b. There are also two sets of life-size pendant portraits showing Aertje Witsen and Cornelis Bicker at bust length from 1625.⁷⁷One of the sets was with Agnew’s, London, in 1990 as circle of Bailly; panel, 66 x 52 cm; photo IB, nos. 90736, 90737; for the other set (panel, 64.8 x 48.6 cm) see sale, London (Bonhams), 9 December 1993, no. 62, as circle of Rubens. The two identical portraits of Aertje Witsen clearly follow Bailly’s drawings from the same year, and that the male pendants show Cornelis Bicker is supported by secure depictions of him, including Joachim von Sandrart’s 1640 The Company of Captain Cornelis Bicker and Lieutenant Frederick van Banchem Waiting to Welcome Maria de’ Medici, Dowager Queen of France, on her Visit to Amsterdam, September 1638 (SK-C-393) in the Rijksmuseum. Bailly also made a drawing of Cornelis Bicker in 1623, which, however, differs from the two drawings of 1625 showing Aertje Witsen in that the sitter is not in a roundel.⁸⁸Pen and brown ink, 156 x 127 mm; dealer cat. Haboldt 2001, pp. 36-37 (ill.); this drawing also carries an inscription on the reverse, which reads ‘h:- bicker v. Swit’. Bicker’s costume and pose differ significantly from the 1625 paintings, which makes it quite conceivable that Bailly drew him again in that year.

Bailly’s Portrait of Aertje Witsen in the Rijksmuseum – the artist’s earliest signed and dated painting – is rather disappointing in comparison with the masterful drawings from the previous year. This can be blamed in part on the painting’s condition, but the execution is also considerably less delicate, and the lace collar hangs in a most improbable manner from the sitter’s left shoulder. While the drawings show Aertje Witsen in a roundel, the present portrait shows her within a painted oval. The portrait on copper is only slightly larger than the two drawings. Oddly, the costumes and hairstyles in the two drawings, the two portraits on panel and the Rijksmuseum painting differ from one another. Those differences are greatest in the present work.

Jonathan Bikker, 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. 16.

Bruyn 1951, p. 160 (as Portrait of Johanna de Visscher); Ekkart in Leiden 1976, p. 42, no. S5 (as Portrait of a Woman); dealer cat. Haboldt 2001, p. 40, no. 16

1809, p. 5, no. 12 (as Portrait of Maria van Reigersbergh); 1843, p. 5, no. 11 (as Portrait of Maria van Reigersbergen; ‘in good condition’); 1853, p. 1, no. 6 (as Portrait of Maria van Reigersbergh; fl. 400); 1858, p. 5, no. 10 (as Portrait of Maria van Reigersbergh); 1887, p. 6, no. 39 (as Portrait of Maria van Reigersbergh); 1903, p. 37, no. 407 (as Portrait of Maria van Reigersbergh); 1934, p. 35, no. 407 (as Portrait of Maria van Reigersbergh); 1976, p. 95, no. A 16 (as Portrait of a Woman, Thought to be Maria van Reigersbergh); 2007, no. 16

J. Bikker, 2007, 'David Bailly, Portrait of Aertje Witsen (1599-1652), 1626', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026532