The support is an oak panel consisting of three vertically grained planks. It was thinned and transferred onto plywood. The panel was primed with a smooth white ground layer. The figure was reserved in the greyish green background, and the sitter’s face was painted very smoothly and softly. The paint appears to have been applied more freely in the costume, but the heavy retouching makes judgement difficult.

Poor. There are several vertical cracks in the panel. The joins and the cracks have been filled with a white filling, but they were not retouched. There is much discoloured retouching and overpaint in the sitter’s face, his right hand, his costume, his hat on the table, and in the background. The varnish layer was applied unevenly.

…; bequeathed to the museum by Jonkheer Ernest Louis Willy Marc Hoeufft van Velsen, Meeuwen (near ’s-Hertogenbosch), as attributed to Cornelis van der Voort, Portrait of a Man and Portrait of a Woman, 1965; on loan through the DRVK, since 1965

Object number: SK-A-4764

Credit line: Jonkheer E.L.W.M. Hoeufft van Velsen Bequest, Meeuwen

These three-quarter length companion pieces from 1622 would have been painted for the marriage of Dirck Corver (shown here) and Maria Overrijn van Schoterbosch (see SK-A-4765). Corver was a merchant on Amsterdam’s Keizersgracht and a governor of the St Jorishof. On 9 July 1621 he married Maria van Schoterbosch, who was 12 or 13 years his junior. Corver is standing by a table covered with a Persian rug on which he is resting one hand, while the other is on his hip. His wife holds a fan in her right hand. Care was lavished on the depiction of their clothing and accessories.

The sitters’ identities were unknown when the two paintings entered the museum.¹¹Six 1887, pp. 9-10; Six 1911, p. 132. They were identified by the Iconografisch Bureau on the basis of the provenance of the paintings and the sitters’ ages.²²Note from the Iconografisch Bureau, RMA. Six 1887, p. 9, expressly states that the final digit of the woman’s age was omitted by the artist. The two portraits are closely related to those of Dirck Hasselaer (SK-A-1242) and Brechtje van Schoterbosch (SK-A-1243) painted eight years previously, which are also in the Rijksmuseum. The portraits of Brechtje and Maria, who were sisters, are remarkably similar. Distinctive features are the pose, the soft brushwork and the pale, matte flesh tones. The style and quality of these portraits warrants Six’s traditional attribution to the Amsterdam portrait painter Cornelis van der Voort.

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. 322.

Six 1887, pp. 9-10, 22; Six 1911, p. 132

992, p. 91, nos. A 4764, A 4765 (as attributed to Van der Voort); 2007, no. 322

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Cornelis van der Voort, Portrait of Dirck Corver (1587-1633), 1622', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200108387