The oak support consists of a single vertically grained plank bevelled on all sides. It was primed with a thin, smooth, ochre ground, that is visible in the reserves and along the edges. The paint was applied thinly, transparently in the background and in the sitter’s beard, and more opaquely in the light flesh tones in the sitter’s face, which were added in a final stage. Brushstrokes are visible, especially in the sitter’s face.

Fair. There is a 6 cm crack in the panel at lower centre. There are many overpainted and retouched areas, and the varnish has yellowed.

…; sale, The Hague (A.G. Visscher), 30 January 1878, no. 40, as C. van der Voort, fl. 12.50, to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague (inv. no. 4232); transferred to the museum, as Cornelis van der Voort, 1885; on loan to the Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, since 1977

Object number: SK-A-953

This bust-length portrait is of the theologian Jacobus Rolandus set in a stone surround. Until 1618 Rolandus was a Counter-Remonstrant minister in Amsterdam, after which he worked on the translation of the New Testament and the Apocrypha for the States Bible.

Several catalogues wrongly describe this portrait as a grisaille.¹¹Coll. cat. 1976, p. 191, no. A 953; coll. cat. Utrecht 2002, p. 320. It is true that the palette is quite monochrome, an effect that is reinforced by the yellowed varnish, but there is no question of it being a grisaille or brunaille.

In the 19th century this portrait was attributed to Cornelis van der Voort himself because the composition matches that in a print by the Delft engraver Willem Jacobsz Delff, which according to the inscription was based on a painting by Van der Voort (RP-P-BI-6911, see fig. a).²²On this see also Six 1887, pp. 8-9. Clearly, though, it is not an autograph Van der Voort. Its mediocre quality, the clumsy rendering of the stone surround, the lack of a cast shadow on the wall on the right, and the odd way the sitter has been positioned in the surround, which necessitated shortening his beard, make it likely that this is a copy. It was probably modelled on Delff ’s engraving of 1632.³³It was in the 1903 catalogue, p. 290, no. 2592, that it was first described as a painted copy of the print by Delff, who was wrongly referred to as Jacob Willemsz Delff instead of Willem Jacobsz Delff.

According to the collection catalogue of the Catharijneconvent in Utrecht, Van der Voort’s original painting is in the Dienstencentrum of the Samen op Wegkerken in Utrecht.⁴⁴Panel, 124 x 90 cm; coll. cat. Utrecht 2002, p. 320. That is probably the three-quarter length that was still with Rolandus’s descendants in 1937.⁵⁵Amsterdam 1937, no. 147a (ill.). There the theologian is seated in a chair in his study in a pose similar to that of Cornelis Pietersz Hooft in his portrait of 1622 (SK-A-1416). Six’s suggestion that Van der Voort may have painted Rolandus’s portrait to mark his departure for Dordrecht in 1618 is plausible.⁶⁶Six 1887, p. 8. It should be added that Six had not seen Van der Voort’s original.

Another copy, which was likewise probably painted after the print, is in Dordrecht.⁷⁷Museum Simon van Gijn; photo RKD. It is a grisaille in a trompe l’oeil painted relief in which, as in the Rijksmuseum panel, Ronaldus is portrayed at bust length.

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. 326.

Six 1887, pp. 8-9, 22; Six 1911, p. 132; coll. cat. Utrecht 2002, p. 320

1887, p. 185, no. 1591a (as Van der Voort); 1897, p. 183, p. 1591a (as Van der Voort); 1903, p. 290, no. 2592; 1934, p. 308, no. 2595; 1976, p. 191, no. A 953 (as a grisaille copy after Willem Jacobsz Delff II); 1992, p. 49, no. A 953 (as copy after Willem Jacobsz Delff II); 2007, no. 326

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'copy after Cornelis van der Voort, Portrait of Jacobus Rolandus (1562-1632), in or after 1632', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20027229