Portret van Piet Hein (1577-1629)

atelier van Jan Daemen Cool, 1629

Portret van Piet Hein (1577-1629), luitenant-admiraal van Holland. Buste, een keten over de borst.

  • Soort kunstwerkschilderij
  • ObjectnummerSK-A-1787
  • Afmetingenbuitenmaat: diepte 5,2 cm (drager incl. SK-L-2407), drager: hoogte 65 cm x breedte 50 cm
  • Fysieke kenmerkenolieverf op paneel

Jan Daemen Cool (workshop of)

Portrait of Pieter Pietersz Hein (1577-1629)

1629

Inscriptions

  • date, centre left:Aº 1629

Technical notes

The support is made up of three vertically grained oak planks. Only the right side is bevelled. The beige ground layer is visible at the ruff and under the figure’s chin. The figure was reserved and the paint layers were applied smoothly and wet in wet. Much impasto was used for the ruff, chain and gold-coloured decorations of the costume.

Scientific examination and reports

  • technical report: W. de Ridder / M. van de Laar, RMA, 2 augustus 1998

Condition

Fair. There are a number of discoloured retouchings throughout. The varnish is moderately discoloured.

Conservation

  • H.H. Mertens, 1967: complete restoration

Original framing

An oak ogee-bottom frame with dark brown, possibly walnut veneer

Provenance

...; ? collection B. Nachenius;1Note RMA....; anonymous sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 8 November 1898, no. 19, as Johannes Dane, fl. 541, to the Department of the Interior, for the museum

Object number: SK-A-1787

The artist

Biography

Jan Daemen Cool (Rotterdam 1589 - Rotterdam 1660)

Citing a document that is no longer traceable, Haverkorn van Rijsewijk established that Jan Daemen Cool was born in Rotterdam in 1589. Other than this information, nothing is known about the painter before 1613, when he married Agniesje Jaspersdr van Hattem in Delft. On 13 October 1613, a few months after his wedding, he joined the Guild of St Luke in Delft as a non-native of the town. Cool probably trained with Michiel van Mierevelt in Delft; not only was the latter the town’s foremost portraitist, but Cool’s portrait style is clearly indebted to Van Mierevelt’s example. In 1614, Cool’s wife had a will drawn up in Rotterdam, indicating that the artist may have returned to his birthplace as early as that year, although he himself is first documented there in 1618. He spent the rest of his life in Rotterdam, where he was the leading portrait painter in the second quarter of the 17th century and a relatively wealthy man. In 1623, after the death of his first wife the previous year, he married Lijsbeth Cornelisdr, the widow of Lowijs Jansz Porcellis, a younger brother of the marine painter Jan Porcellis. After Lijsbeth Cornelisdr’s death in 1652, Cool purchased a place in the Rotterdam almshouse for 1,200 guilders, where he was to spend the rest of his days.

No signed paintings by Jan Daemen Cool are known to exist. Ekkart has nonetheless been able to isolate a group of Rotterdam portraits and connect them to Cool based on his documented Portrait of the Governors and Administrator of the Holy Ghost Hospital in Rotterdam, which the artist pledged to make for the almshouse when he went to live there in 1652 and completed in 1653.2Illustrated in Ekkart 1997, p. 238, no. 28. This painting is Cool’s only known public commission. The high point in his oeuvre is a group of four family portraits in landscape settings executed between 1631 and 1637 now in Lille, Edinburgh, Rotterdam and Brussels.3Illustrated in Ekkart 1997, p. 223, no. 4, p. 225, no. 6, p. 230, no. 16, p. 232, no. 19. Cool is not known to have worked in genres other than portraiture. While there are no documented pupils, Ludolf de Jongh (1616-79) and Isaack de Colonia (c. 1611-63) may have trained with him.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

References
Obreen I, 1877-78, pp. 158-63; Haverkorn van Rijsewijk 1892, pp. 45-47; Von Wurzbach I, 1906, pp. 329-30; Moes in Thieme/Becker VII, 1912, p. 353; Alting Mees 1913, p. 144; Ekkart 1997, pp. 201-02

Entry

Pieter Pietersz Heijn, popularly known as Piet Heijn, was one of the most celebrated Dutch naval commanders of the 17th century. The son of a ship’s captain, he probably went to sea at the age of 16. Around 1598-1600 he was captured by the Spanish and made a galley slave in the fleet commanded by Ambrogio Spinola until his release in 1602. Between 1607 and 1612, Heijn was in the service of the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC). Later, between 1624 and 1629, he made three voyages for the Dutch West India Company (Westindische Compagnie, or WIC), the last of which would prove to be his claim to fame. In May 1628, the 31 ships under his command managed, with very few Dutch casualties, to ambush the Spanish silver fleet off the coast of Cuba. The captured cargo of the Spanish ships was worth around twelve million Dutch guilders, and among those who shared in the profits were the Stadholder Frederik Hendrik and the shareholders of the WIC. After his return to the United Provinces, Heijn left the WIC and became Lieutenant-Admiral in the navy, a position he was not to hold for long, for on 18 June 1629 he was killed in a skirmish with Dunkirk privateers.

The traditional attribution of the present bust-length portrait to Jan Daemen Cool was based on a portrait print of Piet Heijn by Willem Hondius, also of 1629.4Hollstein IX, 1953, p. 105, no. 39; for the traditional attribution of the painting to Cool see, for example, Van Luttervelt 1954, cols. 147-48. The print is inscribed ‘Joh. Dame pinxt’, which leaves little doubt that it was made after a painting by Cool. However, as Ekkart has argued on the evidence of the quality of the Rijksmuseum portrait, the model for Hondius’s engraving was not the present painting.5Ekkart 1997, p. 203. Rather, the Rijksmuseum portrait and an identical one in the Historisch Museum, Rotterdam6Panel, 67 x 51 cm; Ekkart 1997, p. 221, no. 1, copy 2. are old copies, probably executed by Cool’s workshop, after a lost Portrait of Piet Heijn that served as the model for Hondius’s engraving. As that engraving gives Heijn’s age as 47, Ekkart suggests that the original portrait by Cool would have been executed in 1624 or 1625.7Ekkart 1997, p. 221, no. 1. The present portrait corresponds to Hondius’s engraving in all but the clothing. In both this engraving and the Rijksmuseum portrait Heijn wears over his left shoulder the gold chain awarded to him by the States-General on 23 January 1629.8L’Honoré Naber/Wright 1928, p. CLXXXII. Appended to the chain in the engraving is a medallion issued in 1609 that Heijn never actually received.9L’Honoré Naber/Wright 1928, p. CLXXXII.

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. 51.

Literature

Ekkart 1997, p. 221, no. 1, copy 2, with earlier literature

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 75, no. 716 (as Cool); 1934, p. 72, no. 716 (as Cool); 1976, p. 174, no. A 1787 (as Cool); 2007, no. 51

Citation

J. Bikker, 2007, 'workshop of Jan Daemen Cool, Portrait of Pieter Pietersz Hein (1577-1629), 1629', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20027718

(accessed 6 December 2025 23:30:00).

Footnotes

  • 1Note RMA.
  • 2Illustrated in Ekkart 1997, p. 238, no. 28.
  • 3Illustrated in Ekkart 1997, p. 223, no. 4, p. 225, no. 6, p. 230, no. 16, p. 232, no. 19.
  • 4Hollstein IX, 1953, p. 105, no. 39; for the traditional attribution of the painting to Cool see, for example, Van Luttervelt 1954, cols. 147-48.
  • 5Ekkart 1997, p. 203.
  • 6Panel, 67 x 51 cm; Ekkart 1997, p. 221, no. 1, copy 2.
  • 7Ekkart 1997, p. 221, no. 1.
  • 8L’Honoré Naber/Wright 1928, p. CLXXXII.
  • 9L’Honoré Naber/Wright 1928, p. CLXXXII.