Woman Playing the Virginal

Support The single, vertically grained oak plank is approx. 0.7 cm thick on the left and approx. 1.2 cm on the right. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1620. The panel could have been ready for use by 1631, but a date in or after 1637 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, beige ground extends up to the edges of the support. It consists of beige pigment particles with a minute addition of very fine earth pigments.
Underdrawing Infrared photography revealed an underdrawing in a liquid or dry medium, also partly visible to the naked eye, consisting of subtle hatchings defining the volume of the folds in some of the shaded parts of the red dress.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The semi-transparent brown first lay-in has remained partly visible in the dark background, where it was applied thinly, allowing the ground to show through; the lighter colours are thicker and more opaque. The painting was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light. Except for the boy and the woman’s hands, the figures were left in reserve, and then executed wet in wet. Transparent dark glazes were used to create dark shadows, and highlights in the faces, lace and virginal are impasted. Several major changes were made to the composition. Above the monkey, for instance, there was initially a mirror with an ornate frame and a parrot below it, and a lute was hanging on the wall above the girl’s head. Moreover, the woman’s right eye was higher and her cap looked different.
Jessica Roeders, 2022

Good. The panel has become slightly convex. There are a few old retouchings that are rather matte. The varnish has slightly yellowed.

...; ? probate inventory, Jan Miense Molenaer, Haarlem, 10 October 1668, in the vestibule (‘Een vroutje op de Clauwe Zimbael spelende van Molenaer’);¹¹NHA, notary W. van Kittensteyn; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, I, The Hague 1915, p. 3, no. 15; GPI, N-5314.…; anonymous sale, Amsterdam (C.S. Roos et al.), 18 October 1819, no. 21, as D. Hals (‘In een Binnenvertrek zit eene bevallige Vrouw op het klavier te spelen, daar twee kinderen naar staan te luisteren, in het verschiet komt een heer de kamer binnen treden; bevallig op P., h. 15, br. 12 d. [38.5 x 30.8 cm]’), fl. 71, to De Vries;²²Copy RKD; with thanks to Burton B. Fredericksen for pointing this out to us.…; purchased for fl. 350 by Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam, as Dirck Hals, June 1832;³³Lijst van schilderijen, beelden en teekeningen van Adriaan van der Hoop te Amsterdam, NHA, ARS, no. 388 (copy in Rijksmuseum Research Library), p. 2, no. 22: ‘Eene vrouw, spelende op ’t Klavier door Dirk Hals, zeldzaam voorkomende schilderyen 350’. by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam, as Dirck Hals, with 223 other paintings, 1854;⁴⁴Taxatie van schilderijen, teekeningen en beeldhouwwerken gedaan door Pieter E.H. Praetorius en Gerrit de Vries Jz., executeuren van het testament van A. van der Hoop [...] 29 april 1854, NHA, ARS, no. 388 (copy in Rijksmuseum Research Library), p. 2, no. 22: ‘Klavier Speelster met verder staffage fl. 100’. on loan from the City of Amsterdam to the museum since 30 June 1885⁵⁵Provenance reconstructed in A. Pollmer, ‘Catalogus van de schilderijen in de verzameling van Adriaan van der Hoop’, in E. Bergvelt et al., De Hollandse meesters van een Amsterdamse bankier: De verzameling van Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), exh. cat. Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum; Rijksmuseum) 2004-05, pp. 135-95, esp. p. 164, no. 118.

ObjectNumber: SK-C-140

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)

The virginal appears in five works from Jan Miense Molenaer’s early Haarlem period. The Rijksmuseum painting and one other panel dated 1634 in a private collection are the only two in which a woman playing the instrument is the main motif.¹⁰¹⁰The 1634 painting is larger, measuring 51 x 34 cm; illustrated in D.P. Weller, C. von Bogendorf Rupprath and M. Westermann, Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age, exh. cat. Raleigh (North Carolina Museum of Art)/Indianapolis (Indianapolis Museum of Art)/Manchester (Currier Museum of Art) 2002-03, p. 137, fig. 1. Both show three figures in contemporary dress in an interior with a checkerboard patterned floor and an open door in the right background. The Rijksmuseum composition has a lower vantage point and deeper recession, and Weller dates it somewhat later than the 1634 picture on the basis of the ‘slightly more polished and descriptive painting application in the costumes and features of the sitters’.¹¹¹¹Weller in D.P. Weller, C. von Bogendorf Rupprath and M. Westermann, Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age, exh. cat. Raleigh (North Carolina Museum of Art)/Indianapolis (Indianapolis Museum of Art)/Manchester (Currier Museum of Art) 2002-03, p. 134. But not only is the brushwork superior, the virginal, although much too wide,¹²¹²L. van Dijck and T. Koopman, Het klavecimbel in de Nederlandse kunst tot 1800/The Harpsichord in Dutch Art before 1800, Zutphen 1987 (unpag.). does not awkwardly tilt upwards as it recedes in space like the instrument in the 1634 panel. The anatomy of the main figure is also more accomplished, as her thighs do not appear as freakishly long as those of her counterpart. A somewhat later origin of the Rijksmuseum picture is supported by the dendrochronology, which gives 1631 as the earliest year of execution but indicates that a date after 1637 would be more likely.¹³¹³See Technical notes. The strong bright colours, somewhat wobbly construction of the interior, and the relatively large-scale figures are characteristic of Molenaer’s output in the first decade of his career.

Unlike the 1634 painting, a male figure is seen at the threshold of the open door at the back. That this is a gentleman caller is suggested by the courting couple shown in the landscape on the open lid of the virginal. The original design for the picture included a lute, which was probably meant for the suitor to play.¹⁴¹⁴See Technical notes. Music-making was a cherished metaphor for the harmony of love.¹⁵¹⁵E. de Jongh, ‘Portret, huwelijksportret, familieportret’, in E. de Jongh, Portretten van echt en trouw: Huwelijk en gezin in de Nederlandse kunst van de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum) 1986, pp. 14-64, esp. pp. 40-45. A mirror that was also initially planned may have had amorous connotations as well, as an emblem by Pieter Cornelisz Hooft showing a man observing a woman playing a virginal includes a vignette of a cupid holding a mirror capturing the sun. According to Hooft’s elucidation, love reflects its source in the beloved just as the mirror reflects the sunlight.¹⁶¹⁶For this emblem see Wheelock in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Johannes Vermeer, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/The Hague (Mauritshuis) 1995-96, p. 130 (ill.). The fettered monkey, a motif already employed by Molenaer a few years earlier in his 1633 Allegory of Fidelity,¹⁷¹⁷Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; illustrated in D.P. Weller, C. von Bogendorf Rupprath and M. Westermann, Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age, exh. cat. Raleigh (North Carolina Museum of Art)/Indianapolis (Indianapolis Museum of Art)/Manchester (Currier Museum of Art) 2002-03, p. 103. was probably intended as a warning against sensuality. The animal was associated with the sanguine humour, which caused sensuality, and a chained one could stand for ‘voluntary imprisonment by vice’; the monkey is so attached to its self-indulgence that it fully accepts its captivity.¹⁸¹⁸See P.J.J. van Thiel, ‘Marriage Symbolism in a Musical Party by Jan Miense Molenaar’, Simiolus 2 (1967-68), pp. 90-99, esp. p. 98. The birdcage in Woman Playing the Virginal may also refer to love’s shackles, but then in a positive way. An emblem with a confined parrot in Jacob Cats’s Sinne- en minnebeelden has the motto ‘Amissa libertate laetior’ (Happy in slavery), and a verse referring to the ‘sweet slavery’ of love.¹⁹¹⁹For this emblem see E. de Jongh, Zinne- en minnebeelden in de schilderkunst van de 17e eeuw, Amsterdam 1967, pp. 34 (ill.), 37-38. For the various amorous associations of the birdcage in seventeenth-century Dutch painting see E. de Jongh, ‘Erotica in vogelperspectief: De dubbelzinnigheid van een reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingen’, Simiolus 3 (1968-69), pp. 22-74, esp. p. 49. Molenaer’s inclusion of a young girl and boy in the present painting suggests that the woman’s choices in love not only have consequences for herself but serve an exemplary function as well.

Weller rightly rejected the old identification of the children in Woman Playing the Virginal as the two children of Molenaer and Judith Leyster who survived infancy, Helena (1643-after 1689) and Constantijn (1650-1671), since they were born after the painting was executed.²⁰²⁰Weller in D.P. Weller, C. von Bogendorf Rupprath and M. Westermann, Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age, exh. cat. Raleigh (North Carolina Museum of Art)/Indianapolis (Indianapolis Museum of Art)/Manchester (Currier Museum of Art) 2002-03, p. 134. In fact, they resemble the boy and girl on the far right of Molenaer’s Self-Portrait with Family Members of around 1634-36 in Haarlem, who have been convincingly recognized as the artist’s youngest brother Nicolaes and his sister Lucia.²¹²¹Frans Hals Museum. For the identification of those family members see D.P. Weller, ‘Introduction’, in D.P. Weller, C. von Bogendorf Rupprath and M. Westermann, Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age, exh. cat. Raleigh (North Carolina Museum of Art)/Indianapolis (Indianapolis Museum of Art)/Manchester (Currier Museum of Art) 2002-03, pp. 1-7, esp. pp. 2-4; Von Bogendorf Rupprath in P. Biesboer and M. Sitt (eds.), Satire en vermaak: Schilderkunst in de 17de eeuw: Het genrestuk van Frans Hals en zijn tijdgenoten 1610-1670, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum)/Hamburg (Kunsthalle) 2003-04, pp. 160-63, no. 34 (ill.). Weller did, however, accept the long-standing identification of the woman at the virginal as Leyster, and even went so far as to claim that the sketchy male figure in the doorway is Molenaer himself. Both also appear in his Duet,²²²²Private collection; illustrated in D.P. Weller, C. von Bogendorf Rupprath and M. Westermann, Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age, exh. cat. Raleigh (North Carolina Museum of Art)/Indianapolis (Indianapolis Museum of Art)/Manchester (Currier Museum of Art) 2002-03, p. 136. and according to Weller the two works are genre-like portraits documenting Molenaer and Leyster’s life together. The Duet ‘could, in fact, have served as the couple’s marriage portrait’, while Woman Playing the Virginal ‘may have focused on their courtship’.²³²³Weller in D.P. Weller, C. von Bogendorf Rupprath and M. Westermann, Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age, exh. cat. Raleigh (North Carolina Museum of Art)/Indianapolis (Indianapolis Museum of Art)/Manchester (Currier Museum of Art) 2002-03, p. 137. Although the artist often blurred the line between portraiture and genre, a likelier explanation for the appearance of Molenaer himself, his wife and siblings in these two pictures is that he simply used models that were at hand. At any rate, the tiny stature and cursory execution of the man in the doorway in the Rijksmuseum painting make it unlikely that he was intended to be a likeness, and one can also question the resemblance of the woman playing the virginal to Leyster’s Self-Portrait in Washington.²⁴²⁴National Gallery of Art; illustrated in F.F. Hofrichter, Judith Leyster: A Woman Painter in Holland’s Golden Age, Doornspijk 1989, pl. X.

Jonathan Bikker, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

E.-J.-T. Thoré (pseud. W. Bürger), Musées de la Hollande, II, Paris 1860, p. 120 (as Dirck Hals); A. Bredius and W. von Bode, ‘Der Haarlemer Maler Johannes Molenaer in Amsterdam’, Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen 11 (1890), pp. 65-78, esp. p. 74; A. Bredius, ‘Jan Miense Molenaer: Nieuwe gegevens omtrent zijn leven en zijn werk’, Oud Holland 26 (1908), pp. 41-42; G.D. Gratama, ‘Het Portret van Judith Leyster door Frans Hals’, Oud Holland 47 (1930), pp. 71-75, esp. pp. 73-74; Weller in D.P. Weller, C. von Bogendorf Rupprath and M. Westermann, Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age, exh. cat. Raleigh (North Carolina Museum of Art)/Indianapolis (Indianapolis Museum of Art)/Manchester (Currier Museum of Art) 2002-03, pp. 133-35, no. 23, with earlier literature

1887, p. 115, no. 974; 1903, p. 181, no. 1635; 1934, p. 194, no. 1635; 1960, p. 210, no. 1635; 1976, p. 391, no. C 140

Jonathan Bikker, 2022, 'Jan Miense Molenaer, Woman Playing the Virginal, c. 1637', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4616