Portrait of Three Children and a Man

Entry

When it was purchased by the museum in 1891 the present painting appeared to be whole, and showed three children at a table covered with jewellery and silver objects, with a globe in the lower right-hand corner (fig. a). The portrait of a man in an oval frame hung on the wall behind the children. Restoration of the painting carried out in 1926 revealed that it consisted of four fragments that had been extensively overpainted in order to give the work a unified appearance.² The largest fragment, on the left, bears the images of the three children. The portrait of a man in an oval frame turned out to be a figure standing behind a balustrade and the hand, presumably of a woman, holding the youngest child’s left wrist also came to light. The smallest fragment, a square-shaped piece of canvas at the upper right, shows a fringe of the tablecloth and the two-toned floor tiles, and was, therefore, undoubtedly taken from the lower part of the original composition. In a third fragment, a globe stands on similar tiles, the pattern of which suggests that it was originally positioned a little higher in the painting. A fourth fragment on the right, between the globe and the small square fragment at the upper right, bears what is left of the table as well as a pile of jewellery, including a jingle-bell, or possibly a pomander, and a portrait medallion, a jewellery box and two silver objects. It has not been possible to determine how much of the original composition has been cut away, whether the painting originally included just the figure whose hand is now eerily isolated, or more figures on the right.

With the removal of the 1619 Anatomy Lesson of Dr Sebastiaen Egbertsz de Vrij from his oeuvre, the present work has become the earliest dated painting by De Keyser.³ Oldenbourg doubted the signature and, therefore, De Keyser’s authorship in his 1911 catalogue raisonné, but Adams rightly accepted it in her 1985 dissertation.⁴ Indeed, the rather geometrical rendering of the sitters’ heads and the fluid, sketchy treatment of the highlights on the drapery are indicative of De Keyser’s style. Nor is there any reason to doubt the authenticity of the signature. Although De Keyser would never again use changeant fabrics in his compositions, a number of his later paintings show a similar highly colouristic approach.

The suggestion made by Adams in her 1985 dissertation that the painting was commissioned by an orphanage is not very convincing.⁵ Rather, the painting was probably conceived as a portrait historié of a family group. The two standing boys and the seated youngest child, whose gender it has not been possible to determine, wear pseudo-antique costumes. While short capes, such as the one worn by the man, were in fashion in the 1620s, the combination with the tunic suggests that this apparel was also meant to be perceived as fanciful.

The jewellery and silver objects on the table call to mind one theme in particular that sometimes figures in 17th-century portraits historiés, namely Cornelia showing her children.⁶ Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus, is known from Plutarch’s Lives of her sons, the social reformers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. She was considered the model Roman matron who educated her children in exemplary fashion. Valerius Maximus relates the story of a Campanian matron who showed Cornelia her jewellery, the finest in existence. Cornelia responded by claiming that her jewels were her children. Herman Doncker’s representation of the theme includes not only jewels and a jewellery box, but also a variety of silver and gold objects.⁷ That the same theme was represented here must, of course, remain speculative because of the fragmentary state of the painting. It does seem significant, however, that Cornelia had three children who survived infancy, the boys Tiberius and Gaius, and a daughter.⁸

The precise date inscribed on the painting, ‘An° 1622, 10 Augustus’,⁹ indicates that the painting commemorates a specific event. In the case of another family portrait, that of Michiel van der Dussen, his Wife, Wilhelmina van Setten, and their Children by the Delft artist Hendrick Cornelisz van der Vliet, the precise date proved to be the couple’s 15th wedding anniversary.¹⁰ The date inscribed on the present painting may likewise mark the unidentified couple’s anniversary.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

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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. 158.