Portrait of a Young Man, possibly Jacob Francken (1627-after 1656), Aelbert Cuyp, c. 1651 – (Aelbert Jacobsz Cuyp) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Aelbert Jacobsz Cuyp

Date: 1651

Size: 83 x 69 cm

Technique: Oil On Panel

This portrait of a young man in sumptuous imaginary dress painted by Aelbert Cuyp probably had a pendant originally in the shape of a likeness of a 21-year-old woman dated 1651 in a private collection size (fig. a).11 This is suggested not only by the similar dimensions but also by the costumes and attributes, which associate the figures with hunting.12 The sitters remain unidentified, but it seems that they could well be the brother and sister Jacob (1627-after 1656) and Elisabeth Francken (1629-1678), the eldest children of Jacobmijne van Casteren and Sebastiaan Francken (1597-1651), a justice at the Court of Holland. Elisabeth died on 20 May 1678, and her probate inventory of that year lists two octagonal portraits of her and Jacob by someone called Cuyp, which are probably these companion pieces.13 They are on oval panels, but these were often set in octagonal frames and were described as such in inventories.14 A more important argument is provided by the inscription on the woman’s picture, which states that she was 21 in 1651, which is a precise match for Elisabeth, who was baptized on 1 December 1629. This was not the first time that the two Francken children were portrayed. There is a painting of 1635 by Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp in which both of them, aged 6 and 8, and their younger sister Cornelia (1633-before c. 1640) are seen in a landscape near The Hague.15 It is mentioned in Elisabeth’s inventory as well.16 Another work that is listed there was made by Pieter Codde and shows the Francken family on the beach at Scheveningen.17 Cornelia is missing, and Roelof, born in 1635, is the youngest now. The painting is undated, but given the apparent ages of the children it would be from 1638-42.18 Elisabeth and Jacob are once again depicted as remarkably close siblings. Jacob, attended by a couple of hounds, is holding up a dead hare behind his sister’s back. The panel in the Rijksmuseum is notable for its relatively strong chiaroscuro effects and the loose but deft brushwork. Both the costume and face are a little more striking and livelier than in Cuyp’s earliest portraits of 1649.19 Wheelock has suggested that in the present picture Cuyp may have been inspired by the two Dordrecht artists Ferdinand Bol and Paulus Lesire and their paintings of the 1640s ‘in which sitters are similarly modelled in strong light and dressed in exotic costumes’.20 The young man, who is shown half-length turned one quarter to the right, is wearing a black doublet with the sleeves slashed and edged with gold braid, an ornate small collar, a white, gold-fringed neckerchief, and a bonnet decorated with two ostrich plumes. He is holding the barrel of a gun in his left hand. The woman in the presumed companion piece is dressed equally sumptuously. She is holding the game: a pair of songbirds tied together with willow twigs. Hunting is often associated with love and courtship in emblems and pastoral poetry, which is why Wheelock thought that the pendants must have been made to mark a marriage or betrothal,21 but in fact these are probably a brother and sister who were fond of hunting, as illustrated by Codde’s family portrait. Be that as it may, the pictures testify to the aristocratic pretensions of the Franckens, who owned the Hoeckenburg country estate on the Haagse Trekvliet near Voorburg. Erlend de Groot, 2022 See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements