Portrait of Cornelis Pietersz Hooft (1546-1626), Cornelis van der Voort, 1622 – (Cornelis Van Der Voort) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Cornelis Van Der Voort

Date: 1622

Size: 122 x 89 cm

Technique: Oil On Panel

Cornelis Pietersz Hooft first became a member of the Amsterdam city council in 1584. He was a burgomaster on no fewer than 12 occasions between 1588 and 1610, four of them as first burgomaster. Today he is mainly known for his memoranda and opinions, which were published in two volumes in 1871 and 1925. The famous poet Pieter Cornelisz Hooft (1581-1647) was his son.3 Hooft is shown seated in this three-quarter length, which is a fitting pose for someone aged 76.4 He is wearing a black, fur-lined tabbaard and a skull-cap. In 1972 this painting was given on loan to the Amsterdams Historisch Museum, where it was reunited with its companion piece, the portrait of Hooft’s wife Anna Jacobsdr Blaeu, which the Amsterdams Historisch Museum had bought in 1965.5 Like its pendant, Hooft’s portrait was dated 1622, but for some unknown reason the first ‘2’ (which is still faintly visible) was changed into a ‘4’, which would make it a posthumous portrait. The painting, which Hofstede de Groot called ‘solid but with a smooth technique and not very individual’ (‘solied maar glad van techniek en weinig individueel’), has been sold as a work by the Delft portraitist Willem van der Vliet in the past,6 but after its acquisition by the Rijksmuseum it was rightly attributed to Cornelis van der Voort. There are prints with Hooft’s portrait by Jacob Houbraken (1698-1780) and Reinier Vinkeles (1741-1816). According to the inscription on the print by Houbraken, which is of a detail from the composition of the Rijksmuseum panel, the original painting then belonged to the widow of the magistrate Cornelis Hulst. It is not clear whether that was the work now in the Rijksmuseum or another version, for several copies have been documented.7 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. 324.