Artist: Pieter Cornelisz Van Egmondt
Date: 1655
Size: 30 x 26 cm
Technique: Oil On Panel
This small panel shows a man looking out of a stone window embrasure who holds a print of Neptune and Amphitrite.3 Behind him is an easel. The composition with the arched window is a typical device of Leiden artists,4 but until recently there was no information on who depicted the figure.5 In 1990 Meijer succeeded in attributing this and other paintings to the Leiden-born Pieter van Egmondt, who had only been known shortly prior to that by the mentions in old inventories and auction catalogues.6 Van Egmondt’s signature was spotted on two pictures, one of which is closely related to the Rijksmuseum work.7 In addition, Meijer found several comparable compositions, all of them with a man posing in a window, either with musical instruments or painter’s attributes.8 The fact that all of them show the same figure, with his narrow chin and downy little moustache, makes it likely that he is the artist himself.9 None of the paintings currently attributed to Van Egmondt bear the year of execution.10 The dendrochronology of the Rijksmuseum panel indicates that it was most probably ready for use by 1642. Compared to similar pictures from his hand, it is a relatively simple scene in which the illusionistic potential of the window is barely explored at all, which suggests that it is an early venture into the genre. Some clue to the dating is provided by the oeuvre of Gerrit Dou, whose compositions seem to have inspired Van Egmondt’s. The present work is most closely related to Dou’s Man Smoking a Pipe at a Window in the Rijksmuseum,11 which includes a similar stone embrasure and an easel in the background. Since this is generally assigned to shortly after the middle of the seventeenth century it argues for placing Van Egmondt’s picture around then as well.12 It is not clear whether Van Egmondt’s paintings of this type should be regarded as self-portraits or whether he recorded his features so often because he did not have any other model. It is equally puzzling why he is holding the framed print mounted on rollers here so pointedly and as his own attribute. The added red threads on the left and right edges indicate that is on a textile support, probably silk or satin.13 It is a tempting but unfortunately unprovable idea that the artist, who came from a family of silk merchants, had something to do with the manufacture or sale of prints on fabric. Gerdien Wuestman, 2022 See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
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