Portrait of a Man, probably Pieter Anthonisz van Bronckhorst (1588-1661), Anthonie Palamedesz, 1652 – (Palamedesz Anthonie (Stevaerts)) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Palamedesz Anthonie (Stevaerts)

Date: 1652

Size: 82 x 67 cm

Technique: Oil On Canvas

In contrast to his innovative group portraits, in which families are depicted in a genre-like setting, Palamedesz’s individual portraits of the 1640s and 50s are mostly traditional and standardized.4 That is also the case with these companion pieces from 1652, in which the sitters are shown half-length in conventional poses against an undefined grey background. The 64-year-old couple was identified in 1903 by the Zeeland archivist P.D. de Vos as the Zierikzee burgomaster Pieter de Witte and (shown here) his wife Caecilia van Beresteyn (see SK-A-1616).5 De Vos’s identification was generally accepted,6 and in the 20th century the paintings were copied by Willem Karel van Rees (1880-1962), who added the De Witte and Van Beresteyn coats of arms in the corners at the top.7 However, recent research has shown this identification to be untenable. Caecilia van Beresteyn was born on 8 February 1589, so she was not yet 64 in 1652, and her features as depicted in two earlier portraits by Michiel van Mierevelt do not resemble those of the woman in this painting.8 Ekkart discovered that the portraits discussed here belonged to a group of at least eight painted by Palamedesz that were hanging in Moermont Castle, Renesse, in Zeeland in the 19th century. He also made a plausible case for them being of members of the families of the Delft merchant Anthonij van Bronckhorst and his wife Helena Stavenisse, who came from Zierikzee. The genealogical trees of both families enabled Ekkart to identify the 64-year-old couple in the Rijksmuseum paintings as very probably being the parents of Anthonij van Bronckhorst: Pieter Anthonisz van Bronckhorst and his wife Jacobmina de Grebber.9 Pieter Anthonisz van Bronckhorst was a Delft painter of history and architecture pieces. He married Jacobmina de Grebber, the daughter of the well-known silversmith Nicolaes de Grebber, in 1614. The couple had been married 38 years when Palamedesz executed these portraits in 1652. It is likely that other members of the family also sat to the artist on that occasion. Ekkart has suggested that a third portrait of 1652 with the same provenance may be that of their daughter Anna van Bronckhorst, who was born in 1628.10 The portraits probably arrived at Moermont Castle in or after 1827, when it was bought by the widow of one of Pieter Anthonisz’s descendants.11 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. 228.