Sara Wolphaerts Van Diemen
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''Portrait of Sara Wolphaerts van Diemen'' is an oil-on-canvas painting by the
Dutch Golden Age painter Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history roughly spanning the 17th century, during and after the later part of the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) for Dutch independence. The new Dutch Repub ...
Frans Hals Frans Hals the Elder (, , ; – 26 August 1666) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, chiefly of individual and group portraits and of genre works, who lived and worked in Haarlem. Hals played an important role in the evolution of 17th-century group ...
, painted around 1630–1633 and now in the
Rijksmuseum The Rijksmuseum () is the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch arts and history and is located in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough of Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the St ...
, in
Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...
. It is considered a pendant to the portrait of Sara's husband Nicolaes Hasselaer.


Life

Sara Wolphaerts van Diemen was baptized in
Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...
on 6 April 1593 as the daughter of Gerrit Wolphaerts van Diemen and Anna Fabry.De Vroedschap van Amsterdam, 1578-1795
by
Johan Engelbert Elias Johan Engelbert Elias (18 August 1875 – 1 August 1959) was a Dutch historian known mostly for his important work on the history of Amsterdam's regency ("Vroedschap van Amsterdam"). Biography He was born on a canal house on the Keizersgracht ...
Her parents had 9 children and Sara had several brothers and sisters who married into the Amsterdam regency, such as Christina who married Nicolas Balestel, and Anna who married Albert Coenraetsz Burgh. Anna's daughter later married the mayor
Nicolaes Tulp Nicolaes Tulp (9 October 1593 – 12 September 1674) was a Dutch surgeon and mayor of Amsterdam. Tulp was well known for his upstanding moral character and as the subject of Rembrandt's famous painting ''The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp'' ...
. Sara became engaged to the wealthy widower Nicolaes Hasselaer, who lived on the
Keizersgracht The Keizersgracht (; "Emperor's canal") is a canal in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It is the second of the three main Amsterdam canals that together form the Grachtengordel, or canal belt, and lies between the inner Herengracht and outer Prinsengr ...
, on 14 August 1622. He had first married Geertruyt van Erp (1596-1620) and had a son Gerrit by her. She probably died in childbirth. Sara raised Gerrit to be a mayor of Amsterdam and she also had three daughters, of whom Anna married Marten Ruychaver van Loon and later Pieter van Dam, and Geertruid married Cornelis van Werckhoven. Sara outlived her husband by 35 years and died in Amsterdam on 1 May 1667.


Hals portrait

Sara's portrait was probably painted on the occasion of her marriage to Claes in 1622, aged 29. Similar to Hals' other wedding portraits of women, she is wearing a richly embroidered stomacher. Her dress is the height of fashion and shows a moment when flat collars and wide millstone collars were worn together. She wears her hair rolled in front of a winged diadem cap that is edged with lace trim. Her portrait doesn't seem to match up as well to its pendant as other Hals's wedding pendants, and it is possible that the portrait of Nicolaes was painted on the occasion of his first marriage. Her portrait was documented by
Hofstede de Groot Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (9 November 1863 – 14 April 1930), was a Dutch art collector, art historian and museum curator. Life He was born in Dwingeloo and spent some time in Switzerland in his youth due to weak lungs, where he learned Germa ...
in 1910, who wrote:
187. BRECHTJE VAN SCHOOTERBOSCH (probably), wife of Dirk Pietersz Hasselaer. M. 43. Half-length. She is seen almost in full face, but slightly inclined to the left. She looks at the spectator. She wears a lace cap and a very broad ruff on a very rich dress. The hands are not shown. The picture seems to be unfinished. In the Rijksmuseum catalogue the sitter is identified as Geertruyt van Erp (1596–1620). If this is correct the date of her death must be wrongly given. ee 186, of which this is the pendant.Canvas, 32 inches by 26 1/2 inches. Presented to the Rijksmuseum in 1885 by J. S. R. van de Poll. In the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1907 catalogue, No. 1090.
Hofstede de Groot correctly rejected it as a portrait of Nicolaes's first wife, but he went even further and stated that Nicolaes' portrait was actually of his older brother Dirk, thus labelling this one the name of Dirk's wife Brechtje. In 1974
Seymour Slive Seymour Slive (September 15, 1920 – June 14, 2014) was an American art historian, who served as director of the Harvard Art Museums from 1975 to 1984. Slive was a scholar of Dutch art, specifically of the artists Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Ja ...
listed these as pendants and remarked on Nicolaes' unusual relaxed pose leaning over the back of a chair, and that Sara's headress was similar to that of women in the 1630s, including others by Hals.Frans Hals, by Seymour Slive, 1974 a catalog raisonné of Hals works by Seymour Slive: Volume Three, the catalogue, National gallery of Art: Kress Foundation, Studies in the History of European Art, London - Phaidon Press, 1974 on Portrait of a Woman; catalog number 86 & 87, page 52


Wedding pendant

File:Frans Hals - Nicolaes Hasselaer - WGA11104.jpg File:Frans Hals 028.jpg


Similar lace caps by Hals

File:Frans Hals - Portrait of a woman in an octagonal frame - Stuttgart.jpg File:Frans Hals 097 WGA version.jpg File:Frans Hals - Portrait of a Woman Holding a Fan - WGA11135.jpg


See also

*
List of paintings by Frans Hals The following is an incomplete list of paintings by Frans Hals that are generally accepted as autograph by the Frans Hals Museum and other sources. The list is more or less in order of creation, starting from around 1610 when Frans Hals began pai ...


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Portrait of Sara Wolphaerts van Diemen 1630s paintings
van Diemen Van Diemen International, Ltd. was a British race car manufacturer based in Snetterton, Norfolk, United Kingdom. The company had a reputation for high-volume production runs of its cars, the most well-known of which is its series of Formula For ...
Paintings in the Rijksmuseum
van Diemen Van Diemen International, Ltd. was a British race car manufacturer based in Snetterton, Norfolk, United Kingdom. The company had a reputation for high-volume production runs of its cars, the most well-known of which is its series of Formula For ...