Portrait of a Man and Portrait of a Woman

portrait

Of the numerous individual likenesses of worthy sitters, most were intended to be seen with a "pendant," another portrait that represented the person's spouse. Pendants of married couples were the bread and butter of portrait painters such as Verspronck. This pair of well-executed portraits of an unidentified couple is characteristic of the voluminous genre, which did not change significantly over the first three quarters of the seventeenth century, except at the hands of innovative portraitists such as Rembrandt.

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Portrait of a Man and Portrait of a Woman

About the Artist

Jan Cornelisz Verspronck

1603 – 1662

Dutch portrait painter noted for his portraits of children. He was trained in the studio of his father, Cornelis Engelsz., who painted portraits, kitchen still lifes and genre scenes. He joined the guild of St Luke in 1632 and spent his entire life as a portrait painter of his fellow townsmen. He was more than twenty years younger than Frans Hals and may have worked in his studio. He was certainly powerfully influenced by Hals's style. His most imposing works are the two group portraits of 1641 and 1642 of the Regentesses of the St Elizabeth Hospital which form a counterpart to the portrait of the Regents of the same institution painted by Hals in the same years. All three paintings hang today in the Frans Halsmuseum in Haarlem.

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