Lot 983 | Portrait of Catharina van der Voort

MIERIS, WILLEM VAN
Leiden 1662 - 1747

Title: Portrait of Catharina van der Voort.
Technique: Oil on wood.
Measurement: 50,5 x 40cm.
Frame/Pedestal: Framed.
Verso:
On the panel old details of the portrayed woman.

Literature:
O. Naumann: Frans van Mieris (1635-1681) the Elder, Davaco 1981, p. 180f, no. C 174.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

The painting is documented in the database of the RKD, The Hague, under the ill. no. 14436.

Catharina van der Voort (1622-74) was the second wife of Pieter de la Court, a well-known businessman and philosopher from Leiden.
De la Court, who was a close friend of the politician Johan de Witt, first married his sister-in-law Elisabeth Tollenaar in 1657 and then Catharina in 1661, who came from a wealthy Amsterdam merchant family and was related to Johan de Witt. The couple had two children, Magdalena and Pieter, and moved to Amsterdam in 1665.
There are several portraits of Pieter de la Court and Catharina van der Voort, both as a single figure and as a group, the most famous of which is the large double portrait by Ferdinand Bol of 1661 (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp). In 1667, husband and wife were portrayed again, but this time separately, by Abraham van den Tempel (the two portraits are in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). The portrait of Catharina van der Voort is particularly distinguished by the glitter of the precious fabrics and the rich, delicate polychromy.
The two portraits by van de Tempel went to Pieter de la Court's daughter Magdalena in 1685, after his death. In the same year, her brother Pieter de la Court van der Voort had copies of these portraits made by Willem van Mieris (for three hundred guilders each) in order to exchange them with his sister for her originals.
The portrait of Pieter de la Court is still in Amsterdam today, in a private collection, while the portrait of Catharina van der Voort, which is the present painting, has been in a private collection in Germany for several decades.

We are grateful to Nadja Garthoff, RKD, The Hague, for confirming the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a high-resolution digital photograph.