9 02 ‘ 2022   museomag 
FINE ARTS 
tion to the man’s portrait, an accompanying woman’s 
portrait was kept in Zypendaal Castle, the effigy of a 
wife portrayed by the same painter at the same time. 
That portrait, too, was provided with a family crest 
and documented with provenance data that 
made identification possible. The documentation 
of Zypendaal Castle mentioned for both paintings: 
„This work is a copy of an older painting“. 
Commissioning painted copies after original portraits 
was a well-known phenomenon in distinguished, child- 
rich families. The portraits of father and mother usually 
passed to the eldest son, along with the other family 
portraits that (just like our family photos now) never 
formed part of an art collection and were therefore 
rarely, if ever, sold or disposed of as art. If there were 
other children who liked to have a portrait of father 
and mother (or grandpa and grandma) in the house, 
they would have a copy painted. As time went by and 
not all descendants knew who the depicted family 
members were, it became more important to add 
names or coats of arms. The latter also had a func- 
tion in families with noble aspirations, who wanted to 
emphasize the importance of their family history with 
a so-called ‘Ahnengalerie’ (Portrait gallery of ancestors) 
and use it as an argument for the said aspirations. 
A PERSONAL FRIEND OF CHARLES V 
THE EMPEROR 
Further research in the Central Bureau for Genealogy 
in The Hague, on the basis of the family coats of 
arms and data from the Zypendaal documentation, 
confirmed that the portrayed man and woman are Mr. 
Adriaen Dircksz van Leyden (c. 1510/20-1562), baron of 
the Holy Roman Empire and his wife, Maria Gerritsdr 
van Leyden, née van Loo (1524/25-1562). Adriaen 
van Leyden belonged to one of the most prosperous 
and ambitious families in the Northern Netherlands. 
The Van Leydens bought castles and estates that 
suited the status they were after, and they accumulated 
important political offices in municipal governments. 
Adriaen, for instance, was secretary and pensionary 
of the wealthy merchant city of Delft. He had friends 
in high circles, up to the Emperor of the Holy Roman 
Empire, Charles V, with whom he was apparently a 
personal friend. Shortly after Charles V became lord of 
Detail from portrait of Maria van Leyden, c. 1560.