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.
