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Lot Essay
Best known for his revolutionary contributions to Northern landscape painting as the father of the Dutch Italianates, Cornelis van Poelenburgh also excelled in painting portraits such as this enchanting likeness of Susanna van Collen (1606-1637). Delicately rendered, the portrait is bathed in the Italian-inspired luminescence that defines Poelenburgh's work from the early 1630s. The painter began working in this genre with great success following his return to Utrecht from Italy in 1627, creating for many of his wealthiest and most important patrons small-scale portraits, usually painted on panel or copper supports.
Schaefer (loc. cit.) dates the present portrait to the eight to ten years following the artist's return from Italy, a theory supported by comparison with a pair of small oval portraits, also by Poelenburgh, in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. These depict Susanna and her husband, Jan Pellicorne (1597-after 1653), as an Arcadian shepherd and shepherdess according to the fashion of the time, and were commissioned by the sitters to commemorate their marriage in 1626. Both Susanna and her husband came from wealthy, well-connected merchant families. They lived in Amsterdam, where Jan ran a firm together with members of his wife's family. In the Walters painting, Susanna appears in the same pose as in the present portrait, but without a visible hand. Two additional portraits of Jan and Susanna, painted in 1633/4 by Rembrandt (or a member of his studio) in the Wallace Collection, London, provide a terminus ante quem for the present work, as Susanna appears somewhat older.
Schaefer (loc. cit.) dates the present portrait to the eight to ten years following the artist's return from Italy, a theory supported by comparison with a pair of small oval portraits, also by Poelenburgh, in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. These depict Susanna and her husband, Jan Pellicorne (1597-after 1653), as an Arcadian shepherd and shepherdess according to the fashion of the time, and were commissioned by the sitters to commemorate their marriage in 1626. Both Susanna and her husband came from wealthy, well-connected merchant families. They lived in Amsterdam, where Jan ran a firm together with members of his wife's family. In the Walters painting, Susanna appears in the same pose as in the present portrait, but without a visible hand. Two additional portraits of Jan and Susanna, painted in 1633/4 by Rembrandt (or a member of his studio) in the Wallace Collection, London, provide a terminus ante quem for the present work, as Susanna appears somewhat older.