Portrait of Sophia Coymans (1636-1714), three-quarter-length, holding a twig with an orange, before a landscape

Having descended from the family of the sitter since its commission around 1660, this beautifully preserved portrait has never before appeared on the market. Though exhibited in 1879 and 1894, it remained out of public view for almost a century until it was installed in Jacob van Campen’s city hall on Amsterdam’s Dam Square (now the Royal Palace of Amsterdam), where it hung until 2000.

Bartholomeus van der Helst was the leading portrait painter in Amsterdam from the early 1640s until his death. His smooth execution, fluent brush and technical perfection in the rendering of drapery and flesh tones, combined with his ingenious sense for arranging figures, ensured that he was particularly popular among Amsterdam’s patrician class. Several generations of the Bicker, Coymans and Trip families, as well as members of the Huydecoper and Hinlopen families, all sat for the artist, ensuring a steady flow of patronage within this rarefied segment of Amsterdam society. But taste for his portraits extended beyond individual likenesses of the city’s ruling elite. In 1652, he was commissioned to paint the official portrait of Mary Henrietta Stuart, eldest daughter of Charles I of England and widow of William II of Orange Nassau, while between 1637 and 1656 he also received no fewer than eight commissions for group portraits of Amsterdam’s civic, professional and militia groups, seven of which survive today.

Sophia Coymans was born into Amsterdam’s wealthiest merchant family and, through her marriage, solidified ties with the Huydecopers, another of the city’s most powerful families. She was baptised on 3 January 1636 as one of sixteen children born to Joan Coymans (1601-1657) and Sophia Trip (1614-1679). Her father was the fourth son of Balthasar Coymans, among the most prosperous merchants and bankers in Amsterdam, and a partner in the family firm Balthasar Coymans & Broeders. Her mother was the daughter of the merchant and director of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), Elias Trip, who, with his brother-in-law Louis de Geer, operated mines and arms manufacturers in Sweden. While several other family members were portrayed by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Govert Flinck, the couple were among van der Helst’s earliest patrician patrons, having sat for him in a pair of half-length portraits in 1645 (see J. van Gent, op. cit., nos. 22 and 23). On 12 March 1656, Sophia married Joan Huydecoper van Maarsseveen II (1625-1704), the eldest son of burgomaster Joan Huydecoper van Maarsseveen I (1599-1661). Their marriage was immortalised in a pair of statuettes in the guise of Mars and Venus attributed to Rombout Verhulst (fig. 1; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum). Joan would go on to be an administrator of the Dutch East India Company in 1666 and burgomaster of Amsterdam for thirteen terms between 1673 and 1693. The couple’s marriage was one of several ties between the two families: Huydecoper’s mother was Maria Coymans, the younger sister of Sophia’s father. Their partnership produced seven children, six of whom survived to adulthood.

Sophia stands before a dusky landscape, turning to the left, her eyes firmly cast upon the viewer. With her left hand she holds a portion of her blue silk dress trimmed in gold, and in her right a twig with an orange, a symbol of fertility (the couple already had two children, Joan and Maria Eleonora, by the time Sophia sat for the artist). Costly strings of pearls can be seen around her neck and wrists, while two large pearls dangle from her ears as signs of her prodigious wealth. Coymans’ beauty was celebrated by the poet Jan Vos, a family friend of the Huydecopers, in a poem on her portrait by Jan Lievens: ‘What celestial figure shows itself to us on earth? Is it Venus? Or Minerva? Or is it Juno? No. It's three goddesses in one: she has earned the apple from the hand of Maarseveen, who won't deviate for any Paris on the banks of the Amstel river’ (for the original Dutch, see D. Mandrella, Jacob van Loo 1614-1670, Paris, 2011, p. 174).