Portrait of Jan van der Haer (1609-1665), half-length, in a black silk doublet with cutwork, edged with black lace; and Portrait of Levina Ockers (1607-1678), half-length, in a black dress with a double layered lace-trimmed ruff and jewelled collar

As his father (lot 54) and grandfather, Jan van der Haer, second son of his namesake and Maria van Kinschot, held many important public positions. He was a counselor at the court of Holland, and in 1633 became First Secretary to the Audit Office of Holland. One year earlier he had married Levina Ockers in Zierikzee, daughter of Ocker Janse the Younger (1547-1618), a cloth merchant from Zierikzee, and Maria Gijsbertsdr de Wijse (1566-1628) from Tholen. The couple had ten children. In 1647 they inherited the estate of Honthof near Naaldwijk and in 1664 they bought the estate Noordervliet in Voorburg.

For the portraits of Jan and Levina, Van Mierevelt adopted the same formula as he had used for the portraits of Jan's parents. Both sitters are represented as bust-pieces against a neutral background. Jan van der Haer wears a black silk doublet with cutwork, edged with narrow strips of black lace. The decorative bows on his waistline serve to fix the sitter's trousers. His flat, broad collar is edged with lace. Jan wears his hair long, a fashion adopted at the time by young men. Levina Ockers is dressed as fashionably as her husband. Her dress has a raised waistline, decorated with a rosette, reappearing at her sleeves that are slit and bound together with a ribbon at elbow height. Through the slits, a shimmering white underdress is only just visible. The showpiece however is her broad, double layered and lace-trimmed ruff, that reaches from shoulder to shoulder. A jeweled collar, fastened to a brooch, completes her attire.

The face of Jan and his hair are executed with spontaneous strokes of the brush and the lace trimming of his collar is even partly executed wet in wet. The pattern was scratched with the back of the brush in the wet paint. This scratching is also applied in Levina's ruff, and adds to the lively expression of the portraits. The technique can only be seen in Van Mierevelt's later portraits, in which the collaboration of his grandson Jacob Delff II (1619 - 1661) is suspected. 1 It stands to reason to suppose that it was Delff who used the scratching technique. The portrait of Levina is the only picture of which the panel shows the tongue and groove joint, characteristic for panels used by Van Mierevelt.

We are grateful to Anita Jansen of the Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft, for confirming the attribution after inspection of the original paintings on 14 February 2013, and for pointing out the characteristics of the artist.


1 See: R. Ekkart, A. Jansen et al., De portretfabriek van Michiel van Mierevelt (1566 -1641), exh. cat., Delft (Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof), 2011-2012, p. 218, note 2.