Minneapolis Institute of Art

Portrait of Catharina van Voorst

Paulus Moreelse

Date

1628

Medium

Oil on panel

Department

European Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Catharina van Voorst (1595–1650), Lucas’s wife and cousin, wears sumptuous attire, including a fine pleated ruff and gold thread embellishments. Her carefully depicted jewels were probably made by her husband. She bore nine children, seven of whom survived to maturity. Two sons followed their father into his profession of goldsmith and jeweler. The portraits of Catharina and Lucas remained in the van Voorst family until 1968. Sometime during those 340 years, the oak panels were reduced in height by about eight inches—mostly at the bottom. Originally, this painting showed all of Catharina’s white feather fan. And what a fan it must have been: inserted into a gold handle and hung from a thick gold chain, the feathers were likely expensive imports from the Netherlands' vast trade empire. Europe

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