True identity discovered of couple portrayed by Frans Hals, Rijksmuseum says

The Rijksmuseum says it has discovered the true identity of a couple painted by Frans Hals around 1637. The so-called wedding pendants of the Dutch painter and two matching paintings appear to depict the 17th-century Amsterdam mayor Jan van de Poll and his wife Duifje van Gerwen.

For decades, it was thought that there were two other Amsterdammers, namely Nicolaes Hasselaer, brewer and major of the militia, and his wife, Sara Wolphaerts van Diemen. But Rijksmuseum curator Jonathan Bikker recently concluded, based on the wills of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, that that assumption was incorrect. According to the Rijksmuseum, the portraits would "impossibly fit into the line of inheritance."

Van de Poll and his wife are the direct ancestors of the person who donated the two portraits of Hals to the Amsterdam museum in 1885. Bikker compared Hals' work with two earlier portraits depicting Van de Poll. Partly based on this, he now concludes that the Amsterdam former director has been immortalized on Hals' canvas.

Previously, the link with Haarlem, where Hals lived and worked, was missing, but the Rijksmuseum also has an explanation for this. Willem Warmond, the uncle of Van de Poll's wife Duifje, previously appeared in a Haarlem militia piece by Hals. The museum suspects that the recommendation to have the Haarlem painter paint the wedding pendants came from him.

Van de Poll and his wife are said to have traveled to Haarlem, especially because of this. According to the Rijksmuseum, the two portraits are the only wedding counterparts of an Amsterdam couple that Hals painted.