ATTRIBUTED TO FRANZ KESSLER | PORTRAIT OF JOHANN VON BODECK (1589-1650); PORTRAIT OF SUSANNA VAN UFFELEN (B. 1593)

Family van Reede van ter Aa, Utrecht;

Thence by descent to Jonkheer and Mrs van Heemskerck van Beest-Baroness van Reede van ter Aa, The Hague, by 1928;

Thence by descent.

Possibly Gothaisches genealogisches Taschenbuch der freiherrlichen Häuser aus das Jahr 1857, Gotha 1857, p. 59;

W.W. van Valkenburg, 'De voorouders van Z.K.H. Claus prins der Nederlanden', in De Nederlandsche Leeuw. Maandblad van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Genootschap voor Geslacht- en Wapenkunde, no. 2/3, February/March 1966, pp. 45 and 48, nos 4732=4796 and 4733=4797, reproduced pp. 45-46 (as ancestors of Prince Claus of the Netherlands).

Franz Kessler was a student of Gortzius Geldorp and spent most of his career in Cologne, where he made a living painting portraits of the wealthy citizens of Cologne and neighboring cities. Many of Kessler's portraits date to the 1620s, and, like the present, are usually dated and inscribed with the sitter's age and occasionally with the monogram or shield of the sitter's family.

An ancestor of Prince Claus of the Netherlands, Johann von Bodeck, came from a wealthy merchant family located in Frankfurt-am-Main and Lubeck. They traded on the Levant and provided financial loans to local cities and governments as well. In 1617 he married Susanna van Uffelen, a daughter of a prosperous German-Dutch trading family originally from Hamburg; the Van Uffelen family traded in commodities such as indigo, cinnamon and ginger, especially from the Iberian peninsula and were well-travelled. These portraits, one of which is dated 1617, were probably commissioned following the couple's marriage, which took place in that same year in Utrecht.