Pieter Codde

Painted circa 1635, this elegant family portrait depicts eleven people in a partially open, terraced interior. In the clouds’ pinkish hue, Codde achieves a crepuscular effect by making optimal use of the paint’s transparency on the wood panel. The central male figure in black, undoubtedly the pater familias, looks directly at the viewer. Seated to his left, his wife similarly addresses the spectator with her gaze. She wears a lavish black gown with a millstone collar, a gold bracelet around her left wrist, and a delicate cap from which two pearls hang. Their two children are pictured beside them: the young girl clings to her mother’s skirt and the boy imitates his father’s pose.

In this image, Codde unusually combines two distinct genres: the family portrait and the merry company genre scene. The inclusion of the remaining figures, whose lack of physiognomic precision makes their identities difficult to ascertain, reveals the artist’s innovative approach to the commission. Rather than kinsfolk, these generic characters and stock figures populate the artist’s genre scenes. The lady in pale blue silk with her back to the viewer, for example, features in several of Codde’s Merry Companies, including the Merry Company with Masked Dancers, dated 1636 (Mauritshuis) and Merry Company Making Music dated 1631 (Bristol City Museum and Gallery). ¹ The man in the right corner, looking down at the woman seated below, similarly reappears within the artist’s oeuvre.

We are grateful to Fred G. Meijer for his assistance cataloguing this lot and suggesting a date in the mid to late 1630s.

¹ The Hague, Mauritshuis Museum, inv. no. 392, oil on canvas, 50 by 76.5 cm; Bristol, Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, inv. no. BAG 46233. oil on panel, 49.5 by 64.1 cm.