After Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt
The story
Portraits owned by the Mauritshuis in The Hague carry the label "after Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt". One shows Maurits, Prince of Orange, in armour. Another shows the preacher Johannes Wtenbogaert in a black skullcap and a wide ruff. They are copies by unknown hands of likenesses that Mierevelt, the Delft portraitist of the Orange princes, had first painted from life.
A copy like this was how a face got around in the 1600s. A town hall, an admirer or a church community that wanted the prince or its minister on the wall ordered a version of the approved image, and such versions went on being made long after sitter and painter had died. No one can say when these two were painted, or by whom. The Wtenbogaert panel was bought in 1803 for the Dutch national art gallery, then newly founded in The Hague, and the Maurits canvas came as an anonymous gift in 1819.
