Johan de la Rocquette

In 1668 Philippus Baldaeus, home after years as a minister of the Dutch East India Company on Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, had a large double portrait painted to mark that service. He sits in clothes he brought back from Asia, with three dogs at his feet. Beside him is most likely Gerrit Mosopatam, a man from Ceylon who lived with him in the Netherlands and probably helped him translate Christian texts. Baldaeus died three years later, and his account of Ceylon and southern India was published in 1672.

The canvas is signed by Johan de la Rocquette, a painter about whom very little is known, and even his dates are uncertain. He was born around 1640 and appears in 1658 in the records of Pictura, the painters' society of The Hague, as an apprentice of the painter Martinus Lengele. By 1681 he was a member in his own right, though he seems to have given more time to his rank as an army captain than to painting. The last record of him dates from 1694, when he rented a house outside The Hague.