Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck

Haarlem in the 1630s offered two ways to have your portrait painted. Frans Hals, the town's famous portraitist, gave you loose, fast brushwork and a face caught in mid-thought. Johannes Verspronck, some 20 years younger, gave you something calmer, smooth and exact, with every pleat of lace and every link of a gold chain set down with care.

Verspronck learned the trade from his father, Cornelis Engelsz, a painter from Gouda, and he may also have spent time in Hals's studio, because his early sitters borrow Hals's relaxed poses. He joined the Haarlem painters' guild in 1632 and found many of his clients among the town's Catholic families. In 1642 he won the commission for a group portrait of the regentesses of the Holy Ghost House, the women who governed one of Haarlem's richest charities.

He never married. He lived on in his parents' house with an unmarried brother and sister, and the three of them later bought the house next door. About 100 of his paintings are known today, and he was buried in Haarlem on 30 June 1662.