Johannes Mytens

In 1652 Jan Mijtens painted the family of Willem van den Kerckhoven, a counsellor to Amalia van Solms, the widow of Stadholder Frederik Hendrik. Husband and wife sit at the foot of a tree in an imagined landscape with their living children around them, and five small angels float in the sky above. They are the children the couple had already lost. Three years later another son, Pellegrom, was born, and Mijtens came back to the canvas to paint him in beside his father's knee. That is why the picture, now in the Hague Historical Museum, carries two dates, 1652 and 1655.

Mijtens was born in The Hague around 1614 into a family of painters. His uncle Daniël Mijtens had been court portraitist to Charles I in London. Jan made his whole career at home, painting the Hague elite, the courtiers, officers and relatives of the House of Orange, in silk and satin. In 1656 he was among the painters who broke away from the local Guild of St Luke to found their own society, the Confrerie Pictura. He died in The Hague in December 1670.