Werner van den Valckert

In 1617 a man leans out of a painted window, holding a gold ring set with a stone in one hand and resting the other on a dark touchstone, the stone used to test the purity of gold and silver. He is probably Bartholomeus van Assendelft, a goldsmith who was appointed assay-master of the Leiden goldsmiths' guild that very year. The painter was Werner van den Valckert.

Valckert was born between about 1580 and 1585, probably in or near The Hague, and was a member of the painters' guild there. Around 1612 he made a group of etchings, which puts him among the earliest Dutch etchers, though he soon gave the medium up. About 1613 he moved to Amsterdam, where much of his known work portrays the city's institutions. In 1624 he painted the regentesses of the Amsterdam lepers' asylum with their house mother, and in 1625 a company of the civic guard under Captain Albert Burgh, later a burgomaster of the city. He also designed the title page for the 1618 edition of the Schilder-boeck, the book of artists' lives by the painter and writer Karel van Mander.

Beyond that, little is known about him. The last record of Valckert is a tax payment on his Amsterdam house in 1627, and the date of his death is uncertain.