Amorous Couple

Jacob van Loo's Amorous Couple carries no date, and his signature at lower right, I. V. Loo, has worn thin. The picture's known history starts at an Amsterdam auction in 1763, where it sold for 26 guilders.

By 1939 it belonged to Alfons Jaffé, a Jewish collector from Berlin who was then living in London. He had lent his paintings to De Lakenhal, the municipal museum in Leiden, trusting that they would be safe in the neutral Netherlands. After the German occupation the collection was confiscated in 1941, and this canvas was set aside for the museum Hitler planned for Linz, the Austrian city where he had grown up.

It was recovered after the war, and in 1950, a year after Jaffé's death, it went back to the family, to Mrs H. Jaffé in London. The Mauritshuis bought it from her that same year, and since 2010 the museum has hung it in its Gallery Prince Willem V in The Hague.