Double Portrait of Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) and Suzanna van Baerle (1599-1637)

Around 1635 Constantijn Huygens was secretary to the Prince of Orange, a poet and a composer, and he had been married to Suzanna van Baerle for eight years. In Holland a married couple usually had their portraits painted on two separate panels, one for each. Here they share a single canvas.

He sits in strict profile, dressed in black. She leans in behind his shoulder and looks straight out at us, and together they hold a sheet of music, a sign of the harmony in their marriage. When he was courting her, Huygens wrote sonnets to her as Sterre, his star.

The painter was a friend of both. The couple were building a house on the Plein in The Hague, next to the plot where Van Campen was designing a house for their friend Count Johan Maurits. Suzanna died in May 1637, soon after the birth of their fifth child. Huygens lived another 50 years and never remarried.