Equestrian Portrait of Pieter de Roovere (1602-1652)

In the Dutch Republic a village lordship was property, inherited or bought like land. Pieter de Roovere, from Dordrecht, succeeded his father as lord of Hardinxveld in 1640, the same year he became bailiff of South Holland, and around 1650 he had Aelbert Cuyp paint him in that role. He sits high on his horse in a fur-trimmed Polish costume, a feather in his fur hat, pointing his whip at a salmon a fisherman holds up to him. Behind them De Roovere's men haul in their nets. Salmon from the river was what Hardinxveld lived on. Cuyp set the viewpoint low, so the lord towers over us, and left a strip of light along the horizon under a dark sky. The canvas was still in Dordrecht in 1820, when the royal picture gallery in The Hague bought it.