Portrait of Cornelia Claesdr Vooght

Cornelia Claesdr Vooght was the wife of Nicolaes van der Meer, a brewer who became one of the burgomasters of Haarlem, and in 1631 the couple sat to the city's most sought-after portraitist. Hals painted them as a pair. Her husband's likeness hangs on the left, hers on the right, and the plain wall behind them runs on from one panel into the other, so the two are really one room split in half. Haarlem's fortunes were built on beer, and a brewer's wife dressed in this much black silk and stiff white lace was showing exactly where that money sat. There is a hidden detail X-rays have since turned up. Both faces were painted directly over other, earlier portraits on the same panels. Nobody has explained why the pictures were reused.