Portrait of Cornelis ten Hove (1658-1694)

On 24 February 1682 Cornelis ten Hove married Catharina Dierquens in Haarlem, and Maes painted the couple as a pair to mark it, his portrait hanging on the left and hers on the right. He was 23 and already well placed. His mother was a half-sister of Gaspar Fagel, the grand pensionary, the leading official of the province of Holland, and his elder brother Michiel was pensionary of Haarlem, the city where the wedding took place. Since 1679 Cornelis had held a post at the Amsterdam Admiralty, collecting the duties on convoys and trade licences.

Maes shows him leaning on a carved stone fragment in a park, a loose blue robe thrown over a brown silk coat and a lace cravat. The museum singles out the blue. Ten Hove went on to become secretary of the Generality's audit chamber and a director of the West India Company, and he died in The Hague in 1694, at 35.