Portrait of Diederick Hoeufft (1648-1719)

The sitter was a nephew of Johan de Witt, the statesman who led the Dutch Republic for almost 20 years. His mother, Maria, was de Witt's elder sister. In August 1672 Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis were killed by a mob in The Hague, on the Buitenhof outside the prison gate, a few steps from the building where this portrait now hangs. Diederick Hoeufft, from a leading family of Dordrecht, was 24 that summer. Around 1680 Schalcken painted him on a small sheet of copper, with a matching portrait of Isabella Agneta Deutz, the young Amsterdam woman he married that year. The pair probably stayed with the family until 1907, when a bequest brought them to the Mauritshuis, which owns them. They hang in the Gallery Prince Willem V, on that same square. Hoeufft outlived his wife by some 25 years and died in Utrecht in 1719.