Portrait of Maria Pietersdr Olycan

This portrait was painted for a wedding. In the summer of 1638 Maria Pietersdr Olycan, the daughter of one of Haarlem's richest brewing families, married Captain Andries van Hoorn, and Frans Hals produced a matching pair of portraits for the occasion, she on one canvas and her new husband on another. Her clothes are the whole point of the display. The stiff millstone ruff of her parents' generation has given way to layers of fine lace over sheer linen, gathered at the front with a brooch, all of it announcing exactly how much money the family had. Hals painted her in Haarlem. Both portraits now hang far from it, in the Sao Paulo Museum of Art in Brazil.