安娜·范德阿尔肖像

This little panel was made in 1626 for a Leiden household that lived by the printing press. Anna van der Aar was married to Petrus Scriverius, a scholar who published editions of Roman authors and early chronicles of Holland, and Hals painted the two of them as a pair, each head in an oval set inside a painted frame. That oval was the standard look of a scholar's engraved portrait at the time, and the resemblance was practical. Scriverius alone had his likeness cut in copper the same year by the engraver Jan van de Velde, and impressions went out to learned correspondents across Europe. Her panel is barely bigger than a hand, about 22 centimetres tall, and an inscription on it gives her age as 50.