Porträt des Jacob van Hoorn und seiner Frau Jacoba Selstede, 1735 – 1740

About the Work

This drawing is one of the few portraits among the eighteenth- century Dutch drawings in the Städel Museum. It depicts the hundred-year-old Amsterdam wine merchant Jacob van Hoorn and his fourth wife, the twenty-seven-year-old Jacoba van Selstede. Possibly executed as a work in its own right – rather than as a design for a print, for example – the drawing was presumably not intended solely as a likeness of a certain individual. The spry old fellow points to a frugal meal of herring, and thus to moderation as the key to longevity.