The shared likeness between father and son is remarkable, so much so that the commission of our portrait must have been a deliberate homage to the subject’s father, whose reputation as a virtuoso organist was widely revered in Europe. Despite the portraits being painted some twenty-five years apart from one another, the family resemblance is obvious: both men have tall foreheads and the same receding hairline – Dirck having a particularly noticeable combed-over quiff – which are somewhat compensated for by similarly fashioned goatees. The sunken eye sockets both house dark brown eyes, which droop with similar wrinkles. Of course, these aged features are common of men in their early forties, the age at which both Sweelinck’s were when these portraits were painted (Dirck being documented as 40 years old and his father being 44 in his portrait). Even their simple black silk costumes are comparable; indeed, the only distinguishing feature that might date the paintings are their differing ruffs, which are contemporaneous to the dates inscribed upon each painting.

Another clue as to our sitter’s identity could be drawn from its former pendant, which depicted a woman in her seventies [Fig. 3]. The age discrepancy would suggest that the pendant depicted our subject’s mother, rather than wife, and would, thus, identify her as Claesgen Dircx Puyner (d. 1637), the wife of Jan Sweelinck and mother of Dirck. It is known that Dirck Sweelinck was a bachelor and likely lived with his mother in a house on the Koestraat that was given to his father in 1590 in lieu of a pay rise as the Oude Kerk’s organist.[1] The kerk’s organists were on daily duty and so struggled to travel beyond the city. The peak salary earned by Jan Sweelinck had been 360 guilders per year alongside his free housing; this meagre salary was subsidised by teaching but otherwise it was a modest living. [2] Dirck, who inherited the role as organist of the Oude Kerk after his father’s death in 1621, would have been compensated similarly.

Beyond some investments that Jan Sweelinck had made in the newly incorporated VOC, the family would have lived a relatively humble life, so to have been painted by the city’s most desirable portrait painter would suggest that this was a commission facilitated via their mutual acquaintance with the Oude Kerk and the widespread reverence for the Sweelinck name. Pickenoy lived near the Oude Kerk [Fig. 2], on a corner of Oudezijds Voorburgwal, and most of his ten children were likely baptised in the church.[3] Likewise, Sweelinck’s association with the Oude Kerk was deep; both his grandfather and father held the position of organist there and he, like Pickenoy, was baptised and, eventually, buried in the church. Presumably with his immediate proximity and regular attendance of the church, Pickenoy would naturally have fraternised with the Sweelincks and, thus, must have had ample opportunity to paint Dirck’s portrait.

Pickenoy, in a manneristic flare that is unusual within his oeuvre, appears to directly reference Jan Sweelinck’s 1606 portrait in this composition; the subjects are positioned with the same pose in each panel, the dimensions of which are almost identical (1606 portrait: 67 x 51.5 cm., 1631 portrait: 64.8 x 50.6 cm.). Excluding the feigned oval used in the earlier portrait, a motif more common in the early 1600s - and not a pictorial device that Pickenoy ever used – the only major compositional difference is how the subjects’ hands are gestured. Whilst Jan Sweelinck’s hands are used to emphasise the trompe l’oeil effects of the stone oval, which tricks one into thinking that his hands are protruding out of the painting, Dirck’s hands instead gesture towards himself. Jan’s gesticulation implies a more outward and engaging relationship between himself and the viewer, whilst Dirck’s appears more self-referential and delicate. Might his left hand, which is arched and pointing downward, be a reference to his profession as an organist?

Little has been recorded of Dirck Sweelinck’s life, presumably in part due to his father’s more noteworthy career, but he seems to have enjoyed a stable life as the Oude Kerk’s longstanding organist. Socially, it is known that he was an active member of De Muiderkring (The Muiden Circle), which was a group of notable intellectual and artistic figures who met every summer at Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft’s residence, Muiden Castle, just outside of Amsterdam. Constantijn Huygens (1596 – 1687), Hugo Grotius (1583 – 1645), and Maria Tesselschade Visscher (1594 – 1649) were famous participants, though it has been debated whether they all met at the castle at the same time. Dirck never married, but his legacy as a talented successor to his father was recorded in contemporary poetry by Cornelis Gijsbertsz. Plemp (1574 – 1638).

From Plemp’s In Madum, written in Amsterdam in 1638 but published for the first time in 1971 by Randall Tollefsen:

Epigram 34:

Ad Theodorum Suelingium.

Nostro, Suelingi, si delectabere cantu,

Quis Musae factum sat neget esse meae?

Tu mod claviculos, digitis, quosque arte magistra

Percutis, organicum coge sonare melos.

Janum imitare patrem cui te nec Apollo negabit,

Vincere si nequeas, O Theodore, parem.

[For Dirk Sweelinck.

If you, Sweelinck, find pleasure in my song,

who will deny that satisfaction is given to my Muse?

You, then, ensure that the keys - which you play with your fingers and masterful art –

sound a musical melody.

O Dirk, follow your father Jan, to whom - in case you cannot surpass him - Apollo shall not deny that you are equal.]

Epigram 36:

Ad Theodorum Suelingium.

Caelesti puerum Superi modulamine Christum,

Et merit Angelicis concinuere modis.

Post sex triginta sexcentos mille Decembres

Plempi terrestre est, heu, Theodore, melos.

Quod tamen, articulis cuim tu quatis organa doctis,

Aetherium Pallas murmur amica vocat.

[For Dirk Sweelinck.

The celestials serenaded the Christ Child

with a heavenly music, and justly with angelic melodies.

After 1636 Decembers [i.e. Christmasses]

the song of Plemp, alas Dirk, is worldly.

But the sound which you draw from the organ

with your able fingers the amiable Pallas calls heavenly.][4]

~

This portrait is relatively flamboyant within Pickenoy’s corpus and perhaps it is no coincidence that it is as it was painted the year in which Rembrandt arrived in Amsterdam. Pickenoy’s relatively orthodox style of realism was very much in keeping with his likely master Cornelis van der Voort (1576 – 1624), which is to say highly finessed but not as adventurous as the more pioneering generation of Dutch portraitists that followed him, including Rembrandt and Frans Hals. Pickenoy was the son of Elias Claesz. Pickenoy (1565 – 1640), an armorial mason, and Heijltje Laurens d’Jonge (1562 – 1638), who were both from Antwerp. It is likely that he was named after Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of Amsterdam and to whom the Oude Kerk is dedicated, where he was baptised in January 1588. It seems more than likely that he trained with Van der Voort as he inherited his workshop upon his death in 1624. From this point onward he became the portrait painter of choice in Amsterdam, his only serious rival being Thomas de Keyser (c.1596 – 1667). He particularly excelled in group civic guard portraits, but his production largely lay within individual portraits that depicted notable citizens of Amsterdam, such as the present example.

Pickenoy painted no less than five civic guard paintings and four group portraits for craft guilds or charitable institutions, making him even more productive in this field than his most successful pupil, Bartholomeus van der Helst (1613 – 1670). With the exciting bravura stylings of Rembrandt and his immediate circle, Pickenoy’s dominance within the portraiture genre was challenged but never fully dominated during the 1630s. However, by 1640 he seems to have effectively retired; there are only two works of his from post-1640 that survive.

In 1637, Pickenoy bought a house from the politician Adriaan Pauw (1585 – 1653), which had previously belonged to his (likely) master Van der Voort and the art dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh (c. 1587 – 1661). Located on the corner of Sint Antoniesbreestraat and Jodenbreestraat, the immediate area had become a hub for painters and art dealers alike; indeed, it was from Pickenoy’s house that Van Uylenburgh first supported Rembrandt when he moved to Amsterdam. Buying this house guaranteed Pickenoy social and artistic cachet within the Amsterdam elite for it had already been established as a studio for successful portrait painters and a base for art dealers with rich clientele. In 1639 Rembrandt returned to the neighbourhood after buying the house next door to Pickenoy’s, which is now home to the Rembrandthuis museum.

[1] It left the family’s ownership when it was sold to the marine painter Jan van de Capelle in 1661. See: Sweelinck’s Keyboard Music, p. 6.

[2] P. Dirksen, “Sweelinckiana” from Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, Vol. 71 (2021), p. 19.

[3] See: https://www.uitdeoudekoektrommel.com/tag/pickenoy/

[4] R. H. Tollefsen, “Jan Pietersz. Sweelinck: A Bio-Bibliography, 1604 – 1842, from Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, Vol. 22, No. 2 (1971), p. 95.