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Download Image
Non-commercial use
All our images can be downloaded in high resolution from our website for non-commercial use (research/study, educational purposes, personal blogs and social media).
Would you like to use our images in a publication? Please mention our credit line: "Mauritshuis, The Hague."
Commercial use
Would you like to use our images for commercial purposes? We would be happy to discuss this with you. Please contact our marketing department at images@mauritshuis.nl.
Download Image
Non-commercial use
All our images can be downloaded in high resolution from our website for non-commercial use (research/study, educational purposes, personal blogs and social media).
Would you like to use our images in a publication? Please mention our credit line: "Mauritshuis, The Hague."
Commercial use
Would you like to use our images for commercial purposes? We would be happy to discuss this with you. Please contact our marketing department at images@mauritshuis.nl.
Download Image
Non-commercial use
All our images can be downloaded in high resolution from our website for non-commercial use (research/study, educational purposes, personal blogs and social media).
Would you like to use our images in a publication? Please mention our credit line: "Mauritshuis, The Hague."
Commercial use
Would you like to use our images for commercial purposes? We would be happy to discuss this with you. Please contact our marketing department at images@mauritshuis.nl.
Frans Hals
Portrait of Aletta Hanemans (1606-1653)
Aletta Hanemans was 19 when she got married and had this portrait painted by Frans Hals. The portrait of the bridegroom – Jacob Olycan – is hanging on the left. Hals was an expert in the art of characterisation, and was regarded as the best portraitist in Haarlem.
Hals is famous for his free, broad brushstrokes. But here his painting is finer, for example in the ‘bridal stomacher’ embroidered in gold. For this portrait commission, Hals may have had less freedom, having to focus more on achieving a good likeness.
Facelifts & Make-overs - stories from our conservation studio
The couple are very stylishly dressed, according to the latest Spanish fashion. The conservation treatment once again revealed the details of the outfits, including the many black tones. Jacob’s outfit regained depth and contrast, but this was less true for Aletta because her skirt is quite faded. Hals combined two unstable pigments here – blue smalt and red lake – to create the impression of a changeant fabric: the skirt took on different colours depending on the light. The brown areas were once a bluey-purple, but today the skirt has lost some of its sheen. Only the pink highlights are still intact. The video with a reconstruction created by Fahed Ibrahim shows how this part of the painting would have originally looked.
More about Frans Hals
Frans Hals is one of the most famous and most extraordinary Dutch painters of the 17th century. He painted lively, sometimes even cheerful, portraits of people from all levels of society: important people, naughty children and even drunks or people who had been declared crazy. Hals had a unique ability to bring his paintings to life with colour and broad brushstrokes. His skilful style inspired the French impressionists, who made many copies of his paintings in the 19th century.
