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Portrait of Samuel Ampzing
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Portrait of Samuel Ampzing
Frans Hals
(Antwerp 1582/83 – 1666 Haarlem)

1630
oil on copper
16.4 x 12.4 cm
inscribed and dated, center right: “AETAT 40/
ANo 163..”
FH-100How to cite
Liedtke, Walter A. “Portrait of Samuel Ampzing” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd ed. Edited by Arthur K.
Wheelock Jr. and Lara Yeager-Crasselt. New York, 2020–23. https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/ (archived
December 2023).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed by apermanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of Samuel Ampzing
Page 3 of 13

This exquisite portrait, one of three known works that Frans Hals painted on copper,

Comparative Figures

depicts the Haarlem clergyman, poet, and historian Samuel Ampzing (1590–1632)
holding what must be the book for which he is best known: Beschryvinge ende lof derstad Haerlem in Holland (Description and Praise of the City of Haarlem in Holland),published in Haarlem in 1628. The portrait, painted in 1630, was engraved shortly
before or after Ampzing’s early death on July 29, 1632, by the prolific Haarlem
draftsman and printmaker Jan van de Velde II (1593–1641).[1] The print (fig 1)
reverses the image and slightly reduces its scale. Somewhat later, perhaps about 1640,
the Haarlem printmaker Jonas Suyderhoef (ca. 1613–86) reproduced the picture on alarger scale, also reversing the composition (fig 2).[2] Both prints feature anencomium in verse signed “P.S.,” for Petrus Scriverius (1576–1660), the historianand Latin scholar who was Ampzing’s collaborator in writing the Beschryvinge andalso Hals’s subject in a superb small portrait on wood, dated 1626 (Metropolitan

Fig 1.

[3]

Museum of Art, New York).

Jan van de Velde II after Frans

Ampzing was the youngest son of a Haarlem clergyman, Johannes Assuerus

Hals, Samuel Ampzing, 1632,

Ampzingius, who was dismissed from service in 1596 for preaching false views on

200 x 123 mm, engraving,predestination and other indiscretions. Nonetheless, his employers, the burgomasters

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, RP-

of Haarlem, sent his son Samuel to Latin School at the city’s expense and then to

P-1898-A-20197

Leiden University. Ampzing continued his theological studies at Geneva and Saumur,
and in 1616 became a minister in the village of Rijsoord, located between Rotterdam
and Dordrecht. He married Catharina van der Wegen, of Leiden, in 1616; she diedthree months before her husband, in April 1632.[4]Residing elsewhere did not dampen Ampzing’s enthusiasm for his native city. His
first “Praise of Haarlem” (Den Lof van Haerlem), in rhymed verse with classicalallusions, dates from 1616 and was written with the help of Scriverius (who himself
lived in Leiden from 1593 onward).[5] A second edition of 1621 reflects a shift froma more “pagan” mode to a Christian one, following Ampzing’s appointment as a
Haarlem minister in 1619 in St. Bavo’s cathedral.[6] These first two odes to Haarlem,
which were unillustrated, were published anonymously, but the 1628 edition proudly
bears the author’s name (as announced in his foreword). The new publication included
more information about Haarlem and its history, as well as a number of engraved
views and plans of the city by, among others, Van de Velde (nine plates) and Pieter
Saenredam.
Scriverius, who evidently provided funding for this publication, appended his own

Fig 2. Jonas Suyderhoef after Frans
Hals, Samuel Ampzing, ca 1640,
engraving, The Leiden Collection,
New York, JSu-100.

treatise, “Laure-crans voor Laurens Coster” (Laurel Wreath for Laurens Coster) to
Ampzing’s text.[7] Coster was a Haarlem printer credited locally with the invention of
movable type. Also added to this publication was Ampzing’s important essay© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of Samuel Ampzing
Page 4 of 13“Taelbericht der Nederlandsche spellinge” (Treatise on Dutch Spelling). Ampzing and
Scriverius were both ardent proponents for the Dutch language, and took particular
exception to the use of words adopted from Latin or French.
Hals made small paintings of this type as models for portrait prints, often sent tocolleagues in other cities and countries as well as collected locally. His first such
portrait may have depicted the preacher Joannes Bogaert (d. 1614) holding an open
Bible, but the original is known only from Van de Velde’s engraving of 1628, and it
could have been a painting of larger size.[8] In 1617 Hals painted a small oval portrait
on copper of Theodorus Schrevelius (1572–1649), a historian and vice-rector of theLatin School in Haarlem. The painting (14.5 x 12 cm), engraved by Jacob Matham in1618 (and later by Suyderhoef, perhaps after the print), was acquired by the Frans
Hals Museum in 2003.[9] Like the 1626 portrait of Scriverius, that of Schrevelius(holding a small book) was originally accompanied by a pendant painting of his wife
(known through copies). In each case, only the scholar’s portrait was reproduced in an
engraving, but the companion pieces underscore the fact that Hals’s small portraits
were intended not solely as models for prints but also as personal or family keepsakes.
Hals used a copper support for the second time, as far as we know, in his Portrait of a
Man (19.9 x 14.1 cm) of 1627 (Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin).[10] As in
the Scriverius panel (and portrait prints going back more than thirty years), an
illusionistic oval frame opens a window in the picture field, and the sitter’s handextends through it.
Hals exchanged this kind of realism for quite another in the Ampzing portrait, whichin its remarkable luminosity takes advantage of the copper surface in a way not seenin the two earlier examples. The daylight on the textured wall behind the sitter and thehighlights on passages such as the near sleeve, the collar, the face and the hand (which
seems to move, with the head, in response to the viewer’s interruption) shine and shift
with an immediacy that matches that of the sparkling eyes and the completely focused
attention of the figure. In the first published description of Hals’s work, which
Ampzing penned for the Beschryvinge of 1628, one can almost hear the author
exclaim, “How dashingly Frans paints people from life!” Although Ampzing was
citing here the great civic guard picture that Hals had just completed the previous
year, he could as well have been referring to this small portrait.[11]The Latin inscription on Van de Velde’s print of 1632 suggests that it might havebeen commissioned by Ampzing’s congregation in St. Bavo’s (the Grotekerk, or Great
Church, of Haarlem), or at least addressed their concerns.[12] For the most part, thestilted verse applauds Ampzing’s stinging criticism of the Catholic Church (forexample, in pamphlets published in 1630 and 1632) and does not mention the
Beschryvinge or any other of his secular publications.[13] Nevertheless, the book© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of Samuel Ampzing
Page 5 of 13

Ampzing holds in the painting strongly resembles the modest scale of the
Beschryvinge, not the massive Statenbibel (State Bible). In fact, Hals’s painting may
have been intended for reproduction with a different inscription than the one printed
in 1632. The Dutch inscription by Scriverius on the later Suyderhoef print again lauds
him as a Haarlem teacher but drops all reference to wounded Catholics:
O Haarlem, look upon Ampzing’s appearance, which his city gives us that we
may know him: a shepherd true to the church of God, and proficient in the
Lord’s work, whose edifying verses and poetry uplift the pious with their deep
gravity; rightly is he beloved of all Haarlem’s children and of the Lord’s
people.[14]In this case the inscription clearly implies that the city government commissioned theengraving, which in its scale seems intended for display as well as for privatecontemplation.
It would be good to know who owned Hals’s portrait of Ampzing after the sitter andhis wife died in 1632, but no children from the marriage are known. The earliest traceof the picture is its reported acquisition in The Hague by Richard Trench, 2nd Earl ofClancarty, during his service there as British ambassador (1813–23). The painting
descended in his family until 1892, when it was sold at auction in London; by 1905 it
was in the eclectic collection of the railroad entrepreneur Sir William van Horne inMontreal.[15] A more distinguished collector of Dutch pictures, Lord Harold Samuel,owned the portrait between 1966 and 1975 (his collection was given to the City of
London in 1987),[16] and it passed through two New York collections before entering
the present one.

- Walter A. Lietdke, 2017

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Portrait of Samuel Ampzing
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Endnotes
1. As noted in Seymour Slive, Frans Hals, 3 vols. (London, 1970–74), 3:46, under no. 76, and in Seymour
Slive, Frans Hals (Exh. cat. Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art; London, Royal Academy ofArts; Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum) (London, 1989), under no. 40, earlier scholars read the now
illegible last digit of the date on Hals’s painting as a zero, and this is consistent with the inscribed age of
forty. On the question of whether Van de Velde’s print was made before or after Ampzing’s death in
1632, see Pieter J. J. van Thiel, “For Instruction and Betterment: Samuel Ampzing’s Mirror of the Vanity
and Unrestrainedness of Our Age,” Simiolus 24 (1996): 199. Van Thiel maintains that since Ampzing’s
age is given as 41 on the engraving of 1632, it must have been made before his forty-second baptismal
day on June 24, 1632. But this assumes that Van de Velde was privy to this information. Scriverius’s
Latin inscription on the print of 1632 does not mention Ampzing’s death, but neither does the same
writer’s Dutch verse on Suyderhoef’s engraving, which (without giving a date) follows Hals’s painting in
giving the sitter’s age as forty.
2. Suyderhoef’s earliest known print is his engraving (Hollstein, no. 96), dated 1638, after Hals’s small
portrait of the Haarlem calligrapher and schoolmaster Jean de la Chambre (1638; National Gallery,
London). See Seymour Slive, Frans Hals, 3 vols. (London, 1970–74), no. 122, and Neil MacLaren,revised and expanded by Christopher Brown, National Gallery Catalogues, The Dutch School,
1600–1900 (London, 1991), 158–59.
3. See Walter Liedtke, Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 2007), 274–85, on
the pendant portrait of Scriverius and his wife, Anna van der Aar. Petrus Scriverius served as a modelfor Van de Velde’s engraving of the same year. Van de Velde also engraved most of the illustrations in
Ampzing’s book of 1628, and the eighteen plates in his Spiegel, ofte Toneel der ydelheyd ende
ongebondenheyd onser eeuwe (Mirror or Theater of the Vanity and Unrestrainedness of Our Age), of1633. See Pieter J. J. van Thiel, “For Instruction and Betterment: Samuel Ampzing’s Mirror of the
Vanity and Unrestrainedness of Our Age,” Simiolus 24 (1996): 182–200.
4. Pieter J. J. van Thiel, “For Instruction and Betterment: Samuel Ampzing’s Mirror of the Vanity andUnrestrainedness of Our Age,” Simiolus 24 (1996): 197, 199.
5. Of course, Ampzing’s debt to the city fathers must have encouraged this publication, as observed in
Elisabeth de Bièvre, “Violence and Virtue: History and Art in the City of Haarlem,” Art History 11(1988): 308.
6. In the 1616 edition, Ampzing introduced a number of mythological figures to enhance the image of
Haarlem, but in the revised version, published after he had been made minister in Haarlem, he
supplanted these with references to God’s will.
7. Scriverius’s financial support is surmised from a letter to him from Ampzing in 1627, which is printed
in the book; see Gary Schwartz and Marten Jan Bok, Pieter Saenredam: The Painter and His Time (New© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of Samuel Ampzing
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York, 1990), 39.
8. Seymour Slive, Frans Hals, 3 vols. (London, 1970–74), 1: 28, fig. 10, for the engraving.
9. Seymour Slive, Frans Hals, 3 vols. (London, 1970–74), no. 8, pl. 23; Pieter Biesboer, Paintings inHaarlem, 1500–1800: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, ed. Neeltje Köhler (Ghent, 2006),
475–76, no. 176.
10. Seymour Slive, Frans Hals, 3 vols. (London, 1970–74), no. 48, pl. 82. No corresponding print is known.
11. Samuel Ampzing, Beschryvinge ende lof der stad Haerlem in Holland (Haarlem, 1628), 371; see
Seymour Slive, Frans Hals (Exh. cat. Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art; London, Royal
Academy of Arts; Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum) (London, 1989), 382, under document no. 41. The
civic guard portrait of 1627 is the Banquet of the Officers of the Calivermen Civic Guard in the Frans
Hals Museum, Haarlem.
12. Pieter J. J. van Thiel, “For Instruction and Betterment: Samuel Ampzing’s Mirror of the Vanity andUnrestrainedness of Our Age,” Simiolus 24 (1996): 199, reads the line “Praeconem, pia turba, tuum quid
quaeris in aere?” as indicating a commission from the congregation, but precisely how this would haveworked is left unclarified. Van Thiel also gives the mistaken impression that the Van de Velde print andits inscription came after that on the Suyderhoef print (“I presume [that the Reformed Congregationwas] dissatisfied with this ritual eulogy” on Suyderhoef’s engraving), which is impossibly dated “ca.
1630/31” in the caption to his fig. 4. Suyderhoef was twenty years younger than Van de Velde and no
print by him is known to date from before 1638. That Scriverius asks why Ampzing’s congregation
wants his image (see the next note) may be no more than one of his awkward rhetorical flourishes,
rather than a reference to a job assigned to Van de Velde. Portrait engravings and their inscriptions were
often separately solicited by the printer.
13. Pieter J. J. van Thiel, “For Instruction and Betterment: Samuel Ampzing’s Mirror of the Vanity andUnrestrainedness of Our Age,” Simiolus 24 (1996): 200, gives the full titles of the two pamphlets (theStraf-dicht of 1630 and the Suppressie of 1632). Van Thiel’s translation of the Latin inscription (see 199
n. 68) improves on that in Seymour Slive, Frans Hals (Exh. cat. Washington, D.C., National Gallery ofArt; London, Royal Academy of Arts; Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum) (London, 1989), 246, and reads asfollows: “There is no need for a sculpture or painting. Ampzing’s public fame is imperishable. It lives onin the wounded face of the Ausonian bishop [the pope]. Ah, how many scars will you not see on the
Spaniard’s face! Why, devoted congregation, do you desire to have your herald [Ampzing] in print? The
wounded faces of so many men testify better to him [his legacy]. The wound is still fresh. The
conspicuous scar has not yet healed. And even when the wounds close, the toothmarks will remain.”
14. Pieter J. J. van Thiel, “For Instruction and Betterment: Samuel Ampzing’s Mirror of the Vanity andUnrestrainedness of Our Age,” Simiolus 24 (1996): 199 n. 67.
15. See Walter Liedtke, “Dutch Paintings in America: The Collectors and Their Ideals,” in Great Dutch
Paintings from America, ed. Rieke van Leeuwen (Exh. cat. The Hague, Royal Cabinet of Paintings
Mauritshuis; San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco) (The Hague and Zwolle, 1990), 47.
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16. Peter C. Sutton, Dutch and Flemish Seventeenth-Century Paintings: The Harold Samuel Collection(Cambridge, 1992).

Provenance[Said to have been acquired from Johannes van Eijk, The Hague, ca. 1820].
Richard Trench, 2nd Earl of Clancarty, Garbally, County Galway, thence by descent (sale, Christie’s,
London, 12 March 1892, no. 32 [700 guineas to Lesser, who sold it to Wallace]).
Sir William C. Van Horne (1843–1915), Montreal, by 1893, by descent to Miss L. Adaline Van Horne,
Montreal, by 1936, by descent to Mrs. William Covenhoven Van Horne, 1956 [with Edward Speelman,
London, 1966].
Lord Harold Samuel, Wych Cross [Edward Speelman, London, 1975].
Lowenthal Collection, New York, 1975–96 [Bob Haboldt, New York, 1996].
Landau Collection, New York, 1996–2007 (Sotheby’s, London, 5 December 2007, no. 27 [Johnny van
Haeften, London, 2007]).
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2007.

Exhibition History
Montreal, Art Association of Montreal (now Montreal Museum of Fine Arts), “Seventeenth Loan
Exhibition of Paintings in Oils and Water Colours,” 1893, no. 34 [lent by Sir William C. Van Horne].
New York, The Union League Club, “Loaned Paintings,” 11 and 12 February, 1897, no. 11 [lent by Sir
William C. Van Horne].
Montreal, Art Association of Montreal (now Montreal Museum of Fine Arts), “Paintings by Rembrandt
and the Great Dutch Painters of the XVII Century,” 1906, no. 5 [lent by Sir William C. Van Horne].
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “The Hudson-Fulton Celebration,” 1909, no. 25 [lent by
Sir William Van Horne, Montreal].
Atlanta, High Museum of Art, “Masterpieces of the Dutch Golden Age,” 24 September–10 November
1985, no. 29 [lent by the Lowenthal Collection].
New York, National Academy of Design, “Dutch and Flemish Paintings from New York Private
Collections,” 1988, no. 24 [lent by the Lowenthal Collection].
Washington, National Gallery of Art, “Frans Hals,” 1 October–31 December 1989, London, Royal
Academy of Arts, 13 January–8 April 1990, Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum, 11 May–22 July 1990, no.
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Portrait of Samuel Ampzing
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40 [lent by the Lowenthal Collection].
Phoenix, Phoenix Art Museum, “Copper as Canvas: Two Centuries of Masterpiece Paintings on Copper,
1575–1775,” 19 December 1998–28 February 1999, Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 28
March–14 June 1999, The Hague, Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis, 26 June–22 August 1999, no.
25 [lent by the Landau Collection].
Norfolk, The Chrysler Museum of Art, June 2009–August 2010, on loan with the permanent collection[lent by the present owner].
Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, August 2010–July 2011, on loan with the permanentcollection [lent by the present owner].
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Frans Hals in the Metropolitan Museum,” 26 July–10
October 2011 [lent by the present owner].
Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, November 2011–February 2013, on loan with the permanentcollection [lent by the present owner].
Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum, “Frans Hals: Eye to Eye with Rembrandt, Rubens and Titian,” 23March–28 July 2013, no. 44 [lent by the present owner].
Philadelphia Museum of Art, on loan with the permanent collection, October 2013–October 2014 [lentby the present owner].
Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art, “Small Treasures: Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, and Their
Contemporaries,” 26 October 2014–4 January 2015; Birmingham, Birmingham Museum of Art, 4February–26 April 2015, no. 16 [lent by the present owner].
Paris, Museé du Louvre, “Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection: The Age of Rembrandt,” 22
February–22 May 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Beijing, National Museum of China, “Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The Leiden
Collection,” 17 June–3 September 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Shanghai, Long Museum, West Bund, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals in the Dutch Golden Age:
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection,” 23 September 2017–25 February 2018 [lent by the present
owner].
Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpiecesof The Leiden Collection,” 28 March 2018–22 July 2018 [lent by the present owner].
St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpieces of
The Leiden Collection,” 5 September 2018–13 January 2019 [lent by the present owner].
Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age. Masterpieces fromThe Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre,” 14 February–18 May 2019 [lent by the present
owner].

References© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of Samuel Ampzing
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Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum. Moscow, 2018.
Eekhout, Marianne. Werk, bid & bewonder: Een nieuwe kijk op kunst en calvinisme. Exh. cat. Dordrecht,
Dordrechts Museum. Dordrecht, 2018, 65–66, illustrated.
Blanc, Jan. “Being Modern, Being Dutch: The Seventeenth-Century Invention of the Golden Age.” In
Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age. Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Muséedu Louvre. Edited by Blaise Ducos and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 43. Exh. cat. Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu
Dhabi. London, 2019. [Exhibition catalogue also published in French and Arabic.]
Ducos, Blaise, and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, eds. Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age.
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre. Exh. cat. Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu
Dhabi. London, 2019, 170, no. 86. [Exhibition catalogue also published in French and Arabic.]
Packer, Lelia. “Frans Hals and the Male Portrait.” In Frans Hals: The Male Portrait. Exh. cat. London,
The Wallace Collection. Edited by Lelia Packer and Ashok Roy. London, 2021, 1–2, fig. 1.1.

Versions
Engraved
1. Jan van de Velde II after Frans Hals, Samuel Ampzing, 1632, 200 x 123 mm, engraving, Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, RP-P-1898-A-20197.
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Portrait of Samuel Ampzing
Page 13 of 13

2. Jonas Suyderhoef after Frans Hals, Samuel Ampzing, ca 1640, engraving, National Gallery of Art,
Washington, Rosenwald Collection, 1943.3.8072.

Technical Summary
The support, a rectangular-shaped sheet of copper, has been inset in a shallow recess routed into the front
surface of a stained and varnished rectangular-shaped oak panel that is slightly larger than the copper panel inboth directions. Although the copper reverse is obscured by the wood panel, a few areas of green copper
corrosion are visible along the painted image, such as along the figure’s lower lip. There are labels but no wax
seals, import stamps or inscriptions along the wood panel reverse.
The lowest continuous layer is a thin, strongly colored, transparent red-orange, apparently chosen in
anticipation of its contribution to an effect visible in the finished painting.
The paint has been applied thinly but opaquely, with considerable vigor of handling indicative of Hals’s
portraits executed after 1630, even those crafted on a small scale. The beard was executed by applying tonesof gray, then drawing lines though the wet paint with a fine point, exposing red-orange underlayer lines, tosuggest the whiskers, and finished off with fine lines of paint to evoke volume and highlights.
The surface brushwork is primarily wet-into-wet, with emphatic darks, enlivening color, and highlights
added. The evidence of a multilayered painting process suggests Hals executed the picture in stages, despite
the suggestion of speed conveyed by the wet-into-wet passages. Inconsistent overlaps of figure andbackground paint indicate adjustments and corrections to the outline. This feature is typical of Hals, who set
the contours of his subjects only in the last stages of the painting process. Also typical of Hals is the use of
short strokes of umber to demarcate spaces between forms, such as the fingers and lips.
The painting is unsigned but inscribed in dark paint along the background, center right.
No underdrawing or compositional changes are readily apparent in infrared images; in the X-radiograph, thecopper support absorbs the radiation and dominates the image produced so only the rectangular shape of thecopper shows.
The painting was cleaned and restored in 1995, before its acquisition, and remains in a good state ofpreservation.[1]Technical Summary Endnotes

1. Entry based on a 2012 examination report by Mark S. Tucker, The Aronson Senior Conservator of
Paintings, Vice Chair of Conservation, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection