page_title: Jan Gildemeester
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Jan Gildemeester / Biography
context_page_description: Jan Gildemeester Jansz. was a Dutch art collector.
context_section_description: Jan's parents had moved to the Netherlands a few years after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. He lived with his father in a house on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam, where he began to form an art collection. He was involved in whaling and in 1778 was appointed as Portugal's agent and consul general to the Dutch Republic. Also in 1778 he donated nearly one hundred thousand guilders for Felix Meritis's house. In 1779 he inherited his father's country seat Frankendael in Watergraafsmeer - when a tree of liberty was placed (the ground was frozen too hard to plant it) on the Dam in Amsterdam in January 1795, it came from Gildemeester's garden. In 1792 he bought the prestigious stone-clad double canal mansion in the Gouden Bocht at 475 Herengracht which had been redecorated in the popular Louis XV style by Daniel Marot for the former owner, the wealthy widow Petronella van Lennep-de Neufville. She had the Jacob de Wit ceiling installed that can be seen in Gildemeester's art gallery painting, and she commissioned a wall decoration scheme for the parlour by Isaac de Moucheron and sculpted stucco decorations in the hallway and main staircase by Jan van Logteren. The mansion was a stately home in which Gildemeester could exhibit his art collection.
caption: The Gildemeesters in front of Frankendael House, 1766
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