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Frans Hals Willem Coymans
Arch Facial Plast Surg. 2005;7:152.
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Leaning backward over a chair, Willem Coymans looks out at the viewer in an attitude of easy self-assurance. The family crest showing 3 oxen heads on a gold background on the wall behind him identifies the sitter as a member of the wealthy Coymans family of bankersthe Dutch word for cow, koei, is a play on the family name.1 Sometime at the end of the 19th century, the sitters age inscribed on the painting was wrongly changed from 22 to 26 years to support the identification of the sitter as Balthasar Coymans (1618-1690), the founder of the powerful Balthasar Coymans and Brothers firm in Amsterdam. The fact that Hals also executed portraits of Balthasars parents, Joseph Coymans and Dorothea Berck, and sister Isabella Coymans and her husband Stephanus Geraerdts in the 1640s lent credibility to the identification of the sitter as Balthasar. However, later scholarship proved that the sitter . . . [Full Text of this Article]
Lisa Duffy-Zeballos
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