Pieter Cornelisz. van Egmondt, een kennismaking

It appears that the Leiden archives contain a considerable amount of data on the obscure Leiden painter Pieter Cornelisz. van Egmondt. The dates of his birth and death cannot be ascertained, although he must have been born between 1614 and 1622, and died in or soon after 1664. Paintings by Van Egmondt mentioned in some seventeenth century inventories were unidentifiable. A painting auctioned in Leiden in 1778, however, could be traced (fig. 1). Comparative research and the recognition of his signature on a few works make it possible to attribute nine paintings, most of them small formats, to Pieter Cornelisz. van Egmondt. On five of them the painter portrayed himself, invariably in a studio or with a painter's attributes (figs. 3-7). The others are fairly simple genre scenes (figs. 1, 2 and 11) and a representation of St. Peter (fig. 8). Stylistically, Van Egmondt's work may be placed in the school of Gerard Dou, whose early work in particular seems to have influenced Van Egmondt's development.