Portrait of François de Vicq (1646-1707). Burgomaster of Amsterdam for several terms from 1697 on

Ter Borch's portrait of François de Vicq from around 1670, depicting the future burgomaster of Amsterdam, belongs to a pair with the companion portrait of his wife Aletta Pancras. De Vicq had a distinguished career in Amsterdam civic administration, serving as burgomaster multiple times after 1697, and this portrait captures him in the prime of his professional life before his most senior offices. The De Vicq portraits demonstrate ter Borch's sustained relationship with Amsterdam's patrician governing class, which relied on him for the formal portraits that asserted family dignity and civic standing. His ability to combine formal portrait convention with individual psychological presence—giving the official image a quality of specific personhood—distinguished his portraiture from more mechanical approaches to the genre and secured his reputation with the most demanding patrons in the Dutch Republic.

The portrait renders the future burgomaster with youthful confidence, his fashionable costume indicating social status. Ter Borch's meticulous attention to the fabric's texture and the sitter's features creates a vivid characterization.