Christina Pompe (1647-1722)

Van der Werff's portrait of Christina Pompe (1647–1722) from 1712 depicts a Dutch woman of the Amsterdam regent class at the age of about sixty-five, near the end of her life. The Pompe family were prominent in Amsterdam civic and commercial life, and the commission of a portrait from van der Werff — who by 1712 had been appointed court painter to the Elector Palatine Johann Wilhelm and commanded extremely high prices — indicates that Christina was a woman of both means and cultural ambition. The late portrait captures the subject in the full gravity of her advanced age.

Van der Werff applies his fijnschilder precision to portraiture, rendering the textures of aged skin, black silk, and white lace with the same meticulous care he brought to mythological and devotional subjects. The direct, searching gaze characteristic of his best portraits conveys individual character within the formal constraints of the genre.