Cunera van Baersdorp [SEP] collection
Cunera van Baersdorp
Portrait of Cunera van Baersdorp is a painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals, painted in 1625 and now in a private collection. It is considered a pendant portrait to the "Portrait of a Man Standing", now identified as Cunera's husband Michiel de Wael.
Life.
Cunera van Baersdorp was born in Leiden in 1600 as the daughter of the Leiden mayor Jan Jans van Baersdorp and Dirckgen Claes van Heemskerk. Her older brother Jan married in Amsterdam and it is there that she
met Michiel de Wael who she became engaged to in Haarlem on 2 April 1625. She had probably been living in Amsterdam with her mother and brother since her father's death in Leiden in 1614. Her mother died in Amsterdam in October 1624 and was buried in the Oude Kerk. Though Michiel and Cunera ran a brewery in Haarlem, they remained friendly with Jan's family and Michiel was registered at the baptism of Jan's youngest daughter Aeffjen van Baersdorp on 8 June 1631 in the Oude Kerk. Cunera died in Haarlem in