Pieter Coode

A Woman Seated at a Virginal with a Letter

40.3 x 31.7 cm.
Private Collection, Boston 
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A Woman Seated at a Virginal with a Letter, Pieter Coode

CODDE, Pieter
Born 1599, Amsterdam, - Died 1678, Amsterdam

Dutch genre and portrait painter of the fashionable world and barrack-room life, active in Amsterdam. His best works are usually on a small scale, marked by subtle silvery-gray tonalities, but he achieved one memorable feat on a much larger scale. In 1637 he was called upon to finish the group portrait of the Amsterdam Civic Guards known as the Meagre Company (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) that Frans Hals began in 1633 and refused to finish because he would not come to Amsterdam for sittings, and Codde succeeded so well in capturing Hals's spirit and the touch of his brush that experts still disagree where the work of the one ends and the other begins. Codde also wrote poetry.