Catharina as a child, by Frans Hals. In her hand she holds a silver rattle with bells, a status symbol.
Catharina Pietersdr Hooft (28 December 1618 – 30 September 1691) was a woman of the Dutch Golden Age. She became famous at a very early age, when she was painted by Frans Hals.
On 14 August 1635, at the age of sixteen, Catharina Hooft married Amsterdam regent and influential statesman Cornelis de Graeff,[4] a widower who was nineteen years older than her,
[1] whose first wife Geertruid Overlander (1609–1634) had been Catharina's cousin (her father's sister's child).[5] At the side of this powerful man, Catharina's transformation into one of the first women in the country took place.[1] Together with her husband, she expresses her prominent social position as one of the country's first ladies in two life-size pendant portraits, painted in princely fashion, in black with golden, by the Amsterdam painter Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy.[4] Catharina bore two sons: Pieter and Jacob de Graeff. In 1652, De Graeff had himself and his wife along with their two sons portrayed by Jan Victors as Isaac and Rebecca with their sons Jacob and Esau. This allegorical work and De Graeff's portrayal as one of the patriarchs of a people and his wife should underscore its importance.
Allegory of Cornelis de Graeff as leader of his people: Cornelis de Graeff as Isaac with his wife Catharina Hooft as Rebecca with their sons Pieter and Jakob as Jacob and Esau, painted by Jan Victors (1652)
Opposite the De Graeffs' house Soestdijk lived the powerful anti-OrangistBicker family, consisting of Catharina’s brother-in-law and sister-in-law and their four daughters. One of whom, Wendela Bicker, married Catharina Hooft’s nephew, Grand PensionaryJan de Witt.[1]
Catharina was widowed in 1664. After the sudden death of her son Jacob's first wife Maria van der Does in 1667 he began courting Anna Christina Pauw van Bennebroek.[8] She was the only daughter of Adriaen Pauw, President of the Hof (Court) van Holland[9] and granddaughter of former Grand Pensionary Adriaan Pauw. But since De Graeff's mother Catharina Hooft didn't like the Paauwen at all [de Paauwen gantsch niet lustte] she was against marrying a member of the Pauw regent family and even enlisted the help of her nephew Johan de Witt to prevent her son Jacob from marrying Anna Christina Pauw van Bennebroek.[8]
In 1672 when William III. of Orange stepped out of the shadows to become General captain and stadtholder, she changed political tack and – with her sons – became a supporter of the House of Orange.[1] William bought the De Graeff hunting lodge and its surrounding fields, the later Soestdijk Palace, from Jacob de Graeff for only 18,755 guilders.[1] In 1678 Catharina Hooft inherited the high Lordship of Purmerland and Ilpendam from her cousin Maria Overlander van Purmerland (daughter of her maternal uncle Volkert Overlander and widow of Frans Banning Cocq),[10] which she owned half with her son Jacob,[11] who was also Maria's full nephew. Hooft outlived her husband by thirty years. She died in Ilpendam and was buried in Amsterdam on October 6, 1691.
Coat of Arms
Coat of arms of the family of Catharina Hooft (coat of arms donator was her father Pieter Jansz Hooft
Quartered: I In red, a beardless man's head of silver with golden hair, surrounded by a green laurel wreath (Hooft family); II An antique ploughshare in blue, placed obliquely to the right with the point up (Overlander family); III In gold a red cow (Lons family); IV In blue two wavy silver crossbars, accompanied from above by two gold siskins and from below on the right by a golden star (6) and on the left by a golden ear of wax (Chijs family).[12]
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