Portrait of Lucas van Voorst

Lucas van Voorst (1590–1669) was a goldsmith and jeweler in the Dutch town of Utrecht. Yet Paul Moreelse, one of the finest portrait painters of the time, offers no indication that van Voorst is a craftsman. Instead, he shows the man as a prosperous citizen, fashionably dressed, his table covered with an exotic and presumably expensive Persian rug. A family chronicle describes Lucas as “an amiable man, not vindictive, affectionate and beloved by his friends, charitable, generous, gay…. He was of medium height, with well-made shoulders, legs, and calves, or a merry countenance, with some red and white intermixed.”