Template:POTD/2020-09-29
Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (before 1470 – 1533) was a Northern Netherlandish painter and designer of woodcuts. This oil-on-panel painting, by his son Dirck Jacobsz., depicts Van Oostsanen painting a portrait of his wife Anna. Though Van Oostsanen had died in 1533, his wife lived until around 1550, the year in which this work was painted. Its format ingeniously incorporates the viewer in its fiction. The painter looks out, presumably at his subject, whose likeness he is depicting. The work may have been intended to serve as a memorial to Jacobsz.'s parents, to be installed above the couple's tomb in a church.Painting credit: Dirck Jacobsz.