Biography

Little is known of the artist Jan Daemen Cool. He was born in Rotterdam in 1589, and by 1614 he is recorded as entering the Painters’ Guild of Saint Luke in Delft. While in Delft, he was possibly the pupil of Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt, an extremely successful portrait painter whose style was popular for its restraint and lack of gratuitous expression. Cool eventually moved back to Rotterdam, and in 1623 he married his second wife Lysbeth Cornelisdr., the widow of the artist Louis Porcellis. Cool painted sober portraits of notable Rotterdam families. In 1652, he moved to the Oude Mannenhuis (old men’s retirement home) in Rotterdam, where he died in 1660.