Portrait of Pieter de la Court

Pieter de la Court, son of a Flemish emigrant, was one of the most successful cloth merchants in Holland, as well as a jurist and an influential writer on economics and politics. In his pamphlets, he railed against the House of Orange, and all monarchical governments. Van den Tempel painted him in his judicial robes, seated before a bust of the Greek philosopher Socrates and a classically laid-out garden.