A unique tattoo has been discovered on a 17th century group portrait in a Dutch museum and has been described as the earliest depiction of body art in Western European painting.
The discovery emerged during recent restoration work on the large group portrait in the Amsterdam Museum collection, according to a 24th November statement.
The work is a 1674 group portrait titled ‘The Chief Commissioners of the Wharves’, attributed to painter Wallerant Vaillant and showing senior officials responsible for the city’s wharves, ports and cranes.
The painting shows four chief commissioners seated around a table with the harbour master, his servant and a captain behind them, with a view of the harbour in the background.
One of the seated men is depicted turning his arm so that the inside of his wrist faces the viewer and, as his sleeve rides up, a small tattoo appears in the very centre of the composition.
Restorer Liesbeth Abraham noticed the detail while examining the canvas and, after closer study of the paint layers, concluded that the tattoo formed part of the original 17th-century painting.
According to the Amsterdam Museum, no visual or written sources from 17th-century Amsterdam are known that explicitly describe or depict tattoos, making this a particularly striking find.
Head of collections and research Judith van Gent said: “Tattoos were still ‘not done’ for the citizens of seventeenth-century Amsterdam; they were associated with sailors, criminals, or outsiders.
“This makes the tattoo on the wrist of this chief commissioner even more remarkable.”
The man with the tattoo has been identified by Van Gent as Wessel Smits, a wealthy merchant born around 1618 or 1619.
The small design on Smits’s wrist is most likely as a tailed star or comet, experts say.
In the 17th century, a comet was visible over Western Europe in 1618, the period in which Smits was born, and some contemporaries saw that celestial event as a sign of God’s wrath.
To help interpret the unusual tattoo, the Amsterdam Museum consulted Amsterdam tattoo artist and collector Henk Schiffmacher.
He called it a “world-class discovery,” as he had never seen such an early tattoo.
According to the Amsterdam Museum, it is indeed a “tremendous art historical discovery.”
So far, it remains a mystery where Smits had the tattoo done as tattoos were not being done in Amsterdam at that time.
The painting has been in the Amsterdam Museum since the 19th century but this detail went unnoticed until now, likely due to it being positioned high on the wall.
It will now go on display in a small exhibition at Huis Willet Holthuysen in Amsterdam, where it will remain on show until 1st March 2026.
