These two paintings (P7607 and P7608) were first shown in Amsterdam in 1858. On that occasion the sitters were identified as Lambert Witsen and his wife Sara Nuyts owing to the woman`s purported similarity to the portrait of the latter (Amsterdam Historisch Museum, inv. SA 989) dated 1684 and included thus by Jan de Baen (1633-1702) in his work, Portrait of the Regents of the Spinhuis in Amsterdam.

Moes (1897-1905) maintains this identification, although in 1900 the alleged portrait of Lambert Witsen was exhibited at The Hague as a portrait of Gillis de Wildts. In 1893 both works underwent cleaning which revealed the coat of arms in the upper part of the male portrait, enabling Van Krestchmar (1985) to correctly identify the sitters as Johan Rammelman and his wife Alida Lange (1651-1694). Even so, Van Haeften returns to the original identification with which they entered the Museum and with which they have been classified in the catalogue until now.

Johan Rammelman was the son of the wine merchant Hendrick Rammelman, who came to be mayor of Rotterdam. After being expelled from Leiden University for misconduct in 1661, he joined the navy as an officer in the service of the House of Orange, becoming a colonel in 1680. He married Alida de Lange in 1672.

Both portraits belong to the type established by Netscher after settling permanently in The Hague in 1662, in which he successfully combined the decorative trends of French portraiture of the day, the technique of the so-called fijnschilders or fine painters of the Leiden school, and the small format of the portraits executed by his master Gerard ter Borch (1617-1681), which was better suited to the homes of the Dutch haute bourgeoisie than the large formats commonly employed by Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) and his followers as well as by the French painters in vogue in Holland at the time.

Johan Rammelman is shown three-quarter length, gazing at the viewer and, as is typical in Netscher`s portraits, richly attired. Here he wears black armour, a lace cravat and a large blue silk bow. On his right, on a rock covered in an orange mantle -a reference to his military career in the House of Orange- is a helmet adorned with a large plume. He rests his left hand on his hip, while the right points elegantly to the battle scene with the fortress in flames that unfolds in the background, probably an allusion to the battle of Chatham (1667), in which Rammelman took part. The armour depicted is repeated in various of the painter`s portraits, including the Portrait of a Young Man in Armour, dated in 16[7]9 (Wiesemann 2002, no. 181) and Portrait of Ludwig Markgraf von Brandenburg, dated by Wiesemann to around 1682 (Berlin, Staatliche Schlösser und Gärten, Jagdschloss Grunewald), which also features the same helmet (Posada Kubissa, T.: Pintura holandesa en el Museo Nacional del Prado. Catálogo razonado, 2009, p. 307).