A Dutch Golden Age? That's only half the story

Elisabeth Samson, an 18th-century freeborn black woman, made millions as a coffee planter and exporter using slave labor in the Dutch colony of Suriname. She was one of the wealthiest women of the era, but few people have ever heard her story. That’s why her image is one of 13 diverse portraits recently added to a collection of paintings of the city’s wealthiest trade groups. Before the additions, the Portrait Gallery of the Golden Age, as it was known, was a sea of all white and mostly male faces. It resides in a wing of the Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam that houses part of the Amsterdam Museum’s collection. Among the other new portraits in the display are of Elieser, a young black Jewish man who served in the household of a Spanish poet-merchant; and Sychnecta, a Native American man who was once displayed in an Amsterdam human zoo. These photographic portraits, created using contemporary models in period clothes and settings,