71. Short estate inventory of Pieter Barentsz who owned a number of books about ‘Italian accounting’

Notarised estate inventory, dated 11 January 1640, drafted by notary Hendrik Schaef. It lists the possessions of a man named Pieter Barentsz at the time of his death, such as his clothes, furniture and, in this case, at least four books on ‘Italian accounting’. Estate inventories such as this were usually commissioned by the executors and/or heirs of the deceased to gain insight into what was left behind to distribute among them, and, occasionally, what there was to gain financially: in that case, an appraiser (a female profession in seventeenth-century Amsterdam) was brought in to add the estimated value per listed item.

(Tessa de Boer and Ramona Negrón)