Pool was the son of a Polish silversmith of the same name, who had arrived in Amsterdam via Germany. At the age of three, Pool was taken in as an orphan at Amsterdam’s City Orphanage, in the building that now houses the Amsterdam Museum. It was extraordinary that as an orphan he was able to train as a painter, but perhaps his father had left him a sum of money to pay for his training. It’s also quite possible that the silversmiths’ guild took charge of the boy’s education. When the governors of the silversmiths’ guild wanted to be immortalised, they commissioned Juriaen Pool II, an artist who was also the son of a colleague.