Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750), wife of Juriaen Pool II (1666–1745), was much more successful than her husband.
She painted flower still lifes that were acclaimed by contemporaries at home and abroad. Paintings of hers can be found in the Rijksmuseum and Mauritshuis where they remain crowd favourites. Ruysch became court painter at the court of the Elector of the Palatinate in Düsseldorf in 1708. The prince knew her work because he had visited her father, Frederik Ruysch, the famous anatomist.
Very little of Pool’s work is known, but the Amsterdam Museum’s collection includes a painting depicting two surgeons’ guild governors holding a human heart between them. It could well be that Pool’s father-in-law Frederik Ruysch had arranged this, and perhaps even provided the human heart to work from.