Artist: Jan Antonisz Van Ravesteyn
Date: 1611
Size: 108 x 85 cm
Technique: Oil On Canvas
The identification of the sitter in this portrait as Nicolaas Schmelzing is confirmed by the inscription on his portrait in the Leeuwarden Series (SK-A-550). Schmelzing was a scion of a noble family from Passau in Germany. His military career lasted for a period of 36 years. He is first documented in the service of the States army in 1593 as the commander of 100 German horse. From around 1610, he was colonel of one of the 11 regiments of the cavalry and belonged, therefore, to the elite of the States army. Held in high esteem by the courts of Maurits, Ernst Casimir and Frederik Hendrik, Schmelzing became lieu tenant-governor of Overijssel in 1616, and president of the war council in 1625. As commander of Deventer, he struck a major blow against the Spanish at Ommen in 1622, and was killed during the Siege of ’s-Hertogenbosch in 1629.5 The present painting is a somewhat smaller replica of the 1611 Portrait of Nicolaas Schmelzing painted by Van Ravesteyn as part of a series of officers’ portraits that was probably commissioned by Prince Maurits.6 The copyist omitted the glove on the table in the original portrait, and added a curtain in the upper left corner. The less accomplished execution of the Rijksmuseum’s portrait is especially apparent in the crudely painted ear. Two bust-length replicas of Schmelzing’s portrait are also known, one dated 1618 in the Royal Palace in Amsterdam,7 and another in Enschede.8 The knee-length portrait of Schmelzing recorded in the 1633 inventory of the Frisian Court in Leeuwarden may, perhaps, have been the present painting, as many of the works that entered the museum early on were appropriated from Nassau family palaces. Jonathan Bikker, 2007 See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 257.
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