Artist: Pauwels Van Hillegaert (Workshop Of)
Date: 1635
Size: 86 x 113 cm
Technique: Oil On Canvas
In addition to individual equestrian portraits of princes Maurits and Frederik Hendrik (SK-A-3125, SK-A-394, SK-A-4112). Van Hillegaert also depicted the two men on horseback together, as in this painting. They are composed in the same way as the individual portraits, with the riders shown prominently on a dark, elevated foreground against a background with a low horizon and populated with small figures. Here the two commanders are shown as victors in front of an army camp on a spot that is impossible to pinpoint geographically. That this is not the depiction of a specific victory is clear from the fact that the artist did not portray the substantial age difference between the two men. Maurits’s white horse looks like the white warhorse presented to him after the Battle of Nieuwpoort in 1600, which is probably portrayed in another of Van Hillegaert’s equestrian portraits (SK-A-3125). There are other versions of this particular painting, including a smaller one on panel in the Prinsenhof in Delft (fig. a). None of them are signed, but the obvious similarity to Van Hillegaert’s individual equestrian portraits leaves no doubt that they should be placed in his circle. His authorship is suspect in this particular painting, however. The execution of the horses, for example, in which his distinctive modelling with visible brushstrokes is lacking, differs from that of the securely attributed works, which suggests that this is a workshop piece. The compositional scheme of the riders facing each other is derived from a 16th-century tapestry series illustrating the genealogy of the House of Nassau, which was woven after designs by Bernard van Orley, each one showing two princes.6 At the beginning of the 17th century, Prince Maurits was given the painted tapestry patterns, and according to Van Mander commissioned oil paintings to be made after them.7 Then, in 1632, Frederik Hendrik had new tapestries made from the designs for Paleis Noordeinde.8 It is not inconceivable that the tapestries influenced the composition of this painting, which would argue for a date after 1632. The similarities to Van Hillegaert’s equestrian portraits of Frederik Hendrik that can be dated after 1629 (for example, SK-A-394 and SK-A-4112) suggest that this double portrait was executed around 1630-35. In 1754 the painting was in the Binnenhof,9 but by 1763 it had been moved to the Stadholder’s Court in The Hague, when it was still being attributed to Van Mierevelt.10 It is not inconceivable, then, that it originally belonged to Frederik Hendrik. Yvette Bruijnen, 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. 131.
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