Prince Maurice Accompanied by his two Brothers, Frederick V, Elector Palatine, and Counts of Nassau on Horseback, Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne (follower of), c. 1625 – (Adriaen Pietersz Van De Venne) ◄ Předchozí Další ►

Artist: Adriaen Pietersz Van De Venne

Datum: 1625

Velikost: 172 x 283 cm

Technika: Oil On Canvas

This monumental cavalcade of Nassau princes and counts is a variant of a print by Willem Jacobsz Delff after a design by Adriaen van de Venne, which was published in Middelburg by Jan van de Venne in 1621 (RP-P-OB-76.729, see fig. a). On 26 June 1621 the States-General awarded Jan a six-year patent ‘to be allowed to print or have printed, with the art of painting and engraving, and to publish the representation of the house of the heroes of Nassau on horseback’.5 om met de schilderconste ende plaetsneede te moegen drucken ofte doen drukken en uuytgeven, de verthooning van ’t huys der helden van Nassau te peerde’.] It is not only orders placed for the print by the States-General and the city of Middelburg that testify to its success,6 but also the surviving painted copies and variants of the composition, such as this one in the Rijksmuseum.7 Van de Venne had painted a similar cavalcade on copper, which may have been the prototype of the composition.8 The riders in the front row of the Rijksmuseum cavalcade are, from left to right, Prince Maurits, Frederick V (the Elector Palatine), Philips Willem and Frederik Hendrik, while behind them are Ernst Casimir, Willem Lodewijk and Johan Ernst. It was recently suggested that the two sumptuously attired boys in the left foreground are probably Maurits’s sons Willem and Lodewijk.9 A few changes were made relative to the engraved cavalcade, such as the addition of Frederick V, who had been living in The Hague in exile since 1621. His portrait is probably based on the print of 1622 by Willem Jacobsz Delff after Van Mierevelt, given the similarities of the facial expression, hairstyle, collar and clothing.10 The portrait of Frederick V was inserted in a rather unoriginal way with his horse in a pose almost identical to that of Philips Willem’s white horse beside it. A second change concerns the figure to the left behind Maurits, who is wearing the same headgear but is another individual altogether. It has been suggested that this might be the portrait of the person who commissioned the painting,11 but that remains speculative. All the men in the print are wearing tall hats, but some of them have been replaced in the Rijksmuseum painting by lower hats with broad brims, which did not make their appearance in Van de Venne’s oeuvre until 1625, so the painting should be dated around then. The unnatural proportions of the bodies, which are already evident in the print, take on odd forms in the painting. This is seen, among other things, in the implausibly small feet and short legs of Maurits, Philips Willem and Frederik Hendrik, the proportionally over-large heads, and the contorted way in which Ernst Casimir is depicted on his horse on the far left. Combined with the expressionless portraits and the rigid poses of the horses, it is difficult to square this painting with Van de Venne’s autograph monumental cavalcades (cf. SK-A-958, among others) so this painting must be allocated to a follower of his. 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. 307.