Boudewijn van Heusden (830-870) and his Wife Sophia Receiving Homage from the Legate of King Edmund, c. 1626, Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne (manner of), c. 1626 – (Adriaen Pietersz Van De Venne) ◄ Tidigare Nästa ►

Artist: Adriaen Pietersz Van De Venne

datum: 1626

storlek: 186 x 279 cm

Teknik: Oil On Canvas

This grisaille with an episode from the life of Boudewijn van Heusden has until now wrongly been regarded as a work by Adriaen van de Venne, undoubtedly because it came from the town hall in Heusden together with his monumental, autograph grisaille of Frederick V and Elizabeth Stuart (SK-A-958). The two paintings are comparable not only in their grisaille technique and large size, but also fit together iconographically. This painting shows Boudewijn van Heusden (d. 870) and his wife Sophia, daughter of King Edmund of East Anglia. Legend has it that Sophia was abducted from England by Boudewijn and that they settled in Heusden and had a family. After years of searching for his daughter, Edmund heard from an English merchant that she was alive and well in Heusden, whereupon he gave the couple his blessing and marks of respect.3 The story is situated in Heusden in the grisaille, for in the right background is the Kruijd-Toren (Gunpowder Tower) of Kasteel Heusden.4 The iconographic link with the grisaille of Frederick V and Elizabeth is that both men married an English princess. However, there is a great difference between the two as regards the technique. The grisaille with Frederick and Elizabeth is in grey tints, while this one is in brown tints on an ochre ground layer. It was painted rapidly and only broadly worked up, which suggests that it was intended to be viewed at a distance. This is in contrast to the other grisaille, which was painted very painstakingly indeed. Unlike the painting of Frederick and Elizabeth, Boudewijn probably hung high up on a wall, given the low horizon and the better effect of the composition when seen from below. Despite these differences, both paintings could have been part of the same decorative programme for Heusden Town Hall. In addition to the differences in technique, there are dissimilarities in style and quality that demand the removal of this grisaille from Van de Venne’s oeuvre. The stereotype faces of the figures, with the slightly bulging eyes, wooden poses and unnatural physical proportions, such as the over-large hands, are characteristic of this anonymous painter’s style. Unfortunate overlaps hide important parts of the composition, such as Sophia’s hands and the face of the boy behind the English legate in the left foreground. A comparison of the caricature dog with the delicately executed and convincing dogs in Van de Venne’s grisaille of Frederick and Elizabeth highlight the clumsiness of this artist, who cannot possibly be identified with Adriaen van de Venne. It is possible that the municipal authorities of Heusden sought out a local artist to paint this scene to supplement Van de Venne’s grisaille of Frederick and Elizabeth. The painting is supposedly dated [..]26,5 but there is now no trace of this. If that date is correct, the grisaille was painted in the same year as Van de Venne’s, which originally bore the date 1626. Thanks to its depiction of a local legend, the painting must have been quite popular, for there was a polychrome copy in the collection of the St George civic guard in Heusden.6 The dimensions of the copy (204 x 286 cm) indicate that the present grisaille was originally probably some 15 cm higher and that the figure of Boudewijn was not cut off at the top. 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. 308.