Portrait of the Stadholder Frederik Hendrik (1584-1647), Prince of Orange, Anthony van Dyck (after), c. 1670 – (Anthony Van Dyck) ◄ ก่อน ต่อไป ►

ศิลปิน: Anthony Van Dyck

วันที่: 1670

ขนาด: 125 x 101 cm

เทคนิค: Oil On Canvas

This painting is a copy after the portrait by Anthony van Dyck now in the Baltimore Museum of Art,6 which was first recorded in an inventory of the possessions of Amalia van Solms-Braunfels (1602-1675), the sitter’s widow, of 1673, and was probably painted in Antwerp following Van Dyck’s visit to The Hague at the end of 1631 and early 1632. There are two repetitions of this picture, in Madrid and Genoa, which Vey considers to be ‘almost – though not quite – equal in quality’.7 The present picture is, however, too weakly handled to be considered a work of Van Dyck’s studio in Antwerp. Rather it would appear to date from the second half of the seventeenth century, painted perhaps when the varnish on the prototype from which it was copied was already discoloured; as far as can be judged, the sash and helmet plumes should be a clearer orange. The question then arises from which of the three pictures executed by Van Dyck, or under his supervision, the Rijksmuseum copy derives. It is larger than both those at Baltimore and Madrid, showing more at the top; its dimensions are closer to those of the Genoa version, where there is a similar amount of space above the sitter’s head. Larsen states that that picture was already owned by the Brignole-Sale in 1717, and that the family archives record that it was enlarged in the eighteenth century.8 Thus the similarity in format would appear to be coincidental. As the version in Madrid is probably the picture bought by King Charles I of Great Britain (1600-1649) in 1632, it seems likely that the Rijksmuseum picture was indeed executed as an enlarged copy of the Baltimore portrait before the latter left the Netherlands after the death of Amalia van Solms in 1675, when it was inherited by her daughter, Henriette Catharina, the wife of Prince Johann Georg II of Anhalt Dessau.9 What is likely to have been a copy of it, measuring about 127 x 102 cm, was listed in the Stadhouderlijk Hof, The Hague, in the inventory of 1763-64; and, as suggested in the provenance, that may indeed be the present picture, even if the dimensions are slightly smaller. If this is the case, it may have been painted as a replacement of the original when it left Holland. Frederik Hendrik (1584-1647) was the third son of Willem I (1533-1584), Prince of Orange, and succeeded his half-brother as prince of Orange and stadholder of Holland, Zeeland, Gelderland and Overijssel in 1625. He was a very successful military commander seizing much territory from the Spanish controlled southern Netherlands. Van Dyck depicted him in his role of commander of the army of the United Provinces. Indeed he went on military campaigns in every year of his reign. Gregory Martin, 2022