Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 136.8 cm × width 187 cm
Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen
The Explosion of the Spanish Flagship during the Battle of Gibraltar, 25 April 1607
c. 1621
Technical notes
The plain-weave canvas has been lined. The tacking edges have been removed, and cusping is not present. The ground has a light colour. Brushmarking is visible in the sky and flames.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 23 April 2003
Condition
Good. There is some abrasion and areas of inpainting, an especially large one being in the centre of the sky.
Conservation
- H. Plagge, 1961: complete restoration
Provenance
...; ? the heirs of Admiral van Heemskerck (1567-1607);1 ? by descent to Jonkheer H. Tedingh van Berckhout (on loan to the Museum der Stad Haarlem until 1905);2 his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 27 June 1905 -sqq. no. 120, as H.C. Vroom, fl. 975, to the museum
Object number: SK-A-2163
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen (Haarlem before 1577 - Haarlem 1633)
It is not known precisely when the marine artist Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen was born. Karel van Mander states that he was from Haarlem, and that at first he followed his father’s trade of seafarer. Van Wieringen enrolled in the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1597, and since the minimum age of admission was 21 it has been assumed that he was born before 1577. It is generally believed that he was taught by Hendrick Vroom, but that is not documented, nor can the suspicion that he was a pupil of Hendrick Goltzius be substantiated. Van Wieringen’s earliest known work dates from 1616, A Dutch Merchantman Attacked by an English Privateer, off La Rochelle.3 In addition to marine paintings, he also made many drawings of a variety of subjects.
Van Wieringen was made a warden of the guild around 1610, and in 1630 he was involved in drawing up a new guild charter that never came into effect. He died on 29 December 1633 and was buried a few days later in Haarlem’s Grote Kerk. He received his last major commission in 1629 from the Haarlem authorities to design a monumental tapestry of The Capture of Damietta, which still hangs in the council chamber of the town hall. Van Wieringen’s son Claes was also a painter, and joined the Guild of St Luke in 1636.
Everhard Korthals Altes, 2007
References
Van Mander 1604, fol. 300; Ampzing 1621, [p. 33]; Schrevelius 1648, p. 389; Obreen I, 1877-78, p. 235; Bredius II, 1916, p. 671, VII, 1921, pp. 89-93; Thieme/Becker XXXV, 1942, p. 537; Keyes 1979, pp. 1-2; Miedema 1980, I, pp. 84, 85, 93, 136, 139, 194, II, pp. 423, 1033, 1037, 1056-57; Brand 1995, pp. 194-207; Miedema VI, 1998, p. 120; Van Thiel-Stroman 2006, pp. 343-46
Entry
The explosion of the Spanish flagship was the decisive moment in the Battle of Gibraltar. A Dutch warship is ramming the burning ship in the foreground. The explosion hurls men into the sky, while others try to escape in a sloop.
In 1621, the authorities and Admiralty of Amsterdam ordered a painting of the Battle of Gibraltar from Hendrick Vroom. They planned to present it to Prince Maurits, the commander-in-chief of the Dutch forces, to mark the building of a new wing of his residence in the Stadholders’ Quarter in The Hague. Vroom asked for the astronomical sum of 6,000 guilders, which his prospective clients considered exorbitant.4 Vroom refused to budge on the price, so the contract fell through, whereupon the Admiralty approached Vroom’s pupil Cornelis van Wieringen. He was paid 2,400 guilders for the painting, the largest marine ever made in the Netherlands in the 17th century.5
Van Wieringen had to paint a trial piece before he was given the commission, and that was probably this work, which for a long time was attributed to Vroom. Although the size of the painting differs a little from that stipulated in the documents, the description ‘two ships’ matches what is to be seen here. Once Prince Maurits had approved the trial piece, the Admiralty ordered a modello of the composition of the large canvas.6
In its style and use of colour, this painting fits better within Van Wieringen’s oeuvre than Vroom’s. The latter’s compositions are generally less cluttered than Van Wieringen’s, and his outlines of the ships and other details are crisper than Vroom’s slightly vague style.7 Van Wieringen’s figures, on the other hand, are more delicate and precise than Vroom’s.
Everhard Korthals Altes, 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. 341.
Literature
Bol 1973, p. 17; Keyes 1975, I, p. 128; Russell 1983, pp. 174-76, 202; Brand 1995, p. 203; Brand in Rotterdam-Berlin 1996, pp. 105-07, no. 9; Kloek 2000, pp. 143, 150; Zandvliet in Amsterdam 2000a, pp. 406-07, no. 232
Collection catalogues
1934, p. 310, no. 2604a (as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom); 1976, p. 593, no. 2163 (as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom); 1992, p. 93, no. A 2163; 2007, no. 341
Citation
E. Korthals Altes, 2007, 'Cornelis Claesz. van Wieringen, The Explosion of the Spanish Flagship during the Battle of Gibraltar, 25 April 1607, c. 1621', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6503
(accessed 27 May 2024 17:14:01).