Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 307 cm × width 189 cm
Govert Flinck
Allegory in Memory of Frederik Hendrik (1584-1647), Prince of Orange, with a Portrait of his Widow Amalia von Solms (1602-1675)
1654
Inscriptions
- signature and date, centre right, on the tomb: G. Flinck ft 1654
Technical notes
Support The support consists of two pieces of medium-weight, irregular, plain-weave canvas with a vertical seam to the right of centre, approx. 96 cm from the left edge, and has been wax-resin lined. Since the painting could not be unframed, it was not possible to assess the condition of the (original) tacking edges. The two horizontal cross bars of the original strainer left an imprint of approx. 5.5 cm wide. Judging by the crack pattern parallel to the outer edges, and assuming the strainer bars there were also 5.5 cm wide, the support must have been trimmed by at least 3.5 cm at the top, 1 cm at the bottom, 2 cm on the left and 1.5 cm on the right.
Preparatory layers The single, beige ground, containing lead white, chalk and brown earth pigments, barely fills the weave of the canvas. The seam may have been given a second layer, as the texture of the paint in that area is thicker.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The composition was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light. The main figures and architectural features were largely left in reserve; several elements, including the cherub at the top right and the statue partly visible at the back of the monument, were added later in the painting process. The flesh tones of the figures were built up in different ways. A greyish undermodelling shimmers through Amalia van Solms’s pale, smoothly painted face. Here the pink lights and brown shadows were carefully blended into the mid-tones, the contours redefined with greyish brown and the deepest shadows accented with opaque red-brown. Her hands, by comparison, are yellowish. The face and right hand and wrist of Bellona, the helmeted figure, have a brownish tonality which is opaque and flat. In contrast, Hope, kneeling in the left foreground, was executed in strong colours and warm flesh tones, using a bold reddish-brown undermodelling, which was left visible in the palm of her left hand and was worked up with just a few confident brushstrokes. Considerable attention was paid to the contours, which were softened in many places by dragging a brush across the still wet paint.
Various changes made during the painting process have become visible to the naked eye. Parts of Amalia’s black dress, for instance, were extensively modified, such as the shapes of her veil and chemise. Her left hand was partly painted over the book on her lap and Bellona’s hand was added over the palm leaf, while the latter’s right arm seems to have been adjusted several times. Position shifts include the left contour of the monument, which was initially placed a few centimetres further to the left, and the top contour of the monument in the far background, which was at first slightly taller.
Petria Noble, 2023
Scientific examination and reports
- paint samples: P. Noble, Mauritshuis, no. MH1116x01, 15 March 2004
- technical report: P. Noble, Mauritshuis, 15 March 2004
- infrared photography: G. Tauber, RMA, 15 November 2010
Literature scientific examination and reports
Q. Buvelot (ed.), Portraits in the Mauritshuis 1430-1790, coll. cat. The Hague 2004, p. 98
Condition
Fair. Extensive abrasion of the paint surface, pinpoint losses and numerous scratches and dents can be found throughout. There are very large losses in the black gown of the woman to the right-hand side and the darkest shadows of both the gown and veil contain drying cracks, as do the darkest green shadows of the draperies of the other two figures, as well as the laurel crown and the palm leaf. The signature was overpainted in translucent brown paint, with the exception of the lower part of the ‘G’; the fragmentary opaque dark brown paint of the original signature is partly visible underneath. The date could not be examined since it is obscured by the frame.
Conservation
- conservator unknown, 1883: canvas lined
- S. Altmann, 1887: large hole in Amalia’s dress restored
- conservator unknown, 1914: revarnished
- M. Bijl, 1980: two damaged areas in canvas patched; complete restoration
- M. Zeldenrust, 1980: two damaged areas in canvas patched; complete restoration
Provenance
Commissioned by or for Amalia van Solms for the large east cabinet in Huis ten Bosch, The Hague; probate inventory, Huis ten Bosch, 1668, no. 1182 (‘Een schilderije van haer hoogheyt sittende bij ’t graff van sijne hoogheyt prince Frederick Hendrick hoogloff. memorie met eenige postuiren daerbij, door Flinck gedaen’);1 probate inventory, Huis ten Bosch, 1702, no. 28, in the ‘blaeuw cabinet’ (‘Behangen met schilderijen vast aen de lambrisering’);2 probate inventory, Huis ten Bosch, 1707, no. 20, in the ‘Blauw Cabinet’ (‘In de lambris stuck van Flinck, sijnde de oude princes douagière d’Orange’);3 by descent to Willem V (1748-1806), with Huis ten Bosch; confiscated by the French, with Huis ten Bosch, and made the property of the Dutch State, 1795; transferred to the museum, 1800; on loan to the Mauritshuis, 1816-76, and again since 1998
Object number: SK-A-869
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Govert Flinck (Cleves 1615 - Amsterdam 1660)
The exact date of Govert Flinck’s birth, 25 January 1615, is known from a medal issued at the time of his death. He was born into a Mennonite family of some standing in the German town of Cleves, where his father may have been a cloth merchant. According to Houbraken, the young Flinck had a fervent desire to become an artist, which his parents did their utmost to suppress until the Dutch painter and fellow Mennonite Lambert Jacobsz, who was on a preaching tour in Cleves, persuaded them to allow their son to study with him in Leeuwarden. Another of his pupils and Flinck’s ‘companion in art’ (‘gezelschap in de Konst’) was Jacob Backer, who was about seven years his senior.4 Having advanced far enough to stand on their own feet, the two young artists went to Amsterdam. Although Houbraken’s text has been interpreted as meaning that they made the move at the same time, Backer is first documented there in 1633, while the earliest record of Flinck living in Amsterdam is from 1637. On 13 March of that year, he bought some prints at an auction and his address was given as the home of the art dealer Hendrick Uylenburgh. Von Sandrart informs us that after a period of study with Rembrandt, which according to Houbraken lasted only a year, Flinck ‘spent many long years with the famous art dealer Uylenburgh, with whom he left many exquisite, beautiful portraits from his own hand’.5 This chronology implies that he had already trained with Rembrandt, or was training with him, when he painted his earliest signed and dated works in 1636.6 Vestiges of Jacobsz’s style are apparent in these pictures, making Houbraken’s assertion that Flinck fully mastered Rembrandt’s manner in the year he was taught by him appear somewhat exaggerated.
Flinck’s most accomplished Rembrandtesque paintings date from the late 1630s and early 1640s. In addition to the portraits mentioned by Von Sandrart, he executed histories and landscapes while he worked for Uylenburgh. His documented clientele consisted to a large degree of fellow Mennonites, including his cousins Ameldonck and Dirck Jacobsz Leeuw. It is not known when Flinck stopped running Uylenburgh’s studio and set up shop on his own. In 1644, he purchased two houses on Lauriersgracht (nos. 76 and 78) for 10,000 guilders, installing his studio and gallery on the top floors. In the meantime, he had already received the first of three commissions for group portraits from the Amsterdam civic guard, the Portrait of the Governors of the Kloveniersdoelen of 1642;7 the other two are dated 1645 and 1648.8 In the latter year he was awarded his first order from an aristocrat, an allegory for the Elector of Brandenburg, Friedrich Wilhelm von Hohenzollern.9
In June 1645 Flinck married Ingeltje Thoveling, the daughter of a vice-admiral and director of the Rotterdam branch of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Although she was a Remonstrant, it was only after her death in early 1651 that Flinck had himself baptized in her faith. He remarried in 1656, his second wife being Sophia van der Houve of Gouda. Houbraken points out that Flinck had many influential friends, including Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, governor of Cleves, the burgomasters Cornelis and Andries de Graeff, and the art lovers Pieter and Jan Six and Joannes Wtenbogaert.
A fully-fledged Flemish Baroque style, inspired initially by Amsterdam artists who had adopted it, first appears in Flinck’s work in 1645.10 It is also apparent in the many important commissions Flinck received in the 1650s, which included portraits of the Elector of Brandenburg11 and of Johan Maurits,12 as well as the Allegory in Memory of Frederik Hendrik.13 It may have been the trip that the artist made to Antwerp, reported by both Baldinucci and Houbraken, that encouraged him to continue down this path.
In 1656 Flinck completed the enormous Marcus Curtius Dentatus Refusing the Gifts of the Samnites for the newly built Town Hall in Amsterdam, followed in 1658 by Solomon’s Prayer for Wisdom.14 In late 1659 he was asked to paint twelve monumental canvases for the Great Gallery of the Town Hall, but Flinck died on 2 February the following year before completing any of them.
A witness stated that a number of assistants and apprentices were working in Flinck’s studio in 1649, which was probably the case in other years as well. Nevertheless, the names of only four, rather obscure pupils are known with certainty: the Düsseldorf painter Johannes Spilberg (1619-1690), who spent a few years with him in the 1640s, Johannes Buns (dates unknown), Bartholomeus Hoppfer (1628-1699) and Steven Sleger (dates unknown).
Jonathan Bikker, 2023
References
J. von Sandrart, Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675: Leben der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. A.R. Peltzer, Munich 1925 (ed. princ. Nuremberg 1675), p. 194; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, II, Amsterdam 1719, pp. 18-27; F. Baldinucci, Notizie de’ professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua secolo V. dal 1610. al 1670., Florence 1728, p. 484; H. Havard, L’art et les artistes hollandais, II, Paris 1880, pp. 71-174, 191-202; D.C. Meijer Jr, ‘De Amsterdamsche schutters-stukken in en buiten het nieuwe Rijksmuseum’, Oud Holland 7 (1889), pp. 45-60, esp. pp. 45, 46; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, I, The Hague 1915, p. 128; Hofstede de Groot in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XII, Leipzig 1916, pp. 97-100; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, IV, The Hague 1917, pp. 1254-55; J.W. von Moltke, Govaert Flinck, 1615-1660, Amsterdam 1965, pp. 9-12; S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, ‘Doopsgezinden en schilderkunst in de 17e eeuw: Leerlingen, opdrachtgevers en verzamelaars van Rembrandt’, Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 6 (1980), pp. 105-23, esp. pp. 109-10; S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, ‘Het “schilderhuis” van Govert Flinck en de kunsthandel van Uylenburgh aan de Lauriergracht te Amsterdam’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 74 (1982), pp. 70-90; W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, New York 1984, pp. 998-99; W. Liedtke, ‘Rembrandt and the Rembrandt Style in the Seventeenth Century’, in W. Liedtke et al., Rembrandt/not Rembrandt in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Aspects of Connoisseurship, exh. cat. New York 1995-96, II, pp. 3-39, esp. pp. 16-20; Von Moltke in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, XI, New York 1996, pp. 168-70; P. Jeroense, ‘Govaert Flinck (1615-1660): Eine Künstlerbiographie’, Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 36 (1997), pp. 73-112; Beaujean in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XLI, Munich/Leipzig 2004, pp. 240-43; W. Liedtke, ‘Rembrandt’s “Workshop” Revisited’, Oud Holland 117 (2004), pp. 48-73, esp. pp. 52, 68, 70, note 34; J. van der Veen, ‘Het kunstbedrijf van Hendrick Uylenburgh in Amsterdam: Productie en handel tussen 1625 en 1655’, in F. Lammertse and J. van der Veen, Uylenburgh en Zoon: Kunst en commercie van Rembrandt tot De Lairesse, 1625-1675, exh. cat. London (Dulwich Picture Gallery)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2006, pp. 117-205, esp. pp. 160-69; R. Lambour, ‘Het doopsgezind milieu van Michiel van Musscher (1645-1705) en van andere schilders in zeventiende-eeuws Amsterdam: Een revisie en ontdekking’, Oud Holland 125 (2012), pp. 193-214, esp. pp. 197-98; T. van der Molen, ‘Das Leben von Govert Flinck/The Life of Govert Flinck’, in E.-J. Goosens et al., Govert Flinck – Reflecting History, exh. cat. Cleves (Museum Kurhaus Kleve) 2015-16, pp. 10-21; E.J. Sluijter, Rembrandt’s Rivals: History Painting in Amsterdam 1630-1650, Amsterdam/Philadelphia 2015, pp. 97-110
Entry
This large allegorical picture was executed as part of the decorations for the large cabinet in the east wing of Amalia van Solms’s newly-built residence in The Hague, Huis ten Bosch. By 1649 Pieter Post had completed the design for this room, the walls of which were covered with wood panelling painted black with gilded carvings. Govert Flinck’s canvas hung in the centre of the west wall opposite an Annunciation by Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert that is now in Museum Schloss Mosigkau.15 Another work by Willeboirts Bosschaert, Garland of Flowers with a Sculpture of the Virgin and Child of 1645, on which he collaborated with the flower specialist Daniel Seghers, adorned the chimneybreast of the north wall.16 Each of the cabinet’s six doors, three of which were real and three false, were decorated with paintings by Verelst (probably Pieter Verelst) with a female personification of six of the seven virtues: Love, Faith, Prudence, Temperance, Justice and Constancy.17
The personification of the seventh virtue, Hope, was included in Flinck’s painting.18 Dressed in green and supporting an anchor with her right hand and holding a sprig from an orange tree in her left, she kneels before Amalia van Solms, who sits in mourning beneath the tomb of her deceased husband, Frederik Hendrik. It is an imaginary structure that was probably meant to recall the funeral monument of her father-in-law, William the Silent, in the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft. Flinck decorated it with two female figures personifying the virtues of constancy (the one holding a sword and leaning against a pillar) and justice (with a set of scales). Although the text is not legible, the book held by Amalia is probably Isaac Commelin’s biography of Frederik Hendrik published in two volumes in 1651-52.19 Next to the widow, and reading along with her, is a young woman wearing a laurel-decked helmet. She is probably the war goddess Bellona,20 the palm branch held in her left hand symbolizing the deceased stadholder’s military triumphs. Hovering above Hope is an angel gesturing to the rays of light breaking through the storm clouds. The monument in the distant background includes three weeping putti gathered at the side of an armoured warrior lying in state, and an altar, upon which a phoenix – the ancient symbol of resurrection – rises from the ashes.
Flinck’s canvas is both a glorification of the memory of Frederik Hendrik, who had died in 1647, and an expression of hope for the political resurrection of the House of Orange. The premature death of Amalia’s son Willem II in 1650 led to the beginning of the first Stadholderless Period in the Dutch Republic. He is probably the warrior lying in state on the monument in the background. Hope, however, holds the House of Orange in the form of the orange tree branch firmly in her hand, and while the angel points to the heavens where the dark clouds hovering over the House of Orange’s fortunes are beginning to disperse, the phoenix arises again. Indeed, Amalia’s 4-year-old grandson Willem III, who had been born eight days after his father’s death, was elected stadholder of Overijssel in the year the painting was executed. Two medals issued in 1655 and 1657 also carry the message of Willem III as the phoenix, the text on the later one reading ‘Thus, like a phoenix, the father lives after his death in his son’.21 The original hanging of Flinck’s picture opposite Willeboirts Bosschaert’s Annunciation in the large east cabinet elevated Willem III’s birth to the status of a secular equivalent of the birth of the Christ Child.22
The even lighting, the smoothly modelled flesh tones and the more lively brushwork in the draperies are characteristic of the Flemish Baroque style that Flinck adopted around 1645, first in his portraits and later in his history pieces as well. This style would have been in keeping with that in the pictures by Willeboirts Bosschaert in the large east cabinet, and it would have appealed to Amalia van Solms, for it was among those prevalent in the paintings executed for the Oranjezaal in the same building only a few years previously (1648-52).23 The allegorical conception of Flinck’s canvas, in which real people are combined with personifications, may have been derived from the works in the Oranjezaal, which in turn followed the pattern set by Peter Paul Rubens’s 1621-25 series of the life of Maria de’ Medici.24 Flinck was not one of the artists involved in the decorations of the Oranjezaal, but the present picture was not his first princely allegory. In 1648 he had been commissioned by the Elector of Brandenburg, Friedrich Wilhelm von Hohenzollern, to paint an allegory of the birth of his newborn son Prince Wilhelm Heinrich.25 Friedrich Wilhelm von Hohenzollern was married to Amalia van Solms’s daughter Louise Henriette, who may very well have recommended Flinck to her mother.26
Jonathan Bikker, 2023
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
F. Gorissen, Govert Flinck, der Kleefsche Apelles 1616-1660: Gemälde und Zeichnungen, exh. cat. Cleves (Städtisches Museum Haus Koekkoek) 1965, p. 26, no. 18; J.W. von Moltke, Govaert Flinck, 1615-1660, Amsterdam 1965, pp. 39, 92, no. 118; T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer, ‘De woonvertrekken in Amalia’s Huis in het Bosch’, Oud Holland 84 (1969), pp. 29-66, esp. pp. 52-54; Wheelock in A. Blankert et al., God, Saints & Heroes: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Detroit (Detroit Institute of Arts)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1980-81, pp. 164-66, no. 36; W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, New York 1984, pp. 1001, 1025, no. 636, with earlier literature; Van der Ploeg in P. van der Ploeg and C. Vermeeren (eds.)., Vorstelijk verzameld: De kunstcollectie van Frederik Hendrik en Amalia, exh. cat. The Hague (Mauritshuis) 1997-98, pp. 128-31, no. 8; Blankert in A. Blankert et al., Dutch Classicism in Seventeenth-Century Painting, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen)/Frankfurt (Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie) 1999-2000, pp. 168-71, no. 27; Van der Ploeg in Q. Buvelot (ed.), Portraits in the Mauritshuis 1430-1790, coll. cat. The Hague 2004, pp. 95-98, no. 19; S. Beranek, ‘Govert Flinck and the Houses of Orange and Brandenburg: Networks and Influence’, in S.S. Dickey (ed.), Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck: New Research, Zwolle 2017, pp. 66-81; E.J. Sluijter, ‘Out of Rembrandt’s Shadow: Govert Flinck and Ferdinand Bol as History Painters’, in N. Middelkoop (ed.), Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck; Rembrandt’s Master Pupils, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis; Amsterdam Museum) 2017-18, pp. 104-31, esp. pp. 110-11
Collection catalogues
1887, p. 46, no. 366; 1903, p. 100, no. 929; 1934, p. 101, no. 929; 1960, pp. 102-03, no. 929; 1976, p. 228, no. A 869
Citation
Jonathan Bikker, 2023, 'Govert Flinck, Allegory in Memory of Frederik Hendrik (1584-1647), Prince of Orange, with a Portrait of his Widow Amalia von Solms (1602-1675), 1654', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8426
(accessed 28 May 2024 18:06:17).