Bust of Maurice, Prince of Orange (1567-1625)

Entry

Prince Maurice was the second son of William the Silent. His mother was Anne of Saxony, his father’s second wife. After his father’s assassination in Delft in 1584, Maurice became chairman of the Council of State. The following year, 1585, he was appointed Stadholder of Holland and Zeeland and head of the army. In 1590 he also became Stadholder of Utrecht, Guelders and Overijssel and in 1620 of Groningen as well. After the death of his older halfbrother, Philip William, he was appointed the new Prince of Orange. Under his leadership and in cooperation with the Land’s Advocate of Holland Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the Dutch States Army achieved many victories against the Spaniards, who were driven out of the north and east of the Republic. During the Twelve Year’s Truce a conflict erupted between Maurice and Van Oldenbarnevelt, which ended with the latter's decapitation. After the Truce, Maurice failed to achieve more military victories. He died without legitimate children in The Hague in 1625 and was succeeded by his younger half-brother Frederick Henry.

Prince Maurice is portrayed in the ceremonial gilt suit of armour incised with laurel leaves that was presented to him after the Battle of Nieuwpoort (1600) by the States-General. The prince also wears a sash, and the insignia of the Order of the Garter, which he was awarded in 1613. The carefully modelled portrait is likely derived from an anonymous engraving after a painting by Michiel van Mierevelt from 1618. The museum also possesses a bust of prince Philip William by the same hand (BK-AM-68). This bust is signed and dated on the hollow reverse by the renowned Antwerp sculptor Johannes (‘Jan’) Claudius de Cock (1667-1735), though the last digit of the year is illegible. Although the busts of the two half-brothers entered the museum by different routes they undoubtedly belong together. They are the same size, made of the same material and have the same finish. Moreover, they are on identical plaster bases and the compositions are very similar, the heads of the men both turned in three-quarter view. They may have belonged to a dynastic series of portraits of the Princes of Orange that was ordered for one of the stadholders’ palaces. From 1692 to 1695/97 De Cock was based in Breda,¹ where he was commissioned by King-Stadholder William III to make sculptural decorations for this castle, and the busts are very likely to have been commissioned during that period. Since Philip William was never a stadholder and had taken no part in the Dutch revolt against Spain, it seems that only a personal, dynastic interest of the patron, probably William III, could account for the commissioning of his portrait. In the inventories relating to the House of Orange there is just one entry that could refer to a series of ancestral portraits, namely the ‘Eight fired busts, of which one is broken’ which were at Honselaersdijk Palace (near The Hague) at the time the inventory was made up (1755).²

Frits Scholten and Bieke van der Mark, 2025
This entry is a revised version of F. Scholten, Gebeeldhouwde portretten/Portrait Sculptures, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1995, no. 28