Model for the Funerary Monument of Lieutenant-General Baron Johan Theodoor Von Friesheim (1642-1733)

Entry

In order to ensure an abiding memorial for themselves after their death, some monarchs, nobles and affluent individuals would commission their funerary monument themselves, as did Baron Johan Theodoor von Friesheim (1642-1733). This son of a German nobleman began as a page to Prince Willem III (1650-1702) and later, as a lieutenant general of the infantry of the Dutch States Army, took part in most of the Prince’s campaigns during the latter’s stadholdership. In 1709 he was appointed governor of Heusden and in 1733 of Den Bosch.¹ The resplendent wall monument which this warrior had installed during his lifetime in the church at Heusden was finished in 1731, when he had reached the respectable age of ninety (fig. a). The baron died two years later, in 1733. According to the inscriptions on the plinth of the tomb (I: Marot invenit and JOHANNES BAPTISTA XAVERY F. 1731), the monument was designed by Jacob Marot (1697-1761)² and sculpted by Jan Baptist Xavery (1697-1742), two leading artists, who were under the stadholder’s protection.

The present terracotta, signed by Xavery and dated 1731, is the model for the reclining figure of the Friesheim monument, which was actually completed in the same year. The front of the plinth is divided into six similar parts by vertical lines one of which is further divided into two, another into ten similar sections. These marks enabled the sculptor to render the scale accurately in the correct proportions. As in the eventual monument, baron reclines in demi-couché pose, with his upper body resting on four stacked gun barrels with three cannonballs beside them. He supports his raised head with his right hand, in which he holds a baton of command. The warrior is clad in full armour and on his head he wears an allonge wig. A cravatte à la Steenkerque (Steinkirk cravat) protrudes above the breastplate and a fringed sash is knotted round his middle. A flag lies behind his legs and a helmet has been placed at his feet. The final funerary monument depicts the baron lying on a black marble sarcophagus with epitaph, with a white marble angel standing behind pointing to the text on the cartouche it is holding. The ensemble is set against a white marble backing flanked by two rows of three quarterly coats of arms attached to elegantly arching pilasters and crowned by a family crest. Three eagles perch above the coats of arms.

The style of the wall tomb ties in seamlessly with the Louis XIV style which in 1731 was already outmoded. It had been introduced in the Netherlands in the late-seventeenth century by Jacob’s father, the French-born architect Daniël Marot I (1661-1752). Baron Von Friesheim’s monument is one of the last examples of an unusually large number of tombs commissioned by private individuals in that style of the French court, adapted to the less extravagant protestant-Dutch taste.³ Jacob Marot owes a great deal to the corner tomb for the soldier Philips van Hessen-Philipstal designed nine years earlier by Daniël Marot (Grote Kerk, The Hague).⁴ Its execution was initially also attributed to Xavery,⁵ but later the correct maker’s name could be put to it, i.e. that of the lesser known sculptor Nicolaas Seuntjes (1700-1778) from The Hague (cf. BK-1996-18).⁶

A bozzetto in the Rijksmuseum collection dated 1728 for a tomb with a reclining figure in demi-couché pose and also clad in armour had in the past been incorrectly associated with the Von Friesheim commission.⁷ Recently it has been more securely identified with the design Xavery made for the tomb of the general Count Reinhard Vincent von Hompesch (c. 1660-1733) made when the general was still alive (see the entry on BK-NM-3093-A for the argumentation). This version was never realized, because just after Von Hompesch died in 1733, Xavery was asked to make a new design for a monument that would cost half the first. Xavery’s pencil sketches, as well as a copy by the Delft notary and genealogist Willem van der Lely,⁸ of the wall tomb which was eventually placed in the church at Linnich, have been kept, though the tomb was destroyed in the eighteenth century. Instead of a costly, life-size recumbent figure, the monument comprised a portrait bust of the deceased – which would certainly have kept the price down. The 1728 bozzetto for the Von Hompesch monument and the eventual wall tomb of 1734 both contain elements that are comparable with parts of the Von Friesheim monument.⁹ As Van der Klooster already surmised, there would seem to have been a competitive patronage between Von Friesheim and Von Hompesch, who had a comparable army record.¹⁰ Both had solicited in vain for the title of field marshal in 1726 and after Von Hompesch’s death in 1733, Von Friesheim took over his governorship of Den Bosch. However, he only held the position for a short time, as he himself died in that same year.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025