Otter Supporting an Escutcheon, from the Top of a Balustrade or the Backrest of the Stadholder’s Chair in the Rolzaal in the Hof van Holland, The Hague

Entry

This is one of thirteen oak figures, most of them escutcheon supports, which originally belonged to the furnishings of the Rolzaal, the council chamber of the Hof van Holland (Court of Holland) in the Binnenhof in The Hague (BK-NM-144-1, -2, -3, -4, -5, -6, -7, -8, -9, -10, -11, -12 and BK-NM-12304). They decorated the wooden balustrade surrounding the seats in the courtroom and the backrest of the stadholder’s chair.⁵ The whole is clearly visible in the title print of Hugo Grotius’s Inleiding tot de Hollandsche rechts-geleertheyd of 1631 (RP-P-OB-55.376), which shows that the series then comprised seventeen figures.

Each of the thirteen surviving figures – five lions, four monkeys or ape-like creatures, two dogs, an otter and a human figure – holds an escutcheon, apart from one of the monkeys or ape-like creatures, who plays a rumbling pot (BK-NM-144-6). This music-making monkey might have been intended to mitigate the power radiated by the other beasts with their escutcheons or as sardonic commentary on what is taking place in chambers.⁶ The collection of the Rijksmuseum also contains two matching, twisted colonnettes (BK-NM-12305-A and -B), which formed the back stiles of the stadholder’s chair.⁷

A surviving bill reveals that the statues were produced in 1511 on the occasion of the extensive renovation and redecoration of the Rolzaal carried out that year under the supervision of master-builder Pieter Plum(i)oen.⁸ The cabinetmaker/master carpenter Joost Janszoon was responsible for the ‘furnishings of fine woodwork’ (timmeringen van suptylen houtwerck) in the ‘consistory with the beasts and the lions’ (consistorie mit den beesten ende leeuwen), for which he received 120 pounds or guilders. Although he successfully introduced the necessary variety in the escutcheon-bearers’ poses and forms, they are, on the whole, rather crude, stiff and angular in execution. The poor artistic quality is not surprising, however, considering that it was not made by a specialized woodcarver.

Also apparent from the bill is that the painter Jan de Paep applied the polychromy to the statues, and this included painting the blazons on the escutcheons, ‘which display the arms of the prince and his lands’.⁹ It is therefore highly likely that the complete series represented the coats of arms of the (Southern) Netherlandish provinces then ruled by the underage sovereign Charles of Luxembourg, the later Emperor Charles V. This is also in keeping with the four coats of arms that can still be identified: the Netherlandish provinces of Guelders (BK-NM-144-11),¹⁰ Artois (BK-NM-144-8), Luxemburg (BK-NM-144-7) and Old Burgundy (BK-NM-12304). In 1879, moreover, Ising managed to identify the arms of Holland, Hainaut, Flanders and that of either the Holy Roman Empire or Groningen, which were also considered to be among Charles V’s possessions. In the meantime, however, they and the other blazons have deteriorated so as to be unrecognizable, owing to the deplorable state of the polychromy.¹¹

The city chronicler and advocate for the Court of Holland, Jacob de Riemer, quotes in his Beschryving van ’s Gravenhage of 1736-39 a report from the lord justices of the Court of Holland, Zeeland and West-Friesland concerning ‘the legal issues between the Court and The Hague’,¹² which gives another identification of the coats of arms.¹³ To demonstrate the legitimacy of their court of law, they maintained that ‘in this Roll or place of public audience of the Court of Holland, around the bar or wooden balustrade have traditionally stood all the coats of arms of the families from which the Counts of Holland were descended, also those long before the House of Burgundy, as a sign that in that place, justice has been done in the name of those previous counts as well; which arms were removed from there only in the year 1669, as is still borne in the memory of various people, who saw them there; and as those arms were carved in wood and painted, this can still be shown, because they have been preserved’.¹⁴ If this account is true, the original coats of arms had by then been overpainted with those of the counts of Holland.

It is not known where the figures were kept after their removal from the chamber, which took place in 1669, according to the above-mentioned report. Twelve of them were acquired in 1876 by the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst in The Hague (the collection of which was later subsumed into the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam), but to whom they belonged or where they came from is not documented. The thirteenth figure, an escutcheon-bearing lion (BK-NM-12304), was purchased by the museum 36 years later, in 1912, from an art dealer in The Hague. Unfortunately, the fate of the four missing statues is not known.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024