Portrait Medallion of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645)

Entry

The present ivory medallion shows the highly esteemed jurist Hugo Grotius, portrayed in profile, facing left. He wears a tabard over a buttoned doublet and a flat collar around the neck. This portrait can be traced back to an engraving by Willem Jacobsz van Delff (RP-P-OB-50.076) dated 1632, made after a painting his father-in-law, Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt made a year earlier (cf. SK-A-581).

The medallion was acquired by the Rijksmuseum in 1999. A comparable ivory portrait of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (NG-NM-4200) had been in the collection since 1878. It is likewise based on a print by Van Delff after a painting by Van Mierevelt. Both were very likely carved by the same hand responsible for two ivory portrait medallions of the De Witt brothers in the museum’s collection (BK-18760-A and -B). All four medallions share the same dimensions, with the somewhat smoother polishing of the Grotius portrait being the only noteworthy distinction.

The De Witt brothers, Van Oldenbarnevelt and Grotius were all members of the Dutch States Party, the anti-Orangist faction existing in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. Grotius managed to escape from Loevestein Castle, then functioning as the state prison, on 22 March 1621. By contrast, the other three men would meet a violent end: Van Oldenbarnevelt was convicted of high treason in a mock trial held on 12 May 1619 and beheaded one day later; the De Witt brothers were lynched on 20 August 1672 by a mob of vengeful Orangists. Portraits of these ‘martyrs of the State’ were collected by those sympathetic to the republican cause, occasionally as part of a series. ¹ During the so-called Patriottentijd (Time of the Patriots, 1780-95), the veneration of these men experienced a revival. In the 1780s, Van Oldenbarnevelt, Grotius and the De Witt brothers were inducted in a pantheon of ‘Heroes of the Dutch States Party’, which took the form of small busts cast in Loosdrecht porcelain.²

Nevertheless, the four ivory portrait medallions in the Rijksmuseum were all very likely produced quite some time before the 1780s. The style of their execution betrays some similarity to a number of ivory portrait medallions linked to the Flemish (?) sculptor Gaspar van der Hagen (d. 1769), an artist probably to be identified as the Monogrammist GVDR.³ General parallels can be observed in the onset and rendering of the hair, the broad noses, and the large eyes with emphatically delineated eyelids found on a set of three ivory-carved oval portrait medallions of John Milton, Queen Elizabeth I and Oliver Cromwell in the Victoria and Albert Museum,⁴ and an ivory medallion in the Reiner Winkler Collection, possibly a portrait of King-Stadholder Willem III.⁵ As an assistant to the native Antwerp sculptor Michael Rysbrack (1694-1770) (cf. BK-NM-5760 and BK-2018-9) in London from 1744 on, Van der Hagen sculpted in marble. In his autonomous work, however, he appears to have specialized in oval portrait medallions of historical figures carved in ivory, frequently based on three-dimensional models by Rysbrack. By comparison with Van der Hagen’s carvings, the four Amsterdam ivories lack the refinement and the ‘fleshiness’ in the faces of most of the works attributed to Van der Hagen. The carving is less skilled and rather stiff. This raises the question: are the medallions perhaps early works by Van der Hagen, made in the Low Countries prior to his departure for London? In any case, acknowledging the stylistic parallels to the signed work of this sculptor and his master, Rysbrack, the Southern Netherlands (Antwerp?) – where a long and rich ivory carving tradition existed, surpassing that of the Dutch Republic – emerges as a conceivable place where their maker was trained.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025