Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 120.5 cm × width 93 cm
outer size: depth 6 cm (support incl. frame)
anonymous
Portrait of Bartholomeus Andrio Walsdorffer (?-1622)
c. 1605 - c. 1615
Inscriptions
- inscription, top left: CAP,N. WALSDORP[…]R
Technical notes
The support is a plain-weave canvas that has been lined. Cusping is visible on the left and right sides. The ground layer appears to be whitish. It is difficult to judge the technique due to the poor condition of the painting.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: L. Sozzani, RMA, 27 May 2003
Condition
Poor. The canvas is badly damaged, folded and torn, and is now stabilised in an unrestored state with losses, discoloured retouchings and varnish. There is a large horizontal insert in the middle of approximately 9 by 60 cm extending to the right side.
Provenance
...; ? estate inventory, Frisian Stadholder’s Court, Leeuwarden, 16 August 1633, large blue room (‘Veertien stuck schildereien van capiteinen’), and the room next to the large room (‘Seeventien schildereien van capiteinen en ritmeisters.’);1 inventory of paintings, Frisian Stadholder’s Court, Leeuwarden, c. 1800, Garde du Corps Hall (‘16. Capt Welsdorp’);2...; Mauritshuis, The Hague, 1876; transferred to the museum, 1885; on loan to the Nederlands Legermuseum, Delft, 1953-2000
Object number: SK-A-1230
Copyright: Public domain
Entry
It is thanks to the inscription ‘CAP.N. WALSDORP[...]R’ that the sitter could be identified as Captain Bartholomeus Andrio Walsdorffer, who succeeded Aurelius Burchart in 1604 as the commander of one of the three companies of Swiss soldiers in the Dutch army.3 The province of Friesland paid the wages of Walsdorffer’s company, which was mainly armed with broadswords. Walsdorffer was known as a ‘most courageous and bold captain’. He was killed during the fighting around Bergen op Zoom in 1622.4
This portrait can be dated between 1605 and 1615 on the evidence of biographical data and the standing ruff. Its lamentable condition precludes an attribution.
Like four other officers’ portraits in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-576, SK-A-875, SK-A-876 and SK-A-877) it once adorned the Stadholder’s Court in Leeuwarden,5 and it is listed as number 16, ‘Capt Welsdorp’ in an inventory of the paintings hanging in the Garde du Corps Hall.6 See the entry on SK-A-877 for a discussion of this provenance and the relationship between the five portraits.
Yvette Bruijnen, 2007
See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements
This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 407.
Literature
Mulder-Radetzky 1997, pp. 197, 203; Zandvliet in Amsterdam 2000a, p. 242, no. 88
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 19, no. 193; 1976, p. 657, no. A 1230; 2007, no. 407
Citation
Y. Bruijnen, 2007, 'anonymous, Portrait of Bartholomeus Andrio Walsdorffer (?-1622), c. 1605 - c. 1615', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7231
(accessed 25 November 2024 00:11:06).