The conquest of Rhenen by John II of Cleves in 1499

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This painting shows how the town of Rhenen was captured by the army of John II of Cleves on 8 July 1499. The depiction of the town is fairly accurate. Soldiers from the Great Guard, chiefly German mercenaries, are storming the Utrecht Gate in the foreground. The attackers have forced their way into the town through the Berg Gate in the background and are plundering and setting fire to the buildings.⁴ In the right middleground is the Church of St Cunera with one of its walls left open to provide a view of the saint’s tomb with her effigy on it, which was a famous place of pilgrimage. Rhenen was the main centre of veneration of St Cunera, who was one of the 11,000 virgins who accompanied St Ursula on her pilgrimage. They were massacred in Cologne in 337, and Cunera was the only who escaped, being rescued by Radboud, the lord of Rhenen, who took her to his palace. His wife, however, became jealous, and strangled the pious Cunera with the saint’s own scarf. In the top left background of this painting is Cunera Hill with the chapel built over her grave before her bones were moved to the church.⁵

‘The conquest of Rhenen’ also illustrates two miracles which are described in a 16th-century booklet about the life of St Cunera.⁶ One was an event that took place during the first siege of the town in 1483. A citizen called Willem Hac, who was attacked by an enemy with a knife while on his way to church, called on St Cunera, who saved him, forcing the attacker’s knife to turn around in his hand three times. This is depicted just inside the town walls, where the man’s twisted knife is clearly visible. The other miracle occurred during this capture of Rhenen in 1499. During the looting of the Church of St Cunera, two mercenaries who were digging up the floor in search of valuables were buried under a gravestone by St Cunera herself. The mercenaries were then ordered to stop plundering on hallowed ground, and the saint’s tomb was spared. This is shown to the right of the tomb, where a man is standing in an opened grave.⁷

There is an inscription on the original frame around the panel that identifies the scene as the capture of Rhenen in 1499, but there are doubts about the authenticity of that date.⁸ It was for that reason that Hoogewerff assumed that the panel depicts the earlier capture of the town by Engelbert of Cleves in 1483. However, the fact that the painting shows a miracle that took place in 1499, together with the clear depiction of the town being torched, makes it likely that this is the conquest of 1499.⁹ So the painting was not made before 1499, and this is confirmed by the dendrochronology, which gives a date of shortly after 1500.¹⁰

It is exceptional that a painting of this period should record such a recent event.¹¹ A comparable one is the depiction of the St Elizabeth’s Day flood (SK-A-3147-A and SK-A-3147-B), although in that case a far longer interval had elapsed. It is now also clear that both works cannot be attributed to the same artist, as was previously thought.¹² For one thing, the underdrawings in both paintings are very different in nature. In contrast to the clear line drawing on the St Elizabeth panels (also including SK-A-3145 and SK-A-3146), which were laid down very freely in paint, there is barely any underdrawing at all in ‘The conquest of Rhenen’. The little that there is contains hatchings, which are strikingly absent on the St Elizabeth panels.

This painting, which is so closely associated with Rhenen, was undoubtedly made for the town, and could have been commissioned by the church or the town authorities. Another possible candidate is the Guild of St Cunera, a religious body which met twice a week at its altar in the church. Since the miracle that spared St Cunera’s shrine is shown in the middle of the painting, it is very possible that the panel was the altarpiece in the church.¹³

‘The conquest of Rhenen’ was kept in the old town hall of Rhenen until it was transferred to the Rijksmuseum in exchange for a state contribution towards the rebuilding of the church tower, which had been destroyed by fire. One reason was that the painting was in ‘a pitiful condition’ and would be better conserved in a ‘state collection’. A full-scale copy made for Rhenen at the time is still in the old town hall there.¹⁴
MW