Portrait of a Man, possibly Jan Doublet (1580-1650)

1634

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 67.2 cm × width 57.2 cm
outer size: depth 6.5 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature and date, upper left (V and R ligated): VR Anno 1634

Technical notes

The oak support is composed of three vertically grained planks and is bevelled on all sides. The ground is of a light colour, and there is some brushmarking in the sitter’s face and hair.

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 27 July 2004

Condition

Fair. The right join is open and the left one is not altogether stable. The retouchings along the joins and the collar, where it is cast in shadow, are discoloured. The varnish is heavily discoloured and matte in places. A residue of old varnish is present, and is particularly disturbing in the sitter’s face.

Provenance

...; from the dealer Frederik Muller, fl. 750, to the museum, April 1901

Object number: SK-A-1950

The artist

Jan Anthonisz van Ravesteyn (? Culemborg c. 1572 - The Hague 1657)

Although there are no archival records to support such a supposition, it is believed that Jan Anthonisz van Ravesteyn was the son of a glass-painter, Anthonis van Ravesteyn, who is documented in Culemborg in 1593 and in The Hague in 1602. Van Ravesteyn’s date of birth is also uncertain, but it was probably around 1572. His name appears in two notarized documents from October 1597 in Delft, which has led to the belief that he was apprenticed to Van Mierevelt. However, Van Ravesteyn’s earliest known work, Portrait of Hugo de Groot at the Age of 16 of 1599,¹ differs from Van Mierevelt’s early oeuvre, which, it has to be admitted does not include paintings from before 1600. In 1598 Van Ravesteyn joined the painters’ guild in The Hague, where he remained the rest of his life, marrying Anna Arentsdr van Barendrecht from Dordrecht in 1604. The wedding took place at the town hall, not in the Reformed Church, and from other, later documents it is known that the artist was a Catholic. A Van Ravesteyn was dean of the painters’ guild in The Hague in 1617, but whether this was Jan van Ravesteyn or his brother Anthonie, who was also a painter, is not known. In 1631, 1634 and 1637 he was nominated as warden of the guild, but not elected. He may perhaps have served in some capacity before 1631, but as the records of the guild’s administrators are spotty before that year, this cannot be ascertained.

Van Ravesteyn was the foremost portraitist in The Hague in the first half of the 17th century. His clientele consisted primarily of highly placed government officials and the patrician circles of The Hague and Dordrecht, the latter probably because of his wife’s ties to that town. In addition to portraits of individual burghers, Van Ravesteyn painted five civic guard pieces, some of which were quite innovative. Although there are hundreds of extant portraits by Van Ravesteyn and his workshop dating to after 1611, the number before that date is extremely small, in spite of the fact that his work was already being praised by Van Mander in 1604. His breakthrough – at least as far as commissions are concerned – seems to have come with the ambitious series of officers’ portraits begun probably for Prince Maurits in 1611.² As his last signed and dated works are from 1641, Van Ravesteyn seems to have laid down his paintbrushes in that year. He was, however, one of the first artists invited to join the newly established Confrerie Pictura in 1656. The guild books list the names of his numerous pupils, the only outstanding one being Adriaen Hanneman (c. 1604-71), who would later become his son-in-law.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

References
Van Mander 1604, fol. 300r; Van Gool I, 1750, pp. 15-22; Terwesten 1770, p. 9; Obreen III, 1880-81, pp. 261, 283, 285, IV, 1881-82, pp. I, 4-7, 10, 30, 59, V, 1882-83, pp. 68, 70, 72; Bredius/Moes 1892; Ekkart in The Hague 1998, pp. 230-37

Entry

According to the inventory of the paintings in the Rijksmuseum, this bust-length portrait once carried an inscription which read ‘Nicolaas Doubleth ontfanger Generaal van Hollandt’ (Nicolaas Doubleth Receiver-General of Holland). This inscription has evidently been removed, and in the Rijksmuseum collection catalogues composed since the painting’s acquisition in 1901 the sitter has been identified as possibly being Jan Doublet. The latter was a citizen of The Hague, and succeeded his father, Philips Doublet (1560-1612), as Receiver-General of the States-General.³ Born in 1580, Jan Doublet’s age of around 54 in 1634, the date of the portrait, does seem to correspond with the age of the sitter. Also in favour of this identification is the fact that Van Ravesteyn painted wedding pendants of Jan’s younger brother, Philips Doublet (1590-1660), and his wife Gertruyd Huygens (1599-1674/79), a sister of Constantijn Huygens, around 1629, the year in which the couple married.⁴ If Jan Doublet did indeed sit for the present portrait, it probably did not have a pendant, as the Receiver-General never married.

Less is known of the biography of Nicolaas Doublet.⁵ He was the son of Jan Nicolaasz Doublet from Mechelen, and married in The Hague for the first and, as far as is known, only time on 22 May 1634. This is, of course, a significant date as the portrait is from that year, and may have been conceived as one half of wedding pendants. A portrait of Nicolaas Doublet’s wife, however, is not known, and the man in the present painting seems rather old for a man marrying for the first time. Nicolaas Doublet was most likely younger in 1634 than the man in Van Ravesteyn’s portrait. Although his date of birth is not known, it must have been in or after 1598, the year in which his father married for the first time. A 20-year-old theological student named Nicolaas Doublet registered at Leiden University in 1621. Jan Doublet, therefore, is the more likely candidate, but this identification must remain tentative, as the reliability of the missing inscription cannot be judged. The fact that Nicolaas and not Jan Doublet is called the Receiver-General of Holland (and not the Receiver-General of the States-General) raises doubts about the authenticity of this inscription.

A reduced replica of the present painting, also signed with Van Ravesteyn’s monogram and dated 1634, was auctioned in 1971.⁶

Jonathan Bikker, 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. 255.

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 220, no. 1975; 1934, p. 235, no. 1975; 1976, p. 463, no. A 1950; 2007, no. 255

Citation

J. Bikker, 2007, 'Jan Antonisz. van Ravesteyn, Portrait of a Man, possibly Jan Doublet (1580-1650), 1634', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5206

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