Portrait of Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679)

in or after 1663

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 42.5 cm × width 38 cm

Technical notes

Support The single, octagonal, vertically grained, quarter-sawn oak plank is approx. 1 cm thick on the left and approx. 0.7 cm on the right. Traces of a barb along the top and at the bottom right indicate that the plank was originally rectangular and had an engaged frame. At some point the corners were trimmed to form a slightly rounded, uneven octagon. There are regularly spaced holes around the perimeter, possibly related to the construction of the current shape of the panel or to an earlier fixed frame. A second set of smaller holes may also be connected with a former frame. Partial grooves, filled with original paint, run parallel to the straight edges at a distance of approx. 1-2 cm. The reverse is very slightly bevelled at the top and bottom. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1644. The plank could have been ready for use by 1653, but a date in or after 1663 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The coarse triple ground stops short of the edges of the support. The first layer is brick-red and contains red pigment and a few large, coarse white particles, and is followed by a thin, dark layer, which is fluorescent in UV light. The third layer is greyish brown and consists of black, white, earth and red pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye, infrared photography or infrared reflectography.
Paint layers The paint appears to stop short at approx. 1.5-2 cm from the (now overpainted) edges of the support. The portrait is set within a painted oval. The background was applied from dark to light, leaving a reserve for the figure. The latter was first laid in with a thin, brown undermodelling which was left exposed in shadowed areas, for instance in the shaded side of the face. An underlying darker paint can also be seen locally, for example just to the left of the sitter’s nostril, on the bridge of the nose and near his right eyebrow. Dark lines around most of the facial features form part of the final paint layer. The white of the collar extends over the edge of the reserve, as is visible with the naked eye. Infrared reflectography revealed that the reserve for the head was positioned approx. 1.5 cm further to the left, and the pupils were originally placed higher.
Gwen Tauber, 2021

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: G. Tauber, RMA, 5 November 2009
paint samples: G. Tauber, RMA, nos. SK-A-218/1-2, 5 November 2009
technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 5 November 2009
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 24 September 2012
infrared reflectography: G. Tauber, RMA, 29 April 2014

Condition

Good. After the form of the plank had been altered, the unpainted edges were at some point filled and overpainted, except for those at the top and bottom. A vertical crack of approx. 5 cm runs in from the upper right. There is strong craquelure in the off-white edges of the collar.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1919: revarnished
H.H. Mertens, 1968: reverse waxed

Provenance

...; sale, Jeronimo de Bosch III (1740-1811, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (J. Yver et al.), 6 April 1812, no. 8 (‘Denzelfden [Joost van den Vondel], door C. FLINCK. Hoog 17, breed 15 duim [43 x 38 cm]. Paneel. Ovaal.’), fl. 41, to the dealer Jeronimus de Vries;¹...; purchased for fl. 275 by the museum, 1815;² on loan to the Amsterdam Museum since 1972

Object number: SK-A-218

The artist

Jan Lievens (Leiden 1607 - Amsterdam 1674)

According to the account published by the Leiden burgomaster and town chronicler Jan Jansz Orlers in 1641, Jan Lievens was born on 24 October 1607 in Leiden. His parents were Lieven Hendricxz, an embroiderer, and Machtelt Jansdr van Noortsant. When he was 8, his father apprenticed him to the Leiden artist Joris van Schooten, ‘from whom he learned the principles of both drawing and painting’.³ About two years later, in 1617 or 1618, the child prodigy was sent to study with Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam. Upon his return to Leiden at the age of 12 Lievens set up a studio in his father’s house. Although not documented and not mentioned by Orlers, the style of his early works suggests that Lievens probably also spent some time in Utrecht and possibly Antwerp in the early 1620s. Indeed, instead of the small-scale, multi-figure histories for which Lastman is well known, Lievens’s early output consists primarily of broadly rendered, large-scale compositions with only one or a few half-length figures, shown life-size or larger than life. Lievens’s choice of biblical, allegorical and genre subjects in the 1620s also reflects the influence of the Utrecht Caravaggisti, Gerard van Honthorst, Hendrick ter Brugghen and Dirck van Baburen, as well as that of the great Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens. In addition to history and genre pieces, the young Leiden artist executed tronies, still lifes and portraits in this period, and became a talented printmaker. As his earliest signed and dated painting is from 1629,⁴ the chronology of the first decade of his output has been, and still is, open to debate.

Lievens began working closely with Rembrandt after the latter arrived back in Leiden around 1625 from a six-month apprenticeship with Lastman in Amsterdam. While the notion that the two shared a studio in Leiden is not supported by the early accounts of their careers – in fact, Orlers explicitly states that Rembrandt ‘decided to engage in and practice the art of painting entirely on his own’ after his return – Lievens and Rembrandt often treated the same subject matter, for example Samson and Delilah, the raising of Lazarus and Christ on the Cross.⁵ The fijnschilders style that the two artists developed together in the second half of the 1620s was already making it difficult for appraisers and connoisseurs to differentiate their hands during their lifetimes. Lievens’s early work was much sought after, at first by Leiden patrons, including his earliest biographer, Orlers. In 1628, Lievens and Rembrandt were visited in their respective studios by the stadholder’s secretary, Constantijn Huygens, the most powerful cultural broker in the Dutch Republic. Lievens ingratiated himself with Huygens by requesting to paint his likeness,⁶ and soon thereafter the court in The Hague began to acquire his work and offer him commissions. Some of Lievens’s pictures were also acquired by Sir Robert Kerr, representative of the English crown in The Hague, and in 1631 the exiled king of Bohemia, Frederick V, and his consort Elizabeth, a sister of King Charles I of England, commissioned Lievens to portray their son Prince Charles Louis, who was studying in Leiden at the time.⁷

In February 1632, Lievens moved to London where, according to Orlers, he painted portraits of King Charles I and his family, as well as various lords. Those works have not survived and little is known about Lievens’s output and career during his English period, which lasted until 1635. It was perhaps Anthony van Dyck’s return to England in the spring of 1635 that prompted Lievens to leave for Antwerp, where he registered as a member of the Guild of St Luke in that year and acquired citizenship in December 1640. In 1638, he married Susanna de Nole, daughter of the sculptor Andries Colijns de Nole. His father-in-law’s connections may have helped Lievens secure the commissions for two large altarpieces for the Jesuit churches in Antwerp and Brussels.⁸ Also in this period Lievens carried out a commission for Stadholder Frederik Hendrik and painted a monumental Magnanimity of Scipio for the council chamber of Leiden Town Hall, for which he was paid 1,500 guilders and awarded a gold medal.⁹ Besides history pieces, Lievens executed tronies and genre scenes during his Antwerp period, and branched out in the field of painting to produce landscapes and in the graphic arts into the medium of the woodcut. He completely abandoned his early style in favour of one heavily indebted to Adriaen Brouwer, Van Dyck and Rubens.

In 1644, Lievens moved with his wife and child to Amsterdam, where he first rented a room as either living or studio space from the artist couple Jan Miense Molenaer and Judith Leyster. Susanna de Nole died shortly afterward and Lievens married Cornelia de Bray, daughter of an Amsterdam notary, in 1648. Probably in the same year, he was commissioned to paint one of the works, The Five Muses, for the cycle of allegories commemorating the life of Frederik Hendrik in the Oranjezaal (Orange Hall) in Huis ten Bosch, which was completed in 1650.¹⁰ Frederik Hendrik and Amalia van Solms’s eldest daughter Louise Henriette married the Elector of Brandenburg, Friedrich Wilhelm von Hohenzollern, in 1646. In 1652, Lievens was invited to contribute to the decorations of their country seat, Schloss Oranienburg near Berlin. He moved there in 1653 and executed a large portrait historié of the couple as well as mythological scenes.¹¹

Lievens returned to the Dutch Republic and resided in The Hague from 1654 until March 1659 at the latest. In 1656, he was involved in setting up Confrerie Pictura, a new painters’ confraternity that broke away from the local Guild of St Luke. Lievens received several important private and public commissions in these years, not only in The Hague but also in Amsterdam. For example, he was commissioned in 1655 to execute a large overmantel of Quintus Fabius Maximus and his Son for the burgomasters’ chamber of Amsterdam Town Hall, for which he was paid 1,500 guilders.¹² Although he remained a non-resident member of the Confrerie Pictura in The Hague in 1660-61, Lievens moved back to Amsterdam by March 1659, probably with an eye to securing the commission for the series of eight monumental paintings for the lunettes of the Burgerzaal (Citizens’ Hall) in the Town Hall. After Govert Flinck, who had been awarded that project, died in 1660 before being able to execute them, Lievens was given the task of painting one of the lunettes, Brinio Raised on a Shield, for which he earned 1,200 guilders.¹³ Another important assignment in the 1660s was for an enormous Mars (Allegory of War) for Pieter Post’s newly constructed Statenzaal, the assembly room of the States of Holland and West Friesland in the Binnenhof in The Hague.¹⁴ Lievens completed this canvas in 1664 and in the same year set off for Cleves, probably in the hope of being selected to work on the decorations of Johan Maurits of Nassau’s newly renovated Schwanenburg Castle, another architectural project based on designs by Pieter Post. Lievens’s sojourn in Cleves is veiled in mystery and it is only known that by the spring of 1666 he was back in Amsterdam, where he remained until 1669. He spent the last five years of his life constantly on the move, living alternately in The Hague, Leiden and Amsterdam. Due at least in part to non-payments by some of his patrons, which was exacerbated by the economic malaise brought on by the Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672-74), Lievens experienced financial problems during much of his later career and died in poverty in Amsterdam in June 1674.

Throughout his career Lievens had several pupils, none of whom became significant artists in their own right. It was probably as early as his Leiden period that he instructed his younger brother Dirk (c. 1612-1650), who is known to have executed a few portraits around 1640. The otherwise obscure Hans van den Wijngaerde, who trained with Lievens in Antwerp for six years beginning in 1636, is his earliest documented pupil. According to Houbraken, who does not specify where the apprenticeship took place, Hendrik Schoock (1630-1707) from Utrecht was with Lievens after having studied with Abraham Bloemaert and before going on to Jan Davidsz de Heem. Based on Schoock’s date of birth, this would have been either in Antwerp, where De Heem was also active, or in Amsterdam shortly after Lievens moved there in 1644. In 1662, Erick van den Weerelt (1648-1715) was apprenticed by the Amsterdam Civic Orphanage to Lievens for a period of three years. The contract was extended for another three years in 1665. Lievens’s use of student help to execute some of his works is documented. According to his own testimony, his eldest son, Jan Andrea (1644-1680), painted the 1666 Geographer, an overmantel in the Gemeenlandshuis of the Rijnland polder board in Leiden, after his father’s design and with his assistance.¹⁵ He is also recorded in Lievens’s studio in Amsterdam in 1669 together with two Jewish assistants, Aron de Chavez (c. 1647-1705) and Jacob Cardoso Ribero (c. 1643-?), and a wealthy amateur, Jonas Witsen (1647-1675). Lievens’s last documented pupil was Dionys Godijn (c. 1652/57-after c. 1682), whose father apprenticed him to the master in The Hague for a period of two years beginning in 1670.

From contemporary sources it appears that Lievens was rather arrogant. Huygens detected this personality defect even in the youthful artist: ‘My only objection is his stubbornness, which derives from an excess of self-confidence’.¹⁶ Judging from a remark made by Sir Robert Kerr in a 1654 letter to his son, Lievens retained a sense of excessive self-esteem in his maturity as well: ‘[he] has so high a conceit of himself that he thinks there is none to be compared with him in all Germany, Holland, nor the rest of the seventeen provinces.’¹⁷

Jonathan Bikker, 2025

References
J.J. Orlers, Beschrijving der stad Leyden, Leiden 1641, pp. 375-77; P. Angel, Lof der Schilderkonst, Leiden 1642 – trans. M. Hoyle and annot. H. Miedema, ‘Philips Angel, Praise of Painting’, Simiolus 24 (1996), pp. 227-58, esp. pp. 245-46; J. von Sandrart, Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675: Leben der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. A.R. Peltzer, Munich 1925 (ed. princ. Nuremberg 1675), p. 186; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, pp. 212, 296-301; P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, onder zinspreuk ‘Wt jonsten versaemt’, II, Antwerp/The Hague 1876, pp. 61, 69, 139; F.J.P. van den Branden, Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche schilderschool, Antwerp 1883, pp. 863-66; J.A. Worp, ‘Constantijn Huygens over de schilders van zijn tijd’, Oud Holland 9 (1891), pp. 106-36, esp. pp. 125-31; E.W. Moes, ‘Jan Lievens’, Leids Jaarboekje 4 (1907), pp. 136-64; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, I, The Hague 1915, pp. 186-227; Schneider in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXIII, Leipzig 1929, pp. 214-15; H. Schneider, Jan Lievens: Sein Leben und seine Werke, Haarlem 1932, pp. 1-10, 277-85, 289-303; W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, pp. 1764-72; J. Bruyn, ‘Review of W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986’, Oud Holland 102 (1988), pp. 322-33, esp. pp. 327-28; E. Duverger, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, IV, Brussels 1989, p. 224, no. 1034; R. de Jager, ‘Meester, leerjongen, leertijd: Een analyse van zeventiende-eeuwse Noord-Nederlandse leerlingcontracten van kunstschilders, goud- en zilversmeden’, Oud Holland 104 (1990), pp. 69-111, esp. pp. 74, 98-99, doc. nos. 11, 12, 15, p. 102, doc. no. 31; P.J.M. de Baar and I.W.L. Moerman, ‘Rembrandt van Rijn en Jan Lievens, inwoners van Leiden’, in C. Vogelaar et al., Rembrandt & Lievens in Leiden: ‘Een jong en edel schildersduo’/Rembrandt & Lievens in Leiden: ‘A Pair of Young and Noble Painters’, exh. cat. Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 1991-92, pp. 24-38; E. Duverger, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, V, Brussels 1991, pp. 100-01; Domela Nieuwenhuis in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, XIX, New York 1996, pp. 347-50; J.G.C.A. Briels, Vlaamse schilders en de dageraad van Hollands Gouden Eeuw 1585-1630, Antwerp 1997, pp. 352-53; A.K. Wheelock Jr, ‘Jan Lievens: Bringing New Light to an Old Master’, in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2008-09, pp. 1-27

Entry

The most renowned seventeenth-century Dutch poet and playwright, Joost van den Vondel, was born on 17 November 1587 in Cologne into a Mennonite family that originated from Antwerp. When he was 10, they moved to Amsterdam, where his father opened a shop selling silk garments in Warmoesstraat. Vondel took over the running of the business after his father’s death in 1608, first together with his mother, and then alone after his marriage to Maeyken de Wolff in 1610. In 1652, he transferred ownership to his son Joost van den Vondel Jr, who went bankrupt less than a year later. His appointment as accountant at the City Lending Bank in 1658 provided the elderly Vondel with a source of income for the rest of his life.

Vondel’s earliest known poem is dated 5 June 1605, when he was 17. Although he would go on to produce countless occasional and satirical verses throughout his life, Vondel is especially famous for his plays, the first of which is from 1610 and was performed by ’t Wit Lavendel (the White Lavender) chamber of rhetoric. With his 1625 satire Palamedes Vondel criticized the execution of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt on the orders of Stadholder Prince Maurits and was fined 300 guilders by the authorities. His most celebrated tragedy is the 1637 Gijsbreght van Aemstel, which is set in the early days of Amsterdam’s history and was written for the opening of the city’s first theatre, the Schouwburg. This play also proved controversial, as Protestant ministers complained about its many references to Roman Catholicism. Vondel’s own conversion to this faith around 1640 also met with criticism. While his 1654 Lucifer is often considered his masterpiece, the playwright himself thought his 1659 Jeptha came closest to fulfilling his own ideal of combining the Aristotelian principles of classical theatre with Christian subject matter. Vondel died on 5 February 1679 at the age of 91 and was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam.¹⁸

This bust-length portrait of Vondel was attributed to Govert Flinck when it was auctioned in Amsterdam in 1812,¹⁹ but was assigned to Jan Lievens in the Rijksmuseum’s collection catalogues for much of the nineteenth century.²⁰ In 1879, De Vries recognized it as the work by Flinck eulogized by Vondel in a poem from 1653, and that identification has been maintained ever since.²¹ Dendrochronology, however, indicated that the panel was most likely available only around 1663,²² that is to say ten years after the portrait by Flinck was executed according to Vondel’s poem, and three years after that painter’s death in 1660.

The Rijksmuseum portrait is very similar to an etching by Lievens that must have been made before 1650,²³ as a reduced copy of it was used for the frontispiece of Vondel’s collected poems published in that year.²⁴ The painting follows the print in almost every detail, including the sitter’s scrutinizing gaze, the tilt of the head, the arched right eyebrow, the collar, the facial hair and unruly wisps of hair emerging from the skullcap. Apart from the eyes, which are lower in the painted portrait, the two images align perfectly. However, as is apparent in the infrared reflectogram of the present panel, the pupils of the eyes were initially higher, corresponding exactly with their position in the etching. Stylistically, the painting compares well with such works by Lievens as the Portrait of Jacob Junius from around 1658 in Kingston,²⁵ and the 1654 Portrait of Sir Robert Kerr in Edinburgh.²⁶ The colouring of the faces and the fluffy rendering of the hair are analogous in all three paintings. However, because the one in the Rijksmuseum reproduces a much earlier print and is somewhat weaker than those in Kingston and Edinburgh, it may have been executed by an assistant rather than by Lievens himself.

Jonathan Bikker, 2025

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

A.D. de Vries, ‘Vondels portret door Govert Flinck’, Nederlandsche Kunstbode 1 (1879), pp. 57-58 (as Govert Flinck); J.F.M. Sterck, ‘De portretten van Vondel’, in J.F.M. Sterck et al. (eds.), De werken van Vondel, IV, Amsterdam 1930, pp. 38-42, esp. p. 39 (as Govert Flinck); J.W. von Moltke, Govaert Flinck, 1615-1660, Amsterdam 1965, pp. 35, 113-14, no. 233 (as Govert Flinck); Middelkoop in N. Middelkoop (ed.), Kopstukken: Amsterdammers geportretteerd 1600-1800, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum) 2002-03, p. 160, no. 48 (as Govert Flinck); T. van der Molen, ‘“Op d’afbeelding van Rozemond, door den beroemde schilder G. Flinck”: Een nieuwe identificatie voor het vrouwenportret door Govert Flinck in Kassel’, in E. Buijsen, C. Dumas and V. Manuth (eds.), Face Book: Studies on Dutch and Flemish Portraiture of the 16th-18th Centuries: Liber Amicorum Presented to Rudolf E.O. Ekkart on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, Leiden 2012, pp. 319-24, esp. p. 323 (as Govert Flinck); T. van der Molen, ‘Apelles en Apollo in de Voetboogdoelen: Sint-Lucasfeesten tussen schuttersstukken’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 105 (2013), pp. 192-217, esp. p. 213 (as not Govert Flinck)

Collection catalogues

1816, p. 44, no. 174; 1843, p. 37, no. 181 (‘in good condition’); 1853, p. 17, no. 164 (fl. 200); 1858, p. 86, no. 187; 1880, pp. 96-98, no. 89 (as Govert Flinck); 1887, p. 46, no. 363 (as Govert Flinck); 1903, p. 99, no. 928 (as Govert Flinck); 1934, p. 101, no. 928 (as Govert Flinck); 1960, p. 102, no. 928 (as Govert Flinck); 1976, p. 229, no. A 218 (as Govert Flinck)

Citation

Jonathan Bikker, 2025, 'attributed to Jan Lievens, Portrait of Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679), in or after 1663', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200108450

(accessed 6 December 2025 21:56:51).