Frederik Hendrik Besieging Schenkenschans, April 1636

Entry

The typed label on the reverse shows that this painting was first given to Peter Snayers, but by contrast the subject was still well-known at the time.⁵ Strangely, though, it was drawn to the museum’s attention as an anonymous work, and despite the information on the label Van Luttervelt asserted that it was not clear which siege was depicted until he himself identified it.⁶ He then attributed the canvas to Gerrit van Santen by establishing a link to payments to him in the House of Orange archives for a painting with an unusual theme for a new art gallery in Buren Castle.

In August 1636 Prince Frederik Hendrik, Constantijn Huygens and Jacob van Campen spent some days in Buren to discuss the rebuilding activities for the castle, which got under way in 1640.⁷ On the first floor of the west wing three rooms were turned into one, which was then decorated in 1644-45 by a team of artists under Pieter Post. Van Santen and Jan Breecker supplied a series of paintings commending Frederik Hendrik’s military achievements, which were supplemented with an Allegory of the Republic by Jacob Backer.⁸ Albert Valck adorned the wooden ceiling with putti and coats of arms, and Mathieu Dubus provided the pilasters with trophies incorporating coats of arms. It was between them that the works by Van Santen and Breecker were installed. There were similar princely galleries with series of battle scenes in Spain and France,⁹ but it is not known whether Huygens and Van Campen had a specific model in mind for the Buren Castle one.

Van Santen signed a contract on 9 June 1643 to supply seven paintings.¹⁰ In July 1644 Huygens wrote to Laurens Buysero, Frederik Hendrik’s secretary and registrar, saying that he had advanced Van Santen 100 guilders for travel and lodging expenses.¹¹ The artist worked on the spot, and when Post arrived that same month to check on progress he discovered that Van Santen had almost finished The Siege of Maastricht.¹² In the end he made nine pictures in all, for which he was paid in 1647. In February he received 80 guilders each for his scenes of the captures of Hulst (1645) and Sas van Gent (1644), and 50 guilders each for small versions of those of Wesel (1629) and Schenkenschans (1636). The latter two replaced his large works of the subjects that were already hanging there, for each of which he was rewarded 80 guilders in December, along with 110 guilders each for the sieges of Grol (1628) and Gennep (1641), and 150 guilders for the one of Maastricht (1632). The 1675 inventory of Buren Castle lists ‘two paintings without frames, namely Wesel and Schenkenschans’ at the ‘back of said gallery, being the front gallery’.¹³ They would have been the two larger versions that had been removed in 1647. The other seven pictures by Van Santen still hung in the gallery together with the six by Breecker: three of the sieges of Den Bosch (1629), Rheinberg (1633) and Breda (1637), and three of the States army fording the river Dijle at Florival in present-day Belgium.¹⁴ The large painting of Schenkenschans is probably the canvas that the Rijksmuseum acquired in 1955.

The works by Van Santen and Breecker hung between the windows on the gallery’s long wall. Two travel journals of 1740 and 1778 mention them, the latter stating that they had been damaged by damp. The siege scenes were appropriate, because the stadholder used the castle as his base on his campaigns. Backer’s Allegory of the Republic, which was installed on one of the short walls as an overmantel, was intended to show the visitor that Frederik Hendrik regarded himself as defender of the country’s freedom and thus as a servant of the Republic.¹⁵ It is not known how the rest of the gallery looked like. In 1795 the possessions of the House of Orange were confiscated by the French invader, and that would have been when the paintings disappeared from the castle, which was demolished in 1804. The Allegory by Backer and the present canvas of the Battle of Schenkenschans by Van Santen were the only works of the ensemble to survive.

The strategic location of the Schenkenschans fortress at the confluence of the river Waal and the Rhine, close to the border with the German duchy of Cleves, was crucial to the defence of the Dutch Republic’s eastern frontier during the Eighty Years’ War (1568-1648). Spanish troops captured the fort in a surprise raid while Frederik Hendrik was besieging the small town of Gelder. He broke off the assault and took his troops on a forced march to head off an attack in the Betuwe region. Even with the support of French troops it took him nine months to recapture Schenkenschans. The Spanish capitulated on 29 April 1636.

The Rijksmuseum painting is probably the only one to depict actual fighting at a siege during the Eighty Years’ War.¹⁶ The main requirement was the absolute clarity of the military action. The view is topographically accurate, apart from the imaginary knoll in the foreground. Van Santen undoubtedly prepared for it carefully by consulting recent maps, such as those of 1635 and 1636 by Jacob Schort, which also show the seizure and relief of Schenkenschans.¹⁷ In addition, Huygens or Post probably provided Van Santen with official maps made by engineers and surveyors who were involved in the attack, and possibly written reports as well. It has been demonstrated that the patrons of Peter Snayers, the Brussels specialist in battle scenes, helped him in this way.¹⁸

Van Santen’s painting features the final stage of the fight seen from the south-west. The States army, assisted by French troops, is storming the fort, which is wedged between the Waal at the front and the Rhine at the back. In the foreground on the left is Bylant Castle, and on the right the Dutch and French infantry are attacking the redoubt at Duffelweer (modern Düffelward, in Germany), which the Spanish are trying to repel with cannon fire.

The visual type of a siege observed from an elevation in the foreground was first used occasionally by Sebastiaen Vrancx, and was then developed by Snayers in the late 1620s. The more likely models for Van Santen were works by Daniel Cletcher depicting the preparations being made before the actual combat began, two of which were already in Frederik Hendrik’s collection in 1632 and could be viewed in the Stadholders’ Quarter in The Hague.¹⁹ In his other, very few surviving paintings Van Santen is even more clearly a follower of Vrancx.²⁰ The Rijksmuseum Siege of Schenkenschans was reproduced by an anonymous artist in an early copy of almost the same size as the original.²¹

Eddy Schavemaker, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements