Maurits (1567-1625), Prince of Orange, Lying in State, 1625

c. 1625

Object data

oil on copper

support: height 7.3 cm × width 12.1 cm
sight size: height 6.9 cm × width 11.9 cm
frame: height 9.8 cm × width 14.7 cm

Technical notes

The copper support was probably prepared with a light ground layer, because infrared reflectography shows underdrawing. This underdrawing consists of some double contour lines along the nightcap and in the fur-trimmed collar, roughly indicating the position of the figure. The multiple contour lines furthermore suggest that the artist made no use of a transfer method, like a cartoon. The painting is meticulously executed, with visible brushstrokes in the face only.

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 22 July 2002
infrared reflectography: E. Buijsen, RKD, 23 July 2002

Condition

Fair. There are residues of old varnish and small retouched losses, particularly in the face, to the right of the face and in the gown.

Conservation

L. Sozzani, 1997: retouched and revarnished

Provenance

...; sale, Johannes Enschedé (1708-80), Haarlem (T. Jelgersma et al.), 30 May 1786, no. 77 (‘Willem de Eerste op zyn Praalbed; uitvoerig door Van de Venne.’), fl. 10;¹...; purchased by Everardus Temminck for the museum, 11 August 1803;² on loan tothe Oranje-Nassau Museum, The Hague, 1926-32

Object number: SK-A-446

The artist

Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne (Delft c. 1589 - The Hague 1662)

According to Cornelis de Bie, Adriaen van de Venne was born into a southern Netherlandish immigrant family in Delft in 1589. De Bie also states that he was taught drawing and illumination by the Leiden goldsmith and painter Simon de Valck, and was then apprenticed to the grisaille painter Jeronymus van Diest, both of whom are now otherwise unknown.

Van de Venne is first documented in 1614 in Middelburg, where he remained until around 1625. It was in 1614 that he married the daughter of a Zeeland sea captain, Elisabeth de Pours. Dating from that same year are his earliest known paintings, Fishing for Souls (SK-A-447) and two summer and winter pendants.³ On the evidence of an affinity with the work of Jan Brueghel the Elder, it has been assumed that he spent some time in Antwerp before 1614. However, the local Middelburg painters were already working in Brueghel’s style at that time. The fact that he married a woman of Zeeland, and that his father and his brother Jan had settled in the town in 1605 and 1608 respectively, make it likely that he was in Middelburg before 1614. In 1618, his brother Jan opened a shop selling paintings and set up a publishing business, in which Adriaen played an important role as a print designer, poet, and illustrator of books by Jacob Cats, among other authors. Starting in 1618 he also designed several propaganda prints supporting the House of Orange and Frederick V, the Elector Palatine. Van de Venne is last documented in Middelburg on 30 June 1624. He then moved to The Hague, where he is recorded as a resident on 22 March 1625. His departure from Middelburg roughly coincided with the death of his brother Jan, and his decision to settle in The Hague probably had something to do with the presence of the court there, which played an important part in the subjects he chose. Among his earliest works in The Hague were the prints and paintings of Prince Maurits Lying in State (SK-A-446), several impressions of which were ordered by the States-General on 21 July 1625.⁴ He enrolled in the Guild of St Luke in 1625, and a year later acquired his Hague citizenship. He retained his house in Middelburg, and in 1630 bought another one in The Hague, from which he sold his prints and books. He was warden of the guild from 1631 to 1633 and from 1637 to 1639, and filled the post of dean from 1639 to 1641. He was also a member of the Ionghe Batavieren (Young Batavians) chamber of rhetoric. His fame was such that he was included in Johannes Meyssens’s book, Image de divers hommes desprit sublime, where it is stated that the Prince of Orange owned several works by him. In 1656, Van de Venne was also involved in setting up a new confraternity, the Confrerie Pictura, which broke away from the Guild of St Luke. At the end of his life he ran into financial difficulties. He made his will in 1660 after falling ill, and died on 12 November 1662. Two of his sons, Pieter (c. 1615-57) and Huijbregt (1634/35-after 1682), were also painters.

Van de Venne’s painted oeuvre can be divided into his Middelburg and Hague periods. In Middelburg he produced some of his most ambitious, meticulously painted works with politico-allegorical subjects, as well as many landscape scenes in the manner of Jan Brueghel the Elder. In The Hague he concentrated almost exclusively on grisailles for the open market, most of them genre pieces with a comical, moralistic slant with inscribed banderoles, but he also made religious, allegorical works and a few large-scale equestrian portraits of rulers. He abandoned the meticulous style of his Middelburg period for a freer, sometimes even sketchy technique, which enabled him to boost his output to ‘hundreds of monochrome pieces, both known and desired by devotees of art’, as J. Campo Weyerman put it.

Yvette Bruijnen, 2007

References
Meyssens 1649; De Bie 1661, pp. 234-46; Van Bleyswijck 1667, II, pp. 857-58; Houbraken I, 1718, pp. 136-37; Campo Weyerman I, 1729, pp. 340-41; Franken 1878, pp. 7-30; Obreen II, 1879-80, pp. 108-09, III, 1880-81, pp. 258, 272, 275, IV, 1881-82, pp. 59, 128, 148, V, 1882-83, pp, 68-69, 71-74, 96, 102, 133, 153, VI, 1884-87, pp. 52, 226; Bredius II, 1916, pp. 374-93, VII, 1921, pp. 240-45; Bol 1958; Royalton-Kisch 1988, pp. 37-74; Bol 1989; Van Suchtelen in Amsterdam 1993, p. 321; Briels 1997, pp. 394-95; Buijsen in The Hague 1998, pp. 255-62, 354

Entry

This painting used to be regarded as a death portrait of William the Silent⁵ until Franken identified the deceased as Prince Maurits.⁶ Two days after Maurits’s death on 23 April 1625 people could pay their last respects by the clothed body of the prince as it lay on a bed of state. That is how Maurits is portrayed here, dressed in a red, fur-trimmed tabbaard, with a red nightcap over a linen skullcap. That this is a realistic portrait of the deceased is clear from a comparison with a drawing by Jacques de Gheyn II, in which the prince is shown shortly after he died, with open mouth and a half-open eye.⁷ Although this painting depicts the historical moment of the public display of the dead prince, and is thus official in nature, there is nothing idealistic about it, witness the eyes sunk deep into their sockets and the hollow cheeks. This realistic close-up, devoid of allegorical attributes, gives the portrait an intimate touch that is reinforced by the curtains drawn back on either side.

The painting reproduces part of an engraving of 1625 by Jan Verstraelen after a design by Adriaen van de Venne showing the entire mourning room with the prince lying in state (RP-P-1884-A-7711, see fig. a).⁸ In the print, the mourners, among them Maurits’s half-brother Frederik Hendrik, are gathered around the bed. Maurits’s coat of arms is on display, and there is a personification of Fame. Below the scene is a long eulogy of Maurits and his successor Frederik Hendrik that Van de Venne wrote himself. On 21 July 1625 the States-General ordered several impressions of the print, which could be bought from Van de Venne in The Hague.⁹ Since the engraving is not reversed relative to the painting, the latter was probably executed after the print, either that or both versions were based on the same drawn, preliminary study.

There are at least two other known versions of the painting, the one in Paleis Het Loo being signed and dated 1625 by Van de Venne.¹⁰ All three are of a similar size, painted on copper, and are identical down to the details; only the decorative motif in the curtains differs in the Apeldoorn version. The underdrawing in the Rijksmuseum painting shows a few sketchy double lines by the cap and the fur collar, which is evidence that Van de Venne did not employ any mechanical copying method. It is possible that he made these versions in 1625 for the open market, creating a more expensive and personal alternative to his propaganda print. It is noteworthy that he chose copper as the support, for he usually painted on panel. Another, weaker version in oil on paper, which has probably been trimmed slightly on the left, would have been made at the same time as the paintings.¹¹

The present painting is one of the earliest works from Van de Venne’s Hague period, where he is first documented on 22 March 1625. The Orangist theme of the painting, and above all of the print with its eulogy, indicate that he chose to settle in The Hague because of the presence of the court there. He continued to promote himself in those circles, and in 1647 he designed a similar composition to mark the death of Frederik Hendrik, which was published as a print with another eulogy from his hand.¹²

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. 300.

Literature

Franken 1878, p. 44, no. 11; Stevens and Zandvliet in Amsterdam 2000a, pp. 426-27, no. 246

Collection catalogues

1809, p. 76, no. 324 (as Portrait of Prince Willem I); 1887, p. 177, no. 1526; 1903, p. 278, no. 2491; 1934, p. 295, no. 2491; 1960, p. 322, no. 2491; 1976, p. 566, no. A 446; 1992, p. 89, no. A 446; 2007, no. 300

Citation

Y. Bruijnen, 2007, 'Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne, Maurits (1567-1625), Prince of Orange, Lying in State, 1625, c. 1625', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6402

(accessed 19 September 2024 23:47:16).

Figures

fig. a Jan Hendriksz Verstraelen after Adriaen van de Venne, *Maurits Lying in State* (SK-A-446), 1625. Engraving, 192 x 292 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-P-1884-A-7711.