Bird’s-Eye View of Ambon, with a Portrait of Frederik Houtman (1571-1627) in a Cartouche

Entry

This painted perspective map shows the island of Ambon, part of the Moluccan Islands, which was captured from the Portuguese in February 1605 by Admiral Steven van der Hagen for the Dutch East India Company (VOC).³ The island was the first stronghold and headquarters of the VOC in the East Indies, and it was from there it went on to establish its monopoly of the spice trade. Frederik Houtman (1571-1627), who had led the first Dutch trading expedition to the East Indies in 1595-96, also accompanied Van der Hagen’s expedition, and was installed as governor of Ambon upon the Admiral’s departure to the United Provinces in the autumn of 1605. Houtman, whose portrait is set in a cartouche in the painting, would remain governor until 1611.⁴

It is known from an account by Arent van Buchel (Buchelius), a VOC director, that Houtman himself commissioned the map, and that it hung in the meeting room of the directors of the VOC (the ‘Heren XVII’) in East India House on the corner of Kloveniersburgwal and Oude Hoogstraat in Amsterdam.⁵ Van Buchel also tells of the brouhaha that ensued when Steven van der Hagen saw the painting in 1620. As the true conqueror of Ambon he objected to Houtman claiming this honour with his map. The directors of the VOC acknowledged Van der Hagen’s complaint and gave him permission to have Houtman’s portrait replaced with his own.⁶ Houtman’s portrait, however, was not removed.⁷ It seems that only the inscriptions in the small cartouche below the portrait and the larger one next to it were painted over with thick white paint.⁸

The map includes numerous details pertaining largely to the VOC’s military and economic presence on the island.⁹ Fort Victoria, the basis of the VOC’s authority in the region, is shown disproportionately large, and has been placed almost in the centre of the composition. Built by the Portuguese in 1580, it was this fort that was captured without bloodshed by Van der Hagen in 1605. The trade in cloves being the VOC’s reason for capturing the island, clove trees are dotted everywhere throughout the painting. In addition to VOC ships, one of which has been careened so that barnacles and seaweed can be burned off of its hull, a number of junks and kora-koras (Malay rowing-boats) populate the waters around the island. Other details of an anecdotal nature include men fishing with nets from a kora-kora and from the shoreline, and the strange sea creatures, one of which is clambering ashore at lower right. No fewer than 47 place names are inscribed on the map.

The medallion portrait of Frederik Houtman is inscribed with the date 1617. It is not known whether the painted map was also executed in that year, or whether the portrait in the cartouche is a copy of one that was dated 1617. The painting as a whole must have been completed by 1620, however, as it was in that year that it aroused Van der Hagen’s ire. The large ebony frame, which was already noted by Van Buchel, is a very early example; oak box frames more commonly adorned such paintings at this time.¹⁰

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

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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. 417.