Group Portrait of Three Brothers, named Hendrick, Johannes and Simon

Entry

Not included in the literature until 1990, when it was published by Van Thiel, this unsigned painting surfaced at an auction in 1979, where it was attributed to De Keyser.¹ When it appeared again at auction in 1987, this time with an attribution to Dirck Dircksz van Santvoort, it was purchased by the museum, which was rightly convinced of the earlier attribution.² The handling of the figures, their clothing, and, especially, the curtain compares best with the pendant portraits of an unknown couple now divided between the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond (fig. a) and the Museé Massey in Tarbes (fig. b).³ The man’s portrait in Richmond carries De Keyser’s monogram on a column and the date ‘1631, Januarij’. Significantly, the only other works in De Keyser’s oeuvre to incorporate the curtain motif are another pair of anonymous portraits in Copenhagen, also from 1631.⁴ Based on the stylistic similarities, the corresponding dimensions of the panels, and the shared curtain motif, Van Thiel has suggested that the couple represented in the Richmond and Tarbes paintings may be the parents of the three boys in the Rijksmuseum portrait.⁵ While such a combination of three separate portraits would be unusual, portraits of two or more children shown without one or both parents were also rare in the Netherlands in the 17th century. That the heads of the man and woman in the Richmond and Tarbes paintings are shown higher in the pictorial space than those of the Amsterdam children does not necessarily disprove Van Thiel’s hypothesis either, as, after all, the former are adults. Also unlike the children’s portrait, the backgrounds in the couple’s portraits are composed of balustrades and landscape views. While one can readily imagine that this difference might reflect the original hanging of the portraits in the family’s house, Van Thiel’s suggestion is rather speculative, in particular because, as he himself pointed out, the woman in the Tarbes painting appears too young to be the mother of the children in the Rijksmuseum portrait.⁶

The Latin verse on the cartellino affixed to the back wall in the present painting informs us of the children’s first names and their ages (fig. c).⁷ The large gold pectoral cross worn by the naked baby Simon indicates that the three boys are the offspring of a Catholic family. As De Keyser was active in Amsterdam his entire career, the family in question most likely lived in that city. Unfortunately, Catholic baptismal records from before 1628 have not survived in Amsterdam, and it has not been possible to identify the family to which Hendrick, Johannes and Simon belonged.⁸ The iconography of this unusual painting and the equally unusual Latin verse on the cartellino have been extensively explored by Van Thiel, some of whose conclusions are highly speculative however. The first line of the verse may well contain number symbolism as three symbolizes the Trinity, and three times six the promise of Redemption: Christ died on the cross for mankind’s salvation at the sixth hour of the sixth day of the week in the sixth age of the world.⁹ The most striking feature of the present portrait, the prominent placement of the very large and very naked baby Simon, is explained by the last line of the verse, ‘He is Simon unclothed, for he wishes wealth to be spurned’. This proclamation, obviously made by Simon’s parents on his behalf, reflects the New Testament attitude toward riches as a possible impediment to salvation, and calls to mind the monastic vow of poverty.¹⁰ Although not entirely ‘inconceivable in an ordinary child’s portrait before, during and long after De Keyser’s day’, as Van Thiel has claimed, Simon’s nudity does, indeed, evoke devotional images of the Christ Child.¹¹ Van Thiel’s suggestion that Simon’s parents intended him to embrace the scriptural rejection of wealth and lead a life in imitatione Christi is entirely plausible.¹² The notion that his parents intended that he join the priesthood, also suggested by Van Thiel, is far too hypothetical to be followed here.¹³ Instead, one imagines that the import of Simon’s nudity, elucidated in the Latin verse, extends to his brothers Henricus and Johannes as well.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
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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. 160.