The Disbanding of the ‘Waardgelders’ (Mercenaries in the Pay of the Town Government) by Prince Maurits in Utrecht, 31 July 1618

1625

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 91.5 cm × width 156.5 cm
sight size: height 90.2 cm × width 154.7 cm
frame: height 109 cm × width 174 cm

Inscriptions

signature and date, upper right, on the signboard: Joost. Cornelis. Drooch. Sloot f. An.º. 1625.

Technical notes

The original support is a moderately fine plain-weave canvas that has been lined. Cusping is visible on the left side only.

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: J. Bikker, RMA, 12 June 2002

Condition

Fair. There are some losses at the edges and a considerable amount of visible retouchings, especially in the sky. The varnish has discoloured.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1894: canvas lined

Provenance

...; ? sale, Dirk van der Aa and Egbertus Bernardus ten Dall, The Hague (F.J. Bosboom), 25 July 1809, no. 285 (‘Een Gezigt op een groot Plyn in een Stad van binnen te zien, daar troepen in de Wapens staan geinspecteerd worden, vol Figuren, door J. C. Droogsloot 1625, op doek, hoog 35, breed 60 duim [89.95 x 154.2 cm].’);...; first recorded in the collection of the museum in 1887;¹ on loan to the Rijksmunt, Utrecht, since 1912

Object number: SK-A-606

The artist

Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot (Utrecht c. 1586 - Utrecht 1666)

It is assumed that Droochsloot was born in 1586, the year his parents married, or shortly thereafter and that his place of birth was Utrecht, where his father had settled by 1581. He painted imaginary village scenes, topographical views and history pieces. It is not known with whom he trained, although the resemblance of his peasant figures with those of David Vinckboons indicates that it might have been with the latter. Droochsloot’s first dated painting Village Kermis,² and his etchings are highly reminiscent of Vinckboons. The influence of Esaias van de Velde and Adriaen van de Venne is also discernable in Droochsloot’s oeuvre, and two of his early paintings include topographical views of The Hague,³ where Van de Velde had settled in 1618 and Van de Venne in 1625. Droochsloot’s first dated work is an etching from 1610.⁴ Although his first dated painting is from 1615, he did not register as a master-painter in the Utrecht painters’ guild until 1616. Two years later he married Agnietgen van Rijnevelt in the Reformed Church. In 1623, 1641 and 1642 he was elected dean of the painters’ guild. A respected burgher, he also filled other public positions: in 1638 he was elected a lifelong regent of the St Job’s Hospice, in 1642 deacon of the Reformed Church, and in 1650 and 1651 sergeant in the Utrecht militia. Financial success eluded Droochsloot later in his career, and he was forced to take out several mortgages on his house. Beginning in the 1620s, he gave drawing lessons. His pupils included Jacob Duck (c. 1600-67) in 1621, a number of painters about whom nothing else is known (Jan Petersen, Peter van Straesborgh, Steven de Leeuw, and Cornelis Duck), as well as his own son, Cornelis Droochsloot (1630-after 1673), who continued his workshop after his death in 1666.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

References
Houbraken III, 1721, p. 288; Lilienfeld in Thieme/Becker IX, 1913, pp. 574-75; Van Luttervelt 1947; Bok in San Francisco etc. 1997, pp. 380-81; Luijten in Amsterdam 1997, pp. 113, 171-73, no. 31; Beaujean in Saur XXIX, 2001, p. 489

Entry

In line with a resolution passed by the States of Holland at the instigation of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt in 1617, the city of Utrecht established a militia of 600 mercenaries. The States-General declared the resolution to be illegal and the Stadholder, Prince Maurits, tried to persuade Utrecht to disband the mercenaries, but to no avail. Threatened with a military conflict with the regular army, however, the mercenaries themselves decided to disband. Droochsloot shows the scene transpiring on Utrecht’s principal square, the Neude, from the south. The event occurred early in the morning, which is indicated in the painting by the light coming from the east and the long shadows cast by the figures. The army stands in the middle plane of the composition to the right, while the mercenaries deposit their weapons in the guardhouse situated on the left in front of the St Cecilia cloister. It is his position at the front of the group, rather than any portrait-like detail, that distinguishes the man dressed in black in the centre foreground as Maurits; the figures in general are very coarsely painted.

The Rijksmuseum painting is one of many versions of the subject painted by Droochsloot, who was quite possibly an eyewitness to the event. One of these versions, with similar dimensions, is, like the present painting, dated 1625.⁵ The first version of the subject was executed by Droochsloot in the year the event transpired.⁶ That version shows as much of the square as the Rijksmuseum painting and the other version from 1625. However, the figures and buildings are on a smaller scale in the earlier version, and the distance between the figures in the foreground and the buildings is much greater. In another version in Utrecht, from 1629,⁷ Droochsloot reverted back to the more spread out solution with the smaller figures of his first versions of the subject. Representations of the event are also known from Pauwels van Hillegaert, the earliest of which is from 1621,⁸ and other artists, but seem to have originated with Droochsloot.

Droochsloot’s oeuvre includes a number of topographical views,⁹ a type of subject matter rarely depicted by other Utrecht artists. At least one other painting by him shows a historical event.¹⁰ The disbanding of the ‘waardgelders’ is the only contemporary historical event Droochsloot is known to have painted.

Jonathan Bikker, 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. 57.

Collection catalogues

1885, p. 37, no. 288; 1903, p. 86, no. 809; 1976, p. 199, no. A 606 (incorrectly as first recorded in the collection in 1808); 2007, no. 57

Citation

J. Bikker, 2007, 'Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot, The Disbanding of the ‘Waardgelders’ (Mercenaries in the Pay of the Town Government) by Prince Maurits in Utrecht, 31 July 1618, 1625', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6947

(accessed 23 November 2024 03:34:21).