Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 302 cm × width 194.3 cm
outer size: depth 12.5 cm (support incl. frame)
Gerard van Honthorst
1647
oil on canvas
support: height 302 cm × width 194.3 cm
outer size: depth 12.5 cm (support incl. frame)
The support is a plain-weave canvas that has been lined. Cusping is visible on all four sides. Although not clearly visible, the ground appears to be light-coloured. The paint was applied very smoothly with hardly any use of impasto. This might, however, be the result of the canvas lining.
Fair. There are many old retouchings visible, and the varnish is extremely discoloured and matte.
...; estate inventory, Huis ten Bosch, The Hague, 1668, no. 1192 (‘Een schildrije met de contrefeytsels van sijn cheurvorstelijcke doorluchtigheyt van Brandenburgh ende mevrouwe de cheurvorstinne, mede zoo groot als ’t leven ende bij den voorschr. Honthorst gedaen’);1 estate inventory, Huis ten Bosch, The Hague, 1707, no. 9 (‘Frederik Willem h.l.mem. ceurvorst van Brandenburgen sijne gemaelle dochter van Frederik Hendrik’);2 confiscated by the French, 1795; transferred to the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen, The Hague, 1876; transferred to the museum, 1885
Object number: SK-A-873
Copyright: Public domain
Gerard van Honthorst (Utrecht 1592 - Utrecht 1656)
Gerard van Honthorst was born in Utrecht on 4 November 1592 into a family of artists. His father, Herman Gerritsz van Honthorst, was a decorative painter and probably his first teacher. According to Von Sandrart and Houbraken, Honthorst trained with Abraham Bloemaert. When exactly he went to Italy is not known; a drawn copy after Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of St Peter in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo is dated 1616,3 indicating that he was in Rome by that year. His first documented painting, The Beheading of St John the Baptist, was executed for the Church of Santa Maria della Scala in 1617-18.4 Such Caravaggesque night scenes, which often include artificial sources of illumination, garnered Honthorst the nickname ‘Gherardo delle Notti’ in Italy. Among his Roman patrons were the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani, in whose house Honthorst lived, and Cardinal Scipione Borghese.
A few months after his return to Utrecht in 1620, Honthorst married Sophia Coopmans. He joined the Guild of St Luke there and set up his own workshop. Von Sandrart, one of his apprentices in the 1620s, informs us that Honthorst had as many as 25 pupils at a time, from each of whom he received the sizable tuition fee of 100 guilders a year. With the exception of 1627, Honthorst served as dean of the guild between 1625 and 1630. It was also in the mid-1620s that he received his first commission from the court of Frederik Hendrik in The Hague.5 A commission from the British ambassador in The Hague, Sir Dudley Carleton, for Lord Arundel came as early as 16206 and eventually led to the invitation from Charles I to work on Banqueting House in Whitehall in 1628.7 Honthorst returned to the United Provinces the same year, but continued to work for the English court in the years to come. In 1630 he became court painter to the exiled King and Queen of Bohemia, Frederick V and Elizabeth, in The Hague. Honthorst also painted numerous portraits of the Stadholder and his wife, Amalia van Solms, and took part in the decoration of, among others, the palaces Honselaarsdijk, Huis ter Nieuburch (1636-39) and Huis ten Bosch (1649-50). In order to accommodate his work in The Hague, he set up a second workshop there in 1637 and joined the guild, serving as dean in 1640. Also in 1637, he became the principal artist to decorate the Banqueting Hall in Kronborg Castle for King Christian IV of Denmark. Honthorst was, perhaps, the most internationally successful Dutch artist of his time. Despite, or possibly as a result of this success, his late style was criticized as ‘stiff ’ and ‘slick’ (‘stijve gladdicheyt’) and he was esteemed a ‘much less great master than themselves’ (‘beaucoup moins grand maistre qu’eux’) by his fellow artists working on the Oranjezaal.8 He died on 27 April 1656 and was buried in the Catharijnekerk in Utrecht.
Jonathan Bikker, 2007
References
Mancini c. 1620, fol. 86 (Judson/Ekkart 1999, p. 47); Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), pp. 22, 102, 172-74; Houbraken I, 1718, pp. 149-50; Braun 1966, pp. 7-59, 340-88 (documents); Bok in Utrecht-Braunschweig 1986, pp. 276-79; Bok in San Francisco etc. 1997, pp. 382-83; Judson/Ekkart 1999, pp. XXXIII-XXXIV, 1-24
Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg became Elector of Brandenburg in 1640. Louise Henriette of Orange-Nassau was the eldest daughter of Frederik Hendrik and Amalia van Solms. The sitters married on 7 December 1646, and this painting was their official wedding portrait. The sitters are not shown in their wedding costumes, however.9 Friedrich Wilhelm is shown wearing his robes of state, and his crown and sceptre are held above him by putti, underlining not only his own status, but the success of Frederik Hendrik’s ambitious dynastic policy. There is a payment order of Friedrich Wilhelm for 36 full, half and bust-length replicas of the sitters dated 25 May 1647 and naming the recipients.10 The present painting formed a series together with SK-A-871 and SK-A-874.11
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. 139
Lunsingh Scheurleer 1969, p. 60; Judson/Ekkart 1999, pp. 36, 240-43, no. 303, with earlier literature
1886, p. 36, no. 156B; 1887, p. 80, no. 674; 1903, p. 133, no. 1236; 1934, p. 134, no. 1236; 1976, p. 285, no. A 873; 2007, no. 139
J. Bikker, 2007, 'Gerard van Honthorst, Portrait of Friedrich Wilhelm (1620-88), Elector of Brandenburg, and his Wife Louise Henriette (1627-67), Countess of Orange-Nassau, 1647', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7037
(accessed 9 November 2024 18:18:04).