Portrait of Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), Lord of Zuylichem

c. 1628 - c. 1629

Portrait of Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), Lord of Zuylichem

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 100.2 cm × width 84.5 cm

Technical notes

Support The support consists of three vertically grained oak planks (approx. 29.7, 29.5 and 25.3 cm). The reverse has remnants of bevelling on all sides. The panel was thinned to approx. 0.5 cm and cradled. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1607. The panel could have been ready for use by 1618, but a date in or after 1624 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends up to the edges of the support, running over them in a few places. The first, slightly translucent cream-coloured layer is followed by a thin, brownish layer containing white pigment particles with a small addition of tiny earth pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared reflectography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. X-radiography revealed an earlier version of the portrait in paint (also faintly visible with infrared reflectography) in which the head is turned to the front, the gaze directed at the viewer. The eyes, nose and mouth of that portrait are positioned towards the right, the hair is shown on both sides of the face, the brim of the hat is wider on the left side and extends further into the background, and the collar is a bit wider on the left and somewhat smaller on the right side. That version was painted out with broad, rather coarse brushstrokes, as can be seen in the X-radiograph and under the microscope. The current face of the sitter was applied wet in wet with opaque paint and smoothly blended transitions between the different passages of the flesh colours. The hairs of the beard, moustache and eyebrows were drawn with fine lines in different shades of brown and grey, and tiny dots were placed to indicate the stubbly jaw. Fine, pink lines give definition to the lips. The hands were underpainted with freely applied, coarse brushstrokes and then worked up wet in wet with smooth transitions between light and dark areas. Some impasto was used in the decoration of the fabric of the sitter’s left sleeve and in the metallic ornaments decorating the jerkin.
Ige Verslype, 2025

Scientific examination and reports

X-radiography: RMA, nos. 1124-1125, 5 November 1962
infrared reflectography: I. Verslype, RMA, 2 June 2010
paint samples: I. Verslype, RMA, nos. SK-C-1467/1-3, 2 June 2010
technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 2 June 2010
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 18 June 2010

Literature scientific examination and reports

E.M. Gifford, ‘Lievens’ Technique: “Wonders in Smeared Paint, Varnishes, and Oils”’, in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2008-09, pp. 40-53, esp. pp. 46-47

Condition

Fair. There is an open, old crack in the upper left corner of the panel. Old, discoloured retouching and overpaint, showing a wide, distinct craquelure, are visible along the crack and joins, especially in the darker areas of the background. The paint surface is difficult to read due to thick, irregular and heavily discoloured varnish layers. At some point, the painting was selectively cleaned in the face, collar, cuffs and hands.

Provenance

...; purchased from Galerie Favart, Paris, by Dr Enée Aimé Escallier (1794-1857), Douai, c. 1836;¹ by whom bequeathed to the Musée de la Chartreuse, Douai, as Bartholomeus van der Helst, 1857;² on loan from the Musée de la Chartreuse to the museum since 1962

Object number: SK-C-1467

Credit line: On loan from the Musée de la Chartreuse

The artist

Jan Lievens (Leiden 1607 - Amsterdam 1674)

According to the account published by the Leiden burgomaster and town chronicler Jan Jansz Orlers in 1641, Jan Lievens was born on 24 October 1607 in Leiden. His parents were Lieven Hendricxz, an embroiderer, and Machtelt Jansdr van Noortsant. When he was 8, his father apprenticed him to the Leiden artist Joris van Schooten, ‘from whom he learned the principles of both drawing and painting’.³ About two years later, in 1617 or 1618, the child prodigy was sent to study with Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam. Upon his return to Leiden at the age of 12 Lievens set up a studio in his father’s house. Although not documented and not mentioned by Orlers, the style of his early works suggests that Lievens probably also spent some time in Utrecht and possibly Antwerp in the early 1620s. Indeed, instead of the small-scale, multi-figure histories for which Lastman is well known, Lievens’s early output consists primarily of broadly rendered, large-scale compositions with only one or a few half-length figures, shown life-size or larger than life. Lievens’s choice of biblical, allegorical and genre subjects in the 1620s also reflects the influence of the Utrecht Caravaggisti, Gerard van Honthorst, Hendrick ter Brugghen and Dirck van Baburen, as well as that of the great Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens. In addition to history and genre pieces, the young Leiden artist executed tronies, still lifes and portraits in this period, and became a talented printmaker. As his earliest signed and dated painting is from 1629,⁴ the chronology of the first decade of his output has been, and still is, open to debate.

Lievens began working closely with Rembrandt after the latter arrived back in Leiden around 1625 from a six-month apprenticeship with Lastman in Amsterdam. While the notion that the two shared a studio in Leiden is not supported by the early accounts of their careers – in fact, Orlers explicitly states that Rembrandt ‘decided to engage in and practice the art of painting entirely on his own’ after his return – Lievens and Rembrandt often treated the same subject matter, for example Samson and Delilah, the raising of Lazarus and Christ on the Cross.⁵ The fijnschilders style that the two artists developed together in the second half of the 1620s was already making it difficult for appraisers and connoisseurs to differentiate their hands during their lifetimes. Lievens’s early work was much sought after, at first by Leiden patrons, including his earliest biographer, Orlers. In 1628, Lievens and Rembrandt were visited in their respective studios by the stadholder’s secretary, Constantijn Huygens, the most powerful cultural broker in the Dutch Republic. Lievens ingratiated himself with Huygens by requesting to paint his likeness,⁶ and soon thereafter the court in The Hague began to acquire his work and offer him commissions. Some of Lievens’s pictures were also acquired by Sir Robert Kerr, representative of the English crown in The Hague, and in 1631 the exiled king of Bohemia, Frederick V, and his consort Elizabeth, a sister of King Charles I of England, commissioned Lievens to portray their son Prince Charles Louis, who was studying in Leiden at the time.⁷

In February 1632, Lievens moved to London where, according to Orlers, he painted portraits of King Charles I and his family, as well as various lords. Those works have not survived and little is known about Lievens’s output and career during his English period, which lasted until 1635. It was perhaps Anthony van Dyck’s return to England in the spring of 1635 that prompted Lievens to leave for Antwerp, where he registered as a member of the Guild of St Luke in that year and acquired citizenship in December 1640. In 1638, he married Susanna de Nole, daughter of the sculptor Andries Colijns de Nole. His father-in-law’s connections may have helped Lievens secure the commissions for two large altarpieces for the Jesuit churches in Antwerp and Brussels.⁸ Also in this period Lievens carried out a commission for Stadholder Frederik Hendrik and painted a monumental Magnanimity of Scipio for the council chamber of Leiden Town Hall, for which he was paid 1,500 guilders and awarded a gold medal.⁹ Besides history pieces, Lievens executed tronies and genre scenes during his Antwerp period, and branched out in the field of painting to produce landscapes and in the graphic arts into the medium of the woodcut. He completely abandoned his early style in favour of one heavily indebted to Adriaen Brouwer, Van Dyck and Rubens.

In 1644, Lievens moved with his wife and child to Amsterdam, where he first rented a room as either living or studio space from the artist couple Jan Miense Molenaer and Judith Leyster. Susanna de Nole died shortly afterward and Lievens married Cornelia de Bray, daughter of an Amsterdam notary, in 1648. Probably in the same year, he was commissioned to paint one of the works, The Five Muses, for the cycle of allegories commemorating the life of Frederik Hendrik in the Oranjezaal (Orange Hall) in Huis ten Bosch, which was completed in 1650.¹⁰ Frederik Hendrik and Amalia van Solms’s eldest daughter Louise Henriette married the Elector of Brandenburg, Friedrich Wilhelm von Hohenzollern, in 1646. In 1652, Lievens was invited to contribute to the decorations of their country seat, Schloss Oranienburg near Berlin. He moved there in 1653 and executed a large portrait historié of the couple as well as mythological scenes.¹¹

Lievens returned to the Dutch Republic and resided in The Hague from 1654 until March 1659 at the latest. In 1656, he was involved in setting up Confrerie Pictura, a new painters’ confraternity that broke away from the local Guild of St Luke. Lievens received several important private and public commissions in these years, not only in The Hague but also in Amsterdam. For example, he was commissioned in 1655 to execute a large overmantel of Quintus Fabius Maximus and his Son for the burgomasters’ chamber of Amsterdam Town Hall, for which he was paid 1,500 guilders.¹² Although he remained a non-resident member of the Confrerie Pictura in The Hague in 1660-61, Lievens moved back to Amsterdam by March 1659, probably with an eye to securing the commission for the series of eight monumental paintings for the lunettes of the Burgerzaal (Citizens’ Hall) in the Town Hall. After Govert Flinck, who had been awarded that project, died in 1660 before being able to execute them, Lievens was given the task of painting one of the lunettes, Brinio Raised on a Shield, for which he earned 1,200 guilders.¹³ Another important assignment in the 1660s was for an enormous Mars (Allegory of War) for Pieter Post’s newly constructed Statenzaal, the assembly room of the States of Holland and West Friesland in the Binnenhof in The Hague.¹⁴ Lievens completed this canvas in 1664 and in the same year set off for Cleves, probably in the hope of being selected to work on the decorations of Johan Maurits of Nassau’s newly renovated Schwanenburg Castle, another architectural project based on designs by Pieter Post. Lievens’s sojourn in Cleves is veiled in mystery and it is only known that by the spring of 1666 he was back in Amsterdam, where he remained until 1669. He spent the last five years of his life constantly on the move, living alternately in The Hague, Leiden and Amsterdam. Due at least in part to non-payments by some of his patrons, which was exacerbated by the economic malaise brought on by the Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672-74), Lievens experienced financial problems during much of his later career and died in poverty in Amsterdam in June 1674.

Throughout his career Lievens had several pupils, none of whom became significant artists in their own right. It was probably as early as his Leiden period that he instructed his younger brother Dirk (c. 1612-1650), who is known to have executed a few portraits around 1640. The otherwise obscure Hans van den Wijngaerde, who trained with Lievens in Antwerp for six years beginning in 1636, is his earliest documented pupil. According to Houbraken, who does not specify where the apprenticeship took place, Hendrik Schoock (1630-1707) from Utrecht was with Lievens after having studied with Abraham Bloemaert and before going on to Jan Davidsz de Heem. Based on Schoock’s date of birth, this would have been either in Antwerp, where De Heem was also active, or in Amsterdam shortly after Lievens moved there in 1644. In 1662, Erick van den Weerelt (1648-1715) was apprenticed by the Amsterdam Civic Orphanage to Lievens for a period of three years. The contract was extended for another three years in 1665. Lievens’s use of student help to execute some of his works is documented. According to his own testimony, his eldest son, Jan Andrea (1644-1680), painted the 1666 Geographer, an overmantel in the Gemeenlandshuis of the Rijnland polder board in Leiden, after his father’s design and with his assistance.¹⁵ He is also recorded in Lievens’s studio in Amsterdam in 1669 together with two Jewish assistants, Aron de Chavez (c. 1647-1705) and Jacob Cardoso Ribero (c. 1643-?), and a wealthy amateur, Jonas Witsen (1647-1675). Lievens’s last documented pupil was Dionys Godijn (c. 1652/57-after c. 1682), whose father apprenticed him to the master in The Hague for a period of two years beginning in 1670.

From contemporary sources it appears that Lievens was rather arrogant. Huygens detected this personality defect even in the youthful artist: ‘My only objection is his stubbornness, which derives from an excess of self-confidence’.¹⁶ Judging from a remark made by Sir Robert Kerr in a 1654 letter to his son, Lievens retained a sense of excessive self-esteem in his maturity as well: ‘[he] has so high a conceit of himself that he thinks there is none to be compared with him in all Germany, Holland, nor the rest of the seventeen provinces.’¹⁷

Jonathan Bikker, 2025

References
J.J. Orlers, Beschrijving der stad Leyden, Leiden 1641, pp. 375-77; P. Angel, Lof der Schilderkonst, Leiden 1642 – trans. M. Hoyle and annot. H. Miedema, ‘Philips Angel, Praise of Painting’, Simiolus 24 (1996), pp. 227-58, esp. pp. 245-46; J. von Sandrart, Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675: Leben der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. A.R. Peltzer, Munich 1925 (ed. princ. Nuremberg 1675), p. 186; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, pp. 212, 296-301; P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, onder zinspreuk ‘Wt jonsten versaemt’, II, Antwerp/The Hague 1876, pp. 61, 69, 139; F.J.P. van den Branden, Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche schilderschool, Antwerp 1883, pp. 863-66; J.A. Worp, ‘Constantijn Huygens over de schilders van zijn tijd’, Oud Holland 9 (1891), pp. 106-36, esp. pp. 125-31; E.W. Moes, ‘Jan Lievens’, Leids Jaarboekje 4 (1907), pp. 136-64; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, I, The Hague 1915, pp. 186-227; Schneider in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXIII, Leipzig 1929, pp. 214-15; H. Schneider, Jan Lievens: Sein Leben und seine Werke, Haarlem 1932, pp. 1-10, 277-85, 289-303; W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, pp. 1764-72; J. Bruyn, ‘Review of W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986’, Oud Holland 102 (1988), pp. 322-33, esp. pp. 327-28; E. Duverger, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, IV, Brussels 1989, p. 224, no. 1034; R. de Jager, ‘Meester, leerjongen, leertijd: Een analyse van zeventiende-eeuwse Noord-Nederlandse leerlingcontracten van kunstschilders, goud- en zilversmeden’, Oud Holland 104 (1990), pp. 69-111, esp. pp. 74, 98-99, doc. nos. 11, 12, 15, p. 102, doc. no. 31; P.J.M. de Baar and I.W.L. Moerman, ‘Rembrandt van Rijn en Jan Lievens, inwoners van Leiden’, in C. Vogelaar et al., Rembrandt & Lievens in Leiden: ‘Een jong en edel schildersduo’/Rembrandt & Lievens in Leiden: ‘A Pair of Young and Noble Painters’, exh. cat. Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 1991-92, pp. 24-38; E. Duverger, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, V, Brussels 1991, pp. 100-01; Domela Nieuwenhuis in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, XIX, New York 1996, pp. 347-50; J.G.C.A. Briels, Vlaamse schilders en de dageraad van Hollands Gouden Eeuw 1585-1630, Antwerp 1997, pp. 352-53; A.K. Wheelock Jr, ‘Jan Lievens: Bringing New Light to an Old Master’, in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2008-09, pp. 1-27

Entry

Although it was not until 1936 that the elegant sitter in this half-length portrait by Jan Lievens was identified as Constantijn Huygens,¹⁸ his refined features and slightly bulging eyes are known to us from several other likenesses, including a painting of 1627 by Thomas de Keyser¹⁹ and a somewhat later engraving in Anthony van Dyck’s Iconography.²⁰ Huygens was appointed secretary to Stadholder Frederik Hendrik in 1625 and would serve the House of Orange for 62 years. In addition to being a statesman, he was a scholar, poet and musician. Beginning in 1630, Huygens was a member of the board that managed the stadholder’s property, in which capacity he wielded enormous influence on the House of Orange’s patronage of architects and painters. The autobiographical fragment that he wrote between 11 May 1629 and the spring of 1631 contains the earliest characterizations of Rembrandt and Lievens.

It is thanks to Huygens’s account that we are exceptionally well informed about the genesis and early reception of the present work. The author relates that upon meeting Lievens for the first time in Leiden the young artist became ‘seized with the desire to paint my portrait’.²¹ Indeed, ‘so ardent was his desire’ that Lievens almost immediately took Huygens up on his invitation to come to his home in The Hague in order to depict him. ‘My countenance had lodged so firmly in his mind that his eagerness brooked no further delay.’ One senses that Lievens was keen to impress Huygens, the man who could – and indeed would – be instrumental in obtaining for him the patronage of the stadholder’s court. Also indicative of his urge to please Huygens is the latter’s comment that Lievens had a ‘customary aversion to being persuaded to portray a person’. In the light of Huygens’s praise that ‘in painting the human countenance he wreaks miracles’, it comes as a surprise that Lievens would have avoided portraiture. The present panel, which as discussed below was probably executed in 1628-29, may well be the first real portrait that Lievens made. There are none in his extant oeuvre that predate it, and the pictures from which Huygens discerned Lievens’s ability to render the human countenance were probably tronies, not formal portraits. At any rate, Huygens lists a number of praiseworthy works by Lievens, including one that can be identified with the Old Man with Turban now in Potsdam,²² that fall into the tronie category. The painting he made of his mother in 1621, mentioned by the Leiden town chronicler Jan Jansz Orlers in 1641, may also have been a tronie.²³ Lievens’s aversion to true portraiture was perhaps the result of the low status the genre was afforded by theorists such as Karel van Mander. If this was the case, Huygens’s recommendation given in his autobiographical fragment and probably to the artist himself, that he should not pursue history painting, which was ranked highest of the genres, because he ‘is unlikely to match Rembrandt’s vivid invention’, but should instead ‘concentrate on that physical part which miraculously combines the essence of the human spirit and body’ must have come as a blow to the young Lievens. By portraying Huygens, Lievens proved himself willing to heed the advice of the most important cultural broker of the time, thereby perhaps also changing Huygens’s opinion of him as stubborn and incapable of accepting criticism.

According to his autobiographical sketch, Huygens’s initial encounter with Lievens and the first sitting for the portrait occurred in the winter months, but of which year he unfortunately does not specify. At this session, Lievens executed only the clothes and hands because there were limited daylight hours and Huygens was very busy with his own affairs. Lievens agreed to return to The Hague later on to paint Huygens’s face, once again making ‘his appearance long before the appointed date’. Ekkart has convincingly shown that these events probably transpired in the winter of 1628 and the spring of 1629.²⁴ From Huygens’s diary and letters we know that he was in Leiden in October and November 1628 and, exceptionally, in The Hague in the following spring. In other years Huygens was required to accompany Frederik Hendrik on his military campaigns in that season, so he must have been granted special leave at this time. The smoothly brushed paint and the care lavished on the details also point to 1628-29 as the most likely period of execution.

As Gifford has suggested, in the present work Lievens may have consciously emulated the finely detailed manner of Michiel van Mierevelt.²⁵ The latter was not only the stadholder’s court portraitist, he was also much admired by Huygens. But perhaps even more than with Van Mierevelt, who in 1628 was yet to render Huygens’s likeness, Lievens was competing with Thomas de Keyser’s 1627 Portrait of Constantijn Huygens and his (?) Clerk.²⁶ De Keyser can also be described as a fijnschilder. Moreover, the contemplative mood of the sitter in Lievens’s panel is the complete opposite of the active statesman depicted by De Keyser. Whereas he portrayed Huygens in his travel clothes, receiving official correspondence and with a variety of objects, such as a floor plan, a lute and astrological globes that allude to his many intellectual and artistic interests and responsibilities, Lievens painted him in his everyday, all-black clothing, his hands passively folded in his lap, thoroughly absorbed in his own thoughts. Although polar opposites, De Keyser’s and Lievens’s approaches were significant innovations in seventeenth-century Dutch portraiture. Although Huygens makes no mention of it in his autobiographical fragment, X-radiographs and infrared photography reveal that the artist made a profound change to his composition, initially showing Huygens’s face frontally.²⁷ Together with the three-quarter turn of the body, the sitter’s pose in Lievens’s original design would have been very similar, in reverse, to the one in De Keyser’s picture. As it is especially the three-quarter profile view of the face in the finished portrait that lends Huygens a contemplative air, it seems possible that Lievens only alighted upon the idea to do the opposite of De Keyser only during the painting process.

Huygens, who gave it ‘a permanent place amongst my most treasured possessions’, reports in the fragment that Lievens’s portrait was held in high esteem: ‘Not a day goes by but it is regarded by Van Mierevelt and countless others with the utmost admiration.’ He was also quite aware of the unique mood Lievens had captured. In an epigram of 5 April 1632 about the painting the stadholder’s secretary states: ‘This is the face of Huygens, who was meditating.’ He also wrote that ‘there are however those who opine that the contemplative rendering of the face detracts from the vivacity of my mind’. Huygens’s reply to this criticism is disappointing, for instead of defending the ‘contemplative rendering’ as Lievens’s artistic achievement he apologizes for it and places the blame on himself: ‘During this period I was involved in a serious family affair of some importance and, as is only to be expected, the cares which I endeavoured to keep to myself were clearly reflected in the expression of my face and eyes.’²⁸ Two possibilities have been put forward as the personal matter to which Huygens refers,²⁹ but to view them solely as the reason for the contemplative mood of the painting denies Lievens’s artistry and renders him a simple follower of nature. Rembrandt, we can assume, recognized Lievens’s achievement when he adopted Huygens’s pose for an etching from around 1631 of an old woman seated at a table.³⁰ About a decade after completing this portrait Lievens depicted Huygens once again, this time in a black chalk drawing and in a more conventional pose.³¹

Jonathan Bikker, 2025

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

C. Brière-Misme, ‘Un portrait retrouvé de Constantin Huygens’, Oud Holland 53 (1936), pp. 193-201; A. van Schendel, ‘Het portret van Constantijn Huygens door Jan Lievens’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 11 (1963), pp. 5-10; H. Schneider and R.E.O. Ekkart, Jan Lievens: Sein Leben und seine Werke, Amsterdam 1973, pp. 309-11, 333-34, no. 243; Klessmann in R. Klessmann (ed.), Jan Lievens: Ein Maler im Schatten Rembrandts, exh. cat. Braunschweig (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum) 1979, pp. 68-70, no. 17, with earlier literature; W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1807, no. 1286; A.M.T. Leerintveld, ‘“Tquam soo wel te pass”: Huygen’s portretbijschriften en de datering van zijn portret geschilderd door Jan Lievens’, Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 8 (1989), pp. 159-83; R.E.O. Ekkart, ‘Rembrandt, Lievens en Constantijn Huygens’, in C. Vogelaar et al., Rembrandt & Lievens in Leiden: ‘Een jong en edel schildersduo’/Rembrandt & Lievens in Leiden: ‘A Pair of Young and Noble Painters’, exh. cat. Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 1991-92, pp. 48-59, esp. pp. 53-56; R. van Straten, Young Rembrandt: The Leiden Years, 1606-1632, Leiden 2005, pp. 91, 107-08; DeWitt in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2008-09, pp. 112-13, no. 16; E. de Jongh, ‘Van Campen’s “White” versus Lievens’ “Black”’, in A.W.A. Boschloo (ed.), Aemulatio: Imitation, Emulation and Invention in Netherlandisch Art from 1500 to 1800: Essays in Honor of Eric Jan Sluijter, Zwolle 2011, pp. 153-65; B. Schnackenburg, Jan Lievens: Friend and Rival of the Young Rembrandt: With a Catalogue Raisonné of his Early Leiden Works 1623-1632, Petersberg 2016, pp. 97-99, 127, 256, no. 73

Collection catalogues

1976, p. 347, no. C 1467

Citation

Jonathan Bikker, 2025, 'Jan Lievens, Portrait of Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), Lord of Zuylichem, c. 1628 - c. 1629', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8901

(accessed 27 March 2025 19:22:19).

Footnotes

¹ Foucart in A. Cacan de Bissy (ed.), Le siècle de Rembrandt: Tableaux hollandais des collections publiques françaises, exh. cat. Paris (Musée du Petit Palais) 1970-71, p. 130.
² A. Cahier (foreword), Catalogue des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, dessin, gravure et lithographie exposés dans les galeries du Musée de Douai, coll. cat. Douai 1869, pp. 83-84, no. 182.
³ Taken from the translation by Ruth Koenig of Huygens’s autobiographical fragment in C. Vogelaar et al., Rembrandt & Lievens in Leiden: ‘Een jong en edel schildersduo’/Rembrandt & Lievens in Leiden: ‘A Pair of Young and Noble Painters’, exh. cat. Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 1991-92, p. 138.
⁴ Capuchin Monk Praying, Monteviot House, Jedburgh, Scotland, Marquess of Lothian Collection; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1877.
⁵ For Lievens’s Samson and Delilah of c. 1626-27 in the Rijksmuseum see SK-A-1627. Rembrandt’s version of 1628 is in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie; illustrated in J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, I, The Hague/Boston/London 1982, p. 250. For another one of the subject from c. 1626-27 attributed to Rembrandt by the present author, see SK-A-4096. Lievens’s 1631 Raising of Lazarus is in the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1832. Rembrandt’s painting of the subject of c. 1630-31 is now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; illustrated in J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, I, The Hague/Boston/London 1982, p. 294. Lievens’s 1631 Christ on the Cross is in Nancy, Musée des Beaux-Arts; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1884. Rembrandt’s version from the same year is in the Le Mas-d’Agenais parish church; illustrated in J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, I, The Hague/Boston/London 1982, p. 338.
⁶ SK-A-1467.
⁷ Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1825.
⁸ The Holy Family, Antwerp, St Charles Borromeo Church; W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1843. The Visitation painted for the Jesuit church in Brussels is now in Paris, Musée du Louvre; illustrated in ibid., p. 1835.
⁹ The commission from Frederik Hendrik is only known from Orlers’s account. The Magnanimity of Scipio, executed between 1639 and 1641, was destroyed by fire in 1929; illustrated in A.K. Wheelock Jr, ‘Jan Lievens: Bringing New Light to an Old Master’, in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2008-09, pp. 1-27, esp. p. 17, fig. 19.
¹⁰ In situ; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1845.
¹¹ The portrait historié (Stiftung Preussische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg, Jagdschloss Grunewald) is illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1847. For the other decorations of Schloss Oranienburg see G. Bartoschek, Gemälde aus dem Schloss Oranienburg, exh. cat. Oranienburg (Kreismuseum Oberhavel) 1978. See also the entry on SK-A-612.
¹² In situ; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1850.
¹³ In situ; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1852.
¹⁴ In situ; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1886.
¹⁵ In situ; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1887.
¹⁶ Taken from the translation by Ruth Koenig in C. Vogelaar et al., Rembrandt & Lievens in Leiden: ‘Een jong en edel schildersduo’/Rembrandt & Lievens in Leiden: ‘A Pair of Young and Noble Painters’, exh. cat. Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 1991-92, pp. 132-34.
¹⁷ Quoted in H. Schneider and R.E.O. Ekkart, Jan Lievens: Sein Leben und seine Werke, Amsterdam 1973, p. 303.
¹⁸ C. Brière-Misme, ‘Un portrait retrouvé de Constantin Huygens’, Oud Holland 53 (1936), pp. 193-201.
¹⁹ London, The National Gallery; illustrated in N. MacLaren, The Dutch School: 1600-1900, coll. cat. London (The National Gallery) 1991, II, pl. 184.
²⁰ S. Turner, The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700: Anthony van Dyck, I, ed. C. Depauw, Rotterdam 2002, pp. 155-57, nos. 38 (1-2).
²¹ The passages from Huygens’s autobiographical fragment cited in this entry are taken from C. Vogelaar et al., Rembrandt & Lievens in Leiden: ‘Een jong en edel schildersduo’/Rembrandt & Lievens in Leiden: ‘A Pair of Young and Noble Painters’, exh. cat. Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 1991-92, pp. 132-34, and were translated by Ruth Koenig.
²² Stiftung Preussische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg. Schloss Sanssouci, Potsdam; illustrated in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2008-09, p. 119. On the identification of this painting with the one owned by the stadholder see especially Vogelaar in C. Vogelaar and G. Korevaar (eds.), Rembrandts moeder: Mythe en werkelijkheid, exh. cat. Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 2005-06, pp. 154-55.
²³ J.J. Orlers, Beschrijving der stad Leyden, Leiden 1641, p. 376.
²⁴ R.E.O. Ekkart, ‘Rembrandt, Lievens en Constantijn Huygens’, in C. Vogelaar et al., Rembrandt & Lievens in Leiden: ‘Een jong en edel schildersduo’/Rembrandt & Lievens in Leiden: ‘A Pair of Young and Noble Painters’, exh. cat. Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 1991-92, pp. 48-59, esp. pp. 53-56.
²⁵ E.M. Gifford, ‘Lievens’ Technique: “Wonders in Smeared Paint, Varnishes, and Oils”’, in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2008-09, pp. 40-53, esp. p. 47.
²⁶ London, The National Gallery; for a discussion of De Keyser’s painting see Buvelot in Q. Buvelot (ed.), Dutch Portraits: The Age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals, exh. cat. London (The National Gallery)/The Hague (Mauritshuis) 2007-08, p. 150, no. 34.
²⁷ See Technical notes.
²⁸ See also E. de Jongh, ‘Van Campen’s “White” versus Lievens’ “Black”’, in A.W.A. Boschloo (ed.), Aemulatio: Imitation, Emulation and Invention in Netherlandisch Art from 1500 to 1800: Essays in Honor of Eric Jan Sluijter, Zwolle 2011, pp. 153-65, esp. pp. 157-58, where it is suggested that Huygens may have been reproaching himself for ‘showing emotions (...) contrary to the sanctioned Christian-Stoic ideals’.
²⁹ His wife, Susanna van Baerle, was pregnant with their second child, Christiaen, who was born on 14 April 1629; there might have been complications. Also in this period, Huygens’s close friend Jacques de Gheyn was on his deathbed; he died on 29 March 1629. See R.E.O. Ekkart, ‘Rembrandt, Lievens en Constantijn Huygens’, in C. Vogelaar et al., Rembrandt & Lievens in Leiden: ‘Een jong en edel schildersduo’/Rembrandt & Lievens in Leiden: ‘A Pair of Young and Noble Painters’, exh. cat. Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 1991-92, pp. 48-59, esp. p. 56, note 33.
³⁰ S.S. Dickey (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, L, New York 1993, p. 269, no. 343 (2). This borrowing was first pointed out by A. van Schendel, ‘Het portret van Constantijn Huygens door Jan Lievens’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 11 (1963), pp. 5-10, esp. p. 8.
³¹ London, The British Museum; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, VII, New York 1983, p. 3565.