Object data
oil on panel
support: height 67 cm × width 53.1 cm
outer size: depth 6.5 cm (support incl. frame)
Jan Antonisz van Ravesteyn
Portrait of a Man
c. 1630 - c. 1635
Technical notes
The support consists of three vertically grained planks and is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1611. The panel could have been ready for use by 1622, but a date in or after 1628 is more likely. There is a knot in the panel at the upper left, which was retouched at a very early date in the painting’s history. The ground layer is light-coloured and quite transparent. The paint layers were smoothly applied, with some brushmarking visible in the face.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 8 September 2004
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 20 June 2005
Condition
Fair. The varnish is very discoloured.
Provenance
...; purchased by Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam, fl. 70, between 1822 and 1828, as Portrait of Hugo de Groot by Abraham van den Tempel or Cornelis Janssens van Ceulen;1 by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam, as Portrait of Hugo de Groot by Abraham van den Tempel, with the rest of his collection, 1854;2 on loan from the City of Amsterdam to the museum since 30 June 18853
Object number: SK-C-240
Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Jan Anthonisz van Ravesteyn (? Culemborg c. 1572 - The Hague 1657)
Although there are no archival records to support such a supposition, it is believed that Jan Anthonisz van Ravesteyn was the son of a glass-painter, Anthonis van Ravesteyn, who is documented in Culemborg in 1593 and in The Hague in 1602. Van Ravesteyn’s date of birth is also uncertain, but it was probably around 1572. His name appears in two notarized documents from October 1597 in Delft, which has led to the belief that he was apprenticed to Van Mierevelt. However, Van Ravesteyn’s earliest known work, Portrait of Hugo de Groot at the Age of 16 of 1599,4 differs from Van Mierevelt’s early oeuvre, which, it has to be admitted does not include paintings from before 1600. In 1598 Van Ravesteyn joined the painters’ guild in The Hague, where he remained the rest of his life, marrying Anna Arentsdr van Barendrecht from Dordrecht in 1604. The wedding took place at the town hall, not in the Reformed Church, and from other, later documents it is known that the artist was a Catholic. A Van Ravesteyn was dean of the painters’ guild in The Hague in 1617, but whether this was Jan van Ravesteyn or his brother Anthonie, who was also a painter, is not known. In 1631, 1634 and 1637 he was nominated as warden of the guild, but not elected. He may perhaps have served in some capacity before 1631, but as the records of the guild’s administrators are spotty before that year, this cannot be ascertained.
Van Ravesteyn was the foremost portraitist in The Hague in the first half of the 17th century. His clientele consisted primarily of highly placed government officials and the patrician circles of The Hague and Dordrecht, the latter probably because of his wife’s ties to that town. In addition to portraits of individual burghers, Van Ravesteyn painted five civic guard pieces, some of which were quite innovative. Although there are hundreds of extant portraits by Van Ravesteyn and his workshop dating to after 1611, the number before that date is extremely small, in spite of the fact that his work was already being praised by Van Mander in 1604. His breakthrough – at least as far as commissions are concerned – seems to have come with the ambitious series of officers’ portraits begun probably for Prince Maurits in 1611.5 As his last signed and dated works are from 1641, Van Ravesteyn seems to have laid down his paintbrushes in that year. He was, however, one of the first artists invited to join the newly established Confrerie Pictura in 1656. The guild books list the names of his numerous pupils, the only outstanding one being Adriaen Hanneman (c. 1604-71), who would later become his son-in-law.
Jonathan Bikker, 2007
References
Van Mander 1604, fol. 300r; Van Gool I, 1750, pp. 15-22; Terwesten 1770, p. 9; Obreen III, 1880-81, pp. 261, 283, 285, IV, 1881-82, pp. I, 4-7, 10, 30, 59, V, 1882-83, pp. 68, 70, 72; Bredius/Moes 1892; Ekkart in The Hague 1998, pp. 230-37
Entry
The painting was acquired by Adriaan van der Hoop between 1822 and 1828 as a portrait of Hugo de Groot, an incorrect identification that was maintained until the 1903 Rijksmuseum collection catalogue.6 The attribution to Abraham van den Tempel that this bustlength portrait carried when it was in the Van der Hoop collection was correctly changed to Van Ravesteyn early on.7 The anonymous sitter’s ruff was in fashion between about 1625 and 1635. The painting should be dated to the beginning of the 1630s, as it was in this period that Van Ravesteyn’s modelling was at its softest. The fluffy treatment of the sitter’s hair also fits with this dating.
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. 256.
Collection catalogues
1887, p. 139, no. 1169 (as Portrait of Hugo de Groot); 1903, p. 220, no. 1977; 1934, p. 235, no. 1977; 1976, p. 464, no. C 240; 2007, no. 256
Citation
J. Bikker, 2007, 'Jan Antonisz. van Ravesteyn, Portrait of a Man, c. 1630 - c. 1635', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5201
(accessed 15 November 2024 02:45:44).