Portrait of the Governors of the Kloveniersdoelen

Entry

Dated 1642, Govert Flinck’s Portrait of the Governors of the Kloveniersdoelen was made for the Great Hall of the Kloveniersdoelen, the headquarters of the arquebusiers’ civic guard, in the same year as Jacob Backer, Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy and Rembrandt finished their civic guard portraits for the room.¹⁶ From Gerard Schaep’s 1653 list of the paintings in Amsterdam’s three civic guard buildings it is known that the latter works hung on the long wall opposite the windows, while Flinck’s portrait of the governors was given pride of place above the fireplace on the short wall facing the entrance (fig. a). Because Joachim von Sandrart only mentions the present picture hanging in the Kloveniersdoelen in his 1675 Teutsche Academie, it has been claimed that Flinck was the first to complete his commission and that Von Sandrart left Amsterdam before the civic guard pieces by Backer, Pickenoy and Rembrandt were installed.¹⁷ This claim, however, is based on the mistaken notion that Von Sandrart is last documented in the city in April 1642.¹⁸ While it is true that he received a number of commissions from German patrons in the years 1642-44, those paintings were executed in Amsterdam. Payment for the allegorical series of the Twelve months and Day and Night, produced in 1642 and 1643 for the Elector of Bavaria, Maximilian I, in Munich, for example, was made to ‘Herrn Joachimo Sandrart, mallers aus Ambsterdam wegen hierhero verschickter mallerij St(ück)’.¹⁹ These 14 pictures, moreover, were engraved by five different Dutch printmakers before being dispatched, and Joost van den Vondel wrote poems on each of them. Likewise, payment for his monumental altarpiece, St Sebastian Tended by St Irene, produced for the Church of St Ignatius in Landshut, Bavaria, was made to Von Sandrart in Amsterdam in January 1645.²⁰ In 1644, his father-in-law died, leaving him a homestead in Stockau, near Ingolstadt, and it was only the following year that the German artist went to live there.²¹ A closer examination of the Teutsche Academie reveals that he did indeed know Backer’s picture in the Great Hall. Backer only painted two civic guard pieces during his career, both of them for the Kloveniersdoelen, and although Von Sandrart does not mention their location, his statement that Backer ‘made a vast number of portraits in Amsterdam, as well as several excellent large works with fully armed civic guard companies marching out’,²² leaves little doubt that he had seen both paintings. Pickenoy’s picture is obviously not mentioned in the Teutsche Academie because Von Sandrart failed to mention him altogether. The omission of The Night Watch is not unusual when one considers the fact that there is no reference to any individual paintings by Rembrandt. While it cannot be maintained that Flinck completed his portrait of the governors before Backer, Pickenoy and Rembrandt finished their works, it is known that Pickenoy’s deadline was 28 July 1642.²³ Perhaps this was also the due date for Flinck’s portrait.

The governors are seated at a cloth-covered table, a compositional formula that had become standard for regent portraits since Cornelis van der Voort introduced it in 1617 or 1618.²⁴ Flinck, however, has depicted his sitters at full-length, undoubtedly because Backer’s, Pickenoy’s and Rembrandt’s civic guardsmen are also shown at full-length.²⁵ An example that Flinck could have followed in this respect is Thomas de Keyser’s 1638 Portrait of Amsterdam’s Burgomasters Receiving the News of Maria de’ Medici’s Arrival,²⁶ which served as a model for an engraving by Jonas Suyderhoef.²⁷ As discussed below, one of Flinck’s sitters also appears in De Keyser’s picture. It was also this painting, or more likely Suyderhoef’s print, that may have supplied Flinck with the idea to position one of the governors in front of the table. There was also an example of this arrangement already present in the Kloveniersdoelen in the form of Pickenoy’s 1639 Officers and Other Civic Guardsmen of District XX in Amsterdam, under the Command of Captain Dirck Tholingh and Lieutenant Pieter Adriaensz Raep, which hung in the entrance passage leading to the Great Hall.²⁸ A further detail in the tradition of the regent portrait is that the present painting includes a servant whose lower status is made apparent by the fact that he is the only figure who is standing and not wearing a hat. The servant in this case is Jacob Pietersz Nachtglas (1577-1654), landlord of the Kloveniersdoelen from 1637 until his death.²⁹ He carries the arquebusiers’ drinking horn, which dates from 1547, to the table.³⁰ The decisions made during their meeting were probably ceremonially ratified by each governor imbibing from the wine-filled horn.³¹ Hanging on the wall on the right of the painting is another symbol of the Kloveniersdoelen, the golden claw that had already been its emblem for centuries.³² Unlike the drinking horn, the claw, surrounded as it is by a gold auricular frame, has a contemporary look. Also unlike the horn, this depiction of the emblem has not survived; perhaps it never existed and was a product of Flinck’s imagination.

While the relatively rough and patchy execution of the brightly illuminated faces does not betray Rembrandt’s influence on Flinck, the arrangement of light and shadow, although lacking drama, does. The light falls from top left, which is consistent with the portrait’s placement in the Great Hall. The open-handed, ‘speaking’ gesture of two of the governors was perhaps inspired by Pickenoy’s above-mentioned civic guard piece of 1639. Flinck used this interaction to create a sense of unity among the sitters. Another means by which he achieved this, perhaps also drawing on Pickenoy’s example, was to show each governor with one hand on or near the table. That Flinck had come up with this strategy early on is apparent from a preparatory drawing, now in Bremen (fig. b). The purpose of the sheet was perhaps to give the governors an idea of what the painting would look like; the figures are only schematically drawn, lack facial hair, and all wear flat collars. The biggest difference, however, is in the servant, who appears to be a youth and carries books and a quill instead of the drinking horn. One wonders whether Flinck himself was responsible for this change, or whether it was suggested to him by his patrons.

Appointed for life, the four governors were responsible for the running of the Kloveniersdoelen and shared in the profits made by the building’s exploitation. On the death of one of them, the others would put forward three candidates, from whom the burgomasters would make a final choice. The nominees were required to be captains or former captains of a civic guard district. According to Hans Bontemantel, a contemporary of Flinck’s, the lucrative function often went to presiding or former burgomasters.³³ The governor on the far right of the present painting, Dr Albert Coenraetsz Burgh (1593-1647),³⁴ had served as burgomaster in 1638, the year in which the French queen mother, Maria de’ Medici, visited Amsterdam.³⁵ On this occasion, he and the other three were portrayed by Thomas de Keyser receiving the news of her arrival in the city.³⁶ A member of the city council since 1618, Burgh served another term as burgomaster in 1643.³⁷ From 1620 Burgh was a captain in the civic guard, in which capacity he was depicted in a portrait of the guardsmen of district VIII in 1625 by Werner van den Valckert.³⁸ He held numerous official posts, both on a municipal as well as national level, throughout his career, including that of director of the Dutch West India Company (WIC). Among the diplomatic missions he undertook was a 1631-32 trip to Moscow, the intention of which was to persuade Tsar Michael I to grant the Dutch Republic a monopoly on the distribution of Russian grain. It was during another journey there in 1647 that Burgh died at Nizhny Novgorod. He served as a governor of the Voetboogdoelen (the headquarters of the crossbowmen’s civic guard) from 1622 until 1628, at which time he became a governor of the Kloveniersdoelen. The three others depicted by Flinck were all appointed in 1636, making Burgh, although significantly younger than the rest, the longest presiding governor.

Sitting in front of the table and looking out at the hall is Jan Claesz van Vlooswijck (1571-1652), a grain and cattle merchant and one of the wealthiest men in Amsterdam.³⁹ Appointed a lieutenant in district IV in 1620, the fervent Remonstrant Van Vlooswijck was dismissed from this post on 30 June that year for making disparaging remarks and contradicting burgomaster Reijnier Pauw, leader of the city council’s Counter-Remonstrant faction.⁴⁰ By 1627 it had been replaced by a Remonstrant majority and Van Vlooswijck ’s name was cleared and he was promoted captain of district IV. A few of its civic guardsmen were, however, Counter-Remonstrants, and a crisis ensued when, on 28 October 1628, they presented a petition to the burgomasters protesting the appointment of Van Vlooswijck. Rather than effecting the latter’s removal, however, the guardsmen’s revolt led to their own dismissal. Van Vlooswijck was a member of the city council from 1632 until his death in 1652. He is the only person to be portrayed twice in the Great Hall; as captain of district IV in Amsterdam he appears in Pickenoy’s 1642 painting.⁴¹

Across the table from Van Vlooswijck sits the merchant and shipowner Pieter Jansz Reael (1569-1643).⁴² In 1621 he more or less inherited the lucrative post of receiver-general for the Amsterdam region from his father, Jan Pietersz Reael (1543-1621). Unlike the latter, who had served as burgomaster in 1604 and 1612, the highest position Pieter Reael attained in the city council was that of alderman (1609-11). By 1620, he was lieutenant of district XIX and was appointed captain of district II in 1621. In that capacity, which passed to Frans Banninck Cocq, probably in early 1639, he took part in the ceremonial reception of Maria de’ Medici in 1638.⁴³ In 1643, Flinck painted an individual, possibly posthumous portrait of Reael based on his likeness in the present picture.⁴⁴

The final governor, on the far left, was herring merchant Jacob Willekens (1564-1649).⁴⁵ The eldest of the four, he had also had the most adventuresome career. Willekens served as vice-admiral of a fleet sailing to the East Indies in 1599 and, at age 50, went to sea again as admiral in the employ of the WIC. His greatest feat was the capture of the Brazilian capital San Salvador de Bahia. Willekens’s service on the city council only began in 1639, when he was appointed a councillor. From 1616, or possibly earlier, until 1625 he was captain of district VI in Amsterdam.

Von Sandrart implies in his Teutsche Academie that Flinck was still working for the dealer Hendrick Uylenburgh when he executed the present picture,⁴⁶ and some scholars have argued that Uylenburgh secured the important order.⁴⁷ Indeed, it is remarkable that Flinck, who had never previously painted a group portrait nor was awarded any other public commission would be chosen for this prestigious task. However, it was perhaps Flinck’s own contacts that landed him the job. According to Houbraken, it was the artist’s habit after church on Sundays to visit some of the most important private collections in Amsterdam. Among them was that owned by Joannes Wtenbogaert (1608-1680),⁴⁸ who was portrayed by Rembrandt in a 1639 etching known as The Goldweigher,⁴⁹ and Flinck may have made his acquaintance by way of his teacher. Joannes Wtenbogaert was related to two of the governors who sat for Flinck. His ties to his uncle Pieter Reael must have been particularly strong, as the latter passed on to him the post of receiver-general for the Amsterdam region in 1638. Reael’s sister Maria (1580-1617) was the first wife of Joannes Wtenbogaert’s father Augustijn (1577-1655). By way of his second marriage to Geertruid Geldsack (1578-1634) Augustijn Wtenbogaert became a brother-in-law of burgomaster Geurt Dircksz van Beuningen, whose son Dirck Geurtsz wed a sister of governor Albert Coenraetsz Burgh.⁵⁰ In 1631 Augustijn Wtenbogaert shared a house on Kloveniersburgwal (no. 27) with Dirck Geurtsz van Beuningen, a few doors down from Burgh (no. 23).⁵¹ It seems likely, then, that Flinck may have owed the commission for this career-making portrait to his contacts with Joannes Wtenbogaert.

Jonathan Bikker, 2023

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements