Triptych with Guardsmen of the Amsterdam Kloveniersdoelen (Headquarters of the Arquebusiers’ Civic Guard)

Entry

The centre panel of this intriguing triptych is the oldest surviving group portrait of an Amsterdam civic guard, and may well have been the very first one ever commissioned. The Kloveniersdoelen, or arquebusiers’ guild, was established in 1522 as the youngest of the three guard guilds in Amsterdam.⁵ Its headquarters were on either side of the Doelenstraat – today’s Nieuwe Doelenstraat – and included a larger building that provided access to the shooting ranges, as well as to the former wall tower Swijgh Utrecht, overlooking the River Amstel.⁶ It is likely that a demand for group portraits to adorn the walls emerged among the squads’ members by the end of the decade. The example of the Kloveniers was to be followed by the other two guilds, and eventually led to the birth of the typically Dutch genre of the militia or civic guard portrait, which would flourish until the 1650s.

With no group portraits known to have been painted by his father Jacob Cornelisz, alias Jacob War, known to art historians as ‘Van Oostsanen’, the style and layout of this earliest signed and dated work by Dirck Jacobsz might more easily be compared to works by Jan van Scorel. As presumed fellow-pupil in Jacob Cornelisz’s workshop, Van Scorel had just portrayed the members of both the Utrecht and Haarlem Brotherhoods of Jerusalem Pilgrims.⁷ Like Scorel, Dirck Jacobsz depicted the men lined up in three-quarter portraits, their gaze towards the beholder. However, he presented 17 members of the squad in a more compact way by introducing two superimposed tiers, separated by a balustrade, with 8 men in the upper tier and 9 in the lower one.⁸ The composition scheme in two tiers was probably inspired by the spatial limitations of the militia halls, which initially only had wall space available for group portraits on the short ends of the room: either on the chimney piece or next to it.⁹ Two of the men in the lower zone are placed slightly higher up than the others, overlapping the balustrade and giving the scene some three-dimensionality. The painter also enlivened the composition by varying the hand gestures.¹⁰ The hands resting on the balustrades, in particular, add a sense of depth to the scene. The scheme of grouping the guardsmen in two tiers was to be used for most of the 16th-century civic guard portraits, only to be replaced by a more interactive composition in the 1580s.

Although none of the sitters’ identities are known, it is logical to assume that they all belonged to the same squad. The two arquebuses in the painting, and the insignia with small claws and rifles on some of the men’s coats, clearly indicate that these guardsmen belong to the Kloveniersdoelen or arquebusiers’ guild. The man directly beneath the date 1529 is probably the captain of the squad, as several of the others seem to be pointing towards him. The date was first read as 1532,¹¹ until Bredius rightly interpreted it as 1529,¹² which was followed by the deciphering of the monogram and mark in 1887.¹³ According to Tümpel, the man standing fourth from the left in the lower zone is the lieutenant.¹⁴ Tümpel unconvincingly argues that both these officers are depicted twice as large as the others, thereby stressing their importance. In his opinion, the fifth man from the left in the upper tier could be the ‘banjert’, the officer responsible for maintaining order among the younger guardsmen, since he is older than the men next to him. Hoogewerff interpreted the man in the top-right corner holding a quill as a self-portrait of the painter, although nothing is known about Jacobsz’s membership of the civic guard.¹⁵ The interpretation as a self-portrait was adopted by Haak, who recognised the implement in the man’s hand as a painter’s brush, and by Raupp.¹⁶ The date and monogram are stressed by the illusionistic effect of the painted mosaic stones which form them.

The partly visible insignia at lower right on the centre panel, and the somewhat cramped position of the men near the edges, suggest that this panel was trimmed a little, perhaps on both sides, before the painting was enlarged with side panels. However, the lack of physical evidence on the back and sides seems to contradict this. The wings have always been dated after 1540 by scholars.¹⁷ Most recently, Tümpel dated the wings around 1552, citing similarities to civic guard portraits of the third quarter of the 16th century.¹⁸ According to Tümpel, the wings are ‘not far removed’ from the 1561 and 1563 portraits, which Dirck Jacobsz also painted for the Kloveniers.¹⁹ The dendrochronology indicates that the planks of the centre panel are a few years younger than those of the left panel but older than those of the right panel. Nonetheless, the data still support a date of 1529 for the centre panel. The use of a dry medium (such as charcoal) for the underdrawing of the wings as opposed to the wet medium used for the centre panel clearly indicates different dates of execution. It would be worthwhile discovering how the underdrawing on the Hermitage painting of A Group of Guardsmen of the Amsterdam Kloveniersdoelen of 1532 was applied (fig. a).²⁰ Although the differences in underdrawing do not necessarily imply a particular order in which the paintings were produced, the wings should indeed be dated considerably later than the middle panel. The fact that only 14 squad members are portrayed on the wings would indicate that the 'missing' squad members were already present on the centre panel. Even without knowing the exact number that made up a squad, it seems more likely that a group of guardsmen would have wings added to an existing group portrait of the squad that they belonged to in the years after 1529.

According to Tümpel, Dirck Jacobsz deliberately chose the ‘sacral form’ of the triptych for a secular group portrait in order to stress the links between the men on the wings to their supposed predecessors in the centre. Apart from the hazardous assumption that a painter would make such crucial decisions, this religious connotation seems far-fetched, especially since two other triptych civic guard group portraits were recorded by Gerrit Pietersz Schaep in 1653, both now lost.²¹ Dirck Jacobsz’s 1529 triptych was seen by him in the ‘Kleine Heerekamer’ of the Kloveniersdoelen.²² He also mentions a group portrait painted for the Handboogdoelen (longbowmen’s guild) in 1531 and placed on the chimney piece of the ‘Groote Camer’ (large chamber), to which wings were added in 1559.²³ There was a second triptych in the ‘Coningskamer’ (king’s chamber) of the Kloveniersdoelen: an ‘old piece with two doors’, also dated 1559.²⁴ The example of the Handboogdoelen panel makes it most likely that by adding wings, the older central part could remain where it was: on the chimney piece. Given the art-historical consensus about the later date of the wings of Dirck Jacobsz’s triptych, it is likely that they were painted in or around 1559, the same year in which two other militia group portraits were enlarged with wings.²⁵ The two Kloveniers triptych portraits most probably hung on chimney pieces in the old building across the street when the wings were added, only being moved to their 1653 locations after the old building was largely demolished in the 1630s.²⁶

Having matured artistically since 1529, Jacobsz provided most of the guardsmen on the side panels with more convincing individual spaces. In order to so he lowered the barrier separating the tiers relative to the centre panel. More requisites have appeared. On the right wing a man is holding a jug. Another squad member is writing, possibly indicating his role as secretary. On the left wing two men have a berkemeier glass and a silver tazza,²⁷ while another is displaying a sheet of music with the words ‘pour amor’ or ‘pour avoir’.²⁸ The herring and knife held by the man at lower right may allude to the fish trade, as suggested by Tümpel, who also states that the captain of this squad is the man in the middle of the lower zone of the right wing, because of his gesture of command.²⁹ Most of his allusions, however, merely demonstrate that the triptych leaves ample room for speculation.

N. Middelkoop, 2010
Revised by the author, 2016 (download previous version below)