Bust of Piet Heyn (1577-1629)

Entry

The present terracotta bust entered the collection of the Rijksmuseum via the Koloniaal Magazijn in Amsterdam, the warehouse where much of the inventories held by the United East India Company (VOC) and the West India Company (WIC) came to be stored after both were dissolved and their assets subsumed by the Dutch government in the late eighteenth century. In light of its origin, this object could very well be the bust of Lieutenant-Admiral Piet Heyn that is said to have stood on a fireplace mantle on the first floor of the West India House in Rotterdam – the West India Company’s so-called Kamer op de Maze (Chambers on the Maas) – as described in a surviving written account of the building’s interior.³

Bearing the year 1636, incised on the back of the collar, the terracotta bust is a posthumous portrait of the famous Dutch naval hero Pieter (‘Piet’) Pietersz Heyn, who died at sea in 1629. The sitter’s likeness was probably modelled after Jan Daemen Cool’s painted portrait of the admiral, a lost work today known only via several workshop copies (e.g. SK-A-1787) and a 1629 engraving by Willem Hondius (RP-P-OB-16.220). In the copies and the engraving of this painting, Heyn wears a gold chain draped across the chest – a distinction of honour bestowed on the admiral by the States General on 23 January 1629 for capturing a Spanish treasure fleet loaded with silver in 1628. Accordingly, the chain’s absence on the present terracotta suggests it was modelled after the original portrait, painted in 1624 or 1625.⁴

The frontal, armless bust – at the bottom terminating in a grotesque mascaron with auricular ornament – generally adheres to a scheme developed almost thirty years earlier by the Amsterdam city sculptor and architect Hendrick de Keyser I (1565-1621, cf. BK-NM-4149). The present bust, however, extends only to the shoulders versus the upper arms, making it somewhat narrower in proportion. The bust has survived intact together with its original wooden socle, on which the auricular ornamentation continues.

The bust has long been attributed to the workshop of Pieter de Keyser (1595-1664), Hendrick’s eldest son. Following his father’s death, Pieter assumed the running of his father’s workshop, where his younger brothers, Willem, Thomas and Hendrick II, and his cousins, Huybrecht and Thomas Gerritsz, were also employed.⁵ The De Keyser shop maintained a uniform style, in most cases probably according to Pieter’s designs. The execution of these works was sometimes also contracted out to external sculptors,⁶ as was very likely the case with the tomb monument of Piet Heyn from 1638/39 in the Oude Kerk in Delft. The design of the monument’s effigy has rightly long been attributed on stylistic grounds to Pieter de Keyser.⁷ Yet the recent discovery of a monogram, placed in a concealed location on the effigy itself, has led to a significant revelation: contrary to being an autograph work, the effigy was in fact executed by the lesser-known sculptor, Pieter Adriaensz ’t Hooft (1610-1649/50).⁸ This new insight also undermines the interpretation of the present bust as an autograph work by Pieter de Keyser, an attribution partly based on its (superficial) resemblance to Piet Heyn’s tomb effigy.⁹

A more likely candidate, as Leeuwenberg previously suggested,¹⁰ is Pieter’s youngest brother, Hendrick de Keyser II (1612/13-1665). A monogrammed and dated example of the sculptor’s work, today preserved in the Amsterdam Museum, is a posthumous portrait bust of the Swedish king Gustav II Adolph from 1634 (fig. a). This terracotta bust displays not only a similar treatment of the pointed beard and moustache, but also the same hard, modelling style, resulting in a rather stiff and lifeless appearance.

It was previously believed that Hendrick de Keyser II moved to London in 1633, 1634 or 1635. Given that the sculptor’s earliest documented presence in that city dates from 1639,¹¹ one may reasonably conclude that, in reality, his departure may have occurred several years later. Consequently, the year 1636 incised on the bust does not necessarily preclude an attribution to this member of the De Keyser artistic dynasty.

Upon arriving in London, Hendrick entered the workshop of his brother-in-law, Nicholas Stone, where his brother, Willem, was also employed from 1623 to 1640. During this period, he worked for patrons such as Sir John Byron at Newstead Abbey.¹² Following the death of his English wife and Stone’s own wife, Hendrick returned to Amsterdam in 1647. There he worked on various projects, including sculptural work on the facades of the East India House on the Hoogstraat (1658) and the nearby Trippenhuis (1665).¹³

Bieke van der Mark, 2024