Allegory of the Peace under Stadholder Willem II

Entry

This painting shows Prince Frederik Hendrik standing in a triumphal chariot bearing the name Concordia. Seated in front of him is the Maid of Holland accompanied by the Lion of Holland (Leo Belgicus). The personifications of Religio, Libertas and Victoria ride in the chariot with Frederik Hendrik. From left to right, the female personifications drawing the chariot are Probitas, Magnanimitas, Justitia and Prudentia, and the goddesses Minerva, Venus (shown as the Venus pudica type) and Juno await its arrival. In the left and right foreground the Rhine, Waal, Meuse and Scheldt are shown as river gods.⁶ The war god Mars reclines next to the Meuse and the Scheldt rivers with his hands bound. He looks on powerlessly as, in the left background, Divine Peace extends her right hand to a personification of the free Nation holding arrows representing the seven United Provinces and presents Prince Willem II with an olive branch. This part of the depiction is referred to in the inscription on the lower rail of the accompanying contemporary frame: ‘Divine Peace, descended from above / Endows the free Nation with all manner of blessings’.⁷ Hovering above the scene are the goddess Ceres unloading her bounty from a cornucopia, a trumpeting angel, and putti bearing the coat of arms of the House of Orange, a laurel wreath and Frederik Hendrik’s helmet.⁸

As Van Thiel has argued, the painting’s traditional title, Allegory of the Peace of Münster, 1648 is not quite appropriate as neither the painting itself nor the inscription on the frame make reference to that peace settlement.⁹ Frederik Hendrik died three years before the painting was executed in 1650, and Willem II was to die on 6 November of that year. As there are no allusions to his death, it can be assumed that the painting was completed while the young stadholder was still alive.¹⁰ It seems quite likely that Van Nieulandt conceived this painting in the light of contemporary events, specifically the quarrel between the young stadholder, who advocated a large standing army and increased military expenditure, and the States of Holland, which wanted a considerably smaller force. The dispute came to a head on 30 July 1650 when Willem II staged a coup. Amsterdam, which had played a leading role in the opposition to him, was forced to accept new troop and military spending levels.¹¹ The fact that Frederik Hendrik and Willem II are shown wearing armour in Van Nieulandt’s painting makes it clear that it is military might that ensures peace.¹²

The present painting is not the only work by Van Nieulandt to incorporate portraits of members of the House of Orange. In 1624, he had made an allegory of Prince Maurits’s rule that was reproduced in print by Simon de Passe under the motto ‘Liberum Belgicum’.¹³ There is also an undated portrait by Van Nieulandt showing Maurits and Frederik Hendrik on the Beach at Scheveningen.¹⁴ Significantly, Van Nieulandt included his own portrait on the right of the present painting next to the musicians,¹⁵ whereby his Orangist sympathies seem unmistakable

The inventory made of Van Nieulandt’s possessions after his death in 1658 includes ‘a grisaille executed by him of the Peace’ valued at 3 guilders.¹⁶ This grisaille was perhaps made in preparation for the Allegory of the Peace under Stadholder Willem II. Another possibility is that it was meant to serve as the model for an engraving that was never realized because of the premature death of Willem II and the great political changes that followed.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

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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. 224.