Portrait of a Man, possibly Gozen Centen (1611/12-1677)

c. 1635 - c. 1636

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 66.5 cm × width 51.3 cm
outer size: depth 5 cm (support incl. frame)

Technical notes

Support The panel consists of three vertically grained oak planks (approx. 14.1, 25.7 and 11.5 cm), approx. 1 cm thick. The top and left edges have been trimmed very slightly. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks. 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.
Preparatory layers The single, coarse, warm white ground extends over the edges of the support at the bottom and on the right, but not over the top and left edges. It consists of fine white pigment particles, a few large white and a few earth pigment particles, and was applied with vertical brushstrokes.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the left edge of the support, and almost up to the top, bottom and right edges. A medium grey paint was used for the first lay-in of the contours, a lighter beige-grey to model the portrait, and warm pure umber and other earth colours for the shadows. Black lines (bone black or ivory) serve as contours for the doublet and hat, and also to accentuate the eyes and mouth. A medium grey paint, consisting of red, yellow (orpiment), black and white pigment particles, was then sketchily applied for the background, correcting the lower contours of the hat, as has become visible to the naked eye. Light pink flesh tones, consisting of lead white and vermilion, were added in the left side of the face. The upper layer of the dark background was applied, consisting of a translucent brown-green (composed of yellow and black pigments), followed by the upper layer of the hat. Adjustments to its top and far right were made over the background, and the initial lace border of the collar was painted out. There are areas of wet-in-wet applications at the transition between the blacks, the grey of the sash, and the upper background layer. The thick paints were applied with pronounced, loose brushstrokes and impasted relief. A fingerprint is visible in the background, in the centre at the top.
Gwen Tauber, 2023

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: G. Tauber, RMA, 5 December 2008
paint samples: G. Tauber, RMA, nos. SK-A-4166/1-2, 5 December 2008
technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 5 December 2008
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 21 December 2008

Condition

Fair. A part of the lower left corner of the panel is no longer present, probably as a result of insect damage, and there are numerous old woodworm holes along the left edge. At some point the join between the middle and right planks was reglued. There is a whitish haze in the shadows of the face along the nose and at the temple, and small areas of retouching and overpaint throughout. The discoloured varnish has distinct drip marks.

Provenance

? Commissioned by or for the sitter; ? his daughter, Soetje Goossens (?-1691), Amsterdam and Leeuwarden; ? her son, Gozewijn Centen (c. 1676-before 12 May 1750), Amsterdam; ? his widow, Maria van de Rijp (?-1763); her son, Jan van de Rijp Centen (?-1764), Amsterdam; his niece, Veronica van de Rijp Centen (1740-1832), Amsterdam; by whom bequeathed to the Rijpenhofje, 116-26 Rozengracht, Amsterdam, with nine other paintings, 1832; on loan from the deacons of the Verenigde Doopsgezinde Gemeente, Amsterdam, to the museum, 1900-70; purchased from the Verenigde Doopsgezinde Gemeente by the museum, with the support of the Stichting tot Bevordering van de Belangen van het Rijksmuseum, 1970

Object number: SK-A-4166

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Stichting tot Bevordering van de Belangen van het Rijksmuseum

The artist

Govert Flinck (Cleves 1615 - Amsterdam 1660)

The exact date of Govert Flinck’s birth, 25 January 1615, is known from a medal issued at the time of his death. He was born into a Mennonite family of some standing in the German town of Cleves, where his father may have been a cloth merchant. According to Houbraken, the young Flinck had a fervent desire to become an artist, which his parents did their utmost to suppress until the Dutch painter and fellow Mennonite Lambert Jacobsz, who was on a preaching tour in Cleves, persuaded them to allow their son to study with him in Leeuwarden. Another of his pupils and Flinck’s ‘companion in art’ (‘gezelschap in de Konst’) was Jacob Backer, who was about seven years his senior.¹ Having advanced far enough to stand on their own feet, the two young artists went to Amsterdam. Although Houbraken’s text has been interpreted as meaning that they made the move at the same time, Backer is first documented there in 1633, while the earliest record of Flinck living in Amsterdam is from 1637. On 13 March of that year, he bought some prints at an auction and his address was given as the home of the art dealer Hendrick Uylenburgh. Von Sandrart informs us that after a period of study with Rembrandt, which according to Houbraken lasted only a year, Flinck ‘spent many long years with the famous art dealer Uylenburgh, with whom he left many exquisite, beautiful portraits from his own hand’.² This chronology implies that he had already trained with Rembrandt, or was training with him, when he painted his earliest signed and dated works in 1636.³ Vestiges of Jacobsz’s style are apparent in these pictures, making Houbraken’s assertion that Flinck fully mastered Rembrandt’s manner in the year he was taught by him appear somewhat exaggerated.

Flinck’s most accomplished Rembrandtesque paintings date from the late 1630s and early 1640s. In addition to the portraits mentioned by Von Sandrart, he executed histories and landscapes while he worked for Uylenburgh. His documented clientele consisted to a large degree of fellow Mennonites, including his cousins Ameldonck and Dirck Jacobsz Leeuw. It is not known when Flinck stopped running Uylenburgh’s studio and set up shop on his own. In 1644, he purchased two houses on Lauriersgracht (nos. 76 and 78) for 10,000 guilders, installing his studio and gallery on the top floors. In the meantime, he had already received the first of three commissions for group portraits from the Amsterdam civic guard, the Portrait of the Governors of the Kloveniersdoelen of 1642;⁴ the other two are dated 1645 and 1648.⁵ In the latter year he was awarded his first order from an aristocrat, an allegory for the Elector of Brandenburg, Friedrich Wilhelm von Hohenzollern.⁶

In June 1645 Flinck married Ingeltje Thoveling, the daughter of a vice-admiral and director of the Rotterdam branch of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Although she was a Remonstrant, it was only after her death in early 1651 that Flinck had himself baptized in her faith. He remarried in 1656, his second wife being Sophia van der Houve of Gouda. Houbraken points out that Flinck had many influential friends, including Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, governor of Cleves, the burgomasters Cornelis and Andries de Graeff, and the art lovers Pieter and Jan Six and Joannes Wtenbogaert.

A fully-fledged Flemish Baroque style, inspired initially by Amsterdam artists who had adopted it, first appears in Flinck’s work in 1645.⁷ It is also apparent in the many important commissions Flinck received in the 1650s, which included portraits of the Elector of Brandenburg⁸ and of Johan Maurits,⁹ as well as the Allegory in Memory of Frederik Hendrik.¹⁰ It may have been the trip that the artist made to Antwerp, reported by both Baldinucci and Houbraken, that encouraged him to continue down this path.

In 1656 Flinck completed the enormous Marcus Curtius Dentatus Refusing the Gifts of the Samnites for the newly built Town Hall in Amsterdam, followed in 1658 by Solomon’s Prayer for Wisdom.¹¹ In late 1659 he was asked to paint twelve monumental canvases for the Great Gallery of the Town Hall, but Flinck died on 2 February the following year before completing any of them.

A witness stated that a number of assistants and apprentices were working in Flinck’s studio in 1649, which was probably the case in other years as well. Nevertheless, the names of only four, rather obscure pupils are known with certainty: the Düsseldorf painter Johannes Spilberg (1619-1690), who spent a few years with him in the 1640s, Johannes Buns (dates unknown), Bartholomeus Hoppfer (1628-1699) and Steven Sleger (dates unknown).

Jonathan Bikker, 2023

References
J. von Sandrart, Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675: Leben der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. A.R. Peltzer, Munich 1925 (ed. princ. Nuremberg 1675), p. 194; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, II, Amsterdam 1719, pp. 18-27; F. Baldinucci, Notizie de’ professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua secolo V. dal 1610. al 1670., Florence 1728, p. 484; H. Havard, L’art et les artistes hollandais, II, Paris 1880, pp. 71-174, 191-202; D.C. Meijer Jr, ‘De Amsterdamsche schutters-stukken in en buiten het nieuwe Rijksmuseum’, Oud Holland 7 (1889), pp. 45-60, esp. pp. 45, 46; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, I, The Hague 1915, p. 128; Hofstede de Groot in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XII, Leipzig 1916, pp. 97-100; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, IV, The Hague 1917, pp. 1254-55; J.W. von Moltke, Govaert Flinck, 1615-1660, Amsterdam 1965, pp. 9-12; S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, ‘Doopsgezinden en schilderkunst in de 17e eeuw: Leerlingen, opdrachtgevers en verzamelaars van Rembrandt’, Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 6 (1980), pp. 105-23, esp. pp. 109-10; S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, ‘Het “schilderhuis” van Govert Flinck en de kunsthandel van Uylenburgh aan de Lauriergracht te Amsterdam’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 74 (1982), pp. 70-90; W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, New York 1984, pp. 998-99; W. Liedtke, ‘Rembrandt and the Rembrandt Style in the Seventeenth Century’, in W. Liedtke et al., Rembrandt/not Rembrandt in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Aspects of Connoisseurship, exh. cat. New York 1995-96, II, pp. 3-39, esp. pp. 16-20; Von Moltke in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, XI, New York 1996, pp. 168-70; P. Jeroense, ‘Govaert Flinck (1615-1660): Eine Künstlerbiographie’, Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 36 (1997), pp. 73-112; Beaujean in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XLI, Munich/Leipzig 2004, pp. 240-43; W. Liedtke, ‘Rembrandt’s “Workshop” Revisited’, Oud Holland 117 (2004), pp. 48-73, esp. pp. 52, 68, 70, note 34; J. van der Veen, ‘Het kunstbedrijf van Hendrick Uylenburgh in Amsterdam: Productie en handel tussen 1625 en 1655’, in F. Lammertse and J. van der Veen, Uylenburgh en Zoon: Kunst en commercie van Rembrandt tot De Lairesse, 1625-1675, exh. cat. London (Dulwich Picture Gallery)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2006, pp. 117-205, esp. pp. 160-69; R. Lambour, ‘Het doopsgezind milieu van Michiel van Musscher (1645-1705) en van andere schilders in zeventiende-eeuws Amsterdam: Een revisie en ontdekking’, Oud Holland 125 (2012), pp. 193-214, esp. pp. 197-98; T. van der Molen, ‘Das Leben von Govert Flinck/The Life of Govert Flinck’, in E.-J. Goosens et al., Govert Flinck – Reflecting History, exh. cat. Cleves (Museum Kurhaus Kleve) 2015-16, pp. 10-21; E.J. Sluijter, Rembrandt’s Rivals: History Painting in Amsterdam 1630-1650, Amsterdam/Philadelphia 2015, pp. 97-110

Entry

The identity of the sitter in this half-length portrait was recorded as Gozen Centen for the first time on 5 January 1837, in the minutes of a meeting of the deacons of the Rijpenhofje, a Mennonite home for the poor on Rozengracht in Amsterdam.¹² The painting was bequeathed to this institution together with nine others in 1832 by Veronica van de Rijp Centen (1740-1832), a descendant of Gozen Centen. The Rijpenhofje had been established in 1735 with funds bequeathed by Gerard van de Rijp, a brother of Veronica’s grandmother, Maria van de Rijp. As Van Eeghen has indicated, the identification of the sitter as Gozen Centen may have been concocted by the family in the eighteenth century, and cannot therefore be taken as a certainty. However, Van Eeghen’s very hypothetical, alternative suggestion that the sitter is Dirck Jacobsz Leeuw, whose 1636 portrait by Govert Flinck was also part of Veronica van de Rijp Centen’s bequest to the Rijpenhofje, is not convincing.¹³

Born in Amsterdam around 1611/12, Gozen Centen was baptized in the Waterland Mennonite church on 25 February 1632.¹⁴ He was a baker by trade. On 20 January 1637 the banns for his wedding to Antie Gerrits were posted in Leeuwarden, where on 25 March of the same year he was registered as a master baker and a citizen of the town. Antie Gerrits must have died by 18 April 1647, the date of Gozen Centen’s second marriage to Namke Arians from Harlingen. In September 1648 he returned to Amsterdam, where he became a successful grain merchant. He was living on Groenburgwal at the time of his death in 1677.

The portrait first came to the attention of scholars when it hung in the Historische tentoonstelling (Historical Exhibition) held in Amsterdam in 1876. In his review of the show, Adrianus Daniël de Vries described it as being ‘without doubt from Rembrandt’s school’, but not by Govert Flinck or Ferdinand Bol.¹⁵ Later, in 1900, Bredius, who mistakenly thought he was the first to discuss the painting in the literature, assigned the panel to Rembrandt with a dating around 1631-32.¹⁶ In 1904, Hofstede de Groot made the attribution to Flinck, which Bredius promptly accepted and has been rightly followed by all subsequent scholars.¹⁷ Hofstede de Groot compared the work to the signed Portrait of Dirck Jacobsz Leeuw of 1636 and Portrait of a Man Aged 44 from the following year.¹⁸ As in those pictures, the modelling of the figure’s face in the Rijksmuseum’s portrait is flatter – Hofstede de Groot used the word ‘wooden’ – and less detailed than in Rembrandt’s likenesses. Also typical for Flinck are the sitter’s blushing cheeks and the overall shiny look of the skin. Perhaps it was this quality that Von Sandrart was referring to when he wrote of the greater ‘pleasantness’ Flinck achieved in his portraits compared to those by Rembrandt.¹⁹ The black doublet, composed of thickly applied, broad brushstrokes, is too weak to be by Rembrandt, but can be compared with the aforementioned signed works by Flinck.

Flinck may have been well-acquainted with Gozen Centen, as both men had ties to the Waterland Mennonite congregation. Dendrochronology indicates 1628 as the terminus post quem for the painting.²⁰ Although there is no absolute certainty that he is indeed the sitter, Centen’s move to Leeuwarden before 20 January 1637 provides a terminus ante quem that would be appropriate for the panel. The rather rudimentary execution compares best with the 1636 Portrait of Dirck Jacobsz Leeuw, and is at any rate not accomplished enough to warrant Von Moltke’s dating to around 1639-40. Nor is Bruyn’s much earlier dating of around 1632-34 acceptable, since the attribution of the two works to Flinck with which the present painting is compared is unconvincing.²¹

Jonathan Bikker, 2023

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

A.D. de Vries, ‘De schilderkunst op de historische tentoonstelling te Amsterdam’, De Gids 40 (1876), pp. 533-59, esp. p. 551 (as possibly Drost or Fabritius); A. Bredius, ‘Het portret van Gozen Centen op het Rijpenhofje te Amsterdam’, Oud Holland 18 (1900), pp. 1-2 (as Rembrandt); A. Bredius, ‘Het portret van Gozen Centen’, Oud Holland 22 (1904), pp. 129-30; C. Hofstede de Groot, ‘Kritische opmerkingen omtrent Oud-Hollandsche schilderijen in onze musea, III’, Oud Holland 22 (1904), pp. 27-38, esp. pp. 27-28; J.W. von Moltke, Govaert Flinck, 1615-1660, Amsterdam 1965, p. 106, no. 200; C.J. de Bruyn Kops, ‘De ontdekking en de originele omlijsting van een portret door Govert Flinck’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 25 (1977), pp. 60-63; I.H. van Eeghen, ‘Ongrijpbare jeugd: Bij een portret door Govert Flinck’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 25 (1977), pp. 55-59 (as possibly Portrait of Dirck Jacobsz Leeuw); J. Bruyn, ‘Rembrandt’s Workshop: Its Function & Production’, in C. Brown, J. Kelch and P. van Thiel, Rembrandt: The Master and his Workshop: Paintings, exh. cat. Berlin (Altes Museum)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/London (The National Gallery) 1991-92, pp. 68-89, esp. p. 75; R.E.O. Ekkart, ‘Govert Flinck and Ferdinand Bol: The Portraits’, in N. Middelkoop (ed.), Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck: Rembrandt’s Master Pupils, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis; Amsterdam Museum) 2017-18, pp. 142-63, esp. p. 145

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 225, no. 2021 (as Rembrandt); 1934, p. 101, no. 926a; 1960, p. 103, no. 930 A 1; 1976, p. 227, no. A 4166

Citation

Jonathan Bikker, 2023, 'Govert Flinck, Portrait of a Man, possibly Gozen Centen (1611/12-1677), c. 1635 - c. 1636', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.10135

(accessed 19 September 2024 20:36:28).