Prince Maurits, Accompanied by Prince Frederik Hendrik, Frederick V of Bohemia and his Wife Elizabeth Stuart, and Others, on the Buitenhof, The Hague

Entry

The Princes of Orange and members of their families are riding out of the Buitenhof in The Hague. They include William the Silent, his sons Maurits and Frederik Hendrik, the ‘Winter King’ Frederick V and his wife Elizabeth Stuart, and several members of the Frisian branch of the House of Nassau. In the right background are the buildings between the Hofvijver lake and the Binnenhof, and the Stadholders’ Quarter.⁵ This is an imaginary group of riders, for some were already dead when the painting was made. It can thus be regarded as a dynastic portrait of the House of Orange-Nassau and was evidently a popular one, for several versions of it are known. Although the painting is not listed in the old inventories of Paleis Het Loo, it was from there that it was transferred to Huis ten Bosch in 1798.⁶ This suggests that it was intended for the stadholder himself, or one of his courtiers.

The painting entered the Rijksmuseum as a work by Esaias van de Velde⁷ before being attributed to David Vinckboons in 1809,⁸ and then, in 1887, to Van Hillegaert.⁹ Hofstede de Groot doubted this attribution, and gave it instead to Henri Ambrosius Pacx after comparison with a painting signed by Pacx in Naples.¹⁰ This was followed by a few authors,¹¹ but generally the attribution to Van Hillegaert has rightly been retained.¹² The style corresponds to that of known authentic works by Van Hillegaert, particularly as regards the distinctive modelling of the horses and dogs. The rendering of the figures and the architecture is also closely related to that in Van Hillegaert’s Disbanding of the ‘Waardgelders’ (SK-A-155). The attribution to Van Hillegaert is strengthened even further by the fact that there are literal repetitions of some of the riders in other compositions of his and his workshop. The figure of Frederik Hendrik on the rearing horse in the centre foreground is exactly the same as in Princes Maurits and Frederik Hendrik on Horseback (SK-A-568), and is repeated as an anonymous rider in the left foreground in Van Hillegaert’s signed Disbanding of the ‘Waardgelders’ dated 1627. Prince Maurits, just left of the centre foreground in the present painting, is seen in mirror image in Princes Maurits and Frederik Hendrik on Horseback. In addition, the rider pointing straight ahead behind and to the right of Frederik Hendrik, who is probably Ernst Casimir, recurs in Prince Frederik Hendrik and Count Ernst Casimir at the Siege of ’s-Hertogenbosch (SK-A-607). These examples are not only a powerful argument for the attribution to Van Hillegaert, but are also evidence that he used model drawings for individual riders.

There are several surviving versions of this painting, the one in the Mauritshuis being the most closely related (fig. a). It is much larger than the one in the Rijksmuseum, despite being cropped at the top and on the right, and is widely regarded as the prototype and the finest version.¹³ It was formerly attributed to Pacx, but Van Suchtelen recently put forward cogent arguments for giving it to Van Hillegaert. Another version, in a private collection, can also be ascribed to him.¹⁴ Whether the Mauritshuis painting was indeed the prototype, or whether the artist made several versions at the same time, is impossible to say.

Two other versions that are usually associated with the above three are too far removed in style for them to be given to the artist.¹⁵ They contain fewer portraits, are more elongated, and are closer to the signed painting by Pacx in Naples, in that the figures and horses are far squatter than those in the Van Hillegaert.

The architecture is based on an etching of 1621 by Simon Frisius after a design by Hendrick Hondius.¹⁶ The buildings of the Stadholders’ Quarter and the Stadhouderspoort were only completed in 1621, which establishes a terminus post quem for the painting.¹⁷ The absence of Amalia van Solms, whom Frederik Hendrik married in 1625, is a plausible argument for dating the work before that year.

Yvette Bruijnen, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

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. 122.