The Dutch Defeat at the Blokkersdijk, near Antwerp, 1605

Entry

In the distance is the city of Antwerp on the river Scheldt, with the spires of the Sint-Walburgiskerk and Sint-Andrieskerk, of the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk and the Sint-Michielsabdij. In the middle ground, the hamlet of t’ Veer on the Vlaams Hoofd (Tête-de-Flandre), at the border of Flanders. In the foreground, Spanish troops flying the Spanish army flag of the Burgundian red raguly saltire on a white field² engage with fleeing Dutch infantry, on a landing place where the yellow, white, and blue of the Prince of Orange’s flag is displayed.³ Beyond, a Dutch flotilla proceeds away to the north before the wind.

When the picture was offered for sale in 1987, the action was thought to be the assault of the Sea Beggars on Den Briel in 1572; it was also briefly considered by the museum to be the Battle of Kallo of 1638. The painting was then recognized as a smaller version of one in the Rubenshuis, Antwerp,⁴ in which a partially erased inscription on a feigned cartellino identified the engagement as the Battle of Blokkersdijk, 1605. This battle or encounter on 17 May 1605 resulted in a resounding reverse for the Dutch; it put an end to a plan of Maurits (1567-1625), Prince of Orange, to invest Antwerp by occupying the Flemish shore opposite the city.⁵ The victory was commemorated (and made famous) by the first print of a military engagement issued by Abraham Verhoeven II (1575-1652),⁶ who obtained his license at the end of 1605.⁷ This print, which shows the action from an imagined vantage point near Sint-Michielsabdij at the southern end of the city – i.e. from the opposite direction of that of the present painting – was issued in two editions, the second of which differed chiefly by the inclusion of a floating bridge across the river that had been put in place after the event.⁸

Verhoeven included alongside the image an extended written account of ‘the joyful victory … by the troops of their Highnesses near Antwerp on the Blokkersdijk over the Rebels …’.⁹ This is the main source of our knowledge of the event, but there has to have been another – as yet untraced – for whereas Verhoeven shows the Dutch flotilla anchored at the beach head, the present painting and the version in the Rubenshuis show only shallops by the shore while the flotilla sails away. This corroborates later Dutch accounts that its commander, Ernst Casimir (1573-1632), Count of Nassau, was hampered by contrary winds.¹⁰

The Blokkersdijk, now a kilometre-square nature reserve, ran off the river Scheldt in a north-easterly direction some few kilometres from the Flemish shore opposite the city of Antwerp and lay to the west of Kallo.¹¹ Both the print and painted versions simplify the topography by showing the encounter taking place on the Vlaams Dijk which ran beside the Scheldt.

The Dutch troops, led by Colonel Dorp, were assailed by a Spanish and a Burgundian regiment commanded by Iñigo de Borja (1575-1622), Count of Frías, recently arrived from Spain. He and his troops had been earlier deployed to Kallo, about an hour’s march away, and had presumably shadowed the Dutch fleet upstream, sheltered from sight by the causeway, and were in place to ambush them. The Rubenshuis version gives a fuller account of the fight with more troops in view, but in both a cannon has been rolled up onto the dyke by the Spaniards.

The Rubenshuis painting and the present one are most likely by the same single hand. The attribution of the former to Bonaventura and Jan Peeters (1614-1652 and 1624-1678)¹² has been abandoned in favour of one to Bonaventura alone; but this also should be questioned as the latter’s handling is far more skilled and sophisticated than the more schematic treatment evident here, see the paintings by Peeters (SK-A-1949, SK-A-2518).

Eight paintings of the battle are listed in the seventeenth-century Antwerp estate inventories published by Duverger; of these six are itemized without an attribution,¹³ while one is given to ‘Verhulst’¹⁴ and another to ‘Meulenaer’.¹⁵ The former had belonged to Victor Wolfvoet (died 1652) who owned several landscapes by this artist. He is most likely to be identified with Pieter Verhulst (active 1589-1628), the master of Jan Wildens (1584/1586-1653), whose chief, extant signed work may be the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum’s Village Kermesse of 1628,¹⁶ the year of his death. This scene is handled with far greater realism than the present painting. The ‘Meulenaer’ is listed in an inventory of 1692 and, if the scene is correctly identified, is unlikely to have been by Pieter Meuleneer (see SK-A-803) who was active too late to have depicted this event. Pieter was the son of an artist who could be identified with the obscure Hans Meuleneer;¹⁷ he joined the Antwerp guild of St Luke in 1598 and was still active in 1620.¹⁸ Hans might be the Antwerp artist responsible for the Rubenshuis and the Rijksmuseum paintings, but no extant signed works by him are known with which a comparison can be made.

The minor artist here under consideration should be seen as influenced by the style and mise en scène of the printmakers Frans Hogenberg (1559/60-1590)¹⁹ and Abraham Verhoeven II (1575-1662). In this instance, he worked independently of the latter and devised the prototype – which may have been the Rubenshuis version – before the bridge was put in place over the Scheldt. His manner should be seen as in the same vein – but with more lively figures – as that of Abel Grimmer (after 1570- before 1619), whose Christ and the Virgin Interceading of behalf of the City of Antwerp (painted in collaboration with Hendrik van Balen I (1575-1632)) of 1600²⁰ provides a point of comparison. But assigning a date for the present painting is problematic as the uniforms are hard to make out. Having regard to the date of the battle and the likely year when the support would have been ready for use, a time span of circa 1610-15 seems not unreasonable; by then demand for further renderings of the battle may have been on the decline even granted their relative popularity in Antwerp. In this respect, it should be borne in mind that as late as 1628, Pieter Verbiest II (d. 1642/1643) reissued a map of 1569 to commemorate the Dutch defeat.²¹

Gregory Martin, 2022