Officers and Other Civic Guardsmen of the IVth District of Amsterdam, under the Command of Captain Jan Claesz van Vlooswijck and Lieutenant Gerrit Hudde

Entry

This was one of seven portraits commissioned for the new wing of the Kloveniersdoelen, the headquarters of the arquebusiers’ civic guard, which had been completed by 1636.⁵ Six of them, including Pickenoy’s, were group portraits of the six companies affiliated with the Kloveniersdoelen. The seventh, by Govert Flinck, shows its four governors (SK-C-370).⁶ The captain in Pickenoy’s painting, Jan Claesz van Vlooswijck, had also been a governor of the Kloveniersdoelen since 1636. His portrait, therefore, appeared twice in the hall. The location of the portraits in the new hall is known from Gerard Schaep’s 1653 list of the group portraits in Amsterdam’s three civic guard headquarters.⁷ Pickenoy’s painting hung in the centre of the long wall opposite the windows, and was flanked by Jacob Backer’s Officers and other Guardsmen from the Vth District of Amsterdam, under the Command of Captain Cornelis de Graeff and Lieutenant Hendrick Lauwrensz (SK-C-1174) and Rembrandt’s Officers and other Guardsmen from the IInd District of Amsterdam, under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch, better known as The Night Watch (SK-C-5).⁸ That Pickenoy’s portrait received pride of place in the centre of the wall may have had something to do with the fact that Van Vlooswijck had seniority as captain over Cornelis de Graeff and Frans Banninck Cocq.⁹ He had been appointed to this function in 1628, while Cornelis de Graeff had only been a captain since 1638, and Frans Banninck Cocq some time between August 1638 and 1642.¹⁰

The exact date of delivery of the present painting is known from notarized documents that were drawn up because of an unusual wager between one of the sitters, the apothecary Pieter Herbers, and Pickenoy’s probable pupil, Bartholomeus van der Helst.¹¹ Pickenoy’s slowness was legendary, and Van der Helst bet Herbers that he would not have his painting completed by the deadline, 28 July 1642. Should Herbers win, Van der Helst would make ‘a painting with various portraits’ (‘een stuck schildery met verscheyden Conterfeijtsels’) for him. If he lost the bet, Herbers would have to pay double the price for the portrait Van der Helst would paint. Although Van der Helst contested the outcome, Pickenoy did finish the painting on time. According to his own testimonial, the painting was completed on 16 July 1642. Unfortunately, the group portrait Van der Helst promised to paint for Herbers has not survived, if, indeed, it was ever executed. In addition to providing a very precise date for the completion of Pickenoy’s portrait, these documents also inform us that the very large painting was not executed in the Kloveniersdoelen itself.

A shield with the names of most of the sitters hung above the painting when it was in the Kloveniersdoelen. The names were first published by Jan van Dyk in 1758, by which time the painting had been transferred to the town hall and was attributed to Adriaen Backer.¹² Van Dyk, however, confused the shield for Jacob Backer’s painting with that of Pickenoy’s, and until the situation was rectified by Meijer in 1885, the men in the present painting were thought to be the ones in Backer’s painting and vice versa.¹³ Meijer was also the first scholar to reject the attribution of the painting to Adriaen Backer recorded by Van Dyk, and the later one recorded by Jeronimo de Vries to Jacob Backer, in favour of Pickenoy.¹⁴ Something of a puzzle is posed by the fact that the shield above Pickenoy’s painting listed only 18 names, while 22 men are portrayed. The three standing on the steps before the house, one of whom is partially obscured by a pike, were perhaps servants of the company with lesser status than the other men. The young man in the centre holding a notebook and a pen was the company clerk. The man on the left of this group, ascending the stairs, was identified by Van Hall as Pickenoy himself.¹⁵ This identification, however, cannot be supported as there are no substantiated self-portraits by Pickenoy, and the figure’s buffcoat identifies him as a member of the guard. As far as is known, Pickenoy was not a guardsman. Moreover, between around 1637 and 1645 he lived in St Anthonisbreestraat (no. 2) in District XI.¹⁶ The men of Van Vlooswijck’s company were from District IV.¹⁷ Nineteen men are shown in the bottom row. The fourth figure from the left is the least visible and, therefore, perhaps the other civic guardsman not to have his name recorded on the shield.

Of the 18 names listed on the shield, only three can be attached to the individual portraits with certainty. The man seated to the right of the ensign, holding a commander’s baton, is the captain, Jan Claesz van Vlooswijck. A grain and cattle merchant by profession, and one of the wealthiest men in Amsterdam, Van Vlooswijck had quite a turbulent career in the civic guard.¹⁸ He was a sergeant in District IV under the command of Captain Jonas Cornelisz Witsen and Lieutenant Volckert Overlander by 1612 or 1614, at which time he was portrayed in a civic guard piece by Cornelis van der Voort.¹⁹ Van Vlooswijck was a fervent Remonstrant. Together with Nanningh Florisz Cloeck, he was dismissed from his post as lieutenant on 30 June 1620 for making disparaging remarks and contradicting burgomaster Reijnier Pauw, leader of the Counter-Remonstrant faction on the city council.²⁰ By 1627, the Counter-Remonstrant faction had been replaced by a Remonstrant majority in the city government. Van Vlooswijck’s name was cleared and he was appointed captain of District IV. A few of the civic guardsmen of District IV were, however, Counter-Remonstrants, and a crisis ensued when, on 28 October 1628, they presented a petition to the burgomasters protesting the appointment of Van Vlooswijck. Rather than effecting the removal of Van Vlooswijck, however, the guardsmen’s revolt led to their own dismissal. Van Vlooswijck remained captain of District IV until 1650, in which year the city was divided into new districts. Van Vlooswijck became captain of District XXXI, which was roughly one half of the old District IV.²¹

Three of the 17 other known guardsmen in Pickenoy’s painting were also Remonstrants: Hillebrant Bentes, IJsbrant van de Wouwer and Pieter Herbers.²² One of the men, Nicolaes Kuysten, was a Catholic. Jacob Cornelisz Bleijenberg’s 1632 wedding took place in the town hall rather than one of the Reformed churches, which indicates that he may have been either a Remonstrant or a Catholic. The religious persuasion of three of the men is not known, but the rest, that is half of the 18 known sitters, were members of the Reformed congregation.

One of the Reformed guardsmen was the lieutenant, Gerrit Hudde, who was appointed warden of the Nieuwe Kerk in 1620. Hudde is seated to the right of Van Vlooswijck and holds a short officer’s pike decorated with a tassel. He was a merchant by profession, engaged in trade with Italy and the Levant, and a director of the Dutch East India Company. His wife, Maria Witsen (1597-1683), was the sister of the ensign, Jan Witsen. Van Vlooswijck had served as sergeant in the company of Jan Witsen’s father, Jonas Cornelisz Witsen (1566-1626). The latter’s uncle, Gerrit Jacobsz Witsen, was one of the four serving burgomasters in 1620 when Van Vlooswijck was discharged from his commission as lieutenant. An opponent of Reijnier Pauw, however, he was the only burgomaster not to support the discharge.²³

The two sergeants in the portrait, Hillebrant Bentes and Andries Dircksz van Saanen, can be identified as such by their halberds. One of them is the bareheaded man standing between Van Vlooswijck and Hudde. The other stands to the right of this group, looking over his shoulder at the viewer. Bentes and Van Saanen differed only three years in age, making it difficult to determine which man is which in the painting. Bentes was listed first on the shield with the names of the men, perhaps because he had been a sergeant longer than Van Saanen. Bentes may, therefore, be the more prominently placed sergeant in the foreground. Both Bentes and Van Saanen were merchants by profession. Hillebrant Bentes’s brother Jan is one of the other men portrayed in the painting.

There is a later portrait by Nicolaes Maes of one of the other guardsmen, Johannes Looten (fig. a). On the basis of Maes’s portrait it is tempting to identify Looten as the fifth figure from the left, standing with his body in profile. A merchant, living on Singel in 1642, Looten became lieutenant in District XLIV in 1661. His first wife, Elisabeth Hellincx (1612-35), was a niece of Lieutenant Gerrit Hudde.

The great height of the ceiling of the assembly hall of the Kloveniersdoelen resulted in civic guard portraits, at least along the long wall, that were significantly larger, especially higher, than all previous ones executed in Amsterdam.²⁴ While Rembrandt and Backer took advantage of this opportunity, Pickenoy did not; the majority of the men in his portrait are strung horizontally in isocephalic fashion along the lower half of the composition. Pickenoy’s canvas itself is more than 20 centimetres shorter than those by Backer and Rembrandt.²⁵ As far as is known, there is no architectural reason accounting for the lesser height of Pickenoy’s composition. The present portrait is the fourth of five civic guard pieces by Pickenoy, none of which is compositionally innovative. The fifth, Officers and other Guardsmen of the IXth District of Amsterdam, under the Command of Captain Jacob Rogh and Lieutenant Anthony de Lange, executed for the headquarters of the crossbowmen’s civic guard in 1645, also shows the men aligned horizontally and in isocephalic fashion.²⁶ In that portrait, as in the present one, the ensign occupies the centre of the composition. Relieving the monotony somewhat in the present painting, are the various ways in which the musketeers hold their weapons; one holds his musket over his shoulder, another in front him, while the second man from the left is shown loading his gun and the second man from the right has just fired his. The emphasis given the musket and its handling had to do with the fact that it and its predecessors had been the privileged weapons of the arquebusiers’ civic guard since its foundation in 1522.²⁷

As in Rembrandt and Backer’s paintings, the men in Pickenoy’s portrait are shown against an architectural backdrop. Meijer identified the structure in the far left background as the Jan Roodenpoortstoren.²⁸ District IV was situated in the area between the IJ and Oude Leliestraat and between Singel and Herengracht.²⁹ The Jan Roodenpoortstoren occupied the south-east corner of District IV, and served as its clock tower. The guardsmen are assembled at some point along the west side of Singel, one of the major canals in the district. The scholar Jan Six claimed that the building behind the guardsmen was the brewery ‘De Zwaan’, an identification that has always been followed in the literature until now.³⁰ ‘De Zwaan’ was located on Singel (no. 219) between Gasthuismolensteeg and Kruissteeg.³¹ This part of Singel did not lie in District IV.³² The brewery, moreover, could not have been the classicizing building we see in Pickenoy’s painting. A number of the guardsmen lived on Singel, but too far away from the tower for this building to be one of their homes. Captain Van Vlooswijck, for example, lived on Singel near Roomolensteeg. Lieutenant Gerrit Hudde and his brother-in-law, the ensign Jan Witsen, also lived on Singel, between Roomolensteeg and Brouwersgracht. Sergeant Hillebrant Bentes, and possibly his brother Jan, lived in this part of Singel as well, in a house called the ‘Sonnewijser’ (no. 26). The other sergeant, Andries Dircksz van Saanen, probably lived in Haarlemmerstraat at the time the painting was executed. Rather than being one of the homes of the guardsmen, the building before which they stand, is probably Pickenoy’s own invention, based on the most current architectural style practized by Philips Vinckboons.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

THE SITTERS, THEIR RANKS, RELIGIOUS AFFILIATIONS, OCCUPATIONS AND ADDRESSES³³

Jan Claesz van Vlooswijck (1571-1652)
Captain. Remonstrant. Grain and cattle merchant. Lived on Singel near Roomolensteeg.³⁴

Gerrit Hudde (1595-1647)
Lieutenant. Reformed. Merchant. Lived on Singel between Roomolensteeg and Brouwersgracht. Hudde’s wife was Maria Witsen (1597-1683), sister of the ensign, Jan Witsen.³⁵

Jan Witsen (1603-50)
Ensign. Reformed. Jan Witsen probably lived in the house on Singel between Roomolensteeg and Brouwersgracht first owned by his father, Jonas Cornelisz Witsen (1566-1626). According to the 1631 Kohier, fol. 56r, no. 66, the house was occupied by the children of the deceased Jonas Witsen.³⁶

Hillebrant Bentes (1591-1652)
Sergeant. In 1650 he became lieutenant in District XXXI under Captain Van Vlooswijck. Hillebrant Bentes signed the 1628 Remonstrance, a petition to the burgomasters and city council of Amsterdam seeking legal toleration for worship by members of the Remonstrant movement.³⁷ Hillebrant Bentes was a grain merchant living in the ‘Sonnewijser’ on Singel (no. 26).³⁸

Andries Dircksz van Saanen (Leiden 1588-1652)
Sergeant. He later became lieutenant in District XXXII. Reformed. Merchant and shipowner. Lived in Haarlemmerstraat.³⁹

Jan Bentes (?-1659)
Religious affiliation, occupation and address unknown. He was a brother of Sergeant Hillebrant Bentes, and was living in the same house on Singel (no. 26) in 1631. In 1625, Jan Bentes was a member of a company of Amsterdam guardsmen sent to Zaltbommel to fight the Spanish.⁴⁰

Willem Symonsz Moons (1594-1677)
Reformed. At the time of his wedding in 1633, Moons lived in Hartenstraat, which was not in District IV. On 26 August 1642 he purchased a house on the south side of Blauwburgwal, in District IV. His occupation at the time was wine merchant.⁴¹

Jan Huybertsz Codde (1608-c. 1648)
Reformed. His profession and his address in 1642 are not known. When he married in 1633 he was living on Oudezijds Achterburgwal, which was not in District IV.⁴²

Roelof Roelofsz de Lange (1604-79)
Reformed. De Lange was an apothecary who lived on Herengracht (no. 53).⁴³

IJsbrant van de Wouwer (Hoorn c. 1587-1647)
Remonstrant. In 1631, Van de Wouwer was a merchant living in Bordeaux. When he married in 1641 he was living on Singel, where he was still living in 1644. In 1646, he purchased a house on Herengracht (no. 92).⁴⁴

Johannes Looten (1612-76)
Reformed. Merchant. When he married for the first time in 1635, Looten was living on Oudezijds Voorburgwal, which was not in District IV. By the time of his second wedding in 1642 he was living on Singel. In 1645 he purchased a house on Herengracht (no. 26). Van Hall mistakenly identified Johannes Looten as the artist of that name.⁴⁵

Ulrick Peterzen (?-?)
This guardsman has not been identified.

Jacob Cornelisz Bleijenberg (1587-1665)
Bleijenberg’s wedding took place in 1632 at the town hall, indicating that he was not of the Reformed faith. In 1631, 1632, 1664 and 1665, he is reported as living on Singel. Bleijenberg was a merchant.⁴⁶

Pieter Herbers (Gouda 1607-70)
Herbers married in the town hall in 1630 and became a member of the Remonstrant Church on 26 January 1635. He had his son Jan baptized in the same church in 1638. Apothecary. In 1632 he was living in Blauwburgwal in District IV.⁴⁷

Pieter Tonneman (1590-New York, after 1664)
Reformed. Book dealer. In 1637, he lived in Herenstraat, and in 1638 on Haarlemmerdijk, neither of which was in District IV. He may, however, have owned various houses, including one in Bergstraat, in District IV, where he is first recorded as living in the 1631 Kohier, and where his son Jeronimus was living at the time of his wedding in 1645. Pieter Tonneman was later sheriff (1656-60) in Breuckelen in New Netherlands and councillor (1657-59) and sheriff (1660-64) in New Amsterdam.⁴⁸

Elbert Huybertsz Kriek (1606-54)
Reformed. Hide merchant.⁴⁹

Hendrik Jansz van As (?-?)
This guardsman has not been identified.

Nicolaes Kuysten (1605-68)
Catholic. Merchant and shipowner engaged in trade with Italy, among other countries.⁵⁰

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. 236.

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