Venus Arming a Warrior, possibly Johan Maurits at the Forge of Vulcan

Entry

Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert seems never to have signed with initials, and thus those noted above, which seem integral, are viewed with circumspection. A pre-1940 photograph¹⁰ gives a good impression of the work’s innate qualities. Indeed its authenticity has never been doubted, and Heinrich has recently accepted it. He dates it to early 1645.

Another version, destroyed in World War II, was in the Bildergalerie, Sanssouci, Potsdam. Judging from a reproduction, this version would appear to have been not so fluently painted, and Heinrich believes it to have been a replica of the Amsterdam picture.¹¹ Recorded by the dealer Gilliam Forchondt, another copy retouched by Willeboirts Bosschaert was sold to the Johann Seyfried, Prince of Eggenberg (1644-1713), in 1673; it was published as still in situ at Krummau (Czech Republic) by Slavícek in 1993.¹² Both these pictures show much more to the left of the composition and slightly more at the top and to the right. It seems likely that the Amsterdam formulation was originally the same and that therefore the support has been reduced. Thus missing to the left is the barrel and wheel of a cannon, a ramrod and shovel (partially visible), with a cavalry charge in the background.

The scene in the right background is the god Vulcan’s forge. Willeboirts Bosschaert may have seen Peter Paul Rubens’s sketch of Vulcan Forging Jupiter’s Thunderbolt¹³ for the Torre de la Parada series or Rubens working on the picture itself.¹⁴ Seated in front of the forge is Vulcan’s wife, the goddess Venus, accompanied by five putti. The one closest to her, who pulls away the drapery more fully to reveal her thigh, and has the larger wings, may be intended as her son the god Cupid. Beside her is an imposing figure in classical-style armour; the paludamentum (a general’s cloak) shows that he is a commander as does the staff on which his right hand rests. Venus fixes his sword to the baldric, as three putti proffer his helmet, which would be followed by his shield held by the putto bottom right.

In the belief that these actions were depicted in reverse – that the armour was being removed – Van Gelder following tradition proposed that the god be identified as Mars succumbing to Venus.¹⁵ But the composition is in contrast to those of this subject depicted by Rubens¹⁶ and possibly by Van Dyck¹⁷ in which the attitude of Mars is quite different. Indeed here the commander is made to strike a martial pose; this and the cavalry charge in the background of the ex-Sanssouci picture, indicate rather that he is about to engage in his military duties. On this basis, Heinrich, following Baumstark,¹⁸ identified the commander as the hero Aeneas whose armour, forged by Vulcan, was provided by his mother, Venus, as Virgil relates. But to this may be objected that the soldier is depicted as older than Venus, and could not have been intended by Willeboirts Bosschaert to be taken for her son. Further Venus, in Virgil’s Aeneid (VIII: 616), did not dress Aeneas in his armour, but ‘set up the arms all radiant under an oak before him’ (arma sub adversa posuit radiantia quercu). Thus it would appear that the artist has here simply alluded to the story of Venus providing arms for Aeneas and adapted the visual formula of Venus disarming Mars (to which there is no reference in classical literature).

Van Gelde, in fact making more specific a description of the replica made by Oesterreich in 1770 (see below), suggested that the Rijksmuseum picture is a portrait historié. He proposed that depicted as Mars is Friedrich Wilhelm von Hohenzollern, Elector of Brandenburg (1620-1688), and as Venus, Louisa Henrietta, Countess of Nassau (1627-1667), an identification followed in the 1976 museum catalogue.¹⁹ The couple was married on 6 December 1646. Against this, it has to be observed that while the great elector had a low brow with a conspicuous mass of hair – as clearly shown in Honthorst’s double portrait of the married couple of 1647 (SK-A-873) – the soldier depicted by Willeboirts Bosschaert has receding hair. Further, while courtly hyperbole would have permitted a depiction of his bride as Venus, it would have been considered lacking in decorum to have had her displayed almost naked even if a low décolletage might have been acceptable.

Venus’s face may be deemed generically beautiful; but the features of the commander do indeed appear specific. Oesterreich described the Sanssouci replica as an allegorical depiction of a ‘prince of Nassau’,²⁰ and it is here suggested that the sitter could well have been Johan Maurits, Count (later Prince) of Nassau-Siegen (1604-1679). After his return from Brazil in 1644, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the cavalry of the United Provinces and Governor of Wesel by his cousin, Frederik Hendrik. He held these posts until he was appointed in 1647 by Friedrich Wilhelm, Stadholder of Cleves, Mark and Ravensberg. The features delineated by Willeboirts Bosschaert accord with those of Cornelis Visscher II’s (1628/29-1658) engraving of 1647 after a lost portrait by Gerrit van Honthorst (1592-1656), although in the print the sitter’s hair, though clearly thinning, is brushed forward to conceal his incipient baldness.²¹ This portrayal of him being readied for military action, as a cavalry charge is enacted beyond, would seem fitting for the recently appointed commander of the Dutch cavalry.

Another closely related, but lost treatment of the theme by Willeboirts Bosschaert is recorded in a print (presumably in reverse) by Franz Xaver Gebhard (born 1775), published in Dessau in 1797 and exhibited at the Berlin Academy the following year.²² The prototype measured 65 x 80 cm. The main differences in the composition are chiefly that only one putto – probably Cupid – is present and that the arrangement of the warrior and Venus is happier: he stands before her, in profile, with his hand resting comfortably on her shoulder. Because he is shown in profile, it seems unlikely that intended was a portrait historié (but of course the possibility cannot be excluded for this reason). Heinrich believes that the prototype may have been executed before the Amsterdam picture. Indeed its size suggests that it may have been a modello sent by Willeboirts Bosschaert to his patron for his approval. The artist might then have been required to alter the pose of the warrior so that his full face could be seen.

The pose of Venus was repeated in the Amsterdam picture. It had been used with slight variation in Willeboirts Bosschaert’s Venus and Adonis (present whereabouts unknown), which Heinrich believes was executed in 1644/45.²³ It derives from Rubens’s Venus in his Venus and Adonis (Metropolitan Museum of Art),²⁴ which could have been available for the young artist to study when he was working for Rubens on the Torre de la Parada commission. However for the rendering of her drapery, he preferred the more decorous covering he had provided for Venus in his own Venus and Adonis. The model for Venus appears to be the same as in the Toilet of Venus (whereabouts unknown) of 1644.²⁵ The putto carrying the helmet appears in the Van Dyckian Venus Disarming Mars.²⁶ But in the Amsterdam picture the putto is being propelled forward by his energetic companion behind him. The latter’s pose may have been a Rubens formulation.²⁷ The idea of the putto with his arms raised derives ultimately from Titian (c. 1488-1576), whose Worship of Venus Rubens had copied.²⁸ The cannon features prominently and from the same angle in Willeboirts Bosschaert’s Amor Triumphans (present whereabouts unknown), which Heinrich dates a little earlier than the Toilet of Venus of 1644,²⁹ and may also have been inspired by a Rubens motif.³⁰

Excursus on the Provenance
The provenance until 1841 involves a series of uncertainties, unresolvable in our present state of knowledge.

First, Van Gelder believed that the entry in the Ordonnantieboeken for 20 February 1645 referred to the lost painting of Mars and Venus [sic, should be Aeneas] engraved by Gebhard.³¹ However Heinrich upheld the identification, arguing that the mistaken subject (long accepted by the museum) would not have been unusual, for instance the Rinaldo and Armida by Van Dyck was also described in the Orange inventory of 1632 as ‘Mars and Venus’.³² Further, Forchondt in 1673 gave the same title to a copy of SK-C-400. However, if the identification of the warrior advanced here – as Count Johan Maurits – is correct, it might be asked why the work should have been (?) commissioned and paid for by his cousin Frederik Hendrik. Be that as it may, an unattributed (contrary to Heinrich) Mars and Venus was listed as a chimney piece in the Huis in het Noordeinde in 1702. This was either replaced or re-described as a Dido and Aeneas by Willeboirts Bosschaert in 1707; if the former, the period 1702-07 could have been when the Mars and Venus was acquired by Van Biesum.

Second, the next likely record of SK-C-400 is in the ‘groote kamer’ of no. 6, Het Rapenburg, Leiden, when listed in 1749 as no. 33, and in the possession of Allard de la Court van der Voort. The title and dimensions are the same as in the sale (8-9 September 1766, no. 173) of the estates of Allard de la Court van der Voort and of Catherine Backer, his widow. The size is close to that of the lost replica and the copy at Krummau (Czech Republic) by Slavícek (see above), which, as is here argued, could well have been the approximate original measurements of SK-C-400. Both the 1749 inventory and the catalogue entry (based, according to the catalogue, on a French, manuscript catalogue of the collection found in the papers of Catherine Backer) confused and amalgamated the two similar subjects of ‘Thetis giving the arms of Hephaestus to Achilles’ and ‘Venus arming Aeneas’. Heinrich, following (but not referring to) Lunsingh Scheurleer et al., identifies this with the picture at Sanssouci.³³ The description in Oesterreich’s 1770 catalogue of the pictures in the Bilder-Galerie, no. 20 reads: ‘Van Dyck/Eine allegorische Vorstellung auf einem Prinzen von Nassau auf Leinwand gemalt 7 fuss 8 zoll hoch, und 8 fuss 11 zoll breit [240.6 x 279.8 cm]/Van Dyck hat diesen Prinzen stehend Vorgestellet und zu seiner Rechten ein sitzendes fast nackendes Frauenzimmer die im Begriffist, ihm die Waffen anzulegen … besonders das Frauenzimmer, wodurch er die Venus hat andeuten wollen […] es ist völlig in dem Geschmack des Willebordts gemalt’. Reasons against this identification are: a) the picture was acquired as by Van Dyck, Oesterreich’s recognition of affinities with Willeboirts Bosschaert’s style notwithstanding; b) no reference is made to the recent Leiden sale, while other recent sales were referred to by Oesterreich elsewhere in the catalogue; c) the description differs fundamentally from that in the Van der Voort-Backer sale catalogue, as do the measurements but not greatly, and d) the picture appears to have had an association with the House of Orange-Nassau, suggesting that it may have been acquired from one of its members.

Third, it is remarkable, but inexplicable that by the time the catalogue of the Amsterdam Town Hall was compiled in 1841 no provenance then attached to the Rijksmuseum picture.

Gregory Martin, 2022