Memorial tablet of Jacob Jan van Assendelft (1396-1478) and his wife Haesgen van Outshoorn (?-1471)

Entry

According to the inscription below the scene and the two coats of arms this memorial tablet commemorates Jacob Jan van Assendelft and his wife Haesgen (Haesje) van Outshoorn, who are kneeling on either side of a crowned and enthroned Virgin and Child. Kneeling behind Jacob Jan are six male members of his family, while Haesje is accompanied by three girls who are identified as being dead by their black shrouds and the crucifixes they hold in their hands.⁴ They are probably her dead daughters. Haesje herself is wearing a black garment resembling a nun’s habit, which was evidently not unusual for a lay, married woman in a memorial tablet. This is known from several other examples, such as the tablet with Geertruy Haeck-van Slingelandt van der Tempel in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-3926). Two pairs of saints are interceding for the deceased. On the left of the Virgin and Child are St Barbara with her tower and St Cosmas with a urine flask.⁵ St Barbara is resting her right hand protectively on the head of one of the donors’ sons. The saints on the right are Damian with a mortar and Catherine with her crown, broken wheel and sword.⁶ As far as is known, none of them is the name saint of any of the people portrayed. Sts Cosmas and Damian are the patron saints of physicians and protectors of the sick, while Sts Barbara and Catherine respectively represent the active and contemplative lives.

A religious scene of this kind, with donor portraits and an inscription commemorating the dead is also called an epitaph. Originally meaning simply an inscription on a tomb, the scope of the word was expanded in the course of the 15th century until it was no longer associated with the actual tomb of the deceased.⁷

Although the inscription tells us the man’s age and the couple’s place of burial and exact dates of death (St Arnulf’s Day is 15 August and St Agapetus’s Day is 20 September), remarkably little is known about their lives, as far as can be made out. A great deal is known about the Van Assendelft family, but nothing at all about Jacob Jan. The Van Outshoorn family were lords and ladies of Oudshoorn and Aarlanderveen, and thus came from the region around Alphen and den Rijn. However, the family died out in the male line in the middle of the 14th century,⁸ so it is unclear to which branch Haesgen van Outshoorn belonged. Large areas of the panel, including the inscription, are heavily overpainted, making it look like a copy.⁹ That impression is heightened by the fact that there is little difference between the faces of the figures. The type of the Virgin and Child, however, is consistent with northern Netherlandish scenes of the Virgin from the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries, and the dendrochronology is in line with the 15th-century dating. The lack of biographical information about the dead couple and the overpainting of the inscription in particular allows room for the hypothesis that this is a later genealogical falsification. Such visual manipulations of reality served to enhance a person’s social standing by associating them with distinguished forebears. There was great interest in genealogy in the 17th century, in particular, and we know of several instances of such falsifications.¹⁰

It can be assumed that the painting was in the possession of Frans de Wildt’s family for a long time.¹¹ He was related to a Leiden branch of the Van Assendelft family through his great-grandmother on his father’s side. That branch included the Leiden goldsmith Bartholomeus Jansz van Assendelft (1585-1658). His portrait by Werner van den Valckert, which is in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-3920), also came from the De Wildt collection.
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