Portrait of Hendrik IV van Naaldwijk (c. 1430-96)

Entry

Hendrik IV van Naaldwijk, knight and hereditary marshal of the province of Holland, was the last direct descendant in the male line of the noble Van Naaldwijk family, which stood on equal footing with the Van Brederode, Van Egmond en Van Wassenaer families. Around 1455 he married Machteld van Raephorst (d. 1479), who bore him a daughter, Wilhelmina (Willeme) van Naaldwijk (c. 1455-1506). Although little is known about his life or military career, a surviving will tells us a great deal about his donations and religious foundations. After being destroyed in a fire on 4 December 1472 the St Adriaanskerk in Naaldwijk was completely rebuilt in its present form with Hendrik’s financial support. He reserved a large sum in his will for services to be held in his memory and that of his family in St Gregory’s Chapel in the church, which he had founded. He helped establish the Holy Ghost almshouse in Naaldwijk, and founded a Cistercian convent in Wateringen Castle, which came to him from his mother Wilhelmina van Egmond van de Watering, where he and his wife were buried. Hendrik was a member of the Brotherhood of the Jerusalem Pilgrims, and was knighted near the Holy Sepulchre.⁷ It is thanks to this portrait in the Rijksmuseum that we know that Hendrik suffered from the disfiguring but otherwise harmless affliction known as rhinophyma, or cauliflower nose.⁸ The portrait is part of an ancestor series depicting six lords and one lady of Naaldwijk painted by a single artist. The first, of Willem I, who fell in the Battle of Warns in 1345, is lost. The other five are in the Municipal Archive of Naaldwijk and were formerly also on loan to the Rijksmuseum.⁹ The sitters were identified by the inscriptions beneath each one, which also name their spouses. On the front of each painting is a sequential number in Gothic script, which although not part of the original plan appears to have been inserted at an early date, possibly in the 16th century.¹⁰ The series ends with Hendrik’s daughter and heir Wilhelmina (Willeme) van Naaldwijk, who married Jan van Montfoort in 1475. The direct line of the Van Naaldwijk family ended with her death in 1506. The other portraits are of Hendrik II (d. 1340), Willem II (before 1349-1393), Hendrik III (d. 1427) and Willem III (d. 1444).¹¹ The sitters are shown half-length, alternately facing left and right within a Gothic frame, with the coat of arms of Van Naaldwijk in each male portrait and the Van Montfoort-van Naaldwijk arms of alliance in Wilhelmina’s.¹²

Not all the painted Gothic frames are the same. Each sitter is posed against a background of red or green brocade. Hendrik IV is the only one with a palm frond, which is an allusion to his membership of the Brotherhood of the Jerusalem Pilgrims. Compositions of this kind with the figure seen with hands joined in prayer at a prie-dieu, which are also called prayer portraits, indicate a religious context.¹³ That context is confirmed by the early documentation of the paintings, which places the series in the Oude Kerk in Naaldwijk. A report of the iconoclastic destruction in this church describes how ‘some likenesses and paintings of the lords and ladies of Naaldwijk’ were broken or damaged.¹⁴ This was probably then that the portrait of Willem I was lost, and it also accounts for the poor condition of the other portraits.¹⁵ It is likely that they were placed in their late 16th or early 17th-century frames after this event.¹⁶

There are not very many surviving Netherlandish examples of ancestor series of this kind, showing the successive heads of the family. The best known is the one of the counts and countesses of Holland from the Carmelite friary in Haarlem.¹⁷ It is not known who commissioned the Naaldwijk series, or whether it had always hung in the Oude Kerk. It is often assumed in the literature that the last two portraits, of Hendrik IV and Wilhelmina, were painted from life.¹⁸ The dendrochronology, however, suggests that Hendrik’s is a posthumous portrait.¹⁹ It is possible that Wilhelmina, as the last descendant in the direct line, commissioned the series between 1499 and 1506, after the death of her father Hendrik IV. Wilhelmina’s position was comparable to that of Johanna van Zwieten, who as the last descendant of the Van Zwieten family commissioned the refurbishment and additions to her family’s epitaph.²⁰ The prayer portraits had a socio-historical function in this context. They had to keep alive the memory of the extinct line of the family after Wilhelmina’s death in 1506, and at the same time ensure the salvation of the souls of its deceased members.²¹ Her will shows that Wilhelmina attached great importance to this memorial function. Like her father, she set aside sums of money for memorial services to be held on certain feast days.²² Another possibility, which was suggested by Hoogewerff, is that the series was commissioned by the chapter of Naaldwijk, which had been founded by Willem I.²³ This would also explain why the series only begins with Willem I. The chapter was expanded by Willem II in 1369.²⁴ The Van Naaldwijk family was still closely associated with the chapter in the second half of the 15th century, and two of its members were deans of it in 1470 and 1480.²⁵ In addition, Wilhelmina left the chapter money, as well as a house and garden with an orchard that stood behind the church.²⁶

Interestingly, the portraits are in pairs with the sitters facing each other, with Wilhelmina looking away from her forebears. It is difficult to make out what the original arrangement was. It is possible that something hung or stood between each pair.²⁷ Given its function it is not impossible that the series hung in the church from the outset.²⁸ Another conceivable location was the chapterhouse near the church, the existence of which is unfortunately not documented.²⁹

There is insufficient evidence to support the attribution of the series to the Master of Alkmaar, as Schmidt-Degener did in the collection catalogue of 1926³⁰ None of the portraits display sufficient points of similarity to the ‘Polyptych with The seven works of charity’, the core work in that master’s oeuvre, for them to be associated with him or his circle. Wurfbain split the group into two, for he believed that some of the portraits, including that of Hendrik IV, were by the same hand as ‘Four canons with Sts Augustine and Jerome by an open grave, with the Visitation’ (SK-A-2312) by the Master of the Spes Nostra, whom he unconvincingly identified with Huygh Jacobsz.³¹ He attributed the other portraits to the Master of the Gathering of Manna, whom he identified as the Leiden painter Brother Tymanus (active 1446-86) of the Hieronymusdal priory in Leiden. That hypothesis, too is unlikely.
JN