Campaspe Talks Back
women who made a difference in early modern art
Campaspe Talks Back
Women Who Made a Difference in Early Modern Art
e di T ed B y
l ieke van d einsen
Ber T sC hepers
m arjan sT er C kx
h ans v lieghe
Ber T Wa TT eeu W
ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF KATLIJNE VAN DER STIGHELEN
Benefactors
Thomas and Nancy Leysen
Fergus Hall
George Gordon
Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo
Gijsbrecht and Cornelie Keij-de Kanter
Sander Bijl
Derek Johns
Jan Huyghebaert
Michel Ceuterick
Sotheby’s
Christie’s
The editors wish to thank Jan de Meere, Abigail Newman, Laure Primerano and Gitte Vertommen for their collaboration on this volume.
isbn 978-2-503-61305-5 D/2024/0095/280
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Contents
Introduction: Campaspe, Apelles, and Alexander the Great 8
h ans v lieghe
Katlijne: Portrait of an Art Historian 12
1 Sitters & Subjects 16
Bar B ara Baer T
Cutting the Gaze: Salome in Andrea Solario’s Oeuvre (c. 1465–1524) 18
n ils Bü TT ner
Rubens, the Capaio Ladies, and Their Niece 28
h ans Cools
Why Margaret of Parma Should Make It to the Next Version of the Flemish Canon 34
l ies B e T h d e Belie
Concerning Orbs and the Value of a Destroyed Portrait 44
g uy d elmar C el
The Virtuous Women of the Bible: A Series of Baroque Tapestries from Bruges and Their Mysteries 52
g erlinde g ru B er
Brave (if Brazen) Women: Spartans, not Amazons, by Otto van Veen (1556–1629) 72
k aren h earn
Portrait of a Poisoner? An Early Seventeenth-Century British Female Portrait Reconsidered 80
Fiona h ealy
Sacred History Imitating Real Life: How a Curious Portrayal of the Birth of the Virgin Reflects Childbirth Practices in the Early Modern Period 88
koenraad j on C kheere
Rubens’s Verwe: Head Studies and Complexion 96
e liza B e T h m c g ra T h
The Girls in Rubens’s Allegory of Peace 106
h u B er T m eeus
Judith’s Maid 118
Ber T sC hepers
Lifting the Veil on Justus van Egmont (1602–1674): On Cleopatra Approaching Alexandria and Some Other Newly Identified Designs for Tapestries 126
l ieke van d einsen
The Voiceless Virgin and the Speaking Likeness:
Anna Maria van Schurman’s Portrait as a Labadist 138
h ans v lieghe
Portrait of a Young Woman in Triplicate: On a ‘Rubensian’ Head Study 144
Artists & Artisans 152
r udy j os Beerens
Unravelling the Story of Jannetje Laurensd. Wouters (c. 1640–1722), Tapitsierster 154
r alph d ekonin C k
Pausias and Glycera by Rubens and Beert: Amorous Emulation and/or Mimetic Rivalry 160
k irs T en d erks
Leaving Her Mark: Michaelina Wautier’s Signing Practice 166
i nez d e p rekel
Female Artists and Artisans in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke, 1629–1719 173
a d l eerin T veld
Constantijn Huygens and Louise Hollandine, Princess of the Palatinate, or How High a Highness Could Rise in the Arts 180
Fred g . m eijer
All in the Family: A Previously Unrecorded Landscape Painter: Catrina Tieling, 1670–? 190
j udi T h n oorman
‘Elck heeft sijn eijgen pop’: Dollmaker Drawings by Leonart Bramer and Dolls as Indicators of Class and Identity 198
a nna o rlando
Sofonisba and van Dyck: A Matter of Style 206
m arjan sT er C kx
Talent and Sentiment: A Portrait of the Artist Marie-Anne Collot (1748–1821) as a Young Woman 214
j an van der sT o C k
Women Who Stood Their Ground in the Guild of St Luke at the Beginning of Antwerp’s ‘Golden Age’, 1453–1552 224
Fran C is C a van v lo T en
From ‘Russian Rembrandt’ to ‘Baronin’ and ‘Nonna’: Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938), Evolution and Appreciation 234
Wendy Wier T z
Craft, Gender, and Humanitarian Aid: The Representation of Belgian Lacemakers in the Era of World War I 248
Bea T rijs Wol T ers van der Weij
Catharina Pepyn, Rising Star 256
3 Partners & Patrons 266
r udi e kkar T and Claire van den d onk
In the Lead: Another Look at the Role of Women in Seventeenth-Century Family Portraits 268
valerie h erremans
Arte et Marte: Countess Maria-Anna Mulert-van den Tympel and Ian-Christiaen Hansche’s Pioneering Stucco Ceilings in Horst Castle (1655) 280
Corina k leiner T
Hidden in the Footnotes: The Collection of Anna-Isabella van den Berghe, 1677–1754 288
h annelore m agnus
‘Periculum in Mora’: Frans Langhemans the Younger (1661–c. 1720)
and the Scandalous Elopement of Maria Cecilia de Wille 298
v olker m anu T h and m arieke de Winkel
The Marital Misfortunes and Messy Divorce of a Mennonite Woman: Catharina Hoogsaet 306
s arah j oan m oran
Court Beguinage Mistresses as Art Curators 314
e rik m uls
Isabella and Catharina Ondermarck: Spiritual Daughters on a Mission 324
e ri C j an s luij T er
Rembrandt’s Saskia Laughing (1633): The Affect and Effect of Reciprocal Love 332
Ber T Timmermans
Art Patronage in an Unequal Playing Field: Women’s Convents during the Building Boom of the Antwerp ‘Invasion Conventuelle’ 342
Ben van Beneden
A Flemish Shepherd for Amalia? Some Thoughts on a Newly Discovered Painting by Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert 354
Carla van de p u TT elaar
Marriage in Painting: Painterly Collaborations between Juriaan Pool and Rachel Ruysch and a Newly Discovered Portrait of a Girl 364
m ar T ine van e lk
‘The Name Gives Lustre’: Anna Maria van Schurman’s Glass Engravings 378
Ber T Wa TT eeu W and k lara a len
Dealing with Helena 384
j eremy Wood
In the Shadow of the ‘Proud Duke’? Elizabeth Percy, Duchess of Somerset (1667–1722), as Patron 394
l ara y eager-Crassel T
Painting Margherita: Louis Cousin and Flemish Portraiture in Seventeenth-Century Italy 402
l een h ue T
Epilogue: Reading between the Lines, Reading between the Brushstrokes – Two Letters 412
Bibliography of Katlijne Van der Stighelen
Compiled by l ies d e sT rooper 416
About the Authors 429
Sources of Photographs 435
Cutting the Gaze Salome in Andrea Solario’s Oeuvre, c. 1465–1524
Fig. 1 Andrea Solario, Salome and the Head of St John the Baptist, 1506. Oil on panel, 57.2 × 47 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 32.100.81.
By Bar B ara Baer T
In this essay, I consider the northern Italian iconographic interpretations of Salome and the head of St John the Baptist in Andrea Solario’s oeuvre (c. 1465–1524). Solario’s iconographic innovations provide an excellent case study for understanding how Salome was staged as an intermediary between the Baptist’s head and the beholder. I also discuss Solario’s ability to unite the pictorial tradition of Salome with the genre of the early modern portrait on the one hand and with the iconographic tradition of the paragone debate on the other. Solario’s innovations emancipated Salome from the biblical narrative, transforming her into a means of showing what painting, when anchored in gaze, flesh, and death, is capable of.
1Women, strong, instinctive women, and she was one, know precisely what is important or decisive the moment it happens, while men, such as ourselves, are always likely to misunderstand events or explain them away.
—Sándor Márai, Portraits of a Marriage, p. 134.
Mark 6 : 14–29 and Matthew 14 : 1–12 recount the death of St John the Baptist. Herod has him imprisoned for denouncing as incestuous Herod’s marriage to Herodias, the former wife of his brother. During a banquet, Herodias’s daughter dances before Herod, who is so enchanted that he promises her a favour. At her mother’s behest, she asks for the head of the Baptist. The king honours the daughter’s request and has the head delivered to her on a plate (in disco), which she gives to her mother. When the Baptist’s disciples discover his death, they bury his beheaded body. The gospels demonstrate a swift progression of events and a complex spatial structure in which Salome is the ambivalent protagonist: the head is demanded, the head is severed, the head is placed on a platter, and the head is handed over on the platter. During this quick sequence of actions – cum festinatione – the text suggests convoluted indoor and outdoor scenes .1
Cumque introisset filia ipsius Herodiadis et saltasset et placuisset Herodi, or ‘When the daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his dinner guests’ (Mark 6 : 21).2 In the original Greek text, the daughter is called korasion, a term usually used for a young girl who is not yet a woman.3 In the Latin Vulgate, when verse 28 states that the head was given to the daughter, she is called puella. In Mark 5 : 23–35, the daughter of Jairus is likewise referred to as korasion / puella. 4 Herodias’s daughter is not named in the Bible, but the name of Salome, as I discuss below, was deduced from accounts by Flavius Josephus.5 Her role in the plot is encapsulated in only two words: Filia saltasset (the girl danced). She is mentioned merely in connection to her action: the dance. Yet this is not a dance of praise for the Lord, but rather a perverted, fatal dance.6 As Gregory of Nazianzus (329–389) observed, ‘Dance not like the daughter of Herodias, but like David’.7
The French literary critic René Girard (1923–2015) wrote a fascinating essay on the concept of ‘mimetic desire’ in this narrative.8 He notes, ‘Salome is a child. She
All this, of course, happened without anything being said. Isn’t that always the case with serious, even lifethreatening, events generally? When a person begins to cry or scream, the crisis is past.
—Sándor Márai, Portraits of a Marriage, p. 29.
has nothing to do with the dance of the seven veils and other Orientalia’. 9 Girard then continues, ‘At first she is a blank sheet of desire, then, in one instant, she shifts to the height of mimetic violence’.10 The child is a blank page and imitates her mother. She assumes her mother’s desire for the head of John the Baptist. From this moment on, she is characterised by mimesis, and the girl changes (she crosses the threshold, as it were), as does the tempo of the text. The girl moves more quickly, hastening back and immediately demanding John’s head. The acceleration reflects the intensification of the plot that will conclude with death. The narrative occurs in a series of moments, from the silence of the king’s oath to the mimesis of the mother to the hasty fulfilment of the mother’s and daughter’s joint wish.
The girl’s innocence and the resulting impossibility of her desiring something herself lead to a gruesome irony: her demand for the Baptist’s head. The metaphorical meaning of the mother’s words is not understood, and the mimetic desire is fulfilled in all its raw directness.11 The girl thinks she has to bring the actual head, and, ironically enough, that is best done on a platter: in disco 12 The platter is the result of a misunderstanding and is therefore gruesome in its banality. Ironically, in both iconography and religious devotion, the platter (or so-called Johannesschüssel), became the main motif, as well as a powerful simulacrum in medieval and Renaissance sculpture.13
At the end of a process that began with the sober words ‘the girl dances’, the platter is transformed into the vehicle for one of the most important revolutions in Christian history: the death of the Prodromos (Forerunner), who is the voice of all voices, the last prophet, and the proto-martyr.14
The motif of the dancing girl became increasingly important in the extensive iconographic tradition from the twelfth century.15 Her innocence was replaced with ambivalent commitment and her childishness with sexual maturity. Consequently, her dance was ever more framed as a fatal seductive trap. In what follows, I discuss one significant moment in this iconographic tradition: the interpretations of this motif by the northern Italian painter Andrea Solario (c. 1465–1524).
2
Andrea Solario, born in Milan, was highly influenced by the works of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519).16 Solario’s paintings display the soft contours, compact compositions and female facial features typical of Leonardo. Solario, possibly following a now lost design by Leonardo, transformed the iconography surrounding Salome into a portrait-like Andachtsbilder, in which the daughter and the head of St John the Baptist are staged in a close-up view.
In Solario’s painting from 1506, now preserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, we see the executioner’s arm, cut off by the frame at the wrist, on the right. In his hand, the executioner is holding the Baptist’s head (Fig. 1). Salome is on the left; she is already touching the platter in anticipation, becoming complicit through her fingers. Her gaze is downwards, unfathomable, as she squints at the platter. 17
Both Bertrand Rougé and Louis Marin (1931–1992) have focused on the fact that the executioner’s arm bends at the wrist and so provides a hinge for the scene.18
The Girls in Rubens’s Allegory of Peace
By e liza B e T h m c g ra T h
The features of Rubens’s wives, known to posterity from their portraits, have been often discerned in paintings of other sorts by the artist. Such ‘identifications’ are usually no more than generic resemblances, but sometimes Rubens seems to have allowed a portrait likeness to become a convenient model for use in the studio – as when the smiling Isabella Brant, as seen in the ‘exceptionally lifelike’ portrait in Cleveland,1 steps into the role of nymph or even bacchante.2 Images of Rubens’s children were still more serviceable, given the huge demand in the artist’s workshop for varied sorts of amoretti, infant angels, and putti. Rubens’s first-born son, Albert, is the most easily identifiable to us today; he even wears the typical (apotropaic) coral necklace of seventeenth-century infants when he appears in the Bacchanal with Silenus in the National Gallery, London.3 No doubt Rubens’s friends and family enjoyed spotting the familiar faces included in any pictures available to them, but obviously this was not part of the intended appeal for clients outside the artist’s immediate circle: these likenesses are of no relevance to the painting’s subject, in striking contrast to the portraits that are found, for example, in the allegorical scenes of the life of Maria de’ Medici for the great cycle of paintings at the Palais du Luxembourg in Paris.4
There is, however, one painting by Rubens that seems anomalous in this respect, for it incorporates in an allegorical picture three children whose appearance corresponds closely to portrait drawings (Figs 3–5)5 and who look as if they are intended to be recognisable (two of them even wear contemporary costume), but whose identity seems both irrelevant to the theme of the painting and at variance with its supposed purpose. The painting is the celebrated Allegory of Peace and War (or Minerva Protecting Peace from Mars) in the National Gallery, London (Fig. 1), a work which, as is well known, Rubens painted while involved in negotiations in London for an exchange of ambassadors with Spain and gave to King Charles I either at the conclusion of, or at a late stage in, the successful proceedings.6 And the children shown are not Rubens’s own, but rather those of the Dutch-born diplomat, agent, and (intermittently) painter in the service of Charles I, Balthasar Gerbier (1591–1663), with whom Rubens lodged while he was in London.7 The same individuals can be recognised – indeed, in a similar arrangement – in the portrait of Gerbier’s wife, Deborah Kip, and her children (Washington, DC , National Gallery of Art), which seems to show them at a slightly later age (Fig. 2). 8 Moreover, we are lucky enough also to have the drawn portraits of the children – Elizabeth, George, and Susan, to judge from their ages9 – that Rubens prepared carefully for the Allegory in separate studies (Figs 3–5).10 Indeed, the children would appear to have been a crucial starting point, as is indicated too by the fact that the only preparatory study we know for the composition as a whole concentrates on the motif involving them (Fig. 6).11 Both the portrait drawings of the girls, which show them
d
Rubens, Peace and War
(Minerva Protecting Peace from Mars)
Fig. 1 Rubens, Peace and War (Minerva Protecting Peace from Mars). Oil on canvas, 203.5 × 298 cm. London, The National Gallery, inv. no. ng 46.
Fig. 3 Rubens, Portrait of Susan Gerbier. Black, red and white chalk, heightened with white body colour, 364 × 244/248 mm. Weimar, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, inv. no. kk 5072.
Fig. 4 Rubens, Portrait of George Gerbier. Black, red and white chalk and traces of heightening with white chalk, the eyes, mouth and nose reinforced with pen and dark brown ink on brownish paper, 288 × 219 mm. Vienna, Albertina, inv. no. 8267.
Fig. 2 Rubens and ? Jacques Jordaens, Deborah Kip, Wife of Balthasar Gerbier, and her Children Oil on canvas, 165.8 × 177.8 cm. Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, Andrew W. Mellon Fund, acc. no. 1971.18.1.
Fig. 5 Rubens, Portrait of Elizabeth Gerbier. Black, red and white chalk, some details of the eyes executed in pen and ink, on brownish paper, 364 × 244 mm. St Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, inv. no. 5432.
Fig. 6 Rubens, Compositional Sketches for Peace and War. Black and red chalk on brownish paper, 350 × 163 mm. Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, inv. no. v9 verso.
to the waist or just below, and the compositional sketch confirm what is evident from the condition of the canvas: the picture began as a half-length composition.12 In the inventory of the collections of Charles I, drawn up by Abraham van der Doort between 1637 and 1640, we read that the work was painted in England and presented to the king, and that it represents ‘A Picture […] of an Emblin wherein the differrencs and ensuencees betweene peace and warrs is Shewed’.13 In fact, the emphasis in the painting is clearly on the benefits of peace. Minerva, goddess of wisdom, is firmly escorting the war-god Mars, his thunderclouds, and his ominous companions away from the realm of Peace, a gentle mother who is expressing milk to an eager infant.14 It had long been Minerva’s job to expel unpleasant forces in Renaissance art,15 and she has determination enough to take on Mars himself. (Some artists – Rubens among them – would have known that she once vanquished the god of war in the fifth book of the Iliad.) In allegorical contexts, she combines aspects of wisdom and prudence with fortitude and strength. Rubens had already deployed her, in the Council of the Gods in the Medici Cycle, to help Apollo rout the advocates of war,16 and she was to have a similar role on the ceiling of the Whitehall Banqueting House, where she functions as a sort of emanation of the wisdom of the Solomonic James in action.17 Of course, when he painted the London allegory, Rubens evidently remembered in particular how Minerva had opposed Mars in a painting by Jacopo Tintoretto, one of a group of four pictures with political reference made in 1577–1578 for the Atrio Quadrato (now the Anticollegio) of the Palazzo Ducale in Venice.18 And, as has regularly been pointed out, Rubens seems to have found his argument, in both the verbal and visual sense, in Tintoretto’s painting, or rather in the print after it by Agostino Carracci, which bears the inscription: ‘When Wisdom repels Mars, Peace and Abundance combine in rejoicing’ (‘Sapientia Martem depellente Pax et Abundantia cogaudent’) (Fig. 7).19
Fig. 7 Agostino Carracci after Jacopo Tintoretto, Minerva Protecting Peace from Mars Engraving, 190 × 251 mm.
Brongersma’s reaction reflects the widespread disapproval that had followed Van Schurman’s religious shift a few years earlier. In 1669, she had startled the scholarly world, demonstrating her willingness to bid farewell to her public intellectual life and esteemed reputation at the age of sixty-two. She announced her decision to dedicate herself to the sectarian community of Jean de Labadie (1610–1674), a defrocked French Jesuit priest who had settled in the Netherlands in 1666 after a series of conflicts across Europe.2 She joined his Labadist commune in Amsterdam and later followed them first to Herford Abbey, via Altona (near Hamburg), and finally to the Frisian village of Wieuwert.
While extensive scholarly attention has been paid to Van Schurman’s controversial conversion and the written reactions it provoked among her contemporaries, the significance of the portrait of Van Schurman as a Labadist for both her supporters and her opponents has been considered less.3 Shifting the focus towards this work, I illuminate a little-known chapter in the reception of one of the most important female scholars in European history.
Likenesses of a Learned and Labadist Lady
The fact that Brongersma seized upon a portrait to voice her opinion about Van Schurman’s controversial conversion did not come out of nowhere. Portraits had played a crucial role in Van Schurman’s public image from the beginning of her career. In line with the contemporary practices of learned individuals, she showed an active interest in shaping her public persona, in both word and image. As Katlijne Van der Stighelen has demonstrated in a seminal survey of her artistic work, Van Schurman utilised her talents and skills in the arts to create various self-portraits that presented her as a learned woman; she particularly created these self-portraits in the early decades of her academic career.4 By employing the reproductive power of print, she succeeded in disseminating her intellectual self-portraits to a broad audience: she included her portrait in letters to learned men and women from all over Europe and ensured her latest likeness was incorporated into her publications, at least up until her Opuscula (1648).5 It did not take long for Van Schurman’s face to become a symbol of female scholarship. Her portraits were sold, exchanged, collected, and displayed separately, in addition to being incorporated into the books of other
Fig. 2 Anna Maria van Schurman, Medallion with the Portrait of Jean de Labadie, 1660–1678. Iron and wax, 0.75 × 1.5 cm. Franeker, Museum Martena, inv. no. s0002.
authors. In his popular Trou-ringh (1637), Jacob Cats (1577–1660) lauded her portrait as the embodiment of the ‘glory of all women’; the Dordrecht physician Johan Beverwijck (1594–1647) opened his gallery of learned women with her face; and Johan de Brune the Younger (1616–1647) used her likeness as the starting point for an essay on changing attitudes towards women’s intellectual capacities.
It has been suggested that Van Schurman abandoned her artistic practices after joining the Labadists.6 However, there are several indications she used her talents to support the Labadists, creating miniatures of figures such as de Labadie and his later successor Pierre Du Lignon (1630–1681)(Fig. 2).7 Most likely, she also painted several self-portraits. Despite her continued production of portraits, it seems that her focus shifted from appealing to a broad audience to representing herself to a smaller group of religiously like-minded people.8
Her last portrait was posthumously engraved sometime around 1684, most likely without her consent (Fig. 1).9 The impetus for the engraving came from the Amsterdam bookseller Jacob van de Velde (c. 1652–1709), who was the Labadists’ publisher from the 1680s onward. Around the same time, in response to persistent criticism of the Labadists, he published a Dutch adaptation of the Eucleria, Van Schurman’s Latin autobiography in which she vigorously defended her life choices.10 The decision to publish the portrait likely stemmed from similar motivations. Critics, including the prominent Amsterdam publisher and writer Hieronymus Sweerts (1629–1696), had used de Labadie’s portrait to support their aversion to his controversial religious and moral views (Fig. 3).11
The portrait Van de Velde circulated was, at first sight, nothing special. As suitable for her age, Van Schurman is portrayed in a very modest fashion, wearing a simple white hood over a white tip and starched, transparent cap without lace. Her cleavage is covered. The only atypical feature is the collar, which looks somewhat ascetic.12 It was the poem included in the image that highlighted her voluntary choice to give up her fruitful intellectual endeavours in favour of a life devoted to Christ:
See here the noble maiden, described as unparalleled, Before she chose the better part, instead of worldly praise. She seemed to be composed of Wisdom, Spirit and Virtue, Her love was crucified, the Cross was her joy.
Arts, Languages, Science: Erudition, Greatness, Honor, Gladly she laid it all at the feet of Christ.
3 Anthony van Zijlvelt (engraver), Portrait of Jean de Labadie, 1650–1674. Etching and engraving on paper, 256 × 182 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. rp -p -2016–114.
Fig.
The Portrait and the Play
Despite Van de Velde’s efforts, however, contemporaries persisted in refusing to acknowledge this image of the devoted Christian who had willingly relinquished her worldly fame as an accurate representation of Van Schurman. Alongside responses in the form of portrait poems like that by Brongerma, reactions appeared in other literary genres. On 29 October 1785, the comedy De meid, juffrouw (The Maiden, the Girl) premiered in the Amsterdam Theatre. Criticism of De Labadie had previously surfaced in theatrical works, but here, for the first time, the defenseless position of women who came into his grasp was thematised through Van Schurman’s portrait.13 Potentially, the playwright and theatre director Pieter de la Croix (1636–1687) drew inspiration from the portrait’s public appeal, possibly influenced by the works of his father-in-law, the famous portrait painter Bartholomeus van der Helst (1613–1670).
The play tells the story of Karel, an Amsterdam solicitor determined to thwart the arranged marriage of his beloved, Anna Maria, to an older German salesman named Jasper. Assisted by, among others, Anna Maria’s maid Mary, Karel devises a clever scheme. Intercepting the prospective groom during his journey from Altona to Amsterdam, Karel capitalises on a significant advantage: his rival knows his bride-to-be solely through a portrait. Seizing this opportunity to gain the upper hand, Karel cunningly exchanges the miniature for a likeness of the maid. When arriving in Amsterdam, the ruse continues, and Jasper is welcomed by the dressed-up maid, who has taken the place of Anna Maria, and Karel’s office worker, who has disguised himself as Anna Maria’s father.
The play thus initially appears to follow a rather conventional comedic plot. However, as the narrative unfolds, astute contemporary viewers could have swiftly identified it as a humourous rendition of the controversial intellectual courtship between Jean de Labadie and Van Schurman. The plot continues as follows: barely having recovered from the revelation that his prospective wife was far less appealing in person than in her portrait, Jasper – a character notably hailing from Altona, the German village where the Labadists and Van Schurman sought refuge – encounters his second moment of disillusionment. Attempting to initiate a conversation, the woman portraying Anna Maria responds only in languages unfamiliar to him. Desperately, Jasper turns to the assumed father of his presumed wife-tobe, asking him if his daughter indeed cannot speak his language. With a clear nod to Van Schurman’s extraordinary linguistic skills, the impostor-father quips: ‘Not a word. She is highly educated. She speaks Italian, Spanish, French, Greek, Arabic, Russian, Latin, Polish, English, Malay, Hottentot, Hebrew, Norwegian, Danish, Jutlandic and every language you desire. Except Dutch and German’.14 Finally, the dispirited Jasper slinks off, and Karel is able to embrace his beloved.
All’s well that ends well, at least onstage. In reality, events took a different turn. Consequently, one of the era’s most outspoken voices was lost to the scholarly community, much to the frustration of her intellectual peers. Notably, De la Croix deliberately limited the ‘real’ character Anna Maria to only a few lines in the play, barely more than the desperate whisper ‘o father’ throughout the play.
Fig. 4 Jan van Munnickhuysen (engraver), after Anna Maria van Schurman, Portrait of Anna Maria van Schurman, c. 1684–1709 (third state). Engraving on paper, 161 × 102 mm. London, The Trustees of the British Museum, inv. no. s.7338.
Fig. 5 Elias Nessenthaler (engraver), Andreas Luppius (publisher), and Anna Maria van Schurman (?) (inventor), Portrait of Anna Maria van Schurman, 1699. Engraving on paper, 156 × 100 mm. Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, inv. no. EN essenthaler a B 3.1.
Fig. 1 Peter Paul Rubens, Jan Brueghel the Elder and His Family, c. 1612–13. Oil on panel, 124.5 × 94.5 cm. London, Courtauld Institute of Art, Princes Gate Collection, inv. no. 18.
In the Lead Another Look at the Role of Women in Seventeenth-Century Family Portraits
By r udi e kkar T and Claire van den d onk
The study of seventeenth-century portraiture in the Low Countries is all too often based on the idea that the male sitter always had the leading role, whether in the handling of the commission or in the work itself. Such an opinion can clearly be found in Griep’s discussion of two pendant portraits from 1696 by the artist Michiel van Musscher. She assumed the depiction of the Calkoen-van Loon couple to be exceptional because of the imbalanced financial status of the couple: ‘Contrary to what was customary in the seventeenth century, namely that the woman was portrayed not so much on her own merit but merely as just a wife, there is here an almost mirrored manner of representation of husband and wife’.1 However, a glance at portraits from both the Northern and Southern Netherlands makes it clear that the portrayal of women as subordinate to men was actually far from common. Males and females are often given equal importance. It is not uncommon for a woman to clearly have the lead role in double portraits and family groups and for a man to occupy a much more humble position. Additionally, the assumption that male sitters were by default the commissioners of portraits is misguided.
Female Commissioners of Portraits
The fact that women occasionally played the decisive role in commissioning portraits quickly becomes apparent when we consider the commissions given to portrait painters at the courts of Stadholder Frederick Henry and King Frederick V of Bohemia. Both monarchs presumably played a small role, or may not even have been involved, as their wives, Amalia of Solms and Elisabeth Stuart, were the decision makers.2 These scenarios were certainly not exceptional in the highest European social circles. Things were, for example, no different at the Frisian court of Ernst Casimir of Nassau-Dietz. There, his wife, Sophia Hedwig of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, oversaw the commissioning of artworks.3 After her death, there were few commissions at court, and it was not until 1652, when Stadholder Willem Frederik married Albertina Agnes, the second daughter of Amalia van Solms, that there were new opportunities for painters. Even after her husband died, Albertina Agnes continued to give commissions, as is evident, for example, from the impressive 1668 portrait of her and her children by Abraham van den Tempel.4 There were also female patrons outside court circles frequently. In particular, the Frisian Sophia Anna van Pipenpoy (c. 1618–1670), who will be discussed later, had herself portrayed several times.5
It is likely that artists did not discuss their work exclusively with the ‘master of the house’, but that a role, and sometimes even the leading role, was often reserved
for his wife.6 The same can be said for the selection of portraitists. Unfortunately, we know very little about the circumstances surrounding the preparation and execution of portrait commissions. While it would be wonderful if more autobiographical documents (personal diaries, memoirs, letters, etc.) were found to provide more information about the roles of the various people involved in portrait commissions, it is nevertheless sometimes possible to get a general overview from the available data. A study of the portrait collection of the Pauw family, for instance, reveals that it was probably Elisabeth van der Meer – and not her husband Maarten Pauw – who played the primary role in commissioning to Samuel van Hoogstraten in 1672 to paint eight large portraits of all members of the immediate family.7
The Placement of Women in Companion Pieces, Double Portraits, and Family Groups
Contrary to Griep’s argument cited above, a strong hierarchy is generally nonexistent in the pendant portraits of couples from the Northern and Southern Netherlands during the seventeenth century. Naturally, there are countless variations. In some portrait pairs, the husband appears to take a dominant position; in others, the wife is more prominent. In cases where the man seems to dominate, the aim is certainly not always to depict him in a leading role, as the idea of his importance can sometimes result from differences in height or body size. In several group portraits and portrait pairs, women demand more attention than their spouses, but this may also be due, in part, to the colour of their costume or a wide skirt or gown. Important features to consider when assessing the respective roles of husband and wife include the positioning of the sitter – be it in the centre or the periphery of the composition, in the foreground or the background – the placement of the dominant figure in an elevated position so that he or she seems to rise above his or her partner, and the question of who establishes direct eye contact with the beholder, in other words, who meets the beholder’s gaze and who does not.
In her study of Northern Netherlandish family portraits from the first half of the seventeenth century, Frauke Laarmann rightly pointed out that the position of women in the Northern Netherlands differed substantially from that in Italy, for instance, where women had virtually no rights and were often depicted in a subordinate role in portraits.8 Among pendant portraits in both the Northern and Southern Netherlands, however, there was often a degree of relative equality between the portrayed partners; sometimes the husband and sometimes the wife was given slightly more prominence. Nevertheless, it was common practice for the wife to be positioned at her husband’s left (that is, the beholder’s right).9 A remarkable pair of portraits in which the woman plays a particularly important role is the set of effigies of Stephanus Gerardts and Isabella Coymans painted by Frans Hals around 1650. Isabella’s dominance is caused only to a limited extent by her pose and the work’s composition; the viewer swiftly turns to her because of her charm and flirtatious glow.10
The general view becomes much more varied when we analyse double portraits and family groups; in this context, the relationship is often more or less balanced. However, occasionally, one of the two spouses is clearly dominant over the other.
From the late Middle Ages to the first half of the sixteenth century, the portraits of husbands and wives on the wings of altarpieces and memorial tables are usually given equal importance. Early double portraits across the Northern and Southern Netherlands, as well as in neighbouring countries, often give the impression that two separate, uniform portraits were painted together on one single panel.11 In the earliest versions of the family portrait, which were produced during the sixteenth century, male dominance can sometimes be observed, but there is frequently a balance between husband and wife.12 A notable exception is the group portrait of the family of the painter Frans Francken I from 1577; it is uncertain whether this portrait was painted by Francken himself or by one of his artist friends (Fig. 2).13 Here, the woman holding a young child is placed centrally, between the two eldest children, while the man on the right is depicted almost in profile, his right hand pointing to the mother and child. The child he holds in his arm was added only after the painting was completed. It is also remarkable that, contrary to usual practice, the husband is depicted to the left, rather than to the right, of his wife. His strikingly unconventional position may confirm the frequently reiterated possibility that this is a self-portrait of the painter with his family.
The division of the roles of husband and wife is not always equally or explicitly defined. The self-portrait by Peter Paul Rubens with his wife, Isabella Brant, in the Honeysuckle Bower, painted around 1609–1610, features the woman on the
Fig. 2 Frans Francken I (attr.), Frans Francken I, Elisabeth Mertens and Their Children, 1577. Oil on panel, 43 × 58 cm. Le Puy-en-Velay, Musée Crozatier, inv. no. 826.4.
Permission for amortisation was granted in October 1710 by the civil authorities; an almshouse could then be founded in the refurbished cottages.
The almshouse in Sint-Maartensbilk was founded by Isabella and Catharina Ondermarck on 16 December 1710 for five poor spiritual daughters who had joined St Dominic’s Third Order. The sum of £1000 was provided to the Dominicans for the operation of the almshouse. In addition, £10 a year from annuities was allocated to the almshouse for paying the monthly allowance of the lay sisters, purchasing candles for the chapel, funding a recreation on St Catherine’s day, subsidising the amortisation, financing repairs of the almshouse, and for resolving any other expenses. Allocation of places in the almshouse was decided by the founders, the guardians (proviseurs; Fathers Vincentius and Dominicus and Sister Rosa), and, after the deaths of the guardians, the prior of the Dominicans alongside the spiritual director of the congregation of the Third Order of St Dominic in Bruges.15 Until a chapel was constructed in the almshouse, the residents prayed twice daily in the church of the Dominicans for their own salvation and that of the founders and guardians.
Internal regulations provided detailed stipulations about life in the almshouse. These rules were read to the initial residents on 4 January 1712: Theresia Stijns (d. 1715), Catharina vanden Berghe (d. 1717), Joanna Dierick (d. 1722), Louwese Rombout (d. 1726), and Cornelia Dhondt (d. 1728). Following the deaths of these
Fig. 3 Auguste Ancot, The City of Bruges, 1881, detail. Lithograph, 100 × 177 cm. Bruges, Musea Brugge, inv. no. 0020.gro 0637.04.iii After Marcus I Gheeraerts, Map of Bruges, 1562, copper etching, Bruges, Musea Brugge, inv. no. 0000.gro 1283.i . The Dominican convent is located in the centre of the image, and the almshouse of St Catherine of Siena is situated in St-Maartensbilk (‘Bilkske’), between ‘Vulderstraete’ and ‘Ganse Streate’.
Fig. 2 Detail of Fig. 1, spiritual daughters Isabella and Catharina Ondermarck.
earliest residents, the first lay sisters left an average of £6 2s. 7d. to support the almshouse. Thirty-eight women lived at the almshouse for eleven years on average between January 1712 and October 1798. The residents were buried in the church of the Dominicans in a grave reserved for the daughters of the Third Order of St Dominic.16
Two Filiae Spirituales with a Mission on the Real Estate Market
Catharina Ondermarck was a wealthy woman at her death in 1729. The value of her assets, including cash, annuities, bond claims, furniture, and silverware, exceeded £1150. She also owned twenty-five houses, nine of which were large residences, and she enjoyed the usufruct of three other houses. Rentals earned her over £130 annually. Only one of the houses in her possession at her death had been inherited from her parents; all of her other properties had been purchased previously by her sister Isabella. On her own, Catharina did not invest in any properties. In 1706, Catharina and Isabella jointly sold off the inherited property called ‘De Draecke’ and purchased the house named ‘Het Sonneken’ in Geerolfstraat in 1713. Between 1702 and 1719, thirty-one houses were purchased in Bruges by Isabella Ondermarck through nineteen registered legal transactions. The frequency of her purchases is rather remarkable. In Heidi Deneweth’s analysis of the ownership transfers between 1680 and 1800 of 1900 houses – that is, approximately a quarter of all properties in Bruges – there were seventy-three references
Fig. 4 Johannes Beerblock, The Convent of the Dominicans in Bruges, 1796. Drawing, 476 × 674 mm. Bruges, Musea Brugge, inv. no. 0000.gro 0739.ii
to spiritual daughters, within a total of about 34,000 recorded transactions. Fiftyfour women were mentioned; two of them, Marie Theresia Priem and Margriete vanden Kerckhove, took part in six transactions apiece at the end of the eighteenth century.17
Isabella Ondermarck acquired and managed an unusually extensive property portfolio in Bruges. Initially, this may seem to conflict with the expectation that a spiritual daughter pursue detachment from material goods. However, Isabella may have deployed her family inheritance and property assets to realise her philanthropic aspirations. The archival sources tend to support this possible scenario. Between 1702 and 1710, Isabella Ondermarck acquired at least one house annually, and then rented it out. The income from these rentals, along with the proceeds from the sale of ‘De Draecke’ in 1706 supported the purchase and refurbishment of the five houses in Sint-Maartensbilk. As a result, Isabella and Catharina could allocate a starting capital of £1000 for the almshouse. Moreover, there were sufficient funds available to cover all of the almshouse’s daily expenses. When it was evident in 1715 that the initial funds were satisfactory for managing the foundation, the Dominicans repaid the sum of £185 5s. 2d. to the founders. From 1710, the real estate activities of Isabella served the dual purpose of aiding other spiritual daughters and preserving the family’s inheritance. She purchased a house in 1710 from the unmarried Françoise Valcke and another dwelling in 1714 from spiritual daughters Margriete and Cornellie Greau. Each building was bought under the Dead Hand legislation (‘naer den eedt van dooder hant’), which prohibited any transfer of real estate to monasteries and required that aspirant monastics be declared legally deceased before their formal admission to the monastery. With all three of their brothers and also their sister being monastics, responsibility for safeguarding the family’s assets passed to Isabella and Catharina. In 1714 and 1715, without direct heirs, Isabella and Catharina left houses they owned as inter vivos donations under lifelong usufruct to a minor maternal relative in Sint-Winoksbergen as well as to the four surviving children of Elias Kensen, who were also relatives on their mother’s side.18
Conclusion
A compassionate life dedicated to serving God is worthy of being put on display. The representation of the Ondermarck family in the portrait of the founders of the Bruges almshouse of St Catherine of Siena offers one example of this early modern tenet. The spiritual daughters Isabella and Catharina Ondermarck deployed their family inheritance, religious connections, and extensive property dealings to realise their ideals of charity and care for the poor.
A Flemish Shepherd for Amalia? Some Thoughts on a Newly Discovered Painting by Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert *
By Ben van Beneden
Early last year, I accidently discovered a previously unknown picture by Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert (1614–1654), one of those talented Flemish artists whose later fame has been eclipsed by the overpowering presence of such giants as Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641). Measuring an impressive 121.5 × 101 cm, the painting shows an Arcadian scene of a shepherd resting beneath a rock and playing his pipe, an attribute already customary in early Venetian pastoral paintings. Dressed all’antica, with a bare shoulder and a leafbedecked straw hat on his head, the shepherd sits with his boulette, or shepherd’s crook, propped casually between his legs, while he gazes sideways at the viewer (Fig. 1). At the lower left, a landscape vista, painted with extraordinary lightness of touch and feeling, offers a distant glimpse of the shepherd’s flock against a warm evening glow and dramatically wind-blown trees. As the day closes, the scene is shrouded in the fading light of evening.
This painting is significant in a number of ways. Willeboirts Bosschaert owed his fame mainly to his work as a history painter; most of his paintings represent mythological and religious subjects. Departing from a figure type that painters had only recently introduced to art lovers in the Northern Netherlands – the halflength representation of a shepherdess or shepherd – A Shepherd Playing the Flute would appear to be a rare (perhaps even the only) surviving example of a genre painting in Willeboirts Bosschaert’s oeuvre. Fully signed but undated, this intriguingly intimate work was probably painted around 1645–1650, when Willeboirts Bosschaert had reached his full maturity as an artist. It reflects his familiarity with a broader pastoral tradition in the Northern Netherlands. Moreover, the captivating quality of this painting is heightened by the likelihood that the shepherd is a self-portrait of the artist. Although nothing is known about the early history of the picture, it is not inconceivable that it was painted for an important female patron, Princess Amalia van Solms (1602–1675), the wife of the Dutch stadholder Frederik Hendrik, Prince of Orange. The emergence from total obscurity of a rare painting, never previously published or exhibited,1 by Willeboirts Bosschaert provides a welcome opportunity to revisit the artist, whose monograph appeared just over twenty years ago in the excellent Pictura Nova series of studies in sixteenthand seventeenth-century Flemish painting and drawing2 that is edited by Katlijne Van der Stighelen and Hans Vlieghe.
The pastoral genre seems never to have gained a foothold in seventeenthcentury Southern Netherlandish painting, even though several interesting examples can be found. Already around 1615, for instance, Rubens painted a half-length Shepherdess in three-quarter profile; she is identified in the literature either as his
Fig. 1 Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert, A Shepherd Playing the Flute, c. 1645–1650. Signed at the bottom left: T. willeboor TS bo SS . Oil on canvas (relined), 121.5 × 101 cm. Private collection.
sister-in-law Suzanna Fourment or, more convincingly, as his first wife, Isabella Brant.3 Van Dyck’s contribution to the genre is his superb portrait, dating from the early 1630s, of his friend François Langlois as a ‘Savoyard’, an itinerant journeyman, shepherd, and musician.4 A rare multi-figure composition showing rustics in a landscape is A Shepherd Declaring His Love for a Shepherdess by Gerard Seghers (1591–1651), Willeboirts Bosschaert’s teacher.5 An elegant drawing by Jacques Jordaens (1593–1678) from around 1640–1645, which portrays the same subject in an almost identical composition, is most likely derived from Seghers’s painting.6 Jacob
Fig. 2 Paulus Moreelse, Shepherdess, 1617. Signed and dated: PM [interlaced]orelse fe. 1617. Oil on panel, 53.6 × 42.2 cm. The Kremer Collection.
Neefs (1610-after 1660) made engravings of both works. Willeboirts Bos schaert’s flute-playing shepherd, therefore, does not stand alone in Southern Netherlandish painting. During the seventeenth century, however, pastoral art was primarily, and in some respects uniquely, a Dutch phenomenon.7 The pastoral ideal called to mind the freedom and simplicity of an idyllic life in nature, and the shepherd was the embodiment of reverie and contemplation. His time was spent in the innocent pursuit of sweet music, gentle love, and contemplative leisure. While Pieter Lastman
Fig. 3 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Flute Player, 1621. Signed and dated: h T b [in ligature] rugghen. fecit. 1621. Oil on canvas, 71.3 × 55.8 cm. Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, inv. no. gk 180.
ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF KATLIJNE VAN DER STIGHELEN
Campaspe Talks Back
With forty-three contributions this book pays homage to Katlijne Van der Stighelen, who has shown exceptional range in her own contributions to the history of art in the Southern Netherlands and beyond. With monographs on Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, she has considerably expanded scholarship on canonical artists. Yet early on, a catalogue raisonné of the portraits of the lesser-known Cornelis de Vos revealed that Van der Stighelen was not one to preserve the status quo but to challenge it. Mindful of protagonists and their historiographical pull, she has consistently rehabilitated artists relegated to the background, in some cases by single-handedly saving them from total oblivion and – remarkable feat – having them added to the canon.
Portraiture, supposedly a sijd-wegh der consten, was paved into a central avenue of inquiry in Van der Stighelen’s work. Her approach to the genre made it into a pathway for the introduction of women artists. What was a sijd-wegh became a zij-weg. From seminal publications on Anna-Maria van Schurman to revelatory exhibitions on Michaelina Wautier, Van der Stighelen’s particular brand of feminism has impacted scholarship as deeply as it has touched the museum-going public.
Women and portraiture are the core themes of the essays assembled in this book. The resulting group portrait is crowded and rambunctious and reflects the varied subject matter that has attracted Van der Stighelen’s professional attention. It also paints a partial portrait of the community of scholars that she has so generously fostered. In trying to summarize the motivations of authors to contribute to this volume or the gratitude of generations of art historians trained by her, it is best to quote the title of the first exhibition on women artists in Belgium and The Netherlands, which Van der Stighelen curated in 1999: Elck zijn waerom.