Dynasty by Lecturis

DYNASTY PORTRAITS OF THE HOUSE OF ORANGE-NASSAU

CONTENT 4 Foreword ESSAYS 7 25

State Portraits of Orange-Nassau Renske Cohen Tervaert and Paul van Kooij From Monumental State Portrait to Intimate Family Tableau? Family Portraits and Miniatures of Orange-Nassau Sabine Craft-Giepmans Propaganda By Way Of Image Tradition Van Hulle’s Orange-Nassau Equestrian Portraits Paul Rijkens FROM THE COLLECTION

62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 84 86 88

90 92

I. Youth Portrait of Prince Maurice II. Maurice, Prince of Orange III. Ernst Casimir and Sophia Hedwig of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel IV. Henry Casimir II and Henriette Amalia V. Stadholder William V and Wilhelmina of Prussia VI. King William I and King William II VII. King William II and Anna Pavlovna VIII. Queen Wilhelmina IX. Youth Portrait of Elisabeth X. Henriette Amalia of Anhalt-Dessau with her children XI. Youth Portrait of William I, Louise and Frederick of Orange-Nassau XII. King William II and his family XIII. Princes of Orange and Counts of Nassau on Horseback XIV. Frederick V “the Winter King” and Elizabeth Stuart “the Winter Queen” Portraits – Gerard van Honthorst More from the Royal Palace Amsterdam

96 Dynasty 100 Bibliography 104 Colofon

STATE PORTRAITS OF ORANGE-NASSAU Renske Cohen Tervaert and Paul van Kooij

here are innumerable portraits of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima. The most familiar of them are the official portraits that hang in courts, town halls and other public buildings. [fig. 1] These are known as state portraits. The head of state is pictured in his or her official capacity in a photograph, painting, sculpture or drawing.2 State portraits are not spontaneous snapshots, they are carefully staged compositions. Symbols are added to convey information about the head of state’s function and powers. State portraits and variants of them picturing many members of the Orange dynasty, dating from 1550 to the present day, hang in the Royal Palace in Amsterdam. These formal portraits give us a unique insight into the development, function and use of such portraits in the House of Orange-Nassau. A Long Record of Service

The state portraits of today’s royal couple are the latest in a long European tradition. The custom of hanging a portrait of the reigning monarch in government buildings goes back centuries. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, princes of the houses of Burgundy and Habsburg were the governors of the Low Countries, and their likenesses graced public buildings throughout the land.3 There was good reason for this. The portraits left in no doubt who held sovereign power, and on whose behalf the local councils exercised authority in their own districts. Over the years, series of portraits of successive rulers came into being. Series like these underlined historical continuity and legitimated the dominion of the reigning monarch. On occasion portrait series were created as a ‘job lot’, sometimes with imagined portraits of predecessors. The type of state portrait that is still used to this day was first made in the first half of the sixteenth century. It was the Italian painter, Titian, who developed state portraits with a fixed scheme of dress, pose and a ttributes for Emperor Charles V and other members of the Habsburg dynasty. This scheme still expresses the power and dignity of a head of state.4 The portraits are life-size, monumental and stately. The portrait shows the ruler in all his or her glory, from head to toe, or three-quarter length. The subject stands or sits, ramrod stiff, turned three-quarters to the right or left. Beside him or her stands a table or the like, on which lie attributes symbolizing the sitter’s position. The dress—usually armour, uniform or the costliest garment the sitter owns—is enlivened with a sash, insignia or jewellery. A curtain can often be seen in the dark background, or perhaps a column as a sign of

“a good portrait

depicts men not

as they are, but as they should be” 1 Jenkins, 1947

fig. 1 Willem-Alexander, King of the Netherlands and Mรกxima, Queen of the Netherlands Photography: Koos Breukel, 2013 Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst

FROM MONUMENTAL STATE PORTRAIT TO INTIMATE FAMILY TABLEAU? FAMILY PORTRAITS AND MINIATURES OF ORANGE-NASSAU Sabine Craft-Giepmans

n the Royal Palace there are many family portraits and portraits of children. They appear less formal than the individual state portraits because of the ages and poses of the sitters, but this is only true to a certain extent. There are recurrent themes—social position, hereditary succession and securing the dynasty—that are subtly revealed in ingenious allusions. The earliest likeness of a child in the palace is the sole surviving portrait of Prince Maurice as a boy painted by Daniel van den Queborn around 1579. [cat. I] The painting was one of a set of eight individual portraits of William of Orange and Charlotte de Bourbon’s family. Group portraits of families started to appear on a limited scale at the beginning of the sixteenth century, but there are no known early pictures of the stadholder’s family.1 One of the first works in which a member of the Nassau family appears is a 1619 portrait of Maurice, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, with his second wife Juliana of Nassau-Siegen—a cousin of William the Silent—and his fourteen children. In this large portrait the family are lined up in two rows. It looks like a stack of individual portraits.2 This is a logical visual continuation of the series of portraits of family members. The family portraits that started to appear in the first half of the seventeenth century can be roughly divided into two types. On the one hand there were the conventional bourgeois portraits of families dressed predominantly in black in an interior, and on the other the portraits of royal and noble families in colourful, fantastical garments al fresco.3 At court, there was also an imaginative derivative of the portrait in the open air—the portrait historié. In these the sitters posed in the guise of a character in a Bible story, mythology or a passage in literature. They wore appropriate costumes, to which recognizable attributes were added.4 After around 1640 pastoral settings became increasingly popular for portraits of children and families alike. In these works the subjects in imaginary costumes refer to general concepts such as the hunt, pastoral life or a military future. Girls wear graceful draperies and flowers in their hair, and from time to time even have a lamb as an attribute, while boys are decked out in imaginary hunting dress or Roman costume, sometimes with a bow and arrow slung over their shoulder. Commissions from Friesland

The earliest commission for a portrait of a stadholder’s family came from the Frisian court. It is a striking, almost risqué painting of Sophia Hedwig

fig. 9 Portrait of Sophia Hedwig of BrunswijkWolfenbuttel, Countess of Nassau-Dietz, as Caritas, with her children Paulus Moreelse, 1621 Oil on canvas, 140 x 122 cm Paleis Het Loo (Photography: Paleis het Loo)

fig. 10 Title Page for Joost van den Vondel’s ‘Geboorteklock van Willem van Nassau’ Anonymus, 1626 Gravure, 14,8 x 11,5 cm Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague

of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel with her four children. [fig. 9] The painting was finished by the Utrecht artist Paulus Moreelse in 1621 and is his only known family portrait. The sitters are all swathed in pseudo-Roman costumes and Sophia Hedwig conspicuously presents her exposed breast. The allegorical symbolism is instantly clear: Sophia Hedwig personifies Caritas, or Charity—maternal love.5 This portrait also expresses the fact that her husband, the Frisian stadholder Ernst Casimir, is ensured of descendants.6 This was important dynastic information, because he had succeeded his older brother, who died childless, and needed a son to safeguard the position of stadholder in the family. The inventory of Ernst Casimir’s estate lists a large and varied collection of paintings. Among them are many portraits of European rulers that were given by or inherited from branches of Sophia Hedwig’s family.7 In Leeuwarden the couple commissioned likenesses of themselves and their children from Wybrand de Geest, the most renowned Frisian artist. [cat. III] In the Treasury Extraordinary, for instance, there is a portrait of their daughter Elisabeth dating from 1625. [cat. IX] After Moreelse’s spectacular painting there were no more family group portraits of the Frisian stadholders for several decades. At the Stadholders’ Court in The Hague In The Hague, meanwhile, various propaganda portraits of Frederick Henry’s family appeared in the form of prints immediately after the birth of William II in 1626. One accompanied Joost van den Vondel’s epic ode, which ran to nigh-on a thousand lines. [fig. 10] This print is laced with symbolism. The young son and heir is fed by a wet nurse under an orange tree with his parents in attendance. A shield with the arms of Orange hangs on the trunk. Frederick Henry rests his hand on the head of the Dutch lion and Amalia of Solms holds a twig with an orange. In the background is the Hofvijver, the pool outside the palace from which the orange tree draws its sustenance, and the Binnenhof with the Oranges’ official residence. This image underlines their rank as the stadholder family.8 The roles are clearly defined: the stadholder ensures military and political success and his consort provides for posterity.9 Prints with Dynastic Significance The dynastic significance is even more evident in other prints of the stadholder’s family. These are prints that include portraits of other, sometimes

PROPAGANDA BY WAY OF IMAGE TRADITION VAN HULLEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S ORANGENASSAU EQUESTRIAN PORTRAITS Paul Rijkens

an Hulle’s portrayals of William of Orange, Philips William, Maurice, Frederick Henry and William II on horseback, [fig. 23-27] are without doubt unique in art history. Unique, not because they are large, or the stadholders’ portraits well executed, both of which are true, but because no other princely family thus focussed on the military competence of their dynasty as propaganda message. In fact, this series is a mainstay of the Orange-Nassau visual tradition of portraying the continuity of their House to a people wishing leadership, but wary of rulers. Above claims are simple but how do we substantiate them? Since more than two thousand years, authorative leaders have been portrayed on horseback by way of marble or bronze statues, on coins or medallions, in tapestries and paintings, print, and recently in film and on television. Much has been written about these objects, though generally the focus has been on their aesthetic qualities, and not on meaning and function.1 Yet it is their function, and especially of Van Hulle’s equestrian series that is the subject of this essay. A brief theoretical analysis is useful for appreciating the function of this regal communication system. Equestrian Imagery: Its Origin And Meaning In Classical Times

The main factor hampering functional analysis of equestrian imagery in general, and of Nassau in particular, is the shortage of primary sources.2 For various reasons artists commissioned by rulers left no notes or letters about their work, hardly send bills, or these were simply ignored. Moreover, seldom has the reception of their work been recorded. A rare exception that helps to appreciate the universal function of equestrian imagery, concerns Louis XIV’s brusque reaction in 1685, when he first saw his equestrian statue by Bernini in the Orangerie at Versailles, and demanded it destroyed (though not carried out).3 It was not just any statue, but the work by one of the great sculptors of his age. Gian Lorenzo Bernini had worked the marble for three years, and he died before it was delivered. Domenico Bernini recorded his father’s following comment, ‘Since a jovial face and a glorious smile are proper to he who is contended, I have presented the monarch in this way.’4 This case illustrates a central issue concerning the relationship between the ‘form and function’ of equestrian imagery, for these serve above all to communicate a regal message of authority, which only works if the spectator understands it. In short, the form of the object must meet its function.

fig. 23 Portrait of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange Anselm van Hulle, before 1647 Oil on canvas, 250 x 199 cm Royal Palace Amsterdam (on loan from the Royal Collections, The Hague)

FROM THE COLLECTION

IV. HENRY CASIMIR II AND HENRIETTE AMALIA A series of family portraits of the House of Nassau-Dietz hung in the reception room of Castle Oranienstein, among them portraits of the Frisian stadholder Henry Casimir II, grandson of Ernst Casimir, and his wife Henriette Amalia of Anhalt-Dessau. Both were painted by Lancelot Volders. Henry Casimir II succeeded his father as Stadholder of Friesland and Groningen in 1664.1 Like his father and grandfather before him, he held high ranks in the States army, whose commander-in-chief was his powerful cousin, Stadholder-King William III. The two continually disagreed and Henry Casimir ultimately left the army. There was a reconciliation in 1794, and in 1795 William III even appointed him his sole heir.

of the Frisian stadholders of the House of Nassau-Dietz. This series probably hung on the long wall opposite the window wall; in the place of honour, above the fireplace, hung a portrait of William III in full royal regalia.3 The reception room was designed around 1708 by the former court architect to William III, Daniel Marot, who at around the same time also conceived and furnished the great hall of the stadholder’s court in Leeuwarden. A genealogical series of the House of Nassau-Dietz and a portrait of the stadholder-king as a chimney-piece hung there, too.4 Why choose this particular combination of portraits? It has to do with a ferocious row about William III’s legacy. The stadholder-king had died childless in 1702 and his will stated that the Orange estate was to devolve to the Nassau-Dietz branch. This greatly displeased the Prussian king, who thought he had more right to the estate. This battle was fought both in the courts and in pictures. Henriette Amalia and her son used the two portrait series to spread the word that the Nassau-Dietz branch was the rightful heir of the Orange-Nassaus.5

The portrait of Henry Casimir II was painted three-quarters of a century after his grandfather’s, but the iconography has not changed. In both portraits we see the cuirass, the staff of office, the helmet on the table and the curtain in the background. Born a princess of Anhalt-Dessau and Fürstin of Nassau-Dietz, Henriette Amalia had sufficient status to be portrayed in the red ermine-lined robe. Volders painted four more portraits for the reception room in Castle Oranienstein: William Frederick and Albertine Agnes, and John William Friso and Marie Louise of Hessen-Kassel.2 The six portraits by Volders and the two by De Geest [cat. III] formed a genealogical series

As he was a minor, his mother Albertine Agnes acted as regent until 1679.

Drossaers & Lunsingh Scheurleer 1974-76, vol. 2, p. 363, no. 182, p. 367, nos. 272, 273; KHA inventory B I 62.

Drossaers & Lunsingh Scheurleer 1974-76, vol. 2, p. 363, no. 182, p. 367, no. 271; possibly the portrait now hanging in Het Loo Palace on loan from the Royal Collections (RKDimages 153524).

Huizinga 1997, p. 64.

The Prussian king also proclaimed his point of view in a programme of paintings. He had a new banqueting hall, the Orange-saal, built in Castle Oranienburg near Berlin, which he had inherited from his mother, Louise Henriette of Orange. The Prussian king’s descent from the House of Orange, emphasizing his right to the Orange inheritance, was celebrated in the ceiling painting, which has not survived.

Portrait of Henry Casimir II, Count of Nassau-Dietz Lancelot Volders, ca. 1695 Oil on canvas, 195 x 120 cm Royal Palace Amsterdam (on loan from the Royal Collections, The Hague)

Portrait of HenriĂŤtte Amalia of Anhalt-Dessau, Countess of Nassau-Dietz Lancelot Volders, ca. 1695 Oil on canvas, 195 x 120 cm Royal Palace Amsterdam (on loan from the Royal Collections, The Hague)