Left Cast of an original seal of John Weston. c.19th century. (p

The Weston Altarpiece

size for an upper shutter of the Weston Altarpiece and that the subject matter is in keeping with the theme of the Life of the Virgin.68 However, the Rovigo panel’s location and lack of provenance are problematic for Zdanov’s argument, especially considering the high percentage of losses of works of this type.69 Given the large number of this type of altarpiece that were made, the Rovigo panel could have been part of a di erent example, possibly one exported directly to Italy from the same workshop in Brussels.

The connection of the altarpiece to Weston is based on the two painted shields on the interior Christ panel and the former inscription on the Virgin panel. The shield to the right, which incorporates an anchor, is more likely to be the arms of an o ce rather than of a family.70 It resembles one of Weston’s seals, on which his name is inscribed (Fig.17). The shield and seal allude to Weston’s post of turcopolier (responsible for the defence of the coast, including by ship), which he held while stationed with the Order at its headquarters in Rhodes.71 Both the arms on the left of the Christ panel and Weston’s seal contain ve bezants, as do those of the Weston family.72 As mentioned, the crosses at the top are heraldically impossible in terms of colour. It is therefore probable that they would originally have been the white cross of the Order on a red background to the left with the red cross of St George of England on a white background to the right. Albeit rarely, lead white, the predominant white pigment used by fteenth-century Northern European painters, can blacken if in contact with hydrogen sulphide, especially if the shield was left unvarnished or little or no oil was used in the binding process.73 The fact that the white has blackened in Weston’s shield but not elsewhere in the same panel increases the likelihood that the shields were added after the date of original painting, possibly using a di erent technique.

Weston probably originally had his patronage displayed more prominently in the two escutcheons that existed on the exterior Baptist panel, of which only the heavily restored one to the right is now visible. These were discovered on the removal of several layers of overpaint and so are believed to have been contemporary. As previously stated, the original colours of the visible shield were red, black and gold.74 These are the same colours as Weston’s arms of o ce on the Christ panel. The su estion that they are arms of Kendal or Docwra can be dismissed, as their arms contain no gold.75 Winged altarpieces were predominantly seen in the closed position, since they were opened only for speci c events in the church calendar or for important visitors.76 It would be logical, therefore, for Weston to display his identi ers on the exterior Baptist panel, St John the Baptist being both the Order’s patron saint and Weston’s name saint.77 It can therefore be argued that Weston’s arms of o ce were on the right of the Baptist panel and the overpainted shield on the left was that of his family. It is possible that Weston later had his escutcheons added to the Christ panel to proclaim his patronage when the altarpiece was open.

Inscriptions were sometimes used to identify donors. However, since Weston’s arms were painted on the Baptist panel, and possibly on the Christ panel too, it is not obvious why he would require an identifying inscription on the Virgin panel or why a succeeding prior would have added one. The inscription was painted skilfully in the Gothic script textualis, identi able by, among other things, the fact that the ‘s’ in ‘Weston’ and ‘f’ in ‘of’ stood on the baseline.78 In formal terms the inscription was in keeping with fteenth and sixteenth-century usage: the presence of a round ‘r’ after the ‘o’ and ‘p’, for example, accords with scribal practice. Although the script was formallyconsistent with late medieval examples, its size and placement on the panel were not, raising the question of who added it

of any form of triptychs or polyptychs, and p.77 for only seven such portraits appearing on the panels of carved altarpieces like the Weston Altarpiece, all but one of these being on inner panels; Jacobs, op. cit. (note 45), p.38. 66 Zdanov, op. cit. (note 9), pp.531–34. 67 Ibid., p.533. For the fl owers, see C. Fisher: Flowers of the Renaissance, London 2011, p.70. The present author is indebted to Celia Fisher for confi rming that these fl owers are dianthus, email corespondence, 30th April 2018. 68 See D’Hainaut-Zveny, op. cit. (note 45), p.217 for a Meeting at the Golden Gate being the subject of an exterior painted panel of de Coter’s Strängnas III; and ibid., pp.161, 218 and 219 for a similar subject within the wooden caisse. 69 In L. Collobi Ragghianti: exh. cat. Dipinti fi amminghi in Italia 1420-1570, Bologna (Musei d’Italia –Meraviglie d’Italia) 1990, p.107; and A. Romanagnolo: La Pinacoteca dell/ Accademia dei Concordi, Rovigo 1981, p.263. The painting is fi rst recorded in 1818, when it was owned by a Francesco Casilini in Italy. Zdanov, op. cit. (note 9), p.533 cites infra-red refl ectography undertaken by Maddalena Bellavitis, which revealed underdrawing on the Rovigo panel: see M. Bellavatis: Telle depente forestiere: quadri nordici nel Veneto, le fonti e la tecnica, Padua 2010, pp.493–97. Without similar analysis of the Clerkenwell panels the underdrawing does not assist in linking the Rovigo panel with them. 70 I am grateful to Peter O’Donoghue, York Herald, The College of Arms, London for this observation in a conversation on 24th April 2018. 71 E. King: The Seals of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, London 1932, p.109. For the role of the turcopolier, see O’Malley, op. cit. (note 6), pp.42–43 17. Cast of original of a seal of John Weston. c.19th century. Wax and plaster, diameter 3.7 cm. (The Museum of the Order of St John, London).

and 304–13; and A. Mifsud: Knights Hospitallers of the Venerable Tongue of England in Malta, Valetta 1914, pp.87–94. For examples of Weston’s seaborne campaigns, see ibid., p.144. 72 ‘Seal matrix of John Weston, prior of St Johns’, Antiquaries Journal 17 (1937), p.321; and J. Burke: The General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales comprising a Registry of Armorial Bearings from the Earliest to the Present Time, London 1884, pp.162 and 1095. Weston’s nephew, William, had arms similar to Prior John Weston. John Weston of Staff ord, Prior John Weston’s second cousin, had arms ermine on a chief, azure, fi ve bezants. 73 R. Guttens, H. Kühn and W. Chase: ‘Lead white’, in A. Roy, ed.: Artists’ Pigments: A Handbook of Their History and Characteristics, Washington 1993, II, pp.71–72; S. Lussier and G. Smith: ‘A review of the phenomenon of lead white darkening and its conversion treatment’, Reviews in Conservation 8 (2007), p.48. In a telephone conversation of 19th November 2019 Marika Spring, Head of Science at the National Gallery, London, confi rmed that this is unusual but possible. 74 Abrahams, op. cit. (note 15), p.1. 75 See Burke, op. cit. (note 72), pp.289 and 558. 76 Jacobs, op. cit. (note 45), pp.17–18; and K. Woods: ‘Thèmes iconographiques et sources’, in B. D’Hainaut-Zveny, op. cit. (note 45), p.79. 77 For discussion of St John the Baptist becoming patron saint of the Order, see J. Riley-Smith: The Knights of St. John in Jerusalem and Cyprus c.1050–1310, London 1967, pp.32–35. 78 A. Derolez: The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books: From the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century, Cambridge 2003, p.9.

The Weston Altarpiece

and when.79 Although it is possible that it was added centuries later, the most likely candidate in this author’s view is the lawyer John Tregonwell (c.1498–1565), a former owner of Milton Abbey.

Tregonwell was made a Privy Councillor in 1532, acted in a legal capacity for Henry VIII in his divorce from Katherine of Aragon in 1533 and was employed by Thomas Cromwell as a monastic visitor from 1535.80 Despite these activities he was a religious conservative and, after seemingly retreating from London life under Edward VI, returned to favour under Queen Mary.81 As a prominent lawyer, he was based in London from the 1520s to 1535 and was then occupied predominantly with the dissolution of south-western ecclesiastical institutions until early 1539.82 He then returned to London, where he was involved in a legal case in June 1539 and, on 9th July 1540, was a witness to the signing of the letters testimonial declaring the invalidity of Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne of Cleves.83 There is no evidence as to who actually dissolved the priory in Clerkenwell but the inventory recorded plate, gilt and cash and ‘besides ornaments of the church remaining in the vestry, stuff delivered to the King, stuff remaining in St. John’s charged to Sir Henry Knevett, stuff to be sold’.84 There is no record of any subsequent sale but Tregonwell was most probably in London, was experienced in these activities and could have obtained, or purchased, the panels at this time and taken them to Milton Abbey.85 Cromwell’s men were no strangers to taking advantage of their position and Tregonwell himself was permitted to acquire Milton Abbey for the advantageous price of £1,000 in 1540, having dissolved it on 11th March 1539,86 a large sum of money for a man born of a family of little means.87

The destruction or survival of objects following dissolution was a matter of chance and there are numerous examples of religious objects that survived.88 Many objects passed into private hands and secularisation was often seen as sufficient desecration by itself for reformers.89 Even Cromwell owned a carved altarpiece of the Nativity at his death in July 1540 that had already been in his possession in 1527.90 Although a statute of 1550, during the reign of Edward VI, decreed that all images removed from churches should be destroyed, some passed into private houses and religious paintings could still be seen displayed openly in English houses at the end of the sixteenth century.91 However, in 1563 images of the Trinity were specifically condemned.92 Despite this hostile environment Tregonwell’s recusant widow, Elizabeth, harboured priests at Milton Abbey in the late sixteenth century, suggesting that she would not be averse to also harbouring religious paintings.93 In the 1640s ordinances demanded the removal of images of the Trinity and the Virgin Mary from all religious establishments, an edict that was often followed in private houses.94

If this hypothesis is correct, the Tregonwells may have displayed the panels at Milton Abbey, probably in the house rather than the abbey church. By the reign of Edward VI, or almost certainly by that of Elizabeth, it is probable that the panels would have been hidden, possibly with the inscription added as an aide-mémoire. The style of the Gothic inscription and lettering on Tregonwell’s brass on his tomb (c.1565) in Milton Abbey is not unlike that formerly on the Virgin panel (Fig.18).95 Milton Abbey was sold by descendants of Tregonwell in 1752, but the panels could have remained there before being discovered in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries by a subsequent owner.

There remains a possibility that the inscription was added at a much later date in order to procure the sale of the panels, odd though it would be to add an incomplete sentence. If that were the case, they may have been acquired by the subsequent owners of Milton Abbey, the Damer and Dawson-Damer families (1752–1852) or the Hambro family (1852–1932).96 Joseph Damer, later Lord Milton and Earl of Dorchester, who purchased the estate in 1752 , did indeed acquire paintings on the continent.97 The Dawson-Damer family records regarding Milton Abbey do not survive but it is known that they left behind some possessions, including paintings, when they moved to Ireland in 1852, but the sale document does not list the contents.98 Baron Carl Joachim Hambro is said to have collected art, including paintings, after his purchase of Milton Abbey in 1852 and he employed the Gothic revivalist Gilbert Scott to restore the main hall.99 He may have purchased the panels separately from the acquisition of the abbey, although neither his son Everard, who owned Milton Abbey at the time of the Country Life articles in 1915, nor the present Hambro family professed any knowledge of this.100 It would be a remarkable, although not impossible, coincidence if the panels were purchased by a subsequent owner of a property once belonging to one of the Cromwell’s key monastic visitors, who was in London at the time of the dissolution of the English langue.

Assuming that John Weston was the first owner, questions arise as to why he chose an altarpiece in the Netherlandish style. Weston was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, to a family associated with the Order.101 Stationed in Rhodes, he was summoned to England in 1465 because of an accusation of disloyalty to the crown, although no action appears to have been taken.102 His appointment as turcopolier, in combination with service in Rhodes, was a normal step to becoming Prior of England. However, in 1474 the English

79 For examples of typical inscriptions of the fifteenth century, see A. Acres: ‘Rogier van der Weyden’s painted texts’, Artibus et Historiae 21 (2000), pp.75–109, or the quatrain and banderols on the Ghent Altarpiece by Jan and Hubert van Eyck. Inscriptions of the period were usually much smaller than that on the Weston Altarpiece and were either biblical quotations or descriptive of the subject matter of the painting. 80 For Tregonwell’s relationship with Henry VIII and Cromwell, see J. Bettey: ‘Sir John Tregonwell of Milton Abbey’, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society 90 (1969), pp.297–301; and D. MacCulloch: Thomas Cromwell: A Life, London 2018, pp.271–73, 296 and 305. The role of monastic visitors was to enforce the Acts of Succession and Supremacy of 1534, paving the way for the Dissolution of the Monasteries. For examples of Tregonwell’s activities in this role, see A. Shaw: ‘The “Compendium Compertorum” and the making of the Suppression Act of 1536’, PhD thesis (University of Warwick, 2003), pp.136–49; and J. Youings, op. cit. (note 8), pp.67, 74, 78–79, 88 and 180–83. 81 For Tregonwell’s Catholic sympathies, see A.L. Rowse: Tudor Cornwall: Portrait of a Society, London 1969, p.222; and for his life under Mary, see ibid., p.193; and Bettey, op. cit. (note 80), p.302. 82 Ibid., pp.296–301. 83 G. Burnet: The History of the Reformation of the Church of England, ed. N. Pocock, Oxford 1865, I, p.414; and J. Strype: Ecclesiastical Memorials, Oxford 1822, I, part 1, pp.559–61. 84 British Library, London, Cotton MS. Appx. 28, fol.52, ‘An abridgement touching the money, plate, stuff, store, and payments at St John’s’, transcribed in J. Gairdner and R. Brodie, eds: Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, London 1896, XV, p.308, item 646. 85 Hale, op. cit. (note 9), p.64, suggested that the last Prior of England before the dissolution in 1540, William Weston, gave the panels to his brother, Richard, for safekeeping. The latter, whose main residence was in Surrey, had inherited a house in Shapwick, Somerset, from his mother and Hale speculated that Richard Weston, in turn, gave the panels to Tregonwell, whose house at Milton Abbey was some ten miles away. Hale does not mention Tregonwell’s role as a monastic visitor. There is no evidence for this convoluted history. 86 Bettey, op. cit. (note 80), p.301. The annual income of Milton Abbey in 1535 was £665 3s. 21/2d. For Tregonwell taking personal advantage of his role under Cromwell, see ibid., p.301 and Rowse, op. cit. (note 81), p.192. For the deed of surrender of Milton Abbey, see J. Traskey: Milton Abbey: A Dorset Monastery in the Middle Ages, Tisbury 1978, pp.225–26; and for the sale of Milton Abbey to Tregonwell, see ibid., pp.227–30. 87 For his origins, see Rowse, op. cit. (note 81), p.187. 88 See M. Aston: Broken Idols of the English Reformation, Cambridge 2016, pp.219–57; E. Duffy: The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400-c.1580, New Haven and London 2005, pp.478–503; and Clark, op. cit. (note 8), pp.391–420. 89 Aston, op. cit. (note 88), pp.177–78; and M. Aston: ‘Gods, saints, and reformers: portraiture and Protestant England’, in L. Gent, ed.: Albion’s Classi-cism: The Visual Arts in Britain, 1550–1660, New Haven and London 1995, p.199. 90 Aston, op. cit. (note 88), p.119. 91 Ibid., pp.225 and 561. 92 Ibid., p.565. 93 Traskey, op. cit. (note 86), p.179; and R. Lloyd: Dorset Elizabethans: At Home and Abroad, London 1967, pp.94 and 106. 94 Aston, op. cit. (note 88), pp.605 and 610. For more general discussion of iconoclasm with respect to images of the Trinity, see ibid., pp.543–614. 95 For this brass, see W. Lack, M. Stuchfield and P. Whittemore: The Monumental Brasses of Dorsetshire, London 2001, pp.128–29. 96 Traskey, op. cit. (note 86), pp.190–91 and 197. 97 See ibid., p.192, where it is stated, without reference, that he acquired

The Weston Altarpiece

18. Detail from the tomb of John Tregonwell, showing the inscription. c.1565. (Milton Abbey Church). (Photograph the author).

brethren, with the approval of Edward IV, elected Robert Multon, a man unacceptable to the Order in Rhodes and much less qualified than Weston.103 Edward’s decision may have been influenced by the Weston family’s Lancastrian sympathies.104 Only three years earlier, John Langstrother, Prior of England 1468–71, had been executed after the battle of Tewkesbury for siding with the Lancastrians.105 However, after nearly two years of debate between Edward and the Order in Rhodes, Weston finally gained royal approval on 24th July 1476 to replace Multon as prior later that year.106

Edward’s grudging acceptance of Weston as prior, lingering suspicion of his loyalty to the crown, his long absence from England and the preference of the English brethren for Multon may well have created uncertainty over Weston’s status in contemporary society. Ownership of art could assist in self-promotion. In Burgundy, altarpieces were ‘a genre through which some of the most important court officials promoted themselves’ and courtly practices of England in many ways took their lead from the dukedom.107 Possibly because of his close ties with the duchy of Burgundy, which included a period of exile there, Edward IV commissioned at least fortyseven Netherlandish illuminated manuscripts, thus effectively founding the English Royal Library.108 His courtiers followed suit and both Edward’s close friends Lord Hastings and Thomas Thwaites, Chancellor of the Exchequer, acquired Netherlandish manuscripts.109 John Donne, Hastings’s brother-in-law, also owned Netherlandish manuscripts and commissioned a triptych by the Bruges-based painter Hans Memling in c.1478.110 Weston would have known these men, as the Prior of England played a prominent role in this society, regularly attending the King’s council and holding the position of the premier lay baron in England.111 He was also wealthy, since in the 1470s he personally controlled forty percent of the Order’s substantial English profits.112 It would be unsurprising if Weston used his wealth to imitate the court in acquiring a Netherlandish altarpiece for his priory church at Clerkenwell.

Weston would have been associated intrinsically with the great palace at Clerkenwell, which was comparable to those of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Palace of Westminster.113 Through the Weston Altarpiece, distinguished visitors, such as Richard III, who visited the priory and its church in 1485, could have observed that Weston’s tastes were aligned with the great courtiers of the time.114 Weston’s standing in society would have been displayed through his escutcheons. The bezants on his family shield indicate his forebearer’s service in the crusades and the shield of office with anchor proclaims his own service for Christendom and the Order in the East.115 The inclusion of the cross of St George on the family arms endorsed his other loyalty, to England. Strategies such as these employed by Weston to ingratiate himself with the King seem to have met with success. By 1480, judging by various ambassadorial and royal family services asked of him, Weston appears to have gained Edward’s trust.116 He met Margaret, dowager Duchess of Burgundy, on behalf of her brother Edward IV at Gravesend on 6th July 1480, carried the spice plate at the christening of Edward’s youngest child on 11th November 1480 at Eltham, where Edward made Weston ‘ryught whelcum’, and was dispatched to France in August 1480 as part of an embassy to treat with the French king for the marriage of the dauphin to Elizabeth of York.117

It is probable that Weston acquired the altarpiece early in his priorship, between 1476 and August 1481, when he left for Rhodes, not returning to

works by Rubens, Titian, Van Dyck, Poussin and Rembrandt. 98 See Hutchins, op. cit. (note 59), p.395, Conway, op. cit. (note 2), pp.772–73; and Phillips, op. cit. (note 3), p.191, no.1842. 99 On Carl Joachim Hambro’s interest in art, see B. Bramsen and K. Wain: The Hambros, 1779–1979, London 1979, pp.212, 250 and 256, but no references are given. 100Letter from the Secretary of the Order to William St John Hope, 23rd November 1915, LDOSJ 1876, where it is stated that Everard (1842–1925) said ‘that his father got them from somewhere but he does not know where’. Peter Hambro has confirmed that the family has no knowledge or records relating to the panels, email to the present author, 21st November 2018. 101 O’Malley, op. cit. (note 6), pp.34–35. 102 Ibid., pp.126–27. Edward IV was king between 1461–70 and 1471–83. 103 Ibid., p.133. 104 See S. Phillips: The Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in Late Medieval England, Woodbridge 2009, p.76, for John Weston’s brother Edmund’s Lancastrian sympathies. 105 O’Malley, op. cit. (note 6), pp.127–31. 106 For the negotiations that took place before Weston’s appointment was sanctioned, see ibid., pp.133–37; J. Sarnowsky: ‘Kings and priors: the Hospitaller Priory of England in the later fifteenth century’, in idem, ed.: Mendicants, Military Orders and Regionalism in Later Medieval Europe, Aldershot 1999, pp.93–94; and C. Tyerman: England and the Crusades, 1095–1588, Chicago and London, 1988, pp.95–97. 107 H. Wijsman: ‘Patterns in patronage: distinction and imitation in the patronage of painted art by Burgundian countries (15th and Early 16th Century)’, in S. Gunn and A. Janse, eds: The Court as a Stage. New Histories of the Court, Woodbridge 2006, pp.53–69, at p.67. 108 For Edward’s ownership of manuscripts, see J. Backhouse: ‘Founders of the Royal Library: Edward IV and Henry VII as collectors of illuminated manuscripts’, in D. Williams, ed.: England in the fifteenth century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium, Woodbridge 1987, pp.23–26. 109 Ibid., pp.29–30; and T. Zitman: ‘King Edward IV of England’s collection of Flemish manuscripts: how a collection of illuminated manuscripts came about through emulation of Burgundian magnificence’, unpublished MA thesis (Leiden University, 2017), pp.30–32. 110 For the Donne Triptych, see Campbell, op. cit. (note 34), pp.374–91; and for Donne’s ownership of Netherlandish manuscripts, see J. Backhouse: ‘Sir John Donne’s Flemish manuscripts’, in P. Monks and D. Owen, eds: Medieval Codicology, Iconography, Literature, and Translation: Studies for Keith Val Sinclair, Leiden 1994, pp.48–57. 111 For the Prior attending the King’s council, see Phillips, op. cit. (note 104), p.124. For a letter of 1461 confirming the Prior of England as England’s premier lay baron, see Sarnowsky, op. cit. (note 106), p.85. For the position of premier lay baron, see D. Knowles: The Religious Orders in England. Volume II: The End of the Middle Ages, Cambridge 1955, p.304. 112 O’Malley, op. cit. (note 6), p.62; and for income of Clerkenwell, see Phillips, op. cit. (note 104), pp.5–7 and 11. 113 Sloane, op. cit. (note 61), pp.129, 190 and 199–200. 114 For Kings Henry II, John, Henry IV and Byzantine Emperor Manuel II visiting the priory, see W. Pinks: The History of Clerkenwell, ed. E. Wood, London 1881, pp.219–20; Fincham, op. cit. (note 6), p.16; and H. Sire: The Knights of Malta, New Haven and London 1994, p.184. For Henry VII staying at the priory in 1508, see Sloane, op. cit. (note 61), p.206. 115 Bezants, the Western name for coins minted in Byzantium, were adopted for use by crusaders in their arms; see A. Kazhdan et al., eds: The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, New York and Oxford 1991, I, p.287. 116 O’Malley, op. cit. (note 6), pp.137–38. 117 See A. Hanham, ed.: The Cely Letters: 1472–1488, London 1975, pp.86–89.

The Weston Altarpiece

London until 1485.118 Although carved altarpieces could be commissioned they were also made speculatively to sell in the open markets of Brussels and Antwerp.119 It could take up to two years to commission and take delivery of an altarpiece but purchasing on the open market would be much quicker,120 and did not necessarily translate into lower quality or esteem for the patron.121 Brussels altarpieces were sold in quantity to foreigners and exported across the networks of the Hanseatic League to foreign markets, including England and Scandinavia. These sales were dominated by standardised narratives of the Passion and Infancy.122 Painted wings were usually produced separately from the caisse and securing a panel with St John the Baptist on the exterior would not have been difficult.

Just as Hastings, Thwaites and Donne had positions in Calais that afforded them proximity to the Netherlandish art markets, so did Weston through his patronage of the merchant family Cely, who may have been the conduit for his acquisition of the altarpiece, as they were for other Netherlandish goods for him.123 Weston probably visited Calais in 1480 and 1481 and he may have visited Bruges in August 1481 on his journey to Rhodes.124 Although it is possible that he commissioned the altarpiece from an artist based in England, his connections would have enabled him to source it from Brussels or Antwerp.

The Order valued Netherlandish art and accumulated a substantial collection on Rhodes, which Weston would have observed while serving there.125 In terms of the altarpiece’s religious function, the feast day of John the Baptist was observed in all the Order’s churches.126 The Order also had a special allegiance to the Virgin Mary.127 Inscriptions on the Netherlandish cadaver tomb of William Weston (d.1540), originally in the north wall of the chancel of the priory church in Clerkenwell (it is now in the crypt), indicate devotion to the Virgin.128 It is probable that his uncle John Weston shared this devotion, which would explain why he chose an Infancy narrative containing Feasts of the Virgin for his altarpiece, as opposed to the more popular alternative of a Passion cycle. The site and nature of John Weston’s tomb is unknown but presumably, as with his nephew William and another successor as prior, Thomas Docwra, it was in the church at Clerkenwell.129 The altarpiece, with his arms prominently displayed on the Baptist panel,would have ensured that the deceased Weston would be long remembered, and prayed for, in the priory church, particularly on the first Monday in Lent, when the statues of the Order specified that ‘a solemn office for the dead should be celebrated for the Masters and the brethren who have departed this life.130

In summary, visual evidence suggests that the panels were painted by a follower of Rogier van der Weyden, possibly in the circle of the Master of the View of St Gudula. They are two of four panels flanking a carved wooden altarpiece, which was almost certainly commissioned or purchased by John Weston for the priory church in Clerkenwell, where it remained until probably being removed by John Tregonwell in 1540 to Milton Abbey. Scientific examination might well assist with dating the panels and the inscription, identifying the white paint in the family shield on the Christ panel and revealing the overpainted escutcheon on the Baptist panel together with any underdrawings that could be compared with those on the Rovigo panel.

118 Ibid., pp.108–09, 111–12 and O’Malley, op. cit. (note 6), p.139–41. 119 Jacobs, op. cit. (note 45), pp.149–57; and D. Ewing: ‘Marketing art in Antwerp, 1460–1560: Our Lady’s Pand’, The Art Bulletin 72 (1990), pp.558–84. For Brussels as an important supplier to the Antwerp fair, see ibid., p.561. 120 F. Vermeylen: ‘Exporting art across the globe: the Antwerp art market in the sixteenth century’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 50 (1999), p.16. 121 Jacobs, op. cit. (note 45), pp.201–03. 122 For export of carved altarpieces, see ibid., pp.159–61. For documentation of the contemporary importation of Early Netherlandish sculpture into England, see Woods, op. cit. (note 9), pp.106–42. For export sales being dominated by Passion and Infancy narratives, see Woods, op. cit. (note 76), p.93. 123 For Hastings, Thwaites and Donne in Calais, see Zitman, op. cit. (note 109), pp.30–33. For Weston’s close connections with the Cely family, including him buying Netherlandish goods through their Calais based relative, see Hanham, op. cit. (note 117); and A. Hanham: The Celys and their World: An English Merchant Family of the Fifteenth Century, Cambridge 1985, pp.10 and 201. 124 Hanham, op. cit. (note 117), pp.108–09 and 111. 125 M. Buhagiar: ‘The treasure of the Knights Hospitallers in 1530: reflections and art historical considerations’, Peregrinationes: Acta et documenta 1 (2000), pp.41–56. 126 C. Dondi: ‘The liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem (XII–XVI Century): with special reference to the practice of the Orders of the Temple and St John of Jerusalem’, PhD thesis (University of London, 2000), pp.118–19 and 122–24; and A. King: Liturgies of the Religious Orders, London 1955, p.252. 127 See M. Kishpaugh: ‘The Feast of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary in the Temple: an historical and literary study’, PhD thesis (Catholic University of America, Washington, 1941), p.129 for the Feast of The Presentation of The Virgin being adopted by the Order. 128 Pinks, op. cit. (note 114), pp.38–39. 129 Ibid., p.214, for the burial of Docwra. 130 Chapter-General of 1262, Statute 51; see E. King: ‘The thirteenthcentury statutes of the Knights Hospitallers: being a translation into English, together with an introduction and notes’, Library Committee, Order of St John of Jerusalem, Historical Pamphlets: No. 6 (London, 1933), p.16.

appendix

The eight complete Infancy and Life of the Virgin carved altarpieces catalogued in D’Hainaut-Zveny, ed.: Miroirs du sacré: Les Retables sculptés à Bruxelles XVe–XVIe siècles. Production, Formes et Usages, Brussels 2005.

BV: Birth of the Virgin; PV: Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple; MV: Marriage of the Virgin; Magi: Adoration of the Magi; PC: Presentation of Christ in the Temple; Egypt: Flight into Egypt; Doctors: Christ among the Doctors.

One painted panel on each side

Page and Location

163/4 Brussels

164/5 Brussels

189 Berlin

196 Stuttgart Left panel

PV

MV

PV

PV Left of caisse

Annunciation

Annunciation

Annunciation

MV Centre of caisse

Nativity

Nativity

Nativity

Nativity Right of caisse

Circumcision

Circumcision

Circumcision

Magi Right panel

Doctors

Magi

Magi

PC

Two painted panels on each side

Page

201/2 Rouen Outer left panel Inner left panel

MV Annunciation

210/11 Jäder

213/14 Skepptuna

216/7 Strängnäs BV

BV

BV PV

PV

PV Left of caisse Centre of caisse

Nativity Magi

MV Nativity

MV Nativity

MV Nativity Right of caisse

PC

Magi

Magi

Magi Inner right panel

Egypt Outer right panel

Doctors

Egypt Doctors

Egypt Doctors

Egypt Doctors

‘The crucifixion of St Peter’: Gerard Seghers, Michelangelo and Caravaggio

A large painting of the crucifixion of St Peter in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, is here attributed to Gerard Seghers and dated c.1620–21. It was inspired by Michelangelo’s fresco in the Pauline Chapel in the Vatican, possibly mediated through Caravaggio’s lost first version of his painting of the subject for the Cerasi Chapel in S. Maria del Popolo, Rome.

by anne delvingt

Over the past two centuries a large painting of the crucifixion of St Peter in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, has been attributed both to Caravaggio and to various of his followers (Fig.1). After a historical review, this article will propose an attribution to the Antwerp painter Gerard Seghers (1591–1651) based on stylistic comparisons and new connections with works of art in Flanders. It will also suggest iconographical parallels with works by Michelangelo and Caravaggio and in particular will re-examine the painting’s links with the lost first version of Caravaggio’s Crucifixion of St Peter, painted for the Cerasi Chapel in S. Maria del Popolo, Rome, c.1600–01.

Among the numerous Caravaggesque treatments of the subject painted in the first half of the seventeenth century, that in the Hermitage is the most intriguing.1 Its early history is unknown and its attribution has changed several times since Tsar Alexander I bought it in September 1808 as a Caravaggio. It was sold through Dominique-Vivant Denon by a Madame Levy de Montmorency in Paris.2 She has not been identified and no trace of that prestigious surname appears in Frits Lugt’s repertoires or in the Getty Provenance Index. The painting was not in the Giustiniani collection in Rome, as was assumed from 1864 to 1975.3 The only Crucifixion of St Peter inventoried in Palazzo Giustiniani, a lost painting by Luca

This article is based on a chapter of my PhD thesis, Gérard Seghers (1591–1651) et le caravagisme européen: entre l’Italie, l’Espagne et les anciens PaysBas (Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2009). It is published in loving memory of Stéfan Leclercq, inspiring vivacious Dionysian mind. 1 The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, inv. no.2182. S. Vszevolozhskaya and I. Linnik: Caravaggio and his Followers, Leningrad 1975, pls.11–12. 2 L. Kagané: ‘Denon et la Russie: intermédiaire pour l’Ermitage impérial’, in D. Gallo, ed: Les vies de DominiqueVivant Denon, Paris 2001, pp.296–97. 3 From G.F. Waagen: Die Gemäldesammlung in der Kaiserlichen Ermitage zu Saint-Petersbourg, Munich 1864, no.216, p.82, to Vszevolozhskaya and Linnik, op. cit. (note 1), n.p. 4 L. Salerno: ‘The picture gallery of Vicenzo Giustiniani 2, the inventory,

Part 1, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 102 (1960), p.94, no.6; and S. Danesi Squarzina: La collezione Giustiniani: Inventori, Milan 2003, p.187. 5 M. Cinotti, G.A. Dell’Acqua et al.: Cristoforo Roncalli detto il Pomarancio, Michelangelo Merisi detto il Caravaggio, Viviano Codazzi, Niccolo Codazzi (I Pittori Bergamaschi: il Seicento), Bergamo 1983, p.560; Vszevolozhskaya and Linnik, op. cit. (note 1), n.p. 6 Catalogue historique et raisonné, de tableaux par les plus grands peintres, principalement des écoles d’Italie, qui composent la rare et célèbre galerie du Saltarello, was in horizontal format (‘in forma di sopraporto’), measuring about 210 by 315 centimetres.4 In addition, it did not leave Italy until 1870.5 Although numerous Caravaggesque works from that collection did appear in a sale in Paris in 1808, including Caravaggio’s Lute Player (Hermitage), they did not include a Crucifixion of St Peter. 6 The Hermitage painting had in any case already appeared in a sale in Paris, on 20th July 1802.7 Catalogued under the name of Caravaggio, its subject and dimensions correspond in all respects to the Hermitage canvas. Its purchaser was François-Marie Neveu (1756–1808), government commissioner for Science and Arts in 1800,8 who was perhaps the intermediary for Madame Levy de Montmorency. The 1802 sale was anonymous, but the seller was perhaps Alexandre-Louis de Montaleau (1748–1808), whose name is written in the margin of several copies of the sale catalogue.9 Montaleau, Director of the Monnaie de Paris from 1791 to 1797, collected his works of art between 1795 and 1801 and died bankrupt. However, he was no longer the owner of the works in the 1802 sale because a certain ‘Janet’ had acquired his paintings and pawned them at the Mont de Piété.10 The history of the Crucifixion of St Peter before July 1802 is not known.

In the twentieth century, the Hermitage canvas was attributed to various Italian imitators or followers of Caravaggio, including, as well as Luca Saltarello,11 Bartolomeo Manfredi and Lionello Spada (1576–1622).12

Prince Giustiniani [. . .], Paris 1808. 7 A. Paillet and H. Delaroche, Catalogue de tableaux formant une réunion imposante d’articles [. . .] le 19 juillet 1802 et jours suivants, Paris 1802, no.23, p.13 (20th July). 8 B. Savoy: Patrimoine annexé. Les biens culturels saisis par la France en Allemagne autour de 1800, Paris 2003, pp.56–86. 9 J. Tuchlender: Les Roëttiers de la Tour et de Montaleau. Orfèvres, francs-maçons, industriels, XVIIIeXIXe siècles, Paris 2016. 10 Getty Provenance Index, sale catalogue F-33. 11 R. Longhi: ‘Ultimi studi sul Caravaggio e la sua cerchia’, Proporzioni 1 (1943), p.59, note 83; W. Friedländer: ‘The Crucifixion of St Peter: Caravaggio and Reni’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 8 (1945), no.24B, pl.63; and M. Marini: Michelangelo da Caravaggio, Rome 1974, p.290 and no.R-2, p.463. 12 On the attribution to Manfredi, see L. Zahn: Caravaggio, Berlin 1928, p.42. On the attribution to Spada, see S. Vszevolozhskaya, I. Grigorieva and T. Fomitchova: The Italian Painting in the Hermitage, 13th to 18th Century, Leningrad 1964, pls.125–26 ; and M.I. Shcherbachova: ‘Italianskije Caravaggisty V. Ermitaje, II (‘Italian Caravaggesques from the Hermitage’) Soobshchenija Gossudarstvennogo Ermitagea (Bulletin of the Hermitage Museum) 27 (1966), pp.21–24; and Vszevolozhskaya and Linnik, op. cit. (note 1), n.p.

‘The crucifixion of St Peter’ by Gerard Seghers

It is catalogued by the Hermitage Museum under this last name, with a question mark, but the attribution is not justified by style or typology.13 For a short time Spada’s work took ‘Caravaggio’s direction’, to quote Benedict Nicolson, when, c.1611, the painter returned to Bologna after a stay in Malta, where he saw Caravaggio’s works there.14 The degree of extravagant realism in the rendering of the flesh and facial expressions in the Hermitage canvas departs from the classical and ideal aspect of Spada’s works.

In a fundamental article, Walter Friedländer was the first to argue that the Hermitage Crucifixion of St Peter is a work of the Dutch or French school and probably a copy after the lost first version of the painting by Caravaggio for the Cerasi Chapel.15 Mia Cinotti and Gian Alberto Dell’Acqua thought that the painter must be Flemish: ‘the central idea of the cross is undoubtedly Caravaggio’s, but the strong naturalism and crude exuberance of some of the figures (the upright executioner on the left and the one in the feathered beret on the right) are more Flemish than Italian or French’.16 Cesare Brandi believed that the canvas is a copy of the first version of Caravaggio’s painting, perhaps by a French or Flemish painter in the first two decades of the seventeenth century.17 Maurizio Marini, with a Giustiniani provenance in mind, proposed that it was by Joachim von Sandrart.18 Von Sandrart (1606–88) lived from 1632 to 1635 in Palazzo Giustiniani, but the figures in his Caravaggesque paintings, which quote from works by Gerrit van Honthorst and from antiquities in Giustiniani’s collection, are less monumental in type than those in the Hermitage painting.19 For Alfred Moir, the Hermitage canvas is ‘undoubtedly Caravaggesque’, but the ‘chaotic and charged’ composition is opposed to the spirit of Caravaggio’s tendency to simplification.20 He instead compared the head of St Peter to works by Matthias Stomer (c.1600–c.1650). John Spike was the first to propose an Antwerp painter, Thedoor Rombouts.21

The Hermitage Crucifixion of St Peter offers sufficient stylistic and typological parallels to the works of another Antwerp painter, Gerard Seghers, to allow it to be attributed to him. In style, it is close to his paintings of the early 1620s, which emulated Caravaggio and the works Seghers had seen in Rome during the previous decade. A master in the Antwerp painters’ guild from 1608, Seghers departed for Italy after January 1611, when he was last documented in the city.22 Isaac Bullart reported that the painter spent several years in Italy in order to copy Italian works for the Goetkint brothers, merchants in Antwerp.23 The date of his arrival in Rome is not known and no works are documented from his Italian career, between c.1611 and 1617, or from his stay in Spain, between 1617 and c.1620.24 However, recent additions to his oeuvre, such as the Crucifixion in the Capuchins Convent of Monterosso al Mare,25 the Ecstasy of St Francis in the church of the Blessed Virgin of the Carmine, Soragna,26 and the Mystic marriage of St Catherine in the Real Academia de Bella Artes de San Fernando, Madrid,27 were most likely painted before his return to Antwerp in 1620. These last two works have great affinities with the elegant Caravaggism of Bartolomeo Cavarozzi (1587–1625).28 Seghers certainly knew that Roman master because during the summer of 1617 he travelled with him and Giovanni Battista Crescenzi from Rome to Genoa and Madrid under the patronage of Cardinal Antonio Zapata (1550–1635).29 In its rich Caravaggesque vocabulary, the Resurrection (Fig.2), Seghers’ first documented work after his return to Antwerp in 1620, demonstrates his fresh Italian visual experiences.30 It was largely inspired by the painting of the subject by Giovanni Baglione (1601–03), which Seghers surely saw on its side altar in the Gesù in Rome during the second decade of the seventeenth century.31

The Hermitage Crucifixion of St Peter may correspond to an important but previously unidentified work by Seghers mentioned by his biographer Isaac Bullart: ‘Seghers, having made a name for himself among the Italians and Spaniards, was also admired by the Flemish: for in his paintings was seen an elegance so similar to that of the greatest Italian painters that when he had finished this incomparable piece of St Peter crucified with his head down, the most experienced believed at first that it was by Michelangelo Caravaggio’.32 This painting also inspired a laudatory comment by Florent Le Comte (paraphrased from Bullart): ‘On his return to Antwerp, he [Seghers] undertook to paint the Martyrdom of St Peter, with all the circumstances of the crucifixion; it is one of the rarest and most singular pieces in all of

13 It does no appear in M. Pirondini: Leonello Spada (1576–1622), Manerba 2002. 14 B. Nicolson: Caravaggism in Europe, Turin 1989, pp.178–79. 15 Friedländer, op. cit. (note 11), p.153. 16 ‘l’idée centrale de la croix est indubitablement du Caravage mais le naturalisme emporté et l’exubérance grossière de certains personnages (le bourreau dressé à gauche et celui au béret à plume à droite) sont de marque plus flamande qu’italienne ou française’, Cinotti, Dell’Acqua et al., op. cit. (note 5), p.560; and A. Ottino della Chiesa and R. Morselli: Tout l’oeuvre peint de Caravage, Paris 1980, no.80, pp.103–04. 17 C. Brandi: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio [duplicated copy course], Università di Roma, 1972–73, pp.61–63, quoted in Cinotti, Dell’Acqua et al., op. cit. (note 5), p.561. 18 M. Marini: ‘“Michael Angelus Caravaggio Romanus”: Rassegna degli studi e proposte’, Studi barocchi, Rome 1978–79, I, p.77, note 10; and idem: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, ‘pictor praestantissimus’, Rome 1987, p.338. 19 C. Klemm: Joachim von Sandrart, Kunst-Werke und Lebens-Lauf, Berlin 1986. 20 A. Moir: Caravaggio and his Copyists, New York 1976, pp.145–46, figs.68–71. 21 J. Spike: Caravaggio, New York and London 2001, C 6 under no.24.2. 22 P. Rombouts and T. Van Lerius: De Liggeren, Antwerp 1864–76, I, p.424. D. Bieneck: Gerard Seghers, 1591–1651, Leben und Werk des Antwerpener Historienmalers, Lingen 1992; and C. Van De Velde: ‘In de ban van Caravaggio en Rubens: de schilder Gerard Seghers’, Belgisch tijdschrift voor Oudheidkunde en Kunstgeschiedenis 61 (1992), pp.181–99. 23 I. Bullart: Académie des sciences et des arts, Brussels 1682, II, p.494. 24 However various attempts to situate works by Seghers before 1620 are made in G. Kientz: ‘Spain, 1600–1620, new trends in painting’, in L.M. Helmus and V. Manuth, eds: Utrecht and the International Caravaggesque Movement, Paris 2014, pp.83–84, fig.3; and G. Kientz: ‘Velásquez, Caravaggio y el Caravaggismo en España’, in B. Navarrete Prieto, ed.: El Joven Velásquez, Seville 2015, p.515. 25 D. Sanguineti: Genova 1617: incontro con Bartolomeo Cavarozzi, in G. Zanelli: exh. cat. Bartolomeo Cavarozzi a Genova, Genoa (Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola) 2018, pp.53–57, fig.29. A. Delvingt, ‘Gérard Seghers, Cristo spirante tra la Madonna Addolorata e San Giovanni Evangelista’, in A. Cippelli 1. The crucifixion of St Peter, here attributed to Gerard Seghers. c.1620–22. Canvas, 232 by 201 cm. (State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg).

and A. Lercari, eds: Il convento dei Cappuccini di Monterosso al Mare, Genoa 2019, II, pp.590–92 26 G. Papi: Bartolomeo Cavarozzi, Soncino 2015, p.82, fig.79. It is attributed to Maino in R. Contini: ‘Polyphony and polycentrism: Spanish painting in the seventeenth century’ in M. Eissenhauer et al.: exh. cat. The Spanish Golden Age. Painting and Sculpture in the Time of Velásquez, Berlin (Gemäldegalerie) and Munich (Kunsthalle der HypoKulturstiftung) 2016, p.43. 27 Papi, op. cit. (note 26), pp. 79–81, pl.lxxxvi. G. Papi: ‘Indagini sulla fase matura di Bartolomeo Cavarozzi’, Arte Cristiana 89 (2001), pp.435–36, fig.13. 28 The first publication on Seghers’ link with Cavarozzi is M.G. Guardata: ‘Gerard Seghers e l’ambiente gesuitico romano (Anversa 1591–1651)’ in A. Zuccari, ed.: I Caravaggeschi: percorsi & protagonisti, Milan 2010, pp.659–66. Guardata did not cite any sources, as pointed out in Papi, op. cit. (note 26), ‘Da Bartolomeo Cavarozzi a Gerard Seghers’, pp.79–85, at p.79. See also Kientz, op. cit. 2014 (note 24), p.82; and Kientz, op. cit. (note 24), p.511. 29 M. von Bernstorff: ‘Da Roma a Genova e alla corte di Spagna. Il viaggio di Crescenzi, Cavarozzi e Seghers come esempio del transfer artistico tra Anversa, Roma e Madrid’ in Zanelli, op. cit. (note 25), pp.7–29. A. Delvingt: Gérard Seghers (1591–1651) et le caravagisme européen: entre l’Italie, l’Espagne et les anciens Pays-Bas, unpublished Ph.D. diss. (Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2009), pp.28–80, ‘Bullart, Baglione, Zapata et Cavarozzi’ . 30 A. Delvingt: exh. cat. Gérard Seghers (1591–1651), un peintre flamand entre Maniérisme et Caravagisme, Valenciennes (Musée des Beaux-Arts) 2011, pp.39–45, and p.26, fig.7 31 For this lost painting, see R. Longhi: ‘Govanni Baglione e il quadro del processo’, Paragone 163 (1963), pp.23–31. 32 ‘Segers s’estant signalé parmy les Italiens & les Esagnols, se fit encore admirer parmy les Flamens: car on vit en ses Tableaux une élégance si ressemblante à celle des plus grands Peintres d’Italie, que lors qu’il eut achevé cette pièce incomparable de Saint Pierre Crucifié la teste en bas; les plus experimentez crurent d’abord qu’elle estoit, de Michel Ange Carovage’, Bullart, op. cit. (note 23), p.494; A. Delvingt: ‘“L’Académie des sciences et des arts” d’Isaac Bullart (1682) et les peintres illustres du PaysBas et autres en deçà des monts’, in M.-C. Heck, ed.: L’Histoire de l’histoire de l’art septentrional au XVIIe siècle, Turnhout 2009, pp.67–78.

‘The crucifixion of St Peter’ by Gerard Seghers

‘The crucifixion of St Peter’ by Gerard Seghers

‘The crucifixion of St Peter’ by Gerard Seghers

Opposite 2. The resurrection, by Gerard Seghers. c.1620. Oil on canvas, 324 by 240 cm. (Musée du Louvre, Paris; Bridgeman Images). 3. The raising of the Cross, by Gerard Seghers. c.1623–25. Oil on canvas, 535 by 395 cm. (St Charles Borromeo church, Antwerp; Bridgeman Images).

Flanders; it is noticeable that he had adopted the manner of Manfredi’.33 Both writers date the painting to after Seghers’ return to Antwerp, c.1620, when his style was Caravaggesque.34 Le Comte qualifies it as ‘manner of Manfrede’, referring to ‘Bartholomaei Manfredi Manier’, a formula coined by Von Sandrart in his biography of Seghers.35 Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582–1622) indeed successfully adopted and developed Caravaggio’s style and themes after 1610. But rather than being a precise reference to Manfredi’s style and compositions, ‘the manner of Manfredi’ was intended simply to characterise Seghers’ Caravaggesque idiom. Sandrart’s terms defining Seghers’ ‘Manier’ are exactly those that Gian Pietro Bellori had used three years earlier to describe Caravaggio’s style.36

The Crucifixion of St Peter mentioned by Bullart and Le Comte is not further documented in the seventeenth century. It is not cited by Von Sandrart among Seghers’ Caravaggesque paintings nor is it mentioned by Baptiste Descamps or Joshua Reynolds.37 It is not known, therefore, where Seghers’ ‘incomparable piece’ was originally installed. It was surely not the large version (approximately 250 by 202 centimetres) of the subject attributed to Seghers that belonged to the canon of Antwerp cathedral and art lover Pierre André Joseph Knijff (1713–84), which was sold three times in Antwerp, in 1785, 1802 and 1817. The catalogues of these sales do not refer to this painting as Caravaggesque in style.38 As it was apparently a brutal composition with ferocious figures, it was perhaps close to the one Rubens painted c.1638–40 (St Peter’s church, Cologne), also with six characters, showing the apostle writhing under the effect of his crucifixion.39 Rubens departed from Caravaggio’s final version in S. Maria del Popolo, which does not involve any demonstration of physical effort or excessive suffering.40

The Hermitage Crucifixion of St Peter can be stylistically linked with other paintings by Seghers. It must have been executed at the same time or shortly after his Resurrection, painted in 1620. Both canvases possess the same intense radiating yellowish light, creating strong shadows that vigorously outline shapes and illuminate the white surfaces. They both include robust, plastic forms and their protagonists have similar enormous fingers, almost rectangular phalanges (the old man with a shovel, for example) and thick hair. Seghers also uses local colours with a Caravaggesque vocabulary of multicoloured feathered hats and, on the right, gesticulating bravos. He locates the scene in an undifferentiated exterior with succulent plants all of the same type. In an illusionistic – and very Caravaggesque – way Seghers depicts the foot of St Peter’s cross at the foreground edge of the painting. The impressively monumental body of the saint, strongly illuminated and sharply outlined against the dark background, seems to slide out of the frame towards the faithful. Seghers depicts the body of the martyr with raw realism, emphasising his wrinkled and reddened flesh, mutilated by his torment.

Seghers designed the monumental figure of Christ in his Raising of the Cross in Antwerp with the same naturalistic emphasis (Fig.3).41 Large nails also crush the flesh into which they sink, Christ’s feet are distorted by the strong traction exerted on his muscles and his toes are large. In both works the executioners – who all have robust and enormous hands – strain to lift the cross with a rope and Seghers depicted the cross in the same unusual way, combining a greenish tree trunk for the upright with a transverse board. The Hermitage painting can also be compared to Seghers’s Ecstasy of St Francis, another large Caravaggesque work,painted c.1622–24 (Fig.5).42 The soft and refined depiction of the executioner wearing a feathered beret in the Hermitage painting closely recalls the face of St Francis, with very large eyebrows terminating in a shadow, delicately wrinkled temples, pockets under the eyes and a fine, straight nose. In his Christ at the column,

33 ‘A son retour à Anvers, il entreprit de peindre le Martyre de saint Pierre, avec toutes les circonstances du crucifiement ; c’est un morceau des plus rares et des plus singuliers qui soit dans toute la Flandre; l’on y remarque qu’il avoit pris la manière du Manfrede’, F. Le Comte: Cabinet des singularitez d’architecture, peinture, sculpture et gravure, Paris 1699, II, p.308. 34 See D. Roggen and H. Pauwels: ‘Het caravaggistisch œuvre van Gerard Seghers’, Gentse Bijdragen tot de Kunstgeschiedenis en Oudheidkunde 16 (1955–56), pp.255–301. 35 J. von Sandrart: Teutsche Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste in ursprünglicher Form neu gedrukt mit einer Einleitung von Christian Klemm, Nördlingen 1994, p.301. 36 For these, see Delvingt, op. cit. (note 30), pp.43–44; and G.B. Bellori: Le vite de’ pittori, scultori a architetti moderni [Rome 1672], Paris 1991, p.18. 37 Von Sandrart, op. cit. (note 35), p.301; J.-B. Descamps: Vie des peintres flamands, allemands et hollandais, Paris 1753–63, I, pp.387–88; idem: Le voyage pittoresque de la Flandre et du Brabant, Paris 1769; and J. Reynolds: A Journey to Flanders and Holland, Cambridge 1996 38 Catalogue de la riche, rare et célèbre collection de tableaux [. . .] qui formoient le cabinet de feu Mr. Pierre André Joseph Knyff [. . .], dont la vente se fera [. . .] le 18 juillet 1785 [. . .], Antwerp 1785, no.1; Le catalogue d’une collection de tableaux vendus à Anvers le 16 juin 1802, Antwerp 1802, no.6; Catalogue d’une belle et riche collection des tableaux, dont la vente se fera le 1 septembre 1817 [. . .], Antwerp 1817, no.232. 39 M. Hanstein: Peter Paul Rubens’ Kreuzigung Petri: ein Bild aus der Peterkirche zu Köln, Cologne 1996. 40 P. Jansson: ‘Some reflections on Caravaggio’s religious art based on “The Conversion of St Paul” and “The Crucifixion of St Peter”’, in New Caravaggio, Papers Presented at the International Conference in Uppsala and Rome, Florence 2013, pp.122–23. 41 Delvingt, op. cit. (note 30), p.23, fig.2. 42 Ibid., p.23, fig.3.

‘The crucifixion of St Peter’ by Gerard Seghers

painted in the 1630s (Fig.4), the depiction of the crouching executioner and Christ’s monumental body with large torso and wide hips recalls the Crucifixion of St Peter. 43

The head of St Peter is brightly painted, with sparkling eyes, shaggy eyebrows and twinklingly iridescent locks of hair. It is strikingly like the head of the saint in Anthony van Dyck’s Crucifixion of St Peter (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels).44 Van Dyck’s martyr also has a massive face, coarse features, an air of hallucination, reddish flesh and disorderly hair and beard. Seghers and Van Dyck may have used the same Antwerp model for their St Peters. The early provenance of Van Dyck’s painting, dated c.1615–16, is not known. Its vertical composition, verdant setting and bright blue sky evoke Venetian painting more than Caravaggio.

Although the original location of Seghers’s Crucifixion of St Peter remains unknown, it appears to have been in the Southern Low Countries in the first half of the seventeenth century. The theme is relatively rare in this region, but there are a few later Flemish works that appear to demonstrate firsthand knowledge of the painting, which was not engraved. In the second half of the 1640s Gaspar de Crayer (1584–1669) painted the subject for the parish church of Sint-Pieters-Leeuw, near Brussels.45 His crucified St Peter echoes exactly Seghers’s and his cross also consists of a trunk and a plank. A preparatory oil sketch by De Crayer (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam) is even more clearly inspired by Seghers in its inclusion of a crouched executioner with a moustache and a soldier to the left holding a shovel.46 A Crucifixion of St Peter (Fig.6) by Antoon Sallaert (1594–1650) also closely repeats Seghers’ figure of the martyr and the design of the cross.47 Sallaert’s painting, dating from the 1630s, also quotes Caravaggio’s Crucifixion of St Andrew (1607; Cleveland Museum of Art) in the executioner in profile on the right, wearing an exuberantly plumed hat.48 Caravaggio’s original was painted in Naples in 1607 and taken to Spain in 1610. Sallaert never visited Italy or Spain but he could have seen the copy made in Naples that was taken north via Amsterdam and Antwerp in 1619,49 the so-called ‘Back-Vega’ version now in London.50 An anonymous Crucifixion of St Peter in Lo-Reninge owes a debt both to Seghers’ Crucifixion of St Peter and his Raising of the Cross in St Charles Borromeo church, Antwerp.51 However, the artist amends the collapsed pose of St Peter’s body by depicting the saint’s arms in a convex position. This painting is surely the former main altarpiece of the church in Lo-Renige that in 1639 was replaced by Jan Boeckhorst’s Golgotha.

The circumstances of St Peter’s crucifixion are given in the apocryphal Acts of Peter and The Golden Legend. 52 Peter, the first bishop of Rome, was crucified in about AD 64, probably on the site of S. Pietro in Montorio.53 The apostle wanted to be crucified head downwards and he addressed the crowd gathered around him to explain his intention.54 Michelangelo followed the Scriptures to the letter in his immense fresco in the Pauline Chapel in the Vatican (Fig.8).55 He was the first painter to represent the raising of St Peter’s cross, breaking with the old vertical presentations of the crucifixion to create a dynamic diagonal composition.56 The body of the martyr slipping tragically from the cross dramatises the scene even further. Although Seghers clearly borrowed the figure of St Peter from Michelangelo, the relationship between the two paintings has not previously been noted in studies of the Hermitage Crucifixion of St Peter. As Seghers was in contact with Cardinal Antonio Zapata in Rome, he may have had access to Michelangelo’s fresco. However, since the painting’s composition mirrors the fresco, it is possible that his model was the engraving after the fresco made before 1568 by Giovanni Battista de Cavalieri (1525–1601), which shows it in reverse.57 Seghers was especially interested by the monumental body of the saint, sliding off the cross, and in particular the lateral movement of his knees and hips. He was also inspired by the depiction of the martyr’s broad torso and the way his arms form a V on the cross in a naturalistic position that had no parallels in earlier representations of the scene. The executioners supporting the cross in the painting also have counterparts in Michelangelo’s fresco.

4. Christ at the column, by Gerard Seghers, c.1630–35. Oil on canvas, 268 by 144 cm. (St Michael’s church, Ghent; © photograph the author). Opposite 5. The ecstasy of St Francis, by Gerard Seghers. c.1622–24. Oil on canvas, 236 by 161 cm. (Musée du Louvre, Paris).

43 Bieneck, op. cit. (note 22), A 77. 44 N. De Poorter et al.: Van Dyck, The Complete Paintings, New Haven and London 2004, no.I. 43., pp.60–61 (the Hermitage’s painting as ‘Caravaggesque’) and A. Vergara and F. Lammertse: The Young Van Dyck, London 2013, no.11, p.128, note 10, fig.45 (as ‘follower of Caravaggio, Lionello Spada?’). 45 Oil on canvas, 375 by 250 cm. See H. Vlieghe: Gaspard de Crayer, Brussels 1972, A 113, fig.112. 46 Oil/panel, 64 by 44.5 cm. See H. Vlieghe: ‘De marteldood van de H. Petrus, een olieverfschets door Gaspard de Crayer’, Bulletin Museum Boijmansvan Beuningen 17 (1966), pp.13–22. 47 A.-C. Olbrechts: ‘Onvermoede schatten in de Sint-Pieterskerk (Denderwindeke)’, Het Nieuwsblad (20th December 2005). The painting was restored in 2010 by Frederik Cnockaert, Kerat Fine Art Studio, Wervik. 48 The Cleveland Museum of Art, inv. no.1976.2, see E.E. Benay: Exporting Caravaggio. The Crucifixion of Saint Andrew (Cleveland Masterwork, IV), Cleveland and London 2017. 49 A. Bredius and N; De Roever: ‘Pieter Lastman en François Venant’, Oud Holland 4 (1886), pp.7–8, fully published in D. Bodart: Louis Finson, Brussels 1970, pp.234–35. 50 Benay, op. cit. (note 48), pp.105–38. 51 Oil on panel, 300 by 240 cm: see KIK-IRPA photo m12572 (as school of Pieter II Claeissens). 52 W. Schneemelcher: ‘The Acts of Peter’, New Testament Apocrypha, Louisville 2003, pp.311–21; and J. De Voragine: The Golden Legend, Readings on the Saints, Princeton 2012, pp.345–46. 53 P. Fehl: ‘Michelangelo’s Crucifixion of St. Peter: notes on the identification of the locale of the action’, The Art Bulletin 53 (1971), p.327. 54 W. Braunfels: ‘Petrus, Apostel’, in Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, Rome, Freibourg and Vienna 1976, VIII, p.171. 55 W.E. Wallace: ‘Narrative and religious expression in Michelangelo’s Pauline Chapel’, Artibus et Historiae 19 (1989), pp.107–21. 56 L. Steinberg: Michelangelo’s Last Paintings: The Conversion of St Paul and the Crucifixion of St Peter in the Capella Paolina, Vatican Palace, London, 1975. 57 See Fehl, op. cit. (note 53), p.331, fig.4.

‘The crucifixion of St Peter’ by Gerard Seghers

‘The crucifixion of St Peter’ by Gerard Seghers

It is possible, however, that the influence of Michelangelo on Seghers’ painting was mediated through Caravaggio’s lost first version of the Crucifixion of St Peter. The subjects of the two works that Caravaggio painted between September 1600 and May 1601 for the Cerasi Chapel are the same as those depicted by Michelangelo in the Pauline Chapel.58 According to Baglione, Cerasi rejected the paintings, which passed into the collection of Cardinal Giacomo Sannesio (c.1557–1621) in Rome.59 The first Crucifixion of St Peter was last recorded in Madrid in 1702, and no description or proven copies are known.60 Its dimensions and its support must have been the same as those of its pendant, the first version of the Conversion of St Paul (Fig.9), which is painted on a cypress-wood panel measuring about 237 by 189 centimetres.61 This painting was also for a time in Spain but by the time it was recorded in Francesco Maria Balbi’s collection in Genoa in 1682 it had been separated from its pendant.62 Caravaggio executed two new versions for the Cerasi Chapel before May 1605, largely so that they would fit better into the narrow architectural space of the newly built chapel designed by Carlo Maderno.63 His second Conversion of St Paul is more refined than the first and its composition less crowded.64 This raises the question of how different Caravaggio’s first version of the Crucifixion of St Peter was from the second. His first Conversion of St Paul was inspired by the version painted by Michelangelo fifty years earlier.65 His St Paul is also lying in the foreground, his legs bent back and his body turned towards the spectator. In his second version, Caravaggio reversed St Paul’s position, so that his head points downwards. Since Caravaggio was inspired by Michelangelo for his first St Paul, it is possible that his first Crucifixion of St Peter similarly reproduced the crucified martyr and the monumental and naturalistic qualities of the fresco.

6. The crucifixion of St Peter, by Antoon Sallaert. c.1630s. Oil on canvas, 400 by 280 cm. (St Peter’s church, Denderwindeke; © 2014 Kerat bv Kunstatelier-Frederik Cnockaert). 7. The martyrdom of St Lievin, by Gerard Seghers, 1633. Oil on canvas, 259 by 194 cm. (St Bavo’s cathedral, Ghent; © Lukasweb).

The Michelangelesque aspects of Seghers’ painting may conceivably, therefore, be an echo of Caravaggio’s lost painting.66 The Hermitage canvas is comparable in size to the first version of the Conversion of St Paul – it is just a little wider – and it has similar monumental characters in the foreground.67 Some scholars, however have argued that the diagonal compositional scheme of Segher’s painting, with the apostle’s head in the middle of the picture and not on its right, could not correspond to the composition of

58 L. Spezzaferro: ‘La Capella Cerasi e il Caravaggio’, in M.G. Bernardini et al.: Caravaggio, Carracci, Maderno: La cappella Cerasi in Santa Maria del Popolo, Milan 2001, pp.9–35. 59 G. Baglione: Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti: Dal Pontificato di Gregorio XIII fino a tutto quello d’Urbano VIII, Rome 1642, p.137. 60 A. Vannugli: ‘Caravaggio: l’ultima traccia della’ ‘Crocifissione di San Pietro’ Sannesio’, Bollettino d’Arte 107 (1999), p.104. 61 As the autograph first version for Cerasi: A. Morassi: ‘Il Caravaggio di Casa Balbi’, Emporium (1947), p.98; and idem: exh. cat. Pittura del Seicento in Liguria, Genoa (Palazzo Reale) 1947, no.135, p.99. For the contract with dimensions and medium, see D. Mahon: ‘Egregius in Urbe Pictor, Caravaggio

revised’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 93 (1951), p.226. 62 P. Boccardo: ‘Da Roma a Madrid, da Madrid a Genova, da Genova a Roma: Vicende della “Converzione di Saul” del Caravaggio sullo sfondo del mercato internazionale delle opere d’arte nel Seicento’, in G. Lepri, ed.: Capolavori da scoprire. Odescalchi e Pallavicini, Milan 2006, p.89. 63 Spezzaferro, op. cit. (note 58), p.14; and A. Mignosi Tantillo: ‘La cappella Cerasi, Vicende de une decorazione’, in Bernardini et al., op. cit. (note 58), pp.57–63. 64 M.G. Bernardini: ‘‘La quale istoria è affato senza azzione’, la Converzione di san Paolo di Caravaggio’, in Bernardini et al., op. cit. (note 58), pp.87–107; and R. Vodret: exh. cat. Il Caravaggio Odescalchi: Le due versione di S. Paolo a confronto, Rome (S. Maria del Popolo) 2006. 65 W. Friedländer: Caravaggio Studies, Princeton 1955, p.184. 66 Friedländer, op. cit. (note 11), p.155; Nicolson, op. cit. (note 14), p.81 and fig.35; and S. Ebert-Schifferer: Caravaggio: the Artist and his Work, Los Angeles 2012, p.279, note 152. 67 In 1943 Longhi first judged the Odescalchi panel as ‘cosa fiamminga del 1620’: Longhi, op. cit. (note 11), p.101. R. Longhi: exh. cat. Mostra del Caravaggio e dei caravaggeschi, Milan (Palazzo Reale) 1951, p.19, no.13 (as Caravaggio). 68 Ottino della Chiesa and Morselli, op. cit. (note 16), no.80, p.104 (attributed to Caravaggio). H. Nolin: ‘“Non piacquero al Padrone”. A reexamination of Caravaggio’s Cerasi “Crucifixion of St Peter”’, Rutgers Art Review 24 (2008), pp.53 (as Luca Saltarello), where it is suggested that Domenico Cresti’s lost Crucifixion of St Peter, formerly in St Peter’s, Rome (c.1611), which is known through an engraving by Jacques Callot, better reflected Caravaggio’s first St Peter. 69 Vszevolozhskaya and Linnik, op. cit. (note 1), pls.11–12.

‘The crucifixion of St Peter’ by Gerard Seghers

Caravaggio’s first version of the Conversion of St Paul since it does not take account of how the viewer would have seen the painting while entering the chapel.68 Seghers may, however, have adapted Caravaggio’s composition, since his painting was presumably intended as an altarpiece that would have been seen straight on and not from the side, like Caravaggio’s.

It can be assumed that Seghers had the opportunity to study Caravaggio’s first versions of the Cerasi Chapel paintings when he was in Rome in the 1610s under the patronage of Cardinal Zapata and potentially had access to Cardinal Giacomo Sannesio’s collection. This supposition is strengthened by the fact that Seghers borrowed a figure from Caravaggio’s first Conversion of St Paul (of which no copy or engravings are known), the bearded soldier raising his shield to defend himself from the vision of Christ. Seghers reversed the figure’s pose for that of the plumed bravo pulling on the rope on the right of his painting. The position of the legs is identical, as is the design of his extremely muscular arm. Seghers, who often drew on more than one source when creating his compositions, could have been inspired by both of Caravaggio’s first versions of the Cerasi Chapel paintings when creating his Crucifixion of St Peter.

It has been suggested that the left side of the Hermitage canvas, in which the three executioners are supporting the cross, is superior to the rest and was copied from the lost Caravaggio, whereas the figures on the right side, including the man with the plumed hat, are additions by an artist of the Flemish school.69 The old man on the far right and the two soldiers behind the cross do not appear in an anonymous variant once

8. The crucifixion of St Peter, by Michelangelo. c.1545–50. Fresco, 625 by 661 cm. (Pauline chapel, Vatican City; Bridgeman Images).

‘The crucifixion of St Peter’ by Gerard Seghers

9. The conversion of St Paul, by Caravaggio. c.1600–01. Oil on cypress panel, 237 by 189 cm. (Palazzo Odescalchi, Rome; Bridgeman Images). 10. The crucifixion of St Peter, by an anonymous painter. c.1601–50. Oil on canvas, 245 by 225 cm. (Formerly Castello Santa Margherita Ligure).

in the Castello Santa Margherita Ligure (Fig.10).70 This canvas has been lost and its provenance is unknown, as is also the case with a weaker copy in S. Martino, Verezzi, Liguria.71 The slightly different typologies of the figures indicate another hand than Seghers’, probably an Italian artist of the first half of the seventeenth century. The chronology of these versions and their relationship to the Hermitage painting are difficult to define. The two helmeted soldiers behind the cross and the old man at far right in the Hermitage canvas seem to be Seghers’ invention. Similar soldiers, also leaning on pikes, appear in his Martyrdom of St Lievin. The old man as spectator on the edge of the Crucifixion of St Peter could also be an original idea of Seghers, since it does not appear in previous representations of this subject. Might the Santa Margherita Ligure Crucifixion of St Peter, which lacks these ‘Flemish’ elements, have been more faithful to Caravaggio’s original? In which case, had the latter passed through Genoa before arriving in Madrid, where it is documented in 1647?72

Alfred Moir has suggested that the three executioners holding the cross in the Hermitage painting are borrowed from Caravaggio’s lost original because they appear also in two slightly later Italian versions.73 In a painting by Ventura Salimbeni made for an unknown destination (c.1610–12; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Rome),74 the executioners’ faces are scarcely visible, as in Seghers’s painting. Moir also refers to a drawing by Ricci da Novara,75 preparatory to his fresco in S. Maria in Traspontina, Rome, dated 1619.76 The executioner supporting the cross in the centre looks upwards, exactly as in the Hermitage painting and there are also similarities in St Peter’s reversed head as well as in his arms and torso and the four nails. Caravaggio’s first St Peter appears, therefore, to have been a model for painters present in Rome in the first two decades of the seventeenth century.

Friedländer even argued that Rubens’s Raising of the Cross (1610–11; Antwerp Cathedral) could be a development of Caravaggio’s ‘first and imperfect’ idea, reflected also in the Hermitage canvas.77 Rubens’s and Seghers’ paintings share a general compositional scheme, in which the cross tilts obliquely to the left and an executioner to the right pulls it upright with a rope. They also have some figures in common, such as the two executioners pushing and supporting the cross, who appear also in Ricci da Novarra’s drawing.78 A similar comparison can be made with Rubens’s earlier Raising of the Cross, painted in Rome in 1602 and known through a copy in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame-du-Puy, Grasse.79 Rubens admired Caravaggio’s inventions – for example, he made a copy of his Entombment of Christ (c.1602–04; Vatican Museums), painted for S. Maria in Vallicella, Rome – so it is possible that his 1602 Raising of the Cross could have been inspired by Caravaggio’s first Crucifixion of St Peter, executed only a year earlier. Seghers in turn created an original interpretation of the Crucifixion of St Peter that formed an inspiring and imposing example of Caravaggism in Flanders around 1620.

70 Marini, op. cit. (note 11), R-2, pp.290, 463 (as Luca Saltarello). 71 M. Bartoletti: ‘Una nuova traccia caravaggesca in Diocesi di Albenga-Imperia “La Crocifissione di San Pietro”’, unpublished lecture, Museo Diocesano, Albenga, 13th October 2012. 72 Bernardini, op. cit. (note 64), p.87, fig.5. 73 Moir, op. cit. (note 20), p.145. 74 Oil on canvas, 124 by 97 cm. See B. Santi and C. Strinati: exh. cat. Siena & Roma: Raffaello, Caravaggio e i protagonisti di un legame antico, Siena (S. Maria della Scala and Palazzo Squarcialupi) 2005–06, no.5.10 (c.1610) and, for Manetti’s pendant, no.6.8 75 Moir, op. cit. (note 20), fig.69. 76 M. Mercalli: ‘Momenti e aspetti dell’attivita’ di Giovan Battista Ricci da Novara a Roma: I cicli della Traspontina’, Annuario del Istituto di Storia dell’Arte 1 (1981/82), pp.34–42, fig.2. 77 Friedländer, op. cit. (note 11), p.155. 78 F. Baudouin: ‘De kruisoprichting van Pieter Paul Rubens’, in R. D’Hulst et al., eds: De kruisoprichting van Pieter Paul Rubens, Brussels 1992, pp.54–55. 79 H. Vlieghe: Saints, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, 8, Turnhout 1972, II, pp.65–68, no.112, fig.35.

Christian VII of Denmark’s lost British portraits

In 1768–69 the young King Christian VII of Denmark visited London and Paris, where several portraits of him were painted. Three were by artists born or working in Britain – Angelica Kauffmann, Edward Cunningham, known as Calze, and Matthew Peters. All are now lost, but evidence about the commissions survives in copies and prints, contemporary descriptions and documents in the Danish State Archives.

by sara ayres

The history of art naturally privileges extant works, yet the histories of lost objects, preserved in archival ephemera, copies and reproductions, can shed important new light on artists’ biographies and commercial practices and on the interests of their clients. This article will discuss the creation in 1768 of now-lost portraits of Christian VII, King of Denmark (1749–1808), by three artists, one, Angelica Kauffmann (1741–1807), who was then working in Britain, and two who were British but worked abroad, Edward Francis Cunningham, known as Calze (c.1742–95), and Matthew William Peters (1742–1814). Made within a few months of one another during the king’s Grand Tour of Northern Europe that began in May 1768, fifteen months after he had come to the throne at the age of sixteen, these portraits collectively memorialise a short, bright moment in the career of an absolute monarch whose life was otherwise dominated by mental illness.1 In this series of portraits, the young Danish king was briefly celebrated as a modern, enlightened prince.

By undertaking a Grand Tour, Christian was following a long tradition of the Oldenburg monarchy. Johann Friedrich Struensee (1737–72), who would have such a definitive impact on Danish political history, was contracted to accompany him as his personal doctor.2 In 1766 Christian had married Princess Caroline Matilda (1751–75), the youngest sister of George III of Great Britain; in 1770 she began an affair with Struensee, by then royal physician, resulting in the birth of a daughter widely thought to be his, but who was recognised by the king as his own. Struensee’s favour with the king and queen catalysed his political career, culminating in the effective transfer of absolute power to him during the king’s mental disintegration in 1771. Struensee’s enlightened, radically reforming government fell

I would like to acknowledge the generosity of Charlotte Christensen, Peter Kristiansen and Mette Birkedal Bruun, and the financial support of the Paul Mellon Foundation, the Centre for Privacy Studies at Copenhagen University and the Nordea Foundation. 1 Ulrik Langen, Christian VII’s biographer, titled his life of the king The Powerless One: U. Langen: Den Afmægtige: en Biografi om Christian 7, Copenhagen 2008. 2 For accounts in English, see M. Bregnsbo et al., eds: Scandinavia in the Age of Revolution: Nordic Political Cultures 1740-1820, London 2016; and S. Tillyard: A Royal Affair: George III and his Troublesome Siblings, London 2006. On the king’s insanity, see J. Schioldann: ‘Struensée’s memoir on the situation in January 1772, when he, the queen and members of their party were arrested at Christiansborg Palace during a coup sanctioned by the king’s stepmother, Juliane Marie of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Convicted of lèse majesté, Struensee was executed a few months later and Caroline Matilda was divorced and exiled to Celle, in the Electorate of Hanover, where she remained until her death in 1775. Excluded from power by the successive regencies of his half brother, Hereditary Prince Frederick, and his son by Caroline Matilda, Crown Prince Frederick, later Frederick VI, the king survived until 1808, shortly before his sixtieth birthday.

Passing over the borders of Denmark, which in 1768 lay somewhat further south than today, the king’s suite travelled through Germany, moving overland to Holland and from there by sea to first London and then Paris. Caroline Matilda had been left behind in Denmark with the couple’s infant son, on the grounds that her presence would make it impossible for the king to travel incognito. Yet, despite masquerading as the ‘Prince of Travendhal’, his feted arrival by river and the conspicuous accommodation of his extensive suite at St James’s Palace easily identified the king to London’s curious population.3 He hired the Haymarket opera house to host a vast masked ball for which over 3,000 tickets were issued, attracting a storm of publicity.4 Under the care of Struensee, the king’s mental health improved. Horace Walpole saw him several times during his stay in London in the summer of 1768, writing to George Montagu on 13th August:

I came to town to see the Danish King. He is as diminutive as if he came out of a kernel in the fairy tales. He is not ill made, nor weakly made, though so small, and though his face is pale and

of the King (1772): “Christian VII of Denmark”’, History of Psychiatry 24 (2013), pp.227–47; and A. Chery: ‘Le pouvoir des Lumières et l’effroi onaniste: les cas de Christian VII de Danemark et Louis XVI de France’, Medizinhistorisches Journal 53 (2018), pp.263–81. For an iconography of Christian VII, see C. Bech and P. Eller: ‘Christian 7’, Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, biografiskleksikon.lex.dk/ Christian_7. (2014), accessed 12th January 2022. 3 M. Doderer-Winkler: Magnificent Entertainments: Temporary Architecture for Georgian Festivals, London 2013. 4 A. Ribeiro: ‘The King of Denmark’s masquerade’, History Today 27 (1977) www.historytoday.com/archive/ king-denmark’s-masquerade, accessed 12th January 2022.

Christian VII of Denmark’s lost British portraits

delicate. It is not at all ugly [. . .] Still he has more royalty than folly in his air: and considering he is not twenty, is as well as one expects any King in a puppet-show to be.5

The king’s presence in London and then in Paris, where he stayed from October 1768 to January 1769, produced a demand for his portrait. In London the king sat for Nathaniel Dance Holland (1735–1811) at the request of George III (Fig.3) and in Paris the court painter Louis Michel van Loo (1707–71) began a portrait now in the Museum of National History, Frederiksborg Castle, Hillerød, in Denmark, which was finished by the Swedish portraitist Alexander Roslin (1718–93) following Van Loo’s sudden death, by when he had completed only the head. The version illustrated here (Fig.1) was painted entirely by Roslin for a former French ambassador to Denmark, Jean-François Ogier d’Ivry (1703–75), the originator of the Van Loo commission.6 Roslin’s masterly confection follows the pattern of the French royal portrait en costume de sacre. This portrait is primarily one of the king’s public office, yet the king’s hold on power was at best consistently frustrated and at worst usurped. The evidence for the portraits made in Britain or by British artists, by contrast, suggest a seam of private character that was never to develop beyond this brief flicker of youthful sensibility.

Angelica Kauffmann’s studio was an undoubted highlight of Christian’s London sojourn. Between 1766 and 1781 Kauffmann lived in London, where she rapidly rose to fame and became a founder member of the Royal Academy of Arts.7 In 1767 she had painted George III’s sister (and Christian’s sister-in-law) Augusta, Duchess of Brunswick (1764–88), with her young son, Charles George Augustus (Fig.2). Kauffmann was being considered for a new portrait in advance of the king’s arrival in London, as was the court painter Allan Ramsay (1713–84). Notes by the Danish ambassador to London, Baron von Diede zum Fürstenstein (1732–1807), and the Danish legation include a list of persons for whom presents must be purchased: ‘To Princess Amelie, his Majesty’s portrait,

1. Christian VII in coronation robes, holding the crown and sceptre, by Alexander Roslin. 1772. Oil on canvas, 129 by 93 cm. (The Museum of National History, Frederiksborg Castle, Hillerød). 2. Augusta, Duchess of Brunswick, with her son, by Angelica Kauffmann. 1767. Oil on canvas, 272.1 by 180.6 cm. (Royal Collection Trust; © HM Queen Elizabeth II, 2022). Opposite 3. Christian VII, King of Denmark, by Nathaniel Dance Holland. 1768. Oil on canvas, 76.6 by 63 cm. (Royal Collection Trust; © HM Queen Elizabeth II, 2022).

5 Letter from Horace Walpole to George Montagu, 13th August 1768, in W.S. Lewis and R.S. Brown, eds: The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence: vol. 10, Correspondence with George Montagu, New Haven 1937, p.264. 6 M. Skougaard: ‘En Dansk Konge i Paris: Christian VII Malet af Roslin’, Carlsbergfondets Årsskrift, Copenhagen 2010, pp.76–87. Other variants include a bust-length version in the Château of Versailles and a fulllength in a Swedish private collection. 7 B. Baumgärtel et al., eds: Angelica Kauffmann, London 2020, produced for the cancelled exhibition Angelica Kauffmann: Artist, Superwoman, Influencer at the Royal Academy of Arts, London; and A. Vickery: ‘Branding Angelica: reputation management in late eighteenthcentury England’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 43 (2020), pp.3–24; and P. Zudrell: ‘Dialog in porträts: Angelika Kauffmanns Blütezeit in London’, Angermion 7 (2014), pp.13–60.

Christian VII of Denmark’s lost British portraits

Christian VII of Denmark’s lost British portraits

8 feet high, by Ramsay or . . . or Angelika’.8 This suggests that the portrait had first been thought of as a gift to Princess Amelia (1711–86), the second daughter of George II, who hosted a dinner for Christian VII at her house in Gunnersbury, west of London. The gap between Ramsay’s and Kauffmann’s names indicates an intention to consider a third candidate, but none is identified in the notes.

Ramsay was well known to the Danish court and its London representatives, having been commissioned in 1765 to paint a copy of his state portrait of George III in coronation robes (1761–62) for the Hall of Potentates in Christiansborg Palace, where twelve copies of state portraits of contemporary European rulers were displayed.9 The legation reports regarding this commission are intriguing:

There are two famous Painters here, who are the only ones used, on important occasions, to make Portraits of the Royal British Family: I think Monsr. Le Comte preferred this one to the other, called Reynolds, because long ago I heard him say that [Reynolds], who is certainly also a man of great talents in his profession, relies too much on nonchalance, & thereby [the work] is neglected in the Execution, to a Point which has produced examples of poor results, as opposed to those taking great Attention to support a Reputation for consistency.10

The reports demonstrate the importance of the studio visit to the business of the eighteenth-century portraitist:

I mentioned that 80 Guineas makes a good price: he [Ramsay] told me that it was the regular price, and that which the King of Gr. Br. always pays him, for every piece, indeed I saw there six copies in process, all in coronation robes, and in the same pose, all entirely the same, each one a little more advanced than the others [. . .] It is true that the Portrait, after which he copies all the others, is very well executed, & very resembling.11

Although Kauffmann’s novel singularity as a female artist may have played its part, it seems most likely that a British royal recommendation was decisive for the commission. Kauffmann herself was aware of the power of her proximity to the court. In a letter dated 25th August 1768, she wrote to Diede:

As your Excellency was so kind to promise me that he would accept a Copy of the portrait I have just made of His Majesty the King of Denmark – I dare to hope he will also contribute to its perfection by granting me the honour of placing myself at the

4. Christian VII, King of Denmark, by Richard Houston, after Angelica Kauffmann. c.1768–75. Mezzotint, 39.9 by 28.9 cm. (Royal Collection Trust; © HM Queen Elizabeth II, 2022). 5. Queen Caroline Matilda, by James Watson, after Francis Cotes. c.1766–71. Mezzotint, 37.6 by 27.6 cm. (Royal Collection Trust; © HM Queen Elizabeth II, 2022).

Christian VII of Denmark’s lost British portraits

feet of His Majesty in order that he may bestow in a few minutes the last traits of resemblance but rst I have the honour of be ing your Excellency to come and see some twenty paintings and portraits that I have done, so that He may better judge if I am Worthy of so many favours, and to recognise by the same that my concern is indivisible from the honour of serving such a great and amiable King. I live opposite the Princess of Wales in Pall Mall.12

Kau mann’s portrait is recorded in a small oval copy in oils (Fig.6). The blue sash and the star of the Order of the Elephant adorn the king’s pinkish-red coat, which is trimmed with gold braid and buttons; his black collar and white cravat are simple and unfussy. The painting was acquired for the Museum of National History in 1913 and had no provenance, so it is not possible to con rm that it is the copy Kau mann made for Baron Diede. Since her portrait was swiftly and expertly reproduced by Richard Houston in mezzotint (Fig.4) the possibility that the Frederiksborg painting was derived from a print cannot be discounted. In any case, it seems to have been cut down, as indicated by the loss of detail in the lower right area of the canvas, and it sits rather awkwardly in its frame, which is inscribed ‘Portrait de Christian VII. Roy de Dannemarc venu a Paris en 1768’.

Kau mann was an astute businesswoman.13 She may have composed her portrait of the king with its dissemination in mind, perhaps visualising its printed reproduction as a pendant to the popular mezzotint of Caroline Matilda by James Watson, after Francis Cotes (Fig.5). As pendants, these printed royal heads would have inclined towards one another, enabling those who may have been disappointed by the absence of the English princess in London during the king’s visit to reunite the pair in portraiture.

Kau mann enchanted Christian’s entourage, including the German feuilletonist Helferich Peder Sturz (1736–79), who was secretary to the Danish Foreign Minister, Count Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstor . In his diary Sturz wrote an account of the visit to her studio on 15th September 1768. Kau mann’s studio has often been remarked on as a site of elite sociability and self-fashioning.14 Published in 1779 in his collected writings, Sturz’s text is one of the most detailed descriptions of her performances of enlightened cultivation: ‘I found our countrywoman, Angelika Kaufmann, today with [Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’s] Messiah in her hand and Pope’s Homer laying nearby. She reads both with rapture: but the German is closer to her heart’.15 Kau mann was, of course, Swiss, not German; the mistake reveals Sturz’s desire to claim her as compatriot. It seems likely that the well-travelled, uently multilingual Kau mann was able to beguile her clients in their preferred language. Having established the primacy of their shared mother tongue, Sturz continued:

In her form and her painting, in her conversation and in her transfiguration, reigns only one note throughout; namely gentle, vestal dignity. She is now around twenty-seven years old, no polished beauty, but nonetheless charming in her form

8 ‘An Pr.s Amelie S. M.s Portrait 8 Füß hoch, von Ramsay oder . . . oder Angelika’, Rigsarkivet, Copenhagen (cited hereafter as RA) 301, Tyske Kancelli, Udenrigske Afdeling. 1767–1772. England: Diede zum Fürstensteins gesandtskabsarkiv. Indkomne breve, korrespondance, diverse 1768–1772. 63–284. In England C, Breve fra Legationssekretær Frederik Hanneken 1768 Juli–Oktober. All transcriptions and translations are the author’s own unless otherwise specifi ed. 9 O. Andrup: ‘Billederne fra Potentatgemakket’, Kunstmuseets Aarsskrift, Copenhagen 1921–23, pp.7–29. Ramsay’s copy is now in Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, inv. no.KMS886. 10 ‘Il y’a icy deux fameux Paintres, qui sont les Seuls employés, dans les occasions importantes, pour faire les Portraits de la Famille Royale Brittanique: je pense que Monsr. Le Comte a preferé celvicy à l’autre, appellé Reynolds, parce que bien auparavant je l’ai entendu dire que l’autre, qui certainement est aussi un homme à grands Talents dans son mêtier, se fi e trop à la Facilité, & par là se neglige dans ses Executions, à un Point qui a donné des exemples de mauvaises Reüssites, au lieu que celui a prend grand Soin de soutenir une Reputation toujours ègale’, legation report, 2nd August 1765, Danish State Archives Online: Realia (1500–1773), in Vejledende Arkivregistraturer XI, s. 46, TKUA Alm. del 3 nr. 2–37, fi le beginning ‘Offi cerer, Operahuset’, pp.207–10, available at www.sa.dk/aosoegesider/da/billedviser?epid= 19852167#260540,48665098, accessed 12th January 2022. 11 ‘je puis Occasion de mentioner que 80 Guinées faisoient un bon Prix: il me repondit que c’etoit son Priz reglé, & que Le Roy de la Gr. Br. le luy payoit toujours, pour chaque Piéce, dont je voyois là 6 autres en Oeuvre, les tous en Habit de Sacre, & dans le même Attitude, enfi n entierement 6. Christian VII, King of Denmark, after Angelica Kauffmann. 1768. Oil on canvas, 23.5 by 19 cm. (The Museum of National History, Frederiksborg Castle, Hillerød).

pareils, les uns un peu plus avancés que les autres [. . .] Il est vray que le Portrait, après le quel il tire tous les autres, est trés bien executé, & trés resemblant’, ibid. 12 ‘Come votre Excellence a eu la bonté de me promettre q’u Elle accepteroit une Copie du portrait que je viens de faire de Sa Majesté le Roy de Dannemarck - j’ose esperer qu’elle contribura ausi á la perfection en me procurant - lhonneur de me metre aux pieds de Sa Majesté pour pouvoir y donner en quelques minutes les dernieres trait de resemblance mais auparavant jay l’honneur de supplier votre Excellence de venir voir une vintaines de tableaux et portrait que jay fais, pour qu’Elle puisse mieux juger si je suis Digne de tant de faveurs, et connoitre par Elle meme que l’interet y a moins de part que lhonneur de servir un si grand et si aimable Roy. Je loge vis à vis de la Princesse de Gale dans Pell Mell’, Angelica Kauff mann to Baron von Diede zum Fürstenstein, 25th August 1768, RA, 301, Tyske Kancelli Udenrigske Afdeling, 1767–1772, England: Diede zum Fürstensteins gesandtskabsarkiv. Indkomne breve, korrespondance, diverse, 1768–1772, 63–284, fol. C, Indkomne breve fra forskellige, 1768, A–J. 13 Vickery, op. cit. (note 7). For Kauff mann’s prints, see B. Baumgärtel: Anmut und Au lärung: Eine Sammlung von Druchgraphik nack Werken von Angelika Kauff mann, Ruhpolding and Mainz 2016. 14 See W. Wassyng Roworth: ‘A celebrity artist’s studio: Angelica Kauff man in Rome’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 47 (2018), pp.137–50. 15 ‘Unsere Landsmännin, Angelika Kaufmann, fand ich heute mit dem Meßias in der Hand, und Pope’s Homer lag in der Nähe. Sie liest beide mit Entzücken: aber der Deutsche ist näher mit ihrem Herzen vertraut’, H.P. Sturz: Schriften, Leipzig 1779, I, p.44.

Christian VII of Denmark’s lost British portraits

and her entire modesty. The character of her face belongs to the pattern which Domenichini painted, whose heads were equal to Raphael’s: noble, diffident yet eminent, enchanting yet unreserved.16

Sturz has been somewhat misinterpreted as a harsh critic of Kauffmann, an impression largely drawn from the practice in secondary sources of using quotations excerpted from the context of the meandering, circular style of the feuilleton genre he established. He writes, at length:

As a painter, however, she lacks important parts of art: she does not draw correctly, and therefore has to avoid rich inventions full of action; even in the single figure she cannot risk a difficult position or foreshortening; she delineates the anatomy of the male nude in an uncertain and timid manner; even if the proportions are true, the extremities, especially the hands and feet, are not always correct. One finds her colouring cold and strange, her shadows monotonous, and a violet aura suffuses her flesh tones, on the other hand, the colour of the drapery dominates all too brilliantly and is not united with the attitude of the whole piece, also she understands little of atmospheric perspective, nor proportion, nor landscape, and priming not at all.17

Then, Sturz adds an important, concluding caveat – none of these errors matters, because Kauffmann’s work is beautiful and beautifully composed:

but she has compensated for all these mistakes with beauties. Her works are profound, sensu tincta sunt; she elects, with much wisdom, a clear and simple action, and the moment before the decision, when apprehension is heightened by risk, and the imagination flies far into rhapsodies, her forms are full of grace, as if raised in Grecian silent grandeur.18

An order in the Danish archives suggests that Kauffmann’s commission included further copies of her portrait of Christian. Dated 11th October 1768 and signed by the Danish minister Count Adam Gottlob Moltke, it requisitions £94 10 shillings for two gold boxes to be sent to ‘der Malerinen Angelica’.19 Could Moltke have intended miniature copies of Kauffmann’s portrait of the king to be set into these gold boxes? It was common practice to have one’s portrait in large copied in miniature. Such small copies were highly valued, especially when incorporated into jewellery or a gold box.20 Portraitists in London were equipped to deal not only with copying but with mounting miniaturised images into precious settings.21 Alternatively, Kauffmann may have supplied other kinds of imagery rather than copies of her portrait; her motifs were widely disseminated across a variety of objects in diverse materials.22

Gold boxes constituted the diplomatic gift par excellence. Diede’s notes on gifts during the royal tour list a number of tabatières (snuff boxes) or gold boxes provisionally allotted to members of the British court. Francis Seymour-Conway, 1st Marquess of Hertford (1718–94), and William Talbot, 1st Earl Talbot (1710–82), appear at the very top, with 1,000 Reichsthalers allotted to each recipient.23 Against Hertford’s name is jotted the sum of 1,000 Reichsthalers ‘zu einer Tabatiere mit Portrait’. He was Lord Chamberlain between 1766 and 1782, in which capacity he liaised with the Danes during their stay at St James’s Palace. Talbot was Lord Steward of the Royal Household between 1761 and 1782. By contrast, only 100 Reichsthalers were allocated to the box intended for the Clerk Comptroller of His Majesty’s Kitchen, Mr Secker. A little further down the list we find: ‘David Garrick: something that flatters his vanity’. No estimate in Reichsthalers was allotted to this gift.24 Another list is headed ‘Presente an die Departments’.25 Lord Hertford again heads it, with the trilingual suggestion of ‘Ein magnifique Present’, for ‘der Oberkammerherr MyLord Hertford’. The writer adds the suggestion of a ring or the king’s portrait set with diamonds.26 Frustratingly, no objects matching these descriptions survive in the Wallace Collection, London, or in the possession of the present Marquess of Hertford.27

It is still possible to detect in the archive echoes of the voguish significance of these lost items. In a letter to Baron Diede, the legation secretary Frederik Hanneken, who was responsible for distributing presents after the king’s suite had departed, wrote that Lord Talbot had, in conversation, reported himself:

highly obliged for my own Present, & for every thing, & particularly for the fine Present to Mr. Secker, which I look upon just the same as a Favour done to My Self. Besides, every body in my Office is pleased & thankfull, as very well they have Reason to be; but when you come home, You will find that Mr. Secker hath been there allready: I have Send [sic] him to You with a Letter of Thanks, as I ought, to Baron [Diede]; Now he is gone to Hampton Court, to a Ball where your King’s Snuffbox hath been desired to be shewn.28

16 ‘In ihrer Gestalt und ihren Gemälden, in ihrer Rede und ihrem Wandel, ist überall nur Ein Ton herrschend; nämlich sanfte jungfräuliche Würde. Sie ist jezo ohngefähr 27 Jahre alt, keine vollendete Schönheit, aber dennoch einnehmend in ihrer Form und ihrem ganzen Anstand. Der Character ihres Gesichts gehört zur Gattung, welche Domenichin gemalt hat, der in seinen Köpfen den Raphael erreichte: edel, schüchtern und bedeutend, anziehend und mittheilend’, ibid., pp.45–46. 17 ‘Als Malerin fehlen ihr gleichwohl wichtige Theile der Kunst: sie zeichnet nicht allerdings richtig, und muß daher reiche, handlungsvolle Erfindungen meiden; selbst in der einzelen Figur darf sie keine schwere Stellung und keine Verkürzung wagen; sie deutet die Anatomie des Nackenden ungewiß und furchtsam an; wenn auch ihre Verhältnisse richtig sind, so sind doch ihre Umrisse, zumal an Händes und Füssen, nicht immer korrekt. Man findet ihr Kolorit kalt und fremde, ihre Schatten eintönig, und über ihre Karnation schwebt ein violetter Duft, dahingegen dringt die Farbe der Gewänder allzublendend vor, und ist nicht mit der Haltung des ganzen Stücks vereinigt, auch versteht sie wenig Luftperspektiv, kein Beywert, keine Landschaft, und überhaupt keine Grunde’, ibid., pp.46–47. 18 ‘aber alle diese Fehler hat sie durch Schönheiten aufgewogen. Ihre Werke sind tiefen Sinnes, sensu tincta sunt; sie wählt, mit vieler Weisheit, eine leicht zu fassende einfache Handlung, und den Augenblick vor der Entscheidung, wenn das Interesse durch die Ahndung gesteigert wird, und die Einbildungskraft in einem weiten Spielraum schwärmt, ihre Formen sind voller Anmuth, gleich in der griechischen stillen Würde hingestellt’, ibid., pp.48–49. 19 RA, 208, Partikulærkammeret 1768–1769 Kong Christian 7.s udenlandsrejse, bilag 201–300; no.246. 20 M. Pointon: ‘“Surrounded with brilliants”: miniature portraits in eighteenth-century England’, The Art Bulletin 83 (2001), pp.48–71, at p.56. 21 Ibid., pp.56–58. 22 Vickery, op. cit. (note 7), p.11. 23 Document cited at note 8 above. 24 ‘David Garrik: etwas daß seiner Vanité flattiert’, document cited at note 8 above. 25 RA, Kongehuset Christian 7. 1768–1770. Udenlandsrejser 1. 26 ‘Item ein Ring, oder das Königs Portrait mit Diamanten befest’, document cited at note 8 above. 27 Sincere thanks to Suzanne Higgott at the Wallace Collection and Lord Hertford for responding to my queries. 28 RA, 301, Tyske Kancelli Udenrigske Afdeling, 1767–1772, England: Diede zum Fürstensteins gesandtskabsarkiv. Indkomne breve, korrespondance, diverse 1768–1772. England C. Indbydelser, Planer for Udflugte, Festprogrammer, m.v. under Fyrsten af Travendahl (Kong Christian VII.s) Ophold i England 1768. The Ball was given by Lady FitzRoy (Anne FitzPatrick, Countess of Upper Ossory, 1737–1804). 29 Pointon, op. cit. (note 20), p.58. See also T. Murdoch et al., eds: Going for Gold: Craftsmanship and Collecting of Gold Boxes, Eastbourne 2014. 30 U. Langen: ‘Le roi et les philosophes: le sejour parisien de Christian VII de Danemark en 1768’, Histoire, Économie et Société 29 (2010), pp.39–55. 31 ‘Monr Calze étant convenû de faire pour S.M. Le Roi de Dannemarc un portrait de Roi en piéd de grandeur naturelle’. RA, 208. Partikulærkammeret 1768–1769 Kong Christian 7.s udenlandsrejse, bilag 401–497. This order is unnumbered and is filed at the end of the archive box, post no.497. 32 See ibid., nos.489–90; and document filed with that cited at note 28? above.

Christian VII of Denmark’s lost British portraits

The value of the tabatière’s materials persisted for much longer than the prestige of the gift. As the gold box lost its modern sheen, many were returned to their manufacturers to be melted down into more fungible capital.29

In September the king’s party sailed for France, where the best part of the rest of the year was spent in Paris. Here, Christian hosted an extraordinary soirée for eighteen of the leading lights of Enlightenment philosophy, including the encyclopaedists Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert.30 He also sat to two British artists then working in the French capital. A full length, life-size standing portrait was commissioned from the grand manner portraitist Edward Francis Cunningham (1742–95), also known as Francesco Calza or Calze, since he was born in Kelso, Scotland. The son of Jacobite exiles, Calze was largely brought up in Italy and studied at Parma, Rome, Venice and Paris. A memorandum signed by the banker and statesman Baron Heinrich Carl von Schimmelmann, dated 8th December 1768, states ‘Mr Calze being agreeable to make for H.M. the King of Denmark a lifesize portrait of the King, full-length’, for 4,800 livres.31 A money order to the Danish ambassador in Paris, Baron von Gleichen, was made on 5th January 1769, which seems to cover the payment for this portrait. The order reveals that an extra charge of 480 livres was added for a version of the portrait with the royal cipher set in diamonds, intended for insertion within a tabatière to be given to Emmanuel-Félicité de Durfort, duc de Duras (1715–89), who had acted as the king’s maître de plaisir in Paris.32 This seems to have reached its intended recipient,

7. Christian VII, King of Denmark, here attributed to Edward Francis Cunningham (Calze). 1768. Pastel on paper, 62.5 by 51.4 cm. (Rosenborg Slot, Copenhagen).

Christian VII of Denmark’s lost British portraits

since the Oxford Magazine reported on 2nd January 1769 that ‘The king of Denmark has made a present to the duke of Duras of his portrait, enriched with diamonds, which are valued at above 200,000 Francs’.33 No trace remains of these works today.

On 10th March 1769 the sum of 4,800 livres was paid to Calze, who signed the original memorandum to indicate receipt. 150 livres were added for packaging and transport of the king’s portrait.34 Another receipt, dated 13th December 1768, shows that a further 1,350 livres were paid to a Parisian framer via an intermediary to provide a frame presumably – since Calze is named – for Calze’s portrait of the king, together with a small oval frame, which was given to Christian’s favourite, Count Holck.35 Calze also produced a copy in pastels, according to a report in the Whitehall Evening Post:

Last Friday Mr Calze, an Italian artist, was introduced to the Queen, at her Majesty’s Palace, to deliver a portrait in crayons of the King of Denmark, which his Majesty did Mr Calze the honour of sitting for whilst he was at Paris, as a present for her Majesty, who received Mr Calze very graciously, and expressed the highest approbation of his work.36

A pastel portrait in an oval frame, inscribed Prince Charles Edward, 1740 (Fig.7), was recently acquired for Rosenborg Palace, Copenhagen. The sitter wears his sash on the left shoulder and his celadon suit, which is embroidered with gold, silver and bronze threads, is emblazoned with the star of the Order of the Elephant. On the basis of his facial features and costume, the sitter can be identified as Christian VII.37 It is also now possible firmly to attribute the pastel to Calze, on the basis of this documentary evidence.

Over the past century or so, two further portraits of the king have appeared in reproduction and at auction, where they appear to have been conflated and attributed to Angelica Kauffmann or her studio as a copy of her Christian VII. Both are now in private collections, one in Darmstadt (Fig.8) and the other in Copenhagen (Fig.9).38 According to a Danish sale catalogue, the latter was formerly in the collection of the ‘Duke of Buckingham at Stowe’, to whom it was apparently gifted by Christian VII himself, when he visited Stowe in 1768.39 Stowe was then owned by Richard Grenville-Temple, 2nd Earl Temple (1711–79).40 The source of this information appears to be the famous Stowe sale of 1848, at which a portrait of the King of Denmark by ‘A. Kauffman’ was sold to Samuel Morton Peto (1809–89), a railway entrepreneur.41 Peto established the Flensburg–Husum–Tönning Railway Company and oversaw its construction of railways in the Duchy of Schleswig. This link may indicate how the portrait came to be in Denmark.

Without being able to examine these objects in person it is difficult to make definitive statements regarding their attribution. Since they do not much resemble Kauffmann’s portrait, it seems likely that these two very similar paintings are versions of a portrait by a different artist. They present their subject half-length and show the king’s right hand resting on a crown posed atop a tasselled cushion, his left upon the hilt of a sword (these approximate but do not exactly represent Denmark’s coronation sword and Christian V’s crown).42 The king directly engages the beholder’s gaze. Only the costumes and backgrounds vary. The costume in the Darmstadt version, which is ornately decorated with embroidery, frogging and tassels, appears to approximate a Danish admiral’s uniform; the backdrop to the figure is hung with rich textiles.43 The Copenhagen variant is simpler, with fewer details in costume and backcloth. In both, the king is wearing the Star of the Order of the Elephant.

If these portraits do in fact date from 1768, then a document in the Danish State Archives raises the possibility that Matthew William Peters (1741–1814) was the artist. A signed receipt reveals that 1,440 livres were received in October 1768 by a W. de Peters for two portraits of the king. A further 1,200 livres were paid for another portrait intended for the duc de Duras and 240 livres for a copy for Count Holck, as a remembrance.44 These sums suggest that these portraits were on a smaller scale than the life-size full length commissioned from Calze. Peters signed his works W. Peters, but he has been thought to have been in Paris only in 1775 and 1783–84.45 Irish by birth, he was ordained in 1781 and served as chaplain to

8. Christian VII, King of Denmark, formerly attributed to Angelica Kauffmann. 1768. Oil on canvas, 91 by 71 cm. (Private collection, Darmstadt).

33 A Society of Gentlemen, Members of the University of Oxford: ‘Foreign and domestic intelligence’, The Oxford Magazine: or, University Museum 2 (1769), p.33. 34 Document cited at note 31 above. 35 ‘No. 445. Pour £1350. J’ai reçu de Messieurs Tourton & Baur en vertu d’un mandement donné par son Excellence Monsieur le Trésorier Baron de Schimmelman à Mr. Calze Peintre, la somme de treize cent cinquante livres, savoir, douze cent livres pour une grande Bordure que j’ai faite pour le Portrait de Sa Majesté Le Roy de Dannemarck, & cent cinquante livres pour une petite Bordure ovale que j’ai remise à Mr. Le Comte de Holcke. fait double à Paris le 13 Xbre 1768’, RA, 208. Partikulærkammeret 1768–1769 Kong Christian 7.s udenlandsrejse, bilag 301–400; 445. 36 Dated November 1769, for which, see N. Jeffares: ‘Edward Francis Cunningham’, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, www.pastellists.com/ Articles/Cunningham.pdf (2021). Jeffares reports that Cunningham exhibited a pastel portrait of Baron von Diede at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1770 (no.25). 37 The identification was first made by Peter Kristiansen, who communicated it to the present author. 38 The Copenhagen version was illustrated in B. Baumgärtel: Angelika Kauffmann, Düsseldorf 1998, p.161, where it was possibly reproduced from the catalogue of Sale, Copenhagen, Arne Bruun Rasmussen, auction no.228, 11th–21st February 1969, pp.42 and 47, lot 233. For a cropped reproduction of the Darmstadt version, see É.S.F. Reverdil: Struensee og den Danske Hof, transl.

Christian VII of Denmark’s lost British portraits

9. Christian VII, King of Denmark, formerly attributed to Angelica Kauffmann. 1768. Oil on canvas, 91 by 72 cm. (Private collection, Copenhagen).

the Royal Academy of Arts and then to the Prince of Wales, later George IV. As a painter he is best known for his mildly risqué cabinet pieces, female portraits and intimate genre scenes. He was taught by Robert West, who had been a pupil in Paris of Jean-Baptiste Van Loo (the father of Louis-Michel) and may have arranged an introduction for his pupil to his former master’s son; such networks commonly supported young artists’ training abroad.46 The influence of Van Loo might explain the exceptional nature of this portrait in Peter’s œuvre, if he is indeed the artist of the Copenhagen and Darmstadt paintings.

Paul Læssøe Müller, Copenhagen 1917, p.1a, credited on p.309 as: ‘Kong Christian VII, eft. Orig. af Angelika Kauffmann, malet Sept. 1768 i London, tilh. Generalmajor Biegeleben i Darmstadt’. For a complete image attributed to a German photographer, Friedrich van der Smissen (1886–1944), dated c.1910/1929, see Bildarchiv Foto Marburg Aufnahme, no.70.852. 39 Rasmussen Sale, op. cit. (note 38), p.42. A letter from George Grenville to Thomas Whatley, 18th September 1768, discussing the king’s visit does not mention of the gift of a portrait, for which, see W.J. Smith, ed.: The Grenville Papers: being the Correspondence of Richard Grenville Earl Temple, K.G., and the Right. Hon. George Grenville, their Friends and Contemporaries, London 1853, IV, pp.364–66. 40 L.J. Bellot: ‘Richard Grenville [later Grenville-Temple], second Earl Temple (1711–1779), politician’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), www.oxforddnb.com, accessed 12th January 2022. 41 The Stowe Catalogue: Priced and Annotated by Henry Rumsey Forster, London 1848, p.160. 42 P. Kristiansen: Power, Splendour and Diamonds: Denmark’s Regalia and Crown Jewels, Copenhagen 2015, pp.18–19. 43 For a comparison, see Jens Juel’s full-length portrait of Christian VII in admiral’s uniform (1795; Reventlow Museum, Pederstrup), 44 ‘Je sousigne reconnois avoir recu de Monsieur Texier la Somme de mille quatre cent quarante livres pour honoraire de deux portrait de la Majeste le Roÿ de Dannemarck scavoir mille deux cent livres pour celui de

No reference to the fate of the portraits by Kauffmann, Calze and Peters has yet come to light in the Danish palace inventories. Fires consumed a large part of the Danish royal collections at Christiansborg Palace in 1794 and Frederiksborg Palace in 1859. During the Napoleonic Wars, the British Navy attacked Copenhagen in 1801 and 1807.47 This second bombardment destroyed 1,000 buildings in the capital, with further damage being caused by looting, notably at the palace of Hirschholm. Many portraits were lost during these disastrous conflagrations.

The existence of these paintings raises the question of why the Danish king was so enamoured of British portrait artists. An artist of Kauffmann’s calibre and charisma held court for her clients as much as she paid court to them, but Calze and Peters did not wield the same social capital. Their Parisian studios presumably offered an experience quite different to the elite, gently feminine sociability of Kauffmann’s Pall Mall address. Neither Calze nor Peters were mentioned in Sturz’s published writings on the king’s Parisian stay. It is possible also that the subsequent scandal of Caroline Matilda’s affair reduced the commercial potential of the royal association, resulting in the portraits’ misidentification and attribution to the better-known Kauffmann.

The commissions may reflect an Anglophilia resulting from the fact that Christian VII’s mother was Princess Louisa (1724–51), a daughter of George II and, as sister to Frederick, Prince of Wales, Queen Caroline Matilda’s paternal aunt. She died in childbirth when Christian was only three years old. His visit to London gave him the opportunity to meet his mother’s family, who were also his in-laws, for the first time.

Perhaps the portraits are also evidence of a rare moment of political agency, since they originated within the Danish suite and were not French or British commissions, unlike the Roslin and Dance Holland portraits. While in London the king tried to meet the philosopher David Hume, then secretary to Lord Hertford. Hume wrote to Diede on 10th October 1768: ‘I imagined that you had proposed to me to have the Honour of dining with his Danish Majesty today; but Lord Hertford thinks I must be mistaken, and that it is not probable His Majesty woud [sic] dine in company the day of his Masquerade’.48 Whether or not this meeting took place, it is interesting to consider it in the light of the granting of complete freedom of the press within Denmark, declared by the king on 14th September 1770, a freedom for which Hume was a fierce advocate. This law is almost always credited to Struensee, an avowed Francophile. The contribution Christian made to the enlightened reforms enacted during Struensee’s government has tended to be viewed as negligible.49 Yet, the image of the man filtered through British artists’ studios in 1768 offers us a glimpse of an aspiring philosopher king, thriving for the briefest moment before being lost to sickness and scandal.

M le Duc de Duras et deux cent quarante livre pour celui le Copie mise en souvenir pour M le Comte de Holck donc quittance a Paris ce on de – 1768’, RA, 208. Partikulærkammeret 1768–1769 Kong Christian 7.s udenlandsrejse, bilag 401–497; no.406. 45 P. Walch: ‘Rev. Matthew William Peters’, Grove Art Online (2003), available at www.oxfordartonline.com, accessed 6th June 2020. See also R. Simon: ‘(Matthew) William Peters (1742–1814), portrait and genre painter and Church of England clergyman’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), www.oxforddnb.com, accessed 6th June 2020. 46 Lady V. Manners: Matthew William Peters, R.A.: His Life and Work, London 1913, p.2. 47 R. Cavendish: ‘The bombardment of Copenhagen’, History Today 57 (2007), available at www.historytoday.com/ archive/bombardment-copenhagen, accessed 20th December 2021; and T. Munch-Petersen: Defying Napoleon: How Britain Bombarded Copenhagen and Seized the Danish Fleet in 1807, Stroud 2007. 48 David Hume to Baron Diede, 10th October 1768. RA 301 Tyske Kancelli. Udenrigske Afdeling. 1767–1772. England: Diede zum Fürstensteins gesandtskabsarkiv. Indkomne breve, korrespondance, diverse 1768–1772. England C. Breve fra Legationssekretær Frederik Hanneken. 1768 Juli-Oktober. 49 J. Nordin et al.: ‘Northern declarations of freedom of the press: the relative importance of philosophical ideas and of local politics’, Journal of the History of Ideas 81 (2020), pp.217–37, at p.277, note 36. See also Langen, op. cit. (note 1), pp.323–25.

the art of conservation: xvii

Jan Cornelis Traas, paintings restorer of the Van Gogh family collection

Between 1926 and 1933 the collection of nearly 200 paintings by Vincent van Gogh owned by his family, now in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, underwent conservation by Jan Cornelis Traas in a campaign that had a major impact on their condition and appearance.

by ella hendriks

This article traces the early restoration history of the paintings by Vincent van Gogh (1853–90) that now form the core of the Van Gogh Museum collection in Amsterdam. The paintings came from the collection of Vincent’s younger brother, Theo van Gogh (1857–91), and remained in the Van Gogh family’s possession until 1962 when, with the help of the government of the Netherlands, the collection was donated to the Vincent van Gogh Foundation, which then gave the collection to the Van Gogh Museum on permanent loan. For the first thirty-five years the paintings were looked after by Theo’s widow, Jo van Gogh-Bonger (1862–1925), who had frequently loaned them, and in consequence they were in a poor state of conservation. After her death, from 1926 to 1933 almost the entire collection, nearly two hundred works – many of which had not been treated – was subjected to a major campaign of restoration by the Dutch conservator Jan Cornelis Traas (1898–1982). These treatments typically involved surface cleaning, wax-resin lining and varnishing the pictures, which were fitted with new stretchers. Later in his career Traas treated some of the works again, and in hindsight we may observe how the cumulative effects of these interventions have profoundly influenced the condition and appearance of the collection today. Moreover, Traas provides an interesting case study to examine early twentieth-century attitudes towards the treatment of paintings by late nineteenth-century ‘modern’ artists such as Van Gogh. It also demonstrates how subsequently it became clear that it was necessary to develop conservation approaches and methods that were tailored

The Art of Conservation series is edited by Jane Martineau. The author would like to express her gratitude to the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, for supporting this research, in particular to Marije Vellekoop, Kees van den Meiracker and Louis van Tilborgh for his critical reading of earlier versions of this article. Furthermore, she is grateful to colleague conservators who generously shared information and sources, especially Esther van Duijn, René Boitelle, Sabrina Meloni and Elke Oberthaler, and also to Ruud van der Velden, Jaap Nijstad and Toon and Jo Klaver for their valuable recollections of Traas. 1 M. Blewett: ‘The Art of Conservation VI: Helmut Ruhemann, paintings restorer in Berlin and London’, THE

BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 158 (2016), pp.638–64; and E. van Duijn and M. te Marvelde: ‘The Art of Conservation VII: Hopman and De Wild: the historical importance of two Dutch families of restorers’, ibid., pp.812–23. 2 Personal recollection of R. van Velden by email to the author, 22nd February 2021; see also note 10 below. 3 National Archive, The Hague, onderscheidingen Kanselarij der Nederlandse Orden, 1815–1993, archive 2.02.32, inv. no.896ED.2, file 00173710. Traas received the medal on 25th April 1962, when he was registered as an A category paintings restorer at the National Museum H.W. Mesdag and other museums (Ministry of Education, Art and Science; hereafter cited as MEAS). Additional notes mention that Traas died on 22nd December 1982 and that his medal was returned by his widow on 12th January 1983. 4 Details of Traas’s appointments are taken from Mauritshuis Archive, The Hague (cited hereafter as MA), typed list of former restorers employed by the Mauritshuis and Museum Mesdag, compiled partly from annual reports of the Museum Mesdag, not dated, unnumbered. A later annotation by the conservator L. Rutgers van der Loeff adds that Traas continued to restore paintings for the Mauritshuis after his official retirement.

1. Jan Cornelis Traas at work on Girl with a pearl earring, by Johannes Vermeer, in the Mauritshuis, The Hague. 1960. Photograph. (Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague).

to suit the specific requirements of paintings by Van Gogh and his contemporaries, as distinct from old-master works.

Traas belonged to the same generation as his influential colleagues Helmut Ruhemann and Martin de Wild,1 but unlike them he did not publish, and consequently his views on restoration are less well known. We know his appearance only from a photograph showing him late in his career at work on Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a pearl earring (Fig.1), a photograph that was displayed on the living room mantelpiece of his home.2 It was a reminder of his long and distinguished career as a picture restorer who was awarded the medal of a Knight of the Order of Oranje Nassau soon after he officially retired on 1st February 1962.3

Traas began his museum career working as concierge at Museum Mesdag in The Hague, first on a temporary basis, but from 1922 in fixed employment.4 From this position he started to train and work as a restorer for the Mesdag collection, which at that time was run as a small state museum (rijksmuseum), thus giving him the status of a civil servant. This meant that, as Traas’s competence as a restorer grew, the Ministry of Education, Art and Science (henceforth referred to as the Ministry) could ‘lend’ his services free of charge to work on paintings from other national collections, including the Rijksmuseum Huis Lambert van Meerten in Delft and the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Traas started to work on paintings in the Mauritshuis collection in 1931,

Jan Cornelis Traas

and in 1933 officially took up the post of restorer there (keeping his job as concierge at Mesdag until 1943).5

In 1940 Traas was promoted to First Class Technical Assistant at the Mauritshuis and until he retired continued to work as Rijksschilderijenhersteller on paintings from the Mauritshuis and Mesdag collections, as well as from other state collections. In 1945 he was asked to assess the condition of the collection of the Kroller-Müller Museum in Otterlo when it was moved back to the museum from storage in bunkers in the dunes during the Second World War, concluding that it was good, and that many paintings were perhaps even in a better state than they would have been had they been kept on display.6 Alongside his museum work, Traas was also allowed to take on private commissions to top up his museum salary, which was not an unusual arrangement, although the Ministry expressed its disapproval when they got wind of this practice at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.7 He built up a large clientele that extended to prestigious patrons abroad, such as the Rothschild family.8 Consequently his work as a restorer is substantial, and his contribution to the preservation of Dutch cultural heritage has been of great significance.

This article, however, goes back to the lesser-known period of Traas’s career, when as a young man in his twenties he started out on his journey towards becoming a restorer and, almost straight away, was entrusted with the commission to work on the family collection of Van Gogh paintings. Nowadays it seems unthinkable that someone so inexperienced would be allowed to take responsibility for such valuable works, but tracing the history of events allows us to understand how this situation came about. Traas’s career can be reconstructed from museum correspondence, family documents, newspaper articles, job and internship records, as well as from accounts by people who knew him. These include a memorandum, ‘The restorer Traas’, based on an interview with Vincent Willem van Gogh (1890–1978), nephew of Vincent van Gogh, in 1974, the year after the Van Gogh Museum first opened its doors to the public;9 and memories of Ruud van der Velden and Jaap Nijstad, who as boys paid regular visits to Traas and his second wife, Geraldine J. Traas-Janssen (called Diet), at their home at Nieuweweg 14 in Lochem, in the province of Gelderland, when Traas would tell stories about his early career.10 Finally, a local artist, Toon Klaver, provided details of Traas’s restoration practice, which he observed at first hand, since from 1966 he lived in the Traas house for over two years, acting as his assistant and trainee.11

Traas was born on 10th April 1898 in Baarland, a small and sparsely populated town in the south-west province of Zeeland in the Netherlands.12 Later in life, Traas still reportedly had the character of a typical Zeeuw (someone from that region) as he was initially rather reserved, but very straightforward and principled.13 His father had a farm,14 but the young Traas hated farming so in June 1918, aged nineteen, he signed up for the military police (Marechaussee), but served for less than two years after being accidentally shot in the leg.15 The episode left him with a slight limp, which was later mentioned as a hinderance to his job as a restorer. A letter of 1928 from Wilhelm Martin, Director of the Mauritshuis, to the Ministry suggests that Traas was physically unsuited to the task of lining large-scale paintings,16 while in 1930, a letter from Frederik SchmidtDegener, then Director of the Rijksmuseum, rejecting Traas’s application for the post of First Class Technical Assistant, claims that he lacked the agility required to carry large paintings up the 106 steps to the restoration studio in the south-east tower of the museum without harming himself. Notwithstanding his merits as a restorer, the letter concludes, Traas ‘does not appear physically suited for the job’,17 which hardly seems fair, since he had already shown himself perfectly capable of handling large paintings.18

In 1920, shortly before leaving the military police, Traas married his first wife, Marie Louis Pauwels,19 and the couple moved to The Hague, where he was taken on as concierge at the Museum Mesdag. This opened the way to his becoming a restorer thanks to the new Director, Willem Steenhoff (1863–1932), who was appointed in 1924 and served until his retirement in 1928 (Fig.2). Steenhoff had moved from the Rijksmuseum, where as Deputy Director since 1905 he had been a strong advocate of broadening the modern art collection and had secured important Van Gogh loans, some from the Van Gogh family. However, his ideas no longer coincided with those of Schmidt-Degener, who succeeded Barthold van Riemsdijk as Director in 1922 and, after a reorganisation, Steenhoff became surplus to the museum’s requirements and was transferred to the Museum Mesdag, where his struggles to promote modern art continued.20

Soon after taking up his post as director of the Museum Mesdag, Steenhoff embarked upon a rearrangement and pruning of the modern paintings collection, which included works by the Hague School and Barbizon painters. His intention was periodically to vary the display of the paintings and to hold a series of temporary exhibitions, including one of the Van Gogh collection. Vincent Willem van Gogh had just taken over the care of the family collection from his mother, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, who died in 1925, and he was prepared to continue her support of Steenhoff’s efforts to present Van Gogh as the successor to the Barbizon and Hague School painters, albeit now at Mesdag instead of the Rijksmuseum. Steenhoff’s plans met with fierce resistance from the Mesdag heirs, however, and in 1926 he was forced to restore the original display of the collection, while the Van Gogh exhibition never took place.21

5 Document cited at note 4 above. On Traas’s early work for Rijksmuseum Huis Lambert van Meerten, see note 26. 6 See https://krollermuller.nl/tijdlijn/ rijksmuseum-kroller-muller-heropend, accessed 31st October 2021. 7 The archives of the Director of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, are held in Noord-Hollands Archief, Haarlem, 476 ‘Rijksmuseum en rechtsvoorgangers te Amsterdam 1807–1945’ (hereafter cited as NHA), MEAS to Frederik Schmidt-Degener, Director of the Rijksmuseum, 27th May 1925, folder 1495, no.13176, subject ‘Training Traas’. MEAS objected when they heard that the picture restorers at the Rijksmuseum, Bakker and Greebe, were paid for the work they did for the city of Amsterdam on top of their museum salary and suggested that it would be fitting if they paid that extra income into the government’s reserves. 8 Document cited at note 2 above; Van der Velden recalls that Traas was invited to stay in one of the Rothschilds’ properties in France to evaluate the paintings and carry out some necessary treatment of them. 9 Van Gogh Museum Archives, Amsterdam (cited hereafter as VGM), ‘Memorandum, De restaurator Traas’, 13th November 1974. 10 Their fathers were active in the art and antiques trade; email exchanges between Ruud van der Velden, Jaap Nijstad and the author, 22nd February–26th July 2021. 11 Toon Klaver and his wife, Jo, were interviewed by Jaap Nijstad, who relayed his answers to the present author by email; Klaver was also interviewed by Mauritshuis colleagues Carol Pottasch and Sabrina Meloni on 19th June 2020, MA, unpublished notes. 12 Zeeland Archive, Middelburg (hereafter cited as ZAM), Civil registration births, Burgerlijke Stand Zeeland (1798) 1811–1969, access code 25, record BAA-G-000976.jp2. 13 Document cited at note 2 above. 14 Jacob Traas was registered as a farmworker (boerenknecht) on his son’s birth certificate, documents cited at note 12; see also note 2 above. 15 Traas was enrolled on 7th July 1918 and discharged on 7th April 1920, for which, see www.marechausseesporen. nl/pagina_genealogie_t.htm, accessed 4th January 2022. 16 W. Martin to MEAS, 12th March 1928, MA, no.1292, ‘herstellen van schilderijen’. 17 Director of the Rijksmuseum to MEAS, 19th November 1930, NHA, folder 1496, no.14788, ‘sollicitatie J.C. Traas’. 18 In 1929 a picture measuring 210 by 480 cm., one of five behangselstukken by Johannes Petrus van Horstok (1745–1825), was lined with wax-resin by Traas and an obscure colleague, H.A. Hage. The ensemble is now undergoing conservation treatment in Alkmaar City Museum. Thanks to Christi Klinkert for drawing my attention to this. An inscription on one of the stretchers reads ‘gerestaureerd door J.C. Traas and H.A. Hage 1929’. 19 ZAM, Civil registration marriages, Burgerlijke Stand Zeeland (1796) 1811–1980, Philippine, access code 25, no. PHI-H-1920, 11-03-1920, record no.3, available at www.openarch.nl/ zar:60591141-32CB-43E9-8B759FA61D26400C, accessed 27th May 2021. 20 For Steenhoff’s career at the Museum Mesdag, see J.F. Heijbroek: ‘Het Rijksmuseum voor Moderne Kunst van Willem Steenhoff. Werkelijkheid of utopie?’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 39 (1991), pp.163–231.

Jan Cornelis Traas

2. Willem J. Steenhoff in the Van Gogh Gallery of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, with The potato eaters (F82) in the background. 1918. Photograph. (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; Vincent van Gogh Foundation).

It was in this period that Steenhoff hatched his plan to train Traas as a restorer. Before Steenhoff’s arrival at Museum Mesdag, it had been usual to outsource treatment of works in the collection to independent restorers in The Hague. Records in the Van Gogh Museum mention two well-known restorers who were trained in the traditional way from father to son: Cornelis Bernardus van Bohemen (1878–1948), who lined and restored a picture by Jean-François Millet in 1923, and Derix de Wild (1869–1932), who treated twenty-three paintings from the Mesdag collection in 1919 and 1921 (plus three more at an unknown date).22 Derix de Wild was the ‘natural choice’ at the time since from 1911 he had run the family studio situated in the same street, Laan van Meerdervoort, as Museum Mesdag, and from 1914 had restored pictures for the Mauritshuis, where he developed a close professional relationship with the Director, Wilhelm Martin.23 It is therefore striking that, while Steenhoff at first continued to send works out for treatment, he did not opt for the usual restorers, but chose Petrus P.J. Stiefelhagen (1873–1956), who treated eight paintings from the Mesdag collection in 1924–25.24 We know little about this frame-maker and restorer other than that he worked for commercial galleries in The Hague. Almost without exception, from 1925 onwards, Traas took over all restoration work for the Mesdag collection, while still acting as concierge, and was officially appointed as restorer at the Mauritshuis in 1933.

Steenhoff’s decision to back a complete novice and outsider as the museum’s restorer broke with a long tradition. In a letter sent to the Ministry on 8th September 1925, Martin described how for over twentyfive years, successive generations of the de Wild family had worked splendidly for the Mauritshuis, winning international acclaim, adding that in his opinion it would be counter-productive to deviate from this practice.25 Martin rejected accusations that conservation in The Hague was dominated by the de Wild family, dismissing the term ‘monopoly de Wild’ as a gross exaggeration and pointing out that Traas was now employed at Museum Mesdag. In reality, however, change was slow. From 1928 the Ministry tried to persuade Martin to allow Traas to work on pictures from the Mauritshuis, pointing out that his services would be free of charge as he was a civil servant owing to his employment at Museum Mesdag.26 Martin responded that he was willing to try him out, yet he felt that Traas still lacked the experience to perform the complex treatments they proposed, recommending that these be entrusted to the more established restorer de Wild.27 When Derix de Wild died in 1932, Martin was forced to reconsider.

It is tempting to draw a parallel between Steenhoff’s unorthodox choice of restorer and his own situation as a self-taught art historian. Steenhoff had trained as a painter at the state academy in Amsterdam and did not belong to the establishment.28 He must have quickly spotted Traas’s potential, for soon after joining the museum, he embarked upon his plan to teach him what he called the ‘secrets of restoration’.29 In 1924–25 Steenhoff had varnished works in the Mesdag collection, like his predecessor Willy Martens, who was also a painter, and he may have given some basic handson instruction to Traas.30 He used his contacts to set up proper tuition,

21 R. de Leeuw: ‘The Museum Mesdag in perspective’, Van Gogh Museum Journal (1996), pp.17–19. 22 René Boitelle, Senior Conservator at the Van Gogh Museum, has compiled records of the restoration history of the Mesdag collection, 1919–59, based on a compilation of notes in the files of each painting; communication of 4th June 2018; see also R. Boitelle: ‘Lining inevitable: an introduction to wax-resin lining at the Mesdag Collection (1919–74)’, 21st July 2021, online lecture 13 in the series ‘The Dutch Method Unfolded’ at the University of Amsterdam, with support from the Getty Foundation Conserving Canvas initiative (cited hereafter as Dutch Method series). At present these lectures can be viewed online only by the participants in the masterclass. 23 Van Duijn and Ter Marvelde, op. cit. (note 1), pp.820–22. 24 For Petrus Philippus Johannes (Piet) Stiefelhagen, see https://www. openarch.nl/hga:2B3A252A-85DA44EB-BC08-CF072971E2F9, accessed 3rd September 2021. 25 Prof. W. Martin to MEAS, 9th September 1925, MA, no.4811, ‘Request Restaurateur C.B. van Bohemen’. 26 MEAS to the Director of the Mauritshuis, 27th February 1928, MA, no.470; and 12th March 1928, MA, no.1292. A similar proposal was made to the Director of the Rijksmuseum, see MEAS to the Director, 12th March 1928, NHA, folder 1496, no.1292, ‘restauratie van schilderijen’. Traas’s proposal for extensive treatment of a painting in the collection of Rijksmuseum Huis Lambert van Meerten to be carried out in the studio of Museum Mesdag raised concerns discussed between MEAS and the museum director, Ida Peelen, who called in Professor Martin to give his advice on the matter, see MEAS to Ida Peelen, Director of the Rijksmuseum Huis L. van Meerten, 4th December 1928, MA, no.5686, subject ‘restauratie van schilderijen’; see also Ida Peelen to Prof. W. Martin, 7th December 1928, MA, unnumbered. 27 Prof. W. Martin to MEAS, 17th March, 8th November and 11th November 1928, 30th April 1931, 9th June and 10th August 1932, MA, unnumbered. 28 J.H. de Bois, a Haarlem art dealer and critic, made a telling sketch of Steenhoff’s character as one of the candidates to succeed van Riemsdijk at the Rijksmuseum, see Heijbroek, op. cit. (note 20), p.210. 29 MEAS to Director of the Rijksmuseum, 22nd May 1925, NHA, folder 1495, no.2628. 30 In an annotated catalogue of paintings in the Museum Mesdag, René Boitelle found references to Steenhoff varnishing seven paintings in 1924 and two in 1925; document cited at note 22 above. It is unclear if he undertook other small interventions on the paintings. For example, Steenhoff mentions that he would tip in some flaking passages of paint in a picture by Gauguin using watercolour retouches that could be easily removed, but this might be something that he would ask Traas to do under his supervision, see W. Steenhoff to V.W. van Gogh, undated, VGM, b5617v. It was not yet uncommon for museum directors with a background in painting to perform small restoration treatments, another example being Gerrit David Gratama who, as Director at the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, 1912–46, worked on paintings in an upstairs studio at the museum, see A. Erftemeijer: 100 jaar Frans Hals Museum, Rotterdam 2013, pp.232–35.

Jan Cornelis Traas

starting with colleagues from the Rijksmuseum who in 1924 taught Traas how to patinate (aftonen) and colour frames and also donated materials to the Mesdag studio.31 Traas began with frame maintenance and repair work on the Mesdag collection, and in 1925 progressed to what Vincent Willem van Gogh referred to as ‘simpler’ interventions on paintings, which, however, involved lining (doubleren) and ‘cleaning’ (schoonmaken), a rather ambiguous term but which might have included the removal of varnish.32

In 1925 Steenhoff tried to arrange for Traas to travel occasionally to Amsterdam to work at the Rijksmuseum. However, despite pressure exerted by the Ministry, his request was met with objections from the museum’s restorers, Bakker and Greebe,33 who were ‘too busy’ to offer Traas guidance since they were preparing for the big exhibition Amstelodamum and were also involved in Schmidt-Degener’s reinstallation of the entire museum. The restorers’ refusal to co-operate was backed by SchmidtDegener; thus, the possibility of Traas being trained by colleagues at the Rijksmuseum was blocked.34

It was at this time that the idea of treating the Van Gogh paintings took shape, as described by Vincent Willem in his ‘Memorandum on the restorer Traas’.35 He recounts that Museum Mesdag was very quiet, and the young concierge had little to do, so Steenhoff approached him to discuss the restoration of Van Gogh’s paintings, which was badly needed. The paintings were in poor condition because Jo’s frequent loans of them, made in her attempts to raise awareness of Vincent’s work, had exposed them to much travel but they had received little attention.36 Steenhoff had first proposed treatments for some of the works he hoped to include in the Van Gogh exhibition he was planning for Museum Mesdag, but once the Mesdag heirs had put a stop to this idea, a more ambitious one came into being: the long-term loan of the paintings to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, which in 1930 took over management of the family collection.37 Steenhoff suggested to Vincent Willem that Traas could prepare the pictures for loan and perform the required treatments under his supervision, starting with simple procedures. Vincent Willem trusted Steenhoff, who for more than twenty-five years had acted as friend and adviser to the Van Gogh family, so he went along with the idea, remunerating Traas for his work so that he could pay to follow Professor Willem Vogelsang’s lectures in art history at the University of Utrecht, the first course in the subject in the Netherlands. In his memorandum Vincent Willem concluded that ‘things had gone well’.

Working on Van Gogh’s paintings thus formed an essential part of Traas’s training, enabling him to practise his skills of restoration on a large scale and especially to gain experience of lining.38 For seven years from October 1926 the paintings in the family’s collection were transported back and forth by road – and in the case of some smaller works, by rail – from Vincent Willem’s house, Rozenlaantje 12 in Laren, to the studio in the garden of Museum Mesdag.39 The studio was built by Mesdag for his painter friend Willy Martens when Martens was appointed Director of the museum in 1915, but under Steenhoff it came to serve as a restoration studio where works from Mesdag and the Mauritshuis, as well as other state collections, were brought until 1990, when it was demolished.40 On 11th October 1926 the earliest documented consignment from Vincent Willem was delivered: seven paintings that were ‘as good as ready’ by 2nd December of that year.41 Treatment of nineteen paintings in December 1926 to January 1927 followed,42 and this momentum was kept up until the end of the campaign in the summer of 1933, with the last invoice dated 12th July 1933.43 In all, Traas received seventeen deliveries comprising a total of 223 paintings, the vast majority by Van Gogh, but also including some thirty-nine pictures by his contemporaries and a number of unidentified works. The work could not be completed before Steenhoff’s retirement in 1928, so he left a list of works to be treated, for his successor, Ida C.E. Peelen, to supervise. Peelen also arranged for some adjustments to be made to the garden studio so that Traas could treat big paintings there. He reportedly attracted visitors to watch him at work, including Queen Juliana.44

In general Traas appears not to have kept written records of the treatments he performed, something that would become routine only for the next generation. Luitsen Kuiper, who from 1961 was Traas’s assistant at the Mesdag and the Mauritshuis and took over his position when he retired, started to write notes on the paintings he treated and was the first restorer to introduce records as a standard procedure at the Rijksmuseum, where he headed the paintings conservation studio from 1970 to 1989.45 But Traas’s documentation at the Mauritshuis does include technical photographs of paintings made at various stages of treatment, as is evident from the lightbox and perhaps an X-ray visible behind him in Fig.1. Indeed, we know that Traas was educated early on in technical aspects as he followed classes given by Dr J.J. Lijnst Zwikker, a chemist employed at the Kunsthistorisch Instituut, Utrecht, from 1926 to 1938 to teach the ‘chemical aspects of

31 Director of the Rijksmuseum to MEAS, 28th May 1925, NHA, folder 1495, no.13176, ‘opleiding concierge TRAAS’. 32 Document cited at note 22 above. 33 Pieter Nicolaas Bakker (1882–1940) and Willem Frederik Cornelis Greebe (1865–1946) were officially promoted to 1st Class Technical Assistants with the staff title of Paintings Restorer in 1920; they continued to work at the Rijksmuseum until they retired or left in 1930. The author thanks Esther van Duijn for this information. 34 For the Amstelodamum exhibition catalogue, see https://rkd.nl/nl/explore/ library/9722. Exchanges between MEAS and Director of the Rijksmuseum regarding ‘opleiding concierge TRAAS’, NHA, folder 1495, no.2628 (22nd May 1925); nos.13176 and 2784 (both 28th May 1925). 35 Document cited at note 9 above. 36 For instance, The bedroom at Arles (F482) was exhibited twenty times between 1890 and 1926, see W. Feilchenfeldt: Vincent van Gogh: The Years in France, complete paintings 1886–1890, London 2013, p.120; and H. Luijten: Alles voor Vincent; Het leven van Jo van Gogh-Bonger, Amsterdam 2019, p.433. 37 H. Tromp: A Real van Gogh: How the Art World Struggles with Truth, Amsterdam 2010, p.210. The 1930 loan consisted of ninety-two paintings and 143 drawings by Van Gogh and twentyone works by his contemporaries. 38 During the course of his thirty plus years of working at the Mauritshuis, Traas lined only seven paintings, see S. Meloni: ‘An overview of almost 150 years of wax-resin linings in the Mauritshuis’, March 2021, Dutch Method series. 39 Traas was planning to return some smaller works he had treated in person with a companion by train providing there were not too many, see W. Steenhoff to V.W. van Gogh, 10th May 1928, VGM, b5636v/1996. 40 De Leeuw, op. cit. (note 21), pp.5 and 25. 41 List of paintings handed over to Traas for treatment on 11th October 1926, undated, VGM, b5625; and W. Steenhoff to V.W. van Gogh, 2nd December 1926, VGM, b5626. 42 Invoice, VGM, b4206. 43 Invoice, VGM, b4203. 44 Y. Marcus-de Groot: Kunsthistorische vrouwen van weleer De eerste generatie in Nederland vóór 1921, Hilversum 2003, p.267. 45 Document cited at note 4 above. Kuiper was appointed Technical Assistant A, and it was intended that he would succeed Traas when the latter retired on 1st May 1963. He was promoted to Restorer of Paintings A on 1st January 1968 and moved to the Rijksmuseum in 1970, see F. van der Knaap: ‘Luitsen Kuiper, de praktijk van een restaurator’, unpublished MA thesis (University of Amsterdam, 2011), pp.10 and 12–13; idem: ‘Luitsen Kuiper, a conservator’s methodology’, Art Histories Society 2.2 (1st March 2012), p.2; and P.J.J. van Thiel: ‘In memoriam Luitsen Kuiper 1936–1989’, Bulletin van Het Rijksmuseum 37 (1989), pp.307–09. 46 The lessons with Zwikker are mentioned in a letter requesting permission to apply for the post of restorer at the RMA, J.C. Traas, Museum Mesdag, to the MEAS, NHA, folder 1496, 6th November 1930. For Zwikker, see A. Hoogenboom and I. Gerards, eds: De Swillenscollectie; De kunsttechnische verzameling van het Kunsthistorisch Instituut te Utrecht, Vianen 2002, p.14. 47 The document cited at note 46 mentions that an X-ray was included with the application. 48 Ten of the invoices are handwritten and seven of them typed, probably on the portable typewriter that was given by Traas’s widow to Van der Velden; R. van der Velden email correspondence with the author, 7th June 2021. 49 Heijbroek, op. cit. (note 20), pp.212–15. 50 F numbers refer to the numbering in J.B. de la Faille: The Works of Vincent van Gogh: His Paintings and Drawings rev. edn, London 1970. See also W. Steenhoff to V.W. van Gogh, 2nd December 1926, VGM, b5626. 51 W. Steenhoff to V.W. van Gogh, undated, VGM, b5618. The paintings mentioned were restored in October–November 1926. 52 W. Steenhoff to Jo van GoghBonger, Amsterdam 1917, VGM, b5605. 53 L. van Tilborgh: ‘Framing van Gogh 1880–1990’, in E. Mendgen, ed.: exh. cat. In Perfect Harmony: Picture + Frame, 1850–1920, Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum) 1995, p.176, fig.167 and pp.178–79. 54 J. van Gogh-Bonger to Messrs Ernest Brown and Phillips, 17th November 1923, VGM, b5896; and Luijten, op. cit. (note 36), p.432.

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painting, using X-rays, ultraviolet light and suchlike’, before the restorer Martin de Wild took over the role.46 We also know that Traas himself experimented with X-rays, for he included a sample in his portfolio when applying for the post of First Class Technical Assistant at the Rijksmuseum in 1930.47 Unfortunately, no photographs survive from his treatments of the Van Gogh collection, although dated invoices from Traas listing the consignments of paintings in the early campaign give basic descriptions of the treatment for each work. The invoices, both handwritten and typed, also give an idea of the speed at which the paintings passed through his hands, compared to today’s procedures. 48

Traas would have followed the instructions of Steenhoff, whose letters regarding the works he had planned to include in his projected Van Gogh exhibition reveal that he had clear ideas about how each painting should be treated.49 In many cases, although not always, Steenhoff advocated lining and varnishing them as a necessary preventive measure to fix loose paint and reinforce the canvas supports. For instance, he recommended lining a still life with pears (probably F383, Quinces, lemons, pears and grapes) even though it was not immediately necessary, ‘since the canvas had begun to look a bit like a sieve when held against the light’,50 and in the case of a Still life with apples (presumably F254) and The sower (F451) he considered that the lack of varnish had contributed to problems of flaking paint.51 His proposal to varnish Van Gogh’s later French paintings broke with the stipulations of Jo van Gogh-Bonger, who wished to keep them in the unvarnished state in which Vincent had left them. In Van Gogh-Bonger’s lifetime, Steenhoff had tried to coax her into having pictures carefully cleaned, but he knew she was vehemently opposed to the application of even a thin layer of varnish.52 A photograph reveals that Van Gogh-Bonger chose to hang certain pictures at home behind protective glass, including the triptych of orchards painted in Arles in 1888 that is known to have held special value for her and her husband, Theo (Fig.3).53 Van Gogh-Bonger responded vehemently in November 1923 to a suggestion by Ernest Brown & Phillips that works she had lent to the Leicester Galleries, London, should be varnished:

On no account do I want the paintings to be varnished. I am strongly opposed to it, and forbid it for any pictures in our collection. I express myself rather strongly on this subject, because I know it spoils their beautiful appearance. I have seen some pictures, which German collectors had varnished, and I found the effect horrible, Van Gogh’s technique does not agree with varnish.54

3. Living room of Jo van Gogh-Bonger’s house in Brachthuyzerstraat, Amsterdam, showing from left to right: The white orchard (F403); The pink peach tree (F404); and The pink orchard (F555). c.1917. Photograph Thijs Quispel. (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; Vincent van Gogh Foundation).

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4. Diagram of the Dutch method of wax-resin lining; in this case the original and lining canvases are enlarged with paper strips adhered to the edges, rather than the canvas strips sewn on by Traas, enabling the canvases to be stretched on wooden looms during lining. (From S. Cursiter and A.M. de Wild: ‘Picture relining’, in Technical Studies in the Field of Fine Arts 5 (1937)).

Throughout her life, Van Gogh-Bonger resisted recommendations by Steenhoff and others to have the pictures restored. The Hague dealer Johannes Hendricus de Bois (1878–1946) did not mince words when describing the poor condition of the paintings (principally the frames), which in his opinion looked ‘as if they were fished out of the gutter’.55 The situation changed, however, when her son took over care of the collection, since Vincent Willem trusted Steenhoff implicitly and relied on his judgment and advice in preparing the loans to the Stedelijk Museum. By today’s standards, the methods he proposed seem highly invasive, as the paintings were to receive full treatments, which typically involved surface cleaning,56 wax-resin lining, varnishing the pictures and putting them onto new stretchers to carry the extra weight of the lining. Yet in his day, Steenhoff’s recommendations were nothing out of the ordinary, since well into the twentieth century it was common practice to line and varnish Impressionist-style paintings.

Only in a few instances did Traas refrain from lining, and it is striking that these unlined works included a number dating from the spring of 1887, when Van Gogh applied his paints very thinly onto absorbent supports, without his usual impasto, in a style that was influenced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.57 Whether lining was deemed unnecessary or inappropriate for these works is not explained, but it was something of an exception to the rule of wax-resin lining as a standard measure. Most of the paintings had never been lined and varnished before; only in four cases does Traas mention having to remove an old lining, which was probably a French glue lining, as he specifies in one case.58

Traas relined The bedroom at Arles (F482) in the winter of 1931–32. In unusual detail, he described how the old lining had compromised the painting and that it required much effort and consultation to restore it to its original state.59 From Van Gogh’s correspondence we know that The bedroom was already damaged by damp in the artist’s studio, so Vincent had stuck newspapers onto the paint surface to prevent it from flaking and asked his brother Theo to have the picture lined. While in general he considered that sooner or later his paintings would need to be lined,60 he envisaged that it would have been in the traditional French method of glue paste lining rather than the Dutch wax-resin method. He was given a detailed description of the French procedure, which had been demonstrated to Paul Gauguin. It entailed sticking newspaper onto the front of a canvas with flour paste, then placing it on a smooth board and pressing it with very hot irons to flatten and secure flaking paint. In that way, ‘All the breaks in your colour will remain but will be flattened down and you’ll have a very fine surface’. Gauguin added, ‘That’s largely the whole secret of lining’.61 When The bedroom was restored in 2009–10, traces of these earlier interventions were still evident in the form of pressed-down cracks and flattened hills of impasto onto which newsprint had been transferred.62

Traas’s work on the loans for the Stedelijk Museum was interrupted by an internship he spent at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, from September 1927 to January 1928.63 It was organised by Steenhoff who was said to have got the idea from Professor Vogelsang, whose art history classes Traas had followed, and Professor Martin at the Mauritshuis.64 We know of only one other Dutch restorer who studied in Vienna, namely Carel de Wild (1870–1922), who was there for almost a year from November 1894 to September 1895 before starting to work for the Mauritshuis in 1901.65 This is unlikely to be a coincidence, and the choice of the Kunsthistorisches Museum as a place of training seems to indicate the wish to follow in the footsteps of that illustrious predecessor. Yet evidently the Vienna internship no longer carried the same prestige for Traas as it had for De Wild, since immediately after Traas’s return from Vienna, Martin wrote that, ‘reading between the lines’ of Traas’s internship he had ‘merely gained technical experience’,66 which is confirmed by the logbook records of his work performed under the supervision of Karl Proksch. While Traas’s work was satisfactory, it was quite limited in scope, as he had worked mainly on panel paintings and done remedial work, such as fixing paint blisters, rather than complex cleaning or lining treatments.67

Traas later said he had learned how to line paintings in Vienna, yet this claim does not seem credible since, as far as we know, at that time only traditional glue-paste lining was practised in Vienna, rather than the Dutch wax-resin method used by Traas.68 Professor Martin adds to

55 J.H. de Bois to J. van Gogh-Bonger, 23rd July 1908, VGM, b541. Luijten, op. cit. (note 36), pp.432–33. 56 The term used is cleaning (schoonmaken), which in this context can usually be taken to mean the removal of surface grime from the back and/or front of the paintings rather than the removal of an old varnish, which in most cases had not then been applied to the paintings. When Traas did remove an old varnish, this was usually specified in the invoice. 57 The works left unlined include Basket of crocus bulbs (F334) mentioned in VGM, b4211, May–August 1928, and Dish with citrus fruit (F338), mentioned in VGM, b4215, September 1928; and Plaster cast of a woman’s torso (F216h), which are all still unlined. 58 The four paintings are: The bedroom at Arles, F482, December 1931–January 1932, VGM, b4200; ‘t Parijsche gezicht op Montmartre’, perhaps Montmartre: windmills and allotments F346, undated, VGM, b5618; Grapes, F603, December 1932, VGM, b4205; and Woman with cradle, F369, December 1932, VGM, b4210. An undated letter from W. Steenhoff to V.W. van Gogh describes how ‘t Parijsche gezicht op Montmartre’ is stuck onto another canvas, probably with glue, in such a way that the original canvas bulges in places, so that the later canvas needed to be removed and afterwards the work could be properly relined with wax. The relining and restoration treatment by Traas was invoiced on 7th June 1932, VGM, b4202. 59 Traas invoice addressed to V.W. van Gogh, December 1931–January 1932, VGM, b4200: ‘Daar by een vorige behandeling dit schilderij hopeloos slecht verdoekt, en in de verflaag vreeselyk geknoeid was, kon dit schildery slechts met zeer veel moeite en overleg weer in zyn oorspronkelyken toestand terug gebracht worden’. Other translations of the word ‘overleg’ are deliberation or consideration. 60 Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 5th–6th September 1889, see L. Jansen, H. Luijten and N. Bakker, eds: Letters, http://vangoghletters.org/ (hereafter cited as Letters) 800. 61 Paul Gauguin to Vincent van Gogh, between 8th and 16th January 1889, Letters 779. 62 I. Fiedler et al.: ‘Materials, intention and evolution’, in G. Groom, ed.: exh. cat. Van Gogh’s Bedrooms, Chicago (Art Institute) 2016, p.94. 63 Direktion der Gemäldegalerie to J.C. Traas, 12th January 1928, certificate of internship, Kunsthistorisches Museum Archives, Vienna (henceforth cited as KMA). A copy of this is attached to his job application to the Rijksmuseum in 1930, see document cited at note 46 above. 64 Correspondence between Steenhoff and Ernst H. Buschbeck concerning ‘Volontieren des Herrn Jan C. Traas aus dem Haag in der Restaurieranstalt der Gemäldegalerie’, 13th April–28th June 1927, KMA, unnumbered. 65 Van Duijn and Ter Marvelde, op. cit. (note 1), p.817. Thank you to Esther van Duijn for further clarifying the dates of Carel’s training in Vienna and a subsequent timeline based on his correspondence with Hofstede de Groot. From September to December 1895 Carel travelled in Italy and worked

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the puzzle, as in his letter he explains that Traas had visited him after his return from Vienna and had told him that he was still searching for a way of lining paintings that was suited to the Dutch climate.69 Perhaps Traas was referring to a refinement of his lining procedure, since it does not seem tenable that he was not yet acquainted with wax-resin lining after Vienna given that, even prior to his internship, he had already wax-resin lined a considerable number of Van Gogh’s paintings. One of these was Sunflowers, which must have posed a particular challenge, owing to the fact that Van Gogh had added a painted wooden strip to the top of the painting, which Traas had to remove before lining the painting and then had to nail the strip back onto the new stretcher.70

So far it has not been possible to establish who taught Traas to waxresin line paintings at the start of his career in Museum Mesdag. Given the rivalry between restorers in The Hague it unlikely that it was Derix de Wild (although we know that Traas visited his studio),71 and it is tempting to speculate on a possible role played by Petrus P.J. Stiefelhagen, who lined three paintings in the Mesdag Collection in 1924–25, precisely the period when Traas was learning to restore. A peculiar feature of the paintings Traas lined from late 1929 is the machine stitching seen on the tacking margins, which seems unparalleled and constitutes a personal hallmark of his lining procedure. As an ‘autodidact’, a term Steenhoff used to describe Traas when recommending him for the Vienna internship, it is conceivable that he devised his own lining method based on various procedures, or invented certain aspects of it himself.

Examination and analysis of the large number of Van Gogh’s paintings treated by Traas during the early campaign suggests that he worked in a neat and methodical way. The pictures share consistent features – traits of his method – which were slightly adjusted over time. These characteristics can prove helpful in identifying undocumented works treated by his hand. Traas wax-resin lined the paintings using the traditional Dutch method that involved ironing the painting face down on a cold table, with both the original and lining canvases stretched on wooden looms. Klaver recalls that Traas used a one-step process, rather than the original two-step procedure of the Dutch method: the wax-resin was not applied to the reverse of the painting in a separate step, but was brushed onto the lining canvas and ironed through to the front of the painting in a single procedure.72 Analysis has identified the materials he used: automated thread counting has revealed that Traas used lining canvases cut from different rolls that closely resembled the original Tasset et L’Hote canvases used by Van Gogh.73 Chemical analysis showed that he used a typical lining adhesive mixture of beeswax and diterpenoid resin, which agrees with a handwritten bill dated 26th January 1931 listing ingredients Traas purchased: beeswax, Venetian turpentine and colophony.74

To stretch the original canvas before lining it, Traas extended the flattened tacking edges of the painting with strips of canvas that could be wrapped around the oversized wooden loom (Fig.4). Still identifiable on the paintings Traas lined from late 1929 onwards are traces of the machine stitching (applied in two straight rows in natural coloured thread) used to sew on the strips, and occasionally remnants of the fabric strips survive.75 Some paintings have much coarser, oblique stitches made by hand with double strands of coloured thread, but these are thought to have been paintings lined by Traas later in his career.76 To avoid undesirable mark-through of texture, Traas might file or sand off irregularities on the reverse of the original canvas prior to lining. This practice, which may have been necessitated by the lumps of ground that often penetrated between the threads of the open-weave canvases used by Van Gogh, is thought to explain the broken threads and tiny circular losses of ground observed in Sunflowers. 77 To protect the delicate texture of Van Gogh’s paint surfaces when ironing them face down, Traas applied a tissue paper facing with glue. Klaver recalls his use of a rice paper facing for textured paintings, and that he placed an additional blanket on the linoleum tabletop for textured paintings, and spread a

in Vienna, then for three months from January to March 1896 studied under Hauser in Berlin to learn the wax-resin lining method, before returning to The Hague to start his own studio in the summer of 1896. 66 Director of Mauritshuis to the MEAS, 12th March 1928, MA, no.1292. 67 The author is indebted to Elke Oberthaler, Chief Paintings Conservator at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, for sharing log book records of Traas’s internship at the Museum. 68 Information kindly provided by Elke Oberthaler, and Manfred Koller, Institut für Konservierung und Restaurierung, University of Applied Arts, Vienna. 69 Document cited at note 66 above. 70 E. Hendriks et al.: Conservation of the Amsterdam “Sunflowers”: from past to future’, in idem and M. Vellekoop, eds: Van Gogh’s Sunflowers Illuminated: Art meets Science, Amsterdam 2019, pp.175–205, esp. pp.179–80. 71 Traas to V.W. van Gogh, 11th August 1932, VGM, b8686, mentions that Traas took a painting to be photographed in de Wild’s studio. 72 Klaver’s recollections cited in an email from J. Nijstad, 26th July 2021. 73 In the Thread Count Automation Project, a pilot study was performed by D.H. Johnson of Rice University and this author using automated thread count measurements on scaled photographs of the reverse side of eight paintings lined by Traas. The lining canvases are all very similar, but based on slight variations in thread density they could be assigned to three different rolls (roll 1 with 10.6 by 13.3 threads per cm.; roll 2 with 11.4 by 15.1 th/cm.; and roll 3 with 10.4–10.6 by 14.7–14.9 th/cm). The quality of the lining canvas is very close to the Tasset et L’Hote ordinary type of canvas used by Van Gogh in the period 1888–90, for example, the canvas used for Sunflowers has 11.4 by 16.9 th/cm. 74 To determine the composition of the wax-resin adhesive used by Traas, samples of wax-resin adhesive were taken from the reverse of eleven paintings in 2004 by Stephan and Ana Schaefer and analysed using DTMS by Jerre van der Horst and Jaap J. Boon at AMOLF (FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics), University of Amsterdam. Invoice from J.C. Traas to Prof. Martin, 26th January 1931, MA, unnumbered, listing materials Traas used for restoration of two portraits owned by the Department of Defence

5. Relining of Van Gogh’s Railway bridge over Avenue Montmajour, Arles (F480; whereabouts unknown), showing the preparation of the sawdust bed on which the painting is laid face downwards for lining without a hot table, by ironing, using ‘an elaborate insulation with tin foil and a sawdust bedding’ to protect the high impasto. Photograph, taken probably in Helmut Ruhemann’s studio in Berlin c.1932. (From Manual on the Conservation and Restoration of Paintings, Paris 1940).

‘verdoekspecie: was. Venetiaansche terpentijn en kolophonium’. 75 An example is illustrated in E. Hendriks: ‘Treatment History of the Collection’, in idem and L. van Tilborgh: Vincent van Gogh Paintings: Antwerp & Paris 1885–1888, Zwolle 2011, II, p.31, fig.2. 76 Examples are the ochre stitches found on Bank of the Seine (F293) and remnants of brown stitches on A crab on its back (F605), pictures which are thought to have been lined and restored by Traas in 1960. J.C. Traas to V.W. van Gogh, 18th January 1960, Archive Stedelijk Museum (hereafter cited as SMA), unnumbered, list of paintings requiring treatment, mentions ‘krab (verdoeken)’. 77 Hendriks, op. cit. (note 70), pp.181–82.

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Opposite 6. Field with irises near Arles, by Vincent van Gogh. May 1888. Oil on canvas, 54 by 65 cm. (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; Vincent van Gogh Foundation). 7. Fig.6 photographed in raking light after the removal of the varnish in 2014–15. 8. Enlarged detail of Fig.6, showing canvas weave impressed in the flattened impasto from rolling and sending the painting to Theo van Gogh.

layer of flour on the linoleum for highly textured ones.78 While we can no longer find direct evidence for this cushioning, it agrees with similar recommendations to use sawdust or felt padding to protect the impasto surfaces of Van Gogh’s paintings during handlining by the Dutch method (Fig.5).79 This precautionary measure would help to explain how Traas managed to preserve the extremely intricate texture of paintings such as Field with irises near Arles (F409; Fig.6) in such pristine condition, with no signs of visible damage, something that now seems a breathtaking accomplishment (Figs.7 and 8).80

To bear the additional weight of the pictures after lining, Traas replaced the original stretchers with sturdy softwood stretchers that could be stained with a darker colour. The usual construction is with bridle (slot mortise-and-tenon) corner joins and mortised strips nailed around the outer edge to prevent distortions in the corners of the canvas when keyed out. Where needed, crossbars were added for reinforcement. For example, the new stretcher for Sunflowers was modified to incorporate a horizontal bar, presumably to bear the extra weight of the painted wooden strip nailed to the top of the stretcher.81 Traas took care to use stretchers that corresponded to the format of the pictures, which sometimes meant undoing earlier adjustments, for example for the loose canvases that Vincent sent to Theo in Paris, which had been put onto ready-made stretchers that did not quite match the paintings’ dimensions.

One example is Wheat field with crows (F779), which was painted on a ‘double-square’ canvas mounted on a stretcher that was too small. When Traas lined the painting in the spring of 1928,82 he followed Steenhoff’s suggestion to replace the undersized stretcher with one in the correct format, even though this would mean that the existing picture frame would no longer fit.83 Down the left side of the painting we can still detect the two-centimetre-wide strip with tack holes that had served as a tacking margin, now turned back into the picture plane after being lined by Traas.84 Unusually, in the case of the The bedroom at Arles, Traas reduced the size of the picture when lining it in the winter of 1931–32, folding a 1.5 centimetre strip of the painting over the left side of the new stretcher so that it was lost from view. Perhaps this was prompted by the damaged state of this area, which suffers extensive losses of zinc white paint used to render the jamb of the door leading to Gauguin’s bedroom.85

When mounting canvases onto new stretchers, it was Traas’s custom to keep the original tacking margins that had been used to stretch the paintings for lining, but to trim them straight along the back edge of the stretcher. Initially, Traas kept the corners of the original canvas, which were tuck-folded and tacked to the stretcher, but from late 1929 he cut these off to provide a neat butt join around the corners of the stretcher. At a time when it was still common to remove original tacking margins prior to lining, Traas’s method was restrained, and agreed with the recommendations published in the slightly later series on lining by Stanley Cursiter and A.M. de Wild in Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts. 86 Traas’s combination of trimmed edges and clipped corners is also found in early linings by Derix de Wild,87 but more research is needed to know if it was general practice at the time. To protect the edges of the lined paintings, Traas covered them with brown paper tape, usually varnishing the pictures afterwards with a brush coat of dammar which is absent beneath the tape. Compared to artist-restorers such as Claude-Emile Schuffenecker (1851–1934), whose habit it was to ‘complete’ Van Gogh’s works by fabricating additions around the edges,88 Traas’s approach to retouching was much more restrained. He refrained from inventing new parts and from the common practice of ‘completing’ the rough borders of late nineteenthcentury works that were considered to lack ‘finish’.89 When faced early on with treatment of An old woman of Arles (F390; Figs.9 and 10), a painting with large losses in the corners, Traas chose to fill them with a smooth putty and tone them with an even colour, making no attempt to reconstruct texture and detail in the missing areas.90 This forms an interesting early example of a ‘neutral retouch’ that seems quite exceptional for Traas, whose normal approach was to aim for a fully integrated retouching, which could even

78 See email correspondence cited at note 72 above. 79 Anon. [H. Ruhemann and A.M. de Wild]: ‘II. Lining’, Manual on the Conservation and Restoration of Paintings, Paris 1940, p.221 and figs.57–59. ‘In 1932 Philip Hendy, then curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, sent a Netherlandish panel of St Luke painting the Virgin to Berlin [. . .] The painting was cleaned by Ruhemann in his private studio to remove a discoloured, non-original varnish that was also toned with pigments as well as old dark retouchings’, see Blewett, op. cit. (note 1), p.641; the painting can be seen in the background of the photograph, hence the dating given in the caption. 80 The painting shows some local flattening of impasto with the impression of a canvas weave, which must have been caused by Van Gogh rolling the picture when the paint was still fresh, rather than the lining by Traas; letter of Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, Arles, on or about 13th August 1888, mentions that the painting was rolled in a bundle of studies to carry back to Paris, Letters 660. See Fig.8. 81 Hendriks, op. cit. (note 70), p.180. 82 VGM, invoice b4215, March–May 1928. 83 Willem Steenhoff to Vincent Willem van Gogh, undated, VGM, b5635v/1996. 84 E. Hendriks et al.: ‘Automated thread counting and the Studio Practice Project’, in M. Vellekoop et al., eds: Van Gogh’s Studio Practice, Amsterdam 2013, p.180, fig.15 reconstructs the later changes in format of all the ‘double square’ canvases Van Gogh painted in Auvers-sur-Oise. 85 E. Hendriks et al.: ‘A comparative study of Vincent van Gogh’s “Bedroom” series’, in M. Spring, ed.: Studying Old Master Paintings: Technology and Practice, The National Gallery Technical Bulletin 30th Anniversary Conference Postprints, London 2011, p.238 and note 7. The folded-over portion is illustrated in Fiedler, op. cit. (note 62), p.89, fig.19. 86 S. Cursiter and A.M. de Wild: ‘Picture relining’, Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts 5, no.2 (January 1937), p.162. 87 Examples illustrated in a lecture by René Boitelle cited at note 22. 88 Schuffenecker’s practices are discussed in L. van Tilborgh and E. Hendriks: ‘The Tokyo “Sunflowers”: a genuine repetition by Van Gogh or a Schuffenecker forgery?’, The Van Gogh Museum Journal (2001), pp.17–44, esp. pp.31–32. 89 An example is discussed in R. Woudhuysen-Keller et al.: Die Rosenallee: Der Weg zum Spätwerk Monets in Giverny, Aachen and Mainz 2001, pp.39–42. 90 The painting is thought to correspond to ‘Oude vrouw v. Gogh’ listed in VGM, b4206, December 1926–January 1927, as having been lined, ‘repaired’ (bijgewerkt), retouched and varnished.

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9. An old woman of Arles, by Vincent van Gogh. 1888. Oil on canvas, 58 by 42 cm., showing the corners filled with putty and an even tone. (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; Vincent van Gogh Foundation). 10. Photograph of Fig.9 recording its damaged condition prior to the 1927 restoration by Traas. (Photograph Bernard F. Eilers; from W. Scherjon and W. Jos de Gruyter: Vincent van Gogh’s great period. Arles, St. Rémy and Auvers sur Oise, Amsterdam 1937).

extend to the addition of pencil lines to imitate the grooves and cracks in Van Gogh’s textured brushwork.91

Nowadays, some of Traas’s retouches no longer match the surrounding colour of original paint, since he used pigments that have proved to be more stable than the fugitive ones used by Van Gogh. Such old retouches, along with glimpses of original colour preserved beneath the paper tape applied around the edges of the pictures after lining, may provide valuable evidence for the original vivid colour schemes of the paintings that have continued to change since they were treated by Traas.92 When The bedroom was treated in 2009–10, it emerged that Traas had been confronted with this ongoing change, since when he treated the picture in 1958, some thirty years after his first campaign,93 he had to adjust the colour of his earlier retouches to match the new, cooler tint of the floor that resulted from further fading of the geranium lake pigment it contains (Figs.11 and 12).94

While Traas resisted overpainting to resurrect the ‘original’ colours of Van Gogh’s works, he did use overpaint to restore the coherence of paint areas that had been disrupted by the effects of later discolouration and other alterations. For example, he corrected the mottled colour caused by the fading of a red lake pigment in the back wall of The bedroom by using a cerulean blue scumble (rather than reinstating the original purple) and evened out the roughness of Van Gogh’s reworking of the sky in Field

91 For illustrated examples of pencil lines in two versions of the Sunflowers, one restored by Traas in 1927 and the other by Helmut Ruhemann in 1942 (at which time he may have left some older retouches in place), see E. Hendriks et al. in Hendriks and Vellekoop, op. cit. (note 70), pp.186–87; and C. Higgit, G. Macaro and M. Spring: ‘Methods, materials and condition of the London “Sunflowers”’, in ibid., pp.49–83, at p.67. 92 E. Hendriks: ‘“Paintings fade like flowers”: colour change in paintings by Vincent van Gogh’, in R. Clarricoates, H. Dowding and A. Gent, eds: Colour Change in Paintings, London 2016, esp. pp.44–45. 93 VGM, invoice b 4200, December 1931–January 1932, no.1. The painting received extensive treatment, including relining, filling and retouching of damages and varnishing. J.C. Traas invoice, 15th October 1958, VGM, unnumbered, records that the painting had again been ‘cleaned’, retouched and varnished. 94 Hendriks, op. cit. (note 85), p.241; and Fiedler, op. cit. (note 62), pp.86–91. Traas’s later adjustment of his own retouches is discussed by E. Hendriks in an unpublished treatment report, 2010, VGM conservation archive. With thanks to Roy S. Berns and Brittany Cox (Rochester Institute of Technology, New York) and Maurice Tromp (Van Gogh Museum) for Fig.12. 95 F482 was cleaned and restored in 2009–10, and F409 in 2014–15, when in both cases Traas’s overpaint was removed; unpublished treatment reports by E. Hendriks in conservation files, VGM, archived by F number. 96 Drips of vermilion paint from the roofs that had landed in the middle of the field were touched out by Traas, who must have found them unsightly. 97 Document cited at note 9 above. Vincent Willem was referring to Christiaan (Chris) van Voorst, who worked with a colleague, the restorer Jacobus (Co) van Beek; see M. Prins: ‘Restauratoren uit het verleden, Van Manusje-vanalles tot restaurator, Chris van Voorst en Co van Beek’, CR: Inter-disciplinair vakblad voor conservering en restauratie 8 (2007), pp.36–38. M. Prins: ‘Geduld, Waardigheid en Nauwgezetheid. Professionalisering van de eerste schilderijenrestauratoren van het Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam’, unpublished MA thesis (University of Amsterdam, 2006). 98 Discussed in L. Wijnberg: ‘The history of the wax-resin lining of paintings by Kazimir Malevich at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam’, May

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11. The bedroom at Arles, by Vincent van Gogh. 1888. Oil on canvas, 72.4 by 91.3 cm. Photographed after the 2009–10 treatment when Traas’s old varnish and retouches were removed. The originally pale violet walls and lilac doors described by the artist are now light blue, owing to the fading of a red cochineal lake in the paint mixture used. (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; Vincent van Gogh Foundation). 12. Digital visualisation providing an impression of the original colours of Fig.11. (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; Vincent van Gogh Foundation).

with irises near Arles, which he must have misconstrued to be the effect of abrasion.95 The latter also provides an example of Traas’s practice of touching out drips of paint that had unintentionally fallen from the artist’s brush elsewhere on the painting, which is perhaps less invasive than the option of total removal.96 1933 marked the end of Traas’s first campaign treating Van Gogh’s paintings, but Vincent Willem van Gogh recalled that Traas cared for the Van Gogh paintings until the Second World War, after which a large part of the collection was kept at the Stedelijk Museum where the restorer ‘van Voorst’ ‘carried out all sorts of tasks’.97 In 1957 a new studio was established at the Stedelijk under the directorship of Willem Sandberg, which moved to a new space in 1961 with an electrically heated hot-table purchased in 1959. In the busy first years of the studio from 1957 to 1961, the Stedelijk conservators were preoccupied with treating the newly acquired collection of Malevich paintings,98 so they farmed out the treatment of several Van Gogh paintings to Traas.

Some of these paintings Traas lined for the first time, but for those that had passed through his hands before, he would keep the old waxresin linings from the 1926–33 campaign, but ‘cleaned’, ‘retouched’ and ‘varnished’ the works.99 Several paintings by Van Gogh sent to Traas for treatment in the summer of 1961 were varnished with an alkyd resin (so far identified on three paintings) instead of the natural dammar resin he had used in his earlier campaign.100 He may have switched to the synthetic varnish in the belief that it was more stable than the traditional dammar, which is known to yellow over time. However, this does not seem to chime with the presence of red and dark iron-oxide pigment particles found in the varnish, added by Traas to adjust the tone.101 It is known that he applied pigmented varnishes to the old-master paintings he treated at the Mauritshuis in accordance with Professor Martin’s ideas. Martin was the first museum director to publish on the matter, confessing that he liked the effect of a yellow tone provided by traditional gallery varnish, although he preferred a very thin layer that revealed all the details of the painting.102 Perhaps the tonal character of the Sunflowers encouraged Traas to transfer an aesthetic associated with old-master pictures to his treatment of a nineteenth-century painting by Van Gogh.103

While Traas’s later switch to the use of alkyd varnish suggests his willingness to follow the latest trends in the use of modern synthetic materials, we do not witness an equivalent ‘progression’ with respect to his linings, since well into his retirement he continued to wax-resin

2021, Dutch Method series. 99 Typed invoice J.C. Traas to V.W. van Gogh, 15th October 1958, SMA, unnumbered, mentions ‘het schoonmaken, (geheel) bijwerken en vernissen’ for eight of the Van Gogh paintings in the period 14th December 1957 to 23rd September 1958. 100 Discussed in Hendriks et al., op. cit. (note 70), at pp.188–92; and K.J. van den Berg et al.: ‘Structure and chemical composition of the surface layers in the Amsterdam “Sunflowers”’, in Hendriks and Vellekoop, eds, op. cit. (note 70), pp.159–73. 101 Hendriks et al., op. cit. (note 70), pp.190–92. The pigments are thought to have been added by Traas and not in a ready-mixed ingredient, since they are selectively found in the different varnish layers and paintings analysed. 102 P. Noble et al.: ‘Conservering, restauratie en materiaaltechnisch onderzoek in het Mauritshuis. Een historisch overzicht’, in E. Runia, ed.: Bewaard voor de eeuwigheid; Conservering, restauratie en materiaaltechnisch onderzoek in het Mauritshuis, Zwolle 2008, p.29; and M. Mundigler: ‘Wilhelm Martin and the art of restoration in the Netherlands in the early 20th century’, unpublished MA thesis (University of Amsterdam, 2019), pp.24 and 32–34. 103 Toon Klaver recalled that Traas added ochre(?) pigment to the varnishes he applied to a couple of Witjes (grisailles) he restored for Kasteel Rechteren in Dalfsen to give them a slightly warmer appearance, R. van der Velden, email correspondence with the author, 6th April 2021. 104 R. van der Velden recalls the smell of wax-resin emanating from the attic studio (later moved downstairs) during his Sunday visits to Traas in his retirement, while Toon Klaver provides details of his late lining practice, which seems a basic continuation of his handlining method. Van der Velden, email correspondence with the author, 22nd February 2021; and J. Nijstad, email correspondence with the author, 26th July 2021. 105 Traas replaced Martin de Wild as witness at the second public trial, see H. Tromp: A Real Van Gogh: How the Art World Struggles with Truth, Amsterdam 2010, p.160. Ruhemann mentions Traas in his later account of the trials, see National Gallery Research Centre, London, inv. no.NGA34/1, ‘Technical testing methods and Van Gogh falsifications: retrospections on the Wacker case’, undated and unnamed, pp.7 and 9.

line paintings, using his tried and tested method of hand-lining and employing traditional materials, without using a hot table, or even an iron with a thermostat.104 In this respect it is instructive to consider how Traas’s practices aligned with those of his English contemporary Helmut Ruhemann. While we do not know how close the two men were, they had already met by November 1932, when both were called on to act as technical experts at the public trial concerning the so-called Wacker Van Gogh forgeries.105 Like Traas, Ruhemann wax-resin lined

Jan Cornelis Traas

13. Vishwa R. Mehra making a condition report on the Van Gogh collection. 1984. Photograph. (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Vincent van Gogh Foundation).

and ‘varnished’ Van Gogh paintings throughout his career.106 However, Ruhemann’s approach to treatment varied from that of Traas as he held different views on how pictures should look. Ruhemann was a strong advocate of total cleaning: the complete removal of surface grime as well as discoloured and pigmented restoration varnishes, which he believed falsified the artist’s intentions.107 Like Traas, Ruhemann did varnish the Van Gogh paintings he treated, but he used pale beeswax rather than resin to give a matt, unvarnished appearance that he found appropriate for ‘modern’ Impressionist-style paintings.108

Like Traas, Ruhemann started with traditional, face-down handlining of Van Gogh paintings, taking measures to improve the safety of the method. These included the use of a sawdust bed to cushion the delicate impasto and adding an insulating layer of tin foil on the paint surface to conduct the heat evenly, as illustrated in his Manual on the Conservation and Restoration of Painting (Fig.5).109 In 1947 Ruhemann devised an improvised hot table to wax-resin line Van Gogh’s painting Peach blossom in the Crau (called by Ruhemann La Haie: Landscape near Arles; Courtauld Gallery, London), concluding that with this method it was possible to watch the surface of the painting at every stage unhindered by facing or bedding.110 Soon afterwards an electrically heated hot table was made by Stephen Rees Jones at the Courtauld under Ruhemann’s instruction.111 Towards the end of his career Ruhemann still recommended wax-resin lining for Van Gogh paintings in particular, in view of the ‘all-too absorbent canvas (frequently without sufficient ground on it)’ and heavy impasto used by the painter, leading to cracking and flaking paint, adding that there could now be little to say against the idea of lining as a standard precautionary measure, since modern improvements – such as the introduction of the hot table and vacuumlining methods – had eliminated most of the known risks associated with the traditional practice of hand lining.112

In Holland it would be left to the next generation of conservators at the Stedelijk Museum to introduce such methods when they took over treatment of the Van Gogh paintings after Traas retired. Existing records from the period 1968–74 suggest that the younger colleagues Chris van Voorst and Co van Beek varied their approach to structural treatment of the Van Goghs. In 1967 they added a wax-resin lining on the hot table to an existing lining;113 in 1970 they partially impregnated the reverse of an existing lining with wax-resin on the hot table,114 and in 1964 and again in 1974 they lined paintings using a synthetic polyvinyl acetate adhesive instead of the traditional wax-resin for lining.115 Use of a PVA adhesive reflects the influence of the Central Research Laboratory in Amsterdam, where safer alternatives to the wax-resin lining had been developed and the use of synthetic PVA adhesives was imported from the field of textile conservation. The paintings conservator Vishwa R. Mehra (b.1931; Fig.13) joined the staff in 1966 and came to play a crucial role as one of the main protagonists in the growing international debate on wax-resin lining, culminating in the lining moratorium that followed the legendary Conference on Comparative Lining Techniques held in 1974 at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

It is against this background that a controversy was sparked by an act of vandalism that took place at the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, the forerunner of the present Van Gogh Museum. On 25th April 1978, around closing time, a mentally disturbed visitor pulled out a sharp pocketknife and mutilated Van Gogh’s Paris Self-portrait with grey felt hat (F344; Fig.14), slashing diagonally through the canvas in the form of a cross.116 Since the museum, which had opened in 1973, did not yet have its own restoration department, repair of the portrait was entrusted to Luitsen Kuiper at the Rijksmuseum. He had joined the museum in 1970, moving from the Mauritshuis, where he had been assistant and afterwards successor to Traas. He was a highly experienced practitioner of wax-resin lining, the usual method for treating old-master paintings at both museums. An advisory committee was set up to discuss an appropriate course of treatment and at the inaugural meeting, Kuiper presented his proposal to renew the wax-resin lining of the support, replacing Traas’s old lining canvas that had been removed immediately after the attack.117 However, Ernst van de Wetering (1938–2021), art historian and colleague of Mehra at the Central Research Laboratory, questioned the suitability of this proposal, concerned that a further impregnation with wax-resin might cause exposed passages of the absorbent ground to discolour even more.118 Van de Wetering framed his objections in the light of international developments of formulated safer methods of lining yet, while Kuiper’s wax-resin lining was put on hold, eventually it went ahead.119

In the mid-1980s, as the Van Gogh Museum still did not have its own conservation studio, Mehra and Van de Wetering were engaged by the Central Research Laboratory to undertake a survey of the condition

106 H. Ruhemann: The Cleaning of Paintings: Problems and Potentialities, London 1968, p.153. 107 Ibid., pp.217–19. 108 Ibid., pp.269 and 343. 109 [Ruhemann and de Wild], op. cit. (note 79), pp.212–25; and Ruhemann, op. cit. (note 106), pp.150–53. 110 Ibid., pp.153–54 and p.343, Appendix D, ‘Restoration of “La Haie: Landscape near Arles” by Van Gogh’. 111 Ibid., pp.335–39. 112 Ibid., p.153. 113 Typed list of Van Gogh works restored in the Stedelijk Museum, compiled June 1978, SMA, unnumbered. The work in question is Head of a woman (F206). 114 Ibid., Cottages (F17) and Wheatfield with crows (F779). 115 Ibid., respectively, The pink orchard (F555), and a French landscape by Van Gogh that did not belong to the collection. 116 Retrospective report concerning the damaged Self-portrait with grey felt hat by Vincent van Gogh, compiled by L. Kuiper in August 1978 and signed by S.H. Levie, VGM, unnumbered. The act of vandalism was also reported in several newspapers, including the Volkskrant, on 26th April 1978. 117 Minutes of the committee meeting held on 12th May 1978, VGM, unnumbered. The members of the advisory committee were L. Kuiper and W. Hesterman from the restoration department of the Rijksmuseum, S.H. Levie (director) and H. van Crimpen (curator) from the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, J. van Beek from the restoration department of the Stedelijk Museum, and J.A. Mosk (scientist) and E. van de Wetering (art historian) from the Central Research Laboratory. 118 E. van de Wetering’s report, 30th May 1978, VGM, unnumbered. Van de Wetering’s concern was that the ground was of an unusually absorbent type, consisting of barium sulphate probably in a caesine binder (since disproved), which would be especially prone to darkening from the wax- resin impregnation. 119 L. Kuiper’s response to van de Wetering’s report, 14th June 1978, VGM, unnumbered; and subsequent minutes of the committee meetings held on 16th and 30th June 1978, ibid. Some of the reasons put forward in favour of wax-resin relining were the Rijksmuseum’s familiarity with that method, the fact that the portrait

Jan Cornelis Traas

14. Self-portrait with grey felt hat, by Vincent van Gogh. 1887. Oil on canvas, 44.5 by 37.2 cm. Shown after it was vandalised in 1978. (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; Vincent van Gogh Foundation).

of the Van Gogh collection. Assisted by the art historians Monique Berends-Albert and Brigitte Blauwhoff, they submitted their findings and recommendations to the Ministry of Cultural Affairs in July 1985.120 Mehra pointed out that paintings by Van Gogh and his contemporaries were particularly vulnerable to structural lining treatments applied with heat, causing serious changes in their subtle texture and tonal values. His detailed condition reports pay especial attention to registering defects thought to be the result of Traas’s linings, which he captured in images on 35mm. slides from recorded spots on the painting, forming an invaluable historic record of phenomena then perceived to be a consequence of waxresin lining.121

In 1986, soon after the plan for the collection was submitted, Ronald de Leeuw was appointed as General Director of the Van Gogh Museum and reorganised it; this provided the opportunity to follow up on Mehra’s recommendations to set up a conservation studio in the museum. At first the Ministry of Culture had its own plans for setting up a central studio that would serve more state collections, including the Mauritshuis, but when de Leeuw pointed out that the costs of insuring the Van Gogh paintings to be moved to an outside studio would be staggering compared to those of hiring an in-house conservator, they became convinced, and in December 1986 Cornelia Maria Peres (1952–2020) was appointed as the first conservator on the staff.122 Since then the department has grown considerably. For scientific support, conservators at the museum continue to work closely with colleagues at the Central Research Laboratory (now the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands), as well as with other university and industrial partners. Much emphasis has been placed on systematic technical and analytical studies of works in the collection to identify the materials and techniques used by the artist, exploiting new methods such as automated thread counting to study the canvas supports (both the original canvases and the lining canvases added by Traas),123 and advanced analytical techniques to determine the composition and build-up of paint and varnish layers.124 Based on the results, historically informed reconstructions of Van Gogh’s primed canvases and paints could be made. These in turn were used for experiments to study colour change in Van Gogh’s paintings caused by deterioration of the pigments used by the artist and by past lining and varnishing treatments.125 While there is still much to be learned, we now have a better understanding of the condition of individual works and can provide a more nuanced assessment of the impact of past treatments in each case.

In summary, a main part of this article has addressed the circumstances that determined the early restoration history of the Van Gogh collection of paintings treated by Jan Cornelis Traas. It sketches the remarkable tale of Traas’s rise from novice to respected restorer in The Hague and the social forces influencing this process, which reminds us of the importance of the human aspect driving conservation, as is increasingly recognised in current conservation theory. Like many restorers of his day, Traas does not appear to have kept detailed records of his work, let alone to have published or lectured on his approach, so we lack first-hand information on his ideas. This highlights the urgency of gathering oral testimonies from witnesses for this particular generation of restorers before it is too late, which in this case fortunately still proved possible. Within the context of his day Traas worked in a generally careful and comparatively restrained manner and introduced small improvements to his method, yet did not move with his times to the extent of some of his contemporaries. Until the end of his career he continued to handline paintings with wax-resin and apply tinted varnishes, despite mounting criticism of such methods and their inappropriate use for modern paintings in particular. When tracing trends in the early history of treatment of nineteenth-century paintings, it is important to factor in this more conservative approach, alongside the advances propagated by the prominent pioneers in the field. By dedicating this article to the important restorer Jan Cornelis Traas, it is hoped to encourage renewed interest and appreciation of his legacy as a restorer.

had already been wax-resin lined, the importance of an effective tear mend, and the Rijksmuseum’s apprehension regarding the use of synthetic materials for lining. 120 Mehra submitted interim reports on the condition of the paintings on 8th July 1984 and 12th February 1985, and a final report on 22nd May 1986. Van de Wetering and Blauwhoff conducted their examinations between June and October 1984, submitting a provisional report in January 1985 for the whole collection that incorporated Mehra’s findings, see letter from C.E. van Blommestein, interim director at the Central Research Laboratory, to the Ministry of Cultural Affairs (WVC) 31st July 1985, VGM. 121 The condition cards and slides are held in the conservation documentation system at the Van Gogh Museum. 122 Peres transferred from The Hague, where, like Traas, she had worked as Rijksinstelling conservator. From 1977 to 1985 De Leeuw had organised exhibitions for the same Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (Dienst Verspreide Rijkscollecties) and having experienced a ‘fine working relationship’ with Peres he invited her to fill the chair at the Van Gogh Museum. Information kindly shared by Ronald de Leeuw, General Director of the Van Gogh Museum from 1986 to 1996, in an email dated 9th December 2020. Peres worked at the VGM from December 1986 to October 1998. 123 L. van Tilborgh et al.: ‘Weave matching and dating of Van Gogh’s paintings: an interdisciplinary approach’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 154 (2012), pp.112–22; and Hendriks, op. cit. (note 84). 124 E. Hendriks and C. Miliani: ‘Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”: research in context’, in Hendriks and Vellekoop, eds, op. cit. (note 70), esp. pp.12–15. 125 For the pigments, see Hendriks, op. cit. (note 92); and E. Kirchner et al.: ‘Digitally reconstructing Van Gogh’s “Field with Irises near Arles” Part 3: Determining the original colors’ in Color Research and Application, DOI: 10.1002/col.22197, 2017. For the lining and varnishing, see E. Nieder, E. Hendriks and A. Burnstock: ‘Color change in sample reconstructions of Vincent van Gogh’s grounds due to wax-resin lining’, Studies in Conservation 56, no.2 (2011), pp.94–103.

Shorter Notices

Colossal orders and a Classical façade: Hoefnagel and Nonsuch revisited

by MARTIN BIDDLE

if we knew of nonsuch only from the engraving on John Speed’s map of Surrey, published in 1611 (Fig.1), from written descriptions and from the excavated ground plan, we would be hard put to know what the palace begun for Henry VIII in 1538 and demolished in the 1680s was really like. It is Joris Hoefnagel’s watercolour of 1568 (Fig.3), a greatly enlarged detail of which was first published in colour in this Magazine in 1984, which revealed something of the reality that was Nonsuch.1 The watercolour emerges (so far as the present author been able to find out) for the first time in Paris in 1828, in the sale of the collection of General Count Antoine-François Andréossy (1761–1828), when it was bought for 200 francs.2 By 1866 the watercolour was in the collection of the London dealer Thomas Miller Whitehead (1812–97), who sold it that year to the collector Alfred Morrison of Fonthill (1821–97).3 It remained in the Morrison family until 2016, when, following an export bar, it was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.4 Hoefnagel’s watercolour shows the south or garden front of the palace. The building’s upper levels, corresponding to the principal apartments on the first floor with a garret floor above, were timber-framed. The timbers were concealed behind plaques of carved and gilded slate, which enclosed three registers of stucco panels of mythological scenes, moulded in high relief. The watercolour has been used to explain how the stuccoes, hundreds of fragments of which were found in the excavation of the site of the palace in 1959, were set in the external elevations.5 The discussion has not, however, addressed how these stucco panels and their slate borders were gathered together in sets of four, as shown by Hoefnagel, and how these sets were arranged and framed by substantial elements both horizontal and vertical (Fig.2). As soon, however, as attention is drawn to these verticals, which are painted red on the watercolour, it becomes clear that they flare out at the top into something clearly intended to represent capitals of what may well have been the Corinthian order.

These verticals, their capitals topped by horizontal lintels, also painted red, supported the angles of the octagonal towers and central semi-octagonal bay and sub-divided the façades between the towers and the central bay. In Hoefnagel’s watercolour their lower part is hidden behind the wall of the privy garden, which we know from a Parliamentary Survey of 1650 to have been fourteen feet high.6 Speed’s engraving shows that the lowest timber element of the external walls, hidden in the Hoefnagel view, rested on a substantial masonry plinth, which was probably about three feet high. This means that on Hoefnagel’s watercolour something like the lower eleven feet of the decorated elevation is hidden from view.

The upper elevations of the south-west and south-east towers provide further information. Each of the external angles above the soffit supporting the wider upper storey of the towers is emphasised by verticals which continue upward the line of the red-painted verticals below. Each of these upper verticals has three elements: a lower part painted white, a middle part painted red, and an elaboration at the top to represent a capital. This is the standard division of a classical column into base, shaft and capital. The arrangement must have been the same for the taller columns on the main façade, the bottom eleven feet or so of which are concealed behind the privy garden wall.

Hoefnagel shows the taller, middle part of the columns on the wide upper storey of the towers as red and their bases as white, presumably because that is how they were decorated. This may mean that on the building itself the red was intended to represent porphyry and the white limestone bases on which the red columns stood. The use of colour was perhaps the element that above all justified the name ‘Nonsuch’ – ‘none such’. The palette of the decorations around

1. Nonsuch Palace, Surrey, by Joducus Hondius after John Speed. 1610. Engraving, 28.5 by 51 cm. (From J. Speed: Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain, London 1611). 2. Detail of Fig.3, showing the the west end of the south front.

each set of stuccos would have been red for the columns, black with gilding for the carved slatework framing each panel and white in high relief for the stuccos themselves.

The angles of the central bay of the south front (also visible only above the garden wall), are also emphasised by red-painted columns marked as stonework and elaborated at the top by detailing presumably intended to represent capitals. The façades between the central bay and the south-west and south-east towers are treated the same way, each divided into three sections by columns painted red and each with the same emphasis at the top. As with the rest of the south front, the lower part of each of these four columns is hidden behind the privy garden wall but it may be suspected that each of the four, together with those of the south-west and south-east towers and the central bay, rose from a basal element of coursed stonework designated by being painted white.

Some idea of the height of these verticals can be gathered from scale drawings made by the artist Simon Hayfield in order to reconstruct the palace.7 The top of the main elevation, marked by the bottom of the concave soffit that runs across the façade, which is also the level of the top of the lower decorated zones on the southwest and south-east towers, corresponds to the ceiling level of the principal apartments on the first floor of the inner court. This was about twenty-six feet above the level of the inner court and this, including the basal plinth, is probably about the height of the garden façades. This implies that the vertical columns at the angles of the towers and the central bay were perhaps about twenty-three feet tall, resting on a basal plinth of three feet or so.

If this interpretation is correct, the south front, including the angles of the towers and central bay, was divided into bays by tall columns (superimposed on the upper storeys of the two towers), each consisting of base, shaft and capital. Such columns find no parallel in Gothic architecture and can only be explained as a Classical design. The scale of the principal orders, approximately twenty-three feet high, shows that they were indeed colossal, part of a system of superimposed columns articulating the decorated façades of Nonsuch in a Classical framework.8 Anything else would have been inappropriate, given the character of the

3. Nonsuch Palace from the south, by Joris Hoefnagel. 1568. Black chalk, pen and brown and black ink and watercolour, heightened with white and gold, on paper, 24.2 by 26.3 cm. (Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Bridgeman Images). stuccos and their borders of carved slate: it is only surprising that it has taken us so long to appreciate that in Nonsuch in the years around 1540 we have the first fully realised Classical façade in England.

The obvious, indeed the only possible, source must be Sebastiano Serlio’s ‘Fourth Book of Architecture’, published in Venice in 1537 as Regole generali di architetura sopra le cinque maniere degli edifici (Fig.4). Whether or not Serlio sent a copy to Henry VIII (as he did to Francis I of France and to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V),9 the book will certainly have been known by Italians working at Fontainebleau and thus to those among them, including Nicholas Belin of Modena, who came to England in 1537 to work for Henry VIII. Everything needed to design the façades of Nonsuch is in Serlio’s ‘Fourth Book’ and it must be supposed to have been the principal, perhaps the only, source for the Classical façades of Nonsuch.

The finding of the infant Bacchus

by LARS HENDRIKMAN

a little-known and hitherto little studied painting of the infant Bacchus surrounded by a group of men has been on loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, since 1961 (Figs.5 and 6).1 Recent cleaning and removal of overpaint have led to the identification of the model and subject, and consequently to a revision of the former attribution to Gerard de Lairesse (1641–1711). This attribution was not referred to at the time of the acquisition,2 and the painting is not mentioned in Alain Roy’s 1992 catalogue raisonné of the artist, nor was it included in the monographic exhibition at Enschede in 2016 and its associated publication.3 Although there is no doubt that the painting depicts a very young Bacchus, as is made obvious by the vine or ivy leaves that drape him and the leopard skin on which he reclines, as well as the large jar being carried on the shoulder of one of the bystanders, the precise episode that is being depicted has remained unclear until now. The museum tentatively suggested that it represents the moment when Mercury appears in order to take the young god to the nymphs of Nysa.4 Although the figure in blue on the Maastricht painting vaguely resembles Mercury in some representations of this event, such as that by Nicolas Poussin (Fig.8), he lacks any of the attributes of the god and the absence of nymphs, Jupiter, Bacchus’s mother, Semele, or the deceived Juno is puzzling. That incident, derived from the historian Diodorus of Sicily (1st century), Lucian of Samosata (c.125–180) and others, has a strong pictorial tradition, and is referred to in Karel van Mander’s commentary on the Metamorphoses in his Schilderboek, published in 1604.5 Mercury taking Bacchus to the nymphs of Nysa is not, however, in Ovid’s text.

The removal in 2020 of extensive overpaint revealed a figure entering the composition on the left-hand side and one walking out of it on the right, indicating that the painting was once considerably wider. Technical analysis of the relined canvas corroborated this.6 The removal of the overpaint also led to the source of the painting being identified as a drawing by Godfried Maes (1649–1700). Born in Antwerp, Maes was admitted to the guild of St Luke in that city in 1672 and between 1681 and 1698 trained at least twelve apprentices. He carried out commissions for Eugen Alexander Franz, 1st Prince of Thurn and Taxis, and Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria. His best known works, which were mentioned in every biography of the artist from the earliest onwards, are the eighty-three drawings he made to illustrate Ovid’s Metamorphoses. 7

The source of the painting is the Finding of the infant Bacchus on Chios (Fig.7), one of Maes’s illustrations for Ovid’s tale of Acoetes (Book III, 597–614). Following his arrest for participating in a Bacchic rite in the Greek city of Thebes, Acoetes tells his interrogators about his first encounter with Bacchus. Pentheus, King of Thebes, had sought to end the spread of the cult of Bacchus, and had ordered the god to be arrested, but succeeded only in capturing his follower Acoetes. It is often assumed, however, that Acoetes is in fact Bacchus in disguise, who misleads Pentheus with the following story.8 Acoetes was captain of a ship that accidentally landed on the island of Chios in the Aegean. He

4. A triumphal arch, by Sebastiano Serlio. (From S. Serlio: Regole generali di architetura sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici, Venice 1537; Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York).

1 M. Biddle: ‘The stuccoes of Nonsuch’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 126 (1984), pp.411–17, at p.413, fig.21, with fig.22 showing the whole watercolour in black and white. Hoefnagel produced a second verison of the watercolour (British Museum, London, inv. no.1943,1009.35), which was used for the engraving of Nonsuch in G. Braun and F. Hogenberg: Civitates Orbis Terrarum, Cologne 1572–1617, V, plate 1. 2 Sale, Paris, Andréossy Collection, 1828; see also La Chronique des Arts 67 (1864), p.179. 3 See invoice for £300, Thomas Whitehead to Alfred Morrison, 31st January 1866, Morrison Family archive, F/02/1128, by kind permission of Lord Margadale and the Trustees of Fonthill Estate. 4 Inv. no.E.2781-2016. 5 M. Biddle: ‘“Makinge of moldes for the walles” – the stuccoes of Nonsuch: materials, methods and origins’, in R. Frederiksen and E. Marchand, eds: Plaster Casts: Making, Collecting and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present, Berlin and New York 2010, pp.99–117. 6 Parliamentary Survey of Nonsuch House and Park, 1650, The National Archives, London, E317/Surrey/41; see also J. Dent: The Quest for Nonsuch, London 1962, pp.286–94. 7 See, for example, Biddle op. cit. (note 5), figs.5.14 and 15. 8 Biddle, op. cit. (note 1), p.412. It is remarkable that this has not been noticed before. Even H.W. Brewer’s littleknown but splendid drawing reconstructing the view looking east along the south front, published in The Builder (27th January 1894), gives no hint of the Classical framing of the adjacent elevations. Brewer’s original is in the Royal Institute of British Architects Drawings Collection, London, PA 786/1. 9 W. Bell Dinsmoor: ‘The literary remains of Sebastiano Serlio’, The Art Bulletin 24 (1942), pp.55–91, at p.67.

ordered his men to find fresh water, but they returned with a girlish looking baby boy, rosy from wine and sleep. The crew regarded him as extra booty – Acoetes’s trade was not strictly confined to fish – and wanted to take the boy with them. Acoetes recognised that this was no ordinary child: ‘I do not know which god is in that body, but there is a god within! Whoever you are, O favour and assist our efforts, and forgive these men!’9 The men, however, ignored their captain and brought the boy on board.

The figure in the centre of Maes’ drawing is Acoetes, who is identified as captain by the long setting pole resting against his shoulder. The young, naked Bacchus rests on a panther’s skin, his right arm leaning on a wine jug, a wreath of vine-leaves or ivy on his head. Five crew members, one on the left holding a boat hook, gaze at the boy with reticent curiosity. Behind Acoetes are men loading the ship with a barrel and a large situla hanging from a carrying pole. Maes depicts the defining moment in the story in which Acoetes recognises the boy as divine.

The story continues with Bacchus awakening angrily from his intoxication (‘Where’s the glory in men cheating a boy, or many cheating just one?’) and demanding to be taken to Naxos. Although Acoetes agrees, the mutinous crew sail in the other direction. Bacchus then assumes adult form, blocks the ship’s prow with ivy, covers its sails with grapes and threatens the men with wild panthers, whereupon the crew jump overboard and are changed into dolphins. Acoetes remains on the boat unscathed and brings Bacchus to Naxos, thus explaining his devotion to the god, as he tells

5. Young Bacchus, after Godfried Maes. After 1762. Oil on canvas, 63 by 54.7 cm. (Bonnefanten, Maastricht; photograph Peter Cox). 6. Fig.5, photographed in 2012 before cleaning and removal of overpaint in 2020. (Bonnefanten, Maastricht; photograph Peter Cox). Pentheus.10 In both drawing and painting, the panther skin on which Bacchus lies, and perhaps the ivy or vine, refer to these forthcoming events, some of which are illustrated in the next drawing in the series, Bacchus turns Acoetes’ crew into dolphins (Fig.9).

The whereabouts of all Maes’s eightythree drawings are known until well into the eighteenth century, which helps to establish when the painted copy could have been made. The drawings were in Maes’s possession when he died in 1700. The complete set was then acquired by the Amsterdam painter, designer and draughtsman Jacob de Wit (1695–1754), most likely during his stay in Antwerp in 1709–14. In 1732 twenty-three of the drawings served as models for illustrations in three editions of Ovid (the Latin text with Dutch, English and French translations respectively), published by Weststeins and Smith in Amsterdam.11 The drawings by Maes selected for illustration were first copied by De Wit – sometimes with minor adaptations and a degree of bowdlerisation – in order to protect the originals from damage during the process of printmaking.12 It is not known whether Maes intended his drawings for reproduction as prints, but by 1732 they were clearly considered autonomous works of art, which should be protected from damage. The complex history of the 1732 edition is not relevant here because The finding of the infant Bacchus was not included and it is therefore highly unlikely that De Wit made a copy.

In 1755 and again in 1762 the complete set of eighty-three drawings was sold at auction, after which they were scattered and many are now lost.13 The last mention of them being together was in 1763.14 Groups of thirty-one and twenty-seven unspecified drawings came onto the art market in Antwerp in 1774 and Brussels in 1789, respectively.15 Almost nothing is known about the whereabouts of individual drawings after 1762, including The finding of the infant Bacchus, until their gradual reappearance

on the art market between 1967 and 1986.16 The finding, together with four other drawings, including Bacchus turns Acoetes’ crew into dolphins, resurfaced in 1977.17 The finding was bought by the Dutch collector Anton Dreesmann (1923–2000), who acquired at least forty of the drawings, which after his death were offered at auction in 2002.18 In 2012 and 2013 eighteen of Dreesman’s drawings, including The finding, were offered for sale no fewer than three times.19 There can be no doubt that the painter of The finding of the infant Bacchus had direct access to Maes’s drawing. No other versions of the composition are known today and it is unlikely that there ever was one. The drawing and the painting are the only known works of art depicting this subject in early modern art history, possibly in all of art history. Telling differences in details indicate that the artist of the painting did not fully understand the drawing. For example, he did not include the setting pole, which identifies Acoetes. The omission of this iconographically key element from an otherwise faithful copy indicates that the painter knew what he was painting, but not whom. It can only be speculated whether the equally significant boat hook on the left was present, since it is not known how wide the painting originally was. The painter’s second iconographical misunderstanding concerns the panther skin on which the infant Bacchus lies. Maes drew the skin with one claw still attached, draped over a jug and two bunches of grapes. In the painting, the jug and grapes have merged into some kind of dog, with two paws and an open, beak-like mouth. Again this indicates that the painter did not know what story he was illustrating.

The painter also turned the large situla in Maes’s drawing into something that is hard to identify, sometimes tentatively interpreted as a bell.20 The artist apparently had no knowledge of the function of a situla, although it must be admitted that this part of the drawing is hard to read. Finally, in the drawing Bacchus is completely naked, whereas in the painting the little boy is draped with leaves across his waist. This points towards a date for the painting after 1700, when Maes’s inventions began to be repeated in more decorous forms.21 The painting’s provenance does not go further back than 1961, when it appeared on the art market. However, a terminus post quem for its creation can be established from the history of the drawings sketched above.

The drawings remained in Maes’s studio in Antwerp until De Wit acquired the whole set. It may be assumed that he, like Maes’s widow, Josina Baeckelandt, knew what their subjects were. The obvious mistakes in the painting’s iconography would not have been made under

7. The finding of the infant Bacchus on Chios, by Godfried Maes. Last quarter of the 17th century. Black chalk, pen and black ink and grey and brown wash on paper, approx. 18 by 24 cm. (Courtesy F. Baulme Fine Arts).

the direction of a draughtsman working on the 1732 edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It seems likely that the collector B. Cronenburgh, who owned the complete set from 1755 to 1762, also knew what the drawing’s subject was. The obvious mistakes make it much more plausible that the painting was made after the dispersal of the drawings, which weakened the internal coherence of the series and probably also knowledge of their sources in Ovid. A date for the painting of after 1762 is therefore likely. Determination of its origins can be no more than an educated guess. It can be assumed that it was painted in a collectors’ milieu in a city in which large numbers of the drawings were present in the later eighteenth century, such as Amsterdam, Antwerp or Brussels. Now that one painted copy after Maes’s drawings has come to light, more will perhaps turn up in the future, shedding further light on appreciation of these drawings following their dispersal in 1762 and the way contemporary copies were valued in their own right.

I would like to thank Gwen Fife, Charlotte Franzen and Dorien Tamis for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. 1 Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, inv. no.10-01363, on long-term loan from the Royal Limburg Historical and Archaeological Society; see L. Hendrikman: Bonnefan-tenmuseum: Collectie Nederlandse en Duitse schilder-kunst 1500–1800, Maastricht 2012, pp.111–13, 188 and 196; and G. Fife and C. Franzen: ‘Een intrigerende ontdekking’, De Maasgouw 140/2 (2021), pp.74–75. 2 Publications de la Société Historique et Archéologique dans le Limbourg, XCVIII–XCIX (1962–63), p.XXI. 3 A. Roy: Gérard de Lairesse (1640–1711), Paris 1992; and J. Beltman, P. Knolle and Q. Van der Meer Mohr, eds: exh. cat. Eindelijk! De Lairesse, Enschede (Rijksmuseum Twenthe), 2016–17, reviewed by Albert Blankert in this Magazine, 159 (2017), pp.158–60. 4 Hendrikman, op. cit. (note 1), pp.113–14; Fife and Franzen, op. cit. (note 1), pp.74–75. 5 J.D.P. Warners and L.P. Rank: Bacchus. Zijn leven verteld en verklaard door dichters, mythografen en geleerden, Amsterdam 1968, I, pp.13–14, 19; J. Godwin: Ovid: Metamorphoses III An Extract: 511–733, With Introduction, Commentary and Vocabulary, London 2014, pp.19–20; and K. van Mander: Wtlegghingh op den Metamorphosis Pub. Ouidij Nasonis, Haarlem 1604, fol 23v. Van Mander refers to the version of the story told by Lucian. 6 G.R. Fife: Behandelingsverslag, Gerard de Lairesse, Jonge Bacchus, AC19150.010, AC20150.010. 2021 (unpublished); Fife and Franzen, op. cit. (note 1), pp.74–75. 7 J.-B. Descamps: La vie des peintres flamands, allemands et hollandois, avec des portraits, Paris 1763, IV, pp.19–20; C. Kramm: De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters, Amsterdam 1857, III, p.1041; and exh. cat. Divines Métamorphoses, par Godfried Maes (Anvers 1649–1700), Paris (F. Baulme Fine Arts) 2013, pp.2–3. 8 Warners and Rank, op. cit. (note 5), pp.13–15; I. Gildenhard: ‘572–691: The captive Acoetes and his tale’, Ovid, Metamorphoses, 3.511–733: Latin Text with Introduction, Commentary, Glossary of Terms, Vocabulary Aid and Study Questions, Cambridge 2016, pp.163–206, available at books.openedition.org/obp/3623, accessed 14th January 2022; Godwin, op. cit. (note 5), p.11. 9 Ovid: The Metamorphoses, III, p.98, transl. A.S. Kline, available at www.poetryintranslation.com/klineasovid. php, accessed 14th January 2022. 10 Godwin, op. cit. (note 5), p.24. 11 A.W.A. Bosschloo et al., eds: exh. cat. Ovidius herschapen: geïllustreerde uitgaven van de Metamorphosen in de Nederlanden uit de zestiende, zeventiende en achttiende eeuw, ’s Gravenhage (Rijksmuseum Meermanno-Westreenianum) 1980, no.41. 12 J. Tatenhove: ‘Tekeningen van Jacob de Wit voor de Ovidius van Picart’, Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 1985 (1987), pp.224–25. 13 Sale, Jacob de Wit, Amsterdam, 10th March 1755, lot 87; Sale, B. Cronenburgh, Amsterdam, 22nd March 1762, lot 1203; and Tatenhove, op. cit. (note 12), p.232, note 38. 14 Descamps, op. cit. (note 7), pp.19–20. 15 Tatenhove, op. cit. (note 12), p.232, note. RKD, Cornelis Hofstede de Groot fiches, nos.1300626 and 1300648. 16 Three were acquired by the Rijksmuseum’s Royal Cabinet of Drawings, nos.RP-T-1967-34–36. ‘Keuze Uit De Aanwinsten 1967 Van Het Rijksprentenkabinet’, Bulletin Van Het Rijksmuseum 15 (1967), pp.151–52. 17 Sale, Sotheby’s Mak van Waay, 21st March 1977, lot 161. Tatenhove, op. cit. (note 12), p.233, note 42. The following lot (162) and next in Acoetes’ story was acquired Leiden University Print Room, inv. no.PK-1977-T-1. 18 Sale, Christie’s, London, 11th April 2002, lots 661–670. The finding of the infant Bacchus was part of lot 668. 19 Sale, Christie’s, New York, 21st June 2012, lot 1069; Sale, Christie’s, New York, 31st January 2013, lot 121; With F. Baulme Fine Arts, Paris, 2013. Baulme, op. cit. (note 7), p.11. 20 Fife and Franzen, op. cit. (note 1), p.75. 21 Tatenhove, op. cit. (note 12), p. 224.

8. The infant Bacchus entrusted to the nymphs of Nysa; the death of Echo and Narcissus, by Nicolas Poussin. 1657. Oil on canvas, 122.6 by 180.5 cm. (Harvard Art Museums). 9. Bacchus turns Acoetes’ crew into dolphins, by Godfried Maes. Last quarter 17th century, Black chalk, pen and black ink and grey and brown wash on paper, approx. 18 by 24 cm. (Leiden University Library, Print Room).

Exhibitions

A comprehensive retrospective of Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s varied practice repositions the origins of modernist abstraction

Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Living Abstraction

Museum of Modern Art, New York 21st November 2021– 12th March 2022

by lynne cooke

The most comprehensive retrospective of work by the Swiss artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889–1943) to date, this unforgettable exhibition sets a benchmark. Key among many achievements is its fine-tuned articulation of the radical crosspollination at the heart of TaeuberArp’s practice, populated by a dazzling constellation of art forms: painting, performance, photography, needlepoint, tapestry, watercolour, gouache, architecture, design, sculpture, puppetry and more. Also notable is the revelation of modernist abstraction’s origins in the applied arts – specifically, in the age-old mediums of needlepoint and tapestry. Embodied in gendered labour, the source unveiled here for what would

1. Guards (marionette for ‘King Stag’), by Sophie TaeuberArp. 1918. Metallic paint and oil on wood and metal, height 55.5 cm. (Museum für Gestaltung Zurich; exh. Museum of Modern Art, New York). Opposite 2. Verticalhorizontal composition, by Sophie TaeuberArp. 1916. Wool on canvas, 50 by 38.5 cm. (Fondazione Marguerite Arp, Locarno; exh. Museum of Modern Art, New York). become the defining language of the avant-garde stands apart from those routinely identified in arthistorical narratives: the drive towards reductivist representation and the manifestation of spiritualist inspiration in non-objective forms. Third, and not least, of the show’s accomplishments is its revision of disciplinary accounts of the subversion of the entrenched hierarchies that long segregated the fine arts from handicraft, design and the decorative arts. The deconstructive polemics of second-wave feminism are conventionally credited with this laurel, but, as this exhibition makes clear, sedition took form at the dawn of the twentieth century. Far from the doctrinaire theoretical critique that impelled the 1970s revolution, it was based in a generative indifference to genre categorisations and to medium-specific distinctions. Modelled by the trailblazing TaeuberArp as a productive, exploratory engagement with textiles, for the artist it crystallised as a desire to design ‘out of the essence of materials and techniques’ (p.176).

These achievements depend in no small part on the exhibition’s judicious and elegant installation, which encourages cross-referencing between stylistically related objects in different media and from different genres. That, in turn, serves to underscore the resourcefulness with which TaeuberArp’s rigorously economic vocabulary, for which the point of departure was the orthogonal structure of embroidery’s textile ground, could be transported to all forms of her practice over a thirty-year career. In addition, the installation highlights the remarkable chromatic intensity and sophistication of Taeuber-Arp’s early works based in modular geometric forms. A hallmark of her signature style, these features are already fully evident in the wool-on-canvas work Vertical-horizontal composition from 1916 (Fig.2). Modestly scaled, this abstract composition includes four black rectangles (over time one has changed into an olive/brown hue) each of which comprises a monochrome chequerboard of twelve squares visible only to the most attentive of eyes. By orientating the direction of the