JAN LIEVENS’S PORTRAIT OF ADMIRAL TROMP: AN IRON MAN FOR THE DUTCH GOLDEN AGE
CHRISTOPHER BISHOP FINE ART 1046 MADISON AVENUE
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Acknowledgements: This catalog is published on the occasion of the exhibition of Lievens’s Admiral Tromp at The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) in Maastricht, Holland, June 25–30, 2022. I would like to thank all those Lievens lovers and aficionados of the history of paper who helped me to fully understand the sheet before us and dedicated themselves to returning Admiral Tromp to his rightful place in art history: Virginia Brilliant, Hugo Chapman, Sarah Dove, Erik Hinterding, Nico Lingbeek, Frank McNamee, Crispian Riley-Smith, Gregory Rubinstein, John van Oosterom, Vanessa I. Schmid, Bas van Velsen, and Cydney W. Williams. Copyright © 2022 Copyright © 2022 of Dr. Vanessa I. Schmid’s essay is retained by Vanessa I. Schmid. Portions of Gregory Rubinstein’s essay previously appeared in Master Drawings 60, no. 1 (Spring 2022) who may therefore retain copyright © 2022 to portions thereof. Printed in the USA
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Plates Tromp and Lievens: The Drawing We Thought We Knew
p. 7 p. 18
Christopher Bishop Commemorating a Hero: Jan Lievens’s Rediscovered Portrait Drawing of Admiral Tromp
p. 24
Gregory Rubinstein Negotiating Networks: Jan Lievens between The Hague and Amsterdam
p. 30
Vanessa I. Schmid
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PLATES
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Plate I. Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674), Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653), 1652/3, black chalk on cream paper, 310 x 311 mm (irregular). Monogramed “I. L.” middle right below the arm in black chalk and dated “1652” or “1653” below, later brown ink framing lines on three edges, collector’s mark of William Mayor (d. 1874) lower righthand corner (Lugt 2799). Inscribed in pencil in a later hand verso: “Portrait de l’Admiral van Tromp / Jan Lievens delt.” Provenance: William Mayor before 1874 (Lugt 2799) (Drawing 649, A Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings of the Old Masters formed by the late W. Mayor, ESQ. of Bayswater, 1875), Robert Prioleau Roupell before 1888 (Lugt 2234) (his mark not present on the drawing), F.A.C. Prestel 6th of December 1888, Frankfurt, Germany lot 66 (400 to Ruland according to a copy in the library of the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany), Likely Carl Ruland (1834-1907), Private Collection, Massachusetts, Marion Auctions (Marion, Massachusetts) October 10th 2020, lot 389.
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Plate II. Cornelis van Dalen II (Dutch, 1638–1664) after Jan Lievens (1607–1674), Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653), ca. 1653, engraving (Hollstein 8, III state), 387 x 317 mm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
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Plate III. Cornelis van Dalen II (Dutch, 1638–1664) after Jan Lievens (1607–1674), Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653), ca. 1653, 187 x 142 mm, engraving (Hollstein 8, I state), proof state. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
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Plate IV. Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674), Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653), ca. 1650–53, black chalk with black chalk framing lines, 236 x 180 mm. Monogrammed "IL." upper right in black chalk. The British Museum, London
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Plate V. Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674), Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653), ca. 1653, oil on canvas, 132.3 x 101.4 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
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Tromp and Lievens: The Drawing We Thought We Knew
Jan Lievens’s (1607–1674) Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1652/3) (plate I) is both extraordinarily familiar to us and yet also completely new. The image in question ripples throughout the history of Dutch portraiture, casting a long shadow over the portraits of successive Dutch admirals, over their tombs, over the facades of Amsterdam (fig. 1), spilling even onto modern coins and stamps (fig. 2). We are confronted with an image we have seen over and over again yet know extremely little about. We know this man but have never met him. Neither the exact circumstances of the commission nor the exact time and place of the meeting between Admiral Maarten Tromp (1598– August 31,1653) and Lievens is known, and yet this image has left traces everywhere. How to understand, therefore, this image that never left us but has always existed as a ghost in our midst? We are confronted in this work with the ur-image of a tradition with which we had assumed we were conversant. Now, in this crucial moment, we have doubts as to the
true level of our understanding. While the outlines of this work were quite literally known to us through the print by Cornelis van Dalen II (ca. 1602–1665) (plate II), its whereabouts were hidden from us. The absence of this particular piece of paper left a lacuna in history, but it is now possible for the first time to fill this hole in our story, to restore this drawing to its rightful place in the center of the corpus of Lievens’s drawn portraiture. Admiral Tromp now returns to the center of our understanding of seventeenth-century Dutch political imagery, an indelible mark on history. The myth of Maarten Tromp grew over the generations into an outsized icon of heroism. Tromp came to define in many ways what being Dutch means. Before the legend, however, was the man; before the long line of prints and ephemera, the drawing. In part it will be our job, therefore, in this exhibition to attempt to look behind the curtain, to try and understand the drawing as physical specimen, apart from what we thought we knew about it. By examining the history of this object, its various uses and why in the end it is such a unique example of Lievens’s drawing style, we will begin to undo some of these accrued prejudices. In Gregory Rubinstein’s essay (see p. 24), we find once more Lievens’s Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp placed at the heart of the artist’s oeuvre; in Vanessa Schmid’s essay (see p. 30), the drawing is shown to stand at the center of a
Figure 1. Canal house facade featuring a portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653), Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Figure 2. Netherlands 50 Euro Silver Coin Featuring Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653), 1998, silver, 38 mm (diam.).
Christopher Bishop Missing Since 1888: A Drawing’s Return
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web of images that propagated throughout seventeenthcentury Holland. Here, now returned to us finally is this prodigal son, more beloved than ever.
The irony at work in any icon is that the more familiar the image, the more mysterious its origins.
second, the exact match of the drawing to the print when one was laid over the other (fig. 4), confirming with exactitude their direct and necessary relationship. This precise, calibrated correspondence is as close to a eureka moment as one can hope for in the field of connoisseurship. The drawing fits the print like a glove. The same foolscap watermarks found in some of Rembrandt van Rijn’s (1606–1669) best prints of the
Behind its curtain, the icon grows in power. Where to start, therefore? Let us begin with the familiar. My own personal experience with Lievens’s Tromp is full of a spirit of uncanny familiarity, of re-finding an image that was always somehow there. From the moment I first set eyes on it, the rediscovery of the drawing felt like a homecoming. This fateful feeling about Lievens’s Tromp is most clearly embodied in two distinct and unforgettable moments: the first, the early revelation of the watermark (fig. 3) in the course of restoration that precisely dated the drawing to within fifteen years of the date it bears (1652/3); the
period (fig. 5) emerged in the paper like a fingerprint left for us to find after some 360 years. Lievens and Rembrandt once shared a studio, and it is hardly surprising therefore that they also shared a source of paper. What is strange, however, is how precise the time signature on our drawing is. Fifteen years earlier (1635) and this type of foolscap watermark doesn’t yet exist. Conversely, five years later (1660), a revolution in papermaking was taking place, led by the use of wind-powered mills in Holland, changing forever the consistency of paper. Here, therefore, captured in the
It Fits Like a Glove: Print and Drawing Back Together
Figure 3. Foolscap watermark with seven–pointed collar in Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674), Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653), 1652/3, black chalk on cream paper, 310 x 311 mm (irregular). Christopher Bishop Fine Art
Figure 4. Overlay of Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674), Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653) [plate I] and Cornelis van Dalen II (Dutch, 1638–1664) after Jan Lievens (1607–1674), Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653) [plate II]. Christopher Bishop Fine Art
Figure 5. Comparable foolscap watermark with seven–pointed collar in Rembrandt’s The Artist Drawing from the Model dated 1639. From Nancy Ash and Shelley Fletcher, Watermarks in Rembrandt’s Prints (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1998), 103.
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very substrate paper of our Tromp is evidence of the small window in time when the admiral stood at the precipice of death and Holland at the edge of modern nationhood. The overlaying of the print and drawing is an occasion that is quite literally unrepeatable. This moment in time has not been experienced by anyone since the printmaker himself and will not be experienced by anyone in the same way ever again. That everything fit together on the light table like a key in its lock is not only a singular confirmation of the authenticity of the drawing but also a direct aperçu of the function and reason for the existence of the drawing. The drawing was made for the print. This drawing had to exist; the presence of the print demands it. Like twins separated at birth, they complete each other, originally of the same dimensions and even in the same direction (Plates I,II, fig. 4). These two experiences are of the kind that art dealers are rarely privileged enough to experience. The puzzle piece that went missing over a hundred years ago is found again and fits easily into its open place on the table. It is hard to escape here the language of magic or even the sacred. Magic, perhaps, is simply when everything comes together just as it should without leaving evidence for how it did so. The sacred is when we don’t know where, how, or
why the lock was made, only that it fits the key perfectly. This drawing had to exist, and our faith in its existence has been rewarded. It was a miracle that this artwork was ever made, and an even stranger kind of magic that it has now come back to us.
Figure 6. Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674), Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653) (detail), 1652/3, black chalk on cream paper, 310 x 311 mm (irregular). Christopher Bishop Fine Art
Figure 7. Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674), Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653) (detail), 1652/3, black chalk on cream paper, 310 x 311 mm (irregular). Christopher Bishop Fine Art
Learning to Look Again: One Glove On, One Glove Off In many ways, therefore, this is exactly the drawing we would have expected to find. Now, then, for the unfamiliar. The drawing upon closer examination is full of small but significant surprises. Who could have anticipated based on the evidence of the print (plate II) and the paintings of Lievens (plate V, fig. 18) that the drawing would be so alive, so subtle, and its techniques so varied? Largely lost in the print and paintings are the surfaces of Tromp’s skin, the telling bags under his eyes, the single-line chalk whirlwinds of his hair at his temples (plate I), the deep shadows of his sash, the searching lines on the ridge of his nose. His leathered face, marked with crevices and moles, is comforting in its smudged, stumped wornness. In short, who would have anticipated the beauty of this work? On its background of soft cream paper, the
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drawing reads like a small luminous painting of the type Lievens was famous for producing. Leiden’s luminosity shines through here even in black and white. We should not be fooled, however, by Lievens’s mastery. As casual as Tromp’s pose seems to be, it is in fact laden with coded meaning. So familiar to us is the image that we no longer feel the need to look. “This is what a Dutch admiral looks like,” we say to ourselves. The trope put forth is truth in
The cast-off manner of this highly important commission is part of its Dutch sprezzatura. The power of this work is in conveying the very brief moment in which Tromp and Lievens met for a few stolen hours before the admiral returned to the sea, never to come back. This agony is rendered in seemingly effortless symbolism. The sniper’s gun would render him immortal within months of this galvanizing moment, but here Lievens already
advertising. We take for granted all the important newly invented conventions of this work even as we ought to be examining them closely. A small detail of the drawing is most telling in this regard. The cuff of his glove is folded back over Tromp’s wrist, almost mirroring the cuff of his shirt (fig. 6). His other hand remains bare. This ungloved hand sits on the cold iron of the cannon (fig. 7). In these rhyming gestures are summarized all the tensions that form the work. Why the gloved hand? It is wrapped casually around the baton of the admiral, proof that Tromp can wield his power with restraint, with modesty. Why the ungloved hand? Because Tromp has been hardened by his experiences, his will as hard as iron. Here, Lievens redefines the outlines of portraiture, moving away from the conventional toward the naturalistic, hiding the high in the low, overturning the pyramid of political values.
does that same work through symbolic inversion. The cannon, the instrument of the murder of Tromp’s father, is now the trumpet of the admiral’s fame. This moment of destiny, when two great individuals came together to create an indelible image, is crystalized on this sheet of paper forever. The medium of black chalk suits this man of steel. His lack of pretense makes him all the more noble. Here, before us, a republican iconography is born for the first time. Histories of Looking: Lievens and Rembrandt Here we stand at the cusp of the creation of modern portraiture, which necessitated the un-invention of the conventions of aristocratic portraiture. To portray Tromp, warts and all (Cromwell), was Lievens’s task. It begs the question: was Lievens ahead at this time in some ways of his rival and one-time studio mate Rembrandt? Rembrandt’s dark realism is matched by the unwavering observation of Lieven’s searching lines. From this perspective, the subtle waves of Tromp’s hair are every bit as important as the scumbled forearms of the drummer in Rembrandt’s Nightwatch (fig. 8). Both artists are involved in a new way of looking, a new aesthetics not based on an abstract idealism but on the concreteness of real life, the effrontery of looking closely. The overlooked man and woman, the ignored classes and religions—these are the new purviews of the artist. In the Protestant context, a new way of looking is being invented by Lievens and Rembrandt, one focused on the citizen. The dearth of saints produces a new kind of virtue,
Figure 8. Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669), The Night Watch (detail), 1642, oil on canvas, 379.5 x 453.5 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
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a new way of seeing. The daring is in elevating this wornout sailor into a secular saint. Radical in its own time is this insistence on seeing the world, drawing the truth out of the shadows, in order to cast a new light on the world. Here is the nobility of the plain but put together in an elegant package. The drawing straddles the lines of the genres of aristocratic portrait and historical document. The picture is one of steely resolve. As tough as a cannon and yet as vulnerable as the orphan he is, Admiral Tromp is face to face with his destiny. He is an iron man for the Dutch Golden Age. Tromp seems to care little for his silk sash, his barely visible sword, and newly granted medal. Instead his steel gorget and iron cannon are more in line with his character, living symbols of his resistance against the British blockade. The piercing gaze of the admiral tells it all: both weary and determined, resigned and dignified. This lonely man is the hope of a nation. Lievens’s drawing translates for the public the cleareyed way in which Tromp faces his death by applying chalk to paper without fear, rendering the admiral with audacity and economy, letting the black of the chalk speak for itself. The simplicity of the composition belies its complexity. The very casualness of Tromp’s worn leather doublet, his unapologetic frontality, the weary way in which he leans on the cannon while barely holding his baton of command— all of this, everything, is calculated to convey the strength
of the man through a demonstration of the weight he carries on his shoulders. The audacity of the admiral is matched only by that of the painter and that of the nation itself. The sailor-saint begins to make it seem possible that thrones will topple. He will not live to see the promised land, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have proof that he has been to the mountaintop.
Figure 9. Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674), Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653) (detail of sleeve as viewed in transmitted light), 1652/3, black chalk on cream paper, 310 x 311 mm (irregular). Christopher Bishop Fine Art
Figure 10. Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674), Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653) (detail of pinpricks visible in transmitted light), 1652/3, black chalk on cream paper, 310 x 311 mm (irregular). Christopher Bishop Fine Art
A Letter from the Front: Drawing as Document The physicality of this work is one of its most prominent features and evocative of its long history. The Marion drawing is a contact relic of the Dutch nation. The outlines of Tromp’s figure were traced for transfer again and again (fig. 9), the drawing passing from hand to hand. The pinpricks in the sheet testify to the work of the printmaker Van Dalen (fig. 10). Not only was the drawing stored folded—as the mirroring of the ink dots along the centerfold testify (fig. 11)—but it was also clearly rolled for transport early on in its history (fig. 12). The regular, horizontal breaks in the paper speak to a voyage that could be the one Lievens took to Germany to work for the Elector of Orange or even the one the artist took to the coast of Holland to undertake the commission in question. This handling is part of what gives the drawing its life, its personal and intimate aspect. Here is a letter from a dead man, a portal in time.
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It is almost as if the drawing testifies willingly to the myriad hands through which it passed, each one adding its own story. A miracle of survival, its story mirrors in many ways that of Tromp himself. It too has gone through many battles. Orphaned for many years, the drawing has come back to us in the most unlikely of ways, liberated from obscurity. It is a traveler, a survivor with a tale to tell. In this way this work is more than a drawing; it is a sacred document. Why do we care about these charters of our nations? It is because they go beyond words or ideas: they are living witnesses to history; they are proof of the longevity of the ideas we believe in. For contemporary seventeenth-century viewers, the primary importance of this work almost certainly did not lie in its inherent aesthetic or artistic worth but in its documentary value. What we have before us is a seminal image of Dutch national self-identification. More powerful than any broadside and containing more information than any letter or manifesto, the work speaks for those who can no longer speak. It was there before us. This status breathes life into every crease, ink stain, and fold of the paper. Lievens’s monogram—I. L.—and the date are carved into the sheet in a manner that testifies to the character of the artist as historical witness: “I Lievens saw this with my own eyes.” In the face of the gathering storm, Lievens documents for the people and for history the bravery of this singular
man. The drawing was there at this crucial moment, at the moment when a modern country was born. Tromp comes to represent a spirit of independent virtue, of a kind of iron stubbornness that is recognizable to modern viewers. Defiance, self-reliance, determination, individualism— these values are already embodied in this sheet. Who is the audience for this print, for the medals and commemorative ephemera that it inspires? It is the middle-class Dutch merchant or clerk who will purchase this print for his
Figure 11. Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674), Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653) (detail of folds in paper with ink spots, verso), 1652/3, black chalk on cream paper, 310 x 311 mm (irregular). Christopher Bishop Fine Art
Figure 12. Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674), Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653) (detail of creases, recto), 1652/3, black chalk on cream paper, 310 x 311 mm (irregular). Christopher Bishop Fine Art
wall, who will use it to signal to those who visit his pride in his nation, a certain citizenship he holds dear. This new citizen will change the world. Who then might have been behind the commission of this image? A patron (or patrons) who could see that in the near future, the crowns of Europe would fall. Someone who sensed that determination, audacity, and bravery would rule the day. Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) could not be allowed to sleep soundly in his bed. He must dream of Tromp. Why fear a print, why fear art? It is because it has the power to create icons and heroes, to forge powerful new identities. There is something in Tromp’s pose of Luther’s “Hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht anders” (Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise). He is standing up for his country. Civic virtue consists in the individual acting for the whole without being destroyed at the same time—not an easy trick but one accomplished here through art and one necessary for modern democracies.
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Commemorating a Hero: Jan Lievens’s Rediscovered Portrait Drawing of Admiral Tromp¹ Gregory Rubinstein The black chalk portrait drawings of Jan Lievens (1607–1674), of which some forty examples survive, are a defining aspect of the artist’s drawn work. These sheets serve a particular, yet evolving function within his oeuvre and also have no direct parallels in the works of any of his Dutch contemporaries. The recent re-emergence in a minor Massachusetts auction of the long-lost portrait drawing by Lievens of Admiral Maerten Harpertszoon Tromp (1598–1653), signed and dated 1652, or possibly 1653— apparently not seen in public since its previous appearance at auction in 1888—adds another important element to our understanding of the artist’s drawings of this type. Initially, Lievens’s portrait drawings were unquestionably inspired by the Iconography, the remarkable series of half- and three-quarter-length portrait prints representing leading cultural figures, engraved after black chalk drawings by Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641). Although engraved portraits of illustrious personages were hardly a new idea in the seventeenth century, Van Dyck took this art form in a very original new direction. Many of the drawings that he made for this series, including the celebrated group currently and formerly at Chatsworth House,2 are drawn with a dynamism of handling and characterization that has no obvious precedents among works of this type—and much the same can be said of the widely circulated and highly influential prints that were based on these drawings. We might compare, for example, the fabulously moody portrait of fellow painter Hendrick van Balen (fig. 13)— the drawing for which is now in the J. Paul Getty Museum (fig. 14).³ Lievens was himself the subject of one such print (fig. 15), based on a lost portrait
made when Van Dyck encountered the up-and-coming young Dutchman in The Hague in the winter of 1631–32.⁴ Following his time working in Van Dyck’s London studio from 1632 to 1635, Lievens settled in Antwerp, where he made several highly Van Dyckian portrait drawings, chiefly of the members of the apparently somewhat unruly circle of artists that he frequented. Two of these—the portraits of Daniël Seghers (1590–1661) and Jan Davidsz. de Heem (1606–1684), both in the British Museum⁵—were translated into prints by Paulus Pontius (1603–1658),⁶ and Lievens himself made an etching after his own portrait, also in the British Museum, of the great Dutch statesman and patron Constantijn Huygens I (1596–1687), apparently drawn when the artist visited Leiden in 1639.⁷ For a decade or so following Lievens’s move to Amsterdam in 1644, he continued to make these black chalk portrait drawings, but the works from this somewhat later period are a little different, both in technical approach and in terms of their sitters. In Amsterdam, fellow artists
Figure 13. Paulus Pontius (Flemish, 1603–1658) after Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599–1641), Hendrick van Balen, ca. 1650, engraving, 248 x 178 mm.
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no longer provided Lievens with his subjects: instead he drew portraits of philosophers, such as René Descartes (1596–1650);⁸ literary and theatrical figures, including Joost van den Vondel (1587–1679)⁹ and Jan Vos (1610– 1667);10 clerics, such as Caspar Streso (1603–1664);11 and civic dignitaries, such as Andries de Graeff (1611–1678).12 Stylistically, although portraits such as that of Vos (fig. 16) remained in the Van Dyckian idiom, others depicting prominent civic and political figures tend to be drawn in a more sober, slightly more formal style. One might perhaps have assumed that those drawings were made as studies for prints or paintings, yet only two, the portraits of Vondel
looked like, but it also relates to other works by Lievens and other artists in a way that is unique among these portrait drawings and can be analyzed only now that the key drawing is finally under our eyes. This is not the place to repeat the full life story of Maarten Tromp, but a few salient facts are relevant in order to highlight what he meant to his countrymen. The son of a naval officer, Tromp went to sea with his father at the age of nine and was beside him when the elder Tromp was killed by English pirates three years later. After spending some time in captivity in North Africa, the younger Tromp rejoined the Dutch navy, rising to become the de facto commander of
and Streso, served as the basis for prints,13 and none relate to a painting. However important their subjects, these portrait drawings were apparently still primarily made as finished works in their own right. The reappearance of the portrait of Admiral Tromp is of interest in this context for several reasons. Not only is it exciting finally to know what Lievens’s grand, largeformat drawn depiction of this great national hero actually
the fleet, a position he held more or less continuously from 1637 onward. Already in 1639 he achieved notable victories over the Spanish and the Portuguese, but perhaps on account of his earlier experiences, he fought with particular ferocity against the English in the First Anglo-Dutch War of 1652–53, commanding the fleet with great success at the battles of Dungeness, Portland, and Scheveningen. On August 13, 1653, however, in the last of these conflicts, he
Figure 14. Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599–1641), Hendrick van Balen, ca. 1627–32, black chalk, 244 x 197 mm. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Figure 15. Lucas Vosterman the Elder (Flemish, 1595–1675) after Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599–1641), Jan Lievens, engraving, 241 x 157 mm.
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was killed by an English sharpshooter, prompting widespread national mourning. Lievens’s portrait drawing, executed during the year or so before the admiral’s death in action, fits comfortably into the corpus of the artist’s other drawn portraits. Showing the subject three-quarter length on a sheet measuring approximately 310 x 311 mm,¹⁴ it is executed in the restrained style that characterizes Lievens’s drawings of the most important of his sitters; it is perhaps most closely comparable in technique to the portrait in the Amsterdam Museum of the lawyer and “receiver-general” (chief tax collector) for the province of Holland Johannes Wtenbogaert (1608–1680) (fig. 17).¹⁵ Indeed, Tromp was arguably the most distinguished contemporary that Lievens ever drew, rivaled only by Constantijn Huygens. In retrospect, one might argue the case for the philosopher Descartes, but other dignitaries such as Andries de Graeff, Burgomaster of Amsterdam, whom Lievens depicted in one of his most elaborate
portraits, were mere local heroes compared to Tromp. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that when the admiral’s great career was suddenly cut short by an English bullet, so soon after Lievens drew him, this portrait drawing should have taken on an entirely new significance. In some ways it became the defining image of Tromp and served as the basis for a great sequence of works in all media, of varying degrees of closeness to the original. Uniquely among Lievens’s portrait drawings, the image of Tromp is known in two versions, the second of them a study of the admiral’s head in the British Museum (plate IV).16 To the extent that the relationship between these two drawings by Lievens has been considered, the general assumption has always been that the London drawing must have come first, a rapid sketch made from life when the artist could take advantage of a brief moment in the busy admiral’s schedule; the complete, previously lost drawing (and also the related painted likenesses) would then have been based on this initial sketch from life.¹⁷
Figure 16. Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674), Portrait of Jan Vos, ca. 1660, black chalk, 325 x 256 mm. Städel Museum, Frankfurt
Figure 17. Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674), Portrait of Johannes Wtenbogaert, 1650, black chalk with touches of pen and brown ink, 325 x 266 mm. Amsterdam Museum
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But why, one has to ask, would Lievens have made a totally new drawing instead of simply adding a body to the head on the British Museum sheet to create a completed portrait? That would surely have been a more practical way to proceed. The answer, I think, is apparent from a careful look at the print by Cornelis van Dalen II (1638–1660), which rather closely follows the present drawing, with only some minor differences in details,
drawing. In my view, the most plausible sequence of events is that when Tromp died, a memorial print was needed with some urgency, and Lievens, sensing a commercial opportunity, may himself have asked Van Dalen to make one on the basis of his drawing. Although I admit we are now heading into the realm of speculation, is it not likely that Lievens might have felt that his original, rather serene image of the admiral needed to be made a little
primarily in the arrangement of the admiral’s sash, medal, and buttons (plate II).18 Indeed, when the image of the newly rediscovered drawing is superimposed onto one of the print, the two correspond totally in every aspect of pose and proportion, indicating that the drawing, though now irregularly cut to the edges, clearly served as the basis for the print. The most significant difference between the drawing and the print is not, however, in the costume but in the fact that in the latter the admiral’s face appears much older and more care-worn, just as he does in the British Museum
more dramatic for a memorial print? Could he not have made an updated version of the head for Van Dalen? This theory would seem to be borne out by the survival in the Rijksprentenkabinet of an early proof state of the print (plate III), in which Van Dalen has precisely copied the face seen in the British Museum drawing but has not yet added any of the rest of the composition, which he took from the earlier, more complete drawing.¹⁹ The date that Lievens inscribed alongside his initials on his portrait of Admiral Tromp has, ever since the 1875 inventory of William Mayor’s collection, been described as 1652, which fits well with the sequence of production outlined here. Following the reemergence of the drawing, however, it has been debated whether the last digit in the date is in fact a 2 or a 3. Unfortunately, no other dated Lievens drawing is known from a year that includes either of these numbers, so we have no information regarding how the artist wrote those figures. But comparison with, for example, the drawings of Jan van Goyen, many of which are dated either 1652 or 1653, would suggest that the number here is indeed a 2; Van Goyen’s 3s are more rounded than his 2s, which in turn resemble the last number in the date on the present drawing. But that comparison is not, of course, a conclusive proof of anything. It is therefore fortunate that whether the drawing is ultimately allocated to 1652 or 1653 makes no difference to the discussion of which drawing came first: the portrait could perfectly well have been made prior to Tromp’s death even if the date is 1653. Whatever its date of execution, this rediscovered drawing, widely known through the medium of Van Dalen’s
Figure 18. Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674), Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653), oil on canvas, 117 x 97.5 cm. Private collection, the Netherlands (formerly Salomon Lilian Old Master Paintings)
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print, served as the starting point for a great sequence of Trompiana, which includes at least two painted portraits by Lievens himself, both much grander images of the admiral, seen in armor and holding a staff of office rather than in the elegant costume and pose of the drawing. The first of these two paintings (plate V), showing the admiral in reverse to the drawing, is in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam,20 while the second (fig. 18), slightly smaller, was formerly with Salomon Lilian Old Master Paintings.21 Precisely when, and for whom, the two canvases were executed remains unclear, but they represent a subtle reinventing of the admiral’s image: the straightforward and unpretentious naval man resting on the barrel of his cannon whom Lievens depicted in his drawing has now been transformed into a much grander figure, with elements of the sort of elegant portraits of aristocratic generals, princes, and kings that Lievens would have known so well from the work of Van Dyck, his earlier mentor and inspiration. These paintings were, in turn, copied with some frequency, occasionally with minor variations, and from these prototypes and that of the Van Dalen print there issued forth a stream of commemorative items of all descriptions, from engraved glasses and portrait medals (fig. 19)22 all the way through to a much more recent postage stamp (fig. 20),
issued in the dark days of 1943 as one of a series of uplifting images of Dutch naval heroes. More than in any other portrait that he made, this rediscovered drawing by Lievens shaped for centuries the image of its sitter. Yet more important than that, the very fact of Tromp’s status as a national hero, combined with his sudden and much mourned death, seems to have led Lievens to depart from his usual practice and revisit his portrait drawing, “updating” the image in a manner without precedent in his work. Throughout his career—from the rich artistic dialogue with Rembrandt (1606–1669) of the 1620s to the intensely worked, yet almost abstract late landscape drawings—Lievens repeatedly surprises us with his f lexibility and originality of approach and technique, qualities that are once again underlined by the opportunity that we now have to study the nature and relationship of his two very different drawn portraits of Maarten Tromp.
Figure 19. Wouter Muller (Dutch, 1604–1673), The Death of Maarten Tromp and Battle of Ter Heide (obverse), 1653, silver, 70.6 mm (diam.). Christopher Bishop Fine Art
Figure 20. 12.5-cent Dutch stamp featuring Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653), 1943
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This text is an expanded version of a note first published in Rubenstein, Gregory. “Commemorating a Hero: Jan Lievens’s Rediscovered Portrait Drawing of Admiral Tromp.” Master Drawings 60, no. 1 (Spring 2022): 58–62. See Michael Jaffé, The Devonshire Collection of Northern European Drawings (Turin: Allemandi, 2002), 1:32–41, nos. 953–61 Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599 - 1641), Portrait of Hendrick van Balen, about 1627–1632, black chalk 24.4 × 19.7 cm (9 5/8 × 7 3/4 in). 84.GB.92, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles Engraved by Lucas Vorsterman (1595/96–1674/75); see Simon Turner, The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, 1450–1700: Anthony van Dyck (Rotterdam: Sound & Vision Publishers, 2002), pt. 9: no. 72 (repro.). Inv. nos. Gg,2.233 (239 x 202 mm; see Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, (New York: Abaris Books, 1992), no. 1651x [repro.]; Arthur K. Wheelock et al., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered (Washington: Publishing Office, National Gallery of Art, 2009), p. 63, fig. 10 [color repro.]; and https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_Gg-2233) and 1895,0915.1119 (265 x 201 mm; see Sumowski, no. 1652x [repro.]; and https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/ object/P_1895-0915-1199). See Friedrich Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, ca. 1450–1700 (Amsterdam: Hertzberger, 1976), 17: nos. 85, 126 (repros.). Inv. no. 1836,0811.342 (238 x 174 mm; see Sumowski, no. 1598 [repro.]; Wheelock et al., no. 103 [color repro.]; and https://www. britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1836-0811-342). Groningen, Groninger Museum, inv. no. 1931-173 (241 x 206 mm; see Sumowski, no. 1660x [repro].; Wheelock et al., no. 112 [color repro.]; and http://emlo-portal.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/collections/ wp.content/uploads/2014/11/Descartes_Groninger.jpg). The original drawing is not known, only the print based on it, by Lievens himself; see Hollstein, 10: no. 21 (repro.) Frankfurt, Städel Museum, inv. no. 836 (325 x 256mm; see Sumowski, no. 1614 [repro.]; Wheelock et al., no. 118 [color repro.]; and https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jan_vos.jpg). Paris, Fondation Custodia, Frits Lugt Collection, inv. no. 3461 (229 x 190 mm; see Sumowski, no. 1611 [repro.]; Wheelock et al., no. 113 [color repro.]; and https://www.pubhist.com/w7010). Haarlem, Teylers Museum, inv. no. P 006 (421 x 313 mm; see Sumowski, no. 1613 [repro].; Wheelock et al., no. 117 [color repro.]; and https://www.teylersmuseum.nl/en/collection/art/p-006portret-van-andries-de-graeff-1611-1678). See Hollstein, 10: nos. 21, 24 (repros).
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The sheet has been irregularly cut on the left and slightly around the other edges (to judge from comparison with the Van Dalen print). It is, nonetheless, among the largest in scale of Lievens’s black chalk portrait drawings. 15. Inv. no. TA 10208 (325 x 266 mm; see Sumowski, no. 1604 [repro.]; Wheelock et al., no. 114 [color repro.]; and http://am.adlibhosting. com/Details/collect/39947). 16. Inv. no. 1836,0811.344 (236 x 180 mm; see Sumowski, no. 1609 [repro.]; Wheelock et al., no. 116 [color repro]; and https://www. britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1836-0811-344. 17. I myself repeated this assumption in the 2008–9 Washington exhibition catalogue Arthur K. Wheelock et al., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered (Washington: Publishing Office, National Gallery of Art, 2009), 256: no. 116. 18. Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet, inv. no. RP-P-BI-6730 (engraving, state 3 of 3; 421 x 322 mm); see Hollstein, 5: no. 157 [repro.]; and http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.100963. 19. Inv. no. RP-P-BI-6729 (engraving [unknown state]; 187 x 142 mm); see http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.100960. 20. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. SK-A-838 (oil on canvas; 132.3 x 101.4 cm); see http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001. COLLECT.8899. 21. Formerly with Salomon Lilian Old Master Paintings, Amsterdam and Geneva (oil on canvas; 115 x 97 cm); see https://rkd.nl/explore/ images/29248. 22. The medal by Wouter Muller intriguingly show the costume as it appears in the drawing, not in the subsequent prints or paintings.
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Negotiating Networks: Jan Lievens between The Hague and Amsterdam Vanessa I. Schmid Through his deeds [Tromp] reaches the status of hero How his honorable bravery makes the country love him He is the god of the seas: all pomp is to no avail We [can only] repay him with the invaluable laurel wreath —Jan Vos1
Jan Vos’s (1610–1667) encomium appears on the commemorative print published in Amsterdam by Wouter Muller (1604–1673) and engraved by Cornelis van Dalen II (1638–1664) after a design by Jan Lievens (1607–1674) (plate II). The newly rediscovered drawing by Lievens is the lost model for this collaborative print.2 This essay situates the drawing within the context of Lievens’s career and charts how its image became the seminal prototype for all representations of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1598–1653) that followed—in prints, medals, sculptures, and paintings (fig. 21). The reappearance of this drawing allows us to revisit
Figure 21. Pieter Steenwijck (Dutch, 1615–1666), Vanitas Still Life (Allegory of the Death of Admiral Tromp), ca. 1655, 79 x 101 cm. Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden
for the first time the crucial question of its date. Neither the date nor the monogram, unfortunately, was carried over into the print. In 1875 the work was cataloged as “1652,”3 yet the sheet is inscribed “I. L. 1653.” The mistake is understandable, for only close consideration of the area and high-resolution photographs reveal that the right-to-left stroke of the lower half of the 3 overlaps with the shading lines of the canon (fig. 22). This revised dating places its creation in the year of the admiral’s death, supporting the conclusion that the Marion drawing was made specifically for the print project, which celebrated the fallen hero.4 Affectionately called bestevaar, which loosely translates as “dearest father,” Tromp was a popular figure in Dutch life and print culture. In fact, just three days after his death at the battle of Ter Heide on August 13, 1653, the States General voted to fund a funerary monument in his honor. The ultimate testament, however, to his enormous reputation is the resplendent state-sponsored monument erected in his memory, a masterpiece of Dutch sculpture and the first proudly signed work by Rombout Verhulst (1624–1698) (fig. 23).5 Typical of the fast-paced news culture of the republic, the print publisher Muller produced the Tromp portrait print soon after the news of the admiral’s death and the government’s recognition of his service to the nation (plate II).⁶ The rediscovered drawing can now also be reconsidered in relation to two other extant depictions of Tromp by Lievens: a chalk drawing in the British Museum (plate IV), and a pendant pair of paintings in the Rijksmuseum of
Figure 22. Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674), Portrait of Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597–1653) (detail), 1652/3, black chalk on cream paper, 310 x 311 mm (irregular). Christopher Bishop Fine Art
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Tromp and his third wife, Cornelia Teding van Berkhout (1614–1680) (plate V, fig. 24). Constructed of light, quick strokes, the British Museum drawing describes the lively details of Tromp’s visage. The immediacy of the portrayal, with its direct yet introspective eyes and sprigs of wispy gray hair, suggest the work was drawn from life as part of a portrait commission, which may have been planned to coincide with Tromp’s fifty-fifth birthday in April 1653.⁷ Indeed, the gray hair, deep grooves of the face, and the jowls of the sitter in the British Museum sheet are those of a man in later middle age. Tromp and his wife had lived in The Hague since
In The Hague, Lievens had already completed The Five Muses for the Oranjezaal at Huis ten Bosch in 1650. Constantijn Huygens, who was the superintendent of the project and a long-standing supporter, had written high praise of the artist’s work, in the early 1630s. Lievens’s own portrait of Huygens was well known at court, and Huygens reported it was greatly admired by the portraitist Michiel van Mierevelt (1567–1641), who in turn portrayed Tromp around 1640 (fig. 25).9 Lievens’s painted Tromp portrait in the Rijksmuseum (plate V) sits firmly within this milieu. Tromp is presented as a servant of state wielding the baton of command and in
their marriage in 1640, and various connections within their circle would have recommended Lievens for the commission. The artist, moreover, was in The Hague on more than one occasion in 1652 and 1653 to discuss commissions for the elector Frederich Wilhelm of Brandenburg and Louise Henriette of Orange-Nassau.⁸ We may conjecture that the sitting with Tromp occurred in the first months of the new year, when the admiral was home after the victory at Dungeness and before Lievens went to Berlin to work for the elector.
a heraldic suit of armor wearing the sash of the House of Orange.10 His stiff, noble bearing corresponds to the rank conferred upon him by his marriage into the aristocratic elite of Delft—also reinforced by the regal ermine cape and substantial gems his wife wears in the pendant (fig. 24). As an image destined for print, the Marion drawing features details calibrated to its function and locale, reflecting not the court culture of The Hague but the wider public of the port city of Amsterdam. The figure communicates a dignified simplicity with his understated
Figure 23. Hendrick van Vliet (Dutch, 1611–1675), The Old Church Delft with the Tomb of Admiral Tromp, 1658, oil on canvas, 123.5 x 111 cm. Toledo Museum of Art
Figure 24. Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674), Cornelia Teding van Berkhout, after 1653, oil on canvas, 132.8 x 101.5 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
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costume, walking stick, and gloved right hand. Tromp wears a medal of service, emphasizing his exemplary sacrifice to the nation. The sword with ornate hilt marks him as a man of rank, while his frank posture matches the sober tenor of prints of public figures at this time. It should be noted that Muller published the print in Amsterdam, where Vos’s poetry was commonly included on prints.11 Lievens’s collaboration with printmakers was well established by this time. In the latter 1620s and 1630s, the experimental, etched tronies of his Leiden years were appreciated by connoisseurs, and while in London (1632–35) and Antwerp (1635–44), he etched portraits and engravers worked after his drawings.12 It seems probable he knew Cornelis van Dalen I (c. 1602–1665) from his stay in London, where Dutch artists stuck close together to advance within the art market of this foreign city.13 Around the same time as the Tromp collaboration, Van Dalen II and his father made works after various other Lievens portraits.14 Ensconced in the city’s artistic community, they engraved the work of painters and civic projects in Amsterdam and would later complete the grand print of the Tromp naval monument (fig. 26).
Keeping these dates and points of reference in mind with the commemorative function of our drawing, we may attempt to reconstruct the sequence in which the objects were made. First, there must have been an initial sitting for a painted portrait, which I propose is represented by the British Museum drawing (plate IV). This initial drawing was then likely used as a model for the Rijksmuseum painting (plate V), which was completed by Lievens and his studio sometime after the admiral’s death.15 In this scenario, working from the earlier sketch, Lievens would have made the newly discovered Marion drawing to deliver a print design to the engraver Van Dalen II and the publisher Muller. In both the British Museum and Bishop drawings, Lievens emphasized defining features of Tromp’s visage: large eyes, a mole on his forehead, heavy jowls, and lobed chin. In the newly discovered drawing, however, the wrinkles are reduced, the skin smoother, the nose and bridge less gnarly, the jawline trimmer, and the eyes wider set. These changes work toward the cleaner look of a recognizable icon. As an image for public consumption, the sitter in the Marion design is alert and assured, in contrast to the interiority he
Figure 25. Michiel van Mierevelt (Dutch, 1566–1641), Maarten Tromp, ca. 1640, oil on canvas, 62.5 x 55.5 cm. Het Prinsenhof, Delft
Figure 26. Cornelis van Dalen II (Dutch, 1638–1664) after Jacob van Campen (Dutch, 1596–1657) and Rombout Verhulst (Flemish, 1624– 1698), Monument to Maarten Tromp, 1656, engraving, 651 x 420 mm.
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exudes in the black chalk British Museum drawing, where his eyes appear heavily lidded. The print’s first state (plate III) confirms the primary importance of Tromp’s visage to the final image (plate II). The Rijksprentenkabinet houses all three states of the Van Dalen II print: first of the face alone (plate III), then a fuller three-quarter-length portrait, and finally the third-state impression including Vos’s poem and the
even the large mole above Tromp’s proper right eyebrow is included as an identifying feature of the hero’s image in these objects. Given the (at least) two dozen versions preserved in museum collections, the Tromp medal must have been a great success.17 On the large print (fig. 27) depicting the admiral on a victorious chariot led by seahorses, Muller took to advertising his wares: “This here likeness . . . is available
names of Lievens as designer, Van Dalen II as engraver, and Muller as publisher (plate II). The engraver’s tapering and swelling of lines in the face and hair take three-dimensional form against the cloudy, moiré-like background. In his translation of the drawing, Van Dalen II subtly emphasizes the view from below, the canon projecting outward so that the text register in the final version serves to enhance the presence of the standing figure (plate II). An accomplished smith, Muller and his shop made medals commemorating civic events, weddings, and the deaths of prominent figures.16 Following the presumed success of the Van Dalen II portrait print, Muller offered Amsterdammers additional patriotic options, producing a medal and another print in the same year, both of which precisely follow Tromp’s likeness as defined by the Marion drawing (fig. 19, fig.27). Following the Lievens prototype,
in print and as gold- or silver-medal and can be obtained at Wouter Muller’s, goldsmith, in Amsterdam at the Golden Dolphin”18. The inscription is a rare and precious testimony of contemporary artistic entrepreneurship, and Muller’s initiative appears to have worked.19 The range of imagery and symbols in the MullerVan Dalen-Lievens collaboration was fundamental in establishing the iconography of Dutch admirals of the latter 1650s and 1660s, when print culture focused on naval heroes like never before.20 Admiral portrait prints appear in inventories as part of print-publishers’ stock and followed the now standard format of the Lievens prototype: three-quarter-length portrait with seafaring motifs or a battle in the background and encomium below.21 Abraham
Figure 27. Cornelis van Dalen II (Dutch, 1638–1664) after Cornelis Holsteyn (Dutch, 1618–1658), Admiral Maarten Tromp on a Triumphal Chariot, 1653–54, engraving, 364 x 445 mm.
Figure 28. Abraham Blooteling (Dutch, 1634–1690), Egbert Cortenaer, 1666, engraving, 565 x 425 mm.
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Blooteling’s (1640–1690) brilliant flagmen series of 1666–67 (fig. 28), for example, hearkened back to the seminal Lievens image of the Marion drawing. The connection is all the more notable, as Blooteling was Cornelis van Dalen I’s heir after his son’s premature death in 1664.22 The newly resurfaced Marion drawing introduced a new central feature: the naval hero as the lone subject. Typically, during the Spanish wars of the 1590s through the 1610s, and the later depictions of skirmishes in colonial arenas (1620s–1640s), prints emphasized grand battle narratives with vistas of ships and sea, including the commander’s portrait only in a small medallion in the upper register. Van Dalen I’s 1640 print celebrating Tromp’s victory at Duins, for example, displays the battle from a bird’s-eye view, the ships in varying degrees of engagement and drama (fig. 29). In 1653, in response to Tromp’s death, Van Dalen II reworked his father’s 1640 plate, updating the inscriptions, adding the key, aging the admiral’s face with added lines, and including a commemorative laurel crown (fig. 30). In contrast, the canon in the Marion design is the only reference to action and Tromp is now the central subject. While the format follows the norm of contemporary
three-quarter-length portrait prints of other famous Dutch men—political figures, preachers, and scholars—this is the first time a naval hero was honored in this manner, reflecting their rising status during the Anglo-Dutch Wars.23 Lievens took up residence in The Hague the following year in 1654, and he remained active there until 1658. The Tromp commission must have provided entrée into the artistic and patronage circles of The Hague, which only added to his preexisting affiliations in the city. In this manner, Lievens was following the pattern of social advancement experienced during his London and Antwerp years, when portraiture served to facilitate and secure highplaced introductions and collaborations with other artists. While a resident of The Hague, Lievens delivered work for newly refurbished staterooms under the direction of the political leader Johan de Witt and worked on the project with an important artistic ally, the architect Pieter Post (1608–1669).24 Simultaneously, Post was engaged by the
Figure 29. Cornelis van Dalen I (Dutch, 1602–1665) after Simon de Vlieger (Dutch, 1601–1653) and Willem van de Velde (Dutch, 1633– 1707), Maarten Tromp Aged 42, Lieutenant Admiral, 1640, engraving and etching, 274 x 361 mm.
Figure 30. Cornelis van Dalen II (Dutch, 1638–1664), Lieutenant and Admiral Maarten Tromp Aged 55, 1653, engraving and etching, 388 x 307 mm.
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States General to develop the design for Tromp’s funerary monument, for which Verhulst and fellow sculptor Willem de Keyser (1603–after 1674) signed a contract in early March 1654 (fig. 31).25 A remarkable feature of the tomb is the admiral’s effigy, which reproduces the large eyes, mole, jowls, lobed chin, and precise nose of the sitter in the Marion drawing (plate I). While Verhulst may have known the published print, it seems just as, if not more, likely that
stands seriously before the squadron on the water behind him, dressed plainly in a buff coat, holding kid gloves, and wearing a sword; for variation, the cannon of the Tromp print is replaced by a wheellock pistol held akimbo. The prints must have sold well, for Lodewijck Lodewijcks published a new version of the Lievens admirals as a pair of oval portraits set within a border of naval and triumphal accoutrements.
Tromp’s widow and/or Post championed the use of the Marion Lievens portrayal for this purpose. The transfer of Lievens’s image of the naval hero across media reaches its culmination with the Tromp tomb, a commission sponsored by the government and prominently situated in Delft, the burial place of the rulers of the House of Orange. In 1653, moreover, Lievens made an additional naval hero print design of Johan van Galen (1604–1653), who died at the battle of Livorno in March and was the other hero of the First Anglo-Dutch War later honored with a grand, marble funerary monument.26 Published in Amsterdam and engraved by Michiel Mosijn (ca. 1630–ca. 1680), the print (fig. 32) was intended to closely follow the precedent of the Marion Tromp image. Van Galen
The Van Galen print highlights Lievens’s connections not just with Amsterdam printmakers but also with those involved in administrating naval affairs and the businessmen of the war economy. Already upon his arrival in 1644, prominent regents of the Trip, Bicker, De Greaff, and Huydecoper clans sat for portraits by him. Once again, portraiture became the avenue through which Lievens advanced his ambitions, and the prints after his drawings served to bolster his reputation. A last intriguing work makes reference to the Bishop drawing and its progeny: the National Maritime Museum (Het Scheepvaartmuseum) in Amsterdam preserves Verhulst’s commanding marble bust of Tromp (fig. 33). It is conceived in the classical format and follows the Lievens
Figure 31. Rombout Verhulst (Flemish, 1624–1968), Monument to Maarten Tromp (detail), 1658, various colored marbles and alabaster. New Church, Delft. Photo © V. I. Schmid
Figure 32. Michiel Mosijn (Dutch, 1635–1676) after Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674), Johan van Galen, 1653, engraving, 418 x 324 mm.
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likeness just as with the Tromp tomb effigy. The work’s provenance is unknown, but it is related to a group of marble and terracotta busts of Amsterdam burgomasters made in the early 1660s.27 These grand busts were political statements of allegiance and participation in De Witt’s republican government. The existence of the Tromp bust among these others illustrates the intrinsic link between naval heroes and the government, a connection that parallels Lievens’s own activities. Situating the brilliant rediscovery of the Lievens lost drawing of Tromp enhances our understanding of his
remarkable success as a painter of civic projects in The Hague and Amsterdam in the 1650s and 1660s, when he was awarded more prestigious public commissions than any other Dutch painter.28 With this important naval commission, the artist navigated the channels of power between the two cities and maximized existing relationships—artistic, commercial, and political. Translated into print and then recast and repeated in other media, the Marion drawing elevated Lievens’s profile among those in power, for he created the iconic image of the republic’s revered naval hero.
Figure 33. Rombout Verhulst (Flemish, 1624–1698), Bust of Maarten Tromp, late 1650s or 1660s, marble. National Maritime Museum (Het Scheepvaartmuseum), Amsterdam.
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Here liberally translated and transcribed from the print: “Zoo ver verwint hy, door zijn daaden, ‘t puik der Heldè. / Wie d’eedle Dapperheidt, roept Neederlandt, bemint, / Beschry dien watergodt: vergeefs is’t zeegepraalen. / De lauwren zijn te dier wy met Tromp betaalen. "See also D. F. Scheurleer," Onze mannen ter zee in dicht en beeld. Gedichten, portretten, penningen en grafmonumenten door tijdgenooten verzameld” (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1912–14) 1:183–84. For my initial conclusions about the lost Lievens drawing and the print, see: Vanessa I. Schmid, “Civic Monuments and Naval Celebrity in the Dutch Republic” (PhD diss., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 2017), 176-178. Hans Schneider and R. E. O. Ekkart, Jan Lievens, sein Leben und seine Werke (Amsterdam: Israël, 1973), 200 Z.74; Gregory Rubenstein in Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2008), 256, cat. no. 116. In size, the newly discovered drawing matches the print image exactly. Schmid, “Civic Monuments,” ch. 2 and app. no. 6. Michiel van Groesen, “A Week to Remember: Dutch Publishers and the Competition for News from Brazil, 26 August–2 September 1624.” Quaerendo 40 (2010): 26–49. Ronald B. Prud’homme van Reine, Schittering En Schandaal. Biographie van Maerten en Cornelis Tromp (Amsterdam: Arbeiderspers, 2001). Schneider and Ekkart, Jan Lievens, sein Leben, 112 no. 87, 325 no. 87; Wheelock, Jan Lievens, cat. no. 50. Concerning his portrait now preserved in Musée de la Chartreuse in Douai, France, Huygens writes: “Not a day goes by but it is regarded by Van Mierevelt and countless others with the utmost admiration. There are however those who opine that the contemplative rendering of the face detracts from the vivacity of my mind, to which I can respond the fault is mine. During this period I was involved in a serious family affair of some importance and as is only expected, the cares which I endeavored to keep to myself were clearly reflected in the expression of my face and eyes.” Following the translation in Christiaan Vogelaar et al., Rembrandt & Lievens in Leiden: “een jong en edel schildersduo” (Zwolle, the Netherlands: Waanders, 1991), 128–34. Schneider and Ekkart date the works to 1640–53, given Tromp married on February 1, 1640, and died in August 1653. For this fascinating topic, see Nina Geerdink, Dichters en Verdiensten. De sociale verankering van het dichterschap van Jan Vos (1610–1667) (Hilversum, the Netherlands: Verloren, 2012). S. Dickey, “Jan Lievens and Printmaking,” in Wheelock, Jan Lievens, 56–66; Pieter Schatborn and Eva Ornstein-van Slooten, Jan Lievens, 1607–1674: prenten & tekeningen (Amsterdam: Rembrandthuis, 1991), passim. Van Dalen I was in London 1631 to 1640; Lievens was there 1632 to 1635. For this topic, see Mary Bryan J. Curd, Flemish and Dutch Artists in Early Modern England. Collaboration and Competition,
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.
25. 26. 27.
28.
1460–1680 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010). There are also numerous portrait drawings from this period that were not engraved. For the prints, see F. W. H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts, ca. 1450–1700 (Amsterdam: M. Hertzberger, 1949–[2010]), 9:79–80. Wheelock also suggested the painting was completed after Tromp’s death: Wheelock, Jan Lievens, 21. There is a final consideration for the pendant portraits. Admittedly, the intimate nature of the British Museum sketch is not reflected in the final painting. Given Lievens rarely made pendants, and the formality of the pair are counter to his Van Dyckian style, it seems possible Cornelia intervened after her husband’s death to ask for a formal last portrait of the couple. Lievens’s stark, penetrating Sir Robert Kerr of 1654 feels closer to the idea of the British Museum sketch, rather, and may be considered a lost cognate. Among his more famous works is a medal celebrating the opening of Amsterdam’s massive town hall in 1655 and of the death of Govaert Flinck, the painter who had been commissioned to decorate the building’s interior. It is safe to say there are at least two to three dozen in collections in the Netherlands and the United States. See, for example, the online catalogue of the Teylers Museum coin cabinet: https://www.teylersmuseum.nl/en. The full inscription along the lower margin reads: “Dese afbeeldinge als mede het wesen vanden E. H. Tromp zal. syn soo in prent als op Goude en silveren penningen en gevesten van degens te becomen by Wouter Muller gout–smit tot Amsterdam in de vergulde Dolphijn.” Jaap van der Waals, Prenten in de Gouden Eeuw, van kunst tot kastpapier (Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, 2006), 120. Schmid, “Civic Monuments,” chs. 1, 4. See the numerous inventories transcribed in Van der Waals, Prenten, app. The last will and testament is transcribed in the Montias database: https://research.frick.org/montias/details/447. Schmid, “Civic Monuments,” ch. 3. Wheelock also highlights the advantages of his friendship with Pieter Post: Wheelock, Jan Lievens, 21. For the correspondence between Lievens and Johan de Witt for this commission, see Jaap van der Veen, “Patronage for Lievens’s Portraits and History Pieces, 1644–1674,” in Wheelock, Jan Lievens, 30–37 passim; Jacquelyn N. Coutré, “Jan Lievens: Painting, Politics, and Decoration in Dutch Art, 1653–1669” (PhD diss., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 2011), passim. J. J. Terwen and Koen Ottenheym, Pieter Post: 1608–1669: Architect (Zutphen, the Netherlands: Walburg Pers, 1993), 33–34. Schmid, “Civic Monuments,” app. no. 5. Frits Scholten, “Quellinus’s Burgomasters: A Portrait Gallery of Amsterdam Republicanism,” Simiolus 32, no. 2/3 (2006), 87–125; Schmid, “Civic Monuments,” ch. 2. Eric Jan Sluijter, Rembrandt’s Rivals: History Painting in Amsterdam, 1630– 1650 (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2015), 379.
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Photograph Credits PLATES II. III. IV. V.
Image courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Image courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Image courtesy of The British Museum, London Image courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
FIGURES 1. 2. 5. 8. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 20. 21. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.
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Image courtesy of Peter Horree / Alamy Stock Photo Image courtesy of coinsnumismatics.com Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington Image courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program Image courtesy of The Leiden Collection Image courtesy of PubHist.com Image courtesy of PubHist.com Image courtesy of PubHist.com Image courtesy of Colnect.com Image courtesy of the Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden Image courtesy of the Toledo Museum of Art Image courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Image courtesy of Vanessa I. Schmid Image courtesy of Gibon Art / Alamy Stock Photo Image courtesy of The British Museum, London Image courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Image courtesy of Vanessa I. Schmid Image courtesy of Vanessa I. Schmid Image courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Photo courtesy of Het Scheepvaartmuseum, the National Maritime Museum, Amsterdam
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