The Rijksmuseum Bulletin
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the rijksmuseum bulletin 42 the rijks the restorationa ofquestion womanmuseum ofin framingblue reading a letter bulletin An Amsterdam Couple Reunited Michiel van Musscher’s Portraits of Johannes Hudde and Debora Blaeuw • jonathan bikker • common type of seventeenth- Detail of fig. 1 is a bookcase and a shelf with three A century Dutch portrait is the globes. The painting belongs to the pendant pair showing a married couple genre of the scholar’s portrait – a genre on two identical canvases or panels. that usually did not accommodate In most cases, the husband is meant female pendants, even if the scholar to hang to the left and the wife to the in question was married. Even more right, often with the two individuals than the genre to which it belongs and set on diagonals that converge in the the portrait’s provenance, Hudde’s centre. Sometimes such portrait pairs orientation in the painting, which would become separated and art historians necessitate a reversal of the usual left/ can engage in one of their favourite right hanging of companion pieces, has sports, the reunification of estranged never given cause to search for a missing couples. Of course not all seventeenth- pendant. This being the case, it came as century Dutch portraits were conceived a great surprise to discover that a female as pairs, and when there is no reason to pendant to Van Musscher’s Portrait of suspect that a portrait had a pendant, Johannes Hudde does exist. why go looking for one? This was the The painting in question is in a Dutch case with Michiel van Musscher’s 1686 private collection and has never been Portrait of Johannes Hudde (1628-1704), published before (fig. 1). The sitter is a which has been on loan to the Rijks- middle-aged woman wearing a floral- museum from the Koninklijk Oudheid- pattern dress, seated at a table on which kundig Genootschap (kog) since 1889 lies a large book. She was identified (fig. 2). The portrait was donated to in an 1858 list of the portraits that the kog in the nineteenth century by Jonkheer Everard van Weede (1834- Jonkheer Cornelis Dedel (1806-1885), 1893) had inherited from his paternal a descendant of Johannes Hudde’s, as grandparents as Cornelia Blaeuw an individual painting, not one half (1631-1680), the wife of Henrick van of a pair.1 Nor does the painting itself Weede (1631-1700).2 According to the lead one to suspect that it was ever 1858 list, the portrait was ‘painted by accompanied by a pendant of Hudde’s Musker’.3 Examination of the painting wife Debora Blaeuw (1629-1702). itself revealed that this attribution is Dressed in typical scholar’s apparel, a correct; the portrait carries the signa- loose silk gown or housecoat known as ture ‘M v Musscher’ on the plinth of a a banyan, Hudde sits at a table covered column in the back ground slightly to with books, documents, writing quill the right of centre. Also inscribed on and inkwell. In the background there the plinth, beneath the signature, is the 43 the rijksmuseum bulletin Fig. 1 michiel van date ‘1687’. Since Cornelia Blaeuw died the viewer has to look at the work musscher, in 1680, it prompts the question as to quite closely to find them. That the Portrait of Debora whether she really is the woman in this woman was a member of the Blaeuw Blaeuw (1629-1702), portrait. family can be confirmed upon closer 1687. Fortunately, Michiel van Musscher inspection of the vase on the right side Oil on canvas, 57 x 49 cm. included two clues in the painting of the painting, with a design of two Netherlands, that make it possible to identify the putti holding a coat of arms divided private collection. sitter beyond a shadow of doubt, but into four fields with rampant lions in 44 an amsterdam couple reunited Fig. 2 two of them and a chevron and three michiel van Amsterdam, Saint Andrew’s crosses in the other musscher, Rijksmuseum, two. The same coat of arms is one of Portrait of Johannes inv. no. sk-c-528; four depicted in a painting that once Hudde (1628-1704), on loan from 1686. the Koninklijk adorned the Amsterdam municipal Oil on canvas, Oudheidkundig orphanage and is now in the Amsterdam 57 x 49 cm. Genootschap. Museum (fig. 3). The banner beneath the coat of arms in that painting states 45 the rijksmuseum bulletin Fig. 3 anonymous, Two Orphans Presenting the Coats of Arms of the Four Regentesses of the Amsterdam Municipal Orphanage, c. 1679-88. Oil on canvas, 86.5 x 135.5 cm. Amsterdam Museum, inv. no. sb 6269; on loan from the City of Amsterdam. that it belongs to Debora Blaeuw, Blaeuw is associated with her biblical who served as one of the orphanage’s namesake; in a poem written at the four regentesses from 1668 until her time of her death by Laurens Bake, death in 1702. It was in this role that Amsterdam is said to mourn Debora Adriaen Backer portrayed her in 1683 Blaeuw’s passing just as Israel in a group portrait for the Amsterdam mourned that of the Old Testament city orphanage (fig. 4), where, as the heroine Deborah.5 longest serving regentess, she is given Debora was an older sister of the place of honour on the far left of Cornelia Blaeuw. Their father was the painting.4 Until now, this has been the Amsterdam merchant Cornelis the only known portrait of Debora Michielsz Blaeuw (1591-1638), who Blaeuw, but the inscription at the top figures as the lieutenant in Frans Hals of the left hand page of the open book and Pieter Codde’s civic guard portrait in Van Musscher’s painting leaves no known as The Meagre Company.6 doubt that this is the same woman. Debora Blaeuw married three times. The large book is – as one would Her first husband was the extremely suspect – a Bible, open at the fifth wealthy cloth merchant Bartholdus chapter of the book of Judges, which Wormskerck (1627-1653), with whom concerns the prophetess and only she lived at number 166 Herengracht.7 female Old Testament judge, Deborah, Five years after Wormskerck’s death in and her defeat of the Canaanites. An 1653, she married Joan van Waveren intimate knowledge of the Bible is not (1613-1670), Lord of Waveren, Botshol necessary to know this, as the heading and Ruige Wilnis.8 Van Waveren is of the relevant chapter, ‘Lofzang van the lieutenant in the company of civic Debora’, or in translation ‘Song of guardsmen portrayed by Bartholomeus Deborah’, is clearly visible (at least van der Helst in his famous Celebration with a magnifying glass) above the of the Peace of Münster of 1648.9 Van left column in the book. The sitter Waveren would later become captain in Van Musscher’s portrait must be of a civic guard company. In addition Debora Blaeuw, not her sister Cornelia. to his military career, he also had a Incidentally, the painting is not the political one, serving as city alderman only work of art in which Debora from 1646 and as burgo master in 1670. 46 an amsterdam couple reunited He died only twelve days after receiv- regularly with other key figures of ing the latter appointment, making the early Enlightenment including Debora Blaeuw a widow for the Christiaan Huygens, Baruch Spinoza, second time. Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz. Debora Blaeuw’s third and last Hudde was one of the pioneers in husband was Johannes Hudde, whom the development of the microscope, she married in 1673.10 Hudde moved passing the results of his experiments into the house at number 284 Singel with magnifying lenses on to Jan where his wife had lived with her Swammerdam, who refined them second husband.11 As well as his house, further.12 Swammerdam became a Hudde took over Joan van Waveren’s close friend of Johannes Hudde’s, and title as Lord of Waveren, Botshol when he died in 1680 he was living in and Ruige Wilnis. Like Van Waveren, a house on Achtergracht owned by Hudde served as burgomaster of Debora Blaeuw.13 Hudde is also known Amsterdam – but for much longer than today for the system of water locks, Fig. 4 twelve days. His first term of office watermills and water level markers adriaen backer, was in 1672, the year before he married (known as ‘Hudde’s stones’) he The Regentesses of the Debora Blaeuw, and he would go on developed in an effort to prevent Amsterdam Municipal to hold this office a total of twenty-one flooding in Amsterdam and reduce Orphanage, 1683. times. A cattle merchant by profession the stench and pollution of its canals. Oil on canvas, and a director of the Dutch East India None of Johannes Hudde’s scientific 193 x 282 cm. Company, Hudde is best known for accomplishments are specifically Amsterdam Museum, inv. no. sb 4844; his scientific interests, which included alluded to in Michiel van Musscher’s on loan from the Cartesian mathematics, optics and 1686 portrait of him. Instead, it is City of Amsterdam. water management. He corresponded Hudde’s role as burgomaster that is 47 the rijksmuseum bulletin celebrated in this painting. The large that Van Musscher chose to include a open book on the bookstand on the deed of conveyance for a ship as a kind table is Hand-vesten, privilegien, of joke; after all, the city’s seal on the octroyen, costumen en willekeuren der document shows two men in a cog, a stad Amstelredam, which contains the type of medieval ship.