Support The single, vertically grained oak plank is approx. 1 cm thick. The left edge has been trimmed slightly. The reverse has wide bevels on all sides and regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1658. The plank could have been ready for use in 1667, but a date in or after 1677 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, thin, greyish-beige ground extends over the edges of the support at the top and bottom and on the right, and up to the one on the left. It contains white and fine brown and black pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared reflectography.
Paint layers The paint extends over the edges of the support at the top and bottom and on the right, and up to the one on the left. The composition was built up thinly in one or two layers, leaving the grain of the wood readily visible in most areas. An initial lay-in was applied in reddish brown, which also serves as a mid-tone in the face and hands. The text field and background were executed first, leaving a reserve. The figure was then laid in starting with the hair, followed by the face and hands, the brown collar, the white one, the black shirt, and finally the white tunic, which was applied on a grey base. The collar band of the tunic was created by manipulating the wet paint with a dry brush or stick. Coarse pigment particles were used, especially in the whites.
Laurent Sozanni, 2011 / additions by Esther van Duijn, 2014

Fair. The paint is stained and abraded overall, especially in the face and hands. The text field is very worn, and the paint of the letters has been lost largely. The thick, yellowed varnish has a distinct craquelure throughout.

Commissioned by the poet Joachim Oudaen (1628-1692), Rotterdam, 1669;¹¹Letter from Joachim Oudaen to Gerard Brandt, 17 October 1669, published in G. Penon, Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis der Nederlandsche letterkunde, II, Groningen 1881, pp. 131-32. his collection, 1671;²²Letter from Joachim Oudaen to Gerard Brandt, 20 July 1671, published in G. Penon, Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis der Nederlandsche letterkunde, II, Groningen 1881, p. 132.…; ? sale, Pieter Bondam (1727-1800), Utrecht (B. Wild, J. Altheer and C. van der Aa), 11 October 1800;³³E.W. Moes, Iconographia Batava: Beredeneerde lijst van geschilderde en gebeeldhouwde portretten van Noord-Nederlanders in vorige eeuwen, I, Amsterdam 1897, p. 255, no. 2209.…; ? sale, C. Verwey (†), Rotterdam (J. Baalen), 7 March 1816, no. 28, without attribution (‘Het Portrait van Pastoor H. Duifhuis, gestorven te Rotterdam, 1581’);⁴⁴GPI N-264b; the catalogue could not be located.…; sale, J. van Embden et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller), 10 November 1896, no. 40, fl. 84, to the museum; on loan to the Centraal Museum, Utrecht, February 1924-March 1942

Object number: SK-A-1682

The inscription on this small panel states that the man portrayed is Hubertus Duyfhuys, a priest known for his tolerance who played an important part in the Reformation.⁷⁷On Duyfhuys see B.J. Kaplan, ‘Hubert Duifhuis and the Nature of Dutch Libertinism’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 105 (1992), pp. 1-29; B.J. Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines: Confession and Community in Utrecht, 1578-1620, Oxford 1995. Duyfhuys was the pastor of the Sint-Laurenskerk in Rotterdam, where he had secretly started a family with his housekeeper. His heretical sympathies forced him to flee from the Inquisition. After a short stay in Cologne he settled in Utrecht in 1574, where he became the parish priest of the Jacobikerk. He was critical of the Catholic Church, and particularly of the pope, worship of images and processions, but also rejected Calvinism, the Reformed version of Protestantism, and did not recognize any clerical discipline. He refused to introduce the Heidelberg Catechism and continued to wear his surplice, the white liturgical tunic that was one of the vestments of the Catholic Church. He is depicted in it here.

Hendrick Martensz Sorgh based his portrait on a model, which is why he added ‘ad Prototijp’ to his name.⁸⁸See Inscriptions. L.T. Schneeman, Hendrick Martensz. Sorgh: A Painter of Rotterdam, diss., The Pennsylvania State University 1982, p. 259, wrongly describes it as a copy after a lost work by Sorgh. Unfortunately the original work is not known, but interesting information has come down to us about the genesis of this copy by Sorgh. It is in the correspondence of Joachim Oudaen, the Rotterdam poet who composed the four lines of verse below Duyfhuys’s portrait. He also commissioned the painting, as evidenced by several surviving letters that he wrote to the Amsterdam preacher Gerard Brandt.⁹⁹G. Penon, Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis der Nederlandsche letterkunde, II, Groningen 1881, pp. 116-17, 126-27, 131-32. That correspondence is cited by A.J. Teychiné Stakenburg, ‘Huibert Duyfhuis (c. 1515-1581): Laatste pastoor der St. Laurenskerk’, Rotterdams Jaarboekje, series VII, 1 (1963), pp. 205-26.

It emerges from those letters that at the end of 1669 Oudaen had paid for a copy to be made of a portrait of Duyfhuys so that Brandt could have a print made after it for inclusion in his history of the Reformation.¹⁰¹⁰G. Brandt, Historie der reformatie en andre kerkelyke geschiedenissen, in en ontrent de Nederlanden, 4 vols., Amsterdam 1671-1704. Oudaen’s choice to have Sorgh paint the replica was probably related to the fact that the artist was serving with him that year as warden of the Rotterdam Guild of St Luke.¹¹¹¹Sorgh was warden of the painters and Oudaen of the tile makers, sculptors and stone carvers; see J.H. Scheffer and F.D.O. Obreen, Rotterdamsche Historiebladen, II, Rotterdam 1876, p. 432. The Rotterdam painter Pieter Jacobsz Duyfhuysen, who was a grandson of Hubertus Duyfhuys, does not seem to have been considered for the commission. After Sorgh had finished the panel it was sent to Brandt, who had it made into a print by an unidentified engraver.¹²¹²For the print see RP-P-1920-943. Jan Lamsvelt has been proposed as the engraver in J. Wiarda, Huibert Duifhuis, de prediker van St. Jacob, Amsterdam 1858, p. 51, and A.J. Teychiné Stakenburg, ‘Huibert Duyfhuis (c. 1515-1581): Laatste pastoor der St. Laurenskerk’, Rotterdams Jaarboekje, series VII, 1 (1963), pp. 205-26, esp. p. 216, among others. However, Lamsvelt (1674-1743) was not even born at the time, and probably only etched a weak, signed copy after c. 1696 (RP-P-1906-2459). According to Oudaen Duyfhuys looked a little fatter in it than in the painting.¹³¹³G. Penon, Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis der Nederlandsche letterkunde, II, Groningen 1881, p. 132: ‘meerder bolheijd en volwezentheijd’ (more roundness and fullness).

As mentioned, the model that Sorgh used is not known. Oudaen told Brandt that there were two portraits of Duyfhuys with the priest’s granddaughter and grandson.¹⁴¹⁴G. Penon, Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis der Nederlandsche letterkunde, II, Groningen 1881, pp. 116-17. They must have been Crijntje Gijsbrechtsdr Duyfhuysen and Pieter Abrahamsz Duyfhuysen. For a concise genealogy see A.J. Teychiné Stakenburg, ‘Huibert Duyfhuis (c. 1515-1581): Laatste pastoor der St. Laurenskerk’, Rotterdams Jaarboekje, series VII, 1 (1963), pp. 205-26, esp. pp. 217-21. Neither of them, though, wanted a drawn copy to be made. It was only with great difficulty and after the intervention of the burgomaster that the grandson, who was a court usher and thus in no position to refuse, was persuaded to lend out his painting. It was an altarpiece with Duyfhuys’s likeness which Oudaen said was attributed by connoisseurs to Jan van Scorel.¹⁵¹⁵G. Penon, Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis der Nederlandsche letterkunde, II, Groningen 1881, p. 131. J. Wiarda, Huibert Duifhuis, de prediker van St. Jacob, Amsterdam 1858, p. 51, quotes an early eighteenth-century source in which it is stated that the original was with the heirs in Kipstraat in Rotterdam at the time.

There is indeed an altarpiece that has been associated with the priest.¹⁶¹⁶Utrecht, Centraal Museum; illustrated in L.M. Helmus, De verzamelingen van het Centraal Museum, Utrecht, V: Schilderkunst tot 1850, coll. cat. Utrecht 1999, II, p. 1616. On the altarpiece see J. de Meyere, ‘Twee zijluiken van een altaarstuk uit de Utrechtse St. Jacobskerk’, Jaarboek Oud-Utrecht 1988, pp. 53-80. It is a mid-sixteenth-century triptych in which there is a kneeling figure that was thought in the past to be Hubertus Duyfhuys. This work, however, cannot have been the model for the Sorgh as it has always hung in Utrecht and the man depicted bears not the slightest resemblance to the one in the present copy.

The Utrecht Archives has an anonymous seventeenth-century drawing which it regards as a possible preliminary study for the print, but since it shows Duyfhuys in the same direction as the engraving it is more likely to have been drawn after it.¹⁷¹⁷HUA, cat. no. 31864.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2026

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

C.H. de Jonge and W.C. Schuylenburg, Centraal Museum Utrecht: Catalogus van het Historisch Museum der stad, coll. cat. Utrecht 1928, p. 26, no. 116; L.T. Schneeman, Hendrick Martensz. Sorgh: A Painter of Rotterdam, diss., The Pennsylvania State University 1982, p. 259, no. L. 9 (as copy after a lost work by Sorgh)

1903, p. 249, no. 2218; 1976, p. 518, no. A 1682

Gerdien Wuestman, 2026, 'Hendrick Martensz Sorgh, Portrait of Hubertus Duyfhuys (c. 1515-1581), c. 1669 - c. 1670', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20027402