Portrait of Belia Claesdr (1566-in or after 1652)

1630

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 66.3 cm × width 54.3 cm
outer size: depth 3.8 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature and date, upper right (A and R, and T and H ligated): Aº 1630 / BARTh. S. Fecit
inscription, upper left: AEtatis 63.
coat of arms, top left corner: divided vertically, B quartered, A, 3 gold cloverleafs in a braided gold ring on a black field; B, 1 and 4, two horizontal blue bars on a gold field; 2 and 3, three gold lozenges on a red field. The coat surrounded by a laurel wreath

Technical notes

The support is made up of three vertically grained oak planks and is bevelled on all sides, the left side a little less so than the others. The light-coloured ground is visible in the minor losses of the collar. Some brushmarking is present in the hand and face. The collar is slightly larger on the right than the reserve, and the sitter’s right shoulder was lowered during painting.

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 27 July 2004

Condition

Fair. The level of the planks is somewhat uneven. There are minor losses along the seams and at the sitter’s nose, and matte retouchings throughout. The appearance of the face is disturbed by splattered dark paint. The varnish is moderately discoloured.

Provenance

? Commissioned by or inherited by the sitter’s son, William Kettingh (?-1670), The Hague; ? by descent through the families Van Hogendorp, Vermuyden, Leydecker, Van Riebeeck, Strick van Linschoten, Van Lynden to Jonkheer J.H.F.K. van Swinderen, 1860;¹ by whom donated to the museum, 1884²

Object number: SK-A-818

Credit line: Gift of Jonkheer J.H.F.K. van Swinderen, Groningen

The artist

Bartholomeus Sarburgh (Trier c. 1590 - The Hague in or before 1651)

Little is known about Bartholomeus Sarburgh’s early years other than that he was born in Trier, Germany, around 1590. His presence in Switzerland in the third decade of the 17th century is evidenced by the portraits he executed of prominent citizens in Basel and Bern between 1620 and 1628. In 1625, he was commissioned by the burgomaster of Basel, Johann Rudolf Faesch, to copy nine pairs of prophets by Hans Holbein the Younger.³ A Bartholomeus Ter Burch (or Ver Burch) is recorded as a new member of the Guild of St Luke in The Hague in 1629. That this was, indeed, our painter is supported by a notarial document written in The Hague on 17 November 1629 and witnessed by ‘Bartholomeus Sarburgh schilder’ (painter).⁴ A letter to his Swiss patron Johann Rudolf Faesch, written by Sarburgh from The Hague in 1634, informs us that he also resided in Amsterdam and had dealings with the engraver, diplomat and art dealer Michel Le Blon (1587-1656). The painter boasts in that letter that he is extremely busy with the many portrait commissions he received from the House of Nassau and from the court of Maria de’ Medici. There is, however, only one extant portrait of a nobleman, executed in The Hague in 1637, to support Sarburgh’s claim.⁵

Including the Rijksmuseum’s Portrait of Belia Claesdr (shown here), only four other Dutch portraits by Sarburgh have been located, all of them signed and dated 1630.⁶ Also from 1630 is a Shepherd Boy Playing a Recorder, a picture reminiscent of works in this genre by Paulus Moreelse.⁷ The most important work executed by Sarburgh in the Netherlands, at least as far as his posthumous reputation is concerned, is a copy of Holbein’s Darmstadt Madonna, which had been purchased by Michel Le Blon in Basel in 1633 and brought to the United Provinces. Sarburgh’s copy is now in Dresden, and was considered in the 19th century to be Holbein’s original.⁸

Sarburgh must have died in The Hague in or shortly before 1651, as his estate, worth 2,925 pounds, was sold by the County Audit Office in that year.⁹ The artist had neglected to make a will, and the County Audit Office was under the mistaken impression that he had died without heirs. An heir, however, did come forward on 21 January 1652. This was Hans Caspar Sarburgh, who, according to other documents, was also a painter. Hans Caspar Sarburgh and another heir, Maria Salome Sarburgh, were still trying to recover their inheritance in 1662.¹⁰ Although it is not explicitly mentioned in any of the documents, one assumes that Hans Caspar and Maria Salome Sarburgh, both of whom were from Trier, were children of Bartholomeus. One also assumes that Bartholomeus would have been responsible for the training of Hans Caspar as a painter. In the letter of 1634 to Johann Rudolf Faesch, Sarburgh mentions an assistant named Johannes Lüdens (also known as Lydius). The latter, who came from Muttenz near Basel, married Maria Salome Sarburgh in The Hague in 1638 and later settled in Cologne. While no paintings are known from Hans Caspar Sarburgh’s hand, Lüdens is thought to be responsible for copies of the donors’ portraits from Holbein’s Darmstadt Madonna.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

References
Major 1910; Vollmer in Thieme/Becker XXIX, 1935, pp. 462-63; Ekkart 1988b; RKD, Bredius notes

Entry

Based on the portrait’s provenance and the late 18th-century inscription on the reverse of the panel, which gives the sitter’s maiden name as Speyart and the name of her husband as Willem Kettingh, Van Kretschmar has convincingly identified the woman portrayed here as Belia Claesdr.¹¹ The maiden name Speyart is actually a genealogical fabrication, and Willem Kettingh was Belia Claesdr’s son, not her husband. The sitter’s age (63) recorded on the panel accords perfectly with Belia Claesdr’s date of birth, 30 July 1566.¹² The coat of arms in the upper left corner is that of the Kettingh and Speyaert families. Belia Claesdr was the second wife of the Delft notary Pieter Sebastiaensz Kettingh, whom she married on 16 April 1595.¹³ Sometime after the death of her husband in 1609,¹⁴ she moved to The Hague, where her son Willem and daughter Maria lived. Belia Claesdr apparently lived to a great old age; the date of her death is not known, but on 10 September 1647 she had her will drawn up,¹⁵ to which she added a codicil on 23 January 1652.¹⁶

The short-form signature was identified as that of Willem Bartsius in the 1903 Rijksmuseum collection catalogue. Hofstede de Groot rightly rejected this attribution in the following year,¹⁷ but it was not until 1978 that Willem van de Watering recognized the signature to be Sarburgh’s.¹⁸ Ekkart was the first to publish this new attribution ten years later.¹⁹ Indeed, the hard, linear execution of the portrait is also recognizable in Sarburgh’s Swiss portraits, as well as in a pair of pendant portraits he made in the Netherlands in 1630 and signed with his complete last name.²⁰ Also indicative of his approach, is the thoroughly unidealized representation of Belia Claesdr’s features. Compositionally, this half-length portrait is typical of 17th-century Dutch depictions of widows. Belia Claesdr is turned in three-quarter profile to the viewer’s left, that is in the opposite direction married women were usually shown with their husbands in pendant pairs. The small prayer book held by Belia Claesdr is a testimony to her piety, and a common attribute in portraits of older women.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 264.

Literature

Hofstede de Groot 1904, pp. 13-14 (as Anonymous); Van Kretschmar 1984, p. 113 (as Anonymous); Ekkart 1988b

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 41, no. 433 (as Willem Bartsius, Portrait of Juffr. Speyaert); 1976, p. 101, no. A 818 (as attributed to Willem Bartsius, Portrait of Mrs Kettingh, née Speyaert); 1992, pp. 82-83, no. A 818; 2007, no. 264

Citation

J. Bikker, 2007, 'Bartholomeaus Sarburgh, Portrait of Belia Claesdr (1566-in or after 1652), 1630', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5921

(accessed 11 June 2024 03:55:51).