The support is a single horizontally grained oak panel bevelled on all sides. The ground is off-white. The paint layers are smooth. Impasto was used only for the highlights and contours. The small ships were painted over the sea and sky, while reserves were left for the large ones.

Fair. There are many abraded areas, and the varnish is discoloured.

…; sale, J.C.C.D. de Mol (Harderwijk), Amsterdam (C.F. Roos), 28 April 1875, no. 3, as Aert Antun, fl. 40, to Hopman, for the museum¹¹Copy RKD.

Object number: SK-A-1367

It used to be thought that this painting of Dutch and English ships fighting a Spanish naval force was a depiction of the Battle of Gravelines of 8 August 1588, when an Anglo-Dutch fleet was thought to have attacked the Spanish Armada. The San Martin, Admiral Medina Sidonia’s ship flying the flag of the Inquisition, is supposedly being fired on from port by the English admiral, Sir Henry Seymour in the Rainbow, and from astern by Justinus of Nassau in the Gouden Leeuw.³³Coll. cat. 1960, p. 21; coll. cat. 1976, p. 84. Russell, however, rightly observed that this was very unlikely, because no Dutch ships took part in the battle against the Armada. Instead this might be the Battle of Cadiz of 1596, when the English and the Dutch did join forces to fight the Spanish.⁴⁴Russell 1983, pp. 154, 200, note 19. In that case the Dutch four-master Neptunus is supporting England’s Ark Royal in an attack on Spain’s San Felipe. In reality the English ship did not take part in the battle, but Aert Anthonisz nevertheless included it because it was such a potent symbol of English maritime power.

As Bol rightly pointed out, Anthonisz’s painting is a free copy after The Battle of Cadiz by Hendrick Vroom. That work closely resembles this one, but is larger.⁵⁵It is signed ‘H. Vroom’, and was formerly in the collection of Eric Palmer. It is described and reproduced in Russell 1983, pp. 153-54. Anthonisz was particularly faithful in his borrowing of the ships, only adding the boat in the left foreground.⁶⁶Keyes 1975, I, p. 25, note 26; Russell 1983, p. 177. Russell argues convincingly that Vroom depicted the coastline at Cadiz in his painting.⁷⁷Russell 1983, p. 200, note 20.

Aert Anthonisz’s entire oeuvre shows that he regularly borrowed from Vroom. Both artists painted remarkably dark water in the foreground of their works. Anthonisz was generally the more delicate and detailed of the two in his figures, flags and rigging. He achieved the illusion of depth by allowing the shapes of some boats to show through the sails of other ships. That this was deliberate and not the result of ageing is clear from the highlights that he gave to parts of the ship behind the sail. His good eye for detail is demonstrated by the way in which he painted the holes in the sail and the patched areas.

Everhard Korthals Altes, 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. 1.

Willis 1911, p. 23; Bol 1973, p. 38; Keyes 1975, I, p. 25; Russell 1983, pp. 153, 177; Briels 1987, pp. 393-94; Briels 1997, p. 178

1887, p. 2, no. 12 (as Naval Battle between English and Dutch Ships and the Invincible Armada, off Dover, on 22 August 1588); 1903, p. 32, no. 368; 1934, p. 30, no. 368; 1960, p. 21, no. 368; 1976, p. 84, no. A 1367 (as Incident from the Battle of the Spanish Armada); 2007, no. 1

E. Korthals Altes, 2007, 'Aert Anthonisz., The Battle of Cadiz, 1608', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026495