The plain-weave canvas support has been lined. Cusping is only present on the left side. The ground layer is red. The paint layers were applied smoothly, with sparing use of impasto and visible brushmarking.

Fair. There are three repaired right-angle tears. The hands and face are moderately abraded, and the many retouchings here were poorly executed.

...; sale, The Earl of Ancaster et al. [section W.D. Clark], London (Sotheby’s), 26 November 1958, no. 30, to the dealer D.A. Hoogendijk, Amsterdam; from whom, fl. 6,500, to the museum, 1959

Object number: SK-A-3953

Ambrogio Spinola was a scion of a noble family of bankers in Genoa. In 1602, he placed himself and his army of 6,000 men at the disposal of the Spanish in their fight against the Dutch rebels. In 1606, Spinola became commander-in-chief of all the Spanish forces in the southern Netherlands and thereby Prince Maurits’s greatest military opponent.

Spinola must have sat for Van Mierevelt in February 1608, during his visit to The Hague for the peace negotiations that led to the Twelve Years’ Truce.²²Zandvliet in Amsterdam 2000a, p. 339. The composition, showing Spinola diagonally in the picture space with his plumed helmet on a table beside him, was first employed by Van Mierevelt for his 1607 Portrait of Maurits,³³Delft, Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof; illustrated in New York-London 2001, p. 312. and was the Delft artist’s standard composition for military figures. Spinola wears the badge of the Order of the Golden Fleece he had been awarded in 1605 by Philip III of Spain for his capture of Ostend. Heinen has suggested that the armour worn by Spinola was probably the product of Van Mierevelt’s imagination; the short skirt of lames is Italian while the breastplate is of the flat, northern Netherlandish kind.⁴⁴Heinen in Braunschweig 2000, p. 120. The decoration of the breastplate, on the other hand, is Italianate (rather than Italian) in character. The presence of a copy of Van Mierevelt’s portrait in the Leeuwarden Series (SK-A-554), has led Heinen to conclude that the present picture was probably commissioned by Prince Maurits for a gallery of officers’ portraits.⁵⁵Heinen in Braunschweig 2000, p. 120; Zandvliet (in Amsterdam 2000a, p. 339) also suggests that Maurits commissioned the present portrait or a version of it for an officers’ gallery. Heinen, moreover, suggests that by showing Spinola wearing decorative armour and a large ruff, Van Mierevelt set out to paint the Spanish forces in a negative light by contrasting them with the more soberly clad officers who fought for the United Provinces.⁶⁶Heinen in Braunschweig 2000, pp. 120-21. Although portraits of Spinola are listed in the 1632 inventory of the Stadholders’ Quarter in the Binnenhof,⁷⁷For mention of one of these portraits in the inventory see Drossaers/Lunsingh Scheurleer I, 1974, p. 204. and Maurits might, therefore, have owned a version or versions of Van Mierevelt’s portrait of the Genovese officer, there is no evidence to support Heinen’s conclusion that the present picture was painted for a gallery of officers’ portraits. Indeed, Van Mierevelt’s Italianate (again, rather than Italian) signature on the painting, suggests that it was commissioned by and for Spinola himself. The fact that Johan Ernst I, Count of Nassau-Siegen wears a suit of armour very similar to Spinola’s in the Leeuwarden Series (SK-A-531) belies Heinen’s hypothesis that Van Mierevelt’s rendering of Spinola’s costume in the present painting had a political motivation. Spinola, moreover, wears the same large ruff in a print showing the participants of the 1608 conference.

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. 183.

Heinen in Braunschweig 2000, pp. 119-21, no. 34; Zandvliet in Amsterdam 2000a, p. 339, no. 176

1976, p. 383, no. A 3953; 2007, no. 183

J. Bikker, 2007, 'Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt, Portrait of Ambrogio Spinola (1569-1630), 1609', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200110482