Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne (manner of)

Boudewijn van Heusden (?-870) and his Wife Sophia Receiving Homage from the Legate of King Edmund

c. 1626

Technical notes

The support is a lined canvas with two horizontal seams that has been trimmed, possibly on all sides. The ground layer is of a reddish-ochre colour. It is possible that there is a second, greyish layer on top. There seems to be an underdrawing in dark paint, fragments of which are visible along the contours of the figures. The grisaille is executed in greyish and brownish tints. Some pentimenti are present, for example in Boudewijn’s sword and in the left foot of the figure on the left.

Scientific examination and reports

  • technical report: L. Sozzani, RMA, 13 januari 2003

Condition

Poor. The whole canvas is severely damaged, possibly as a result of the canvas falling from the stretcher. The painting is abraded, and there are many discoloured areas of retouching, particularly in the sky, severely distorting the appearance of the painting.

Conservation

  • conservator unknown, 1883: canvas lined with wax
  • D. van der Kellen, 1887: retouched
  • W. Hesterman, 1985 - 1987: complete restoration

Provenance

...; presented to the museum by the Municipality of Heusden, 1879; on loan to the Municipality of Heusden, 1987-2002

ObjectNumber: SK-A-959

Credit line: Gift of the Heusden Council

The artist

Biography

Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne (Delft c. 1589 - The Hague 1662)

According to Cornelis de Bie, Adriaen van de Venne was born into a southern Netherlandish immigrant family in Delft in 1589. De Bie also states that he was taught drawing and illumination by the Leiden goldsmith and painter Simon de Valck, and was then apprenticed to the grisaille painter Jeronymus van Diest, both of whom are now otherwise unknown.

Van de Venne is first documented in 1614 in Middelburg, where he remained until around 1625. It was in 1614 that he married the daughter of a Zeeland sea captain, Elisabeth de Pours. Dating from that same year are his earliest known paintings, Fishing for Souls (SK-A-447) and two summer and winter pendants.1Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie; illustrated in Bol 1989, pp. 13-14, figs. 3, 4. On the evidence of an affinity with the work of Jan Brueghel the Elder, it has been assumed that he spent some time in Antwerp before 1614. However, the local Middelburg painters were already working in Brueghel’s style at that time. The fact that he married a woman of Zeeland, and that his father and his brother Jan had settled in the town in 1605 and 1608 respectively, make it likely that he was in Middelburg before 1614. In 1618, his brother Jan opened a shop selling paintings and set up a publishing business, in which Adriaen played an important role as a print designer, poet, and illustrator of books by Jacob Cats, among other authors. Starting in 1618 he also designed several propaganda prints supporting the House of Orange and Frederick V, the Elector Palatine. Van de Venne is last documented in Middelburg on 30 June 1624. He then moved to The Hague, where he is recorded as a resident on 22 March 1625. His departure from Middelburg roughly coincided with the death of his brother Jan, and his decision to settle in The Hague probably had something to do with the presence of the court there, which played an important part in the subjects he chose. Among his earliest works in The Hague were the prints and paintings of Prince Maurits Lying in State (SK-A-446), several impressions of which were ordered by the States-General on 21 July 1625.2Illustrated in Royalton-Kisch 1988, p. 65, fig. 26. He enrolled in the Guild of St Luke in 1625, and a year later acquired his Hague citizenship. He retained his house in Middelburg, and in 1630 bought another one in The Hague, from which he sold his prints and books. He was warden of the guild from 1631 to 1633 and from 1637 to 1639, and filled the post of dean from 1639 to 1641. He was also a member of the Ionghe Batavieren (Young Batavians) chamber of rhetoric. His fame was such that he was included in Johannes Meyssens’s book, Image de divers hommes desprit sublime, where it is stated that the Prince of Orange owned several works by him. In 1656, Van de Venne was also involved in setting up a new confraternity, the Confrerie Pictura, which broke away from the Guild of St Luke. At the end of his life he ran into financial difficulties. He made his will in 1660 after falling ill, and died on 12 November 1662. Two of his sons, Pieter (c. 1615-57) and Huijbregt (1634/35-after 1682), were also painters.

Van de Venne’s painted oeuvre can be divided into his Middelburg and Hague periods. In Middelburg he produced some of his most ambitious, meticulously painted works with politico-allegorical subjects, as well as many landscape scenes in the manner of Jan Brueghel the Elder. In The Hague he concentrated almost exclusively on grisailles for the open market, most of them genre pieces with a comical, moralistic slant with inscribed banderoles, but he also made religious, allegorical works and a few large-scale equestrian portraits of rulers. He abandoned the meticulous style of his Middelburg period for a freer, sometimes even sketchy technique, which enabled him to boost his output to ‘hundreds of monochrome pieces, both known and desired by devotees of art’, as J. Campo Weyerman put it.

Yvette Bruijnen, 2007

References
Meyssens 1649; De Bie 1661, pp. 234-46; Van Bleyswijck 1667, II, pp. 857-58; Houbraken I, 1718, pp. 136-37; Campo Weyerman I, 1729, pp. 340-41; Franken 1878, pp. 7-30; Obreen II, 1879-80, pp. 108-09, III, 1880-81, pp. 258, 272, 275, IV, 1881-82, pp. 59, 128, 148, V, 1882-83, pp, 68-69, 71-74, 96, 102, 133, 153, VI, 1884-87, pp. 52, 226; Bredius II, 1916, pp. 374-93, VII, 1921, pp. 240-45; Bol 1958; Royalton-Kisch 1988, pp. 37-74; Bol 1989; Van Suchtelen in Amsterdam 1993, p. 321; Briels 1997, pp. 394-95; Buijsen in The Hague 1998, pp. 255-62, 354

Entry

This grisaille with an episode from the life of Boudewijn van Heusden has until now wrongly been regarded as a work by Adriaen van de Venne, undoubtedly because it came from the town hall in Heusden together with his monumental, autograph grisaille of Frederick V and Elizabeth Stuart (SK-A-958). The two paintings are comparable not only in their grisaille technique and large size, but also fit together iconographically. This painting shows Boudewijn van Heusden (d. 870) and his wife Sophia, daughter of King Edmund of East Anglia. Legend has it that Sophia was abducted from England by Boudewijn and that they settled in Heusden and had a family. After years of searching for his daughter, Edmund heard from an English merchant that she was alive and well in Heusden, whereupon he gave the couple his blessing and marks of respect.3For this episode see Van der Aa III, 1858, pp. 230-31; Brenninkmeyer-de Rooij 1980, p. 69. The story is situated in Heusden in the grisaille, for in the right background is the Kruijd-Toren (Gunpowder Tower) of Kasteel Heusden.4Royalton-Kisch 1988, p. 144, note 1. The iconographic link with the grisaille of Frederick V and Elizabeth is that both men married an English princess.

However, there is a great difference between the two as regards the technique. The grisaille with Frederick and Elizabeth is in grey tints, while this one is in brown tints on an ochre ground layer. It was painted rapidly and only broadly worked up, which suggests that it was intended to be viewed at a distance. This is in contrast to the other grisaille, which was painted very painstakingly indeed. Unlike the painting of Frederick and Elizabeth, Boudewijn probably hung high up on a wall, given the low horizon and the better effect of the composition when seen from below. Despite these differences, both paintings could have been part of the same decorative programme for Heusden Town Hall.

In addition to the differences in technique, there are dissimilarities in style and quality that demand the removal of this grisaille from Van de Venne’s oeuvre. The stereotype faces of the figures, with the slightly bulging eyes, wooden poses and unnatural physical proportions, such as the over-large hands, are characteristic of this anonymous painter’s style. Unfortunate overlaps hide important parts of the composition, such as Sophia’s hands and the face of the boy behind the English legate in the left foreground. A comparison of the caricature dog with the delicately executed and convincing dogs in Van de Venne’s grisaille of Frederick and Elizabeth highlight the clumsiness of this artist, who cannot possibly be identified with Adriaen van de Venne. It is possible that the municipal authorities of Heusden sought out a local artist to paint this scene to supplement Van de Venne’s grisaille of Frederick and Elizabeth. The painting is supposedly dated [..]26,5Note RMA. but there is now no trace of this. If that date is correct, the grisaille was painted in the same year as Van de Venne’s, which originally bore the date 1626.

Thanks to its depiction of a local legend, the painting must have been quite popular, for there was a polychrome copy in the collection of the St George civic guard in Heusden.6That painting, included in the museum collection as SK-A-2305, is now lost. The dimensions of the copy (204 x 286 cm) indicate that the present grisaille was originally probably some 15 cm higher and that the figure of Boudewijn was not cut off at the top.

Yvette Bruijnen, 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. 308.

Literature

Brenninkmeyer-de Rooij 1980, p. 69 (as Van de Venne); Royalton-Kisch 1988, pp. 16, 114, note 2, p. 144, note 1 (as Van de Venne)

Collection catalogues

1887, p. 177, no. 1525 (as Van de Venne); 1903, p. 279, no. 2500 (as Van de Venne); 1934, p. 296, no. 2500 (as Van de Venne); 1976, p. 567, no. A 959 (as Van de Venne); 1992, p. 89, no. A 959; 2007, no. 308

Citation

Y. Bruijnen, 2007, 'manner of Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne, Boudewijn van Heusden (?-870) and his Wife Sophia Receiving Homage from the Legate of King Edmund, c. 1626', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7081

(accessed 27 April 2025 12:12:14).

Footnotes

  • 1Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie; illustrated in Bol 1989, pp. 13-14, figs. 3, 4.
  • 2Illustrated in Royalton-Kisch 1988, p. 65, fig. 26.
  • 3For this episode see Van der Aa III, 1858, pp. 230-31; Brenninkmeyer-de Rooij 1980, p. 69.
  • 4Royalton-Kisch 1988, p. 144, note 1.
  • 5Note RMA.
  • 6That painting, included in the museum collection as SK-A-2305, is now lost.