Portrait of Jacoba of Bavaria (1401-36), Countess of Holland and Zeeland

The support consists of three vertically grained oak planks (24, 5.5 and 20.5 cm), 0.4-0.8 cm thick. The planks are joined together with a lap joint, as are the planks of the pendant (SK-A-499). The reverse is slightly thinned, and the second and third plank have been reinforced with a modern block. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1464. The panel could have been ready for use by 1475, but a date in or after 1489 is more likely. The whitish ground and paint extend to the edges of the panel. There is no underdrawing visible to the naked eye. The figure and coat of arms were reserved. Horizontal brushstrokes are visible in the background. Although the golden inscription is partly painted over the underlying green background, it seems that the text was also reserved.

Fair. The left and right planks are both cracked. There is a great deal of discoloured retouching in the chin and along the joins and cracks. The varnish, which is thicker on the background, has yellowed.

...; recorded at Kasteel Teylingen, Voorhout, 1746 (‘men vindt hier ook nog haar Afbeeldsel en dat van haaren geliefden Frank van Borsselen, in twee Schilderyen’);¹¹Tirion 1746, p. 322. recorded at Kasteel Teylingen, Voorhout, 1793 (‘Op ’t slot van Teilingen worden oude pourtraiten van Jacoba en Frank gevonden’);²²Letter Hendrik van Wijn to Cornelis Ploos van Amstel, 1793; see Moes/Van Biema 1909, p. 195. acquired from Kasteel Teylingen by the museum, in or before 1800;³³Moes/Van Biema 1909, p. 195. on loan to the Zeeuws Museum, Middelburg, since 2006

ObjectNumber: SK-A-498

This portrait of Jacoba of Bavaria and its pendant showing her fourth husband Frank van Borselen, Lord of Sint Maartensdijk (SK-A-499), once hung at Kasteel Nieuw Teylingen, the couple’s former residence.⁴⁴See Provenance. Both figures are shown standing at half-length before a wooden ledge. Their respective coats of arms hang from ornamental mascarons in the background, while gilded inscriptions at the top of each panel identify them by name. Jacoba wears a red pleated houppelande with a lining of brown fur and a high standing collar and slit sleeves that open to reveal black undersleeves. She wears a red and gold hairnet over her hair, which is done up in two horns and covered at the back of her head by a black veil. Her hands rest at her waist below a gold chain belt. Frank wears a black doublet and a red chaperon, which is scalloped at the edges and embellished with a bejewelled pin.⁵⁵On the figures’ clothing, particularly the houppelande, bourrelet, and chaperon, see Beaulieu/Baylé 1956, pp. 68-69, 77-79, 84-89. Both he and his wife wear the collar of St Antony around their necks, the insignia of the order founded by Jacoba’s grandfather, Albrecht of Bavaria, in 1382.⁶⁶Husband 1992, p. 26.

Jacoba, born the Duchess of Bavaria on 25 July 1401, became the Countess of Holland, Zeeland, Friesland, and Hainaut upon her father Willem VI’s death in 1417. She had already endured three ill-fated marriages and a series of political and family conflicts when, in the summer of 1432, she married Frank van Borselen, Lord of Sint Maartensdijk, Scherpenisse and Zuylen, and Stadholder of Holland. The ceremony was performed in secret, as the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, had forbidden Jacoba to remarry without his consent. When Philip learned of the marriage, he imprisoned Frank and forced Jacoba to relinquish her counties immediately in exchange for his release. She complied in 1433, accepting the diminished title, ‘Duchess of Bavaria and of Holland, Countess of Oostervant’ (‘hertogin in Beieren, van Holland, gravin van Oostervant’). Frank likewise became the Count of Oostervant upon the couple’s second, public marriage in 1434. Jacoba died just two years later; Frank lived on until 1470 and never remarried.⁷⁷De Boer/Cordfunke 1995, pp. 115-22; Jansen 1976, pp. 109-18; Dek 1979, pp. 40-41.

A notable feature of these two portraits is Jacoba’s placement to the right of her husband, the position deemed superior by long-standing courtly and heraldic custom.⁸⁸Van der Velden 2006, pp. 124-55. In other surviving double portraits of the couple, she is also situated to his right.⁹⁹Two such pairs, one from the 15th, and the other from the 16th-17th century, are in Kasteel Zuylen; see Van der Goes/De Meyere 1996, p. 151, nos. 144, 146. For other versions see Hoogewerff II, 1937, pp. 49-51. Although it is the husband who generally assumes this position of honour, Jacoba’s far more significant political status here overrides this tradition and relegates Frank to the sinister side. Jacoba’s first three husbands fully shared in her titles, but Frank married Jacoba after Philip had laid claim to her inheritance and thus did not benefit from this elevation in rank. The distinction is evident in an illumination from the late 15th-century chronicle of Johan Huyssen van Kattendijke that presents the coats of arms of Jacoba and her four husbands, all of whom are referred to as ‘dukes’ except for Frank, who is identified only as a ‘lord’.¹⁰¹⁰Janse 2005, pp. 452-53 (fols. 422v-23r).

The Rijksmuseum pendants have been identified as 16th-century copies after an early 15th-century model. Not only is the couple’s attire characteristic of this earlier period, but Jacoba’s posture and costume also correspond to three other portraits of her long thought to record a lost composition by Jan van Eyck.¹¹¹¹1. Silverpoint, Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut. 2. Drawing in the Recueil d’Arras, XXXVI, Arras, Bibliothèque Municipale. 3 Panel, 29.7 x 22 cm, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inscribed on the verso with Jacoba’s name and the barely legible date of 1432; Primisser in coll. cat. Vienna 1976, pp. 234-35, no. 202; illustrated in ENP I, 1967, pp. 66-67, pl. 61. See also Steppe 1983, pp. 72-83. All three images differ from the Rijksmuseum portrait, however, as they show Jacoba facing to the left and without the collar of St Antony. With the more recent discovery of a painting recorded in Kasteel Heverlee’s inventory inscribed, in translation, ‘Done on 3 August 1432 by Lambert van Eyck. When this portrait was made, our Lady Jacoba was 31 years old’, the existence of an Eyckian portrait of the duchess, painted not by Jan but by his brother, was confirmed.¹²¹²‘Actum a[nno d[omi]ni. 1432. G. IIJ augusti a Lamberto de Eyck… Als dit gemaect was onder Vrau Jacob hadde XXXJ jaer’; see Steppe 1983, pp. 63-86, esp. p. 64. In this inscription and in the Rijksmuseum portrait, the countess is referred to as ‘Lady Jacoba’, a title which she is frequently given in contemporary documents; Steppe 1983, p. 69.] The portrait by Lambert, dated to the summer of 1432, was made precisely at the time of Jacoba’s secret marriage to Frank. It is likely, given the surviving copies, that Lambert painted a pendant portrait of him as well. Karel van Mander also refers to a well-executed but rather ‘old-fashioned’ pair of portraits of Jacoba and Frank by Jan Mostaert, which must have been copied after an earlier original, perhaps after Lambert’s work.¹³¹³Miedema I, 1994, pp. 176-77. A portrait of Jacoba in Copenhagen (panel, 61 x 42.5 cm), comparable in format and detail to the Amsterdam image, has inconclusively been ascribed to Mostaert; coll. cat. Copenhagen 1976, pp. 209-10, no. 483; Steppe 1983, pp. 80-81, with additional literature. Other extant portraits of Frank also closely resemble the one in the Rijksmuseum.¹⁴¹⁴Steppe 1983, pp. 83-84; Moes I, 1897, no. 906.

Lambert van Eyck’s unknown work of 1432 thus provides the most likely model for the Rijksmuseum portrait of Jacoba. Whether Lambert also painted an accompanying likeness of Frank on the occasion of their clandestine marriage is less certain. The double portrait may instead have been a later construction.¹⁵¹⁵Snyder 1960, p. 40, note 7, speculates that there were two original double portraits of the couple, one dating to the time of the marriage, the other painted after Jacoba’s death. He sees the Rijksmuseum portraits as copies after the first prototype. In either case, the paintings in the Rijksmuseum remain the best surviving example of what clearly became the couple’s official portraits.¹⁶¹⁶Copies on paper after the Rijksmuseum portraits (each 210 x 155 mm) are in the collection of the Museum Simon van Ghijn, Dordrecht.
MBa

Moes I, 1897, p. 106, no. 906:2, p. 480, no. 3960:4; Hoogewerff II, 1937, p. 49 (as Holland or Zeeland school); Amsterdam 1951, p. 4, nos. 11-12; Van Luttervelt 1957, pp. 143, 221-27; Snyder 1960, p. 40, note 7; Steppe 1983, pp. 55-86, esp. pp. 69, 81-82

1809, p. 89, no. 376; 1843, p. 74, no. 382 (‘in good condition’); 1853, p. 35, nos. 368, 369 (fl. 200 each); 1858, p. 172, nos. 380, 381 (as 14th-15th century); 1876, pp. 243-44, nos. 483-84; 1880, pp. 359-62, nos. 424-25; 1903, p. 14, nos. 130, 131; 1960, p. 9, nos. 130-31; 1976, pp. 651-52, nos. A 498, A 499 (as c. 1435)

M. Bass, 2010, 'anonymous, Portrait of Jacoba of Bavaria (1401-36), Countess of Holland and Zeeland, Northern Netherlands, after c. 1480', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6829