The Skirmish Between Cuirassiers, 5 February 1600, on the Vughterheide

…; ? a French or Netherlandish collection;¹¹On a label on the reverse is an inscription in French attributing the painting to Palamedes; this is the only inconclusive evidence of a French or Netherlandish provenance.…; sale, Jan Hendrik Cremer (1813-85, Brussels), Amsterdam (F. Muller et al.), 21 June 1887, no. 40, as Sebastiaan Vrancx, fl. 95, to ‘het Ministerie’ for the museum;²²Copy RKD. NHA, ARS, IS, inv. 167, no. 196 (28 June 1887; no. 1336 KW); NHA, ARS, Kop, no. 289, pp. 148-49, no. 329 (13 July 1887). on loan to the Rijksmuseum Muiderslot, 1947, 1999-2005, and since 2008

ObjectNumber: SK-A-1409

This notorious incident took place on the Vughterheide not far from ’s-Hertogenbosch on 5 February 1600.¹¹¹¹H. Pauwels, Musée Groeninge: Catalogue, Bruges (Groeningemuseum) 1963, under no. 71, gives references; see also C. White, The later Flemish Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, London 2007, under no. 135. It resulted from a challenge by Pierre (or François) de Bréauté (1580-1600), a Norman cavalry officer based in Geertruidenberg, in the service of Prince Maurits of Orange, the Dutch stadholder, offered to Anton Schetz (1564-1640), from 1619 2nd Baron Grobbendonck and from 1598 governor of ’s-Hertogenbosch, which city remained under Spanish suzerainty until 1629.¹²¹²For Schetz, see hhtp://www.tercios.org/personajes/grobbendonck.html; consulted July 2010. He appointed a native of Brabant from the city, Gerard Abramsz van Houwelingen (c. 1560-1600), his lieutenant, to answer the summons. Houwelingen had an odd nickname, Leckerbeetje, which has had various interpretations; Vander Auwera has recently suggested that the Dutch nickname should mean ‘he who likes tasty things’.¹³¹³Quoted by C. White, The later Flemish Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, London 2007, under no. 135.

The formalities seem to have followed those of the traditional, medieval tournament.¹⁴¹⁴R.W. Barber and J. Barker, Tournaments: Jousts, Chivalry and Pageants in the Middle Ages, Woodbridge 1989, p. 213. Settled beforehand by the heralds would have been the place and time of the encounter – the Vughterheide between the Vught windmill and the ’s-Hertogenbosch gallows on the 5 February 1600 – and the numbers on each side, twenty-two. The cuirassiers are wearing three-quarter length, heavy armour and are fighting with pistols/bludgeons and armour piercing swords. Houwelingen wears a red sash and his comrades the red armband of the Spanish army (their opponents’ armbands should be green).

The Rijksmuseum picture, which is on an oak support that has not been dated, is a copy of the print, designed by Sebastiaen Vrancx and engraved by Joannes van Doetecum II (by 1587-1630), of which there appear to be no extant examples.¹⁵¹⁵H.J. Nalis, G. Luijten, C. Schuckman, The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, 1450-1700: The Van Doetecum Family 1554-1606, 4 vols., Rotterdam 1998, IV, no. 1016. It has been suggested that the engraver worked from a painting by Vrancx,¹⁶¹⁶H.J. Nalis, G. Luijten, C. Schuckman, The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, 1450-1700: The Van Doetecum Family 1554-1606, 4 vols., Rotterdam 1998, IV, no. 1016. but this is unlikely as the latter is described as the ‘inventor’ and this in spite of there being a record of a painting of the skirmish (mêlée) by Vrancx of 1601.¹⁷¹⁷C. White, The later Flemish Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, London 2007, under no. 135. The plates, which made up the print, were purchased after Van Doetecum’s death by Claes Jansz Visscher (1587-1652) and republished by him in 1631 as Batalie van Breaute ende Leckerbeetien.XXII.Tegens XXII.

Inscriptions on Visscher’s print identify the town, centre, as ‘shertogenbos’ (’s-Hertogenbosch) and the villages to the left and right as ‘Orten’ (Orthen) and ‘Vucht’ (Vught) respectively. The present copy is not accurate; in particular the gallows in the middle distance, left, was misunderstood and the tower to the left of the windmill differs, as do the buildings along the horizon. There are far fewer spectators in the middle ground. Dendrochronological analysis of the three pieces of oak timber which make up the support might provide a terminus post quem for its execution. Hofstede de Groot suggested that it was the work of Gerrit van Santen (1609/11-1687/1700),¹⁸¹⁸C. Hofstede de Groot, ‘Kritische opmerkingen omtrent eenige schilderijen in ’s Rijksmuseum’, Oud Holland 17 (1899), pp. 163-70, esp. p. 170. but it seems rather to be the work of a not very skilful, journeyman hand active very probably in the Netherlands in the first half of the seventeenth century.

Depicted is the moment after the impact of the first charge, which would have been signalled by each sides’ trumpet-blowing heralds on raised ground to the left and right. At this first encounter, De Bréauté shot Houwelingen dead and his own horse was killed. The former, identified as Lieutenant Lackbeetken (Leckerbeetje), is shown lying prone in the left foreground of the print, while De Bréauté is identified in the print as the cuirassier remounting by his dead charger, to the left of the heralds on the right. Whether these identifications are as Vrancx intended is an open question, but it seems likely.

As is shown in the print (and painted copy), this skirmish was to the death (a mêlée à outrance) and thus fiercely contested.¹⁹¹⁹R.W. Barber and J. Barker, Tournaments: Jousts, Chivalry and Pageants in the Middle Ages, Woodbridge 1989, p. 213. Nineteen of De Bréauté’s companions were killed as were four Brabanters and thirty horses. Among the Brabanters to die were Houwelingen’s brother and brother-in-law. De Bréauté was himself captured and then murdered as he was brought into ’s-Hertogenbosch. An account of the mêlée in Dutch and French is given at the base of Visscher’s print. Although Houwelingen is prominently depicted in the foreground, and De Bréauté is inconspicuous in the middle ground, the accounts are sympathetic to him and condemn his murder in cold blood, after his surrender and disarming, by a cornet, Jan van Mil, acting on the orders of the governor, who had been driven by hatred and revenge (haet en wraeck). This was to be expected as the print was published in the northern Netherlands; the narratives were probably the work of, or commissioned by, Visscher as the governor is referred to by his title, inherited in 1619.

The prototype of the image is one of the few prints engraved by Van Doetecum when he was working independently in Rotterdam (1598-1603).²⁰²⁰H.J. Nalis, G. Luijten, C. Schuckman, The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, 1450-1700: The Van Doetecum Family 1554-1606, 4 vols., Rotterdam 1998, IV, no. 1007-1017; an account of Joannes van Doetecum II’s life by Henk Nalis is given in part I, pp. XXIII-XXVII. Vrancx only became a master in the Antwerp guild in 1600/01; how the two came into contact and whether the design was commissioned by the engraver remains unknown, as do the sources on which Vrancx relied for the design. An earlier depiction of a mêlée à outrance is the print by Lucas Cranach I (1472-1553) of 1506, which was set in a town square.²¹²¹F.W.H. Hollstein et al., German Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts 1400-1700, Amsterdam/Roosendaal 1954-, VI, p. 93 ‘The First Tournament’; R.W. Barber and J. Barker, Tournaments: Jousts, Chivalry and Pageants in the Middle Ages, Woodbridge 1989, p. 68. Vrancx had already supplied a drawing for an engraver when he was in Rome.²²²²M.R. Nappi, ‘Il viaggio in Italia di Sebastiaen Vrancx’, Bollettino d’Arte (Fiamminghi à Roma Supplement, 1997), pp. 171-90, esp. pp. 185-86, fig. 17, and p. 190, note 79.

Both the RKD and the Witt Library have photographs of many other copies after, or derivations from, Visscher’s print – examples are in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp,²³²³Catalogus Schilderkunst, Oude Meesters, Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1988, p. 415, no. 772. and Leeds City Art Gallery²⁴²⁴Catalogue of Paintings in Leeds City Art Gallery and Temple Newsam House, I: Works by Artists Born before 1800, Leeds 1954, p. 80. J. Vander Auwera, ‘Historical Fact and Artistic Fiction. The Face of the Eighty Years’ War in southern Netherlandish Painting in Particular Those of Sebastian Vrancx (1573-1647) and Pieter Snayers (1592-1667)’, in K. Bussmann and H. Schilling (eds.), 1648: War and Peace in Europe – Essay volume II: Art and Culture, exh. cat. Münster (Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte) 1998, pp. 461-68, esp. p. 463 and note 13; p. 467 refers to ‘dozens of versions’ listed by Verreyt in 1843 and 1894. of which none is by Vrancx. And it is perhaps noteworthy in his respect that in the seventeenth-century Antwerp inventories, published by Duverger, only one picture of the ‘Bataille de Lackerbeetje’ by Vrancx is listed; this was the picture owned by Arnold Lunden (d. 1656).²⁵²⁵E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, V, p. 59, no. 81 (as still in the family in 1692, Idem, XII, p. 154). And further Vander Auwera does not accept any other renderings of the skirmish, which are listed by White, as having once been thought to be autograph, including one (or (?) two) that was owned by King Charles I of Great Britain (1600-1649).²⁶²⁶C. White, The later Flemish Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, London 2007, p. 380, under no. 135.

In the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, also by a follower of Vrancx, is a depiction of the two sides charging each other and Houwelingen falling,²⁷²⁷X. Egorova, State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts: The Netherlands XV-XVI centuries, Flanders XVII-XVIII Centuries, Belgium XIX-XX Centuries: Collection of Paintings, Moscow 1998, p. 169, no. 117; this correctly shows snow on the ground. of which another version was on the Monaco market in 1987.²⁸²⁸Anonymous sale, Monaco (Sotheby’s), 6 December 1987, no. 39 (as by Vrancx).

Gregory Martin, 2022

1898, p. 133, no. 288; 1903, p. 291, no. 2599 (records Hofstede de Groot’s attribution to Gerrit van Santen, perhaps a copy after Visscher’s print); 1904, p. 340, no. 2599 (as by Sebastiaen Vrancx, perhaps also a copy after Visscher’s print); 1934, p. 309, no. 2399 (as Sebastiaen Vrancx, perhaps a copy of Van Doetecum or Visscher’s print); 1976, p. 590, no. A 1409 (as copy after Sebastiaen Vrancx)

G. Martin, 2022, 'after Sebastiaen Vrancx, The Skirmish Between Cuirassiers, 5 February 1600, on the Vughterheide, c. 1635', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7375