Object data
oil on panel
outer size: height 38.3 cm × width 28.5 cm × depth 2 cm
Cornelis Engelsz (attributed to)
Portrait of Frans van Schoterbosch (c. 1484-?)
Northern Netherlands, c. 1620
Inscriptions
- inscription, centre right: Aet 38 An 1522
- inscription, on the reverse, in black paint: 1 / Frans Overyn van / Schoterbos / geb. 1484 (1, Frans Overyn van Schoterbos, b. 1484)
- coat of arms, upper right: a red chevron and three red fleurs-de-lis on a silver ground
Technical notes
The arched support is a single, vertically grained oak plank with integrated frame. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1571. The panel could have been ready for use by 1580, but a date in or after 1590 is more likely. The painting was primed with a beige ground, visible at the pinpoint losses. The paint layers were mostly smoothly applied except for the figure’s hands, where brushmarking is visible and impasto was used. A red glaze was used in the face.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 25 May 2005
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 18 October 2005
Condition
Fair. The retouchings on the numerous pinpoint losses have discoloured.
Original framing
Integral frames painted black and with gilded sight edge
Provenance
? Commissioned by Johan Gerritsz van Schoterbosch (c. 1564-1654); ? his granddaughter, Aegje Hasselaer (1617-64), Amsterdam; ? her son, Gerrit Hooft (1649-1717), Amsterdam; ? his son, Hendrik Hooft (1676-1752), Amsterdam and The Hague; ? his daughter, Suzanna Isabella Hooft (1716-1803), The Hague; ? her son, Hendrik Hoeufft, Lord of Velsen and Santpoort (1747-1823), The Hague and Amsterdam; by descent to Jonkheer Ernest Louis Willy Marc Hoeufft, Lord of Velsen and Santpoort (1903-65), Meeuwen; by whom bequeathed to the museum, 19651
Object number: SK-A-4771
Credit line: Jonkheer E.L.W.M. Hoeufft van Velsen Bequest, Meeuwen
Copyright: Public domain
Context
The sitters in this series of six small portraits are identified by the inscriptions in black paint on the reverse of the panels. All except one of the portraits are replicas of 16th- and, in one case, early 17th-century prototypes that are no longer extant. The oldest replicated prototypes showed Pieter Salina (SK-A-4772) and Frans van Schoterbosch (c. 1484-?) (shown here), respectively the father-in-law and father of Willem Fransz van Schoterbosch (c. 1520-?), who is shown in the third portrait (SK-A-4773). His son, Gerrit Willemsz van Schoterbosch (c. 1538-1611) is the sitter in the fourth portrait (SK-A-4774), and his grandsons, Floris (c. 1562-1618) (SK-A-4775) and Johan Gerritsz van Schoterbosch (c. 1564-1654) (SK-A-4776) are portrayed in the remaining two.
As Ekkart has demonstrated, the inscription on the reverse of Floris’s portrait records Johan’s name and vice versa; the year 1620 is inscribed on the front of Johan’s portrait and therefore cannot show Floris who died in 1618.2 Moreover, the 1620 portrait is a version of one painted by Engelsz in 1619,3 and the same sitter is shown in a similar pose as one of the three captains in Cornelis Engelsz’s 1618 Banquet of Officers of the Haarlem Arquebusiers Civic Guard.4 Van Valkenburg had identified him as Captain Cornelis Gerritsz Quakel, but the unmistakable resemblance to the portrait in the present series led Ekkart to recognize him as Johan Gerritsz van Schoterbosch, one of the company’s other captains.
In addition to showing the same sitter as in Engelsz’s 1618 civic guard piece, the Portrait of Johan Gerritsz van Schoterbosch and the rest of the portraits in the present series can be attributed to Engelsz based on the soft modelling of the figures and their striking pink cheeks. All six paintings were probably executed in 1620, the date on Johan Gerritsz van Schoterbosch’s portrait, and, given the fact that a direct line of descent can be drawn from his daughters to the last private owner of the paintings, Ernest Louis Willy Marc Hoeufft (1903-65), Johan probably commissioned them.5
Jonathan Bikker, 2007
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, nos. 70-75.
The artist
Cornelis Engelsz (Gouda c. 1574/75 - Haarlem 1650)
According to Van Mander, Cornelis Engelsz came from Gouda. Engelsz gave his age as approximately 32 in a document of 1606, and in one of 1635 he is recorded as being 60 years old, which indicates that he was born around 1574/75. Van Mander also informs us that Engelsz’s teacher was Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem, while the anonymous author of Van Mander’s own biography in the second edition of the Schilder-boeck also lists him under that artist’s pupils.6 Engelsz joined the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1593 and served as its warden in 1616. From 1594 to 1621 he is recorded as a member of the Haarlem civic guard. The town council appointed him fire pump master in 1626, and in 1629 commissioned him and Frans Hals to restore paintings in the Prinsenhof. Engelsz married Maritge Jansdr around 1595. Two of the couple’s children, Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck (c. 1601/03-62) and Jochem Cornelisz Verspronck (c. 1612/13-53), became painters. Both probably received their first training from their father. His recorded pupils were Michiel Willemsz in 1606, Hendrick Lourissen van Groll in 1622 and Symon Symonsz La Feber in 1637. Engelsz died a well-to-do man in November 1650.
His small extant oeuvre includes only three signed and dated portraits, a civic guard piece of 1612,7 another of 1618,8 and a Portrait of Johan van Schoterbosch of 1619.9 The latter work enabled a series of six portraits in the Rijksmuseum to be attributed to Engelsz (the portrait shown here, and SK-A-4772, SK-A-4773, SK-A-4774, SK-A-4775, SK-A-4776). A third, probably earlier, civic guard portrait now attributed to Engelsz was rediscovered in 1991.10 Stylistically, these works are related to Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem’s oeuvre, while the compositions of the civic guard portraits are also indebted to Frans Pietersz de Grebber and Frans Hals. In addition to portraits, there are two monogrammed still lifes with biblical scenes in the background in the tradition of Pieter Aertsen.11 These works are stylistically related to the still lifes by Engelsz’s contemporaries, Cornelis Jacobsz Delff and Floris van Schooten. Finally, a genre piece showing an old man with an alms box and three children has been attributed to him.12
Jonathan Bikker, 2007
References
Van Mander 1604, fol. 293v; Van Mander 1618, fol. Siii; Ampzing 1628, p. 370; Houbraken I, 1718, p. 252, II, 1719, p. 122; Van der Willigen 1870, p. 306; Von Wurzbach II, 1910, p. 782; Lilienfeld in Thieme/Becker X, 1914, p. 548; Ekkart 1979, pp. 13, 15, 21-26; Miedema 1980, II, pp. 420, 455, 932, 1033, 1056; Ekkart in Saur XXXIV, 2002, pp. 72-73; Van Thiel-Stroman 2006, pp. 146-48
Entry
Frans van Schoterbosch was the father of Willem Fransz van Schoterbosch. This portrait replicates a lost prototype in the style of Jan Mostaert from around 1522.13
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. 70.
Literature
Wilson in Sarasota 1980, unpag., no. 1 (as Anonymous, Six Male Portraits from the Overrijn van Schoterbosch Family, c. 1604); Ekkart 1985
Collection catalogues
1992, p. 99, no. A 4771 (as Northern Netherlands School 1522, possibly a copy by Cornelis Engelsz after an unknown original); 2007, no. 70
Citation
J. Bikker, 2007, 'attributed to Cornelis Engelsz., Portrait of Frans van Schoterbosch (c. 1484-?), c. 1620', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4837
(accessed 27 September 2024 11:57:20).