Carved in the round and polychromed.

The spurs, a section of the military baton and the rapier are missing. The oak plinth has been replaced. The polychromy is non-original.

…; from the Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden, The Hague, transferred to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, 1875; transferred to the museum, 1885

Object number: BK-NM-1005

The veneration of naval heroes, who were held up to the populace as exempla virtutis, took on extravagant forms in the seventeenth-century Republic, with countless odes, pamphlets, biographies and painted or engraved portraits being produced to commemorate admirals who had died for their country. The fame of these men even equalled that of the Orange stadholders, thus explaining why the present statuettes – one of a stadholder (shown here), the other a naval hero (BK-NM-1006) – could both be found in the same series of military commanders. A small figure of the seated Prince Maurice (1567-1625) may also have belonged to that ensemble (fig. a).¹¹J. Becker, Hendrick de Keyser: Standbeeld van Desiderius Erasmus in Rotterdam, Bloemendaal 1993, fig. 41. The series’ size and mediocre execution suggest that it had served a decorative function in some state chamber. In 1998, a smaller, polychromed wooden figure of a standing nobleman was sold in London. This work displays a striking similarity to the present figures and was perhaps carved in the same anonymous workshop.²²Sale London (Sotheby’s), 8 July 1998, no. 66.

Artistically, the commanders are not first-class portraits, but their form is particularly interesting. The men are depicted as standing rulers – a type of image that was rare in the Netherlands. The model for these full-length portraits were four marble statues of stadholders by François Dieussart, sculpted around 1647. Unique in the Netherlands, this earlier series of dynastic rulers had originally stood in the Oranjezaal of Huis ten Bosch Palace. After being moved to Germany in the eighteenth century, however, all four were destroyed during the Second World War.³³C. Avery, ‘François Dieussart (c. 1600-61): Portrait Sculptor to the Courts of Northern Europe’, in ibid., Studies in European Sculpture, vol. 1, London 1981, pp. 205-35, esp. pp. 221-23. A polychromed wooden statue of stadholder William II in the museum’s collection, in the past also attributed – erroneously – to François Dieussart, follows the same general scheme (BK-NM-1007).

Frits Scholten, 2025
This entry is a revised version of F. Scholten, Gebeeldhouwde portretten/Portrait Sculptures, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1995, no. 15

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 265a, with earlier literature; F. Scholten, Gebeeldhouwde portretten/Portrait Sculptures, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1995, p. 36

F. Scholten, 2025, 'anonymous, A Stadholder, Possibly Frederick Henry (1584-1647), Prince of Orange, Holland, c. 1650', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035662