Memorial tablet of Jacob Jan van Assendelft (1396-1478) and his wife Haesgen van Outshoorn (?-1471)

The support consists of three horizontally grained oak planks (24.5, 19.5 and 16.5 cm), approx. 0.5 cm thick, which is remarkably thin for this period (fig. a). The panel is bevelled on all sides and covered with a thin wax layer. Dendrochronology has shown that the wood for planks I and III came from the same tree and that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1470. The panel could have been ready for use by 1481, but a date in or after 1495 is more likely. The yellowish ground as well as the paint layers were applied up to the edges of the panel. Neither an underdrawing nor ‘pentimenti’ were detected with infrared reflectography. However, some changes can be observed with the naked eye. The silver horse in the coat of arms was originally intended to be slightly lower down, and St Catherine’s sword was originally placed slightly higher up. There also seems to have been a change in the position of the tower, which appears to have been more to the left, although infrared reflectography does not confirm this. The surface is difficult to interpret due to the overpaint and the thick and heavily discoloured varnish, but the saints appear to have been left in reserve. Most of the donors, on the other hand, seem to have been painted directly on top of the background; the shoulder of the boy on the left, for example, was painted over St Barbara’s tower and his head over the saint’s red dress. The coats of arms were also painted on top of the underlying layers. The paint was applied roughly and is opaque in several areas. The cloth of honour and the saints’ haloes have a mordant gilding; the cloth of honour was painted with a glaze in the pattern. The white painted text runs over the red paint.

Fair. There are discoloured fillings and retouching, as well as raised paint along the lower join. The varnish is heavily discoloured.

…; ? St Bonifatiuskerk, Alphen aan den Rijn;¹¹Note RMA; Cuypers/Kalf et al. III, 1915, p. 4. …; by descent to Maria S.T. de Wildt (1766-1851); transferred for safekeeping to the Charter Room in Leiden Town Hall, 1838;²²Akte, 13 April 1838; copy in the De Wildt archive, RKD. The inventory number 40 painted in red on the reverse (fig. a) was removed at the request of her son Frans de Wildt (1805-69), Amsterdam, May 1839; notes on the akte, 13 April 1838. her son, Frans de Wildt (1805-69), Heemstede; presented to the KOG by his heirs, 1871;³³Van Thiel 1995, p. 61, no. 1066. on loan to the museum since 1889

ObjectNumber: SK-C-509

Credit line: On loan from the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap

According to the inscription below the scene and the two coats of arms this memorial tablet commemorates Jacob Jan van Assendelft and his wife Haesgen (Haesje) van Outshoorn, who are kneeling on either side of a crowned and enthroned Virgin and Child. Kneeling behind Jacob Jan are six male members of his family, while Haesje is accompanied by three girls who are identified as being dead by their black shrouds and the crucifixes they hold in their hands.⁴⁴Van Bueren in Utrecht 1999, pp. 92-93. They are probably her dead daughters. Haesje herself is wearing a black garment resembling a nun’s habit, which was evidently not unusual for a lay, married woman in a memorial tablet. This is known from several other examples, such as the tablet with Geertruy Haeck-van Slingelandt van der Tempel in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-3926). Two pairs of saints are interceding for the deceased. On the left of the Virgin and Child are St Barbara with her tower and St Cosmas with a urine flask.⁵⁵For St Barbara see Kirschbaum V, 1973, cols. 304-11; for St Cosmas, Kirschbaum VII, 1974, cols. 344-52. St Barbara is resting her right hand protectively on the head of one of the donors’ sons. The saints on the right are Damian with a mortar and Catherine with her crown, broken wheel and sword.⁶⁶For Damian see Kirschbaum VII, 1974, cols. 344-52; for Catharine, Kirschbaum VII, 1974, cols. 290-97. As far as is known, none of them is the name saint of any of the people portrayed. Sts Cosmas and Damian are the patron saints of physicians and protectors of the sick, while Sts Barbara and Catherine respectively represent the active and contemplative lives.

A religious scene of this kind, with donor portraits and an inscription commemorating the dead is also called an epitaph. Originally meaning simply an inscription on a tomb, the scope of the word was expanded in the course of the 15th century until it was no longer associated with the actual tomb of the deceased.⁷⁷See Van Bueren in Utrecht 1999, pp. 13, 66-67; Schoenen in Schmitt V, 1967, cols. 871-921.

Although the inscription tells us the man’s age and the couple’s place of burial and exact dates of death (St Arnulf’s Day is 15 August and St Agapetus’s Day is 20 September), remarkably little is known about their lives, as far as can be made out. A great deal is known about the Van Assendelft family, but nothing at all about Jacob Jan. The Van Outshoorn family were lords and ladies of Oudshoorn and Aarlanderveen, and thus came from the region around Alphen and den Rijn. However, the family died out in the male line in the middle of the 14th century,⁸⁸Molhuysen/Blok VI, 1924, col. 1093. so it is unclear to which branch Haesgen van Outshoorn belonged. Large areas of the panel, including the inscription, are heavily overpainted, making it look like a copy.⁹⁹Defoer, for example, regarded it as a copy; see Van Bueren 1999, p. 92, note 12. See also note RMA. That impression is heightened by the fact that there is little difference between the faces of the figures. The type of the Virgin and Child, however, is consistent with northern Netherlandish scenes of the Virgin from the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries, and the dendrochronology is in line with the 15th-century dating. The lack of biographical information about the dead couple and the overpainting of the inscription in particular allows room for the hypothesis that this is a later genealogical falsification. Such visual manipulations of reality served to enhance a person’s social standing by associating them with distinguished forebears. There was great interest in genealogy in the 17th century, in particular, and we know of several instances of such falsifications.¹⁰¹⁰See Bok 1996.

It can be assumed that the painting was in the possession of Frans de Wildt’s family for a long time.¹¹¹¹See Provenance. He was related to a Leiden branch of the Van Assendelft family through his great-grandmother on his father’s side. That branch included the Leiden goldsmith Bartholomeus Jansz van Assendelft (1585-1658). His portrait by Werner van den Valckert, which is in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-3920), also came from the De Wildt collection.
JN

Moes I, 1897, p. 30, no. 222, II, 1905, p. 175, no. 5656; Van Thiel 1995, pp. 38, 61, no. 1066; Van Bueren in Utrecht 1999, p. 273, no. 9

1903, p. 5, no. 42; 1976, p. 675, no. C 509 (as Holland school, c. 1485)

J. Niessen, 2010, 'anonymous, Memorial tablet of Jacob Jan van Assendelft (1396-1478) and his wife Haesgen van Outshoorn (?-1471), Noord-Nederland, after c. 1500', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.10835