This portrait was purchased in 1804 from the Remonstrant congregation in The Hague as a portrait of Bernardus Prevostius. Presumably the person in question was Bartholomeus Praevostius (1587-1669), Remonstrant minister in Amsterdam from 1632 onwards. The man in the present portrait, however, does not resemble Praevostius, whose likeness is preserved in an engraving by Hendrick Bary after Adriaen Backer. Praevostius, moreover, was younger than the man in the Rijksmuseum’s portrait which, based on the sitter’s clothing, was probably executed in the first half of the 17th century.
In the 1880 catalogue of the Rijksmuseum’s permanent collection, the sitter was identified as the Remonstrant minister Johannes Wtenbogaert (1557-1644) and the painting was attributed to Van Mierevelt for the first time. The portrait has also been considered a copy after Van Mierevelt’s 1631 portrait of Wtenbogaert. While the sitter does resemble Wtenbogaert as we know him from the several portraits executed by various artists, especially that by Jacob Backer from 1638 (SK-C-1474), the painting is definitely not a replica of Van Mierevelt’s 1631 portrait, nor should it be related to Van Mierevelt in any way. The relationship of the sitter to the surrounding space and the painting’s execution, especially the incised edges of the lace collar, are foreign to Van Mierevelt’s style. Given the likelihood that this portrait shows Wtenbogaert in old age, a dating to the last years of his life would be appropriate.
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. 444.
