The support is a single vertically grained oak plank, which has been cradled. The ground layer is ochre in colour. The paint layers were applied thinly, with the exception of the light areas in the background. Brushstrokes are visible in the background.

Fair. The sliding members of the cradle are blocked. The area around the inscription and the signature has been retouched. Minor losses appear throughout, and there are some discoloured retouchings in the cloak, the sitter’s face and around his cap. The varnish was applied unevenly and has discoloured.

...; collection Dr Max Wassermann;¹¹Note RMA. his sale, Paris (Palais Galliéra), 26 November 1967, no. 27, fr. 5,000, to the museum; on loan to the Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, since 1978

Object number: SK-A-4138

Palamedesz became one of Delft’s leading portraitists after the death of Michiel van Mierevelt in 1641.³³On Delft portrait painting, see Liedtke 2001. The majority of his dated portraits are from the period between 1645 and 1665. The present one is related in style to the work of Palamedesz’s presumed teacher Van Mierevelt. When this painting was acquired for the Rijksmuseum’s Department of Dutch History in 1967, the sitter was identified as the Leiden theologian Jacobus Trigland (1583-1654). The age corresponds with Trigland’s, and there is a slight resemblance to his features as shown in other portraits of the theologian.⁴⁴Such as the engraving by Cornelis van Dalen after Jan van Teylingen, Hollstein V, 1951, p. 120, no. 156. However, the identification was rejected by Pieter van Thiel after comparison with an engraved portrait by Willem Jacobsz Delff of Trigland at the age of 53, which shows that the theologian was already bald in 1636.⁵⁵Note RMA; Hollstein V, 1951, p. 226, no. 90. That print was used as a frontispiece in Opuscula Jacobi Triglandii, 2 vols., Amsterdam 1639-40. See also a related painting in Leiden University dated 1634; coll. cat. Leiden 1973, no. 68 (ill.). The sitter was probably a clergyman from Delft.

Ekkart has suggested that he may be the pastor Dionysius Spranckhuijsen, who was born in 1585 and lived in Delft from 1625 onwards, whose features are known from a print of 1641 by Crispijn van den Queborn.⁶⁶Hollstein XVII, 1976, p. 269, no. 73; illustrated in Den Hertog 1982, p. 44; oral communication, R.E.O. Ekkart, 2003. Spranckhuijsen’s death in 1650 might explain why so many versions of his portrait were produced in that year. Although Ekkart’s identification is an appealing one, the resemblance between the sitter in the present portrait and Spranckhuijsen as he appears at the age of 56 in Van den Queborn’s print is not that close, especially as regards the hair. Moreover, the Delft preacher was a year younger than the man in the portrait. The identification of the sitter as Spranckhuijsen must, therefore, remain hypothetical.

There are several versions of this portrait, most of them signed at centre right, instead of at upper right as in the present painting. The most sophisticated one was auctioned in Amsterdam in 1960.⁷⁷Sale, Amsterdam (De Zon), 21 September 1960, no. 5485, as Portrait of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, panel, 31 x 24 cm (ill.). The age of the sitter inscribed on that painting of 1650 is 64, that is two years younger than in other versions, but the last digits of the date appear to have been overpainted, which suggests that the first version dates from 1648. Several variants are in Aachen and in private collections.⁸⁸Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, panel, 31.8 x 24 cm; sale, Stockholm (Auktionsverket), 10 November 1987, no. 1508, panel, 31 x 23.5 cm; private collection, panel, 33 x 22.9 cm; photos RKD. The latter two are possibly identical. In a version that is signed and dated at upper right, as in the Rijksmuseum painting, the composition has been reduced.⁹⁹Private collection, panel, 25.6 x 21 cm; photo RKD. A difference between the present painting and other versions is the occurrence of three buttons on the sleeve at lower right.

The awkward execution of the sitter’s face, with his relatively large eyes and strangely attached earlobe, makes an attribution to Palamedesz or his workshop doubtful. The Rijksmuseum version should therefore probably be considered a copy.

Gerdien Wuestman, 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. 231.

coll. cat. Utrecht 2002, pp. 243-44 (as Palamedesz, Portrait of Jacobus Trigland)

1976, p. 434, no. A 4138 (as Palamedesz, Portrait of Jacobus Trigland); 1992, p. 72, no. A 4138 (as Palamedesz); 2007, no. 231

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'copy after Anthonie Palamedesz., Portrait of a Man, probably a Clergyman, 1650', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20025970