Soldiers at an Encampment, Stone Tablet from the Amsterdam Soldatengasthuis (Soldier’s Hospital)

Sculpted in relief from two rectangular stone pieces and originally probably polychromed.

The top part of the right-hand soldier’s musket rest is missing. Other areas of incidental chipping can also be discerned. During Schmidt-Degener’s directorate (1922-41), the surface was (again?) polychromed. Later (before 1973), this modern polychromy was removed.

Commissioned by the City of Amsterdam and installed in the facade of the Soldatengasthuis, Amsterdam, 1587;¹¹B. van der Mark, ‘Soldiers at an Encampment, Stone Tablet from the Amsterdam Soldatengasthuis (Soldier’s Hospital)’, in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam 2020. removed from the facade, 1888;²²Note RMA. on loan from the City of Amsterdam, to the museum, since 1888  

ObjectNumber: BK-AM-77-A

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam

This stone tablet once adorned the facade of the Soldatengasthuis (soldier’s hospital) on the Binnengasthuisterrein in Amsterdam, located near the Gasthuispoort. It was accompanied by a second stone bearing the year of the building’s completion, inscribed within a cartouche: 1587 (BK-AM-77-B). Ultimately torn down in 1888, the Amsterdam Soldatengasthuis was the first in a series of gasthuizen founded in the Dutch Republic specifically built to care for wounded soldiers. These new military hospitals relieved pressure on the regular hospitals, which had become increasingly overcrowded with the onset of the Eighty Years’ War (1568-1648). As can be seen in an 1887 watercolour by J.M.A. Rieke, both the relief and the cartouche above it were imbedded high up on the masonry wall facade of the Soldatengasthuis (fig. a). The relief was perhaps originally polychromed, making it more readily visible when viewed from street level.

The relief shows two soldiers at an encampment. With his right hand, the left soldier holds a rod-and-banner that rests on his shoulder. He extends his left arm with open palm in front of a second soldier standing to his left, as if gesturing to make an announcement. The figure on the right clasps the barrel of an arquebus in his left hand; the firearm’s enormous butt rests on the ground behind his feet. He lays his right hand on the fork rest. In the bottom-left corner of the relief, a soldier appears to have fallen wounded on the ground: a reference to the hospital’s aim of nursing ailing and wounded soldiers. Dressed in fashionable attire, the two main figures with their broad stances and lively gesturing of the arms are vaguely reminiscent of soldiers appearing in Jacob de Gheyn II’s series of twelve engravings – also from 1587 – made after drawings by Hendrick Goltzius (e.g. RP-P-1943-610).

Contrary to the often unembellished and rudimentary scenes appearing on the stone-carved tablets that adorned the facades of private homes, the present relief is finely executed and contains numerous details. This level of quality was to be expected from the object’s patron, the City of Amsterdam. In the Dutch Republic, (semi-)public buildings and institutions such as hospitals and ‘plague houses’ were seen as important means to convey civic pride. Aimed to promote the city’s prestige, these structures were often richly ornamented.

Van Regteren Altena linked the relief to Rembrandt’s Night Watch (SK-C-5), in which Frans Banninck Cocq addresses his companion in a manner similar to that of the two soldiers on the present relief.³³J.Q. van Regteren Altena, ‘Quelques remarques sur Rembrandt et La Ronde de Nuit’, Actes du XVIIe congrès international d’histoire de l’art 17 (1952), 1955, pp. 405-20, esp. p. 413. The two central figures of the painting are depicted more or less in a comparable pose, accompanied by firearms positioned diagonally in the composition. The agreement between the two works is too superficial to draw any kind of definitive conclusion. Nevertheless, Rembrandt lived for many years on the Amsterdam Jodenbreestraat, in close proximity to the Soldatengasthuis. He was undoubtedly familiar with the stone tablet, which by this time had already adorned the hospital facade for over fifty years.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 210, with earlier literature; O.W. Broers, De gevelstenen van Amsterdam, Hilversum 2007, no. 671A

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous, Soldiers at an Encampment, Stone Tablet from the Amsterdam Soldatengasthuis (Soldier’s Hospital), Amsterdam, 1587', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.25990