The Breda Wall, with Stone Elements from the Facade of the Nassau Palace Stable Complex

The sandstone decorations, two windows and portals in the lower register originate from the garden facade of the stable block at Nassau Palace in Breda. These architectural elements were recomposed in the 19th century by Pierre Cuypers, supplemented with masonry, an extra window, the bases of the pillars and a stone entablature. Embedded in the bays of the upper register are stone tablets from the Amsterdam facades of the former Leprozenhuis (BK-AM-71-A, -B, -C, -D) and a demolished house on the Reguliersdwarsstraat (KOG-ALS-90).

The restorations are indicated in a schematic drawing of the wall included in the conservation report compiled by Van Hoogevest Architecten (2015).

Commissioned by Prince Maurice of Orange (1567-1625) for the garden facade of the stable block of the Nassau Palace in Breda, between 1618 and 1624;¹¹I. Ippel, ‘The Breda Wall, with Stone Elements from the Facade of the Nassau Palace Stable Complex’, in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. 2021. acquired, dismantled and the stone sections transferred to the museum, 1885;²²HNI, inv. no. RYKSd116. incorporated in the east facade of the museum’s Fragments Building (later integrated in the Philips Wing) by the architect P.J.H. Cuypers, since 1890-97

ObjectNumber: BK-NM-8654

The Breda Wall in the Philips Wing of the Rijksmuseum initially served as the east exterior facade of the museum’s Fragments Building. It was built in 1890-97 according to a design by the architect Pierre Cuypers (1827-1921) using remnants of various historic building facades integrated in a new composition reflective of traditional Dutch architecture. The Breda Wall is divided into two registers, with each register subdivided into five bays. The lower register contains two portals with basket arches (in the second and fifth bays), both flanked by Ionic pillars, and three cross windows surmounted by round arches. Each bay is framed by Doric pillars with inverted corbels, which ostensibly ‘support’ an entablature comprising a sandstone architrave and cornice, and a masonry frieze. Embedded in the frieze are stone-carved ornamental trophies of arms and cow skulls with horns decorated as cornucopia. The right portal has a double fanlight with a triangular pediment; the left portal has a single fanlight with a circular pediment. The windows are ornamented top and bottom with stone-carved volute motifs. In the upper register, each of the five bays – flanked by pilasters resting on pedestals – is filled with a stone tablet originating from the Amsterdam facades of the Leprozenhuis (BK-AM-71-A, -B, -C, -D) – a building demolished earlier in the nineteenth century – and a private residence on the Reguliersdwarsstraat (KOG-ALS-90). With the further expansion of the museum in the early twentieth century, the facade was integrated in the interior of what came to be called the Phillips Wing.

The lower register of the facade – essentially, the Breda Wall – originally stood facing the garden of the stable block at Nassau Palace in Breda. An 1875 design drawing shows that Cuypers’s initial intention was to renovate the facade in situ.³³See RCE, object no. BT-026302. From the ground plan, likewise drawn up by Cuypers, one learns he wished to also increase the wall’s original width.⁴⁴See RCE, object no. BT-032440. By this time, the facade was little more than a buttressed wall with an open space behind it, wedged between the Garnizoensbakkerij (Garrison’s Bakery) at its left end and the academy stalls on the right. The wall’s condition is conveyed in an undated lithograph and a drawing on brown paper.⁵⁵See RCE, object no. BT-019896. These visual sources also provide insight into the kinds of improvements Cuypers had in mind. The 1875 design drawing reveals the architect’s preference for symmetry: seven bays and three portals, with two windows flanking the central portal. Because it proved unsalvageable in the end, however, the wall was dismantled and subsequently incorporated as part of the Rijksmuseum expansion. Unclear is why Cuypers ultimately deviated from his design drawing and instead chose to retain much of the original composition. He did nevertheless make two modifications. As reflected in the ground plan, drawing and lithograph, the left bay must previously have contained a contrasting element. The lithograph shows no more than a simple door, which Cuypers replaced with a window identical to the other two cross windows.⁶⁶The colour and condition of the window in the first bay deviate from that of the other two windows. For this copied window, Cuypers appears to have used materials of a quality inferior to those used for the original windows. Furthermore, he corrected the Ionic pillars flanking each of the portals, by adding bases in accordance with the classical order. This required that the Doric pillars, though already having a base, also be elevated in a deviation from the classical order.

The Breda Wall has occasionally been described as being a seminal example of the Renaissance architecture introduced in the Netherlands by Tommaso Vincidor (c. 1493-1537).⁷⁷A. de Koomen, ‘Een lamentatio over een lapidarium: De Nieuwezijds Kapel in de Rijksmuseumtuin’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 55 (2007), pp. 298-331, esp. p. 301. From 1531 up until his death, Vincidor was the architect of Count Hendrick III of Nassaus’s palazzo in fortezza, built in the Renaissance style.⁸⁸G.W.C. van Wezel, Het paleis van Hendrik III, graaf van Nassau te Breda, Zwolle/Zeist 1999, pp. 129, 154. The stable block’s garden facade, however, was constructed a little less than a century later, when the palace and the adjoining Valkenburg were in the possession of Prince Maurice of Orange (1567-1625), between 1618 and the Siege of Breda in 1624. On the prince’s orders, the palace was renovated and further expanded with structures such as an octagonal garden pavilion and an aviary designed by Melchior van Herbach (1579-after 1624/before 1639). The garden facade would also have been renovated during this same period in the style of Hendrick de Keyser, in whose sphere of influence Van Herbach had been trained as a stone-carver. In 1613/14, he moved to Breda, where he was employed by Prince Maurice as architect ende steenhouwer (architect and stone-carver).⁹⁹I. Ippel, ‘‘’S heeren architect ende steenhouwer’: Melchior van Herbach and the Breda Wall in the Rijksmuseum’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 66 (2018), pp. 234-53, esp. p. 249.

On the basis of stylistic comparisons and indirect evidence, the Breda Wall was also recently attributed to Van Herbach.¹⁰¹⁰I. Ippel, ‘‘’S heeren architect ende steenhouwer’: Melchior van Herbach and the Breda Wall in the Rijksmuseum’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 66 (2018), pp. 234-53, esp. p. 249. Meischke established precedent when mentioning the wall in the same breath with the above-cited garden pavilion – in his view the most important building commissioned by Prince Maurice – due to the ‘originality of [the wall’s] overall composition.’¹¹¹¹R. Meischke, ‘Het Mauritshuis te Willemstad’, Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 3 (1985), pp. 265-94, esp. pp. 267-68. Also attributed to Van Herbach on the basis of source material are the Friese Poort in Alkmaar (1614), the portal of the Vleeshal in Breda (1614) and the town hall of Klundert (1621). The aforementioned aviary originally abutted the stable block’s garden facade. Bruinvis noted the similarity of the tympanums surmounting the cross windows on the portal in Alkmaar and the building in Klundert, both of which were linked to name variants of of Melchior van Herbach as cited in documentary sources.¹²¹²Melchior van Harsbeeck and Melchior van Harbach, see C.W. Bruinvis, ‘Melchior van Harbach’, Oud Holland 26 (1908), no. 3, pp. 203-04. Agasi, in turn, observed the agreement between the tympanums of the Klundert town hall and those of the Breda Wall.¹³¹³R. Agasi, Reconstructie van de Nassaustallen, Breda 2013, p. 17. This architectural ornamentation had previously been linked to the Amsterdam style of Hendrick de Keyser. The connection to De Keyser’s style is more emphatically discernible on the portal of the Breda Vleeshal. Van Herbach, relying on antecedent, combined De Keyser’s designs for the interior and exterior of the Amsterdam Haarlemmerpoort, realized in 1618. The Vleeshal also bears a humorous ornamental detail similar to that found on the Breda Wall: in order to visually convey the building’s function, sandstone cow’s heads decorated with sausage festoons traditionally appeared on Vleeshal facades in the Netherlands.

Iris Ippel, 2024

C.W. Bruinvis, ‘Melchior van Harbach’, Oud Holland 26 (1908), no. 3, pp. 203-04; F.A.J. Vermeulen, Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche bouwkunst, The Hague 1931, pp. 299-300; R. Meischke, ‘Het Mauritshuis te Willemstad’, Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 3 (1985), pp. 265-94, esp. pp. 267-68; G.W.C. van Wezel, Het paleis van Hendrik III, graaf van Nassau te Breda, Zwolle/Zeist 1999; A. de Koomen, ‘Een lamentatio over een lapidarium: De Nieuwezijds Kapel in de Rijksmuseumtuin’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 55 (2007), pp. 298-331, esp. p. 301; R. Agasi, Reconstructie van de Nassaustallen, Breda 2013; I. Ippel, ‘‘’S heeren architect ende steenhouwer’: Melchior van Herbach and the Breda Wall in the Rijksmuseum’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 66 (2018), pp. 234-53

I. Ippel, 2024, 'attributed to Melchior van Herbach and P.J.H. Cuypers, The Breda Wall, with Stone Elements from the Facade of the Nassau Palace Stable Complex, BredaAmsterdam, c. 1620', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.26504