Modelled in relief.

Large parts of the background and the profile frame have been filled in with wax. Complete with corresponding frame.

Commissioned by Stadholder William V (1748-1806), Prince of Orange-Nassau, The Hague, 1784;¹¹Cf. Koninklijk Huisarchief, Archive Willem V, inv. no. A31-387, Verificatie der Rekening van de Privécas over 1784, invoice sent by Schepp to the Stadholder in April 1784: medaillon Z.K.H. kroonprins van Pruisen geboetseerd en in een grote cornalijn (‘medaillon of H.R.H. the crown prince of Prussia modelled and in a large cornelian’). For both items (the modelled wax portrait and the carved gem) the artist received f. 315 in total.… ; from the Mauritshuis, The Hague, transferred to the museum, 1897

Object number: BK-NM-11002

This signed and dated wax medallion by Johann Heinrich Schepp (1736-before 1793) from 1784 is a portrait of the Prince of Prussia, the later King Friedrich Wilhelm II. Schepp, a gem-cutter and medallist of German origin, was commissioned to make the medallion by the subject’s brother-in-law, the Dutch Stadholder Prince William V (1748-1806), whose service Schepp had entered as court engraver and medallist a year earlier.²²For Schepp, see A. Staring, ‘De medailleur J.H. Schepp en Frans Hemsterhuis’, Oud Holland 64 (1949), pp. 83-103 and M. Scharloo, ‘Drie creatieve geesten’, in F. Grijzenhout and C. Tuyll van Serooskerken, Edele eenvoud, neo-classicisme in Nederland 1765-1800, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum and Teylers Museum) 1989, pp. 99-101. In April 1784 Schepp sent an invoice to the Stadholder for a medaillon Z.K.H. kroonprins van Pruisen geboetseerd en in een grote cornalijn (‘medaillon of H.R.H. the crown prince of Prussia modelled and in a large cornelian’).³³The Hague, Koninklijk Huisarchief, Archive Willem V, inv. no. A31-387, Verificatie der Rekening van de Privécas over 1784, invoice sent by Schepp to the Stadholder in April 1784. For both items the artist received f. 315 in total. The invoice suggests the wax version may have served as the model for the (smaller) portrait Schepp subsequently carved in carnelian. Although further specifics and whereabouts of this version in carnelian are unknown, it probably concerned a carnelian engraved in intaglio, similar to several other examples Schepp produced for Willem V and his entourage (cf. NG-470).

Apart form serving as a model, wax reliefs of this type were also replicated in plaster. The Rijksmuseum owns a cast of the present piece (BK-NM-254) which is one of a series of six plaster medallion portraits of members of the House of Orange and their Prussian relatives (BK-NM-255 to -259).⁴⁴In the Rijksmuseum inventory book, the arrival of three extremely damaged fragments of the wax model of Prince William V’s medallion (NM-11001) was registered, but their present whereabouts are unknown.

After his appointment as court medallist in Kassel and Frankfurt am Main, Schepp came to the Netherlands around 1770, in the wake of the German Count of Waldeck, who later also introduced the important portrait-painter, Johann Friedrich August Tischbein (1750-1812) here. In The Hague, Schepp attracted the attention of Frans Hemsterhuis (1721-1790), the well-known philosopher and curator of the stadhouder’s collection of medals and antiquities. He asked Schepp to make a number of his innovative, neo-Classical designs, including, in 1781, the medal commemorating the Battle of Dogger Bank (NG-NM-10325-1).⁵⁵See F. Grijzenhout and C. Tuyll van Serooskerken, Edele eenvoud, neo-classicisme in Nederland 1765-1800, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum and Teylers Museum) 1989, no. 97.

The most successful collaboration between Hemsterhuis and Schepp is indubitably the medal commemorating the death of the celebrated doctor Petrus Camper of 1789 (NG-VG-1-2966).⁶⁶See F. Grijzenhout and C. Tuyll van Serooskerken, Edele eenvoud, neo-classicisme in Nederland 1765-1800, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum and Teylers Museum) 1989, no. 98. The difference between that portrait medallion and the one featured here could hardly be greater. Whereas Camper is portrayed in accordance with the clear, neo-Classicist, unadorned idiom, Friedrich Wilhelm II is represented in graceful rococo lines and wearing a wig with side rolls and a queue. This far more decorative style is characteristic for Schepp’s own designs and at that stage was still popular for portrait medallions.

We do not know whether there had been a specific reason for William V to have the portrait medallion in wax and carnelian made. The carnelian might have been intended as a gift to his Prussian relatives, while he kept the wax model. At all events, there were close ties between the two families, as demonstrated by Friedrich Wilhelm II’s resolute intervention a few years later, when his army joined the stadholder’s troops in crushing the Dutch Patriotic Revolution (cf. NG-VG-1-2940) that had heated up through the spring and summer of 1787.⁷⁷Staring assumed, mistakenly, that the medallions depicting Friedrich II and Friedrich Wilhelm II were added to the series only in 1787-88. Apparently he overlooked the dating of 1784, see A. Staring, ‘De medailleur J.H. Schepp en Frans Hemsterhuis’, Oud Holland 64 (1949), pp. 83-103, esp. p. 100.

Bieke van der Mark, 2026

B. van der Mark, 2026, 'Johann Heinrich Schepp, Portrait Medallion of Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, the Later King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia (1744-1797), The Hague, 1784', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035867