Drawn up in 1697, the will of the sculptor Rombout Verhulst (1624-1698) includes two busts described as ‘the modelled portrait of King William, and that of the Admiral Sweers’.¹¹aen den Hoog Ed. Heer van Duyvenvoirde het geboutseerde portrait van Coninck William, en dat van den Admiraal Sweers. M. van Notten, Rombout Verhulst, beeldhouwer 1624-1698: Een overzicht zijner werken, The Hague 1907, p. 77. Both works were bequeathed to Jacob Baron van Wassenaer, Lord of Duivenvoorde (1649-1707),²²For painted portraits of Jacob van Wassenaer and his wife by Pieter Nason from 1670, 1671 and Th. Netscher from 1702, see .A. Canneman and L.J. van der Klooster, De geschiedenis van het Kasteel Duivenvoorde en zijn bewoners, The Hague 1967, figs. on pp. 41 and 73. For Verhulst, see M. van Notten, Rombout Verhulst, beeldhouwer 1624-1698: Een overzicht zijner werken, The Hague 1907 and F. Scholten, Rombout Verhulst in Groningen: Zeventiende-eeuwse praalgraven in Midwolde en Stedum, Utrecht 1983; F. Scholten, ‘“Mea sorte contentus”: Rombout Verhulst’s Portrait of Jacob van Reygersbergh’, The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 19 (1991), pp. 65-74; F. Scholten, Sumptuous Memories: Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Tomb Sculpture, Zwolle 2003, pp. 178-209. a member of one of the oldest noble families in Holland who undoubtedly belonged to Verhulst’s circle of trusted patrons, most likely via the immensely wealthy family of his wife, Jacoba Baroness van Liere and Lady of both Katwijks. More than thirty years before, in 1663, Verhulst was commissioned to build a monumental tomb for Jacoba’s parents, Willem Baron van Liere (1620-1654) and Maria van Reygersbergh (1628-1673), in the church at Katwijk-Binnen.³³F. Scholten, Sumptuous Memories: Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Tomb Sculpture, Zwolle 2003, pp. 185-88 and fig. 168. For a painted portrait by Adriaan Hanneman from 1663 of Maria van Reygersbergh and her children, including her daughter Jacoba, see .A. Canneman and L.J. van der Klooster, De geschiedenis van het Kasteel Duivenvoorde en zijn bewoners, The Hague 1967, fig. on p. 40. By this time, a vast network of Verhulst’s patrons had formed around the Van Reygersbergh family in The Hague, which extended to the Northern Netherlandish provinces of Groningen (Midwolde), North-Holland (Spanbroek) and Zeeland (Aagtekerke). The pivotal figure in this network was Maria’s brother, Jacob van Reygersbergh (1625-1675). Today, Verhulst’s terracotta portrait busts of Jacob, Maria, and Willem van Liere are held in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, with a marble bust of Jacob preserved at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Although undocumented, one can almost be certain that Verhulst also received commissions from Jacoba van Liere's second husband, Jacob van Wassenaer after they married in 1668, and that the two men were on friendly terms, judging by the sculptor’s testamentary bequest of the two terracotta busts to the Lord of Duivenvoorde.

No knowledge exists regarding the first of the two busts cited in Verhulst’s 1697 will, the modelled portrait of King-Stadholder Willem III.⁴⁴The cited terracotta bust could in theory be the model for a marble bust from 1683 in the collection of the Mauritshuis, see M. van Notten, Rombout Verhulst, beeldhouwer 1624-1698: Een overzicht zijner werken, The Hague 1907, p. 85 and fig. 52-2. The present terracotta portrait bust of Isaac Sweers (1622-1673), however, resurfaced in 2016 at a sale in Brussels, resting on an elaborately carved wooden socle. This work is the modello for Rombout Verhulst’s marble portrait bust adorning the naval hero’s monumental wall memorial in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, commissioned in 1674 by the Admiralty of Amsterdam.⁵⁵M. van Notten, Rombout Verhulst, beeldhouwer 1624-1698: Een overzicht zijner werken, The Hague 1907, pp. 56-58, and figs. 36, 37. Isaac Sweers was vice-admiral of the provinces Holland and West-Friesland. Having led an adventurous life and built a successful career with the Dutch navy, the vice-admiral’s life came to a tragic end on 21 August 1673 during the Battle of Kijkduin, fought against the combined English and French fleets.⁶⁶See the lemma in P.C. Molhuysen and P.J. Blok, Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek, Leiden 1911-37, vol. 5, pp. 849-50. Sweers was struck by an English bullet, losing both legs and dying virtually on the spot. Shortly thereafter, the Admiralty of Amsterdam decided to honour him with a public funerary monument.

Judging by the form (a so-called piédestal en adoucissement) and the Louis XIV-style ornamentation, the ornately carved wooden socle was specifically made for the bust around 1700.⁷⁷See A.-C. d’Aviler, Cours d’ architecture qui comprend les orders de Vignolle (nouvelle édition), Paris 1750, pl. 94 (Piedestaux pour statues en pied et figures assises). This occurred most likely at the request of Jacob van Wassenaer, who perhaps commissioned a woodcarver, antieksnijder or frame-maker in The Hague or Leiden to design a befitting socle. Among the possibilities are Johannes Hannaert⁸⁸P.J.J. van Thiel and C.J. de Bruyn Kops, Framing in the Golden Age: Picture and Frame in 17th-century Holland, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1984, p. 343. or the otherwise unknown Mr. beelthouwer (master sculptor) Johan van der Heijden, to whom Verhulst bequeathed alle sijne kleyne kleij en pleijsterbeelden van epitafia (all his small clay and plaster sculptures for epitaphs) in his will.⁹⁹M. van Notten, Rombout Verhulst, beeldhouwer 1624-1698: Een overzicht zijner werken, The Hague 1907, p. 76. The socle would originally have been painted and gilded and made to be placed against the wall or in a niche.¹⁰¹⁰My thanks to Paul van Duin for this observation. Its elaborate decoration includes trophies flanking either side and a cartouche on the front featuring a naval battle scene. Its design is typical of French and Flemish socle forms of the late seventeenth century, typified by the elegantly arched form, the frieze with carved acanthus palmettes and hanging lambrequins. The socle’s decoration is somewhat reminiscent of the style of the court architect, Daniël Marot, who also did work at Duivenvoorde Castle, Jacob van Wassenaer’s house near Voorschoten.¹¹¹¹Cf. the design of a tomb monument for A.P. de Precipiano door Michel van der Voort, c. 1708, in P. Philippot, D. Coekelberghs, P. Loze and D. Vautier, L’Architecture religieuse et la sculpture baroques dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux et la principauté de Liège: 1600-1770, Sprimont 2003, p. 996, fig. 2; a design for a statue of Philip V by Joannes Claudius de Cock, from 1700, see A. Jacobs (ed.), Boetseren met potlood. Tekeningen van beeldhouwers van de 17de eeuw tot heden, Brussels 2004, no. 19; For Marot, see K. Ottenheym, W. Terlouw, R. van Zoest (red.), Daniel Marot: Vormgever van een deftig bestaan, Amsterdam/Zutphen 1988, figs. 9, 10, 17 and 65; and for his role at Duivenvoorde, see also .A. Canneman and L.J. van der Klooster, De geschiedenis van het Kasteel Duivenvoorde en zijn bewoners, The Hague 1967, pp. 46-47 and figs. on pp. 58, 61, 65. Regarding the somewhat outdated form of the cartouche, compare E. Dhanens (ed.), De beeldhouwkunst in de eeuw van Rubens in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden en het prinsbisdom Luik, exh. cat. Brussels (Museum voor Oude Kunst) 1977, no. 158 (cartouche based on a design by Mattheus van Beveren, for the burial chapel of Lamoral Claude François, Count of Thurn und Taxis, 1678). A less probable but conceivable scenario is that the socle was commissioned by Arent van Wassenaer, Jacob’s son, who was responsible for the full-scale modernization of both the castle at Duivenvoorde (1710-1717) and the Wassenaer home on the Lange Voorhout in The Hague (1719).¹²¹²E. Galjaard-Daems, ‘Arent (IX) van Wassenaer van Duvenvoirde (1669-1721)’, in H.M. Brokken (ed.), Heren van Stand: Van Wassenaer 1200-2000. Achthonderd jaar Nederlandse adelsgeschiedenis, Zoetermeer 2000, pp. 267-70, esp. p. 269.

In its design, the socle resembles the marble pedestal with its gilt-bronze trophies, made in the 1680’s to support Bernini’s magnificent bust of King Louis XIV at Versailles, or a trophaeum of the type, for example, designed by Giovanni Giardini (1646-1721) in Rome for a silver reliquary of the Holy Cross, published in an engraving in his Disegni diversi from 1714 (no. 11).¹³¹³Giovanni Giardini, Disegni diversi inventati e delineati da Giovanni Giardine da Forli: intagliati in Roma da Massimiliano Giuseppe Limpach da Praga (intro. di C. Aschengreen Piacenti), Florence 1978 (facsimile of ed. Rome 1714), Prima Parte, no. 11. See also J. Montagu, Gold, Silver, and Bronze: Metal Sculpture of the Roman Baroque, Princeton 1996, pp. 117-19, figs. 185-86. Cf. also the inlay decorations on two Antwerp cabinets, attributed to Hendrik van Soest, c. 1713, made for Philip V, King of Spain; see Masterpieces from a Rothschild Collection, sale cat. London (Christie’s), 4 July 2019. The socle fundamentally enhances the prestige of the terracotta it supports, as such elevating a sculptor’s modello to the status of an autonomous artwork honouring the sitter. As a whole, the bust and socle evoke the impression of a private monument dedicated to Sweers, one equivalent to the public monument in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam and similar to other public tombs for Dutch naval heroes. The same standard elements found on other monumental ‘naval tombs’ appear here on a smaller scale: the portrait of the deceased, the representation of a sea battle, and auxiliary ornaments in the form of trophies.¹⁴¹⁴Cf. Rombout Verhulst’s monument for Egbert Cortenaer, Grote Kerk, Rotterdam (1665), F. Scholten, Sumptuous Memories: Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Tomb Sculpture, Zwolle 2003, esp. p. 149 and fig. 135. A parallel also exists with the ornate, wood-carved trophy frames from the second half the seventeenth century made to accommodate painted depictions of naval heroes and battles at sea. One example is the magnificent frame from 1668 in the dining hall of the College van gecommitteerde raden (Board of Delegate Councillors) in Hoorn, carved by the antieksnijder Jan Kinnema (d. 1673).¹⁵¹⁵Cf. P.J.J. van Thiel, C.J. de Bruyn Kops et al., All the Paintings of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam: A Completely Illustrated Catalogue, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1976, nos. 37, 50, 54, 59, 71, 77 and 83. See also A. Lenders, ‘Trofeeënlijsten-Trophy Frames’, Mauritshuis in Focus 27 (2014), no. 1, pp. 14-21.

A number of questions concerning the terracotta bust and its accompanying wooden socle remain open. What was their original location: Duivenvoorde Castle or the Van Wassenaers’ Hague residence? Was a similar ‘monument’ perhaps also made for the terracotta bust of King-Stadtholder Willem III? Also to be addressed is whether a connection existed with Jacob’s illustrious forefather, Admiral Jacob van Wassenaer-Obdam, for whom a grand-scale funerary monument was erected in 1667 in the Grote Kerk in The Hague, a design for which Rombout Verhulst also submitted that was never executed.¹⁶¹⁶F. Scholten, Sumptuous Memories: Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Tomb Sculpture, Zwolle 2003, pp. 144-77. The naval battle depicted on the socle’s cartouche suggests this might have been the case: the scene appears to be derived from a representation of the Battle of the Sound, won by Jacob van Wassenaer-Obdam in 1658. Had the socle’s maker perhaps consulted a model – painting, engraving or medal – in Van Wassenaer’s collection at Duivenvoorde?¹⁷¹⁷My thanks to Jeroen van Vliet for this suggestion. A final matter to be addressed centres on what importance a bust of Sweers might have held for Jacob van Wassenaer: is it to be interpreted as an expression of a political sentiment on his part? Was he perhaps involved in the planning of the monument in the Oude Kerk or was there a more personal bond between Sweers and Van Wassenaer?

Frits Scholten, 2025

F. Scholten, 2025, 'Rombout Verhulst, Bust of Isaac Sweers (1622-1673), Vice-Admiral of the Admirality of Holland and West-Friesland, The Hague, 1673 - 1674', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200671555