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Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck (painter) Dutch, 1606/1609 - 1662 Andries Stilte as a Standard Bearer, 1640 oil on canvas overall: 104 x 78.5 cm (40 15/16 x 30 7/8 in.) framed: 137.2 x 111.8 x 8.9 cm (54 x 44 x 3 1/2 in.) Patrons' Permanent Fund 1998.13.1 On View |
With great bravura, this fashionably clad member of the Haarlem civic guard stands with arm akimbo, staring out at the viewer. His proud character, accented by the panache of his brilliant pink satin costume and jauntily placed hat with its brightly colored feathers, suggests the confidence felt by the Dutch during the formative years of the republic.
This remarkable portrait shows Andries Stilte, whose family coat of arms decorates the upper corner. Stilte is presented as a standard bearer or ensign of Haarlem's Kluveniersdoelen, the company of militiamen originally organized in 1519 as a firearms unit under the patronage of Saint Hadrian. He bears the blue standard and sash of his company; the style of the rest of his outfit was determined by his individual taste and wealth. Elaborate, brightly colored costumes such as the one Stilte sports were worn for banquets and ceremonial massings of the guard. During the Dutch revolt against Spanish control in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, militia companies served as a civic guard. By 1640, when Verspronck painted this work, civic guards had lost most of their military character and had become more like gentlemen's clubs. Officers were chosen from the wealthy families of Haarlem and enjoyed remarkable social prestige.
Andries Stilte, son of Mattheus Stilte and Hester Monnicx, was probably elected ensign in the Kluveniersdoelen in 1639. Stilte commissioned Verspronck to paint this portrait in 1640, the year that he resigned his rank to marry Eva Reyniers. According to Haarlem regulations, ensigns had to be bachelors. Subsequently, he was required to wear black!
Verspronck was one of the foremost portraitists in Haarlem during the mid-seventeenth century. Little is known about his artistic background: he probably studied first with his artist father in his native city of Gouda. Johannes Verspronck may also have trained with Frans Hals, although the younger artist painted in a smoother and more modulated manner than did Hals. As in this work, Verspronck rendered faces and materials with great sensitivity, delighting particularly in the delicacy of lace and the luminous sheen of satins. The care with which he arranged elements of high visual interest is evident in the change he made in the sweep of feathers on Stilte's hat. Over the centuries, the top layers of paint have become more transparent so that today we can see traces of the plumes' original placement. While many seventeenth-century Dutch artists, including Frans Hals, portrayed Dutch militia companies, Verspronck is the only one known to have executed a life-size portrait of an ensign.
(Text by Lynn Pearson Russell, published in the National Gallery of Art exhibition catalogue, Art for the Nation, 2000)