Armorial Lockplates: A Story of Success in Renaissance Rome

This article was prompted by a gilt bronze lockplate in the Rijksmuseum, originally the decorative fastening of a chest and one of a large group of similar objects. Hardly any other metalwork design was more extensively reproduced in Italian Mannerism. Its success was based on the appealing design and the fact this type of lockplate offered the possibility of integrating coats of arms and thus personalizing a chest. The paper presents new examples not yet listed in Charles Avery’s comprehensive overview (2001), identifies a whole series of clients for these lockplates on the basis of heraldic and genealogical analyses and deduces from this an origin in Rome and a dating of the entire group (previously dated 1540) to the last third of the sixteenth century.It has been generally assumed that the specific function of these objects was to decorate marriage chests. Closer analysis argues against this thesis. The lockplate in the Rijksmuseum is particularly significant in this context. The coats of arms on its lateral cartouches identify the Roman Orazio Ruspoli and his wife Felice Cavalieri (marr. 1594) as the clients for the piece. Surprisingly, however, the crest on the hasp belongs to a family that was not related to this couple. A comparable finding is made for a lockplate in the National Gallery in Washington, which has also been misinterpreted so far. In this case, too, the coats of arms on the plate and on the hasp do not point to a family connection, but to neighbouring and presumably friendly families. The analysis of other examples, such as one in the Palazzo Venezia, confirms that these lockplates and the chests to which they were attached were not exclusively bound to the context of marriage. As travelling chests, which became must-have items for the Roman upper class, they seem to have been open to a variety of functions.

Beastly Condemnation: The Representation of Oldenbarnevelt’s Twenty-Four Judges as Animals

The Rijksmuseum’s History Department holds a remarkable early eighteenthcentury album titled Regtspleging van Oldenbarnevelt (The Trial of Oldenbarnevelt). The album contains a collection of thirty-eight watercolour drawings on parchment with written explanations on paper and deals with the infamous trial of the Land’s Advocate. At its heart are cartoons of the twenty-four judges who signed Oldenbarnevelt’s death warrant, with the judges depicted as animals. The Rijksmuseum album is similar to albums in the National Library of the Netherlands and Rotterdam City Archives. In this article we show that Oldenbarnevelt’s judges continued to be subjects of general interest for more than a century. We locate the satirical portrayal of the judges as animals in the broader tradition of animal allegories used as a vehicle for political criticism, and explore the function of the album. It probably served as a key to a painting – not Cornelis Saftleven’s famous work Satire op de berechting van Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (Satire of the Trial of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt) in the Rijksmuseum, but a later composition by an anonymous artist now in the Six Collection. Finally, we come to the conclusion that the album is part of a game of concealment and revelation that is typical of the Remonstrants’ memorial culture.

Ketel and De Keyser

In 1858 the Rijksmuseum acquired a modest portrait of a man (inv. no. SK-A-244) that has since then been attributed on good grounds to the colourful Amsterdam painter Cornelis Ketel (1548-1616). Until now it has been regarded as a likeness of the goldsmith Paulus van Vianen, an identification for which there is no plausible evidence.The author suggests that the man should be identified as the Amsterdam city sculptor Hendrick de Keyser. Arguments in favour of this, aside from the convincing similarities between the man’s features and a portrait engraving of De Keyser, are the close friendship between Ketel and the sculptor, and the typical sculptor’s attribute – a statuette – that the man holds in his hand. This figurine – probably a model in reddish-brown wax – bears a strong resemblance to a statue of Eurydice that Hendrick de Keyser made for a fountain in Het Oude Doolhof, a pleasure ground in Amsterdam.According to Karel van Mander, in the biography of Ketel in his 1604 Schilder-Boeck, Ketel made De Keyser’s portrait twice. He painted one portrait with his fingers, the other with a brush, which was described as ‘the head of the must artistic sculptor Hendrick de Keyser ... a very good likeness’. It is safe to assume that the latter work is the portrait in the Rijksmuseum.