Artist: Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot
Date: 1625
Size: 92 x 157 cm
Technique: Oil On Canvas
In line with a resolution passed by the States of Holland at the instigation of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt in 1617, the city of Utrecht established a militia of 600 mercenaries. The States-General declared the resolution to be illegal and the Stadholder, Prince Maurits, tried to persuade Utrecht to disband the mercenaries, but to no avail. Threatened with a military conflict with the regular army, however, the mercenaries themselves decided to disband. Droochsloot shows the scene transpiring on Utrecht’s principal square, the Neude, from the south. The event occurred early in the morning, which is indicated in the painting by the light coming from the east and the long shadows cast by the figures. The army stands in the middle plane of the composition to the right, while the mercenaries deposit their weapons in the guardhouse situated on the left in front of the St Cecilia cloister. It is his position at the front of the group, rather than any portrait-like detail, that distinguishes the man dressed in black in the centre foreground as Maurits; the figures in general are very coarsely painted. The Rijksmuseum painting is one of many versions of the subject painted by Droochsloot, who was quite possibly an eyewitness to the event. One of these versions, with similar dimensions, is, like the present painting, dated 1625.5 The first version of the subject was executed by Droochsloot in the year the event transpired.6 That version shows as much of the square as the Rijksmuseum painting and the other version from 1625. However, the figures and buildings are on a smaller scale in the earlier version, and the distance between the figures in the foreground and the buildings is much greater. In another version in Utrecht, from 1629,7 Droochsloot reverted back to the more spread out solution with the smaller figures of his first versions of the subject. Representations of the event are also known from Pauwels van Hillegaert, the earliest of which is from 1621,8 and other artists, but seem to have originated with Droochsloot. Droochsloot’s oeuvre includes a number of topographical views,9 a type of subject matter rarely depicted by other Utrecht artists. At least one other painting by him shows a historical event.10 The disbanding of the ‘waardgelders’ is the only contemporary historical event Droochsloot is known to have painted. Jonathan Bikker, 2007 See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 57.
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