3.2 Case Study I: The Concert and Granida and Daifilo
In 1623 Honthorst’s painting style moved seemingly unfixed among systems of lighting and tone. It was in this year that he produced one of his most successful and ambitious early court paintings, The Concert now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington [4]. The bold, ambitious, inventive, and large-scale Concert was probably commissioned by the Bohemian monarchs for the Dutch stadtholder, in whose collection it appears as early as 1632, placed in Noordeinde Palace in The Hague and described as ‘A painting for the fireplace mantle made by Honthorst, being a music’.1
The Bohemian monarchs and the stadholder Prince Maurits (1567-1625) were the two likely patrons of such a large, ambitious commission in 1623. Maurits was never an active patron of the arts, being preoccupied with waging war against the Spanish during this period. Many of the paintings that he received were gifts from various allies and municipalities. As one of the Bohemian monarch’s major financial and political supporters, Maurits was a fitting candidate for such a grand gift, particularly in 1623, the tenth anniversary of Elizabeth’s marriage to Frederick V, Elector Palatine (1596-1632) and their arrival in the Netherlands on their wedding journey, where they were received by Maurits, among others.
Not only were Elizabeth and Frederick well-positioned to commission this picture from Honthorst through their close relationship with Dudley Carleton, but they had a vested interest in further ingratiating themselves with Maurits at this moment when their political situation was very much precarious yet hopeful. In the early modern courtly culture of gift-giving, not only were impressive objects such as The Concert emblematic of the senders’ affection but they also took part in a system of reciprocity in which they served as constant reminders of the givers’ hope for acts of kindness in return.2
Along with the emphatically courtly nature of the instruments pictured — they include a bass viol, violin, lute, and bandora — they may have even belonged to a distinctly English tradition.3 This points again to Elizabeth, an English princess, as the work’s originator. The conductor, his back turned toward the viewer while pointing his bow at an open book of music, provides a potential final piece of evidence. The specificity of this figure’s long hair and beard indicate that it may be a portrait, and it has been suggested that there is a resemblance to images of Frederick V in a picture album done around the same time by Adriaen van de Venne (1590-1661) [5].4 The role of the conductor in ensuring that the musical performance proceeds without incident is furthermore aligned with Frederick’s role as a leader of the Protestant cause against the Spanish and with broader 17th-century concepts of leadership as the crafting of harmony from discord.
In addition to the complex political and courtly networks which Honthorst’s painting navigates, it is also one of his boldest and most ambitious compositions, joining striking colouration with the Caravaggesque half-length collection of merrymakers around a table (including a repoussoir figure) and a subtle and economical construction of space. Evidencing Honthorst’s ongoing emulation of Caravaggio, this image’s inventiveness comes from the pointed remaking of the Caravaggesque type into a new kind of brilliantly colourful picture.
It is not until 1625’s Granida and Daifilo [6] that Honthorst makes his first prominent turn toward the pastoral — which he helped to develop into an incredibly popular courtly mode — and likely did so at the direct prompting of a court patron. The work depicts the titular princess and her shepherd lover from P.C. Hooft’s Granida (1605), specifically Act II, Scene 5, after the two have eloped from the court to live in the countryside. Stunning in its colouring and the sensitive rendering of its protagonists, animals, and landscape, this picture remains the epitome of Honthorst’s pastoral output. Though it is first documented at the Orange court — it is listed as a mantlepiece in Huis Honselaarsdijk in 1707 — it is unclear whether Frederik Hendrik was its patron.5
In the only surviving image of this scene from Hooft’s play, Honthorst shows Granida and Daifilo in a loving embrace, caressing each other’s faces in respective stages of undress. Her courtly crown has been replaced by one composed of the flowers she praises in Hooft’s text, bedecked with roses and a blooming iris. Daifilo has spread his humble brown cloak over the ground to provide something for the lovers to collapse upon in the company of goats, sheep, and a ram. His houlette lies similarly discarded across the foreground of the painting, pointing the viewer’s gaze to his emphatically dirty feet.6 The juxtaposition of these emblems of the pastoral and the Caravaggesque in this image demonstrates again how permeable the boundary between the two was in Honthorst’s work of the 1620s. With this detail, he has moreover declared himself as the documenter of the pastoral, placing his signature exactly in the center of the painting and inscribing ‘Ghonthorst. Fesit 1625’ on the houlette’s shaft.
The date in particular and its prominent placement within the painting indicate that this might have been a gift celebrating the marriage of Frederik Hendrik and Amalia van Solms, in 1625.7 The amorous subject matter and pastoral theme would certainly have been appropriate for a wedding gift and in keeping with the couple’s taste. For example, in 1627, a gift of four paintings given to Amalia by the states-general of Utrecht included a shepherd and shepherdess by Paulus Moreelse (1571-1638), so her preference for the subject matter was at that point well known.8 If it was a gift to the newly married couple, a strong argument can be made that it came from Elizabeth. In 1625 the relations between the Bohemian and Orange courts in The Hague were quite close: Elizabeth and her husband signed Amalia and Frederik’s marriage certificate on 4 April and may have been the commissioners of Adriaen van de Venne’s album of miniatures now in the British Museum.9 Elizabeth, furthermore, served as godmother to the couple’s first child, Willem II, born in 1626.10
In addition to Dudley Carleton’s pivotal role discussed above, Elizabeth Stuart likely also had a hand in Honthorst’s invitation to London in 1628. Elizabeth, who had established her court-in-exile in The Hague in 1621, maintained a particularly close correspondence with her brother, the Duke of Buckingham, and with Dudley Carleton. Honthorst likely met Elizabeth and her husband Frederick in The Hague in 1621, during his dealings with Carleton regarding the Arundel Sack of Troy.11 As argued above, he subsequently seems to have made several paintings for them, including The Concert, Granida and Daifilo, and the 1622 King David Playing the Harp [7] which appears in a later inventory of the Craven collection, much of which originated from Elizabeth’s own paintings.12
4
Gerard van Honthorst
The Concert, dated 1623
Washington (D.C.), National Gallery of Art (Washington), inv./cat.nr. 2013.38.1
5
Adriaen van de Venne
Frederick V of the Palatine and Frederik Hendrik van Oranje-Nassau playing pell-mell, c. 1625
London (England), British Museum, inv./cat.nr. 1978-6-24-42.30
6
Gerard van Honthorst
Granida and Daifilo, dated 1625
Utrecht, Centraal Museum, inv./cat.nr. 5571
7
Gerard van Honthorst
King David singing psalms and playing the harp, dated 1622
Utrecht, Centraal Museum
Notes
1 [Een schilderie voor schoorsteenmantel door Honthorst gemaeckt, sijnde een musijck]: Drossaers/Scheurleer 1974-1976, vol. 1 (Inventarissen Nassau-Oranje, 1567-1712; inventory no. GS147), p. 207, no. 611. Wheelock 2014, and Magreta 2008, p. 297, no. 611.
2 On the reciprocity culture of gift-giving in the 17th century, for example: Zell 2021, Heal 2014, Auwers 2013, p. 421-441, and Thoen 2006.
3 Dutch musicologist Louis Peter Grijp has pointed to this as well as the rarity of the combination. Private correspondence with Grijp quoted in Wheelock 2014.
4 Wheelock 2014.
5 As Kettering points out, by the time of the 1707 inventory the subject had been lost, and it was misidentified as a scene from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (Kettering 1983, p. 105). The inventory note, as transcribed in Judson/Ekkart 1999, p. 159, cat. no. 189, reads: ‘His Majesty’s waiting room on the ground floor No. 55. 130 Mantel painting by Honthorst being the fable from Ariosto of Angelica and Medor. [Sijne Majestijts antichambre aan de parterre Nr. 55. 130 Schoorsteenstuck van Honthorst sijnde de fable uijt Ariosto van Angelica en Medor.]’ Also Van der Ploeg/Vermeeren 1997, p. 35; and Magreta 2008, p. 201, 233-236.
6 The houlette, a frequent but under-explained addition to many seventeenth-century pastoral images, was a common accoutrement of both shepherds and shepherdesses. It was a staff used to fling a divot of dirt in the direction of a sheep to prevent it from straying from the herd. Salzman 1957, p. 92-93. Salzman’s definition is confirmed by the entry on the subject in Littré/Beaujean 1886, p. 560: [HOULETTE—Bâton que porte le berger, et au bout duquel est une plaque de fer en forme de gouttière, qui sert pour lancer des mottes de terre aux moutons qui s’écartent et de la sorte les faire revenir. || Fig. et poétiq. L’état, la condition de berger.]
7 Bohemian patronage to celebrate Frederik Hendrik and Amalia’s wedding was first suggested by Jos de Meyere in 1988: De Meyere 1988, p. 23.
8 Kettering 1983, p. 1.
9 Royalton-Kisch 1988, p. 108-110, and Akkerman 2014, p. 30-34, 37- 42.
10 Keblusek 1997, p. 50.
11 Braun 1966, p. 213, no. 72. See also Kettering 1983, p. 67, 150n23, 172.
12 On the Craven Collection and its relationship to Elizabeth’s Collection: Frederick 2019, p. 481-482, and Hoogsteder 1984-86, vol. 1, p. 52-53.