RKD STUDIES

In circa 1635, Adriaen van de Venne (1589–1662) painted a series of five animal allegories with banderols.¹ All these pieces are described in the 1710 inventory of Schloss Gottorf: a dance of a dog and a cat; two owls on skates; two frogs in armour and one in women’s clothing; two pigs dressed as farmers; two monkeys dancing and one making music.² Perhaps the ‘delivered paintings’ in the Gottorf account books of 1653 (see above) refer to these works. Unfortunately, this series with animals in human clothing, has been dispersed. Today only a polychrome panel with the skating owls is known, which bears the inscription Hoe dienen wy by een! (How well we go together!) [12]. In 1759, after Schleswig had fallen into the hands of the Danish king, this painting ended up in the Danish royal collection and afterwards in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen. Three other paintings were auctioned in 1824; the fifth was missing as early as 1750.³ Since the local engraver Christian Rothgiesser (before 1630–1659) made prints after three of the paintings, it can be deduced that Van de Venne’s animal allegories must have already been at Gottorf Castle in the 1650s, which makes it pretty certain that Frederick III owned these works [13-15].⁴

12
Adriaen van de Venne
"How well we go together", c. 1630-1640
Copenhagen, SMK - National Gallery of Denmark, inv./cat.nr. KMS 1897

Ernst Schlee suggested that Van de Venne may have left the series at Gottorf on his way to the court of King Christian IV (1577–1648) in Copenhagen, for whom he painted King Christian IV as mediator in the Thirty Years’ War in about 1643 [16]. However, there are no concrete indications that Van de Venne visited Copenhagen for this commission. In any case, he did not create the painting in Denmark, since the work was sent to the port city of Glückstadt in 1643, which was then part of the Kingdom of Denmark (nowadays located in Schleswig-Holstein).⁵ Perhaps Van de Venne offered the animal paintings to Frederick III as a gift, whether or not through an intermediary, in order to try to gain the favour of the Duke and thus obtain a commission. Not before has it been proposed that Ovens might have played a role in securing the series for Gottorf.⁶ Ovens certainly knew Van de Venne’s King Christian IV as mediator. He copied elements from this composition in mirror image for his large Gottorf peace party. The Gottorf ducal family in a peace allegory from circa 1652 [17]. Contacts between Van de Venne and Ovens are, however, not known. The series of paintings with the five animal allegories will probably have been appreciated within the context of the Gottorf Kunstkammer mainly because of its subject – animals dressed as people. This may partly explain why the name of the artist was no longer known when the 1710 Gottorf inventory was drawn up.

15
Christian Rothgiesser after Adriaen van de Venne
A couple of pigs dancing, c. 1650-1659
Copenhagen, SMK - National Gallery of Denmark, inv./cat.nr. KKSgb4977

The Georg August university of Göttingen owns three paintings that once (allegedly) hung in Gottorf Castle: Landscape with Christ carrying the Cross by an anonymous artist in the circle of Jan Brueghel I (1568-1625), Portrait of a scholar from 1635 by David Bailly (1584–1657) and Tronie of an old man (circa 1650) by an unknown Dutch painter [18-19].⁷ The Celle lawyer Johann Wilhelm Zschorn (1714–1795) bequeathed these works to the university.⁸ Perhaps Ovens bought the paintings in Holland for Frederick III or Christian Albrecht. Wolfgang Stechow suspected that Bailly himself sold his painting in Gottorf Castle, since he worked for several Northern German rulers.⁹ The artist, however, was active in that region only in circa 1608–1609.¹⁰ The painting will have been created in Bailly’s home town of Leiden.

We can feel somewhat more certain that Ovens sold The battle between Constantine and Maxentius from 1613 by Pieter Lastman (1583–1633) to the Gottorf court [20]. Ovens admired Lastman, the most important Dutch history painter of his generation. In the middle of three brief draft notes on the verso of one of Ovens’ sketches for the Batavian series in the Amsterdam Town Hall, dated 6 September 1662 – when Ovens was either living next door to Gerrit Uylenburgh in Amsterdam or staying with him – he wrote that he owned a very important painting by Pieter Lastman.¹¹ Ovens apparently wanted to interest a potential buyer. Unfortunately, the name of the addressee is not given. Lastman’s painting could have been The battle between Constantine and Maxentius. ‘1 Römische bataille von Laßman’ is recorded in the 1695 inventory of Christian Albrecht as hanging in the ‘Hasenkammer’ (‘hare chamber’) of Gottorf Castle.¹² However, Ovens’ draft letter was written in Dutch and not in German, so Christian Albrecht was probably not the addressee.¹³ Ovens did not describe the subject or composition of the painting in his note, thus some uncertainty remains whether he referred to Lastmans’ Battle.¹⁴ He might have taken the work with him from Amsterdam to Schleswig, when he relocated to Northern Germany in the spring of 1663, and sold it to Christian Albrecht. It cannot entirely be ruled out that the Duke acquired Lastman’s work from someone else.

While residing in Amsterdam in the early 1660s, Ovens kept in touch with Christian Albrecht in Schleswig-Holstein. The Duke’s trust in Ovens is exemplified by letting him organise the greater part of the order to Artus Quellinus I (1609–1668) for life-size busts for the ducal crypt in Schleswig’s Dom [21-22]. After the death of Frederick III in 1659, plans were developed to adorn the burial chapel. Quellinus himself, however, never travelled to Schleswig-Holstein, but was represented there by his brother Hubertus (1619–1688) in the spring of 1661. Ovens will have negotiated the order with Quellinus in Amsterdam somewhat later. After solving several issues with customs in Amsterdam and paying an insurance sum, Ovens managed to arrange the export of the marble portrait busts of Frederick III and Mary Elisabeth to Northern Germany at the end of 1662. The Amsterdam sculptor François de Saggere, the brother-in-law of Artus and Hubertus, for whom Ovens wrote a letter of recommendation, oversaw the transportation of the sculptures and their installation in niches in the ducal crypt.¹⁵ The ‘Marmorne Bildtnußen’ which Ovens sold to the court in 1654, certainly are not identical with the busts, since he only received a total of 474 Reichstaler and 20 Schilling for paintings and sculpture (see above).¹⁶

Harry Schmidt assumed several smaller sculptures by Artus Quellinus I might also have come in the possession of the Dukes of Gottorf through Ovens’ intermediary activities, perhaps in conjunction with the commission for the sculptor to decorate the ducal graves.¹⁷ In the 1710 inventory of Gottorf Castle, namely, we find 1. ‘A woman offering her breast to a child, modelled by Quellin’, 2. ‘A shield of children, modelled by Quellin’, 3. ‘A lying child with a cross, smooth, and from the same master’ [23-26]. Interestingly, six small sculptures by Quellinus are recorded in the 1675 inventory of Gerrit Uylenburgh.¹⁸ It is not known when and from whom Uylenburgh acquired these works; perhaps he bought the statuettes from Quellinus himself.

18
David Bailly
Portrait of a man with a pen in his hand, dated 1635
Göttingen (city, Lower Saxony), Kunstsammlung der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, inv./cat.nr. GG 002

19
Anonymous (Northern Netherlands)
Old man leaning on a stick, c. 1650
canvas, oil paint 75 x 63.5 cm
Göttingen (Niedersachsen), Georg-August-Universität, inv./cat.nr. GG 108

20
Pieter Lastman
The battle between Constantine and Maxentius, dated 1613
Bremen, Kunsthalle Bremen, inv./cat.nr. 251-1903/4