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Summary
It is a well-known fact that many printrooms and museums possess large collections of engravings,
woodcuts and etchings, which originate from old books whose exact titles it is not always possible
to establish. The destruction of these old and often rare books not only constitutes the loss of
precious printed matter but also thwarts the possibility of establishing the exact time of publication of
a print or establishing the interdependence of the artists who engraved the same subject.
This study deals with the iconography of the Dutch statesman, theologian and poet Philips van
Marnix, Lord of St. Aldegonde, one of the most important leaders in the first decades of the Dutch
Revolt against the Spaniards. Although his life and works have been studied and described by
numerous historians, theologians and linguists, there are still many unknown facts uncovered and
questions unanswered.
Philips van Marnix was born in Brussels in 1540. Although his parents, Jacob van
Marnix and Marie de Haméricourt, dame de Mont Sainte-Aldegonde (in Hainault) were born in the
Netherlands, the Marnix-family drew their origins from Savoy and belonged to the gentry. His
grandfather Jean, who was secretary to Margaret of Austria, moved in her company to Brussels,
where the Duchess became governor for the six-year old Charles V. The family belonged to the
Roman Catholic Church. Philips and his two years older brother Jan began their studies at the
University of Louvain in 1553. They continued their studies at several universities in
France and Italy and in 1559 the two brothers were among the first students of the University of
Geneva, which had just been opened by the reformers Calvin and Beza.
After their return to the Netherlands they kept quiet counsel for years until the resistance against the
Spanish government began to swell up. They took part in the Compromise of the Nobles, Philips
wrote a defence of iconoclasm and in the first confrontation between armed insurgents under Jan van
Marnix and the governmental army, Jan was killed. On the arrival of the Duke of Alba with a huge
army, many thousands, amidst whom William of Orange and Philips van Marnix, left the country.
Marnix took refuge in Bremen and Emden, where he finished his most famous book, The
Beehive of the Holy Roman Church, a vehement satire against the Roman-Catholic
Church.
In 1571 he entered into the service of William of Orange and became his most dedicated servant.
Gifted with excellent diplomatic talents and eloquence he represented the Prince on many occasions
at international affairs
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as well as at foreign courts. He used his sharp pen in numerous pamphlets and he was unequalled in
deciphering intercepted secret letters and messages. As an ardent Calvinist he was a zealous
organisor of the reformed church in the Netherlands and advisor to the congregations of Wesel,
Emden, Dordrecht and Middelburg. Above all he was a poet and man of letters with an incredible
knowledge of languages.
His diplomatic gifts enabled him to unite parties in the Pacification of Ghent and to take part in the
preparations of the Union of Utrecht. In 1583 William of Orange appointed him to the post of First
Mayor of Antwerp, the most important town in the Netherlands at that time. After a
siege of thirteen month by the Spaniards he was forced to surrender the town, for which fact he was
accused of high-treason and lack of courage. He retired from public affairs to his castle in
West Souburg in Zeeland, devoting his time to theological studies and especially to
the cultivation of flowers and vegetables. From 1590 onwards, he returned to government service
again and in 1594 a complete rehabilitation followed with the appointment of translator of the Bible.
He died in Leiden on 15th December 1598.
Although Marnix played such an important role in the political and ecclesiastical affairs of the Low
Countries and even though he was a nobleman, there exists no live-portrait painting that depicts him
with absolute certainty. We are therefore fortunate that there are other artistical techniques to
provide us with an image of his appearance. The oldest known pictures in which Marnix is
represented originate from the time he pursued his greatest political activities, i.e. between 1575 and
1585. Right in the midst of that period, 1578-1581, the earliest portraits originated. The first one is a
woodcut by Antoon van Leest, depicting Marnix at the Diet of Worms on May 7th, 1578, at which
event he read the famous Oration to the German Emperor and the German Princes, in which he
pleaded for aid against the Spanish oppressors. The artist must have given vent to some wilful
fantasizing, as it seems unlikely that Marnix could have recited this long Latin speech solely by heart.
The first portrait, which is undoubtedly from life, is on a medal dated 1580 in the British Museum in
London. It was casted on the occasion of Marnix's journey to France, where he negotiated as head
of the Dutch delegation with the Duke of Anjou on the presentation of the sovereignty of the
Netherlands. The round head with the short-cut curled hair, moustache and beard bears a striking
resemblance to the engraving of Johan Wierix, made in 1581. This extremely rare print has never
enjoyed widespread distribution. Hence it has never become a source of inspiration to later artists,
such as the engraving of Jacques de Gheyn did. Only in the latter part of the nineteenth century did
this portrait become known, especially through a copy in a steelengraving by J.A. Boland.
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After Wierix no portraits from life are known, until Marnix' final year. Whether any portraits were
indeed made is not certain. On the strength of a nineteenth century source it may however be
possible that a drawing by Hendrik van Cleve was made. As Marnix was a friend of the Amsterdam
portrait-painter Dirk Barentsz, whom he met first during his student-days in Italy and whom he never
forgot to visit later on when he was in Amsterdam, it is a point of conjecture, whether this friendship
resulted in a Marnix-portrait. From two incidental notes, one from 1585, the other one from 1590,
we learn about his physical appearance, that Marnix was of small or medium stature, of dark
complexion, that he was however ugly and that he had a blot on his left cheek.
From mid 1595 both Marnix and the artist Jacques de Gheyn lived in the university-town of Leiden,
the former to make a translation of the Bible, the latter coming from Amsterdam after his marriage.
At the end of 1596 Marnix was send to Orange in the South of France on a special assignment by
Prins Maurits. He stayed away until February 1598, when he returned home, sick and tired.
Between his return and his death on 15 December of that year, Jacques de Gheyn made a drawing
of Marnix from life, which was clearly meant as a sketch for an engraving, because of the text in
reverse. There is confusion on the establishing of the year in which De Gheyn drew Marnix's
portrait. The De Gheyn specialist I.Q. van Regteren Altena was confident that the drawing was
made in 1597, by reading the year in the oval border in a mirror. Marnix however was not in the
country in that year. Also refuted in this study is Van Regteren Altena's statement that Marnix was
born in 1539, instead of 1540, which can be proved by two pages from Alba amicorum in Marnix's
own hand, in which he mentioned his age at particular dates.
After the small finely detailed portrait of Marnix, De Gheyn made an engraving shortly after Marnix's
death. A comparison of the two shows that the old, wrinkled, human face on the drawing, was
idealized on the engraving. This is an important fact, because the engraving remained the only
reference image source on Marnix's face for centuries, up to the present time: De Gheyn's drawing
remained in private collections and Wierix's engraving existed only in a few copies.
The greater part of this study deals with the followers of De Gheyn over four centuries, in an effort
to discover how each different artist at a different time looked at the same prototype. In order to
discover the interdependence of the various artists, it was necessary to establish the chronology of
the origin of the engravings, etchings and lithographies. As these prints were almost always used as
book-illustrations, the chronology could only be ascertained by finding the books in which they were
published and
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sometimes even in which edition of the same book.
Shortly after the publication of De Gheyn's engraving in 1599, we find two rather accurate copies -
one anonymus from 1601 and one by Demelais from 1602 - in two publications of Marnix's own
works. A more freely drawn copy was made by Hendrik Hondius in 1602, perhaps earlier. A
portrait which had a certain popularity and the copperplate of which was used until the early part of
the eighteenth century, was made by Willem Swanenburgh in 1609. From the year 1631 Marnix's
portrait was published numerous times on the title-page of his very popular main work The Beehive
of the Holy Roman Church. Obviously these portraits only give a general impression of the face and
the clothing, derived from De Gheyn. Other seventeenth-century engravings of Marnix's portrait
were made by Hendrik Bary (1663), Jan Lamsvelt (1677) and Gaspar Bouttats (1687) and by
anonymous engravers, who delivered portraits for famous historical accounts on the Dutch Revolt by
Hooft, Bor and Grotius (the Marnix-print appeared first in Bor in 1680).
Seventeenth-century paintings of Marnix's portrait are not known. There is a so-called Marnix at the
University of Amsterdam without any resemblance and the dress is in the mode of about 1620-1630. A nineteenth-century auction-catalogue mentions a painting by Mierevelt, which truly must be
a mystification. In the Upper Reading Room of the Bodleian Library in Oxford we find a frieze with
200 portraits, painted between 1616 and 1618, amongst which there is a Marnaeus. Finally the
famous Dutch poet Constantijn Huygens obviously possessed an authentic Marnix-portrait, which he
presented to Marnix's granddaughter, who at that time lived in Chelsea. Perhaps this painting is still
in England.
The eighteenth century has left us with very few Marnix-portraits. The first half brought us nothing
new. Mainly seventeenth-century copperplates were used for prints to illustrate either new books or
new editions of older publications. The most important Marnix-prints in this period were made by
Jacobus Houbraken (around 1750), and after him by the French artist J.J. Flipart (about 1760). In
1782 Pieter Willem van Megen made a new portrait-engraving to illustrate the first biography on
Marnix by Johannes Prins.
The nineteenth century wherein the tremendous development of the industrial revolution brought the
time of the handpress to an end, also saw the creation of new views on the Marnix-portrait. In the
course of this century as well new artistical techniques were employed such as lithography and steel
engraving. Around the middle of the period the French republican refugee Edgar Quinet published a
Marnix-biography in Belgium. This publication resulted in a complete revival of the public's interest
in Marnix's
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life and works in both a positive and negative sense. The portion on the nineteenth century in this
study deals with the various artistical aspects relating to the Marnix-portrait. There are artists who
have a very free and individual view on Marnix, like Michel Mourot (1838), Felix de Vigne (1837)
and anonymous artists as can be seen on prints in a Beehive-edition of 1844 and a historical
account on the Eighty-Years War by Corvin-Wiersbitzky of 1846.
A further group of four prints is discussed which seem to have a certain interdependency and which
seem to have been derived from eighteenth-century prints of either Houbraken or Van Megen: a
woodcut by M.C. de Vries jr. (1836), lithographies by T.C. and M.J. Dessaur (year of publication
of both prints unknown) and an anonymous steel engraving which was used as a frontispiece for the
Belgian edition of Marnix's works, published between 1857 and 1860.
Next some examples are given of portraits which are copied from older prints. These are as
accurate as possible (Taurel, 1851; Boland, 1878). A large number of romantic prints have been
produced in the nineteenth century which, as a matter of fact, do not belong to the strict portrait-iconography; they sometimes only give an impression of a sixteenth-century nobleman with faint
features of Marnix (Brown, 1844; Hemeleer, 1875). From these prints to pictures of romantic
scenes, in which Marnix plays a role, is only a small step that was indeed made many times.
In the last quarter of the century several artists made a painting of a Marnix-portrait; for the
iconography they have not much more value than the black and white engravings, but they give a
more lively impression of Aldegonde. Some of them hang in distinguished places: a portrait after
Hondius by Johan Stortenbeker (1875) at the Palace Het Loo at Apeldoorn and a free
interpretation by August Delfosse (1885) in the Cabinet of the Mayor of Antwerp; a copy of the
steel engraving of the Works, mentioned above, was painted by Jules Roberti (1906).
The interest in the personality of Marnix in Belgium also resulted in several statues and memorials
being erected. In Brussels alone there are not less than three Marnix-statues: one by Paul de Vigne
in the garden square of the Petit Sablon (1890), one by Victor de Haen for a Municipal School in
the Hoogstraat (1896) and another by Leander Grandmoulin at the Townhall (1901). All three show
Marnix as a scholar. Several portrait-reliefs or medaillons exist at various places, mostly based on
the engravings of Wierix or De Gheyn.
Our present century is very poor with regard to the Marnix-iconography. To commemorate the
400th birthday of Marnix the Dutch Post Office issued a stamp with his portrait, engraved by Kuno
Brinks in
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1938 and a medal with a copy of the De Gheyn-print by H.M. Wezelaar was made in 1940. A
fetching copper-etching by S.L. Hartz appeared in 1954 and in 1964 another stamp was issued by
the Belgian Post Office.
The final chapter of the study deals with two portraits made during Marnix's lifetime. The
identification of the two portraits seems to have been based on wrong hypotheses. One so-called
Marnix-portrait is well-known nowadays, because it has been reproduced in recent years several
times in Dutch historical publications. It concerns a painting in the Bodleian Library in Oxford,
which, as it seems, is wrongly attributed to Antonio Moro. The identification was made by James D.
Milner of the National Portrait Gallery in London in 1909. Before that year the man on the painting
was identified respectively as Sir Thomas Bodley, as Portrait of an Unknown Man, as Sir
Christopher Hatton and as Sir Francis Walsingham. Mr. Milner, who at that time was not aware of
the existence of the Marnix-portrait by Wierix, saw a remarkable resemblance with the De Gheyn-engraving of 1599 and other later portraits. Furthermore the age of the sitter in the year the painting
was made, i.e. 35 years in 1573, seemed to correspond exactly to Marnix. In the very year
however the identification was made, it was established, that Marnix was younger than 35. Besides
in the description of the painting by Mr. Milner it was stated correctly, that the man had thin hair at
the forehead, which Marnix definitely did not, judging from the engraving of Wierix and especially
from the drawing by De Gheyn of the old Marnix. On account of these arguments, the identification
as Marnix is definitely rejected. The name of the painter is not discussed in this study; in view of the
political situation of 1573 Marnix can never have been painted by Moro.
The second portrait which is doubted to be a Marnix representation, is a detail on one of the so-called Valois tapestries. These eight precious tapestries, now in the Uffizi in Florence, were fully
studied and discussed by Frances Yates. Her keen investigations solved many questions regarding
the time and place of production, the principal of the commission, the occasion and the purpose of
the creation, the designer of the portrait-figures on the forefront and the identification of several
figures. Mrs. Yates' study comes to the conclusion that the tapestries were ordered by William of
Orange as a gift to Catharina de Medici during the time of negotiation between the States General
via their representative Marnix and Catharina's son The Duke of Anjou on the sovereignty over the
Netherlands. The tapestries must have been made in Brussels and the portrait-figures must have
been designed by Lucas d'Heere, who was the only artist who combined all the capabilities of
designing portraits, costumes and tapestry. Some of the events on the tapestries have been
recognized by Mrs. Yates and date from the years 1565
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and 1573; the portrait-figures, of which several have been recognized by the same author as well,
were however active in the years Marnix negotiated with the French, i.e. 1580-1582. On the
tapestry called The Yourney, Mrs. Yates identified one of the three men on the right forefront as
Louis de Nassau, brother of William of Orange. The Dutch art-historian, Mrs. van Ysselstein clearly
identified Marnix in the most right man, because of his clothing as a theologian and his resemblance
to the engraving of Wierix, which, in her view was mede after the portrait on the tapestry. This must
be rejected because of the much longer face of the man on the tapestry: the two contemporary
sources for Marnix's face, the medal of 1580 and the Wierix-portrait of 1581 show that the head of
Marnix was round. A special ground for rejection is that Lucas d'Heere designed the portraits on the
tapestries and that he has not depicted Marnix here. He was a good portrait painter and a good
friend of Marnix to boot. Wy should his design then differ so much from the two other independent
portraits?
Although it is a rich and rewarding exercise as such to follow the artistical development of the
portrait of an important man like Marnix during four centuries, the final conclusion of this study must
be, that the artists who were inspired by De Gheyn's engraving of 1599 - and in fact all of them
were, directly or indirectly - have been mislead to a certain extent by an idealized prototype which
differs clearly from the portraits which were drawn from life. Therefore the impression of Marnix's
face, which has become common and which shows him as a distinguished, serious-looking scholar,
does not seem to correspond with the more vivid and human face on the few live-portraits which
have been unknown for many centuries. It seems very likely that more authentic portraits have
existed or even still exist: they could give us a more complete or a better well rounded view on him
than we have now.
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