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Between Memory and Amnesia: The Posthumous Portraits of Johan and Cornelis de Witt

2015; Volume: 7; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5092/jhna.2015.7.1.4

2473-1404

Frans Grijzenhout,

Historical Art and Culture Studies

the brothers Cornelis and Johannes de Witt were brutally murdered in The Hague.They fell victim to a political and populist hate campaign engendered by their deliberately anti-Orangeist stance and by the extremely difficult political and military situation of the Republic of the Seven Netherlands in that year.Around the body parts of the dismembered brothers a memory cult arose among both their political opponents and their adherents.This essay concentrates on the processes of appropriation and rejection, in prints and medals, of the iconic painted portraits of the brothers produced by Jan de Baen and Caspar Netscher immediately after their deaths.In particular Jan de Baen's allegorical portrait of Cornelis de Witt --created for the Dordrecht town hall after the victorious Dutch raid on the Medway of 1667 --appears to have sparked emotions in 1672 and later.After some months of vehement exchange, artistic production accommodated to a policy of deliberate and officially promoted forgetfulness in which the life and death of the brothers De Witt were inscribed into a much broader policy of reflection with humanistic overtones.