Lot 120: HENDRICK DE KEYSER (1565-1621), CIRCA 1610

A GILT BRONZE BUST OF WILLIAM I, PRINCE OF ORANGE

measurements note
bust: 14cm., 5 1/2 in.

the tapered bust wearing a soft hat and stiff lace ruff with buttoned doublet and a fur collared coat, the shoulders and waist ending in scrolls, inscribed at the waist AE T 51

PROVENANCE

Sold in these rooms as part of The Cyril Humphries Collection 11 January 1995, lot 77

LITERATURE

C.Avery, 'Hendrick de Keyser as a sculptor of small bronzes', Studies in European Sculpture, London 1981, p.186, fig.26

NOTE

Henrick de Keyser was one of the most important sculptors in the 17th Century Netherlands. He was also an architect and was became city architect and sculptor of Amsterdam when he moved there in 1591. His portrait busts include one of Vincent Jacobsz Coster in the Rijksmuseum and his small bronzes include the Mercury monogrammed HDK, a version of which is in the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris.

The present bronze shows William I of Orange, known as William the Silent (1533-1584), at the age of fifty one, the year of his death.

Having inherited large Protestant domains in Brabant, Flanders and Holland, William of Orange was sent as a boy to the Catholic Court of Charles V, where he enjoyed the confidence of the Emperor, but was distrusted by his son Phillip II. By the mid-sixteenth Century the people of the Netherlands detested the presence of the Holy Roman Empire in the guise of Spanish troops and the cruelties of Spanish religious persecution of Protestants. William of Orange found himself obliged to withdraw to Germany until 1571 when he mounted his long attack against the Catholics, which lasted until his assassination in 1584 by a young Burgundian Catholic fanatic named Balthazar Gerard.