Beskrivning: Se även beskrivning i den engelska versionen

Catalogue raisonné: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 178:

Technical notes: The painting’s support consists of
two pieces of fine, densely woven, plain weave fabric,
with an identical thread count of 15 vertical and 12–14
horizontal threads/cm, sewn together with a vertical
seam near centre. The original fabric support has been
lined twice, with a loosely woven piece of fabric followed
by a newer relining canvas. The original tacking edges
have been removed on all sides and the painting mounted
on a non-original strainer at the tacking edges of the
relining canvas. Cusping is visible along the right and
bottom edges only.

The fabric support was prepared with a thinly and
smoothly applied white ground. Paint is generally applied
quite thinly in opaque and semi-transparent layers with
slight impastos in the lights. The area of the sky and clouds
is painted more thickly, with much admixture of lead white,
over an opaque, cool grey underpaint; the foreground landscape,
extending across the bottom half of the painting, is
painted over a thin, semi-transparent, light brown underpaint.
Translucent green top glazes were employed in the
foreground landscape. Few pentimenti during the painting
process are visible to the naked eye: the tall spear of the
foot soldier seen from the back standing next to the
mounted officer in the lower right-hand foreground has
been shifted from a position slightly further to the left. The
small-scale figures of troops on the battlefield in the middle
ground and background seem to have been executed freehand
over the landscape without prior drawing (but cf. no.
180), as were the cityscape on the right and the rows of
small trees dotting the distant fields. The group of comparatively
larger figures in the lower right-hand foreground
were held in reserve when the surrounding areas of the
landscape and small-scale figures in the middle distance
were executed; the hat and right arm of the mounted officer
were then painted over the surrounding landscape.
A layer of old varnish is present, slightly discoloured
and unevenly cleaned. Abrasion is moderate overall.
Retouching covers losses of the paint and ground layers
along the edges. A series of vertical cracks in the paint
and ground layers throughout the painting may have
resulted from rolling of the canvas. The top half of the
painting, including the area of the sky and the background
battlefield with its multitude of tiny figures of
soldiers, is very well preserved, with hardly any retouching.
Areas of retouching occur throughout the bottom
half of the painting, covering numerous small losses of
paint here. The painting underwent conservation treatment
in 1837, 1875 and 1966

Provenance: Possibly brought back from Cassel around
1766 by Johan Arckenholtz; purchased 1770 by Fredrik
Adolf; KM 1804, no. 148 (as Pieter Meulener); KM
1816, no. 584.

Exhibited: Stockholm 1966, no. 94; Münster/
Osnabrück 1998/1999, no. 1099 (as Pieter Meulener);
Stockholm 2010, no. 79.

Bibliography: NM Cat. 1867, p. 18 (as Pieter Meulener);
Sander IV, pp. 72–73; Göthe 1887, pp. 150–151;
Göthe 1893, pp. 188–189; Göthe 1910, pp. 213–215;
Granberg 1911–1913, I, p. 32; Granberg 1929–1931, III,
p. 29; NM Cat. 1958, p. 122 (as Pieter Meulener);
Legrand 1963, pp. 211–212, fig. 86 (as Pieter Meulener);
Danielsson 1972, pp. 13–52 (as Peter Snayers); NM Cat.
1990, p. 218 (as Pieter Meulener); Pfaffenbichler 1997,
pp. 64–65, fig. 78 (as Pieter Meulener); Engerisser and
Hrniík 2009, figs. 19, 20, 22 and 31.

On 6 September 1634 the Swedish army and allied
Protestant forces suffered their greatest defeat of the
Thirty Years’ War at Nördlingen in south-western
Germany.1 Following the murder of General Albrecht
von Wallenstein (b. 1583) in February of 1634, King
Ferdinand of Hungary, the son of Emperor Ferdinand
II, had taken over the supreme command of the Imperial-
Bavarian army. In the summer of 1634, he moved
upwards along the Danube with his main army, reconquering
Regensburg and Donauwörth, finally also
attempting to take Nördlingen, which was occupied
by a Swedish garrison. As the city was of great strategic
importance for the control over the Swabian Imperial
region, the Swedish commanders Gustav Horn
and Bernhard von Weimar decided to launch an attack
on the besiegers. But before the joint armies reached
Nördlingen, the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Austria,
cousin of the heir, joined the Imperial troops with
his 15,000 men. The Catholic troops numbered some
35,000 men, significantly superior to the approximately
25,000 of the advancing Swedish troops. This was
reflected in the battle, which began with Swedish
attacks at dawn on September 6th by the hills of
Nördlingen. However, the superior position of the
Imperial troops quickly made itself felt, the Swedes
panicked, and many were slaughtered while attempting
to flee – all in all they suffered some 12,000 losses.
The overwhelming victory of the Imperial troops at
Nördlingen finally moved the majority of the Imperial
estates to accede to the Peace of Prague, concluded
between the Emperor and electoral Saxony a year
later, on 30 May 1635, which triggered France’s entry
into the war.

This painting is one of a set of three panoramic battlefield
scenes, which celebrate the overwhelming victory
of the Catholic troops at the Battle of Nördlingen,
and were previously attributed to the little-known
Antwerp artist Pieter Meulener. While the present picture
shows the early stages of the battle on 6 September
1634, no. 179 documents the earlier meeting of
King Ferdinand and the Cardinal-Infante at Reimlingen,
south of the beleaguered town of Nördlingen, on
2 September, four days before the joint Catholic troops
reached the battlefield, and no. 180 depicts a successful
cavalry charge led by the two Ferdinands. In all three
large canvases a topographically and historically accurate
picture of the battlefield is attempted – undoubtedly
derived from military topographical maps like to
those on which Matthäus Merian later modelled his
Theatrum Europeum (1662)2 – presented as if on a map
unrolled before the viewer. All attention is directed
towards the vast landscape backdrops, which produces
a strong contrast with the narrow strip of shadowed
foreground, viewed in normal perspective and functioning
as a repoussoir, where the military activity is
shown in anecdotal detail. The bottom half of the present
picture, thus, depicts a sweeping view overlooking
the hills of Schönfeld and Adelsberg, where the
Catholic troops are shown readying themselves for
battle, while the upper half records in some detail the
actual battle by the hills of Allbuch and Häselberg. On
the right is the silhouette of the besieged town of
Nördlingen. Throughout the set of three paintings the
Swedes and their allies are identified by yellow or blue
sashes and yellow standards, the Catholic troops by red
sashes and standards.

Although less emphatically analytical-topographical
and more atmospheric than some other examples, the
composition of these paintings, with their rather oldfashioned
steeply rising backgrounds viewed in bird’s
eye perspective, is quite typical of Snayers’ works.3
This compositional formula strongly influenced the
later work of Meulener, who may have been Snayers’
pupil, and whose works are sometimes mistaken for
those of his reputed master. Meulener, however, does
not quite attain the degree of narrative vividness of his
master, or the latter’s effortless depiction of the movement
of horses and riders. As the visual record of a
military success, pictures like these had documentary
value and were undoubtly commissioned by the victorious
side. As two of the pictures seem to glorify the
Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand (see nos. 179–180), the
newly appointed regent of the Spanish Netherlands
(1634–1641), whom Snayers served as court painter,
Danielsson (1972) suggested that the set may have
been commissioned by him.
CF

1 For the historical facts see most recently Engerisser and Hrncˇirˇik 2009.
2 See Pfaffenbichler 1997, pp. 59, 63.
3 Cf., for example, Snayers’ The Battle of Thionville (1639) (oil on canvas,
197 x 266 cm), Brussels, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts, inv. no.1832; for
which see a photograph on file at the RKD, The Hague. Also, his Battle of
Callo (1638) (oil on wood, 92 x 122 cm), Brussels, Musées royaux des
Beaux-Arts, inv. no. 117383 B; for which see Cat.1949, no. 429.[End]

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Peter Snayers | Slaget vid Nördlingen (1634) I | Nationalmuseum