Beskrivning: Ryttarporträttet av den svensk-polske kungen Sigismund I/III kan ha tillkommit i samband med sonen Vladislavs besök i Antwerpen 1624 och en stor beställning av vävda tapeter. Målningen är utförd i Rubens ateljé, huvudsakligen av hans nära medarbetare Cornelis de Vos. Porträttet tillhörde Johan Gabriel Stenbock och så småningom Carl Gustaf Tessin, som förde det till Paris, där konservatorn Louis François Colins förlängde duken.
 

Description: This equestrian portrait of the Swedish-Polish king Sigismund I/III may have been made in connection with his son Władysław’s visit to Antwerp in 1624, when a large order was placed for tapestries. It was painted in Rubens’s studio, chiefly by his close collaborator Cornelis de Vos. The portrait originally belonged to Johan Gabriel Stenbock and eventually to Carl Gustaf Tessin, who took it to Paris, where the conservator Louis François Colins extended the canvas.

Catalogue raisonné: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 230:

Technical notes: The support consists of two horizontally
joined lengths of plain-weave linen with some
coarser thread in the upper half of the painting. The
upper length, which is 18.5 cm broad, may possibly be an
extension of the support which would mean that the
dimensions of the large complete length is 246.8 by 185
cm wide. The canvas has been trimmed along the edges
of the current non-original stretcher. Cusping is faintly
visible to the outer right and left as well as along the
lower edge which limits the approximate format of the
original canvas (see above). The painting was lined in
1860 into a canvas that consists of three vertically joined
pieces of linen. The ground, which covers the texture of
the canvas, is yellowish-white and probably consists of a
chalk ground. Light grey underpainting is visible below
the armour, under parts of the horse, the dog and Sigismund.
The paint layers are opaque and thinly applied.
The pale colours are partly transparent because of pigment
changes (saponification) and abrasion. Sigismund
on his horse and the dog next to them have been
reserved and painted separately, after which the foreground
and background has been painted in. The foliage
on the left has been painted over the background. Minor
pentimenti are visible on the paws of the dog and the
fringes of the armband. The brushwork is rather lifeless.
UV examination has revealed a large number of retouches
all over the painting, including the outer edges, face,
eyes, nose and beard, the horse’s muzzle, withers and left
hind leg as well as the front and hind legs of the dog.
There has also been extensive retouching of the foreground
and background and along the seam in the upper
section of the painting. The painting underwent conservation
treatment in 1988.

Provenance: Johan Gabriel Stenbock; Erik Sparre (as
Rubens); 1741 Carl Gustaf Tessin (in the list of objects
sent from Paris to Stockholm, no. 97); Lovisa Ulrika
1760, no. 253 (as Rubens, Frans Snyders and Frans de
Momper); Gustav III (as Crown prince) 1777, no. 32;
NM 1866, no. 598; transferred to Gripsholm 1931.

Exhibited: Cracow 1976, cat. no. 29; Stockholm Liljevalchs
1976, cat. no. 35; Washington 1988, cat. no. 10;
Warszawa 1996, cat. no. XIII; Stockholm 2010, no. 105.

Bibliography: Cavalli-Björkman 1977, pp. 44, 47 (as
workshop of Rubens); Chrosciki 1981, pp. 173–175;
Granberg 1921, p. 55, 61; Granberg 1930, pp. 102–103,
151, 156; Granberg 1931, pp. 13, 18, 165; Johnsson 1985,
p. 13; Cat. Gripsholm I 1951, p. 256, no. 2012 (as Cornelis
de Vos) Lindblom 1927, p. 44; Von Malmborg 1956, pp.
3, 38–39 (as workshop of Rubens); von Malmborg 1975, p.
40; Puyvelde 1952, p. 146 (as Rubens); Sander 1872, pp.
10, 59, 100–101, 104, 150; Strömbom III 1943, p.
107–109, cat. no. 14; Thyssen, Oud Holland, 101, 1987, p.
58, nr. 13 (as workshop of Van Dyck?) Tomkiewicz 1952,
p. 19; Wennberg 1970, p. 36.; Van der Stighelen 1990, cat.
no. 71, pp. 173–175 (as Cornelis de Vos); Vlieghe 1987,
cat. no. 58, n. 6, p. 37 (as Cornelis de Vos).

Sigismund III was the son of King Johan III of Sweden
and the Polish princess Catherine, daughter of Sigismund
I. The accession of his father made Sigismund
III next in line for succession to the Swedish throne. By
birth he was also the heir to the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania but the Union of Lublin in 1569, which
Johan III admittedly never acknowledged, led to the
establishment of the Polish – Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Sigismund left Sweden in 1587 after he and his
father had agreed in the “Kalmar Articles” on guarantees
for the independence of Sweden. His coronation
as King of Poland took place in Cracow in 1587 and as
King of Sweden in 1594. He was deposed by the
Swedish Riksdag in 1599. This equestrian portrait
depicts Sigismund, King of Sweden and King of
Poland, mounted on a brown horse with a flowing
mane. Sigismund is dressed in black with a cuirass, a
pointed hat decorated with a black plume and a red silk
armband flutters from his left arm. In his right hand
Sigismund is holding a staff that rests on his hip. A
white and brown dog is running alongside Sigismund
and in the background there is a varied landscape with
trees in leaf to the right of the painting. Hans Vlieghe
has linked the composition of this work with Rubens’
lost equestrian portrait of Albert, Archduke of Austria
from around 1617.1 The composition of Rubens’ portrait
is based on a study of riders on different poses
made by the artist a few years earlier, c. 1615. As a
genre equestrian portraits derive ultimately in their
turn from an earlier 16th century tradition with depictions
of subjects on horseback by Tintoretto, Tempesta
and others.2 The formalised version that Rubens was to
introduce in 1615 contains references to older traditions
like these but was also specifically inspired by the
more recent series of Roman emperors on horseback
by Stradanus. According to Vlieghe, a depiction of
Julius Caesar on horseback by Stradanus served as a
model for Rubens’ portrait of the Archduke Albert of
Austria, which was later to influence the composition
of equestrian portraits, among them the Nationalmuseum’s
depiction of Sigismund III. What characterises
Stradanus’ works and Rubens’ portrait of the Archduke
is the positioning of the horse and rider face on to create
the effect that they are approaching the viewer’s
own physical space. Similar frontal compositions in the
equestrian genre were later used in portraits by Anthony
van Dyck, Isaac Isaacz, Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert
and by Cornelis de Vos. Vlieghe attributes this
portrait to De Vos, as does Katlijne van der Stighelen
in her scholarly catalogue of Cornelis de Vos’ portraits
from 1990. This attribution was already being proposed
on 1951 in connection with the catalogue of portraits
at Gripsholm. Over the years the portrait has also
been linked with Rubens and his workshop (see Cavalli-
Björkman 1977, Von Malmborg 1956 and Puyvelde
1952 as well as Morelowski 1955) and also with Van
Dyck’s workshop (Brussels 1987).3 In her catalogue of
portraits by Cornelis de Vos, Van der Stighelen has also
proposed 1624, the year in which Sigismund visited the
Netherlands to commission tapestries, as a possible
date for the portrait.4 Stighelen also links De Vos’
equestrian portrait to Rubens and his workshop and
names two of Rubens’ assistants who could well have
been involved in its production: Jan Wildens where the
landscape is concerned and Paul de Vos for the rendering
of the dog. In this way this eclectically organised
equestrian portrait in the Gripsholm collection could
be considered a work by De Vos that is imbued with
Rubens’ approach to portraiture and which was produced
by De Vos with the help of Rubens’ workshop.
According to Puyvelde there is another smaller scale
equestrian portrait of Sigismund in a private collection
in Richmond in the USA. There are also a number of
engravings based on the portrait in the Gripsholm collection,
including one by Alexander Clemens Wetterling
(1796–1858). The equestrian portrait has a longstanding
provenance in Sweden that dates back to the
17th century, when it was owned by Johan Gabriel Stenbock
and later inherited by Erik Sparre before it became
the property of his son-in-law, the important art collector
Carl Gustaf Tessin in 1741, when it is listed as one of
the works transported from Paris to Stockholm in that
year. The painting was later included in Lovisa Ulrika
and Gustaf III’s art collections. During the 19th century
the work was erroneously ascribed to Pieter Claesz
Soutman, as indicated on the reverse by a label on the
gilt frame decorated with sprays of laurel. According to
Cavalli-Björkman this attribution was based on a pencilled
note on an engraving in the Nationalmuseum.
Technically, the painting contains a large number of
retouches to both the rider, horse, dog, foreground and
background. The glue-lining undertaken as early as the
1860s led in its turn to the flattening of areas of impasto.
KS

1 H. Vlieghe, Rubens Portraits I, cat. no. 58, pp. 35–37. See also Rubens’
equestrian portrait of the Duke of Lerma from 1603.
2 See J. Müller Hofstede, “Die frühen Reiterbildnisse”, ex. cat. Peter Paul
Rubens, Cologne 1977, pp. 88–94.
3 In a letter from Professor Marian Morelowski, Wrocław (8SP 133, app.)
dated 7 July 1955 the equestrian portrait is ascribed to Rubens, the landscape
to Wildens and the dog to Fyt. NM curatorial files.
4 E. Duverger, “Unte tenture de l’histoire d’Ulysse livrée par Jacques
Geubels le jeune au prince de Pologne”, Artes textiles, 7, 1971, pp. 74–98. [End]

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Peter Paul Rubens | Sigismund I/III (1566–1632), kung av Sverige och Polen, möjl. 1624 | Nationalmuseum

Peter Paul Rubens | Sigismund I/III (1566–1632), King of Sweden and Poland, possibly 1624 | Nationalmuseum

Titel (sv): Sigismund I/III (1566–1632), kung av Sverige och Polen, möjl. 1624
Titel (en): Sigismund I/III (1566–1632), King of Sweden and Poland, possibly 1624
Etikett (sv): Sigismund I/III, 1566-1632, av Sverige och Polen
Etikett (en): Sigismund I/III, king of Sweden and Poland

Title (sv): Sigismund I/III (1566–1632), kung av Sverige och Polen, möjl. 1624
Title (en): Sigismund I/III (1566–1632), King of Sweden and Poland, possibly 1624
Label (sv): Sigismund I/III, 1566-1632, av Sverige och Polen
Label (en): Sigismund I/III, king of Sweden and Poland