(Mechelen 1576 – before 1633)
Prince Maurice of Orange-Nassau attending a stag hunt accompanied by his courtiers, a white stag in the background,
oil on panel, 34.5 x 48 cm, framed

Whilst in the past tentative attributions to Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne or Esaias van der Velde have been suggested, the present painting has recently been identified as an autograph work by Vinckboons by Klaus Ertz (certificate, 2020). The relationship between Vinckboons and his likely pupil Esaias van de Velde is discussed by Klaus Ertz in his monograph (K. Ertz, David Vinckboons, Freren 2016, p. 11).

The exact iconography of this charming painting has not yet been established, but it would appear to commemorate an actual hunting event, rather than a general ‘hunting scene’. Clearly recognisable in the front left is Prince Maurice of Nassau (1567–1625), who was stadtholder of all the provinces of the Dutch Republic except for Friesland from 1585 at the earliest until his death in 1625. Before he became Prince of Orange upon the death of his eldest half-brother Philip William in 1618, he was known as Maurice of Nassau.

Maurice spent his youth in Dillenburg and studied in Heidelberg and Leiden. He succeeded his father William the Silent as stadtholder of Holland and Zeeland in 1585, and became stadtholder of Utrecht, Guelders and Overijssel in 1590, and of Groningen in 1620. As Captain-General and Admiral of the Union, Maurice organised the Dutch rebellion against Spain into a coherent, successful revolt and won fame as a military strategist. Under his leadership and in cooperation with the Land’s Advocate of Holland Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the Dutch States Army achieved many victories and drove the Spaniards out of the north and east of the Republic. Maurice set out to revive and revise the classical doctrines of Vegetius and pioneered the new European forms of armament and drill. During the Twelve Years’ Truce, a religious dispute broke out in the Republic, and a conflict erupted between Maurice and Van Oldenbarnevelt, which ended with the latter’s decapitation.

The artist uses the arrival of Prince Maurice in a carriage drawn by four grey horses – to underscore the contrast between the elegant conduct of Hague courtiers and the realistically depicted forest scenery.

Vinckboons spent almost his entire life in Amsterdam. His style is unmistakably Flemish, and he belongs to that extraordinary generation of Netherlandish artists who, compelled by religious persecution to move either north to the Protestant stronghold or south to the Catholic one, effected one of the most significant cross-pollinations of style and taste in the history of art. His debt to Gillis van Coninxloo III, whom van Mander described as ‘the best landscape painter of his time’, is particularly strong in this painting. Coninxloo, a pupil of Pieter Coecke van Aelst and a close relative of the Brueghel family, may have been Vinckboons’s teacher and may have helped familiarise the latter with the Kermesse pictures by the Brueghels and Marten van Cleve.