Hidden from view for more than a century: a 16th-century portrait of Dutch courage by Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem

The parents of Cornelis Cornelisz. (van Haarlem) were looking to move away from the city of Haarlem. So great was their young son’s artistic talent, though, that they decided not to take him with them. Instead, they left him in the care of the painter Pieter Pietersz., in whose studio he would train.

Not long afterwards — when Cornelis was just 10 — Spanish troops besieged Haarlem in a bloody, early episode of the Eighty Years’ War (1568-1648). Raids and artillery assaults were accompanied by a city blockade. In July 1573, after a siege of many months, Haarlem fell. Cornelis survived, though thousands of others didn’t.

In the words of his biographer, Karel van Mander, ‘the distinguished town of Haarlem was an admirable spectacle before the whole world, and everyone… spoke of how she [faced] Spanish might with feeble ramparts, stout hearts, and the fist’.

Cornelis would go on to become a key member of the Haarlem Mannerists, a group of artists based in his home town who heralded a golden age of Dutch painting at the end of the 16th and into the 17th century. A remarkable, newly rediscovered portrait by Cornelis is being offered in the Maîtres Anciens: Peintures — Sculptures sale at Christie’s in Paris on 11 June 2025.

It depicts, with no little panache, a standard-bearer from Haarlem’s civic guard. It was his job to carry the unit’s flag. The guard consisted of armed civilians who — if the need arose, as it had during the Spanish siege — would defend the city against attack.

The portrait is set outdoors. The subject stands before us in quasi-profile, one leg confidently placed in front of the other. His left arm is akimbo, while his right hand holds a billowing flag which occludes much of our view of the tree directly behind him and the landscape beyond.

Typically, a standard-bearer was dressed in the latest fashion, and this one is no exception, from the plumed hat to the white-lace ruff. As the emblem of his troop, he was wont to wear bright clothing, unlike his more soberly dressed fellow guardsmen. This had the consequence, in battle situations, of making him a prime target for enemy soldiers. The role was therefore always given to a bachelor, to ensure that no widow was left behind.

Cornelis’s subject was almost certainly Cornelis Jacobsz. Schout, who went on to become Captain of the Guard in 1618. He hailed from an eminent family which also included a brother, Pieter, who served as the city’s mayor on four occasions.

The portrait was probably commissioned by Schout himself, but it would hardly have come cheap. Cornelis was an artist in high demand. The picture is dated 1592, a year after he was paid the princely sum of 600 Flemish pounds to produce a pair of paintings to be hung in Haarlem’s city hall, the Prinsenhof, and a year before he was paid the same amount to produce two more paintings for the same venue. (Among the four works in question was the stunning mythological scene The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis, which today forms part of the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague.)

Cornelis was aged around 30 at the time. The picture coming to auction wasn’t actually his first depiction of Schout, who can also be seen in a group portrait that the artist painted in 1583, of members of Haarlem’s civic guard at a banquet.

Not yet having assumed the position of standard-bearer, Schout is towards the top left of the scene — a young man wearing a white silk jacket. He shakes hands with an interlocutor and points to himself with his left hand.

Today found in Haarlem’s Frans Hals Museum, Banquet of Members of the Haarlem Calivermen Civic Guard was Cornelis’s first major commission. Schout has a rounded profile, a button nose and dark blue eyes — just as he does in the solo picture from nine years later.

Portraits of standard-bearers would become increasingly popular in the Netherlands through the 1590s and in the early part of the 17th century. Rembrandt was among the artists to produce one. This popularity was doubtless connected to a belief that the subjects symbolised the valour and intrepidness of the Dutch in their ongoing fight for independence in the Eighty Years’ War — even if, as in Schout’s case, the standard-bearer in question didn’t see combat. (The war would end in 1648, with Spain’s formal recognition of a state known as the Dutch Republic.)

Of known solo portraits of standard-bearers, Cornelis’s seems to have been the second earliest — preceded only by an example painted in Utrecht in 1590. In a delightful Mannerist touch, Schout’s protruding ‘peascod belly’ echoes the curved shape of his flag as it billows.

Part of Cornelis’s pictorial inspiration was the engraving of a generic standard-bearer by his friend and fellow Haarlem Mannerist, Hendrick Goltzius. Dating from 1587, that print bears an inscription in Latin at the bottom which reads: ‘I, the standard-bearer, provide courage and daring. While I stand firm, the line holds; if I were to flee, it would flee.’

As Cornelis’s career progressed, Haarlem — a city with pre-medieval roots — underwent a renaissance. Not really a conflict area after the siege of 1572-73, it flourished into a cultural and economic hub. It was out of pride in his home town, one assumes, that Cornelis chose to add the words ‘van Haarlem’ to the end of his name.

The city developed a thriving linen industry (both the manufacture and the bleaching of the fabric), and later became a centre of the tulip trade. A plethora of significant artists also settled there, among them Frans Hals, Pieter Claesz and Salomon van Ruysdael.

In 1616, following Cornelis’s example, Hals would paint his own group portrait of Haarlem civic guardsmen. Schout can be seen in that picture, too: now bald, he shares a knowing look with his son Jacob, who has taken up his father’s old role as standard-bearer.

The early provenance of Cornelis’s portrait isn’t known. In the mid-19th century, however, it was in the collection of the sculptor Carlo Marochetti. Born in Turin, Marochetti spent much of his life in Paris, before settling in London, where he became one of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s favourite artists. Among other commissions, he cast the four bronze lions designed by Sir Edwin Landseer to sit at the base of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square.

The Schout portrait has remained in Marochetti’s family to the present day, housed in their castle, the Château de Vaux-sur-Seine, outside Paris. It is a painting that speaks across the ages, but also serves as testament to the glory of Haarlem around the turn of the 17th century.

The Maîtres Anciens: Peintures — Sculptures sale takes place at Christie’s in Paris on 11 June 2025. It will be on view 5-10 June, alongside Maîtres Anciens: Peintures — Sculptures, Online (live for bidding from 27 May to 12 June)