The Rijksmuseum Bulletin is a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal presenting scholarly articles that contribute to historical and art-historical research into the Rijksmuseum collections to an international audience of curators, scholars, students, art professional and enthusiasts.
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The Rijksmuseum Bulletin, volume 73 (2025), issue 2

CONTENTS AND ABSTRACTS

‘Preserved from Decay by Air, Rain and Sun’. Forsaken and then Found: A Biography of the Hartog Plate
TAMAR DAVIDOWITZ AND GIJS VAN DER HAM

The Hartog Plate, left by Dutch skipper Dirk Hartog on the Australian coast in 1616, is the earliest known western object found in Australia, making it a significant historical artefact. Over the centuries, its status has evolved from an ordinary pewter plate into an iconic symbol of the shared history between the Netherlands and Australia. The plate’s fragile condition serves as a testament to what it has endured, including the various efforts undertaken to preserve it. Even if well meant, these efforts highlight the past challenges of balancing preservation with maintaining the integrity of the object’s history. Recent material analysis and archival research have provided new insights into the plate’s story, helping to determine the latest conservation efforts, aimed at restoring the plate to its most authentic state. Through a biographical approach, the authors examine how the plate and its meaning have changed throughout its existence and underscore how its historical value and relevance have been, and continue to be, interpreted from different perspectives.

A New Identification and Source for Anselmus Boëtius de Boodt’s ‘Brazilian Coati’
DENIZ MARTINEZ

A curious animal illustration by Anselmus Boëtius de Boodt (1550-1632), held in the collections of the Rijksmuseum, is labelled as a coati from Brazil. However, this image bears little resemblance to a real coati, an endemic mammal of the Americas related to raccoons. The author presents evidence of the likely origin of De Boodt’s image, how it came to be misidentified and what other American mammal it was meant to illustrate.

‘Who this Portrait Depicts is (yet) Unknown’: John Greenwood and his Portrait of a Captain Sailing to Suriname
EVELINE SINT NICOLAAS

In 1984, the Stichting Cultuurgeschiedenis van de Nederlanders Overzee (CNO) purchased a portrait of a then unknown captain, painted in 1760 by the artist John Greenwood (Boston 1729-1792 Margate). Since 1994, the portrait has been in the collection of the Rijksmuseum. Until now, the identity of the sitter has remained unknown. The study of Greenwood’s notebook, preserved in the collection of The New York Historical, has made it possible to identify the person in the portrait as Dirk Simonsz (1727-1768), the captain of the ship on which John Greenwood travelled from Suriname to Amsterdam in 1758. This identification is further substantiated by research in the Simonsz family archive in Zaandam and other sources.

The Rediscovery of a Portrait Listed in Hendrik van Limborch’s Rijksmuseum Notebook
WAYNE FRANITS

In 1997, Guido Jansen published an essay in the Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum that explored a notebook kept by Hendrik van Limborch (1681-1759), an early eighteenth-century Dutch history painter and portraitist active in The Hague. In March 2021, twenty-four years after Jansen’s essay was published, a Parisian auction featured one of Van Limborch’s portraits of a female sitter, dated 1711. By consulting the painter’s notebook entries for the year 1711 in combination with archival references, the author is able to identify the sitter of this particular portrait. It represents The Hague resident, Maria Adriana van der Heim, daughter of the financial comptroller for the province of Holland. Her husband, Willem Sluijsken, whose name appears directly above hers in van Limborch’s entry, likewise enjoyed a distinguished legal and financial career. Both sitters exemplify the elite status of sitters whom Jansen describes as the painter’s customary clientele.
166-175

MAARTJE BRATTINGA, ALEXANDER DENCHER, FEMKE DIERCKS, CERI-ANNE VAN DE GEER, LUDO VAN HALEM, FRITS SCHOLTEN AND MATTHIAS UBL
Recent Acquisitions: Fine and Applied Arts