RKD STUDIES

In her thesis and in recent articles Isabella di Lenardo states that Dirck de Vries came from the Bildelanden, the area now known as Het Bildt in Friesland, close to the Waddenzee.¹ She deduces this from a notarial deed of the year 1601 in the State Archives of Venice.² In this deed two brothers, Ferdinandus and Antonius de Surco, who live in Venice with their uncle Melchior Quingetti or Coignet, donate part of the proceeds they receive from the Bildelanden to the brothers Nicolaus and Theodorus de Vriese. The Bildelanden are areas with very fertile sea clay, worked through drainage and reclamation in the first decades of the 16th century by labourers from north and south Holland, Zeeland and Brabant. Di Lenardo assumes that the Venetian notarial deed refers to the painter Theodorus [i.e. Dirck] de Vries, who lived in Venice.

But it is necessary to take a closer look at the notarial deed. The brothers ‘De Surco’ are Ferdinand and Antonio van Surck, sons of the late Caspar or Jasper van Surck from Antwerp, a very wealthy merchant who belonged to a large family of merchants who lived in the most important ports all over Europe. During his lifetime Caspar several times donated bond yields from the Bildelanden – ‘Bildtrenten’ – to family and friends, some of them of noble descent.³

I noticed a mention in a 1959 publication of the Dutch Institute in Rome of one Nicolaus de Vriese who was in Padua in 1591, probably studying law.⁴. He arranged the burial and the tombstone of a student from Dordrecht who had died in Padua; the stone still exists in the cloister of the church of Sant’Antonio [13]. Nicolaus de Vriese came from Middelburg and studied in Leiden and in Douai, where he left a drawing of his coat of arms in Reinoud van Brederode's album amicorum: six silver lilies in red. Later in his life he was a citizen and lawyer in Middelburg, and owned large estates in Zeeland. He and his brother Dirck were sons of Dirck de Vriese Senior, a wealthy wine merchant, who lived in Middelburg and died before 1602.⁵ Nicolaus and Dirck Junior died in 1633 and 1645 respectively, both in Zeeland.⁶
I have not been able to establish any relationship between the Van Surcks and our painter De Vries, or between the Van Surcks and the Middelburg De Vriese brothers. It is thus not certain that they are the brothers referred to in the notarial deed. Later we will find that the deed is clearly not related to our painter in Venice, and that different conclusions have to be drawn about his origins.

The name of the painter Dirck de Vries appears in Venetian notarial deeds as executor of the will of Gaspar Rem (1542–1617), as a witness to the last will of Hans Sadeler (1550–1600) and the dowry of Hans's daughter Justine, and in deeds related to Justus Sadeler (1572/9–1620) and Hans Rottenhammer. De Vries was a good friend of Rottenhammer and the Sadeler family of engravers.⁷ He was the godfather of Franceschina Isabeta, daughter of Raphael Sadeler I (1561–c. 1632), when she was baptised on 15 December 1603 [14].⁸

Now let's see whether relevant godfathers attended the baptisms of Dirck’s own children. That is the case with Giustina Vittoria in 1596, when Zambattista Cocardo was the godfather. He was a Flemish pharmacist who worked for one of the four major hospitals in Venice, the ‘Incurabili’.⁹ His wife was Isabella, the daughter of Hans Riecher (or Ricart), an excellent goldsmith and jeweller.

What was the social background of the spouses of De Vries’s daughters? Isabeta, the eldest daughter, was the first to marry, in April 1600. The groom was Isepo Iopino, son of a ‘laner’, a Bergamo woollen manufacturer or draper, who lived in the parish of San Silvestro. They were married in the parish of Santi Apostoli ‘in a house of Bernardo Dolfin’, and the excellent Mr Giacomo Bertelli, a doctor, was one of the witnesses [15].¹⁰

Elena married Pietro Sasso d'Oro in 1602, when she was about 16 years old [16].¹¹ From 1598 to 1630 he was registered in the painters’ guild in Venice as ‘Pietro Sancistiano Fleming called Sassodoro’.¹² In the Liggeren (registers) of the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp a certain ‘Peerke Goutsteen’ was registered in 1588 as a pupil of Maerten de Vos (1532–1603).¹³ One of the witnesses of this marriage was a painter, Giovanni Battista Argenti (active 1590-1625).¹⁴ The wedding took place ‘in a house of Ser Tomaso Mocenigo in the parish of San Giovanni Crisostomo rented by the father of the bride’. This might give the impression that De Vries rented a location for the weddings of his daughters, but it simply means that they took place in the house where the family lived. Thus De Vries must have lived in the parish of Santi Apostoli until about 1601, and from 1602 in the adjacent parish of San Giovanni Crisostomo. His first house belonged to Bernardo Dolfin, in Calle Dolfin, a street that still partly survives.¹⁵ One of Venice’s post offices, La Posta di Fiorenza, was around the corner, and the house was very close to the Ca' da Mosto, a famous luxury hotel at the time, called the Lion Bianco. According to the Status Animarum of 1592, Leandro Bassano (1557–1622) lived nearby in the street leading to the hotel's gondola ferry across the Grand Canal to the marketplace and the Rialto banking district. Mocenigo's house was on a street with his name; that probably changed over the centuries, and the street cannot be found today.¹⁶ Both houses were located near the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the warehouse that was the hub of the German trade. They were surrounded by shops and houses of shoemakers, tailors and hatters.

In 1610 Perina married Carlo di Kosli, recorded as one of the agents (‘fattori’) of the Flemish merchant Cornelio de Robiano in 1592 [17].¹⁷ Carlo's father Lorenzo probably came from Koszalin, a city near the Baltic coast in present-day Poland. One of the witnesses was Angelo Giusi ‘dai colori’ – Angelo who sold colours.

The most important of all the weddings of Dirck's daughters was Giulia's [18].¹⁸ ‘On 1 February 1604 the marriage between Giulia, daughter of Mr Theodoro, painter, son of the late Fedrigo de Fris, and Mr Piero Girardi from Normandy who at the time lived in the parish of San Moisè in the shoemaker’s shop with the sign of St Louis, was celebrated in the house of Toma' Mocenigo’. After the wedding announcements had been made in January Margarita Rosighi, a Frenchwoman, claimed that the bridegroom had promised to marry her. The Patriarchal Vicar solved the problem, stating that Piero Girardi was not yet married. The witnesses to the wedding were Pietro Asselineau, a French physician, and Zuane Garzoni, a French bookseller.¹⁹ We discover that the name of Dirck's father was Frederick, so Dirck was not a direct descendant of Dirck Jacobszoon de Vries, the former mayor of Haarlem, as was assumed by Pariset and Van Gelder.²⁰ We also discover that the milieu was completely French. The first witness, moreover, was none other than Pierre Asselineau, a Calvinist physician from Orléans who had lived in Venice since 1584. He was a very close friend of Fra Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623), the theologian, scientist and adviser to the government of the Republic of Venice.²¹ Paolo Sarpi was in the habit of meeting merchants, noblemen and foreigners, German and Flemish Protestants, and travellers in the last decades of the 16th century in the haberdashery shop of the Fleming (or Dutchman) Bernardo Secchini, called La Nave d'Oro. Here the latest news from abroad was exchanged and discussed.

Around 1964, D.J. van der Meer came across a certain Tyerck Feyesz (Frisian for Dirck, son of Frederick) in his genealogical research on some families in Leeuwarden at the end of the 16th century. In a deed of 1584 Tyerck Feyesz was referred to as ‘living in Venice’, and in another deed of 1586 as ‘a painter and citizen of Venice’.²² According to Van der Meer, Tyerck Feyesz was the son of Feye Tyercks and Lijsbeth Jansdr. The notarial deed of 1584 related to the sale by Tyerck Feyesz of a house on the Weerd in Leeuwarden; the deed of 1586 concerned the donation of land-rent to the 'teenager' Thomas van Herbayum (later a renowned lawyer), son of his notary Jacob van Herbayum. Tyerck Feyesz received this rent as ‘the sole heir of his grandmother Syts Thalinghs’. This implies that our Dirck de Vries did not have an elder brother called Nicolaus (unless the latter had been disinherited); that his eldest daughter Isabeta was named after her grandmother Lijsbeth and his eldest son Frederick after his grandfather; and also that our painter was reasonably prosperous and generous in spite of having three daughters already.

Van der Meer’s findings are mentioned in a dissertation of 2008 by Piet Bakker, who claims without giving a source or reason that Dirck de Vries had left Leeuwarden in 1580. The record in the Status Animarum of 1592–1993 of the holy communion and confirmation of the painter and his wife and the confirmation of the eldest four children show that he was a Catholic. In 1580 the city of Leeuwarden embraced the Protestant faith, and that may have been a reason for him to leave. De Vries’s prosperity can also be deduced from the fact that he was able to marry off four of his five daughters before his death in 1612, providing four dowries (though they may have been modest) and covering the cost of the celebrations. The churches chosen for the weddings were all on islands in the lagoon (San Michele di Murano, San Giorgio Maggiore, San Cristoforo in Isola), which suggests cheerful pageants of gondolas. The elegant clothes of young Frederick in the engraving by Goltzius indicate that he was a well-off boy. The youngest daughter, Giustina, ended up in the Low Countries, probably with her mother Oegenia.²³ She became the wife of the Delft flower and still-life painter Joris Gerritsz. van Lier (c. 1589–1656), who had been an apprentice of Karel van Mander II (c. 1579-1623) and had travelled to Paris and Rome in 1611 and 1612.²⁴

I would like to conclude with another fishmarket painting by De Vries [19]. In the foreground a fishmonger (who looks strikingly like De Vries and young Frederick) presents his goods. It is cloudy daybreak; the sun is rising above the Lido, the narrow and bare island on the horizon. We see the Palladian churches of San Giorgio Maggiore, with its façade still under construction, and the Zitelle on the Giudecca island. Fishermen are bringing in their catches, and the first buyers appear. We see gondolas with cabins and the old tower of the Punta della Dogana, a little taller than it really was. By current standards the water level in the lagoon is extraordinarily low ...

13
Tombstone, Cloister of the Church of Saint Anthony in Padua

14
ASPVe, Parrocchia Santi Apostoli, Registro Battesimi no. 4, 1600-1608, p. 62, Franceschina Isabeta fia di Rafael Sadeler, 1603

15
ASPVe, Parrocchia Santi Apostoli, Registro dei Matrimoni 5, 1599-1609, marriage Isabeta da Fries, 1600

16
ASPVe, Parrocchia San Giovanni Crisostomo, Maestro de’ Matrimoni, 1595 sino 1769, p. 15, marriage Elena di Fries, 1602

17
ASPVe, Parrocchia San Giovanni Crisostomo, Maestro de’ Matrimoni, 1595 sino 1769, p. 32 v., marriage Perina Fries, 1610

18
ASPVe, Parrocchia San Giovanni Crisostomo, Maestro de’ Matrimoni, 1595 sino 1769, p.17 v., marriage Giulia de Fris, 1604

19
Dirck de Vries
Fish vendor