Canvas

anonymous

Portrait of Anna van den Bergh?

1600-1628

Countess Anna van den Bergh (1579-1630), daughter of count Willem van den Bergh and Mary of Nassau.

Count Willem van den Bergh and Mary of Nassau had sixteen children, including the later count Herman (portrait number 845) and countess Anna. The latter features in this portrait. Anna must have been quite a girl, as for a time she ran the entire household for her numerous brothers. Later, however, the brothers richly rewarded her for her efforts, building a castle for her in Limburg. The portrait comes from this castle, Annadael. The building is itself immortalised, in the view through the window next to the face of the woman after whom it is named. Anna looks out from this canvas as a true child of the Renaissance: she has herself painted as a cultivated woman (as is apparent from the writing materials on the table, she can even read and write) with an interest in numismatics (as we can see from the medals and cameos which lie on the table, which she is holding, and which adorn her dress and hat).

The garment that she is wearing, moreover, has an open neck, which before the beginning of the seventeenth century would have been fairly daring. Two striking attributes merit our attention here: the janus head on the table and the trumpet in the right upper corner. A janus head is a head with two faces, looking in opposite directions, often with one old and one young. It is a classical symbol of past and future, or a new beginning, and also of time in general. The trumpet here may indicate renown. Taken together, these symbols refer either to the passage of time, ’tempus fugit’ (the janus head), to transitory fortune (the coins and medals) or to fleeting fame (the trumpet). This suggests that this portrait has a ’vanitas’ significance. Vanitas refers to a type of still-life consisting of a collection of objects which symbolize the brevity of human life and the transience of earthly pleasures and achievements The lady portrayed wants to express how conscious she is of the vanity and transience of earthly existence and of earthly possessions. Such paintings were particularly popularly popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially in the Netherlands.