A Brill Calendar: June 5

Few relics of a bygone age are as universally admired as a painting by Diego Rodríguez de Silva Velázquez (Seville, 1599 – Madrid, 1660).

The painting, officially called ‘The Surrender of Breda’, more evocatively known as ‘Las Lanzas’, produced by the artist and his work-shop around 1635.

It depicts a kneeling Justinus of Nassau – born out of wedlock in 1559, son of William of Orange and Eva Elinx – handing over the key of the City to the general of the Spanish army entering Breda June 5 1625 after a siege of nine months. The victor, Ambrogio de Filippo Spinola (Genoa, Italy 1569 – Castelnuovo Scrivia, Italy, 1630) tries to help Justinus gently back to his feat. Velázquez painted this master-piece, unique in his oeuvre, in 1635, ten years later, without ever having seen Breda, (a hotly contested stronghold during the Eighty-Years War) by using lifelike portraiture of the protagonists and cartographical detail to fire his genius.

Another son of William, Frederik Hendrik (1584 – 1647), a legitimate one, and youngest of his offspring, would eventually regain the historical Orange Residence in 1637. Justinus died on June 26 1631, a Leyden citizen since the end of the siege and a Leyden alumnus like his younger half-brothers. Like them he was a warrior and diplomat; raised, educated and trained in the retinue of his Sire.

Back to the painting. It is seldom that the spirit of a whole age is expressed so intimately; almost in spite of a canvas measuring ten by twelve feet. Violence and starvation are past; nothing gruesome is in sight; excepting perhaps wafts of smoke hovering over an endless landscape acting as background for two noblemen and their entourages, impeccably attired for a solemn occasion.