22

Paulus Bor (ca. 1600-1669)
The finding of Moses. Painted in the latter 1630s. Canvas, 132.5 x 115.5 cm.

Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv.nr.A 852. From the house of Constantijn Huygens, The Hague, 1874.

Bor was one of a small group of artists from Amersfoort, in Utrecht province, who enjoyed the favour of Frederik Hendrik thanks to the old friendship between the stadholder's secretary Constantijn Huygens and Joannes Brosterhuysen, who lived for a time on the estate of the most important of the Amersfoort group, Jacob van Campen. Van Campen was introduced to Huygens by Brosterhuysen in 1632, and soon became the stadholder's architect.

The painting style of the Amersfoorters was sophistication itself masquerading as simplicity. Brosterhuysen was a humanistic scholar, and his friends were all quite learned. Once, in 1645, sending Huygens a drawing he had made of the town of Amersfoort with the van Campen estate, he added a note saying 'I know that you do not make much of painters' dreams and whimseys, but cherish work done from life or drawn from the object itself Even in a biblical subject such as this, Bor tried to create an impression of that kind of directness. His tactic was to avoid stock figures and stereotypes, to work from local living models, to rethink his subjects rigourously and to reduce visible artifice to a minimum.

This painting comes from the house of Constantijn Huygens in The Hague, and was probably made for him. In 1827, and perhaps in Huygens's lifetime as well, it hung above the door of one of the smaller rooms, opposite an interior of the church of St. Mary, Utrecht, by Pieter Saenredam. Saenredam was a Haarlem friend of van Campen's, and it can be illuminating to look at his church paintings in the context of the artistic ideas of the Amersfoorters.

Worp 1911, pp. 379-380. Worp 1915, pp. 160-161. Bloch 1949. Lunsingh Scheurleer 1962, pp. 180-181.