108171-DCJ 2010_s001-007:108171-DCJ 2010_s001-007 02/06/10 12.

17 Side 3

JOURNAL
OF
THE DAVID COLLECTION

Edited by

Kjeld von Folsach and Joachim Meyer

volume 3

Copenhagen 2010
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Fig. 1. Detail of The Darbar of Cornelis van den Bogaerde. The David Collection, 43/2008.
108171-DCJ 2010_s160-183:108171-DCJ 2010_s160-183 02/06/10 13.56 Side 161
Pomp Before Disgrace: A Dutchman Commissions Two
Golconda Miniatures on the Eve of the Mughal Conquest
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In October 2008, two very fine depictions of a
European man by an Indian artist were auctioned
from the estate of the French artist Raymond Subes
(figs. 1, 2, and 3). They were acquired by the gallery
of Francesca Galloway in London, where they under-
went a restoration. Commissioned to investigate the
miniatures for the gallery, the art historian Jerry
Losty concluded that the sitter/patron must have
been a Dutchman in the sultanate of Golconda – the
latter from the style of both paintings and the former
from the red, white, and blue flags in one of the
paintings.2 This conclusion generated some interest
among museums in The Netherlands, but the David
Collection in Denmark beat everyone to the minia-
tures, as a consequence of which they may currently
be admired in the museum’s wonderful new exhibi-
tion galleries in the context of a great number of
Indian and Persian miniatures. The following ques-
tion remains: who is the Dutchman who seems to
have commissioned these paintings of himself from a
Golconda artist?
Unfortunately, we have not been able to trace the
origin of the miniatures to before Raymond Subes
(1891-1970), who made his name in the applied arts
during the Art Deco period. There are references on
the World Wide Web to the Subes family archives,
but efforts to find them have been fruitless so far
(and even if they were successful, it would probably
be a very lengthy task to find a reference to the
acquisition of the miniatures by Subes). We therefore
have no lead in the provenance of the miniatures,
but the paintings themselves do provide various clues
that we may profitably combine with Dutch descrip-
tions and archival material from the period. Another
point of reference is a painting from the collection of
the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, for which the
patron and date can be established with great cer-
tainty (fig. 4). It was executed in late 1689 for the
161
1
Dutch ambassador Johannes Bacherus.3 That paint-
ing unites in one image both of the elements that we
find in our two paintings: on the one hand a stately
procession (fig. 3) and on the other a darbar, in
which a prominent person sits in state to receive “the
high and the common” – as the Persian phrase runs
(fig. 2).
But while the Tropenmuseum painting is done in
what Jerry Losty calls the “bazaar style” and the art
historian Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer has referred to
as “Golconde de commande” 4 – a style less refined
than that found at the court of Golconda proper and
meant for the export market – our paintings are
rather refined and approximate the Golconda court
style of the 1680s. This style was an expression of
Golconda court culture, which has been called
Islamicate, that is to say, was heavily influenced by
Muslim (and especially Persian) material and literary
traditions.5 The sultan and a large part of the elite of
the state were Muslim, but their interaction with the
various Hindu groups that made up the majority of
the population created the specific Golconda style.
An artist working in this Islamicate style of Golcon-
da did not therefore necessarily have to be a Muslim.
We know from their signatures that some painters at
the comparable but much larger Mughal court were
Hindus, but this feature is lacking on our minia-
tures. So while it is fitting that the miniatures now
form part of a collection of Islamic art, we can only
be sure that the painter was influenced by a certain
tradition of painting that was associated with the
Muslim elite.
Jerry Losty draws our attention to the following
influences on and parallels with our paintings. The
rows of beautifully detailed flowers behind the
balustrade in the darbar scene and across the bottom
of the painting in the processional scene are also
found across the bottom of the portrait of Sultan
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Abu’l-Hasan (r. 1672-1687) in San Diego6 and in a
painting of the same period in Dublin to which art
historians give the name Prince with Ladies in a
Garden, signed by Rahim Deccani.7 The brown land-
scape dotted with small trees in the darbar scene is
also found in the landscape of the former picture.
The carpet that seats the Sultans of the Adil Shahi
Dynasty, painted at the court of the neighbouring
sultanate of Bijapur and now in New York,8 has the
same borders as both floor spreads in our darbar
scene. The stacked-up rocks with their spiky trees in
the processional scene closely resemble those seen in
the background of the same painting. These spiky
trees are also found in the background of the portrait
of Abu’l-Hasan referred to above. The profile and
outline of our short-backed horse are also found in
Saint Shah Raju on Horseback of 1670-1680, in a pri-
vate collection.9 Many of these features are indicative
of the influence of Bijapur court painting that was
found in Golconda painting following the accession
of Abu’l-Hasan in 1672, a fact to which the art histo-
rian Mark Zebrowski has drawn attention.10 How-
ever, the delicate depictions of buffaloes, sheep, and
their herdsmen in the background of our procession
painting owe much to similar effects in imperial
Mughal painting of the Shah Jahan period, indicative
of the pervasive influence from the north at this
time.
Apart from the stylistic elements, we may use the
features of the Dutchman’s dress, which the painter
seems to have rendered with great care, as a guide.
Fashion in Europe was dictated by the court of Louis
XIV and turned over quickly. Europeans in India fol-
lowed this fashion with a few years’ delay and with
the use of some local elements. The long coat, or jus-
taucorps, that the gentleman is wearing points to a
date between the late 1670s and the late 1680s. The
large upturned sleeves, a feature of the early 1680s,
reveal the Indian chintz lining of his justaucorps, as
well as the European white lace shirt underneath.
His breeches are hidden under the justaucorps in the
Fig. 2. The Darbar of Cornelis van den Bogaerde, c. 1687.
Opaque watercolour, gold, and silver on paper, 16.8 × 22.8
cm. The David Collection, 43/2008.
163
procession painting, but in the darbar painting his
right knee and left thigh are exposed and reveal that
the material is elegantly coordinated with the lining
of the justaucorps. His tight-fitting, white high-
heeled shoes (rather than boots) without ribbons also
seem to date the dress style to the early to mid-
1680s.11 Jerry Losty draws attention to the way the
cravat is fastened, a style that went out of fashion in
1682, after which it was fastened in a bow tie by the
fashionable. We will therefore have to look for our
Dutchman somewhere between the late 1670s, if he
was an early adaptor and somehow managed to get
the latest fashion from Europe, and the late 1680s,
where he would be a bit outdated. The latter would
not be surprising in the case of someone who had
not been to Europe in years or had never even been
there.
This timeframe coincides precisely with that in
which, as Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer has suggested,
one or more Dutchmen in Golconda liaised with
painters around the court in order to set up a small
export trade in series of miniature portraits of the
politically important people of the Deccan and the
Mughal Empire.12 These portrait series can be dated
quite precisely by combining the facts about the cur-
rent position of the depicted persons given in the
Dutch and Persian captions found with many of
these portraits. While Lunsingh Scheurleer initially
suggested a date in the mid-1680s for all these series,
a very close reading of the captions along with the
political history of the period reveals that some of
them date to around 1680 or even earlier. The series
that is now in the Rijksmuseum, for instance, can be
dated to late 1677.13 This goes to show that there was
a history of contacts between the Dutch and painters
around the court of Golconda that lasted about a
decade. It is very likely that those contacts had some-
thing to do with the fact that from the early 1660s,
the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-
indische Compagnie – VOC) established a factory in
the capital of the sultanate, Hyderabad. This factory
gradually gained in importance as an office repre-
senting the trading interests of the other VOC facto-
ries in the Golconda sultanate, most of which were
located on the coast.
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The Procession and the Darbar
As was already noted, we have a very good reference
point in the large painting on cloth made for the
Dutch ambassador Johannes Bacherus in 1689 (fig.
4). While Bacherus’s embassy was not to the Golcon-
da court but to the Mughal imperial camp after the
conquest of Golconda that had taken place two years
before, the painting was likely executed by painters
formerly of Golconda.14 Comparable elements in the
Bacherus painting and our paintings are the stately
entourage and noble appurtenances. The entourage
of Bacherus is much larger, but both Dutchman have
VOC “flags of pomp” 15 carried before them (figs. 3
and 5). The designs of the flags vary a bit, but they
share the horizontal red, white, and blue bands of
the Dutch flag and a medallion indicating allegiance
to the VOC, in our case a gold-embroidered ship
with five diminutive Dutch/VOC flags flying atop.
Both men also have a set of retainers. As Jerry Losty
points out, the dress of some of the soldiers in front
of our Dutchman appears to be north Indian, in
contrast to that of the majority of the retainers,
whose dress style is that of the Deccan, or south-
central India, where Golconda itself was located. In
both groups we see both Hindus and Muslims, with
their robes tied to the left and right, respectively. The
two figures in the back of the front group, with a
sword and a stick over their shoulders, stand out as
Rajputs, with their particular headdress, curved
moustache, and sideburns. Rajputs were a soldiering
group with its origin in Rajputana in north India. So
just like Bacherus’s soldier corps, this one too was
made up of a mix of “Rajput, Muslim, and Hindu”
soldiers – as the accounts of the Bacherus embassy
put it.16 Because of the continual warfare between
the Mughal Empire and the Deccan sultanates as
well as the Maratha king Shivaji, there were appar-
ently some numbers of north Indian soldiers avail-
able on the job market in the Deccan.
Fig. 3. The Procession of Cornelis van den Bogaerde, c. 1687.
Opaque watercolour, gold, and silver on paper, 20.2 ×
26.2 cm. The David Collection, 42/2008.
165
Other commonalities concern the ways in which
both men have adapted to the Indian environment,
or refrained from adapting. Both wear European
dress (in 1678, Dutch VOC employees were forbid-
den from wearing “Moorish” dress on official occa-
sions) and keep dogs, also a peculiarly European
habit (figs. 3 and 6). On the other hand, both Bache-
rus and our Dutchman sport a small moustache,
something that was not fashionable in Europe, but
was almost indispensable in India. Both Bacherus
and our Dutchman are also sitting on the ground
cross-legged (unfortunately, the restoration has re-
shaped the curve of our Dutchman’s right knee),17 on
both a sozani, or quilted cotton spread, and a carpet
below it. Both men are also being fanned with a
peacock-feather fan, a very important status symbol
in India (figs. 1, 2, and 6).18
The painter seems to have taken great care in ren-
dering the faces of the people in our darbar painting,
especially the two with features that would have been
quite unfamiliar to him: the European central figure
and his Southeast Asian attendant (fig. 1). The Euro-
pean man’s pale cheeks and bright grey eyes look
rather young, although two fine lines below his eyes
and a thin pucker indicate the first signs of aging.
He seems to be sporting his own black hair rather
than a periwig, for his hair has none of the elaborate
curling that was common to wigs and is well depict-
ed by the Indian painter on the head of Bacherus in
the Tropenmuseum painting (figs. 5 and 6). His
Southeast Asian attendant also looks youngish, but,
with a black streak below his eyes, he too is no
longer a boy. The painter has taken great care to ren-
der the frizziness of his hair, punctuating it with tiny
white dots in the way that the Roman sculptors of
late antiquity made small holes in marble hair to
make it look curly. His features and frizzy hair would
seem to locate him in the eastern Indonesian archi-
pelago, perhaps the Moluccas, whence some number
of slaves intermittently came onto the slave market
in the VOC capital of Batavia through the hands of
Sulawesian raiders.19
In the darbar painting, two people are depicted
slightly larger that the others, the European man and
the man in the middle of the row of three darbar
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166 gijs kruijtzer

Fig. 4. The Encampment of Johannes

Bacherus, 1689. Painting on cloth,
240 × 103 cm. Tropenmuseum,
Amsterdam, A 9584.
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Fig. 5. Detail of fig. 4: Bacherus riding in a palanquin in a splendid procession.
guests (fig. 2). He is, as we can see from the fact that
his jama robe is tied to the left, a Hindu. More
specifically, he would be a Shaiva, or devotee of
Shiva, as shown by the red dot and ochre horizontal
smear on his forehead. He could be a merchant or
an official from the Golconda court, at which
Brahmins played a large role between 1674 and 1687,
when the sultanate fell to the Mughals. This man
seems to be the one who does the talking. The two
167
other men seem to be of his party because they are
sitting by his side facing in the same direction as he
is, which makes for the striking absence of a transla-
tor or broker who would have been sitting by the
side of the Dutchman or off to the side between the
two parties. This we know from the Bacherus paint-
ing, where the translator and broker are prominently
present in Bacherus’s seating arrangements, sitting to
the side of his seat with one ear towards him and the
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168 gijs kruijtzer

Fig. 6. Detail of fig. 4: Bacherus sitting in noble style in his camp garden, with his pageboys by his sides,
his north Indian broker and Dutch second in front, and three Indian attendants in back.

other towards prospective guests (figs. 6 and 7). The
man to the right of the important Indian in our
painting is a Muslim, to judge by his right-tied jama,
the style of his beard, and his unpierced ears. The
person to the left of the important Indian is also a
Shaiva, though of a slightly different denomination,
because his horizontal forehead mark has a more
defined outline and a different colour. In his right
hand he holds a pan, or betel leaf wrapped around
areca nut and lime, wrapped in paper. A spittoon
made of silver (now black through oxidation of the
silver paint) stands at the ready to catch the chewed
108171-DCJ 2010_s160-183:108171-DCJ 2010_s160-183 02/06/10 13.57 Side 169
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Fig. 7. Detail of fig. 4: Bacherus’s audience tent, with the “Persian writer” and the translator and his aide sitting at the side
of the seat reserved for the ambassador himself.
remains, although pan was generally given at the
time of parting – so perhaps this person has just
been given leave, at which time he would also have
received some rosewater from the rosewater sprinkler
standing nearby him.
The meeting between these three Indians and our
Dutchman could be located in a garden belonging to
the VOC, for most if not all of its factories in the
Golconda sultanate had a garden outside the town or
village where the factory was located (at least in
Hyderabad, Nagulvancha, and Masulipatnam).
169
These gardens were used for leisure and to receive
people, and perhaps this is also what we see in the
procession painting behind the front soldiers, al-
though that walled garden looks rather more like an
orchard than a pleasure garden. In any case, the set-
ting of the darbar is clearly defined as Dutch by the
red, white, and blue ribbons wound around the poles
of the canopy in the same way as around the flag-
poles in the procession painting. This detail inciden-
tally also shows that the painter made a great effort
to render an actual setting as precisely as possible or,
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170
alternatively, that he closely discussed such symbolic
elements with the Dutch patron, for only a Dutch-
man or someone very familiar with Dutch patriotism
could have come up with the idea of having red,
white, and blue windings around the poles. This
colour scheme is even extended into the row of flow-
ers behind the group in the darbar scene, where
blue-purple irises alternate with white daisies and red
poppies.
Identifying the Sitter/Patron
There are thus three main leads for the identification
of the sitter and patron of the paintings. First, the
style of the paintings shows that he must be situated
in the vicinity of the court of the Golconda sul-
tanate. Second, the fashion of his dress clearly dates
the painting to around 1680. And third, the flags car-
ried before him in one miniature indicate that the
sitter must have had a semi-diplomatic status as a
representative of the VOC. There are some five can-
didates who at first glance seem to fit these criteria.
We shall review them individually, ending with the
one I think is the most likely candidate. In the
course of the review of these characters, I also hope
to provide some insight into Dutch material culture
in the Indies and the cultural interactions between
the Dutchmen in Golconda and the Golconda elite
from which these miniatures sprang.
The first person that comes to mind is Daniel
Havart (1650-1724), who most clearly exemplifies the
close interaction between the Dutch and the Islam-
icate culture – or more precisely, Indo-Persian court
culture – in Hyderabad. Daniel Havart was stationed
at the Hyderabad factory from around 1673 to
around 1680 and married a Dutch woman who had
grown up there. Havart emphasised the need for the
factory in Hyderabad to be surrounded by pomp and
circumstance, and he regretted very much the succes-
sive economisations on the attendant staff of the fac-
tory in the late 1670s and again in the late 1680s. He
believed strongly that the Company would not be
able to get anything done without a shining presence
in Hyderabad. Some VOC superiors were not com-
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pletely deaf to such arguments from Havart and oth-
ers in Hyderabad and sufficiently recognised the rep-
resentative function of this factory in the capital of
the sultanate. Even directly after the severe budget
cuts of 1678, a number of Indian soldiers remained
that the factors were allowed to use for staat-houderye
– Havart’s word for pomp and circumstance. Being a
mere cashier, however, he himself was probably not
high enough in the hierarchy of the factory to arro-
gate the kind of pomp and flag-flying that the pro-
cession miniature shows.20
Havart did leave us a number of writings that
give a vivid picture of life in Hyderabad and the
other Dutch factories on the Coromandel Coast. His
Op- en Ondergang van Coromandel (Rise and Fall of
Coromandel) contains short biographies of a great
number of people he encountered, including Gol-
conda courtiers, but mostly VOC employees. Most
vivid are his portraits of the staff of the factories at
which he himself was stationed, to wit Hyderabad,
Masulipatnam (the harbour of the Golconda sul-
tanate), and Nagulvancha, midway between the two
(fig. 11). Havart freely passed judgement on the char-
acter of the VOC employees in those places, who
were, incidentally, not all Dutch. One of the em-
ployees stationed in Hyderabad was a person hailing
from Flensburg in Denmark by the name of Jan de
Beer – on whose homosexuality Havart frowned.21
What Havart’s writings also show us is the extent to
which some of the Dutchmen in Hyderabad partici-
pated in the Indo-Persian culture of the court. His
Persiaansche Secretaris (Persian Secretary) and transla-
tion of the Persian poet Sa(adi’s Bustan as Den Per-
siaansen Boogaard (The Persian Orchard), are clear
examples.22 Apparently Dutchmen vied with each
other as to who had the best Persian skills. Havart
and Cornelis van der Murter (a Dutchman living in
Golconda who was not attached to the VOC) felt
that they had to concede the honour to Herbert de
Jager, a great scholar who found himself in the serv-
ice of the VOC.23 Havart’s works show that there
were many Dutchmen who were interested in the
kind of Indian elite culture that the two David
Collection miniatures exemplify.
Pre-eminent among them was the aforementioned
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Herbert de Jager (1636/1637-1694), whom we will
consider our second candidate. Between 1669 and
1680, he was basically stationed in Pulicat, within the
realm of Golconda but somewhat remote from Hy-
derabad, but was sent on various missions through-
out the years. He corresponded with scholars in
Europe and wrote short treatises on such diverse top-
ics as botany, Hinduism, and the river Ganges.24 For
his description of the court of Golconda, Havart
drew on a description of the court of Persia by
Herbert de Jager.25 We know that after De Jager’s
death in Batavia, two chests full of his own writings
as well as his collection of manuscripts and printed
books were sent back to The Netherlands. The histo-
rian Marion Peters suggests that while the chests
stood in the VOC offices in Batavia and Amsterdam,
they were slowly plundered by manuscript collec-
tors.26 Havart in any case seems to have managed to
get his hands on the aforementioned description of
the Persian court that De Jager would have complet-
ed during his stay there during the years 1685-1687,
or just after Havart had returned to The Nether-
lands. “Oh, where are the important dispatches
belonging to Herbert de Jager?” wrote the 19th-
century national archivist P. A. Leupe on the only
part of the dispatches that remains in the National
Archives today, namely the label of one of the
boxes.27 Our two miniatures could easily have been
among the papers dispersed from the chests.
Moreover, De Jager did attain the kind of diplo-
matic status shown off in the miniatures. In 1677 he
went on a mission to the Maratha conqueror Shivaji.
Having passed through Hyderabad in 1676, Shivaji
conquered the area south of the Golconda sultanate
and was on his way back to his homelands in the
western Deccan when De Jager caught up with him
in August 1677, staying in the royal camp until
September. On De Jager’s first visit, he was allowed
to take the VOC flags he had brought, probably sim-
ilar to the ones in the procession painting (fig. 3),
right up to Shivaji’s tent. In his reports he, like
Havart, emphasised the need for pomp and circum-
stance as a means to get one’s message across in
India. While staying in Shivaji’s camp, De Jager, his
Dutch assistant, and their Indian attendants did on
171
occasion make a tour of the camp accompanied by
drumbeat and trumpet-blowing, to remind the
important people of their pressing business, which
they deemed was progressing at too slow a pace.
Such a tour may have looked like the procession in
our painting, but for the absence of drums and
trumpets.28 In any case, we may conclude that the
procession was a diplomatic tool to which VOC rep-
resentatives regularly took recourse.
We might further speculate that during his
sojourn in Hyderabad, Shivaji could have attracted
some court painters to his own service. A number of
portraits of Shivaji survive in the Golconda minia-
ture albums with Dutch captions. As was already
noted, one of these albums dates to late 1677, just
after De Jager passed through the royal camp of
Shivaji. Yet we have no more concrete evidence to
establish a link between De Jager and the David
Collection paintings and there are probably more
things that weigh against him. The fashion of his
dress would be somewhat forward for 1677, and it
must be noted that De Jager was about forty years
old when he undertook his expedition to Shivaji,29
while the sitter of the paintings looks slightly
younger, perhaps in his thirties.
This argument concerning the age of the sitter
also weighs against Laurens Pit (1643-1700), whom
Jerry Losty suggests was the patron of the paint-
ings.30 Pit went on a grand embassy to the Golconda
court in March and April 1686 in order to redress
some grievances that the VOC held against the min-
isters of that state. But at the time of his embassy, Pit
was 42 or 43 years of age. Moreover, his entourage
was much grander than what we see depicted in the
procession painting. When Pit entered Golconda in
a palanquin, he was accompanied by a sergeant and a
trumpeter on horseback, 14 European soldiers,
camels with drums, and the VOC “flags of pomp”
hoisted on elephants.31 All of these elements except
the flags are conspicuously absent from the proces-
sion painting in the David Collection (fig. 3). Had
Pit had his portrait done, it would have looked
much more like the procession in the painting that
was made for Johannes Bacherus in 1689 (fig. 5).
Also absent from the painting is the translator Narsa,
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172
who played an important role in Pit’s embassy to the
Golconda court, even though Pit probably knew a
local language, Telugu, having been born in Pulicat
and having spent part of his childhood there.32
Another element in the paintings that one might
want to relate to Pit must also be rejected as evidence
for his candidacy. In the darbar painting, the fanner
behind the Dutchman is holding a branch with
fruits (fig. 1), and the family coat of arms of the Pits
displays a well, sometimes covered by two branches.
The branches in that coat of arms, however, have no
fruits. Besides, the well is really the significant ele-
ment in the coat of arms (pit or put meaning well).
While in the silver medallion struck on the occasion
of the silver wedding anniversary of Pit’s parents the
branches can be seen over a triangular shape shield-
ing the well, the coat of arms on the grave of Pit’s
baby sister Elisabeth in Pulicat appear to have no
branches at all, only the triangle.33 We will reach a
more satisfactory explanation for the enigmatic
branch of the darbar painting below.
It therefore seems that we must search for our sit-
ter closer to the court in Hyderabad, among the
chiefs of the inland factories who managed to arro-
gate to themselves a considerable status, remote as
they were from the larger crowd of VOC personnel
on the Coromandel Coast. One element in the dar-
bar painting that points in this direction is the ledger
lying beside the silver writing set that is more an
attribute of a trader than of an envoy or ambassador.
In particular we are thinking of the two chief factors
who successively manned the Hyderabad factory in
the mid-1680s, Michiel Janszoon and Cornelis van
den Bogaerde. Both lived in a grand style and were
at the end of their tenure accused of corruption and
letting costs spiral out of control. The expenditures
on Indian personnel, for instance, which had been
cut in 1678, were back at the pre-1678 level by the
end of Janszoon’s tenure and reached an all-time
high during Van den Bogaerde’s tenure (after which
they were cut again).34 By rubbing shoulders with
the glamorous Islamicate elite of Hyderabad, both
men seem to have acquired a taste for the kind of
pomp that Havart deemed necessary and we see in
our paintings.
gijs kruijtzer
Of these two candidates, Michiel Janszoon (1651-
1712), who was the chief of the Dutch factory in
Hyderabad from January 1683 till April 1686, seems
to have lived in the grandest style. In addition he
was “a fresh young man” according to Havart, and
spoke a local language, namely Telugu, fluently,
which fits our profile. His mastery of Telugu, for
instance, allowed Janszoon to have a private conver-
sation with the Golconda minister Akkanna once.
The scene would have looked somewhat like our
darbar painting, but in reverse, Akkanna reclining on
the pillows fanned by his fanner (the only other per-
son present at the meeting) and Janszoon sitting in
attendance and receiving pan at his dismissal.35 From
his predecessor, Jan van Nijendaal, Janszoon and his
second at the factory inherited a fraudulent scheme
that involved supplying the Mughals with elephants
ostensibly under the Company seal, but for the
Hyderabad factors’ private profit. The scheme went
badly wrong and ended up costing the Company
over a million guilders, but before its discovery at the
end of Pit’s embassy, Janszoon was able to live in a
grand style. Havart extenuates the scandal that cen-
tred on his father-in-law Jan van Nijendaal and de-
fends Janszoon, saying that he “was not desirous to
gather treasures, [since] he holds such things in low
esteem”. But Havart also somewhat contradictorily
notes that Janszoon and his second, Theunis Car-
stensz, used to go around Hyderabad “well-dressed,
sitting in palanquins, surrounded by a large flurry of
attendants, and adored like gods by their inferiors”.36
Moreover, Janszoon owned quite a few of the
things we see in the paintings. At his arrest on the
charge of illicit trade, most of his goods were im-
pounded, including his private garden37 outside
Hyderabad and:
1 palanquin inlaid with ivory and tortoise shell, its
bamboo handles plated with silver
1 set of silver horse trappings38
In the procession painting we do indeed see elabo-
rate silver trappings on the riding horse, and the
prominent presence of a garden in both paintings
was already noted. After his arrest, Janszoon man-
aged to hold on to the following items until he
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gijs kruijtzer 173

reached Pulicat, where they were also impounded
(except for half of item no. 3):
145 smooth golden buttons
44 ditto smaller
2 pairs of golden trouser buttons, of which he was
allowed to keep one pair
1 silver betel box
1 ditto spittoon
1 sword with gold brace and plating and ivory handle
1 golden scabbard for the same, gold-plated
1 rapier with golden handle, hook and brace
1 handgun gilded with copper [sic]
2 pistols
2 pocket pistols39

The enormous number of golden buttons that is list-

ed here is very prominently present in the paintings
in the form of gold-painted rehaussé,40 and so are
the silver spittoon and a richly decorated sword
(although the one in the darbar painting has a gold-
en handle and an iron brace).
There is still one more item we see in the darbar
painting that the archives mention in connection
with Janszoon. The instruction given to Janszoon at
the start of his tenure as chief carefully laid down all
the skills of diplomacy he was to deploy. “If at your
approach to Golconda [i.e. Hyderabad] or your first
appearance there, servants of the grandees come to
greet you in the name of their masters, you shall
have them properly thanked and greeted in return,
recommending yourself to their good favours and
giving leave [to the servants of the grandees] with Fig. 8. Obverse of a Keicho gold koban. Until 1695, kobans of
betel and rosewater.” While this passage brings to the type first minted during the Keicho period (1596-1615)
mind the presence of pan and rosewater in the dar- continued to be circulated by the Japanese government.
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, HCR6642.
bar painting, the instruction also lists the object that
the sitter is holding in his right hand. It is a koban,
the most important Japanese gold coin of the age, audience: 15, 20, and 25, respectively. Apparently the
which was oval and relatively large for a coin (figs. 1 VOC factors of Hyderabad were given a stock of
and 8), although the word koban means “small for- these kobans, because they were a useful diplomatic
mat” (that in comparison to the oban). The instruc- tool. The koban could function as both nadhr, the
tion to Janszoon laid down how many kobans he was gift of coin in recognition of a superior, or as tohfa,
to send to Akkanna and his brother the prime minis- the gift of a precious rarity, because it had interesting
ter Madanna upon his arrival, and how many he was exotic and artfully crafted characters on it (not visi-
to give to Madanna if the latter were to request an ble in our painting).41
108171-DCJ 2010_s160-183:108171-DCJ 2010_s160-183 02/06/10 13.57 Side 174
174
The Most Probable Patron
However, Cornelis van den Bogaerde (?-?) is in an
even better position to be identified as the patron of
the painting than Janszoon, for the puzzling branch
with apples or oranges in the left hand of the Indo-
nesian fanner remains to be explained. It is so un-
usual that it cannot but have some special signifi-
cance related to the patron. After corresponding with
the genealogist Benjamin Wesseling and the historian
Marion Peters, it dawned on me that the only
Dutchman in Golconda whose name had anything
to do with fruit trees was Cornelis van den Bogaerde
– bogaerd meaning orchard in early modern Dutch.
This would also add an extra dimension to the
walled orchard that is so prominent in the procession
painting. Such plays on the meaning of surnames
were very common among the Dutch in the early
modern period. As Marion Peters notes, a number of
Dutchman on the Coromandel Coast invented
“canting arms”, that is coats of arms that visually
allude to the meaning of the family name.42 The coat
of arms of the Pit family with its pit, or well, dis-
cussed above is a case in point. Moreover, the refer-
ences in our paintings would not be the only artistic
references to the Van den Bogaerde name. In the
mid-18th century, Philip Zweerts composed a poem
in praise of Jasper van den Bogaerde, who had been
governor of Ternate in the Moluccas a century earlier
and was most probably either Cornelis’ father or his
uncle. The last two lines of the poem read, “O Com-
pany, if only you saw many such orchards bloom/
Your repute, power, and wealth would boom.” 43 This
goes to show that people at the time were well aware
of the original meaning of this surname.
Cornelis van den Bogaerde possessed the semi-
diplomatic status that came with the position of
chief factor of Hyderabad. The instruction drawn up
by Laurens Pit at the start of Van den Bogaerde’s
tenure in December 1686 clearly defined both aspects
of his function, stating that he was to reside in Hyd-
erabad “as chief over the honourable Company’s
trade and all other business with the court, etcetera”.
He was given a large stock of kobans with precise
instructions for their disposal. He was to present
gijs kruijtzer
larger quantities than Janszoon on his expected ini-
tial audiences with the sultan and grandees because
of the special circumstances of his appointment (to
which we will come below). In sum, he was to give
25 kobans on a silver dish to Mir Husaini Beg, who
had just been made the prime minister and who was
to introduce Van den Bogaerde to the sultan. To the
latter he was to give 50 kobans on a golden dish. He
was also to give 20 kobans on a silver dish to Mu-
hammad (Ali Beg as the newly appointed governor of
the Pulicat region. Further, he was to request an
audience with two of the formerly most important
ministers, I(timad Rao and Persupati Venkatadri,
who belonged to the Brahmin faction at the court
(currently at a low) and to whom he also was to
present 20 kobans on a silver dish each. Two days
after his arrival, Van den Bogaerde was indeed
received by the sultan, with whom he had a friendly
conversation and who dispatched him with the usual
tashrifs (robes of honour).44
Moreover, during his long years of service in
Gujarat, Van den Bogaerde had learned to speak
fluent “Hindustani”, that is the Urdu of north India.
He could therefore have spoken to the Indians in the
darbar painting without an interpreter because the
Urdu of the Deccan was close enough to the Urdu of
north India and similarly widely used as a language
of the market. It was precisely for his language skills
that Pit had appointed him as the second person on
his mission to Hyderabad earlier in 1686. According
to what Havart had heard about Van den Bogaerde
(for he never met him), he was “a good man inside,
without pretence, openhearted, who understands
well the business of the Company in the Moorish
[i.e. Muslim-ruled] regions, as well as the character
of that people [i.e. Muslims]”. In other words, some-
one who could have established contact with the
court painters.45
Van den Bogaerde is also the most likely of our
candidates to have had an Indonesian servant, since
he had just returned to India from a stay in Batavia
and the Moluccas.46 Moreover, Van den Bogaerde
had himself been born in Ternate on the Moluccan
island of Halmaheira.47 So he could either have pro-
cured the Indonesian servant during his recent stay
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gijs kruijtzer 175

Fig. 9. Detail of fig. 4: Part of Bacherus’s entourage, including armed retainers and a Dutchman receiving a merchant or emis-
sary, seconded by an African pageboy.

at Batavia or have brought him from his parental employees monthly wage p.p.
home. Unfortunately, these personal servants rarely 1 translator who is not in service 5 hons
show up in the VOC archives because their expenses
were paid from the purse of their master, not from 1 translator who is in service 4 hons
VOC funds. The two South or Southeast Asian per- 2 message-bearers 2 hons
sonal servants who attend to Bacherus in a manner 1 warehouse attendant 1 hon, 3 large fanams
similar to that seen in our darbar painting (figs. 6
and 2) only almost accidentally showed up because 1 tent-erecter 1¼ hons
Bacherus had their justaucorps paid for from the 3 toorsiers [?] 1¼ hons
Company coffers. The other personal servant we see 39 peons 1¼ hons
in the Bacherus painting, an African boy attending
an unidentified Dutchman in a scene reminiscent of 2 flag-bearers ?
our darbar, has so far not turned up from the 1 chief mason 2 hons
archives (fig. 9).48
1 carpenter ?
We also know that Van den Bogaerde, his second
Nicolaas Cramfer, and the aforementioned Flens-
burger Jan de Beer, who was the cashier at the time, Of these people, the two flag-bearers are of course
kept a large Indian staff at the factory at the Com- prominently present in the procession painting. The
pany’s expense, for which extravagance they were tent-erecter could have erected the canopy we see in
later berated. From that later evaluation we can the darbar painting. I have not been able to place the
reconstruct part of their entourage and its monthly Indo-Dutch word toorsier, but I suspect that it refers
cost in gold hons and fanams: to armed retainers, who are not otherwise listed
108171-DCJ 2010_s160-183:108171-DCJ 2010_s160-183 03/06/10 8.59 Side 176
176
(unless some of the peons doubled as soldiers). This
would also match with the procession painting,
where we see three sword-bearing men at the front
behind the flag-bearers (fig. 3).49
At this point I would also like to draw attention
to an intriguing detail in the procession miniature: a
number of birds are flying in the sky above, and a
bird of prey is attacking a crane almost above our
Dutchman (fig. 10). This symbolism of fighting ani-
mals is quite generic in Deccan art, but was generally
invoked in the context of conflict and war, as I have
argued elsewhere.50 In other words, the painter seems
to suggest that war is looming on the horizon. This
fits the context of Van den Bogaerde’s stay in Hy-
derabad, over which the war between Golconda and
the VOC of 1686 cast a large shadow. This war had
been started by the VOC because Laurens Pit had
felt compelled to go to war after he had returned
from Hyderabad with his demands unsatisfied, even
though in the meantime he had found out that the
financial losses for which he sought reparation were
caused not by Golconda ministers but by Company
employees (the above mentioned Van Nijendaal,
Janszoon, and Janszoon’s second). The war lasted
through the summer of 1686 and consisted in the
VOC occupation of the island in front of Golconda’s
harbour, Masulipatnam.51 The declaration of war
against Golconda shows how important keeping up
the honour of the Company had become to the
Dutch. The only real reason for the war was, accord-
ing to the VOC council in Pulicat, “to maintain the
Company’s wounded respect”.52 This is precisely
what our Dutchman seems to be doing in the paint-
ings: maintaining his own status and that of the
Company.
All things considered, Van den Bogaerde is our
most likely candidate. Especially the presence of the
Indonesian servant, the fruit branch, and the war
symbolism accord better with what we know of him
from the archives than with what we know of the
other candidates. But what about his age at the time
he was in Hyderabad? I have not been able to find
out his date of birth, but we can make the following
calculation on the basis of what we find in the VOC
general muster rolls. Van den Bogaerde was born in
gijs kruijtzer
Fig. 10. Detail of fig. 3: A bird of prey attacking a crane in
the sky above the procession.
Ternate, joined VOC service in 1668, and came out
to the Indies from The Netherlands on the ship
Sparendam for the VOC chamber Delft.53 In view of
these facts and traditional Dutch naming patterns, it
seems likely that he was the son of either one of the
brothers Jasper (1604-1668) or Balthasar (1605-?),
who were born in Amsterdam as the sons of Cornelis
van den Bogaerde. Both of these brothers were pres-
ent in Ternate around 1650, the former as the VOC
governor. Cornelis junior could have been taken
along by Jasper when the latter sailed from Batavia
to The Netherlands in December 1655, which would
explain why he was born in Ternate but joined the
VOC from Delft in The Netherlands.54 Being from
an “Indian” family, he would have been likely to join
the VOC at an early age, say between 15 (like Lau-
rens Pit, who was hired a decade earlier)55 and 18. In
the latter case, he would have been around 37 at the
time the paintings must have been done in about
1687 (see below); in the former case, he would have
been 34. Both calculations accord well with our
hunch that the sitter should be in his thirties.
The Indian Relations of the Patron
and the Twilight of Golconda
Having established Van den Bogaerde as our most
likely candidate, we can move on to identify the
three Indians visiting him under his garden canopy
108171-DCJ 2010_s160-183:108171-DCJ 2010_s160-183 03/06/10 9.01 Side 177
gijs kruijtzer
(fig. 1). In his instruction to Van den Bogaerde, Lau-
rens Pit noted that he was to form a group or “com-
pany” of three merchants with whom the VOC was
to conduct its trade in Hyderabad. Appointing one
or more “company merchants” at a factory was a
common practice among the European companies
operating in India, and it was also very common for
Indian merchants to team up for certain ventures. In
this case, Laurens Pit deemed the formation of a
group necessary because he found that one of the
decisive factors in the disastrous turn of events of the
past years had been the dependence on a single
Company merchant by Van Nijendaal and Janszoon.
“To forestall any further bankruptcies”, the three
merchants were to be each other’s guarantors. The
three merchants Pit had in mind, and who had
already more or less intimated their willingness, were
Mohan Das Virji, Nagosa, and Chand Khan. Mohan
Das Virji was “well known as a very opulent mer-
chant” and a Baniya, that is, he belonged to a caste
of merchants who traced their origins to Gujarat in
northwest India. Chand Khan was – we may assume
from the title Khan – a Muslim and also reasonably
wealthy. The name Nagosa indicates two things.
First, that the bearer was likely to be a devotee of
Shiva, whose attribute is the nag, or snake. Second,
that he was a merchant, because the suffix sa is short
for sahu or sadhu, meaning well-intentioned, trust-
worthy, truthful, or revered. It was typically used by
mercantile groups, who were, after all, in the busi-
ness of trust. Nagosa was reasonably wealthy, but less
so than Chand Khan.56
Returning to the darbar painting, we may specu-
late that the person in the middle doing all the talk-
ing is the powerful merchant Mohan Das Virji, while
the two less-opulent merchants sat by his sides.
Being a Baniya, Mohan Das would have spoken the
language of the market of Hindustan or north India,
which Van den Bogaerde also spoke, and he may
have belonged to the Shaiva section of the Baniyas,
which would explain the mark on his forehead that
seems to be that of a Shiva-devotee.57 The other
Shaiva person, to his left, would be the merchant
Nagosa. He too was conversant with the Hindi or
Hindustani of the north, as evidenced by his use of
177
the Devanagari script for his signature on a petition
to Bacherus.58 The Muslim person to his right would
be Chand Khan, who would have spoken the Urdu
of the Deccan. Again it must be stressed that Hindi,
Hindustani, Urdu, and Deccani Urdu were not so
much different languages as different aspects of the
same language. The presence of the trade ledger
beside Van den Bogaerde confirms that we are wit-
ness to a commercial rather than a diplomatic meet-
ing.
If our identification of the central people in the
darbar painting with Van den Bogaerde, Mohan Das
Virji, Nagosa, and Chand Khan is correct – and it
does seem to furnish the best match between the
visual evidence and the archival material – the paint-
ings must have been made between Van den Bo-
gaerde’s arrival in Hyderabad on December 26, 1686,
and Mohan Das’s demise on the evening of October
2, 1687.59 From the dispatches of the Hyderabad fac-
tory over this period, most of which seem to have
survived, we know that there were very intensive
contacts between the three Hyderabadi merchants
and Van den Bogaerde throughout this timeframe.
From mid-February onwards, however, the contacts
became less about trade and more about complex
financial transactions occasioned by the advent of the
imperial army.60
On February 8, 1687, the Mughal emperor Aur-
angzeb (r. 1658-1707) came to camp outside Hyde-
rabad to force the sultanate to its knees (fig. 11). The
sultan withdrew into the fortress of Golconda, but
the adjacent city of Hyderabad lay exposed, so upon
Aurangzeb’s arrival, his kotwal (constable) appeared
to announce at drumbeat that the city had been
taken over but that business was to go on as usual.
In the course of the eight-month-long siege of the
fortress, however, famine and pestilence struck. The
Mughals blamed this on the drought that occurred
in the region and on the Marathas who cut off the
supply lines, but others blamed it all on the Mug-
hals. Some in the Mughal camp apparently likened
the calamities to the story of the seven plagues of
Egypt as found in the Bible. Trade ground to a tem-
porary halt. The satirical chronicler of the siege of
Golconda, Ni(mat Khan (Ali, put it thus: “The mer-
108171-DCJ 2010_s160-183:108171-DCJ 2010_s160-183 02/06/10 13.57 Side 178
178
chants have no wares in their shops except their
wretched souls, and the buyers commit for nothing
except purchase on credit.”61
The people in our darbar painting were all af-
fluent enough not to be directly affected by the
famine, but the occupation was to cause them much
grief nonetheless. Apparently, Sultan Abu’l-Hasan
tried to liquidate some of his treasures in order to
pay for his defence against the Mughals, for various
merchants were accused of having bought gems and
jewellery below the market price (which could be
construed as theft from the Mughals who had come
to take over the treasures in order to settle the sul-
tan’s alleged arrears in the payment of tribute). In
March, Mohan Das, “along with a number of [other]
Gujarati or Baniya merchants”, was held in the tent
of the Mughal kotwal for five or six days in order to
force them to settle the matter, which cost Mohan
gijs kruijtzer
Fig. 11. Map of Golconda on the eve
of the Mughal conquest, showing the
extent of the sultanate and other
important political centres (as black
squares).
Das 2,500 rupees. Mohan Das was “very sad about
the affronts he had suffered” while in custody.62 Van
den Bogaerde and his second, Cramfer, were forced
to live in a tent in the Mughal camp outside the city
for months. They had a small tent (tentje) but main-
tained their grand entourage.63 They were urged to
give presents to various Mughal nobles and forced to
repay the private debts of one of their predecessors to
some former Golconda nobles. On account of the
latter, they were twice dragged in front of the Mug-
hal qadi (judge) as prisoners.64 To pay for all this
they had to take out loans from Mohan Das, backed
up by Chand Khan and Nagosa.65 Van den Bogaerde
was so unhappy with the situation that he requested
a transfer away from Hyderabad.66
The royal fortress of Golconda fell on the very
day that Mohan Das died and Van den Bogaerde had
been scheduled for an audience with Aurangzeb. We
108171-DCJ 2010_s160-183:108171-DCJ 2010_s160-183 02/06/10 13.57 Side 179
gijs kruijtzer
can only speculate on the question of whether Mo-
han Das’s death was self-induced (perhaps because he
was expecting more of the dishonour he had suffered
at the hands of the Mughals), for the dispatches
from Hyderabad do not seem to touch on its cause.
In any case, he died only hours after the news first
broke. His house was sealed and his possessions were
to be assessed before the Mughal emperor.67 But it
was through the intercession of a Mughal noble years
later that the VOC was to settle its debt with his
heirs.68 The imperial audience that the Mughal wazir
Asad Khan had promised Van den Bogaerde fell
through, and the latter failed to secure the VOC
privileges on the Coromandel Coast under the new
order. His superiors were very dissatisfied with this
diplomatic failure, which made Bacherus’s very costly
mission to the Mughal emperor necessary.69
Epilogue
The fall of the last of the Deccan sultanates marked
the end of an era. It signalled changes in the political
constitution in the Deccan and in the fortunes of the
Dutch on the Coromandel Coast that were in Ha-
vart’s view for the worse – this was the “Fall of Coro-
mandel” of the title of his magnum opus. Moreover,
it signalled the end of sultanate courtly painting in
the Deccan and the particular styles to which it had
given rise. The Golconda court painters were pre-
179
sumably dispersed and left to find employment with
Mughal nobles as well as European wannabe Mug-
hals. Perhaps the David Collection pendants repre-
sent the final flowering of the refined Golconda
courtly style of painting. But even there, the influ-
ence of the Mughal style, with its relative realism and
stark lines, that was soon to pervade Deccan paint-
ing, is already visible, especially in the pastoral
figures of the procession painting.70
Van den Bogaerde was finally dismissed from
Hyderabad and put in a palanquin to Masulipatnam
together with his wife Maria de Helt in March 1690.
According to Bacherus, his “many corrupt practices
and scandalous lifestyle” had caused the company
“disgrace among the Moors [i.e. the Islamicate
elite]”, yet apparently, Van den Bogaerde’s network
among the Mughal elite in Hyderabad was so strong
that Bacherus was forced to rehire him so as not to
displease that elite. After his dismissal from Hydera-
bad, he was sent to Pulicat in order to be investigat-
ed, but was employed once again at Batavia the next
year.71 He would have taken along our paintings to
Batavia as a reminder of the few good months he
had had in Hyderabad. He might then have passed
them on to the daughters he had with Maria de
Helt, Anna and Maria.72 This, however, is where the
trail of the miniatures ends until they resurface in
the collection of Raymond Subes in the 20th centu-
ry.73
108171-DCJ 2010_s160-183:108171-DCJ 2010_s160-183 02/06/10 13.57 Side 180
180
1. The author would like to thank Benjamin Wesseling,
Joji Nozawa, Marion Peters, Pauline Lunsingh Scheur-
leer, Lennart Bes, Shailendra Bhandare, and Arent Pol
for their helpful suggestions concerning various items
depicted in the paintings, and Jerry Losty for permission
to include parts of his unpublished note into the paper.
He would also like to thank Joachim Meyer and Kjeld
von Folsach for their enthusiastic support for the article
and careful comments on an earlier draft.
2. Losty 2009.
3. Lunsingh Scheurleer and Kruijtzer 2005.
4. Lunsingh Scheurleer 1996, pp. 201-202.
5. Compare Gilmartin and Lawrence 2000, pp. 2, 10-13.
6. San Diego 2005, pl. 68.
7. Zebrowski 1983, fig. 176.
8. Zebrowski 1983, pl. XVII.
9. Zebrowski 1983, fig. 161.
10. Zebrowski 1983, p. 193.
11. See the article “1650-1700 in Fashion” on www.
wikipedia.org (accessed Jan. 22, 2010).
12. Lunsingh Scheurleer 1996.
13. My dating is based on the Persian captions that accom-
pany each painting, as were earlier datings to 1686 and
1685 by Herman Goetz and Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer,
respectively (compare Lunsingh Scheurleer 1996, pp. 189-
193). The captions seem to suggest that: a) Muhammad
Ibrahim was waging war on the Mughals as a general of
Golconda, b) Bahlul Khan was prime minister of Bijapur
and still alive, c) Sayyid Makhdum Sharza Khan had just
been reappointed as a minister of Bijapur. The combina-
tion of these facts points to early December 1677. The
Smith-Lessouëf 232 series in the Bibliothèque Nationale
in Paris may be even earlier, perhaps dating from around
1675 (for it appears that Sultan ‘Abdullah had died rather
recently) and certainly before 1682. Two other series with
Dutch captions, in the British Museum and the Guimet
Museum, respectively, date to between May 1682 and
October 1685 and April 1683 and October 1685, respec-
tively. Kruijtzer 2009, pp. 164, 227. See also Lunsingh
Scheurleer and Kruijtzer 2005, p. 51.
14. Lunsingh Scheurleer and Kruijtzer 2005, pp. 49-53.
15. Daniel Havart referred to this type of flag as the Com-
pany staat-vlag. Havart 1693, pt. 2: p. 155.
16. Lunsingh Scheurleer and Kruijtzer 2005, p. 55.
17. Originally the curve of this knee was as wide as that of
the left knee, but in this damaged part of the painting,
the restorer has extended the coat a bit too much, so as
to leave only a small protrusion that looks like part of a
pillow.
18. Lunsingh Scheurleer and Kruijtzer 2005.
gijs kruijtzer
19. Van Welie 2008, p. 197.
20. Kruijtzer 2009, pp. 38-44; Peters and La Porte 2002,
pp. 74-79, 238; Havart 1693, pt. 2: pp. 183-184, 192.
21. Havart 1693, pt. 2: p. 191.
22. Havart n.d.; Havart 1688.
23. Havart n.d., foreword.
24. Peters and La Porte 2002, pp. 59-60.
25. Havart 1693, pt. 2: pp. 220, 235.
26. Peters and La Porte 2002, p. 60.
27. NA, Aanwinsten 1934, IX, no. 1649.
28. NA, letter from De Jager and Nicolaas Clement to
Pulicat (?), VOC 1328: fol. 620; NA, letter from De Jager
to Batavia, Oct. 15, 1677, VOC 1328: fol. 664.
29. He was born, it seems, in 1636 or 1637. Stapel 1931,
pp. 314-316.
30. See note 2.
31. Havart 1693, pt. 2: p. 155.
32. Peters and La Porte 2002, pp. 207, 240. In addition to
Narsa, Cornelis van den Bogaerde (about whom more
below) was also attached to the mission for his language
skills. Havart 1693, pt. 2: pp. 154, 160.
33. Rijksmuseum, NG-2002-52-A; Peters and La Porte 2002,
p. 207.
34. NA, overview of expenses for 1662-1689 of the Hydera-
bad factory, May 13, 1690, VOC 1511: fols. 894v-895.
35. The interview took place in a painted chamber and
Janszoon was given pan from Akkanna’s own hands at
the end. NA, letter from Janszoon to Masulipatnam,
Sept. 9, 1683, VOC 1405: fols. 1370-1373.
36. Kruijtzer 2009, pp. 224-226, 242-243; Havart 1693, pt. 2:
pp. 185-189; compare Peters and La Porte 2002, p. 239.
37. Mentioned in NA, instruction from Laurens Pit to
Cornelis Van den Bogaerde, Dec. 12, 1686, VOC 9720:
fol. 647.
38. These items were stored in Nagapattinam for years until
1700, when they were taken into official use by the
VOC governor there. NA, letter from Nagapattinam to
Batavia, Aug. 31, 1700, VOC 1638: 176.
39. NA, letter from Pulicat council to Batavia, June 27, 1686,
VOC 1429: fol. 1067.
40. A similar use of gold-painted rehaussé on a Golconda
miniature is found in the depiction of a gilded gauntlet
sword in a painting of Shivaji in the Guimet Museum
(cat. no. 35.554). The details of this gauntlet are not
painted but carved into the elevated layer of gold paint.
For a reproduction and discussion of this miniature, see
Kruijtzer 2009, pp. 162-163.
41. NA, instruction from Willem Hartsinck to Janszoon,
Jan. 12, 1683, VOC 1387: fols. 1377v-1383.
42. See Peters and La Porte 2002, pp. 148-232.
108171-DCJ 2010_s160-183:108171-DCJ 2010_s160-183 02/06/10 13.57 Side 181
gijs kruijtzer
43. Zaagt gij, o maatschappy, veel zulke bogaerds bloeien/ Dan
zou uw aanzien, magt en welvaart schooner groeien.
Zweerts 1759, p. 270. The poem was used to accompany
an engraving of Jasper van den Bogaerde’s portrait by
J. Folkema. The undated engraving can be found in the
KITLV image bank (http://kitlv.pictura-dp.nl/) under
the title “Gaspar van den Bogaerde”.
44. NA, instruction from Pit to Van den Bogaerde, Dec. 12,
1686, VOC 9720: fols. 633-638; note by Hyderabad fac-
tors to Company directors, Dec. 28, 1686, VOC 1425:
fol. 457v. For the background to the reshuffle at the
court, see Kruijtzer 2009, pp. 240-245.
45. Havart 1693, pt. 2: pp. 191-192.
46. NA, resolution GG and council, Oct. 25, 1685, VOC
700: fol. 529.
47. NA, general muster roll for 1692, VOC 11536: fols.
13v-14.
48. Lunsingh Scheurleer and Kruijtzer 2005, pp. 54,57.
49. NA, Letter from Bacherus to Hyderabad factors, Nov. 4,
1688, VOC 1511: fols. 799-801v.
50. Kruijtzer 2008; Kruijtzer 2009, pp. 74, 154-155, 160-166;
Kruijtzer forthcoming will also discuss the origins of this
symbolism.
51. Kruijtzer 2009, pp. 65-66, 242-244.
52. NA, letter from Pulicat council to Batavia, June 27, 1686,
VOC 1429: fol. 1080.
53. NA, general muster roll for 1692, VOC 11536: fols. 13v-
14. The pay ledgers of the Sparendam have been lost.
54. Kalff 1928-1929, pp. 36-38; Blois van Treslong Prins 1933,
pp. 262-263. For Jasper and Balthasar’s baptismal records,
see the online database of doopregisters of the Amsterdam
City Archives, using the spelling “Van de Bogaerd”.
55. NA, general muster roll for 1691, VOC 11534: fols. 375v-
376.
56. NA, instruction from Pit to Van den Bogaerde, Dec. 12,
1686, VOC 9720: fol. 639; letter from Pulicat council to
Batavia, June 27, 1686, VOC 1429: fols. 1059-1063.
I thank Shailendra Bhandare for the analysis of the name
Nagosa.
57. Compare Singh 1998, s.v. Bania/Baniya.
58. NA, Wajib al-ard (petition) to Bacherus from a number
of merchants, in Persian and signed in Devanagari,
Modi, and Telugu script, c. 1690, Hoge Regering 41 no.
110.
59. Note from Hyderabad factors to Company directors,
Dec. 28, 1686, VOC 1425: fol. 457v; letter from Hydera-
bad factors to Masulipatnam, Oct. 4, 1687, VOC 1435:
fol. 776.
60. NA, Hyderabad dispatches Jan. 3, 1687-Oct. 23, 1688,
VOC 9721.
181
61. NA, letters from Hyderabad factors, Feb. 10, and Oct. 4,
1687, VOC 9721: fol. 48v and VOC 1435: fol. 776v;
Khafi Khan 1975, pp. 338-339; Eaton 1978, p. 270;
Ni(mat Khan (Ali 1975, pp. 34-36, 42, 46.
62. NA, letter from Hyderabad factors, Mar. 29, 1687, VOC
9721: fol. 55-55v. The French merchant Guesty was held
in custody on similar charges later that year. NA, letter
from Hyderabad factors, Oct. 25, 1687, VOC 1435: fol.
781v. For the ado about Abu’l-Hasan’s jewellery in rela-
tion to the tribute, see Khafi Khan 1975, pp. 326-328.
63. NA, letter from Hyderabad factors, Oct. 25, 1687, VOC
1435: fols. 777-782; instruction from Van Rheede to
Bacherus, Sept. 22, 1688, VOC 1450: fol. 958.
64. NA, letters from Hyderabad factors, May 7 and Aug. 18,
1687, VOC 9721: fols. 67-102v, 117-128v.
65. NA, papers concerning settlement with Mohan Das’s
heirs and calculations on the basis of the Hyderabad
trade ledgers, Apr. 6, Apr. 25, and May 13, 1690, VOC
1511: fols. 890-892v.
66. NA, letter from Hyderabad factors, Oct. 25, 1687, VOC
1435: fol. 781v.
67. NA, letter from Hyderabad factors, Oct. 4, 1687, VOC
1435: fols. 775-777.
68. NA, letter from Bacherus to Masulipatnam, Apr. 16,
1689, VOC 1511: 811; papers concerning settlement with
Mohan Das’s heirs, Apr. 1690, VOC 1511: fols. 890-891v.
69. NA, letter from Hyderabad factors, Oct. 4, 1687, VOC
1435: fols. 775-777; instruction from Van Rheede to
Bacherus, Sept. 22, 1688, VOC 1450: fol. 958.
70. Compare Michell and Zebrowski 1999, pp. 210-225, 272,
and Lunsingh Scheurleer and Kruijtzer 2005, pp. 52-53.
71. NA, letters from Bacherus to Masulipatnam and
accountant Ploos van Amstel, Feb. 8 and Mar. 22, 1690,
VOC 1511: fols. 723v-724v and 879-880v; general muster
roll 1691, VOC 11534: fols. 12-13.
72. Anna was born before or in 1679-1680 and Maria in
1685, but we hear nothing of their presence in
Hyderabad. See references in the next note.
73. Avenues for further investigation are a reconstruction of
Van den Bogaerde’s family line up to the 20th century
and the testament(s) he and his wife had made at
Batavia, to be found in the Arsip Nasional in Jakarta in
the testamentenregisters for 1679-1680 fol. 148 and 1693-
1694 fol. 337. (It is possible that the latter is a copy of the
former.) Blois van Treslong Prins 1933, p. 263, and un-
published index cards of idem in the collection of the
CBG, s.v. Bogaerde.
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Illustration Credits
kjeld von folsach
Figs. 1, 3-10. Pernille Klemp; Fig. 2. The David Collection.
oliver watson
Figs. 1, 3, 5, 9-12. © The Board of Trustees of the Victoria
and Albert Museum; Fig. 2. After d’Allemagne 1938; Figs. 7,
8. Drawings by Mechthild Baumeister; Fig. 13. The Benaki
Museum; Figs. 14, 22. After London 2005, courtesy of the
Musée du Louvre and the Topkapi Palace Museum; Figs. 15,
16, 25-28. Pernille Klemp; Figs. 17, 18, 20, 24. Hadiye
Cangökçe courtesy of the Topkapi Palace Museum and the
Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts; Fig. 19. After Paris
1903; Fig. 29. Photo: Katya Kallsen © President and Fellows
of Harvard College; Fig. 31. Courtesy of the Czartoryski
Museum, Krakow; Fig. 32. After Kühnel 1938; Fig. 33. After
C. Singer, E. H. Holmyard, and A. R. Hall, A History of
Technology, vol. I, Oxford 1954.
sheila r. canby
Figs. 1, 2, 4, 15-41. Pernille Klemp; Fig. 3. © Trustees of the
British Museum; Fig. 5. After Sotheby’s, London, April 30,
2003; Figs. 6, 7, 9, 10. Photo © The Israel Museum,
Jerusalem; Figs. 8, 11. Photo Imaging Department and Katya
Kallsen © President and Fellows of Harvard College;
Fig. 12. © The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art;
Fig. 13. After Robinson 1976a; Fig. 14. After Sotheby’s,
London, October 15, 2003.
will kwiatkowski
Figs. 1, 4. Pernille Klemp; Fig. 2. After Bergley 1985; Fig. 3.
Digital Image Museum Associates/LACMA/Art Resource
NY/Scala, Florence; Fig. 5. Richard Barz.
john seyller
Figs. 1, 2, 6, 7, 9-11. Pernille Klemp; Figs. 3, 4, 12, 13, 15, 16.
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Fig. 5. By
permission of The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford;
Fig. 8. Photo © The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; Fig.
14. © Trustees of the British Museum.
gijs kruijtzer
Figs. 1-3, 10. Pernille Klemp; Figs. 4-7, 9. Tropenmuseum,
Amsterdam; Fig. 8. Visitors of the Ashmolean Museum,
University of Oxford; Fig. 11 The author.