Back to the Archives: An Oginski Sitter?
About 1970, Mykhailo Bryk-Deviatnytsky, a Ukrainian living in Holland, was examining the Dutch archives for information on Poles living in that country in the 1650s. Because of Rembrandt's Polish family connection, he wondered about any contacts with Ukrainians from the Commonwealth, specifically Cossacks, as possible models for the rider.
Some Ukrainians speculated about Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky (d. 1657), who was leading the Cossack insurrection when the work was being painted, or even a young Ivan Mazepa (1639-1709), later hetman, who, between seventeen and twenty, while a courtier to the Polish king, was sent to Holland to study artillery (1656-59).Bryk-Deviatnytsky went to the archives of the Frisian Academy at Frankener, where Professor Jan Makowski (called Maccovius in Latin), the Polish husband of Rembrandt's wife's sister, had then been teaching theology and philosophy. He found some Ukrainians enrolled there, along with some members of the influential Oginski family of Lithuania. He hypothesized that Makowski, always short of money, arranged for Rembrandt to paint one of these Oginskis - brothers Bohdan (Theodorus in Latin) or Aleksander - in his national costume and mounted on his horse. The painting's turning up some 150 years later in the hands of this same family would thus be no coincidence.
The Oginski family was actually Ruthenian (the old, generic name for Ukrainians and Belarusans in the Commonwealth) and in the 1650s still Orthodox and subjects of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, not the Polish crown, and thus hardly “Polish.” Bryk-Deviatnytsky suggested relabelling the painting as “Rembrandt's Cossack,” or something similar.26
Rembrandt specialist B.P.J. Broos soon followed this lead. Broos also thought Zygulski's work underestimated, and he cited writings in both Dutch and Ukrainian by Bryk-Deviatnytsky.
He identified several of Rembrandt's overlooked Polish connections and noted the existence of a stone relief of a Poolse Cavalyier (Polish Horseman) dating from Rembrandt's time on an Amsterdam street but labelled Poolsche Kozak by a nineteenth-century scholar, which seemed to be “an interpretation of the ‘Polish Rider' by a simple mason.”Broos also stressed Rembrandt's close relationship with the art dealer Henrick van Uylenburgh, in whose workshop he painted for four years and who got him commissions and promoted his career. Rembrandt married Uylenburgh's niece Saskia in 1634 and subsequently bought the house next door to his studio in Breestraat. The art dealer had grown up in Cracow in Poland and by 1620 was acting as an agent of the Polish king and buying art for his collection. Thus he may have arranged the sitter for The Polish Rider. It was Rembrandt's marriage to Saskia that connected him to Professor Jan Makowski at Frankener. Broos added three more possible Oginski sitters from the Commonwealth: brothers Marcjan Aleksander, Jan, and Szymon Karol, who registered at Leyden University as “Poles” (Polonus, sing.). Broos seems to have favoured Szymon Karol, who had settled in Holland, married a Dutch woman, and fathered three children there, but concluded that at least one of these five Oginskis was probably the model.27
Broos's careful scholarship, which publicized the Bryk-Deviatnytsky thesis from one or more little-known Ukrainian emigre newspapers, stunned the tight circle of established Rembrandt scholars when it appeared in 1974. Held noted it in a postscript to the 1981 German version of his article, and it attracted attention in Poland as well. Held seemed to awaken to the possibility of a real, live model, but he dismissed Szymon Karol as too old, at thirty-four in 1655. Instead, he proposed Marcjan - eighteen or nineteen in 1650.28
Meanwhile, in Poland, Juliusz Chroscicki, who thought Broos's article “brilliant,” agreed and began research on Marcjan.
He eventually discovered that Marcjan was portrayed in a picture by Ferdinand Bol, one of Rembrandt's students, and that Rembrandt's equestrian bore a striking resemblance. “Oginski's face,” he wrote in 1981, “is easily recognizable in the ‘Polish Rider.'” As a clincher, he pointed to the fire faintly observable in the background and added that “Oginski” in Polish means “of the fire,” from the root “ogien.” He failed to notice, however, another supporting element: Rembrandt's rider was mounted on a white horse moving across a dark background - a symbol on the coats of arms of the old Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Commonwealth, and the modern republic. This armorial rider, today called Vytis (the chaser) in Lithuanian, carries a raised sword and rides a white steed set on a field of red. Thus Oginski's presence in Holland in 1650, his age, nationality, status, and personal appearance, the “of the fire” argument, and the “white steed” all seemed to identify Rembrandt's rider, which, of course, turned up some 150 years later in the possession of this same family.29Marcjan Aleksander Oginski (1632-1690) was a perfect candidate. Born into one of the great landowning families of Lithuania, he was son of the last Orthodox senator in the Sejm (parliament) of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Although this Ruthenian family, with lands in the Smolensk region, dated back to Kyivan Rus', it gained prominence in the sixteenth century when the Lithuanian Grand Duke Aleksander gave it the estate of Ogintai, which was the true source of its name.30
Marcjan was born and raised Orthodox and studied in Vilnius and Cracow before going to Holland; he enrolled at Leyden in 1650 but soon returned to the Commonwealth and entered military service; by 1654 he was a standard bearer (chorqzny), and by 1656 he fought in the ranks of Prince Sapieha's Lithuanian army; he took part in the 1663-64 Muscovite expedition and became deeply involved in Commonwealth politics.
He married Marcebella Anna Hlebovich in 1663 and through this marriage became one of Lithuania's wealthiest magnates. In 1668, he founded the Orthodox church in SmiIowiczy, but he shortly afterwards converted to Catholicism and founded a Catholic church at Rogov and a Jesuit college in Minsk. He became grand chancellor of Lithuania in 1684 and died in 1690.31The discovery of Bol's portrait of Oginski and the identification of the “Polish Rider” with Marcjan convinced many Rembrandt scholars. Held himself largely accepted the evidence accumulated by Zygulski, Bryk- Deviatnytsky, Broos, and especially Chroscicki, retreated somewhat from his allegorical interpretation, which he claimed was not all that rigid, and wrote: “While I believe that Rembrandt's martially handsome rider derives some of his appeal from the old concept of the Miles Christianus, I never claimed that Rembrandt intended him to personify such an allegorical character, and always admitted the possibility that ‘he may have called him by a definite name.'”32 The British cultural historian Sir Simon Schama also accepted the new evidence, as did some Polish scholars, like the military historian Richard Brzezinski, who welcomed it and concluded that Chroscicki “had finally identified it as a portrait of a Lithuanian nobleman, Martin Alexander Oginski.”33
Of course, even all this compelling evidence did not convince everyone. Gary Schwartz ignored all this evidence and in 1985 proposed his somewhat fanciful Tamerlane theory about the origin of the picture;34 and in 1983 Leonard Slatkes, echoing Held's earlier position, denied that the rider's arms and costume were specifically Polish, pointed out their general “Oriental” (that is, central Asian and Middle Eastern) qualities, flatly rejected the significance of the Bol portrait purported to be of Oginski, and proposed his “young David” thesis.35 A few years later, the Frick Collection's comprehensive catalogue of its paintings treated the Oginski evidence as a mere “proposal,” on the same level as Bialostockis “Socinian hypothesis”: “The rider's costume, his weapons, and the breed of his horse have also been claimed as Polish. But if The Polish Rider is a portrait, it certainly breaks with tradition.” The writer explained: “Equestrian portraits are not common in seventeenth century Dutch art, and furthermore, in the traditional equestrian portrait the rider is fashionably dressed and his mount is spirited and well-bred.” The author concluded by returning to Held's original Miles Christianus theory, but only as another unverified proposal.36