Andries de Graeff

Andries de Graeff (19 February 1611 – 30 November 1678) was a regent and burgomaster (mayor) of Amsterdam and leading Dutch statesman during the Golden Age.

[3] At the height of the Dutch Golden Age, during the First Stadtholderless Period from 1650 to the Rampjaar 1672, political power within Holland rested primarily with two republican and state-minded families.

[4] Andries de Graeff was one of the leading figures seeking to end the Eighty Years' War between the United Netherlands and the Kingdom of Spain.

The proponents of the De Graeff family has shown they had an eye for national politics and tried to find some balance between the House of Orange and the Republicans.

[9] Together with his brother Cornelis de Graeff he became an illustrious Patron and Art collector of various artists and poets of the Dutch Golden Age.

[1][10] His patronage consisted of commissions to artists such as Rembrandt, Artus Quellinus, Gerard ter Borch and Govert Flinck for the portraits of himself and his family.

[14] Shortly before Andries, the "Edle Herr von Graef(f)", died in end of 1678, he and his only adult son, Cornelis de Graeff, were raised to the German Imperial Knighthood by Emperor Leopold I[15] and their coat of arms improved.

The marriages of his daughters, especially Arnoldina's with Baron Van Voorst, showed a conscious rapprochement with the Orangism camp in the republic even after his political end.

[28] The De Graeff family was in the circle of the Amsterdam oligarchy of the Golden Age and belonged to the ruling states oriented patriciate of the province of Holland.

During this time he held positions as Commissioner of the Haarlemmermeer, Hoofdingeland (highest rank in dike management) of the Watergraafsmeer and Dikemaster of Nieuwer-Amstel.

[1] The awarding of the art commissions was shared between a number of painters, including Jacob Jordaens and Jan Lievens, by principal burgomasters De Graeff and his 2nd cousin Joan Huydecoper van Maarsseveen.

For this reason, Andries and Cornelis de Graeff,[9] in 1660 founded a commission that presented the English King Charles II with the Dutch Gift, consisting of numerous valuable paintings and works of art.

[34] In 1666, together with the burgomasters Valckenier, Hendrick Dircksz Spiegel and Gerard Claesz Hasselaer, he presented the French Foreign Minister Hugues de Lionne with a representative painting of Amsterdam by Ludolf Backhuysen.

Despite the Perpetual edict, De Graeff pursued a moderate policy, for it was extremely good relations with the Orange Court in The Hague.

De Graeff had a clear message in mind for the ceiling painting: the ‘Ware Vrijheid’ of the Republic was only protected by the republican regents of Amsterdam.

[3] When the situation in the republic became more and more precarious in the Rampjaar of 1672 due to the invading French troops, the Orange-leaning party of Valckenier and the statesmen Coenraad van Beuningen, Nicolaes Witsen and Johannes Hudde, who had become Orangists in July of the same year, succeeded in seizing the power of the opposing party To seize the De Graeff faction again and to gain a majority in the Vroedschap (Amsterdam city parliament).

In early summer, the population threatened by the French invasion refused to follow Grand pensionary Johan de Witt and thus played themselves into the hands of the Orange Party.

[4] On August 20, the De Witts were brutally murdered in The Hague by a popular mob, incensed by Orange party members and the ongoing pamphlets.

In Amsterdam the Vroedschap in person of Schepen Jan Six[10] delayed this result in order to achieve a reconciliation between De Graeff and Hooft with Valckenier.

[8] On September 5, the ongoing uproar and popular anger caused the Amsterdam Vroedschap, due to community unrest and to prevent massacres and looting, the new governor to change the law to allow certain regents to be replaced by those more friendly to Stadtholder William III, thus restoring order within the city government.

[51] The conflicts between Wilhelm III of Orange and the patricians of Amsterdam in the Rampjaar 1672 showed that neither Gillis Valckenier nor Henrick Hooft can be considered convinced Orangists.

The decisive factors here were mainly the commercial interests for which Valckenier campaigned and at the same time accused his rival Andries de Graeff of wasteful politics.

[54] However, since his son Cornelis died young on October 16, half of his inheritance went to his son-in-law Diederik van Veldhuyzen, the husband of his older daughter Alida.

He was painted by various artists of the Dutch Golden Age, Rembrandt van Rijn, Gerard ter Borch, Govert Flinck and Thomas de Keyser.

In addition to his friendships and patronage with Flinck, ter Borch, Lievens, Quellinus and the poets Joost van den Vondel[55] Jan Vos, Caspar Barlaeus, and Gerard Brandt,[1] he was also a patron of Rembrandt at a young age.

[56] But this support ended abruptly when Rembrandt received a commission for a portrait from De Graeff, which, according to his family, represented "drunk and unfinished".

[61] De Graeff also dealt very intensively with the genealogy of his house and its lineage, about which Van den Vondel wrote a treatise personally dedicated to him.

[65] De Graeff had country estates with the Vredenhof near Voorschoten and Graeffenveld near Oud-Naarden (Naarden), where he had a hill built, the Venusberg, on the top of which a lion statue was erected, and which was then called Leeuwenberg.

[66] Andries de Graeff had an art collection that included masterpieces by Rembrandt, Gerard ter Borch, Govaert Flinck and other Dutch masters of the 16th and 17th centuries.

The historian Peter Burke, in his book Venice and Amsterdam: Study of Seventeenth-century Elites, mentions a large collection without giving any references.

Descendants of Andries Boelens . Overview of the personal family relationships of the Amsterdam oligarchy between the regent -dynasties Boelens Loen , De Graeff , Bicker (van Swieten) , Witsen and Johan de Witt in the Dutch Golden Age
Coat of Arms as knight of the Holy Roman Empire, diplom July 19th 1677 (archiv Matthias Laurenz Gräff )
Deed of fief from the States of Holland and West Friesland for Andries de Graeff regarding the high and low Lordship of Urk and Emmeloord
Portrait of Andries de Graeff by Rembrandt in 1639
The Vredenhof estate, which De Graeff lived in while he was employed as an advisor and Statutory auditor of Holland and West-Friesland in The Hague
Portrait drawing of Andries de Graeff in 1657 on the occasion of his first mayoralty (by Jan Lievens )
The Arrival of Cornelis de Graeff and Members of His Family at Soestdijk, His Country Estate . Andries de Graeff is the right one of the three figures standing on the roadside to the right of center; painting by Jacob van Ruisdael and Thomas de Keyser , (1656/1660) ( National Gallery of Ireland )
The States of Holland, led by Johan and Cornelis de Witt, adopt the Perpetual Edict in 1667, by Romeyn de Hooghe (1675)