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Vrancke Vrelant (ca.1486- 1557)
PIETER VASSENHOOVE , Baron Loofthausen ( ca.1620)
This recently discovered portrait of Baron Pieter is unquestionably the lost companion piece to Vrancke Vrelant’s "Portrait of Leurence de Valenciennes". The two paintings were hung together in the the Vassenhoove collection in Bruges until 1939. Archive and photographic records testify to this.
Baron Pieter was a swashbuckling figure of exceedingly short temper in his youth. His Danish lineage is manifested in Vranke’s portrait by his long face, melancholic expression, and the style of his cap*. Pieter’s dour temperament and short fuse provoked many unnecessary duels from which, although generally the victor, he suffered many disfiguring sabre cuts. Vralant, in this portrait, has taken care to hide the damaged side of Baron Pieter’s face and his nearly sightless left eye by casting them in shadow.
Family tradition held that these two paintings were betrothal portraits documenting the binding together of the interests of two wealthy families. A marriage did take place between Leurence de Valenciennes (1503-1653) and Pieter Vassenhoove , Baron Loofthausen (1487-1628) in 1620 and was duly recorded in the Church of Jerusalem in Bruges. It has been speculated that this was a loveless "marriage of convenience", in which a share in the the Valencienne fortune was exchanged for a share of the Vassenhoove title of nobility. A condition of the marriage agreement was that physical alterations appropriate to the enhancement of the Valencienne-Vassenhoove-Loofthausen estates would be made. This would have included much necessary restoration to the ancient Chateau, which figures in the background of Leurence’s portrait and which would serve henceforth as the cradle of future Vassenhooves-Loofthausens.
As can be seen by looking at the birth and death dates above, Pieter did not survive the marriage very long. According to a family legend, Pieter, in spite of the armor which he wore at all times (and which is not completely concealed in his portrait by his richly furred costume), was slain in a street altercation by a member of a distinguished Genoese with whom the Vassenhove family did business. It was further said in defense of his reputation as a superior swordsman that the heavy furs he wore even in the heat of summer hindered his attempt to draw his sword. On the other hand, there is another story which holds that Pieter was a most unsatisfactory lover and husband. Once he had fathered a son and heir to the Vassenoove-Loofthausen name, he fell or was pushed,pssibly by Leurence herself, from the highest tower of the Chateau Valencienne-Vassenhoove.
Certain it is that Leurence enjoyed the freedom of husband-free widowhood for many years following Pieter’s demise but not without succeeding in attaching scandal to her name and estate. Her parade of amours so dismayed her son that eventually, having wearied of attempts to closet her more closely against gossip and rumor, he is reported to have persuaded a former suitor and rejected lover to pitch her from the battlements of the Chateau Vassenhoove-Loofthausen.
*see "The Persistence of Style Through the Centuries Particularly in Reference to Men’s Caps", Sergei Menil Hendrickson, in the Bulletin of Fashion Antique and Modern, MMONY, New york 1937.
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