The golden cup of Cornelis de Witt (on loan from the Louvre Museum)
After the successful expedition to Chatham, Michiel De Ruyter, Willem-Joseph Van Ghent and Cornelis de Witt were presented with a beautiful golden cup on behalf of the States of Holland during a meal on 7 November 1667. The events on the Medway are depicted in coloured enamel. The ships with the red-white-blue flag are the ships of the Dutch war fleet. The identical cups (with the exception of the inscription on the inside of the lids) were made in 1667 by The Hague gold- and silversmith Nicolaas Loockemans (?-1673).
After Cornelis de Witt’s death, possession of the cup passed successively to his widow Maria van Berckel, after her death to their daughter Anna Elisabeth de Witt and after Anna had died childless in 1721 in all likelihood to the children of Johan de Witt. The cup remained in the family and eventually came into the hands of the great-grandchild of Cornelis and Johan de Witt: Maria Hoog. A grandson of hers would have sold the cup in 1876 to an unknown person, who sold it on to the family of Rothschild. After his death in 1886, the possessions of Mayer Carl of Rothschild were divided among his seven daughters. The cup went to the eldest daughter, Baroness Adèle (1843-1922), who left her art collection to various museums in France. The cup is part of the permanent presentation of the Louvre and is formally the property of the Musée national du Moyen-Âge-musée de Cluny in Paris.
Van Ghent’s cup has been lost; De Ruyter’s cup is kept in the Rijksmuseum.
Source: Sanne Hermans 2017
