Satyrik painting

Bilderdijk was almost sixty years old when Matthaeus Ignatius van Bree painted this portrait of him in 1815. Van Bree was a renowned Flemish painter. His painting ‘De zelfopoffering van Burgemeester van der Werff’ ('The self-sacrifice of Burgemeester van der Werff'), which can be found in the Lakenhal in Leiden, still attracts a lot of attention.

In a few poems in response to the painting, Bilderdijk praised the painter exuberantly and ascribed magical powers to him: he had managed to reproduce the young man's features in the elderly man. Towards his intimates, the poet showed less enthusiasm. He saw ‘something satyrik’ (‘iets satyriks') in the portrait and even 'something selfish' (‘iets egoïstisch’). He himself had not realized that he had these characteristics, and the confrontation horrified him. Thus, the portrait taught the poet 'a stern and painful lesson'.