Monuments to the Dutch naval hero Piet Hein attract attention for a variety of reasons. Pieter Pietersen Heyn (fig. 1) was born on 25 November 1577 in Delfshaven, a small harbour town then belonging to Delft but now part of Rotterdam. He lived during the Eighty Years’ War (or Dutch Revolt) between the Dutch Republic and Habsburg Spain. His three younger brothers would become merchants but young Piet would follow in the footsteps of his father Pieter Corneliszoon Hein (d. 1623), who was a sea captain in the merchant navy. In the Netherlands Piet Hein is still famous thanks to the triumpal song ‘De zilvervloot’ (The silver fleet), written in 1844, which celebrates his famous capture of part of a Spanish treasure fleet in 1628: a song that every Dutch schoolchild would learn to sing. Several streets across the country are also named after him.

Hein’s life had its ups and downs. In 1598 he was captured by the Spanish along with his father and served as a galley slave in Ambrosio Spinola’s fleet for four years until an exchange of prisoners in 1602. However, he was captured once again in 1603 near Cuba and remained locked up in the fortress at Havana for another four years or so. He would learn fluent Spanish during his captivity.

In late 1607 Hein was home again to enter into the service of the Dutch East India Company (‘VOC’) as helmsman. His ship Hollandia was part of a fleet bound for the Banda Islands to gain control of the spice trade. Hein did not have a military rank and thus may not have been initially involved in the atrocities committed there by the Dutch, but he later led two punitive expeditions against two of the Islands. In 1610 he was promoted captain of the Hollandia but on his homeward journey he was forced to jettison his precious cargo of cloves to prevent fire on board. Perhaps as a consequence his contract with the VOC was not renewed on his return home in 1612. Instead Hein married Anneke Claesdochter de Reus (c.1565-1640), the widow of a comrade killed in the Moluccas. The couple settled down in a large house near Leuvehaven, a newly dug harbour in Rotterdam: they would have no children. Nor would Hein remain ashore for long.

In 1618 captain Hein and his ship Neptunus were pressed into the service of the Republic of Venice in its war against the kingdom of Naples and Sicily: this period on the Adriatic Sea would last 28 months. It was not until 1621 that he managed to leave his ship and travel home overland. Through the influence of his wife’s family he was given a position as alderman on the city council of Rotterdam in 1622 (fig. 2), but although he appears to have fulfilled his duties diligently he was ultimately a sailor at heart.

In 1623 he joined the newly founded Dutch West India Company (‘WIC’). As its Vice Admiral, and later Captain General and Admiral, he would lead three expeditions. It was during the third expedition in 1628 that he was given specific orders to intercept the Spanish treasure fleet on its homeward journey laden with silver, indigo and cochineal. In the Bay of Matanzas, east of Havana, Hein and his fleet managed to ambush and capture sixteen Spanish ships with their cargo, virtually without a fight, on 7-8 September 1628. He released the captured Spanish crews with ample supplies to reach Havana, and returned home via Falmouth to avoid the Dunkirk Privateers who were waiting out at sea to ambush his ships. In early January 1629 he finally arrived home as a hero with booty worth over 11.5 million guilders in gold, silver, pearls, and other luxury goods … including one talking parrot. The money was used to reward the WIC shareholders, the stadholder Frederick Henry, as well as Hein and his crew, and to finance the continuing war against Spain.

Yet fame came at a price. Many of his crew felt shortchanged and the ensuing protests along with Hein’s own demands would sour relations between him and the WIC, who replaced him as commander. On 26 March 1629 he was instead appointed de facto supreme commander of the confederate Dutch fleet. He settled near the Oude Kerk in Delft with his wife, but not for long. On a mission to combat the Dunkirk Privateers he was hit in the left shoulder by a cannon ball at sea outside Ostend and died instantly on 17 June 1629.

On 4 July Hein received a grand funeral in Delft where he was buried in the east end of the Oude Kerk. The States General clearly felt that Hein deserved a proper monument and instructed the Admiralty in Rotterdam to erect one. However, the Admiralty did nothing and it was not until 1638 that Hein finally received a proper memorial after his widow Anneke had threatened to pay for her husband’s monument herself. To avoid embarrassment the VOC in Delft allocated 6 000 guilders to commission a grand marble tomb.

The monument in the Dutch classicist style features the recumbent white Carrara marble figure of Hein in full armour (fig. 3): it may have been carved by Pieter Adriaensz ‘t Hooft (1610-1649/50) although many sources attribute the tomb instead to Pieter de Keyser (c.1595-1676), who had been responsible for completing his father Hendrick’s monument to William the Silent in the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft. Hein’s effigy rests on a woven reed mattress on top of a black marble base flanked by two pairs of black marble columns with white bases and capitals that support a black marble tympanum (fig. 4). A long Latin epitaph in gilt letters attributed to Caspar Barlaeus (1584-1648) celebrates the heroic deeds of the local hero and describes Hein as a ‘novus argonauta’ (new argonaut) who brought the golden fleece of the king of Spain to the Dutch Republic.

The white marble crest on the tympanum above (fig. 5) features a pun on Hein’s name, viz. a bird (Dutch: ‘pietje’) on a fence (Dutch: ‘heining’). This device can also be seen on the silver seal stamp that was created for Hein when he briefly served as alderman of Rotterdam (fig. 2), and on the wooden armorial board that may once have been displayed above his tomb (fig. 6).

Gallery

• Fig. 3. White Carrara marble tomb effigy of Dutch naval hero Piet Hein (1577-1629) on his tomb monument in the Oude Kerk, Delft. Photo: Norman Hammond.
• Fig. 4. Tomb monument to Dutch naval hero Piet Hein (1577-1629) in the Oude Kerk, Delft. Photo: Norman Hammond.
• Fig. 5. Crest with a bird (‘pietje’) on a fence (‘heining’) of Dutch naval hero Piet Hein (1577-1629) on his tomb monument in the Oude Kerk, Delft. Photo: Norman Hammond.
• Fig. 6. Armorial board with the arms of Piet Hein, possibly once displayed above his tomb in the Oude Kerk in Delft, now collection Museum Rotterdam.

As Hein was a national hero his tomb monument became an important sight for visitors to Delft. Dirck van Bleyswijck’s two-volume Beschryvinge der stadt Delft (1667) includes an illustration of it by Coenraet Decker (fig. 7). It also features in several seventeenth-century church interior paintings, such as Hendrick van Vliet’s Interior of the Oude Kerk Delft of c.1652-53 (Collection Mr and Mrs M.E. Zukerman, New York, https://www.pubhist.com/w4284) and a slightly earlier painting by Emanuel de Witte now in the Hermitage, St Petersburg (fig. 8). In 1828 it was recorded in a pencil drawing by Johannes Jelgerhuis (1770-1836) (fig. 9).

Gallery

• Fig. 7. Engraving of the tomb monument of Piet Hein by Coenraet Decker, published as an illustration in Dirck van Bleyswijck, Beschryvinge der stadt Delft (Delft: Arn. Bon, 1667), 2 vols, vol. 1, p. 178/179, Collection Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, inv. RP-P-OB-81.181.
• Fig. 8. Emanuel de Witte (1617-1692), Interior of the Oude Kerk in Delft with the Tomb Monument of Piet Hein (1648 or 1651/2), oil on panel, 75 x 60.5 cm, Hermitage, St Petersburg, at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emanuel_de_Witte_-_Old_Church_in_Delft_-_WGA25808.jpg.
• Fig. 9. Johannes Jelgerhuis (1770-1836), The Tomb Monument of Piet Hein (1828), pencil drawing, Stadsarchief Delft, https://hdl.handle.net/21.12115/NL-DtAD209896598.

Hein’s fame continued. In the night of 8 to 9 Janury 1868 three men in Delfshaven secretly made a statue of their local hero in snow. They had hatched this plan the previous summer to highlight the fact that Hein still had no statue in his birthplace. The snow statue lasted for five days until the thaw set in, but that was long enough to drum up local support for a proper memorial. On 17 October 1870 a public monument to Hein by sculptor Jos Graven (1836-1877) was unveiled in Delfshaven near the spot where Hein was born (fig. 10). His birthplace had actually been demolished in 1820 but was ‘restored’ in 1870 as a period house, complete with a commemorative plaque and Hein’s heraldic device on the façade.

Graven’s 3 m high sandstone statue – for bronze was deemed too expensive – shows Hein in a heroic pose, a baton in his raised right hand as he gives the order to attack the Dunkirk Privateers. A canon and anchor lie at his feet. The model for the figure was an eighteenth-century print by Jacob Houbraken (fig. 11). The monument was subsequently moved and already in need of renovation when it was vandalised by action group ‘Helden van Nooit’ (Heroes from Never), who daubed the pedestal with the words ‘Killer’ and ‘Dief’ (thief) in white paint on 12 June 2020: https://nos.nl/artikel/2337020-actiegroep-bekladt-beeld-piet-hein-en-gevel-witte-de-with-in-rotterdam. The statue and pedestal were cleaned and restored in 2022 but on 10 August the monument was attacked again, this time with red and blue paint: https://www.rijnmond.nl/nieuws/1535833/standbeeld-piet-hein-in-rotterdam-weer-beklad-met-rode-en-blauwe-verf.

Attacks on monuments to controversial historical figures have occurred elsewhere, one of the most notorious being the toppling of the slave trader and philanthropist Edward Colston in Bristol on 7 June 2020, just five days before the first attack on Hein’s statue. Questions have also been raised about tomb monuments in churches that commemorate historical figures now deemed disreputable.

The Dutch action group responsible for the attack in 2020 proclaimed itself to be against the glorification of the period in which the Netherlands founded colonies, traded slaves and stole art. They wanted ‘unjustified heroes’ such as Piet Hein to be rejected: ‘The statue of the robbing murderer is a shameless display of colonial nostalgia.’

Yet while Hein was no saint, he was no slave owner or trader. When he captured two Portuguese slave ships from Angola outside Brazil in 1627, he released the slaves. His years as a galley slave and then as a prisoner in Havana, where he may also have had to do forced labour, had made him more sympathetic towards enslaved people. He also treated the captured Spanish sailors with great leniency in 1628. And although the WIC had a monopoly in the transatlantic trade in enslaved people, who were transported to America to work on the plantations, this trade did not start until after Hein’s death. Nonetheless, his earlier actions in the Banda Islands in the service of the VOC probably do not bear close scrutiny: by modern standards there is guilt by association at the very least.

Before this controversy about ‘unjustified heroes’ two other bronze statues of Hein by the Rotterdam sculptor Willem Verbon (1921-2003) were erected. One was unveiled in Matanzas in 1998 by Bram Peper, at the time mayor of Rotterdam, to commemorate Hein’s most famous feat (fig. 12). A second version was erected in 2000 in the grounds of the country house Matanze in the Dutch province of Gelderland. The original owner of this estate, then called Redingesgoed, was a merchant from Deventer and a WIC shareholder, so it seemed appropriate to the later owners to honour the hero of Matanzas who had so enriched the WIC.

There is one more twist in the story of Piet Hein and his memorialisation. In 2024 his marble tomb monument in the Oude Kerk in Delft was dismantled in a major cleaning and restoration campaign (fig. 13). The removal of the back wall of the monument against the east wall of the choir revealed a hitherto unknown grisaille mural that depicts Piet Hein kneeling in prayer in the pose of a priant (fig. 14a-b). It unmistakably portrays Hein with his pointed beard, rakish moustache, short hair and somewhat chubby face, as we know him from his earlier painted portrait (fig. 1), and perhaps more honestly than the marble effigy. It is possible that this mural was commissioned by Hein’s widow Anneke in 1635 to highlight the Admiralty’s still unfulfilled promise of a proper memorial to her late husband. The painter may have been local artist Hendrick Cornelisz van Vliet (c.1611-1675), who also lived near the Oude Kerk and who may have known Hein personally. The mural is badly damaged and subject to further research and conservation.

As for Hein’s statue in Delfshaven, perhaps the explanatory plaque and QR code with more information about Hein’s actual character and deeds will help protect it from further attacks.

Sophie Oosterwijk

Gallery

• Fig. 10. Public monument to Dutch naval hero Piet Hein (1577-1629) in Delfshaven, Rotterdam, erected in 1870. Photo: F. Eveleens (2007) at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rotterdam_monument_pietheyn.jpg.
• Fig. 11. Jacob Houbraken, after Aert Schouwman, Portrait of Pieter Pieterszoon Hein (c.1749-59), engraving published by Isaak Tirion.
• Fig. 12. Willem Verbon, Statue of Piet Hein (1998), Matanzas, Cuba. Photo: Fulko at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Piet_Hein_Matanzas.jpg.
• Fig. 13. The tomb monument of Piet Hein in the Oude Kerk in Delft during restoration. Photo: https://www.oudeennieuwekerkdelft.nl/nieuws/unieke-vondst-achter-de-graftekst-van-piet-hein/.
• Fig. 14a. Mural of Piet Hein revealed behind his tomb monument. Photo: https://www.oudeennieuwekerkdelft.nl/nieuws/publiek-kan-tijdelijk-de-unieke-grafschildering-van-piet-hein-in-de-oude-kerk-van-delft-bezichtigen/.
• Fig. 14b. Detail of the mural of Piet Hein revealed behind his tomb monument. Photo: https://www.oudeennieuwekerkdelft.nl/nieuws/unieke-vondst-achter-de-graftekst-van-piet-hein/.

Some further reading:

Corvinus, ‘Het praalgraf van Piet Hein’, at https://corvinus.nl/2022/03/26/het-praalgraf-van-piet-hein/.

Ronald Prud’homme van Reine, Admiraal zilvervloot: biografie van Piet Hein (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 2003).

Frits Scholten, Sumptuous Memories. Studies in Seventeenth-century Dutch Tomb Sculpture (Zwolle: Waanders, 2003), passim.