The Threatened Swan

Asselijn painted this hissing swan around 1650, and at the time it was simply a striking animal picture, a mother swan rearing up over her nest, wings flung wide, to drive off a dog paddling toward her egg. Its second life came later. Long after Asselijn died, someone added three small inscriptions to the canvas, naming the swan for the Dutch statesman Johan de Witt, who ran the country and was killed by a mob in 1672, the dog for the enemies of the state, and the egg for Holland itself. With those few words a nature study became a patriotic emblem. That is the story it carried in 1800, when it became the very first painting bought for the collection that would grow into the Rijksmuseum.