Mysterious portraits

Many portraits in the Merghelynck Museum are shrouded in mystery. Often, we do not know who the subject is. And even in the rare cases where we do have that information, there is sometimes something strange going on.

Take, for example, the stately portraits from 1712 of the Ypres couple Jean-Baptiste Wullems (de Bisterveld) (1678-1727) and Rosa Isabella Barbara van den Broucke (1678-1761) in the large salon on the ground floor.
Jean-Baptiste Wullems is the son of the councillor of Ypres of the same name and alderman of Ypres in 1704 and 1727. Arthur Merghelynck attributes these portraits to a certain “Millet” from Lille, but this is highly uncertain: during that period, there was no portrait painter with that name active in the northern French city.
The portraits also feature the coats of arms of the couple, but there is something strange about them. This caused confusion during a visit in June 2025 by the West Coast Genealogy Association. Were these really a husband and wife? Why are there two oval coats of arms next to the lady's name instead of the usual “divided” coat of arms? One of the visitors is genealogist Pieter Donche, who is very familiar with the work of Arthur Merghelynck. A few days later, he returns with an explanation.
It turns out that the portrait painter seems to have had no knowledge of heraldry whatsoever and completely misunderstood what he was supposed to paint and how exactly. The portrait of Mr Wullems does indeed feature a shield-shaped (male) coat of arms, but the coat of arms depicted in it is that of his wife, Rosa I.B. van den Broucke! The van den Broucke family coat of arms is described in heraldic jargon as follows: in silver with a shield head of azure, angled at the top with gold in two pieces and two half pieces. But actually, the Wullems family coat of arms should have been depicted here: in azure, a crossbar of gold accompanied by three roses of the same colour.
The painter also made mistakes on the portrait of the woman: there are two oval coats of arms with, from left to right (for the viewer), the Wullems coat of arms and the van den Broucke coat of arms. In fact, there should only be a single oval coat of arms, but divided with Wullems on the left (from the viewer's perspective) and van den Broucke on the right.
But that is not the end of the story: Arthur Merghelynck mentions in his Receuil de genealogies inédites de Flandre (1877) that Rosa I.B. van den Broucke, as widow of J.B. Wullems, retroactively obtained the ennoblement of her deceased husband (letters patent dated 3 September 1761).In other words, Jean-Baptiste Wullems was only ennobled more than thirty years after his death! The letter of nobility confirming this was auctioned quite recently, on 1 October 2022, at Van de Wiele in Bruges.
The portraits of Jean-Baptiste Wullems and Rosa van den Broucke are among the oldest in the collection. They have been hanging in the vestibule since 1894, when Arthur Merghelynck opened his museum. This is not surprising, as they are family heirlooms.The subjects of the portraits are the grandparents of Isabelle M.J. Wullems de Bisterveld. She was the mother-in-law of Clément Merghelynck, the fifth child of François Merghelynck. François was the builder of the Hôtel Merghelynck. Clément was the first child born in the Hôtel Merghelynck. In other words, the Wullems-van den Broucke couple were ancestors of Arthur Merghelynck.