Rijksmuseum

Object data

bronze

height 16 cm × width 5 cm × depth 4 cm

Technical notes

Cast with various flaws and holes. The surface of the gambeson is hammered.
Alloy brass alloy with some tin and lead and some impurities (Cu 87.04%; Zn 7.99%; Sn 1.52%; Pb 2.12%; Sb 0.36%; As 0.15%; Fe 0.64%; Ni 0.15%; Ag 0.11%).

Provenance

…; sale Joseph de Ghellinck d’Elseghem (Brussels), London (Sotheby’s), 30 June 1969, no. 58 (with BK-1969-6), £ 319, to the museum, as a gift from the Commissie voor Fotoverkoop;…; sale Joseph de Ghellinck d’Elseghem (Brussels), London (Sotheby’s), 30 June 1969, no. 58 (with BK-1969-6), £ 319 for both, to the museum, as a gift from the Commissie voor Fotoverkoop

Object number: BK-1969-7

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Stichting tot Bevordering van de Belangen van het Rijksmuseum

Entry

This peasant is holding a bird, possibly a chicken, to his breast with both hands. On his head, he wears a brimmed hat, pointed in front and curled in back. The cord tied around his waist closes his jacket and serves to clamp a sickle behind his back. A kind of satchel hangs down both sides of his right shoulder, with a pouch-like receptacle in front. The present bronze – the only known cast of this model – was acquired as a pair together with a bronze elderly peasant woman carrying a milk canister on her head (BK-1969-6), of which multiple versions are known. Apart from the rural subject shared by the two figures, they are unrelated and even differ in size.

On the basis of its style and subject, the present bronze can be situated in the Netherlands, where low-life genre subjects were vastly popular in the seventeenth century, though primarily in paintings, engravings and drawings. The peasant’s facial type recalls that of the man with the wooden leg in Pieter Quast’s terracotta relief of A Fight Between Two Street Musicians from 1628 or 1629 in the museum’s collection (BK-1966-2).

Bieke van der Mark, 2025

Literature

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 245, with earlier literature

Citation

B. van der Mark, 2025, 'anonymous, Peasant Holding a Bird, Netherlands, c. 1600 - c. 1650', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035656

(accessed 7 December 2025 02:07:59).