Plato

Entry

In 1711, this pair of marble busts – most likely depicting the Greek philosophers Plato (shown here) and Aristotle (BK-1986-44-B) – is documented in the art collection of the Amsterdam scholar Lambert ten Kate (1674-1731). They are mentioned in the travel journal of the German traveller Von Uffenbach, who upon viewing Ten Kate’s collection described the pair as follows: ‘In the morning we went to see Mr Lambert Tenkaaten, a Mennonite. Although he is actually a grain merchant, he is also a very courteous, enquiring and withal scholarly man. First, he showed us a fine collection of bas-reliefs, casts, small and large sculptures […]. He also had two marble busts portraying Sophocles and Plato, very well made, but not from Antiquity’.¹⁰

While not mentioned by Von Uffenbach explicitly, at this time the two philosopher busts were attributed to the famous Flemish-born sculptor François du Quesnoy (1597-1643), who had been mainly active in Rome. The earliest attribution of the busts to Du Quesnoy is found in Ten Kate’s Verhandeling over het denkbeeldige schoon der schilders, beeldhouwers en dichters (Treatise on the Ideal Beauty of Painters, Sculptors and Poets), a manuscript from 1720. In his treatise, Ten Kate identifies the bald philosopher as Plato and the pendant bust with hairband erroneously as Sophocles or Xenophon.¹¹ A French-language edition of the same treatise was published in 1728 under the title Discours préliminaire sur le Beau Idéal, intended as an appendix accompanying the third volume of Traité de la peinture et de la sculpture by father and son Jonathan Richardson, whose treatise Ten Kate translated and published himself.¹² The two busts are also mentioned in the English-language edition of Richardson’s treatise (published six years prior), written after the young Richardson’s viewing of the Ten Kate collection in the fall of 1716. Here the works were praised as ‘two very fine Heads of Fiammingo’.¹³ The Richardsons even went so far as to assign the busts a place of distinction, describing them as high points in Du Quesnoy’s oeuvre, second only to his two most important works made in Rome.¹⁴ Lastly, the pair is also mentioned in Ten Kate’s correspondence with the painter Hendrik van Limborch (1681-1759), in which various matters of art theory and physiognomy were addressed. In these letters, the two busts were introduced as test cases in Ten Kate’s ‘applied physiognomy’ and proportion theory. Formulating detailed descriptions of the curvature and proportions of the faces, he further argued his previous identification of the two busts as Plato and Sophocles or Xenophon.¹⁵ He also enclosed two signed cross-section drawings of the busts, including all calibration points as well as mutual differences in size and form.

There is sufficient reason to believe that the two philosopher busts were in the collection of the painter Joachim von Sandrart (1606-1688) by as early as 1638.¹⁶ Before moving to Amsterdam, Von Sandrart had lived in Rome (1629-1635). There he belonged to a small circle of artists – mostly non-Italian, among them Du Quesnoy – who devoted their time to the intensive study of Antique culture. The members of this so-called Antiquität-Academie organized themselves along the lines of an art academy. It was through this association that Sandrart became close friends with Du Quesnoy, then also having the opportunity to acquire the busts directly from the sculptor.

One indication that the two busts arrived in Amsterdam via Sandrart is an antique philosopher’s bust in the Galleria Giustiniana, a work displaying facial features remarkably similar to the pair of busts in Lambert ten Kate’s possession (cf. the top bust in RP-P-OB-23.339),¹⁷ as can be seen in Theodoor Matham’s engraving of this sculpture. Sandrart oversaw Vincenzo Giustiniani’s famous collection for several years and could easily have provided Du Quesnoy access to view the works held there. The busts also left their mark on Sandrart’s own oeuvre, in the form of tronies of old, bearded men, often depicting classical figures.¹⁸ The earliest known example of these heads was a portrait of Asclepius painted in Amsterdam in 1638.¹⁹ Also supporting a link between the busts and Sandrart are the poems that Joost van den Vondel wrote in 1644, centring on works of art in the German painter’s possession, as the two men were close friends. In his poem entitled Op Plato en Aristoteles (On Plato and Aristotle), Vondel praises two marble busts of these Greek philosophers, famed for the wisdom they exuded.²⁰ By his own account, Sandrart sold his entire collection of art in 1645, when he moved from Amsterdam to Munich.²¹ The two busts therefore also remained behind in Amsterdam. The identity of the person who acquired the busts is unfortunately not known. Most likely is that they were held in the art cabinet of another Amsterdam collector, before ultimately entering Lambert ten Kate’s possession at the onset of the eighteenth century.

The eighteenth-century attribution of the present two busts to Du Quesnoy was revised in 1980, 1981 and 2005, respectively by Van Gelder, Schlegel and Boudon-Machuel. Orfeo Boselli (1597-1667) was introduced as a possible candidate, on the basis of stylistic parallels to a monumental, signed statue of St Benedict in the Sant’Ambrogio alla Massima in Rome (fig. a).²² As early as the seventeenth century, this statue was previously thought to be a work carved by Boselli after a design by Du Quesnoy.²³ This is very well possible, as Boselli is known to have closely worked with the Flemish sculptor and – again by his own account – to have even served as his apprentice.²⁴ The agreement between the faces on the philosopher busts and that of Benedict is striking, most notably in the lively treatment of the beard and the form and proportions of the face, including the straight nose and the high cheekbones. More problematic, by contrast, are comparisons to other works by Boselli, such as his portraits of Girolamo Colonna I (1651) and Paolo Giordano Orsini II (c. 1655), or his busts of Emperor Hadrian and a Roman lady (both 1663).²⁵ All of these works are rather dry and schematic in execution and possess nothing of the subtle and varied liveliness observable in the surface treatment of the two marble philosophers and the St Benedict. In these latter works, Boselli displays his talent as a competent, though fairly unimaginative sculptor, who chiefly elaborates on the inventions of others. That he was capable of creating such an appealing pair of philosopher’s busts on his own therefore seems unlikely.²⁶

That the two philosophers and the St Benedict are all three of Du Quesnoy’s invention is confirmed by stylistic similarities to the sculptor’s documented works. The form of the face, the ‘fluttering’ beard and the lively modelling are clearly derived from the countenance of Du Quesnoy’s St Andrew (St Peter’s Basilica, Rome) – even if the rendering of the latter displays far greater suffering and drama – whereas a striking agreement can be discerned when comparing the bald philosopher’s countenance to that of Du Quesnoy’s famous St Susanna: the straight nose, the sharply defined eyelids, and the characteristic mouth with its large lower lip and short, wavy upper lip.²⁷ Lastly to be noted is the great similarity of the philosophers’ faces to that of several monumental apostle statues by Jerôme du Quesnoy II (1602-1654), François’s brother, made for the Brussels cathedral (both 1644).²⁸ Jérôme worked closely with his brother in Rome. After his death in 1643, François’s artistic legacy was overseen by his brother, who had himself returned to Brussels in 1642. Apart from the somewhat fuller beards, the commonalities shared by the marble philosophers’ faces and those of Jérôme du Quesnoy’s saints Paul and Bartholomew are striking. It therefore seems quite conceivable that he was inspired by models of the two philosophers from the legacy of his elder brother.

In the art historical literature, virtually no consensus exists regarding the identity of the philosopher pair. Since Vondel’s poem of 1644, the bald man without the hairband has generally been identified as Plato, but later twice as Sophocles. The identity of the pendant has switched from Aristotle (Vondel), Sophocles (Von Uffenbach) and Xenophon (Ten Kate).²⁹ Jonker recently argued that Socrates is the figure depicted without the hairband, accompanied by Plato instead with the hairband.³⁰ His interpretation was based on the seventeenth-century iconography of classical philosophers. Jonker nevertheless completely overlooks the history of the busts. Moreover, his proposal falls short of convincing, if only on the basis of a total absence of any clear-cut visual tradition at this time.³¹ While there is no way of disproving that Vondel’s description of the philosopher with the hairband was indeed Plato – pace Jonker – the present identification adheres to that most commonly embraced in the existing literature: Aristotle with the hairband, Plato without.

A possible, eighteenth-century echo of the Aristoteles – excepting the omission of his headband – is the small head of a bearded man in ivory, attributed to Johann Ludwig Lücke (c. 1703-1780).³² A parallel is also observable with two expressive all’antica busts of Homer and Aristoteles, until 2020 held in the Earl of Derby’s collection at Knowsley Hall in the United Kingdom.³³ This pair was purchased in 1726 by James Stanley, 10th Earl of Derby (1664-1736), as works ‘modelled by Bernini’ for £10, from one of his art agents, Hamlet Winstanley, who himself had acquired them in Rome during an art acquisition trip undertaken in the period 1723-1729 on Derby’s behalf. The technical similarity to the Amsterdam pair – above all in the treatment of the hair and skin – suggests that, likewise in this case, Boselli was responsible for their execution. Less probable is that he was the inventor: unlike the Amsterdam busts, the dynamic pose of the Knowsley Hall busts, with the head turned to the side, the expressive treatment of the beards and coiffures, and the more vivid rendering of the skin betray a model devised by a sculptor in Bernini’s immediate circle. Giuliano Finelli (1601-1653) is a plausible candidate, in part due to the striking similarity to a bust of the Pseudo-Seneca in Madrid, convincingly attributed to this sculptor.³⁴

Frits Scholten, 2025