Object data
terracotta
height 51 cm × width 43 cm
Artus Quellinus (I)
Three Nereids, Part of a Model for the East Tympanum of the Amsterdam Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square
Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1653
Technical notes
Modelled in high relief and fired.
Condition
Both the middle and the right figure are missing their respective left arms.
Provenance
Commissioned by the City of Amsterdam, c. 1650-53;1 ? from the artist,2 transferred to the Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square, Amsterdam, 1664;3 first recorded there in the early 19th century;4 transferred to the Stadstekenacademie (at two or three successive locations), Amsterdam, 1808;5 transferred to the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten (old Exchange of Hendrick de Keyser), Amsterdam, 1821;6 transferred to the Oude Mannenhuis, Amsterdam 1837;7 transferred to the Town Hall at the Prinsenhof, Amsterdam, 1878;8 on loan to the Rijksmuseum, since 18879
Object number: BK-AM-51-1-C
Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam
Copyright: Public domain
Context
The great wealth and might of the city Amsterdam – the most important merchant city of the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century – manifested itself in grand public works and countless other public and private buildings. This was especially true of the new town hall on the Dam Square, for which initial plans were already being made as early as 1639. The building’s design was aimed to reflect the power and prosperity that Amsterdam had come to acquire since the closing of the Scheldt in 1585, an event that cost Antwerp its leading economic position in the Low Countries.10 The existing town hall, which dated back to the Middle Ages, had become too small to accommodate the rapidly growing civic governmental apparatus and was therefore to be replaced by a new and spacious ‘urban palace’. To carry out this ambitious plan, the city’s burgomasters chose the architect Jacob van Campen (1596-1657).11
In its design, decoration and style, the new Amsterdam town hall was to glorify both the city and its governing council by mirroring illustrious examples from antiquity and its own day: the ancient Roman Republic and the modern Republic of Venice.12 Designated as the central themes were the three mainstays of Amsterdam’s economic success: good and fair governance, peace and prosperity. The Amsterdam city regents were bestowed the honorary title of vredesvader (father of peace), an appellation alluding to the seminal role these men played in negotiating the Peace of Münster, the treaty of 1648 that ended the war with the Spanish and signalled a new period of unparalleled prosperity.13 Through the classicist style of its architecture and the themes depicted in painted and sculptural decoration, this new monumental addition to the city was meant to convey Amsterdam’s standing as a worthy successor to ancient Rome, the geographic source of the Roman Republic’s past power and glory.14 Albeit less explicitly, Amsterdam also wished to mirror itself on the Republic of Venice. Both cities had begun as fishing villages and grown to become powerful merchant centres with international allure. Both cities also boasted a stable government firmly grounded on republican principles.15 Lastly, the decoration programme of the new Amsterdam town hall drew a parallel between the Israelites in the Bible and the present-day inhabitants of the Dutch Republic. Just as the Israelites – also long oppressed by a heathen religion – were led out of Egypt, so too had the Dutch liberated themselves from the yoke of the Spanish king and Catholic idolatry. The inhabitants of the Dutch Republic had God to thank for their freedom and fortune.16 All of these associations were to be unified in the new town hall’s realization, made manifest for both the city’s own burghers but also countless visitors from abroad.
In 1648, the Flemish sculptor Artus Quellinus I (1609-1668) – then one of the most successful and talented sculptors in the Low Countries17 – was hired to devise the sculptural programme of the planned town hall. Having been trained as he sculptor by his father in the Baroque milieu of Rubens in Antwerp, Quellinus travelled to Rome in 1635, where he entered the studio of the Flemish sculptor François du Quesnoy (1594-1643).18 In the words of Du Quesnoy’s biographer, Sandrart: ‘Quellinus made himself very useful when in Rome and there he studied the art of Antiquity with success.’19 Accordingly, the sculptor’s work displays both elements of Du Quesnoy’s austere Classicism and Rubens’s Baroque. Yet the Amsterdam burgomasters’ decision to place the town hall’s sculptural decoration in Quellinus’s charge was not simply based on his style and qualities as a sculptor: his international experience, knowledge of antique sculpture and ability to run a large studio were also important factors.20
The architect of the planned town hall, Jacob van Campen, was ‘artistic director’ of the decoration programme of the building’s exterior and interior in close consultation with his patrons. A number of fairly primitive pen-and-ink sketches and discernible details on the wooden, scale-model maquette show that, especially in this regard, Van Campen had very clear ideas of his own.21 Quellinus’s task was to transform these ideas and simple sketches into clear and detailed three-dimensional designs. Several terracottas in the Rijksmuseum illustrate this specific stage of the design process. Presented for approval to both Van Campen and the burgomasters charged with making the final decision, these models can be described as vidimi (vidimus (Lat.) = we have seen) in the purest sense. A subsequent stage in this process entailed the detailed realization of these sketch models into working models – scale models, possibly followed by so-called modelli grandi – to be used in the studio for the final execution of monumental sculptures in marble and bronze.
Given the monumental scale of sculptural production accomplished in a relatively short period of time, Quellinus is certain to have had a large workshop to accommodate his many assistants. While information regarding the distribution of tasks remains scant, the diverse modelling on the surviving terracottas rules out the possibility of a single sculptor working on his own. Variations in the level of finishing can also be observed. The first group of terracottas can be described as bozzetti: loosely modelled sketches functioning as preliminary, plastic explorations of a theme or composition (cf. BK-AM-51-10). The second group consists of finished modelli – the aforementioned vidimi – from which the cast replicas were made that served as models in the studio. This category of works can sometimes be identified as such by measuring marks: points, lines and grids drawn in the wet clay to facilitate the design’s reproduction and enlargement in marble or bronze.22 The third and final group consists of various replicas likewise made in Quellinus’s workshop but ultimately destined for the free market, e.g. as council members’ gifts to friends or as souvenirs privately commissioned by the burgomasters and their retinue to commemorate their role in the building of the town hall.23
Entry
This relief of three Nereids24 – sea nymphs and daughters of the sea god Nereus is one of the terracotta sketches and models made by the Antwerp sculptor Artus Quellinus I (1609-1668) and his assistants in preparation for the sculptural decoration of the new Amsterdam town hall, today the Royal Palace on the Dam Square (for an extensive history of the town hall, its significance and decoration programme, see ‘Context’). After the project’s completion, Quellinus’s Amsterdam studio was closed in 1664. At this time, the city’s burgomasters ordered that all of the remaining works and presentation models be transferred to the new town hall. With this move, the ensemble of fifty-one pieces officially became the property of the city of Amsterdam.25 A number were transferred to the Rijksmuseum in 1887/88 on a long-term basis. All other works are today preserved at the Amsterdam Museum.
This relief of the three Nereids is a scale model for the section right of the Maid of Amsterdam on the town hall’s east tympanum. Two terracotta models of this marble tympanum have survived: a complete version in the Amsterdam Museum measuring more than four metres long, and an incomplete version comprising ten individual components, including the present piece (for the remaining sections, see BK-AM-1-A, -B , and -D to -J). The tympanum contains a scene of the Four World Seas – personified in the form of Tritons riding hippocampi and dolphins, swimming Nereids and other water creatures – bringing tribute to the city of Amsterdam, depicted as an enthroned maiden. The functional status of both tympanum designs, which show no distinct differences, remains ambiguous. The town hall account books mention only one modelled work for the frontespies (frontispiece), for the amount of 600 guilders. Uncertain is to which of the two models this entry refers.26 The complete tympanum model in the Amsterdam Museum is composed of several larger reliefs mounted together. This, in combination with the somewhat inferior quality of the execution, suggests that this was the model used in Quellinus’s workshop, an assumption further reinforced by the incised grid lines (5 x 5 cm) still visible in places. The incomplete model – including the present terracotta ‘fragment’ – can therefore be identified as the vidimus submitted to the building’s patrons for their evaluation and approval. Accordingly, the entire model – and with it the present terracotta – was produced circa 1650-53, as deduced from the fact that the account book citing the frontespies as tsedert lange in diverse partyen betaelt (since long in various instalments paid) was compiled in 1652-53.27 The marble tympanum for the town hall’s east facade was executed in 1657, for the then astronomical amount of 12,000 guilders, excluding an additional bonus of 600 guilders paid to Quellinus for his efforts.28
By the year 1769, both the complete tympanum model and most sections of the incomplete model were housed in the town hall’s art cabinet. Evidently sold several decades later, various sections of the incomplete tympanum – which, as conveyed in an old reconstruction photo,29 was originally composed of many more parts – came into the possession of private individuals.30 This possibly occurred in or after 1795, i.e. during the French occupation of the Netherlands, when for a period of approximately ten years the collection of Quellinus models remained at the town hall without oversight.31 Of the surviving ten pieces, seven came directly from the town hall art cabinet (after 1769), while the other three came from a private collection in Utrecht, where they were held in the nineteenth century.
Frits Scholten, 2024
Literature
J.S. Witsen Elias, Geschiedenis van de Europese beeldhouwkunst, Utrecht 1966, p. 217, fig. 136; J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 276-a-3, with earlier literature; J. Van der Stock and H. Devisscher, Antwerpen, verhaal van een metropool, 16de-17de eeuw, exh. cat. Antwerp (Hessenhuis) 1993, pp. 352, 354 (ill.), 355; M. Jonker et al., In beeld gebracht: Beeldhouwkunst uit de collectie van het Amsterdams Historisch Museum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1995, no. 77; H. Vreeken, ‘Quellinus’ boetseersels voor het zeventiende-eeuwse stadhuis op de Dam’, in M. Jonker et al., In beeld gebracht: Beeldhouwkunst uit de collectie van het Amsterdams Historisch Museum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1995, pp. 38-59, esp. pp. 44, 45 and fig. 60-f; H.J. Wiggers, ‘De stad Amsterdam en haar vroegste beeldencollectie’, in M. Jonker et al., In beeld gebracht: Beeldhouwkunst uit de collectie van het Amsterdams Historisch Museum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1995, pp. 60-75; F. Scholten, Artus Quellinus: Sculptor of Amsterdam, Amsterdam 2010, fig. 19
Citation
F. Scholten, 2024, 'Artus (I) Quellinus, Three Nereids, Part of a Model for the East Tympanum of the Amsterdam Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square, Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1653', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20017580
(accessed 6 December 2025 23:59:39).