Object data
terracotta
height 23.8 cm × width 24.5 cm × depth 22.5 cm
Artus Quellinus (I)
Cimon and Pero (or ‘Caritas Romana’), Model for the Crowning Element of a Pump Designed for the North Courtyard of the Amsterdam Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square
Amsterdam, c. 1651 - c. 1652
Technical notes
Modelled and fired. Coated with a finishing layer.
Condition
Part of Cimon’s left leg and one of the other prisoners’ heads are missing. Paint traces can be discerned.
Provenance
Commissioned by the City of Amsterdam, c. 1651;1 from the artist,2 transferred to the Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square, Amsterdam, 1664;3 transferred to the Stadstekenacademie (at two or three successive locations), Amsterdam, 1808;4 transferred to the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten (old Exchange of Hendrick de Keyser), Amsterdam, 1821;5 transferred to the Oude Mannenhuis, Amsterdam 1837;6 transferred to the Town Hall at the Prinsenhof, Amsterdam, 1878;7 on loan to the museum, since 18878
Object number: BK-AM-51-11
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.9 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).10
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.11 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.12 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.13 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.14 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.15 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 Countries16 – 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).17 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.’18 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.19
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.20 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.21 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.22
Entry
This design with a representation of the so-called Caritas Romana 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.23 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.
Each of the town hall’s two inner courtyards was to be furnished with monumental water pumps or fountains, each crowned by a statuary group.24 An allegory of maritime shipping was planned for the crowning element of the pump in the south courtyard (cf. BK-AM-51-10), while the fountain in the north courtyard was to be adorned with a group dedicated to filial piety in the form of Roman Charity (Caritas Romana), such as told by the Roman writer Valerius Maximus in his Dictorum factorumque memorabilium (first century after Christ).25 Quellinus made the present terracotta sketch for the latter waterwork in 1651 or 1652, for which the account books indicate he was paid 24 guilders.26
This autograph design for the north courtyard pump appears less freely modelled than the sketch for the crowning element of the other pump. It shows a compact group of four sitting figures, with the elderly Cimon and his daughter Pero (in the Greek variant known as Mykon and Perona) depicted most prominently. Unjustly sentenced to death by starvation and subsequently incarcerated, Cimon was certain to perish were it not for his daughter, who kept her father alive by breastfeeding him. The city magistrates were so impressed upon learning of Pero’s charitable act that Cimon was immediately set free, with the state assuming full responsibility for his care and ensuring he would never again suffer hunger in his life. Commonly known as the Caritas Romana, the history of Cimon and Pero was a highly appropriate theme for the north courtyard of the Amsterdam town hall. It referred both to the life-giving and revitalizing waters flowing from the pump – analogous to Pero’s breastmilk – and the prison that adjoined the courtyard. Nevertheless, Pero’s act was to be seen above all as a model of filial piety, charitable sacrifice, civic virtue and caring for those wrongfully accused.27
For the theme’s realization, Quellinus very likely based his design for the present terracotta on Rubens, whose rendering of Cimon and Pero survives in multiple versions, one of which is held in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-345).28 In both works, father and daughter are shown seated; the old man has his hands bound behind his back, with the daughter’s right arm gently draped across his shoulders. Unlike the painting, however, Quellinus shows Pero gazing down at her father, watching attentively as he suckles milk from her breast while in the immediate presence of two other prisoners. In Rubens’s painting, by contrast, she turns to look back in the direction of two men – prison guards – peering through a window in the prison cell wall. Furthermore, Rubens’s Pero wears more or less contemporary clothing, whereas Quellinus – in the spirit of the town hall – has chosen to portray her in classical raiment. A somewhat similar terracotta group by Quellinus, showing Samson and Delilah, is preserved at the Bode-Museum in Berlin. This sculpture, however, was probably made as an autonomous, finished cabinet piece.29 The painter Willem Drost, a student of Rembrandt, was likely inspired by Quellinus’s design when creating his own version of the theme, from circa 1655-57 (SK-C-1802, fig. a). Especially Pero’s classical attire and facial type are highly reminiscent of Quellinus’s style.
This freely modelled, indisputably autograph work was clearly conceived as an initial exploration of the design’s theme, to be further worked out at a later stage. Fremantle suspected that this model and that of the other pump were further realized in life-size models later to be cast in bronze.30 The high amount that Quellinus had declared indeed suggests he produced such casting models at full scale. Nevertheless, he failed to receive the 1,000 guilders for the moddellen van beelden die geordonneert waren tot de pompehof (models of statues destined for the pump courtyard) – i.e. the definitive models, of which there has since been no trace – because, in 1665, the then serving burgomasters decided that niet genoeghsaem bleeck dat daer ordre toe gegeven was (it proved ill-befitting that such an order had been made). In the end, the amount was settled with another, as yet unpaid item for marble delivered to Quellinus by the city.31
Frits Scholten, 2024
Literature
J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 282-b, with earlier literature; E. Dhanens (ed.), De beeldhouwkunst in de eeuw van Rubens in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden en het prinsbisdom Luik, exh. cat. Brussels (Museum voor Oude Kunst) 1977, p. 147, no. 109; M. Jonker et al., In beeld gebracht: Beeldhouwkunst uit de collectie van het Amsterdams Historisch Museum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1995, no. 102; 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. 49, 51 (fig. 62k); 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; P. Philippot, D. Coekelberghs, P. Loze and D. Vautier, L’Architecture religieuse et la sculpture baroques dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux et la principauté de Liège: 1600-1770, Sprimont 2003, p. 842 (fig. 3); F. Scholten, Artus Quellinus: Sculptor of Amsterdam, Amsterdam 2010, pp. 41-44, fig. 49
Citation
F. Scholten, 2024, 'Artus (I) Quellinus, Cimon and Pero (or ‘Caritas Romana’), Model for the Crowning Element of a Pump Designed for the North Courtyard of the Amsterdam Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square, Amsterdam, c. 1651 - c. 1652', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20017592
(accessed 7 December 2025 01:19:37).