Object data
terracotta
height 61 cm × width 30.5 cm
Artus Quellinus (I) (workshop of)
Diana, After a Model for a High Relief in the Amsterdam Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square
Amsterdam, c. 1651 - c. 1664
Technical notes
Modelled in relief and fired.
Provenance
…;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 Rijksmuseum, 18878 transferred to the Amsterdams Historisch Museum (now: Amsterdam Museum), 1935
Object number: BK-AM-51-12
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
The present Diana 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.
Diana stands frontally before a modelled frame, posed in an elegant contrapposto with her head turned sharply to the left. She holds a burning torch in her right hand and clasps the bow slung over her left shoulder with the other. The goddess wears a short tunic with one breast exposed. Several of the motifs in this representation of Diana can be traced back to Ripa’s descriptions of the moon goddess and the Chariot of the Moon. Her burning torch, for example, refers to her roles as the aenbrengster van ‘t licht aan de jongh geboren kinderkens (bringer of light to new-born children) and the guiding light of shepherds in the night.24
The definitive marble version of the present terracotta belongs to a series of eight marble reliefs depicting planetary gods, mounted in the galleries on both sides of the central hall, the Burgerzaal (Citizens’ Hall). The gods were positioned between the doorways to the various office chambers and between the passages to the stairwells.25 The iconography of these reliefs can in part be traced to Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, of which a Dutch-language edition was published in Amsterdam in 1644.26 The reliefs refer to the specific functions of each of the adjoining spaces and together form a cosmological system linked to the statues on the pediments of the building’s façades and the large inlay maps of the Eastern and Western hemispheres in the floor of the main hall. In this manner, Amsterdam and its town hall were symbolically portrayed as the centre of the world and the cosmos.27
The marble Diana relief was placed in the south-east corner of the town hall’s south gallery between the doors to the former Thesaurie Ordinaris – the city’s financial department, also responsible for paying Quellinus’s account declarations28 – and the Burgermeesterskamer, where the burgomasters and ex-burgomasters met to discuss key matters at the close of the quarterly period.29 Diana is flanked by two lunettes with putti and fish mounted above the doors (cf. BK-AM-51-20-A and -B). As goddess of the hunt, she is surrounded by the fruits of her bounty: a deer, two large fish, a crab and a lobster. In their respective lunettes, the putti playfully re-enact the hunt, as it were: each holds the slippery tail of a large fish arced along the curve of the central oculus, with horns of plenty spilling a variety of fruit at the putti’s feet. As a whole, the scene represents a befitting ode to the rich ‘hunting bounty’ brought from around the world by the Amsterdam merchants largely responsible for the city’s prosperity during this period.30
The town hall account books of 1651 list a terracotta model of Diana measuring ‘three feet high’ (= c. 85 cm) for the amount of sixty guilders, together with the model for the Apollo.31 The original Diana model, however, is probably non-extant; the present piece is a reduced replica – circa two feet high – probably made from the master model by an assistant in the workshop. This occurred at some point between 1651 and 1654, the year in which Quellinus closed his workshop. For what purpose the present piece was made and whether it was also commissioned by the city of Amsterdam itself (as opposed to a private patron) are matters as yet unresolved. The fact that it is documented in the town hall’s art cabinet by as early as the eighteenth century nevertheless suggests a municipal commission. Two other replicas of the Diana relief survive to the present day: a smaller replica in Berlin and a larger replica in the collection of Gustav Leonhardt in Amsterdam up until 2014.32 The Berlin piece is possibly identical to the same Diana (together with an Apollo) first sold with the collection of the Amsterdam burgomaster Joan de Vries in 1738, and almost a century later, sold with that of the Delft burgomaster E. Sandoz in 1819. All of the aforementioned replicas underscore the relative popularity of Quellinus’s inventions for the new town hall.33 For a discussion of the various replica groups, see the entry on BK-AM-51-19.
Frits Scholten, 2024
Literature
E. Rümmler, C. Theuerkauff et al., Europäische Barockplastik am Niederrhein: Grupello und seine Zeit, exh. cat. Düsseldorf (Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf) 1971, no. 240, fig. 137; J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 290, with earlier literature; K. Fremantle and W. Halsema-Kubes, Beelden Kijken: De kunst van Quellien in het Paleis op de Dam/Focus on Sculpture: Quellien’s Art in the Palace on the Dam, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Royal Palace) 1977, p. 82 (no. 15); 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, pp. 144-45 (under no. 106); F. Scholten, ‘Twee vroege statuettes van Rombout Verhulst’, Antiek 25 (1990-91), pp. 345-53, esp. pp. 348, 350, fig. 5; E. ten Napel (ed.), Amsterdamse sinjoren 1576-1622: In het voetspoor van Antwerpse immigranten, Amsterdam 1993, p. 79; M. Jonker et al., In beeld gebracht: Beeldhouwkunst uit de collectie van het Amsterdams Historisch Museum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1995, no. 108; 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. 53, 55 (fig. 65e); 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, p. 23, fig. 31
Citation
F. Scholten, 2024, 'workshop of Artus (I) Quellinus, Diana, After a Model for a High Relief in the Amsterdam Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square, Amsterdam, c. 1651 - c. 1664', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200115930
(accessed 10 December 2025 23:49:48).