Object data
terracotta
height 59 cm × width 30.5 cm × thickness 14.3 cm × weight 18 kg
Artus Quellinus (I) (workshop of)
Cybele, After a Model for a High Relief in the Amsterdam Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square
Amsterdam, c. 1653 - c. 1664
Inscriptions
- inscription, on the wooden frame’s reverse, in blue chalk: 6
Technical notes
Modelled in high relief and fired. Discernible on the surface of the background are individual, not entirely parallel markings made with a toothed comb. The innermost, concave frame of the terracotta displays the same comb markings, which intersect. On the outermost, flat frame, the comb markings are parallel to the frame’s perimeter.
Condition
The relief has been coated with a greyish-brown slip. In places where this slip has worn off due to natural abrasion, an earlier layer of light-red slip can be discerned. This earlier layer gives the effect of terracotta, though the actual colour of the fired terracotta is much redder. This difference in colour is likely more readily visible on the relief’s reverse; the presence of a later frame made around the piece, however, prevents this from being seen. Presumably, both slip layers were applied over the relief after a restoration, in order to conceal the plaster used to make eventual repairs.1 The plaster restoration can nevertheless be seen on the outward-projecting knee and on the folds around the belly. A closer inspection of the relief reveals that there are old damages as yet concealed. First and foremost is a dark crack visible through the slip layer below the projecting knee; above the same knee, another crack traverses in the direction of the key. The horn has broken off; the surface of the break and the key have both been sealed with slip. The aforementioned breaks and restorations are likely related. In the area around the belly, where the plaster can be discerned through the slip layers, the folds in the V-form of the drapery extend only part way: this area has probably been completely sealed with plaster. Furthermore, the mantel that Cybele raises with her right hand has also been completely sealed. A crack traversing towards the left edge of the relief splits off at the elbow just above the right arm continuing to behind the head. The face also displays several traces of plaster. Directly above Cybele’s nose, the municipal crown has been restored with a pink filler.
The relief is enclosed in a 19th or early-20th century, brown-painted pinewood frame, with the number ‘6’ inscribed on the reverse in blue chalk. The frames of the other reliefs from the planetary gods series (BK-AM-51-12 to -19) are also numbered. This possibly indicates a (later) sequencing
Provenance
…;2 from the artist,3 transferred to the Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square, Amsterdam, 1664;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 museum, since 18879
Object number: BK-AM-51-18
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
The present Cybele 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.24 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.
Cybele stands frontally before a modelled frame, posed in a light contrapposto. With her right hand resting against her right hip, she pulls back the train of her mantle. In her left hand, she holds the key to the city and the trumpet. A lioness lies at Cybele’s feet on her right; on her left, a lion stands with its head gazing down in the direction of the viewer. The goddess’ classically inspired clothing consists of two parts: a mantle, turned down to reveal the left shoulder, worn over a full-length tunic from which two sandaled feet emerge. Cybele’s head turns slightly to the left. Her hair hangs semi-loose in all’antica style, worn beneath a mural crown (corona muralis).
The definitive 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 goddess Cybele watches over the earth as Magna Mater, the mother of all growing things. In the Burgerzaal of the Amsterdam town hall, she appears between the doors to the former Weeskamer (Orphan’s Chamber) and the Vroedschapskamer located in the north-east corner of the north gallery.28 The lunette above the door to the first room features putti and lions. A surviving model of this overdoor element shows a clear iconographic link to Cybele, as explained in part by Ripa:29 during the period of sowing, Agriculture’s chariot was pulled by lions.30 The marble version of the present relief was executed in the year 1653/54.31 Presiding in the Weeskamer was a committee of four or five ‘orphan masters’, whose primary task lay in overseeing the care and legal custody of all underage citizens for whom one or both parents were deceased.32 The Vroedschapskamer was the meeting place of the burgomasters’ advisory committee, the vroedschap.33
There is no mention of a terracotta model of Cybele in the surviving town hall account books. The 1651 accounting lists only an Apollo and a Diana measuring ‘three feet high’, each for the amount of sixty guilders.34 Together with the documented execution of the marble Cybele relief in 1653-54, this supports a most plausible dating for the original model circa 1652-53.35 The present piece is certain to be a reduced workshop replica, with the original model probably non-extant. Moreover, the present Cybele relief measures only approximately 2 feet high and is therefore significantly smaller than the models for the other two reliefs. There is no doubt, however, that various versions of the Cybele existed, as confirmed by an undated list compiled some time before 1806 (1802/03?), which cites a Cybele gebootseerd (modelled Cybele), followed by een dito grooter (a ditto larger) and an additional ‘Cybele’. Which of these entries specifically refers to the terracotta discussed here is no longer ascertainable.36 This reduced replica would have been made at some point between 1653 and the closing of Quellinus’s workshop in 1664, one year prior to his definitive departure from Amsterdam. Uncertain is for what purpose the replica was made and whether it was commissioned by the city of Amsterdam itself (as opposed to a private patron). The case for a civic commission is nevertheless strengthened by the fact that the terracotta was already in the town hall’s art cabinet in the eighteenth century. For a discussion of the various replica groups, see the entry on BK-AM-51-19.
Iris Ippel and Frits Scholten, 2024
Literature
J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 289, 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. 68, fig. 83, p. 82 (no. 19); M. Jonker et al., In beeld gebracht: Beeldhouwkunst uit de collectie van het Amsterdams Historisch Museum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1995, no. 107; 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. 65d); 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. 30
Citation
F. Scholten, 2024, 'workshop of Artus (I) Quellinus, Cybele, After a Model for a High Relief in the Amsterdam Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square, Amsterdam, c. 1653 - c. 1664', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035685
(accessed 8 December 2025 23:20:09).