Object data
terracotta
height 41.5 cm × width 40 cm (left half)
height 40.3 cm × width 40 cm (right half)
Artus Quellinus (I)
Model for an Overdoor Lunette with Putti and Fish for the Amsterdam Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square
Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1651
Inscriptions
- inscription, on the right fragment, above the cornucopia
Technical notes
Modelled and fired in two seperate halves. Coated with a white finishing layer. Analysis by Hallebeek (ICN) in 1997 revealed that this finishing layer comprises a mixture of chalk and plaster.1 Furthermore, remnants of a natural resin were detected in dark-brown chunks on the surface. The red-firing clay is composed of silicon, iron oxide (hematite) and calcium silicate sulphate. These findings generally correspond with those of chemical analysis of several unspecified Quellinus terracottas conducted at the Centraal Laboratorium voor Onderzoek van Voorwerpen van Kunst en Wetenschap in 1967. This study established a thin greyish finishing layer composed of plaster (CaSO4) with small quantities of chalk white (CaCO3) and iron oxide red (Fe2O3).2
Scientific examination and reports
- X-ray powder diffraction: P. Hallebeek, ICN, 97-107, 17 March 1997
Condition
On the left half, the fish’s head and a section of the fruit is missing. Several restored breaks can be discerned.
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.3 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).4
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.5 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.6 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.7 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.8 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.9 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 Countries10 – 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).11 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.’12 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.13
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.14 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.15 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.16
Entry
This design for a lunette with putti and fish 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.17 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.
The present lunette design with putti and two fish can be dated circa 1650-51, based on the explicit mention of lunettes met hanen ende vissen ende kinderkens daerby (with cockerels and fish and children thereby) in the town hall account books of 1651.18 For each of his lunette designs, Quellinus received 25 guilders. He would ultimately create a total of eight different designs, seven of which survive to the present day, albeit largely in a fragmentary state.19 Discernible in the putti’s plump bodies is the influence of Quellinus’s teacher in Rome, François du Quesnoy, the Flemish sculptor renowned for this kind of putti (cf. BK-2014-28).20
The present design was executed in marble in 1652. Its designated place was above the doorway to the Thesaurie Ordinaris, the city’s financial department likewise charged with the remuneration of Quellinus’s account declarations.21 The Thesaurie was located in the southeast corner of the south gallery on the town hall’s second floor. The marble version of the present overdoor lunette appears left of a statue of the moon goddess, Diana (cf. BK-AM-51-12), with a second, comparable lunette (cf. BK-AM-51-20-A) mounted right of the statue. In her role as goddess of the hunt, Diana stands amidst the spoils of the hunt: a hart, two large fish, a crab and a lobster. In the right lunette, two putti engage in a kind of child’s play clearly centred on the theme of hunting: each holds the slippery tail of a fish, whose bodies follow the curve of the central oculus on either side. Behind them, cornucopias run parallel to the fish left and right, with all kinds of fruits and vegetables pouring out at the putti’s feet. Viewed as a whole, the scene is a befitting ode to the abundant ‘catch’ brought to the city from around the world by Amsterdam merchants, who greatly contributed to its prosperity during this period.22
Frits Scholten, 2024
Literature
J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 284, with earlier literature; M. Jonker et al., In beeld gebracht: Beeldhouwkunst uit de collectie van het Amsterdams Historisch Museum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1995, no. 115; 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, 56 (fig. 66d); 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
Citation
F. Scholten, 2024, 'Artus (I) Quellinus, Model for an Overdoor Lunette with Putti and Fish for the Amsterdam Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square, Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1651', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200115925
(accessed 11 December 2025 22:18:12).