The Four Continents Bringing Tribute to Amsterdam: Model for the West Tympanum of the Amsterdam Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square

Entry

This design for a tympanum belongs to a group of 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.⁸ 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 terracotta is a large, approximately 1:5 scale model of the sculptural decoration on the pediment of the Amsterdam town hall’s west facade. The scene shows the four then known continents – Europe, Asia, Africa and America – personified as female figures bringing tribute to the Maid of Amsterdam, who sits before a cog ship that dominates the background at the tympanum’s centre. Lying at her feet are two recumbent figures: male river gods personifying the IJ and Amstel rivers. Leading the figures bringing tributes on the tympanum’s left half is the continent Europe, accompanied by a horse and two oxen. She wears classical raiment, a crown and cradles a cornucopia in her two hands. The continent Africa follows: a black woman accompanied by a lion, an elephant and two attendants, one holding a parrot and the other a chameleon. At the rear, far left, men can be seen busy moving various pieces of mercantile ware: bales, a barrel, elephant tusks and other objects. First in line to offer tribute on the tympanum’s right half is the continent Asia, portrayed as a veiled woman holding an incense burner, accompanied by a camel and an ostrich, and several children bearing small luxury goods and a crocodile. After these figures comes America, depicted as a Native American woman wearing a feathered headdress, with her bare back facing the viewer. She grasps the arm of a male slave crouched behind her, while an armadillo paces between her feet. Seated right is an Indian smoking a pipe, who gazes in the direction of apparent mineworkers, a scene possibly referring to goldmines in recently discovered California.⁹

The functional status of the present terracotta model for the tympanum design remains unclear. The town hall account books include only one entry regarding a modelled design for the frontespies – for the amount of 600 guilders – with no further specification to enable a more precise identification among the various surviving models.¹⁰ On the model for the east tympanum (BK-AM-51-2),¹¹ which has survived completely intact, one discerns quadrant lines to facilitate scale reproduction incised in the clay. The absence of such markings on the present model, by contrast, arguably suggest it could not have been a studio working model. In 1901, Pit noted that the thick red finishing layer covering the model’s surface impeded any stylistic evaluation aimed to detect Quellinus’s hand.¹² With the removal of this layer, however, the evident high quality points to a work quite probably executed largely by Quellinus himself. This corroborates Leeuwenberg’s view in 1973, which characterized the design in the following terms: ‘…chiefly the work of Quellinus […] the rather dull execution here and there suggests the hand of one of Quellinus’s close assistants’.¹³ This also rules out the possibility that the piece is a replica, made at the request of a private patron. Given the high level of finishing and the obvious deviations from previous designs, e.g. Van Campen’s sketch (RP-T-1906-18), a drawing possibly by Daniël Stalpaert or Quellinus himself (RP-T-00-414) and the small-scale design on the wooden town hall maquette, the present terracotta model likely functioned as a vidimus presented for the burgomasters’ approval.¹⁴ Its date of origin is circa 1650-53, as the town hall account book in which a frontespies is listed was compiled around 1652-53. The execution of the definitive tympanum design in marbled followed several years later, in 1656 or 1658, completed at the astronomical cost of 9,500 guilders, excluding an additional 500 guilders remitted to Quellinus as vereering (bonus) for his work.¹⁵

The provenance of the present tympanum model deviates from most of the other Quellinus objects held by the municipality of Amsterdam. The piece was in fact acquired many years after its making, in 1882, from the Ghent architect Théophile Bureau (1827-1884), a purchase that entailed two years of negotiation and the mediation of the Dordrecht merchant J.A. van Dam.¹⁶ Bureau himself acquired the piece at an 1859 sale of possessions formerly belonging to the Ghent archaeologist Benoni Verhelst (1803-1861), who in his turn had purchased it some fifty years earlier reportedly ‘in Holland’.¹⁷ It therefore becomes quite conceivable that the model was sold by the city during a period of unrest in Amsterdam’s history in the years 1795 to 1805/08, a fate that presumably also befell approximately twelve other models.¹⁸ Another less probable scenario is that the tympanum model originated from the collection of Govert Bidloo (1649-1713), an Amsterdam/Leiden physician and esteemed man of letters. A framed ‘original model’ of the town hall’s west tympanum he apparently owned was sold at his 1713 estate sale for the amount of fifty-three guilders.¹⁹ What happened to the piece after the sale is not known, just as by what means Bidloo – an avid supporter of the House of Orange whose relations with the Amsterdam burgomasters were far from ideal – had come to acquire the model.

Frits Scholten, 2024