Pearl Oyster Shell with Perseus and Andromeda

Entry

Starting at the end of the sixteenth century, the first large exotic shell collections were being assembled in the Northern Netherlands. These natural curiosities could be imported from overseas thanks to the Dutch colonies and trade relations. As a result, cabinets containing these objects were becoming increasingly larger in scale, with the absolute high point occurring in the eighteenth century.¹ Especially the Nautilus shell was often furnished with an engraved decoration by skilled hands or encased in a precious metal frame, thus making it a highly suitable object for display in a Kunst- und Wunderkabinett. By contrast, Bellekin’s decorated shells were in all probability intended to be shown as individual items in a collector’s cabinets. The silver frames in which these shells are sometimes encased – often utilitarian objects such as snuff boxes (cf. BK-NM-13008) – are therefore always of later date.²

The shell of the Great Pearl Oyster (Pteria maxima Jameson) was perfectly suited for such purposes, thanks to its ample surface and the substantial thickness of the layer of mother of pearl. Moreover, both halves of the shell can be engraved. Occasionally, as with the present reliefs, the two halves form an ensemble. In most cases, the shell’s concave exterior was used, requiring first that the outer shell layer be removed to expose the mother of pearl. Georg Rumphius (1627-1702), a natural historian working for the East India Company on the Moluccan island Ambon, explains this process in his publication on shells, in which he likewise addresses other techniques of mother-of-pearl working.³

The Bel(le)quin family of mother-of-pearl engravers originated from Metz and settled in the Northern Netherlands at the onset of the seventeenth century.⁴ This family was specialized in the artistic working of mother of pearl with ebonized line engravings (cf. NG-KOG-1655). Its youngest and most important member was the Amsterdam mother-of-pearl engraver Cornelis Bellekin (active c. 1650-1700), who often combined the techniques of etching and engraving with sculptural relief carvings. In addition to the customary mother-of-pearl shells, great green turban and great top shells, he was one of the few artists to successfully apply these techniques in the Nautilus shell’s extremely thin layer of mother of pearl (cf. BK-1957-18 and -19).⁵ He also succeeded in decorating a number of ostrich eggs with relief carving and engravings.⁶ Bellekin’s innovative spirit is further exemplified by his invention of a newly devised tool for drilling diamonds, pearls and agate, which he advertised on 2 February 1696 in the Donderdagse Courant, a local Amsterdam newspaper.

In his day, Cornelis Bellekin was the leading mother-of-pearl engraver in the Dutch Republic. This was after a failed attempt to garner success as a painter in Middleburg in 1662-63. His peasant tableaux painted in the spirit of Teniers and Van Ostade are subjects also found on his earliest shells. The two pieces discussed here, bearing depictions of scene from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, are of later date and exemplary of the mythological genre in which he was most proficient.

Bellekin’s mother-of-pearl carvings were greatly admired in the Northern Netherlands, finding their way into the most prominent collections. The art cabinet of the Amsterdam merchant’s widow Petronella Oortmans-de la Court (1624-1707) contained a drawer filled with twenty different shells, ‘all carved most masterfully by the famous Bellekin’.⁷ His work was also amply represented in the renowned cabinet of natural curiosities of the Amsterdam apothecary Albertus Seba (1655-1736) and the resplendent cabinet of the amateur (garden) designer and collector Simon Schijnvoet (1652-1727).⁸

Although unsigned, there is no doubt concerning the attribution of these shells to Cornelis Bellekin. The combination of relief-carving and engraving is present, so typical of his work, but also his characteristic free-standing plants in the foreground of the scenes. Bellekin clearly had some difficulty with rendering human corporeal forms. This is nevertheless a constant in his oeuvre. As far as can be ascertained, the scene with Glaucus and Scylla (BK-NM-617) is a personal invention. The scene with Perseus and Andromeda (shown here), by contrast, he adopted from an engraving by Jan Saenredam after Hendrick Goltzius from 1601 (RP-P-OB-10.601).⁹

Since 1972, the Amsterdam Museum also possesses a pair of unsigned Bellekin pearl oyster shells with the same combination of scenes, albeit in somewhat modified compositions. Here the shells have been reworked as the lid and bottom of a silver, shell-shaped box (figs. a and b).¹⁰ The lid of a silver snuff box in the former collection of Jonkheer L.Ch. van Loon in Amsterdam also has a comparable scene of Andromeda, this time furnished with the monogram ‘C.B.f.’, a signature commonly used by Cornelis Bellekin.¹¹ A fourth pearl oyster shell with the same scene, likewise with a different composition, is held in the collection of the Württembergisches Landesgewerbemuseum in Stuttgart.¹² Nevertheless, the divergent technique and the monogram ‘C.B.’ engraved on this shell – unusual for Bellekin – suggest that this piece is a copy.¹³

Bieke van der Mark, 2025