Susanna and the Elders

Amsterdam, c. 1654 - c. 1658

Object data

point of brush and black and grey ink, with grey wash and opaque white, on paper toned with grey wash; indented for transfer; framing line in black ink

height 317 mm × width 381 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed: lower right, in pencil, Cornelis Visscher
inscribed on verso, in pencil: centre, 3; lower centre, 14; below this (with the numbering of Van Leyden), 40,1. – 3; lower right, Corn Visscher / naar Reni
stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of the museum (L. 240)

Technical notes

Watermark: Arms of Amsterdam and countermark with letters, PB (same as on inv. no. RP-T-00-744)

Provenance

? commissioned from the artist by Gerard van Reynst (1599-1658), Amsterdam;¹ ? his widow, Anne Reynst, née Van Schuyt (1605-1671), Amsterdam; ? sale, ‘Cabinet de Reinst’, Amsterdam, 29 May 1670;² …; collection Pieter Cornelis, Baron van Leyden (1717-88), Leiden;³ his daughter, Françoise Johanna Gael, née Van Leyden (1745-1813), Leiden; from whom, en bloc, fl. 100,000, to Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, King of Holland (1778-1846), for the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (L. 240), The Hague, 1807; transferred to the museum, 1816

Object number: RP-T-00-745

The artist

Cornelis Visscher (Haarlem 1628/29 - 1658 Amsterdam)

Little is known about his early life. Information regarding his birth is based on two surviving self-portraits, one from 1649 in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1895,0915.1343), and the other, dated 10 April 1653, in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. RP-T-1902-A-4624). He was presumably born in Haarlem, where he became a member of the Guild of St Luke in 1653. His father – who cannot be identified – must have been an artist as well, because in the admission book of the guild Visscher is described as ‘plaetsnijder en Meester outste zoon’ (‘engraver and the master’s oldest son’). Two younger brothers, Jan Visscher (1633/34-1712) and Lambert Visscher (1630/32-after 1690), also pursued artistic careers. The relationship between Cornelis and the relatively unknown painter Cornelis de Visscher (c. 1530-c. 1586) of Gouda is unclear. According to Van Mander, the latter was a skilled portraitist, but had some mental issues and died in a shipwreck on the North Sea.⁴ Perhaps the same person can be identified with Cornelis de Visscher, whose money was managed (presumably on behalf of his under-age children) by the orphans’ board of Gouda because he was considered mentally ill; in 1622, the widow of Cornelis’ brother, the painter Gerrit Gerritsz. de Visscher II (c. 1559-before 1622), collected the money from the orphans’ board on behalf of Cornelis’ two nephews, her sons Gerrit de Visscher III (?-?), a goldsmith living in Gouda, and Barent de Visscher (?-?).⁵

Cornelis Visscher probably received his first artistic training from his father. Later he must have been apprenticed to the Haarlem painter, engraver and draughtsman Pieter Soutman (1593/1601-1657), with whom he collaborated on several print series in 1649/50. Shortly after his admission in the Guild of St Luke in Haarlem, he moved to Amsterdam. In the 1650s, he received numerous commissions for portrait drawings and engravings of Haarlem and Amsterdam scholars, clergymen and writers, including Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679) (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-H-P-41). One of his last commissions was an engraved portrait of Constantijn Huygens I (1596-1687) after a lost drawing by the sitter’s son Christiaan Huygens (1629-95), which was included as the frontispiece to Huygens’ poem book Koren-bloemen (1658) (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-27.428). It was finished in the last months of 1657, when the artist was presumably suffering from ‘de steen’ (kidney stones). Visscher died the following year and was buried on 16 January in the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam. Despite his short life – he was only twenty-eight years old when he died – Visscher left an extensive oeuvre, consisting of more than 100 drawings and some 185 prints.

Marleen Ram, 2019

References
R. van Eijnden and A. van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst, 4 vols., Haarlem 1816-40, I (1816), pp. 71-77, IV (1840), pp. 96-97; P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, pp. 100-01; R.E.O. Ekkart, ‘Visscher, Cornelis (de)’, in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., London/New York 1996, XXXII, pp. 622-23; J. Hawley, ‘An Introduction to the Life and Drawings of Jan de Vissccher’, Master Drawings 52 (2014), no. 1, pp. 59-94; J. Hawley, ‘Cornelis Visscher and Constantijn Huygens’s Koren-bloemen’, Print Quarterly 32 (2015), no. 1, pp. 51-53

Entry

Together with his younger brother Jan Reynst (1601-1646), the Amsterdam merchant Gerard Reynst (1599-1658) built up one of the largest art collections in the seventeenth century in the Netherlands. Around 1655, he commissioned reproductive prints of a number of his most beautiful art works, including many paintings by Italian masters. Cornelis Visscher, who was one of the main engravers, was responsible for no fewer than twelve prints.⁶

Two of Visscher’s preparatory drawings for the print series are preserved in the Rijksmuseum, the present sheet and Holy Family with the St John the Baptist and St Elisabeth (inv. no. RP-T-00-744), which is after a painting by Titian (c. 1488-1576). Susanna and the Elders was apparently made after a painting by Guido Reni (1575-1608/09), of which multiple versions are known. Today, only the painting in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG196), is considered autograph.⁷

However, there are differences between the drawing and the National Gallery painting, such as the representation of the fountain and the headscarf of Suzanna. Closer to Visscher’s drawing is a painted copy in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago (inv. no. PE-0375). It depicts the same fountain, which is constructed out of a basin supported by a kneeling nereid. Moreover, the lighting, the delineation of the drapery and the position of the hands and fingers of all three figures in the present sheet correspond more closely to the Santiago painting. The vertical lines that run through both sides of the drawing probably indicate the edges of the original painting. Visscher seems to have widened the composition in order to create equally sized prints (most of his horizontal engravings in the series measure approximately 315 x 380 mm).

Subsequently, the drawing was indented for transfer to the copper plate. Visscher left the lower edge of the paper blank for the lettering. This, however, was never added to the print, of which only proofs version are known (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-H-P-55).⁸ After Reynst’s sudden death in 1658, the prestigious project came to a standstill. A total of thirty-three paintings were reproduced in print. This was only a fragment of the Reynst collection, and from a letter from Jeremias Falck (c. 1610-1677), one of the other engravers who worked on the project, we know that Reynst must have had a more ambitious project in mind.⁹ The unfinished series was finally published in the late 1660s under the title Variarum imaginum a celeberrimis artificibus pictarum Caelaturae, presumably by the publisher Clement de Jonghe (1624/25-1677).¹⁰

Bonny van Sighem, 2000/Marleen Ram, 2019

Citation

B. van Sighem, 2000/M. Ram, 2019, 'Cornelis (II) Visscher, Susanna and the Elders, Amsterdam, c. 1654 - c. 1658', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200145499

(accessed 8 December 2025 17:00:53).