Four Studies of an Amputated Human Right Arm

Entry

De Gheyn knew Pieter Pauw (1564-1617), a professor at the University of Leiden who initiated the construction of the first anatomical theatre in the Netherlands. During the winter months, Pauw performed dissections at the theatre for students and faculty members, as well as members of the public. De Gheyn probably attended several of these sessions and took his son, Jacques de Gheyn III (1596-1641), with him as it was an excellent opportunity for his young apprentice to study and draw the human body. Three drawings of dissected limbps might be connected to these drawing sessions: the present sheet, a second study of the same arm in black ink, also in the Rijksmuseum’s collection (inv. no. RP-T-1948-346 and a sheet with four studies of an amputated left leg in the Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. no. 6866).²

According to Van Regteren Altena, all three studies were made De Gheyn III and he dates the drawings around 1615, when De Gheyn III would have been around eighteen years old. While this is certainly possible, it seems more likely that the present sheet was made by De Gheyn II, who mastered the chalk medium and created delicate chalk drawings that convincingly portray the subtle differences between muscle groups and bone structures. Further, De Gheyn III’s small attributed oeuvre does not contain chalk drawings, in contrast to his father’s oeuvre, which includes several drawings in chalk.³ Seen in this light, it seems more likely that De Gheyn III was responsible for inv. no. RP-T-1948-346, which is executed entirely with pen. Perhaps father and son participated in a joint drawing session and would each have made their own drawings of the same dissected limbs; the father in chalk, the son in pen. It seems plausible that we see the hands of both artists in the Paris sheet, where the father was responsible for the upper two legs in chalk and the son, to further his studies, would have finished his father’s initial chalk sketch of the lower legs with black ink.

The present sheet probably stayed in the possession of De Gheyn III until his death. According to Boon and Van Regteren Altena, the estate was passed along to De Gheyn’s cousin and heir, Nicolaes den Otter (?-?) and put into a numbered album at some point, either in the late-seventeenth, or eighteenth century. The present drawing and the Paris sheet were put next to each other as they were consecutively numbered ‘29’and ‘30’. The album contained at least ninety sheets; Boon was able to able to trace thirty-three of the album sheets, the lowest number being “2”, the highest “90”.⁴ Thirteen sheets are either by De Gheyn II or III and twenty studies of female nudes are attributed to Govert Flinck (1615-1660) and, more recently, some to Ferdinand Bol (1616-1690).⁵

Both Boon and Van Regeteren Altena suggested that the album may have belonged to Johannes Wtenbogaert (1608-1680), who inherited works by Den Otter and was, according to Houbraken, in close contact with Flinck.⁶

The album was acquired by Paul Brandt around 1939-1940, probably from a collector in Amsterdam. He sold the individual sheets to several collectors: the numbers ‘2’, ‘3’, ‘57’, ‘83’, ‘89’ and ‘90’ are now at the Fondation Custodia (inv. nos. 6859-6863), the numbers ‘88’ and ‘89’ were sold at the Van Regteren Altena sale in 2014⁷, and a drawing with the number ‘38’ was sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, in 2020.

Carolyn Mensing, 2020