Object data
oil on panel
support: height 55.5 cm × width 45 cm
frame: height 71.5 cm × width 62.5 cm
sight size: height 54 cm × width 44.7 cm
Pieter Codde
The Adoration of the Shepherds
1645
Inscriptions
- signature, in ligated monogram, on the cradle: PC.
- date, bottom right: 1645
Technical notes
The support is a single plank of an unidentified kind of wood, possibly walnut. It has a vertical grain and is bevelled on all sides. A knot is visible in the middle, just above the basket. The panel was primed with a thin light-coloured ground layer that appears to be pinkish, because the wood support shows through it. Paint was applied transparently in the background, and opaquely with impasted highlights in the foreground figures.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 20 September 2004
Condition
Fair. The panel is concave at upper right, and the lower right corner has been repaired. The vertical grain is prominently visible. There is mild abrasion in the browns and in the back- ground, and some discoloured retouching in the trousers of the standing man in the foreground. The varnish is very yellow and has crazed in several areas, and there are residues of old varnish layers.
Provenance
...; sale, Madame F.M. Hodgson (†), dowager of P.C. Baron Nahuys et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller et al.), 14 November 1883 sqq., no. 29, fl. 61, to the museum;1 on loan to the Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder, Amsterdam, since 1 October 1996
Object number: SK-A-789
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Pieter Codde (Amsterdam 1599 - Amsterdam 1678)
Pieter Jacobsz Codde was baptized in Amsterdam on 11 December 1599. His father was an assistant to the collector of beaconage, a form of harbour dues. It has been speculated that he studied with Frans Hals, Cornelis van der Voort or Barend van Someren. Codde is first recorded as a painter in the 27 October 1623 registration of his marriage to Marritje Aerents. He also moved in literary circles. Elias Herckmans dedicated his tragedy Tyrus to him in 1627, and a pastoral love poem written by Codde was published in Hollands Nachtegaelken in 1633.
Codde was involved in several unpleasant affairs. In 1625 he attacked the genre painter Willem Cornelisz Duyster during a quarrel in a place called Meerhuysen. In 1636, he was accused of raping his 22-year-old servant, for which he and the servant were locked up in Amsterdam Town Hall. In the same year he separated from his wife, which led to his inventory being drawn upon 5 February 1636.
In 1637, Codde was commissioned to complete the large civic guard painting, the so-called Meagre Company (SK-C-374), begun four years earlier but left unfinished by Frans Hals. Codde was one of the artists consulted by the art dealer Gerrit Uylenburgh in 1672 to value a group of Italian paintings. He made his will on 8 October 1669, and died nine years later. He was buried in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam on 12 October 1678.
Codde painted merry companies related in style to those by Anthonie Palamedesz. In addition to his genre scenes, Codde painted small-scale portraits in the manner of Thomas de Keyser, and history pieces. His earliest known dated work is A Seated Woman Holding a Mirror of 1625.2 There are few dated works after 1645. A painter named Albert Jansz is recorded as his pupil.
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
References
Dozy 1884; Bredius 1888a; Playter 1972, pp. 14-25; Van Eeghen 1974; Beaujean in Saur XX, 1998, pp. 95-97
Entry
With the monogram on the crib, one would not immediately have associated this painting with Pieter Codde, who is known mainly as a genre painter and portraitist. Nevertheless, he did produce history paintings, and not on an incidental basis. His preference was for mythological subjects, followed by Old Testament scenes. Playter assumed that Codde began to concentrate on history painting around 1640,3 but the eulogy written by Elias Herckmans in 1627 on Codde’s painting of the fall of Tyre shows that he was already working in the genre in the 1620s.4 Apart from the present painting, only The Judgement of Paris of 16355 and Diana and her Nymphs of 16516 are dated.
Codde’s earliest genre paintings recall the broad, narrative scenes of Pieter Lastman, but this Adoration of the Shepherds is closer to Rembrandt and his school. The fact that it was praised as an early work in the catalogue of the 1883 sale, before the discovery of the date at lower right,7 would have been due to the slight clumsiness in the figures here and there.
There are no other known paintings of this subject by Codde.8 The Rijksmuseum painting may be identical with the ‘Karsnacht van Codde’ (Christmas night by Codde) listed in the bankruptcy inventory of Egbert Schutt of Amsterdam drawn up on 15 February 1666.9
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements
This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 49.
Literature
Torresan 1975, p. 19
Collection catalogues
1886, p. 16, no. 59c; 1887, p. 30, no. 235; 1903, p. 73, no. 700; 1976, p. 171, no. A 789; 2007, no. 49
Citation
G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Pieter Codde, The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1645', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8150
(accessed 9 January 2025 19:40:17).