The Annunciation to the Shepherds

c. 1655 - c. 1659

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 73.7 cm × width 106.9 cm
outersize: depth 5.5 cm (support incl. SK-L-1212)

Inscriptions

signature and date, lower right: C SaftL[…] Fe / 16[5/3.]
signature and date, with ligated monogram, bottom left (false?): TB.1663

Technical notes

Support The panel consists of three horizontally grained, butt-joined oak planks (24.6, 25.6 and 23.5 cm), approx. 0.8 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1636. The panel could have been ready for use by 1647, but a date in or after 1653 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, off-white ground extends partially over the edges of the support. It consists of white pigment particles with a minute addition of black and ochre-coloured pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The translucent dark brown first lay-in of the composition was left partly visible between the figures, and shows through in abraded areas. The foreground group of figures and animals was largely left in reserve. The former were subsequently worked up in thin layers. The sky was applied wet in wet and from dark to light. The angel and the cherubs were added on top of the clouds, and the shelter and trees on the right in the middle ground were painted over the sky. The eyes of the dog in the centre were accentuated with little red dots. The paint surface is smooth, with slightly impasted brushstrokes along contours and in the sky.
Anna Krekeler, 2023

Scientific examination and reports

dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 23 June 2010
infrared photography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 1 July 2010
paint samples: A. Krekeler, RMA, nos. SK-A-801/1-2, 1 July 2010
technical report: A. Krekeler, RMA, 1 July 2010

Condition

Fair. The reverse is covered by an old dark and lumpy greyish paint layer over which strips of fabric were attached, to reinforce cracks in the panel and parts of the joins. The paint surface is severely abraded throughout, especially in dark areas and in and around the angel and cherubim. There is some discoloured retouching, particularly in the sky at top left. The varnish is uneven and has yellowed. At some point the painting was partially cleaned, leaving the group of figures and clouds in the upper left corner covered by a layer of varnish that is thinner than elsewhere.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1900: overpaint on the left removed, revealing the angel
H. Plagge, 1963: treated
M. van de Laar, 1994: retouched; revarnished

Provenance

…; collection Julius Otto Gottschald (?-1903), Leipzig, c. 1882;¹…; sale, Count Andor de Festetis, Szeleste Castle (Hungary), Amsterdam (C.F. Roos), 22 January 1884 sqq., no. 116, as Herman Saftleven (‘Paysage. Quelques bergers agenouillés, une marchande et des enfants en prière devant une image de Madone, suspendue au tronc d’un arbre à l’entrée d’une forêt […].’), fl. 718.75, to De Vries, for the museum;² on loan to the Centraal Museum, Utrecht, December 1924-March 1942

Object number: SK-A-801

The artist

Cornelis Saftleven (Gorinchem 1607 - Rotterdam 1681)

Cornelis Saftleven was born in Gorinchem in 1607. He and his younger brothers Herman and Abraham followed in the footsteps of their father, the painter Herman Saftleven, who probably dealt in art as well. Cornelis and Herman Jr are the only ones with an extant oeuvre. Shortly after their eldest son’s birth the family moved to Rotterdam, where Herman Sr is documented before he married. Cornelis, who was still living in his parents’ house in 1629, trained with him. His earliest pictures are two small panels with grotesque figures dated 1628.³

It is thought that he spent some time in Antwerp around 1632-34, mainly because of similarities in his output to that by Flemish artists like Adriaen Brouwer and David Teniers II from about 1634, the existence of a portrait of him drawn by Anthony van Dyck, and above all the fact that Rubens added the staffage in his works before 1637. The latter’s probate inventory lists no fewer than eight paintings by Saftleven, four of them with figures by his own hand. Another hypothesis, although it does not rule out a period in Antwerp, is that Teniers shared a studio with Cornelis and his brother Herman in Rotterdam around 1634, because there are striking parallels in the repertoire of all three at that time. Cornelis was in Utrecht in the mid-1630s, where he and Herman, who was living there, collaborated on a family portrait at nearby De Haar Castle. From 1637 on he was documented back in Rotterdam, where he married Catharina van der Heyden in 1648. The inventory drawn up after her death in 1654 lists several dozen paintings. The following year Elisabeth van den Avondt became his wife. She was a Catholic, unlike Saftleven, who was a member of the Reformed Church. In 1663 the city’s firemen paid him for 18 panels they had commissioned and in 1672 for 2 ‘watch pennants’. On 18 October 1667 Saftleven was elected dean of the Rotterdam Guild of St Luke. He died on 1 June 1681 and was buried four days later in the Franse Kerk.

Saftleven is mainly spoken of in contemporary sources as an artist of ‘apparitions’ and satanic monsters, but that type was just a small part of his output. He mastered a wide range of disciplines: genre and history pieces, stable interiors, landscapes and animal pictures. He collaborated with his fellow townsman Willem Viruly, who is said to have painted the sceneries in some of his works. Saftleven also left a large drawn oeuvre. According to the 1654 inventory he had several young pupils, one of whom, according to Houbraken, was Ludolf de Jongh (1616-1679).

Gerdien Wuestman, 2023

References
C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vrij schilder const, inhoudende den lof vande vermarste schilders, architecte, beldthowers ende plaetsnijders van deze eeuw, Antwerp 1662, p. 412; S. van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst: Anders de zichtbaere werelt: Verdeelt in negen leerwinkels, Rotterdam 1678, p. 184; G. van Spaan, Beschrijvinge der stad Rotterdam en eenige omleggende dorpen, Rotterdam 1698, p. 421; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, pp. 342-43; ibid., II, 1719, p. 33; C. Kramm, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters: Van den vroegsten tot op onzen tijd, V, Amsterdam 1861, p. 1435; J.H. Scheffer and F.D.O. Obreen, Rotterdamsche Historiebladen, III, Rotterdam 1880, pp. 670-74; F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis: Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers [enz.], V, Rotterdam 1882-83, pp. 115-28; A. Bredius, ‘Het schildersregister van Jan Sysmus, Stads-Doctor van Amsterdam’, Oud Holland 8 (1890), pp. 1-17, 217-34, 297-313, esp. p. 4; C. Hofstede de Groot, ‘Een spotteekening van Cornelis Saftleven op de Dordtsche Synode’, Oud Holland 15 (1897), pp. 121-23; P. Haverkorn van Rijsewijk, ‘De geboorteplaats van Cornelis Saftleven’, Oud Holland 17 (1899), pp. 239-40; N. Alting Mees, ‘Aanteekeningen over Oud-Rotterdamsche kunstenaars, III’, Oud Holland 31 (1913), pp. 241-68, esp. pp. 255-58; J. Denucé, Kunstuitvoer in de 17e eeuw te Antwerpen: De firma Forchoudt, Antwerp 1931, p. 25; E. Wiersum, ‘Cornelis Saftleven, geboren te Gorcum in 1607, overleden te Rotterdam in 1681’, Rotterdams Jaarboekje, series III, 9 (1931), pp. 88-90; J. Denucé, De Antwerpsche ‘Konstkamers’: Inventarissen van kunstverzamelingen te Antwerpen in de 16e en 17e eeuwen, The Hague 1932, p. 69; Stechow in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXIX, Leipzig 1935, pp. 309-10; B.J.A. Renckens, ‘Enkele notities bij vroege werken van Cornelis Saftleven’, Bulletin Museum Boymans-van Beuningen 13 (1962), pp. 59-74; M.-L. Hairs, Dans le sillage de Rubens: Les peintres d’histoire anversois au XVIIe siècle, Liège 1977, pp. 20-21; W. Schulz, Cornelis Saftleven, 1607-1681: Leben und Werke: Mit einem kritischen Katalog der Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Berlin 1978, pp. 1-5; Van der Zeeuw in N.I. Schadee (ed.), Rotterdamse meesters uit de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Historisch Museum) 1994, pp. 295-96; R. van Dijk, Nieuwsbrief Stichting Gouden Eeuw Gorinchem, no. 3 (Spring 2009); Veldman in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, C, Munich/Leipzig 2018, pp. 344-45; Bredius notes, RKD

Entry

The annunciation to the shepherds is the biblical subject Cornelis Saftleven depicted most often.⁴ He employed it at least 12 times over a period of several decades,⁵ of which this version is among the largest.⁶

When the Rijksmuseum bought the panel at auction in 1884,⁷ it was not realized that the left half was largely overpainted. The angel and cherubim were concealed by a large group of trees, which explains why the picture was not given its current title and was listed as Shepherds in Prayer in an Approaching Thunderstorm.⁸ During a conservation treatment in 1900 this area was brought back in the initial state. Unfortunately, there is no photograph of the work’s previous appearance, but it emerges from the description in the 1884 sale catalogue that an image of the Virgin was attached to one of the trees then present.⁹ The cleaning operation was probably inspired by a remark made by Hofstede de Groot, who knew the picture in its original capacity when it was in the Gottschald Collection in Leipzig.¹⁰ Since he was only 20 years old at the time of the 1884 auction, he could not have seen it more than a few years before that, which means that the overpainting was done shortly before the sale, possibly because a dealer or intermediary thought that it would sell better without the angel.¹¹

The auction catalogue assigned the picture to Herman Saftleven, but the museum immediately gave it to his elder brother Cornelis. This attribution was supported by technical examination only in 2010, when traces of a signature and date were found in the lower right corner.¹² The last two numerals of the year are unfortunately difficult to read, but the first of them appears to be ‘3’ or ‘5’. The latter digit seems more likely, as it is consistent with the findings of the dendrochronological analysis, indicating that the work was probably only available in or after 1653.¹³

However, there is another inscription in the bottom left corner that is more obvious and was therefore noticed earlier. It can be read as the ligated initials ‘TB’ followed by ‘1663’.¹⁴ In the past this monogram was always interpreted as a false signature of Gerard ter Borch,¹⁵ but no evidence was found during the 2010 examination that it was added at a later time. The ageing of the paint is identical, and the frayed ends of the cloth on which one of the shepherds is sleeping lie on top of the date. It does not seem likely, then, that it is the remains of the overpaint of around 1883. That creates a problem, because if the inscription is indeed from 1663 a second hand was at work a few years after the Annunciation had been completed. It is a mystery who that could have been and what details he might have included.¹⁶

According to Schulz Saftleven’s depictions of the subject were influenced by Govert Flinck from the end of the 1630s onwards.¹⁷ He also pointed out the similarities to an Annunciation to the Shepherds dated 1644 by Jan Dircksz Ossenbeeck, who like Cornelis Saftleven was active in Rotterdam.¹⁸

Gerdien Wuestman, 2023

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

W. Schulz, Cornelis Saftleven, 1607-1681: Leben und Werke: Mit einem kritischen Katalog der Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Berlin 1978, p. 201, no. 551; Schulz in N.I. Schadee (ed.), Rotterdamse meesters uit de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Historisch Museum) 1994, pp. 221-22, no. 43 (as dated 1663)

Collection catalogues

1887, p. 150, no. 1264 (as falsely signed G.T.B., Shepherds in Prayer in an Approaching Thunderstorm); 1903, p. 236, no. 2103; 1960, p. 274, no. 2103 (as indistinctly signed with a monogram and dated 1663 at lower left); 1976, p. 493, no. A 801 (as falsely signed G. Terburg)

Citation

Gerdien Wuestman, 2023, 'Cornelis Saftleven, The Annunciation to the Shepherds, c. 1655 - c. 1659', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5354

(accessed 22 November 2024 22:37:18).