Striding Man

Entry

This bronze figure of a striding man has been a matter of research and discussion as far back as 1930, when still in the possession of a Berlin gallery. At first glance, it appears to be a small portrait of a man with distinct facial features, accurately rendered in the attire of Spanish court fashion circa 1575, which held sway throughout Western Europe at this time: pumpkin breeches worn with hose (known as trunk hose), a doublet with lace ruff and cuffs, a medallion worn at the breast and a felt, brimmed hat. Particularly striking is the strong treatment of the wide sleeves, with folds rendered in simple but effective surfaces. Draped over his breeches on the left is an ornamented baldric, a holder for his missing rapier. A medallion hangs from his neck on a ribbon. On the doublet to the right, one discerns an engraved insignia in the form of a fleur-de-lys: its presence suggests a courtly status versus that of a wealthy burgher. At the time of its acquisition by the Rijksmuseum in 1948, the Striding Man was still believed to be a possible portrait of Prince William I of Orange. Its presumed maker was the man responsible for the prince’s funeral monument in Delft: Hendrick de Keyser (1565-1621), the city sculptor of Amsterdam.⁵ The lack of any resemblance when comparing the bronze to various documented portraits of the prince, however, disproved the tenability of the identification.⁶ More difficult to dismiss was the attribution to Hendrick de Keyser,⁷ even after a bronze signed by the sculptor (BK-1959-61) surfaced in 1959, clearly showing that the sculptor employed a far more fluid modelling style with his smaller bronzes entirely, unlike that encountered on the present piece.⁸ Equally unconvincing is the bronze’s attribution to the sixteenth-century Dutch sculptor Johan Gregor van der Schardt (1530-c. 1581), as proposed by Honnens de Lichtenberg in 1991. According to her theory – resting on vague stylistic observations such as the rhythmischen Ausdrucks, wobei der Körper im Gleichgewicht bleibt, and the Lebendigkeit, die es ausstrahlt – the statuette was made at some point during the sculptor’s roughly two-year stay at the Danish court (1576-1578).⁹ Honnens de Lichtenberg’s theory can nevertheless be rejected when comparing the present work to documented or generally acknowledged bronzes and terracotta portraits by Van der Schardt, characterized without exception by their elegance, stylized poses and a treatment of the drapery folds, utterly unlike that encountered on the Striding Man.¹⁰ In her view, though initially with some reservation, the Striding Man’s facial features matched those of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), with whom Van der Schardt maintained what she described as an intensive (though undocumented) collaboration.¹¹ Just as with the former identification involving William of Orange, however, any purported resemblance between the bronze and this second historic figure can be rejected outright, as Brahe’s face – oval in shape, with a long, pointed moustache, and most notably, a strikingly noticeable artificial nose, a consequence of having lost part of his real nose during a duel in 1566 – are notably different.¹² The absence of the astronomer’s standard insignia, the Danish Knights of the Order of the Elephant, is perhaps most telling.

Contrary to being a portrait, the Striding Man is very likely a rare example of a genre-like figure known as a Kostümstatuette, designed to convey an accurate image of clothing worn in a given era.¹³ It was precisely in the second half of the sixteenth century that a growing interest in specific, locally oriented clothing styles began to emerge. This interest manifested itself in the making of so-called ‘fashion dolls’ – initially intended as diplomatic gifts exchanged among princely houses in early modern Europe, but later also as children’s playthings¹⁴ – and in the publication of illustrated costume books, which served to codify the ‘cults of dress’ from various geographic regions.¹⁵ In the latter category, the best-known example is Hans Weigel’s Trachtenbuch from 1577, which includes a depiction of a Deutscher Landtsfürst dressed in attire virtually identical to that worn by the Amsterdam Striding Man, excepting the mantle and plumed cap.¹⁶ In the precise detailing of the raiment, the same bronze also readily compares with a somewhat smaller bronze costume figure of a Gentleman attributed to Barthélemy Prieur (c. 1536-1611, BK-NM-8042).¹⁷ In light of the European fascination with regional cultures and customs (of attire) prevailing in the second half of the sixteenth century, the Amsterdam bronze – despite its portrait-like qualities – may quite plausibly be deemed as the depiction of a type versus any one individual.

The Striding Man’s dynamic stance and the absence of any attributes also led to repeated speculation regarding his function and the nature of his activity. To be depicted almost as if frozen in a majestic step versus a static pose is an unusual choice, most likely associated with the positioning of the arms and the attributes now missing from his hands. Later supported in his findings by Leeuwenberg, Staring believed the figure once held a staff in his right hand, as affirmed by a minuscule dent on the right side of the breeches, where one end of the staff would have rested.¹⁸ Microscopic analysis, however, revealed this to be nothing more than a blemish arising from a minor casting flaw. Evident is that, in his left hand, he originally held a dress sword, as indicated by the empty baldric over the left hip. Striding male figures, depicted with drawn dress sword and staff and attired in the same manner as the present figure, appear in various representations, including the funeral procession of William of Orange as depicted in Hendrick Goltzius’s twelve-part engraving from 1584 (e.g. RP-P-OB-10.417).¹⁹ Might this striding male figure also have formed part of such an ensemble, executed in bronze? This seems rather unlikely, when acknowledging the absence of comparable figures possibly belonging to this sculptural cortège and with no other examples of such a set known to exist in sculpture.

An alternative, musicological interpretation proved equally untenable.²⁰ The figure was said to be playing a violine, the late-sixteenth-century precursor of the cello,²¹ with the right hand holding the bow in a manner associated with German playing technique circa 1600.²² Surprising parallels in the Striding Man’s raiment and posture can indeed be discerned in engravings from the sixteenth century depicting individuals playing such an instrument, e.g. a woodcut by Jost Amman from the Panoplia (1568) and a sketch from a ‘Schemparth-buch’ (Nuremberg, 1518).²³ Nevertheless, a simple experiment involving small wooden sticks placed in the hands of the Striding Man ruled out such a possibility: only with great difficulty would the figure have been able to hold the violine and bow in a logical manner.

Clarity in this matter was finally provided in 2005 by neutron radiographic and tomographic analyses of the bronze.²⁴ This research shed light on several eccentricities discernible in the statuette’s interior, revealing that the bronze was initially conceived with a simple mechanism inside the body. Analysis determined that the arms and lower legs were cast separately and inserted and soldered into the body only after, further reinforced with bronze rods. The study also led to the discovery of an arched opening in the figure’s back, sealed with great care and concealed by means of chasing. Lastly, two wedge-shaped pieces in the man’s lower torso were revealed.

An explanation for the enigmatic technical aspects of the Striding Man was provided by two bronze statuettes in the collection of the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig, which proved to show a surprising agreement.²⁵ These rather roughly cast male figures – each approximately 20 centimetres in height, with one exotically attired in a long robe with turban – possess the same narrow portal-shaped opening in the back, in form and location similar to the sealed, arched hole in the back of the present figure. Emerging from the opening on one of these bronzes is a metal lever that can be moved up and down causing the man’s right arm to move. Now missing on the pendant figure, a similar mechanism once served precisely the same function, moving the figure’s right arm. Both statuettes were intended for an Automatenuhr of the type produced in Augsburg and Nuremberg in the second half of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, where the clockwork drove the movement of the arms.²⁶

The corresponding openings in the backs of the Braunschweig figures leave virtually no doubt that the Amsterdam bronze also possessed (or was meant to possess) a mechanism of this kind, as such allowing his arms and lower legs to move. That this bronze once also functioned as a movable automaton figure is likewise suggested by the two wedge-shaped blocks in his lower abdomen, which would have functioned as securing points for the driving mechanism. The same kind of internal construction is also encountered, for example, in the belly of a drum-playing bear on an Augsburg Automatenuhr (c. 1585). The striding man accompanying a drumming bear on a second automaton clock, made in Augsburg by Erasmus Pirenbrunner in 1582, recalls the Amsterdam Striding Man somewhat, despite its much simpler manufacture and substantially smaller size.²⁷ Here too we find an eye for detail in the rendering of the figure’s attire, albeit in rudimentary form, typical of many automaton figures from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. The rather stiff and cumbersome poses and proportions often encountered on these works are more than compensated by an excess of engraved and modelled detail, the attention given to a varied surface texture, and the elaborate finishing, achieved by means of fire-gilding and sometimes even oil painting.

Assuming that the Striding Man originally belonged to the same genre – initially meant to move its arms and legs, driven by a clockwork mechanism – Augsburg would then be the obvious place of origin. Known for its clock and automaton production, around 1600 the city was also a leading centre of bronze casting.²⁸ Unlike a vast majority of the south-German Automatenuhren and statuettes, the Amsterdam bronze displays a remarkably high level of artistic quality and finishing. If also taking into account its relatively large scale, one can only conclude it was to be incorporated a particularly ambitious clock or automaton, perhaps even designed to accommodate multiple figures. Somewhat comparable in scale, detailing and pose are two known works (both with moving parts): an archer in the Musée national de la Renaissance in Ecouen – executed in steel, silver, gold and gilt bronze – and a huntsman from a silver parcel-gilt automaton (c. 1620 or earlier) by the Nuremberg master Wolf Christoff Ritter (active 1617-d. 1634) in the British Museum.²⁹

That the Striding Man possibly originates from the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Kassel, which is known to have de-acquisitioned much of its old collection in favour of pieces possessing greater regional interest, is particularly relevant in this context. If true, the present bronze might very well have belonged to the former collection of the landgraves of Hesse-Kassel, from which the museum’s collection arose, and perhaps even dates back to the Kunstkammer of Landgrave Wilhelm IV (1532-1592) and his son, Moritz (1572-1627), both renowned as men of learning and collectors of scientific instruments, mechanical devices and clocks, bronze sculptures and automatons.³⁰ Unfortunately, no inventories of the Kassel Kunstkammer have survived from the period of Moritz and his father, leaving the question of whether the Striding Man once belonged to this illustrious collection unresolved.³¹

Frits Scholten, 2024