Apollo, After a Model for a High Relief in the Amsterdam Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square

Amsterdam, c. 1651 - c. 1664

Object data

terracotta

height 59.5 cm × width 28 cm × thickness 13.3 cm × weight 14 kg

Inscriptions

inscription, on the frame’s reverse, in blue chalk: 4

Technical notes

Modelled in high relief and fired. Like the Mars and the Cybele, here too the markings of a toothed comb can be discerned on the surface of the background, but here applied in a cross pattern. The terracotta frame has an uncrossed comb pattern. The relief has been furnished with two finishing layers: an old, light-reddish finishing layer over which a greyish-beige slip has been applied. Spectographic analysis has indicated the presence of barium in the top, greyish-beige finishing layer.¹ Accordingly, this layer can be dated to the 19th-century or later, as barium contains pigments existing no earlier than the 19th century.

Scientific examination and reports

: J.A. Mosk and W. Roelofs, Centraal Laboratorium, Amsterdam, 1980
: I. Garachon, RMA, 20 October 1994

Condition

A sealed crack traverses left to right from beneath Apollo’s armpit, along the neck and over the left shoulder towards the relief’s edge just above the bow; numerous chip losses can be discerned along this crack. A plaster restoration can be seen left of the bow. A number of the dragon’s upper teeth are missing. A greyish-brown slip has been applied over an old, light-reddish finishing layer. A section of the relief is missing along a break on the right side; the greyish-brown slip is absent from surface of the break, thus indicating relatively recent damage. The slip layer(s) on the dragon is/are thicker when compared to that of the rest of the relief.
The relief is enclosed in a 19th or early-20th century, brown-painted pinewood frame, with the number ‘4’ inscribed on the reverse in blue chalk. The frames of the other reliefs from the planetary gods series (BK-AM-51-12 to -19) are also numbered. This possibly indicates a (later) sequencing.

Provenance

…;² from the artist,³ transferred to the Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square, Amsterdam, 1664;⁴ transferred to the Stadstekenacademie (at two or three successive locations), Amsterdam, 1808;⁵ transferred to the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten (old Exchange of Hendrick de Keyser), Amsterdam, 1821;⁶ transferred to the Oude Mannenhuis, Amsterdam 1837;⁷ transferred to the Town Hall at the Prinsenhof, Amsterdam, 1878;⁸ on loan to the museum, since 1887⁹

Object number: BK-AM-51-19

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam

Context

The great wealth and might of the city Amsterdam – the most important merchant city of the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century – manifested itself in grand public works and countless other public and private buildings. This was especially true of the new town hall on the Dam Square, for which initial plans were already being made as early as 1639. The building’s design was aimed to reflect the power and prosperity that Amsterdam had come to acquire since the closing of the Scheldt in 1585, an event that cost Antwerp its leading economic position in the Low Countries.¹⁰ The existing town hall, which dated back to the Middle Ages, had become too small to accommodate the rapidly growing civic governmental apparatus and was therefore to be replaced by a new and spacious ‘urban palace’. To carry out this ambitious plan, the city’s burgomasters chose the architect Jacob van Campen (1596-1657).¹¹

In its design, decoration and style, the new Amsterdam town hall was to glorify both the city and its governing council by mirroring illustrious examples from antiquity and its own day: the ancient Roman Republic and the modern Republic of Venice.¹² Designated as the central themes were the three mainstays of Amsterdam’s economic success: good and fair governance, peace and prosperity. The Amsterdam city regents were bestowed the honorary title of vredesvader (father of peace), an appellation alluding to the seminal role these men played in negotiating the Peace of Münster, the treaty of 1648 that ended the war with the Spanish and signalled a new period of unparalleled prosperity.¹³ Through the classicist style of its architecture and the themes depicted in painted and sculptural decoration, this new monumental addition to the city was meant to convey Amsterdam’s standing as a worthy successor to ancient Rome, the geographic source of the Roman Republic’s past power and glory.¹⁴ Albeit less explicitly, Amsterdam also wished to mirror itself on the Republic of Venice. Both cities had begun as fishing villages and grown to become powerful merchant centres with international allure. Both cities also boasted a stable government firmly grounded on republican principles.¹⁵ Lastly, the decoration programme of the new Amsterdam town hall drew a parallel between the Israelites in the Bible and the present-day inhabitants of the Dutch Republic. Just as the Israelites – also long oppressed by a heathen religion – were led out of Egypt, so too had the Dutch liberated themselves from the yoke of the Spanish king and Catholic idolatry. The inhabitants of the Dutch Republic had God to thank for their freedom and fortune.¹⁶ All of these associations were to be unified in the new town hall’s realization, made manifest for both the city’s own burghers but also countless visitors from abroad.

In 1648, the Flemish sculptor Artus Quellinus I (1609-1668) – then one of the most successful and talented sculptors in the Low Countries¹⁷ – was hired to devise the sculptural programme of the planned town hall. Having been trained as he sculptor by his father in the Baroque milieu of Rubens in Antwerp, Quellinus travelled to Rome in 1635, where he entered the studio of the Flemish sculptor François du Quesnoy (1594-1643).¹⁸ In the words of Du Quesnoy’s biographer, Sandrart: ‘Quellinus made himself very useful when in Rome and there he studied the art of Antiquity with success.’¹⁹ Accordingly, the sculptor’s work displays both elements of Du Quesnoy’s austere Classicism and Rubens’s Baroque. Yet the Amsterdam burgomasters’ decision to place the town hall’s sculptural decoration in Quellinus’s charge was not simply based on his style and qualities as a sculptor: his international experience, knowledge of antique sculpture and ability to run a large studio were also important factors.²⁰

The architect of the planned town hall, Jacob van Campen, was ‘artistic director’ of the decoration programme of the building’s exterior and interior in close consultation with his patrons. A number of fairly primitive pen-and-ink sketches and discernible details on the wooden, scale-model maquette show that, especially in this regard, Van Campen had very clear ideas of his own.²¹ Quellinus’s task was to transform these ideas and simple sketches into clear and detailed three-dimensional designs. Several terracottas in the Rijksmuseum illustrate this specific stage of the design process. Presented for approval to both Van Campen and the burgomasters charged with making the final decision, these models can be described as vidimi (vidimus (Lat.) = we have seen) in the purest sense. A subsequent stage in this process entailed the detailed realization of these sketch models into working models – scale models, possibly followed by so-called modelli grandi – to be used in the studio for the final execution of monumental sculptures in marble and bronze.

Given the monumental scale of sculptural production accomplished in a relatively short period of time, Quellinus is certain to have had a large workshop to accommodate his many assistants. While information regarding the distribution of tasks remains scant, the diverse modelling on the surviving terracottas rules out the possibility of a single sculptor working on his own. Variations in the level of finishing can also be observed. The first group of terracottas can be described as bozzetti: loosely modelled sketches functioning as preliminary, plastic explorations of a theme or composition (cf. BK-AM-51-10). The second group consists of finished modelli – the aforementioned vidimi – from which the cast replicas were made that served as models in the studio. This category of works can sometimes be identified as such by measuring marks: points, lines and grids drawn in the wet clay to facilitate the design’s reproduction and enlargement in marble or bronze.²² The third and final group consists of various replicas likewise made in Quellinus’s workshop but ultimately destined for the free market, e.g. as council members’ gifts to friends or as souvenirs privately commissioned by the burgomasters and their retinue to commemorate their role in the building of the town hall.²³

Entry

This Apollo is one of the terracotta sketches and models made by the Antwerp sculptor Artus Quellinus I (1609-1668) and his assistants in preparation for the sculptural decoration of the new Amsterdam town hall, today the Royal Palace on the Dam Square (for an extensive history of the town hall, its significance and decoration programme, see ‘Context’). After the project’s completion, Quellinus’s Amsterdam studio was closed in 1664. At this time, the city’s burgomasters ordered that all of the remaining works and presentation models be transferred to the new town hall. With this move, the ensemble of fifty-one pieces officially became the property of the city of Amsterdam.²⁴ A number were transferred to the Rijksmuseum in 1887/88 on a long-term basis. All other works are today preserved at the Amsterdam Museum.

Apollo is depicted as a muscular, almost naked youth standing in an elegant contrapposto. He wears little more than a mantle that fans out over his right leg to cover the groin area, sandals on his feet, and a strap across the chest holding the arrow quiver on his back. At his feet lies the vanquished Python; as Hyginus relates, the only four-day-old Apollo had killed the dragon for having pursued his mother.²⁵ He holds a bow in his left hand while reaching back behind his shoulder for an arrow with the other. Apollo looks to his left, as if eyeing his next victim. The god’s other traditional attribute, the lyre, can be seen in the background behind Python.

The definitive marble version of the present terracotta belongs to a series of eight marble reliefs depicting planetary gods, mounted in the galleries on both sides of the central hall, the Burgerzaal (Citizens’ Hall). The gods were positioned between the doorways to the various office chambers and between the passages to the stairwells.²⁶ The iconography of these reliefs can in part be traced to Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, of which a Dutch-language edition was published in Amsterdam in 1644.²⁷ The reliefs refer to the specific functions of each of the adjoining spaces and together form a cosmological system linked to the statues on the pediments of the building’s façades and the large inlay maps of the Eastern and Western hemispheres in the floor of the main hall. In this manner, Amsterdam and its town hall were symbolically portrayed as the centre of the world and the cosmos.²⁸

The definitive, marble version of Apollo has been installed next to the entrance to the office of the Commissarissen van Kleine Zaken (Commissioners of Petty Affairs), located in the southwest corner of the south gallery on the town hall’s second floor. As the god of harmony, Apollo’s appearance here is highly befitting: the seven Commissioners of Petty Affairs (‘committee of peacemakers’) mediated in minor conflicts, disputes and disagreements. ²⁹ The fighting cockerels in the flanking overdoor lunettes (cf. BK-AM-51-C-1 and BK-AM-51-C-2) refer to sparring parties in need of the department’s adjudication.³⁰ As part of the planetary series, Apollo appears here above all as the sun god, accompanied by the attributes prescribed by Ripa.³¹ Yet with his bow and arrow, he is also portrayed as the god who punishes and destroys evil – just as the sun verrottinge wegh nemende (eliminates decay) with its heat.

The town hall account books confirm that the terracotta models for both the Apollo and Diana (cf. BK-AM-51-12) – as goddess of the moon and the hunt being Apollo’s twin sister – as well as the models for the accompanying lunettes had all been completed before 12 September 1651. At this time, the Apollo was also executed in marble.³² Quellinus and his team next began work on the sculptural decoration of the town hall’s Vierschaar (Tribunal). It would therefore be at least another year before the other planetary gods were realized. Fremantle concluded that the Apollo had served as an important ‘prototype’ and that Quellinus would never have allowed its execution in marble to be carried out by an apprentice or assistant. Accordingly, in her view the marble Apollo is an autograph work.³³

In the town hall account books, the height of the model of Apollo is stated as drie voet hooge (three feet high = c. 85 cm).³⁴ This original model, which likely no longer survives, was probably used to produce the present terracotta: a reduced replica measuring approximately two feet high (= 59.6 cm), invariably made by a workshop assistant between 1651 and 1664, the year in which Quellinus closed his workshop. For what purpose it was made and whether it was also commissioned by the city of Amsterdam itself (as opposed to a private patron) are as yet questions unresolved. The fact that the present piece is documented in the town hall’s art cabinet by as early as the eighteenth century nevertheless suggests that it was also a municipal commission.

A virtually identical version of the present replica of Apollo, albeit a fraction larger (62,5 x 34 cm), is today held in the Van Herck collection (Koning Boudewijnstichting) in Belgium.³⁵ Because it possesses less detail, this second replica – possibly to be identified as a work once belonging to the collection of the Delft burgomaster E. Sandoz, sold in 1819 at Zoeterwoude³⁶ – has erroneously been dated earlier than the Amsterdam piece.³⁷ As it were, the Amsterdam Apollo relief differs from the other models for the planetary gods in one important aspect. With the exception of two variant models for Jupiter and Saturn, neither of which were ever executed in marble, the backgrounds on all of the other reliefs held in the city of Amsterdam’s possession appear to have been immethodically worked with a toothed trowel. By contrast, the background decor on the present relief is characterized by finely ‘raked’, diagonal hatch markings.³⁸ This suggests the present replica was possibly made by someone other than the workshop assistant(s) responsible for the replicas of the other gallery planets.

Based on the detailing, the dimensions and the hatching with a toothed trowel, the surviving terracotta models of the planetary series can be broken down into three coherent groups. The first group comprises five reliefs, including the Amsterdam Apollo. In size, the Apollo roughly corresponds with the Diana in the Bode-Museum in Berlin,³⁹ and the Mars (BK-AM-51-17), Jupiter (BK-AM-51-16), and Cybele (BK-AM-51-18), in the possession of the city of Amsterdam. One scenario for the aforementioned deviation in the background – the Amsterdam Apollo being the sole exception – is that all five reliefs were made at the same time by the one and the same person, while the finishing of the background, including the hatching and the modelled frame, was carried out by someone else.

The second group comprises the variant terracotta reliefs of the Jupiter (BK-AM-51-15), and Saturn (BK-AM-51-13), evidently made by another hand and ultimately never executed in marble. While sharing the same dimensions, the same level of detailing, the egg-and-dart moulding lining the perimeter, the hatching in the background and the finishing of the plinth, these models clearly deviate from the others. Vlaardingerbroek ascribed these two models to Rombout Verhulst, whom he described as an independent sculptor working on the town hall – in competition with Quellinus – versus being a studio assistant or collaborator.⁴⁰ Nevertheless, the Verhulst attribution founders on insufficient stylistic grounds, with little more than circumstantial evidence to support the notion of competition between the two sculptors.

The third group consists solely of a Mars in the Westfälisches Landesmuseum in Münster and a rather damaged Jupiter sold at Sotheby’s in 1990. In size and detailing, the two modelli closely correspond, with the backgrounds both articulated with a loose hatching of elongated strokes made with a toothed trowel.⁴¹

Five other surviving terracotta reliefs depicting the planetary gods – the aforementioned Apollo from the Van Herck collection, the sole (as far as can be ascertained) version of Mercury and an accompanying Jupiter,⁴² and in the city of Amsterdam’s possession a Diana and Saturn (BK-AM-51-12 and -14) – are so unlike the others that they cannot be classified in a group. Noteworthy on the Saturn are the scale distribution markings incised in the wet clay along the relief’s outer edge, suggesting this relief was used as a working model.⁴³

Iris Ippel and Frits Scholten, 2022

Literature

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 292, with earlier literature; E. Dhanens (ed.), De beeldhouwkunst in de eeuw van Rubens in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden en het prinsbisdom Luik, exh. cat. Brussels (Museum voor Oude Kunst) 1977, pp. 144-45 (under no. 106); K. Fremantle and W. Halsema-Kubes, Beelden Kijken: De kunst van Quellien in het Paleis op de Dam/Focus on Sculpture: Quellien’s Art in the Palace on the Dam, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Royal Palace) 1977, p. 82, no. 11; M. Jonker et al., In beeld gebracht: Beeldhouwkunst uit de collectie van het Amsterdams Historisch Museum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1995, no. 111; H. Vreeken, ‘Quellinus’ boetseersels voor het zeventiende-eeuwse stadhuis op de Dam’, in M. Jonker et al., In beeld gebracht: Beeldhouwkunst uit de collectie van het Amsterdams Historisch Museum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1995, pp. 38-59, esp. pp. 52, 53, 55 (fig. 65h); H.J. Wiggers, ‘De stad Amsterdam en haar vroegste beeldencollectie’, in M. Jonker et al., In beeld gebracht: Beeldhouwkunst uit de collectie van het Amsterdams Historisch Museum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1995, pp. 60-75; C. Baisier et al., Terracotta’s uit de 17de en 18de eeuw: De verzameling Van Herck, coll. cat. Antwerp (Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp) 2000, pp. 44-46 and fig.; F. Scholten, Artus Quellinus: Sculptor of Amsterdam, Amsterdam 2010, fig. 26

Citation

F. Scholten, 2024, 'workshop of Artus (I) Quellinus, Apollo, After a Model for a High Relief in the Amsterdam Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square, Amsterdam, c. 1651 - c. 1664', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035687

(accessed 9 December 2025 22:22:04).