Object data
terracotta
height 85 cm × width 25.5 cm × depth 30.5 cm
Artus Quellinus (I)
Penitence, Model for a Caryatid in the Vierschaar of the Amsterdam Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square
Amsterdam, 1650 - 1651
Technical notes
Modelled, hollowed out and fired. The reverse is flat. The four caryatids display varying levels of finishing. The faces of caryatids BK-AM-51-24-A-2 and -B-1 – one of each iconographic type – are worked in greater detail, as are the holly leaves on their respective Ionic capitals. This disparity may possibly reflect two different stages in the production process. Numerous marks made by trowels, paintbrushes, brushes and fingers can be discerned on all surfaces.1 On all four caryatids, on each side at the level of the hips, a 2-cm diameter hole can be discerned: presumably made either for ventilation (during firing) or securing purposes.
Condition
Several cracks and restored breaks can be discerned in the belly and along the left hip. Several lacunas can also be observed in the draperies. Two fingers on the right hand have been restored. The finishing layer – a thin layer of yellow clay – was possibly applied only after the seventeenth century.2
Provenance
Commissioned by the City of Amsterdam, 1650/51;3 from the artist,4 transferred to the Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square, Amsterdam, 1664;5 transferred to the Stadstekenacademie (at two or three successive locations), Amsterdam, 1808;6 transferred to the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten (old Exchange of Hendrick de Keyser), Amsterdam, 1821;7 transferred to the Oude Mannenhuis, Amsterdam 1837;8 transferred to the Town Hall at the Prinsenhof, Amsterdam, 1878;9 on loan to the museum, since 188710
Object number: BK-AM-51-24-B-1
Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam
Copyright: Public domain
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.11 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).12
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.13 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.14 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.15 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.16 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.17 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 Countries18 – 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).19 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.’20 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.21
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.22 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.23 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.24
Entry
These four caryatids (for the other three, see BK-AM-51-24-A-1, -A-2 and -B-2) belong to a group of 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.25 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.
These caryatids are the terracotta scale models made by Artus Quellinus in preparation for the sculptural decoration of the Vierschaar – the seat of the municipal tribunal – in the new Amsterdam town hall, now the Royal Palace on the Dam Square. Iconographically, the sculptural programme of this spacious front hall on the building’s ground floor was designed to convey its primary function: to pronounce the death sentence.26 The city’s burghers were able to watch the process from beneath the building’s arcades on the east (Dam Square) side. Intended not only for public viewing, the iconography also served to inspire the schout (sheriff) and the schepenen (magistrates) to exercise wise and fair judgement. Executed larger than life, the four marble caryatids are separated by three figurative panels bearing exempla iustitiæ (cf. BK-AM-51-21, -22 and -23), flanked at either end by a decorative panel with foliate motifs. Expressing repentance and remorse in pose and attitude, the four figures confronted both the guilty party and the citizenry with the drama of the death sentence.27
Quellinus’s caryatids in the Amsterdam Vierschaar fully convey the primary meaning of term kariatide as applied by the Roman architect Vitruvius in his treatise De architectura.28 Vitruvius describes the punishment of the Peloponnesian city Carye at the hands of the Greeks for having entered an alliance with the Persians. The city was destroyed, the men were slaughtered and their women were driven into slavery. Vitruvius explained how Greek architects selected women of Carye as models for the design of monumental figures made to replace any column or pillars supporting some kind of structure in the city’s public buildings. As such, the architects of antiquity created their ‘caryatids’ to convey the sin and punishment of the citizenry’s progeny, that they may never be forgotten. Greek caryatids, such as those on the Erechtheion in Athens, are depicted standing upright, dressed in long tunics and supporting capitals on their heads. Quellinus’s bent-over giants, by contrast, clearly arise from a literal interpretation of Vitruvius’s text. Despite their massive size, the figures appear as if about to collapse beneath the burden of the cornice they bear. The virtually naked women bow their heads beneath the weight of the architecture, with their knees bent and their bodies undulating. The same undulation appears in a surprising invention: weaving braids of hair coil around the figures’ heads like ropes, becoming intertwined with iconic capitals and disappearing behind the shoulders. Quellinus’s caryatids are vivid expressions of their punishment, but also represent a symbolic pairing of the penalty and remorse associated with their crimes. This is likewise affirmed in the formulation of the account book entry pertaining to the figures: bedructe en gevange vroubelten (forlorn and captive female statues).29 The two bedructe women – with their hands covering the face in shame – symbolize Penitence (BK-AM-51-24-B-1 and -B-2); the gevange pair – with their hands bound behind the back – symbolize Penance (BK-AM-51-24-A-1 and -A-2).30
Two account books from 1651 and 1651/52 list payments for the present terracotta models, each measuring approximately three feet in height, at sixty guilders per piece.31 (an additional 2 modelled sculptures for the vierschaar which the gentlemen allowed me in another account [for] 2 such [works] 60 guilders per piece – 120 [guilders]), see ibid., no. 6.] The first account book also makes mention of a payment of fifteen guilders for a bedruckte vrouwe tronie met een caputeel op t hooft (dejected female tronie with a capital on the head). This last model – apparently limited to a caryatid’s face with capital – has not been preserved.32 Quellinus received 800 guilders as payment for each of the four definitive marble caryatids, all completed in 1652.33
Various sources are likely to have inspired Quellinus’s four caryatids. Besides Vitruvius, the figure of a half-naked woman was derived from traditional representations of Venus. During his time in Rome (1635-1639), Quellinus was able to directly examine various Venus sculptures from antiquity with his own eyes, including the Roman copy of the Aphrodite of Knidos by Praxiteles (400-326 BC) and the Venus Anadyomene. In devising his own figures, he might also have consulted the Venus model in the vast collection of Marquise Vincenzo Giustiniani (1564-1637) in Rome.34 Nevertheless, Quellinus by no means limited himself to Roman models. He was undoubtedly familiar with the Salle des Caryatides by Jean Goujon (1510-1572) in the Louvre, as it was from this source that he adopted the drapery knot adorning one of his caryatids (BK-AM-51-24-A-1). In all probability, the sculptor spent time in Paris while journeying to (1634-35) or returning from Rome (1638-39), or possibly during a second trip made circa 1645.35
Wendy Frère and Frits Scholten, 2024
Literature
J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 278, with earlier literature;, no. 278; M. Jonker et al., In beeld gebracht: Beeldhouwkunst uit de collectie van het Amsterdams Historisch Museum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1995, no. 83-96; 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. 48, 50-51 (nos. 62d-g); 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. 30, 32 (ill.); P. Philippot, D. Coekelberghs, P. Loze and D. Vautier, L’Architecture religieuse et la sculpture baroques dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux et la principauté de Liège: 1600-1770, Sprimont 2003, pp. 759 (fig. 30), 840; F. Scholten, Artus Quellinus: Sculptor of Amsterdam, Amsterdam 2010, pp. 28, 33, figs. 40-41; F. Knegtel, ‘The Exercise of Power: The Caryatids of the Town Hall’s Tribunal’, in S. Bussels, C. van Eck and B. Van Oosterveldt (eds.), The Amsterdam Town Hall in Words and Images, London/New York 2021, pp. 143-71
Citation
F. Scholten and W. Frère, 2024, 'Artus (I) Quellinus, Penitence, Model for a Caryatid in the Vierschaar of the Amsterdam Town Hall (now Royal Palace) at Dam Square, Amsterdam, 1650 - 1651', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20017588
(accessed 6 December 2025 23:29:21).