Under Willemijn Fock’s leadership the Applied Arts section in Leiden achieved international recognition. Willemijn Fock was inspiring through the depth of her knowledge and her drive to research and map out the history of the Applied Arts in The Netherlands. These qualities led, among other things, to an imposing six-volume publication on the history of residency on the Rapenburg Canal in Leiden. The investigation of properties on Rapenburg on the basis of inventories, construction plans and other source material yielded groundbreaking new insights. How did the original residents live in the houses and with what objects did they surround themselves?

This large-scale research project was of great significance for the subsequent approach to reconstruction of historic interiors. For this reason, Willemijn Fock’s expertise was brought to bear on questions arising from the reinstallation of the Rembrandt House in the late 1990s. Together with among others the architect and architectural historian Henk Zandkuijl, she formed part of the team that was charged with bringing the interior of the former house of Rembrandt back to life. Additionally she guided the research that the undersigned, Titia Vellenga, undertook on Rembrandt’s art cabinet. But also in more recent years the museum drew on her advice in the area of mid-seventeenth-century domestic interior arrangements in Amsterdam.

Willemijn Fock hereby made a decisive contribution to the reinstallation – based on scholarly research – of the building and the historical atmosphere that the Rembrandt House breathes. Since 2014 Professor Reinier Baarsen and Assistant Professor Alexander Dencher have assumed the tasks that she had laid down in 2007 with her retirement. They perform these roles alongside their duties as Curators at the Rijksmuseum. As a museum institution with a historical interior the Rembrandt House Museum also recognizes the importance of maintaining and expanding knowledge of the applied arts. The museum furthermore aspires – where possible and in memory of Willemijn Fock – to making a contribution to this field in the present and the future.

Titia Vellenga, former student of Willemijn Fock and former PR-Manager of the Rembrandt House Museum

Leonore van Sloten, Curator, The Rembrandt House Museum

In the research that he conducted over decades on the painted oeuvre of Rembrandt, insight into seventeenth-century working practice played a central role. In the Rembrandt House he thus felt at home. After all, one cannot get any closer to the artist. After Ernst had assumed leadership of the Rembrandt Research Project – of which he had been a part since its founding in 1968 – he encountered the Rembrandt House on his path. In 1995 he took a place on its board, in a period during which the museum was to undergo a fundamental change. A new museum wing beside the historic house would finally offer space for changing exhibitions of considerable size. This expansion, which opened in 1998, also made it possible to return the former house to its seventeenth-century state, to give an impression of how Rembrandt lived and worked in the house. Ernst was intimately involved in the development of plans for the installation of both of the painting studios.

Under the inspiring leadership of then-curator Bob van den Boogert, and under the oversight of director Ed de Heer, plans were made with Ernst for Rembrandt exhibitions of international calibre with important loans. The first exhibition of an intended trio became The Mystery of the Young Rembrandt, over the early years of Rembrandt’s artistic career. This was organized in 2001-2002 in collaboration with the Gemäldegalerie Schloss Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel. In the Rembrandt anniversary year 2006 there followed Rembrandt: The Quest of a Genius in collaboration with the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, on Rembrandt’s artistic crisis and renewal after the completion of the Night Watch. The third part, that would cover the final years of Rembrandt’s oeuvre, was never realized – partly owing to internal problems that affected the Rembrandt House in 2008 and 2009, about which Ernst was very critical.

In studying Rembrandt’s paintings, Ernst steadfastly referred to the drawn and etched oeuvre of the artist. His fascination for prints resulted in the 2009-2010 exhibition Rembrandt gespiegeld (Rembrandt Reflected), based on an idea of his. Original impressions of etchings by Rembrandt from the museum’s collection were displayed next to reproductions in mirror image. The result was a surprising insight into the compositions that Rembrandt had conceived when he was drawing them on the etching plates. Due to the printing process, however, these images have come down to us in mirror image. This exhibition generated a new understanding of the artistic intentions that Rembrandt had when he made his etchings. In an introductory film Ernst enthusiastically related how these new observations give us a glimpse into the mind of the master.

Besides these thematic exhibitions, in which the visitor (in some cases also with Ernst’s voice in their ears through the audiotour) was taken along in new insights over Rembrandt as an artist, important small presentations took place. Ernst’s research into the stylistic, technical and material aspects of the work of Rembrandt brough spectacular discoveries to light and led to new attributions. These were often the result of study of paintings with technical and scientific research methods. The application of such techniques were very present for Ernst in his approach to art historical research. Between 2003 (the discovery of an early self-portrait that had been overpainted) and 2011 (the discovery of a tronie of an old man painted by Rembrandt), various new finds were presented in the Rembrandt House. Such events attracted international press coverage and drew visitors to the museum.

Ernst had a special talent for captivating his audience. This is what drew me to Amsterdam in 1996 to come and study with him at the UvA. Ernst’s lectures were inspiring experiences that gave one the feeling of attending a special event. He let his listeners look, as it were, over his shoulder, by bringing them with detail images ever closer to the brush strokes. Also in the Rembrandt House Ernst shared his insights with visitors and staff. The palpable excitement turned every lecture into  a memorable occasion. The knowledge that Ernst shared with us on Rembrandt’s painting technique, studio practice, function of art works or ideas on art has been decisive for the ways in which curatorial and educational staff members have carried out their activities. We look back in gratitude on these moments and treasure the extensive knowledge that Ernst left us in his publications.

Leonore van Sloten, former student of Ernst van de Wetering and Curator at the Rembrandt House Museum

Attribution to Lievens

Scholars have assigned this sheet to an artist closely linked to Rembrandt: his Leiden friend and associate Jan Lievens (1607-1674). This attribution dates from 1983, when this work appeared under his name in the seventh volume of Werner Sumowski’s series Drawings of the Rembrandt School.² The chief point of comparison with Lievens’s drawings lay in the bold, linear strokes of the pen. This attribution was carried over with the drawing’s presentation in the major monographic Lievens exhibition of 2008-2009, under the aegis of Gregory Rubinstein.³ There appears to be further evidence about the artist and studio here represented sitting high on the ledge. The round shield mounted with a point and the bust fitted out with costume drapery are familiar from depictions of artists at work by Rembrandt and his followers, with whom Lievens associated as well (figs. 2, 3). However, Sumowski dated the sheet quite late, to the 1660s. After departing from Leiden in 1631, Lievens led an itinerant existence, often in financial need. The scenario of this drawing would have to reflect a moment of prosperity enabled by one of several major commissions he won in his later years. Or it may instead show the situation of a fellow artist, or even an imagined situation. This assumes however that it is by Lievens. The detailed interior is unconventional for him however, and we do not recognize the face of an artist who depicted himself almost as readily as Rembrandt.

A Link to Another Artist: Cornelis Bisschop

At the same time we must consider a hitherto unnoticed, alternative link to another member of the Rembrandt circle: the Dordrecht painter Cornelis Bisschop (1630-1674). It is the painting on the easel, depicting The Contest between Apollo and Pan.⁴ Apollo has summoned Pan to the contest after hearing King Midas boasting about his flute-playing, and the mountain god Tmolos acts as judge. He favours Apollo, who then punishes Midas by endowing him with the ears of a donkey, an animal limited to raucous braying. In the drawn painting, the ass-eared Midas leans in protest toward the contemptuous Apollo to the right, while Pan raises his pipe to the viewer. The composition and figures relate directly to Bisschop’s depiction of the same theme in The Bader Collection at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario (fig. 4).⁵ Especially evident is the silhouette of Apollo, carrying a violin under his arm, and walking away to the right while turning for one last glance at Midas (fig. 5). Only, in the painting he turns his back to us. The disgraced Midas echoes the drawn figure’s unusual pose more closely, albeit in mirror image, with his arms flung out in exclamation against the negative judgement of the mountain god Tmolos. His champion, Pan, is likewise shown much as in the drawing, holding his pipe to his lips and turned slightly to the left. The tree also takes a similar place; only the unconventional representation of Tmolos, as a ghostly face (likely a self-portrait) in a cloud, is not reflected in the painting drawn into the sheet in Mettingen. The cloud itself is shown. The Kingston painting had previously been attributed to various Rembrandt pupils, including Barent Fabritius, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout and Nicolaes Maes, until Sumowski assigned it to Bisschop in 1989. It aligns with the smooth and broad rendering of surfaces and figures Bisschop had developed by the later 1650s.

This striking connection raises the possibility that Bisschop, and not Lievens, is the author of the Mettingen atelier scene. His drawings are not well known, however. Werner Sumowski did discuss the artist in his series on the paintings of the Rembrandt school,⁶ but not in his series on the drawings. At least, not in the published volumes. This series remains incomplete, as many scholars know: we are still waiting for the bibliography to complete the authour-date references in the text. Sumowski passed away in 2015, and shortly thereafter the Rembrandt House Museum learned that he had bequeathed the manuscript of an unpublished Addendum volume. Contact with the series publisher Abaris books then revealed the existence of another unpublished volume, of Anonymous drawings. It contained the long awaited bibliography. Both will be translated, and prepared for pubication in 2023, with the support of Bader Philanthropies. The Addendum volume contains a small section of five drawings attributed to Cornelis Bisschop (who did not feature in the earlier volumes because he was, strictly speaking, not a known pupil of the master himself).⁷  It leads with a single core drawing (a secure sheet providing the basis for further attributions), one that he had already cited earlier, although only in a note (fig. 6).⁸ Depicting The Angel Appearing to Elijah, its composition aligns closely with a painting of the same theme, reasonably attributed to Bisschop, last with the Chicago collector and opera tenor Harry Moore (fig. 7).⁹

The handling in this drawing shows prominent, open and imprecise strokes of the pen, like what we see in the Mettingen atelier scene, in contours and hatching. There is a conspicuous tendency to abrupt, forceful curves, producing a lumpiness in the figures and foreground. The shading in patches of wash and vigourous looping hatching contributes further to an overall gnarly effect, at the expense of overall concentration. Bisschop evidently sought to underscore the emotional drama of Elijah’s rescue with these expressive elements. They resurface in the painting, in milder form. They were evidently an early stylistic direction. One can draw a parallel to the turbulence and clutter of the composition of the Mettingen drawing. It likewise features short, forceful curved contours, but they are generally smoother and more fluid, possibly reflecting development away from youthful bravado and dependence on his teacher.

These qualities at the same time point away from the traditional attribution to Lievens. Significant differences emerge already in the comparison with the drawing Sumowski cited in support of his attribution, the St. Jerome in Dusseldorf, signed and dated 1665 (fig. 9). There, the figure of Jerome shows Lievens’s typically extended, taut strokes, in contrast with the busy, tight rounded curves in the atelier scene (paralleling the rounded, abstract forms of his later paintings). Jerome’s massive figure achieves monumental presence, typical for Lievens, as is the powerful focus that he generated by accentuating Jerome’s rugged features. In the Mettingen sheet the instructing painter instead cuts a  svelte, agile figure, and his face blends into the diffuse pattern of lines mapping his figure. The overall composition there is agitated, and turbulent. The lines yield a more painterly effect, in part due to the fully loaded pen, even leaving pools in various places, as seen also in the Elijah. This technique yields softer surfaces and tones, as opposed to Lievens’s sharp, hard effect of hatching in the Jerome, generated with forceful, elastic strokes.

A Second Late Drawing Linked to Bisschop

In the further exploration of the possible attribution of the Mettingen sheet to Bisschop, we are confronted by the lack in the literature of a secure, later drawing that could serve as a reference core work for the period in which it would be expected to fall, around 1660-1670. However, a candidate does emerge among the drawings Sumowski attributes to Lievens, in another another anomalous sheet, which again offers a previously unnoted, direct link to a late painting by Bisschop.¹⁰  The vertical kitchen scene with a maid formerly with Houthakker in Amsterdam (fig. 11) closely relates to Bisschop’s striking kitchen scene in the museum in Dordrecht (fig. 10). Both exhibit a similarly oversized setting, a space with a particularly high ceiling, even incorporating an elevated gallery at the back, above an arched doorway. The motif of the boy blowing on the coals in the brazier is another clear, even decisive, link between painting and drawing; likewise that of the striding figure farther back (who is in turn similar to the bowed-over assistant at the mixing stone in Mettingen). The many correspondences strongly suggest that Bisschop is the author of this drawing.

In turn, it shows strong links to the Mettingen atelier scene, which lend support to the proposed attribution of that drawing to Bisschop. The drawn Kitchen Scene includes a similarly leaning, dynamic main figure contributing to a turbulent composition. The pen handling is dominated by tight curved lines drawn with a loaded pen, leaving pools of ink. Furthermore, both sheets show a structure of washes in a range of tones, an approach Lievens had largely left behind after his early years in Leiden; in his mature drawings he favoured hatching for tone, with strong contrasts, occasionally supplemented by wash.¹¹ In addition, there is even a curious but telltale shared trait, of a slash in the cheek of the main figure in both, an exaggerated suggestion of the cheekbone, with artificial effect. The high fireplace mantel provides yet another distinctive link underscoring Bisschop’s authorship of the Mettingen sheet. As it inclines less to decorative effect, it more likely dates a bit earlier than the kitchen scene, to around 1660.

Context: Van Hoogstraten and Later Rembrandt Pupils in Dordrecht c. 1655-1660

The proposed attribution of the atelier scene to Bisschop places its origins among artists who were well acquainted with Rembrandt (much like Lievens was), but demonstrably more keenly interested in discussions concerning artistic theory and practice. Bisschop associated with various pupils of Rembrandt not just by way of tutelage under Bol in Amsterdam, around 1650-1652, but even more so in his subsequent years of practice back in his native city. Dordrecht became a hotspot of artistic activity oriented towards Rembrandt, after several native pupils returned to settle there after instruction under him, around 1653/54,¹² and especially after the return of the older pupil and teacher Samuel van Hoogstraten from travels, in 1656.

It appears more than likely that Bisschop cultivated direct ties with Van Hoogstraten.¹³ His use of tonal washes in the atelier scene is closely tied to Van Hoogstraten’s distinctive pictorial combination of pen and brush in many of his drawings. It shows up as well in the work of Abraham van Dijck, pupil of Rembrandt and Van Hoogstraten, and evidently also a friend of Bisschop.¹⁴ Bisschop may also even have taken the prompt for the theme from Van Hoogstraten, who incorporated a painting of the famous mythological musical contest, with a calmer and more spacious composition, in one of the illusionistic interior spaces in his famous Perspective Box in the National Gallery in London, painted in Dordrecht around the same time as Bisschop’s panel (fig. 13).¹⁵

This shared interest was the likely context in turn for Bisschop’s production of illusionistic cutout paintings. They drew such attention that they ended up the focus of Arnold Houbraken’s biography of him. He is the only artist (of over six hundred presented) Houbraken identifies as producing them, and he goes on to relate that he placed them throughout his house in logical contexts, with the aim of pleasurably deceiving the unsuspecting viewer.¹⁶ Previously unnoted, the verso of the Kingston panel features a related illusionistic rendering of wood panelling, with edges skilfully articulated in light and shade to evoke the fall of light. The unusually thick (1 cm), unbeveled panel appears to have been incorporated into a three-dimensional architectural or furniture fixture, such as a door. The parallel with Houbraken’s description of cutout paintings is conspicuous, and supports the attribution made by Sumowski (unaware of these features), to Bisschop (fig. 14). Bisschop evidently followed the older master’s interest in illusionistic effects. He was probably aware of Van Hoogstraten’s triumph at the Vienna court with a similar visual deception, which earned him a gold chain from the Emperor.¹⁷ Houbraken dismissed the cutouts as trifling (consistent with his prioritization of idealization and lofty subject matter). But they likely expressed a serious interest in evoking the visible world, and how we perceive it, aligned with the core aim of Van Hoogstraten’s treatise, Inleyding tot de Hooghe Schoole der Schilderkonst, published in the year of his death, 1678.¹⁸ In a similar vein, Bisschop also followed Van Hoogstraten in the perspectival rendering of interiors. His kitchen scene in Dordrecht is striking for the grandeur it lends to the everyday theme, and he very likely sought to conjure a parallel to Van Hoogstraten’s monumental fantasy architectural scenes.¹⁹

Interest in Theory and Art Instruction

The wider function of Van Hoogstraten’s treatise was art instruction, the very action displayed in the Mettingen drawing. Neither Van Dijck nor Bisschop is known to have had pupils, so it is very tempting to see this drawing as evoking the atmosphere in the studio of Van Hoogstraten, Dordrecht’s most prominent art pedagogue. There does seem to be a resemblance to Van Hoogstraten, for instance in the full lips and straight nose, but a clearly identifiable portrait may not have been intended here, but instead simply the figure of an artist. Even more than for his art, Van Hoogstraten is famous for his treatise, which in the first place aimed to teach the young painter. In nine “books”, each thematically associated with one of the nine Muses, he presented his extensive knowledge of the practice of painting, some of which he inherited from his own teacher Rembrandt. A vast array of rhetorical terms and principles are cited and applied in defining this art and encouraging young pupils in its practice. In one touching anecdote he recalls stern correction of a drawing by his teacher Rembrandt,²⁰ which is eerily conjured in the painter’s assertive and insistent pose here, doing precisely the same thing. Perhaps the painting on the easel, showing the rejection of Pan’s unrefined music, was meant to underscore the significance of sound aesthetic judgement.

Drawings for Connoisseurs: Demonstrating Theory in Practice

The function of such a scene would have been similar to the two well-known drawn views of Rembrandt’s workshop in the 1650s.²¹ One, in Darmstadt, by pupil Constantijn Daniël à Renesse, anecdotal and possibly imagined but based on direct experience, shows Rembrandt himself leading a session of study from the nude model by pupils and fellow artists.²² The other is Rembrandt’s own pictorial rendering of Rembrandt’s studio in the Ashmolean Museum, which likewise demonstrates drawing from the nude model.²³ Often linked to Rembrandt’s 1654 painting of Bathsheba in the Louvre,²⁴ it actually corresponds more closely in costume, setting, and unusual half-nude pose to Rembrandt’s famous etching of A Half-Dressed Model by a Stove.²⁵ This richly tonal print is signed and dated 1658, and was conceived as a masterwork, comparable to the Hundred-Guilder Print. It was subsequently hotly pursued by connoisseurs, in all of its states, as Arnold Houbraken relates with exasperation.²⁶ The lavish, worked-up drawing in Oxford, showing his studio arrangement, was likely produced for the same audience: it quite distinct from Rembrandt’s spontaneous figure studies from life. Connoisseurs valued drawings precisely for their spontaneous reflection of initial artistic ideas and conceptions, compared to finished paintings, and Rembrandt too fed this interest with such works. The liefhebbers would have noted and appreciated the clear rendering in a pictorial technique of the lighting effect, also seen in the etching, drawing attention to Rembrandt’s innovative use of a sheet of cloth suspended high before the window, to capture more daylight and reflect it down, providing light from above, such as also recommended by Willem Goeree.²⁷

Bisschop evidently likewise reflected on an recommended aspect of artistic practice in this remarkable rendering of an artist teaching his young pupil. It issued a backstage pass to knowledgeable and enthusiastic connoisseurs. They would also have appreciated Bisschop’s illusionistic paintings, and would have considered it obligatory to visit the artist in the studio. There they would engage in intelligent conversation on topics related to art, including the instruction of a younger generation of artists.

1. For an overview and analysis of the phenomenon of the atelier scene in Dutch art, see Katja Kleinert, Atelierdarstellungen in der niederländischen Genremalerei des 17. Jahrhunderts : realistisches Abbild oder glaubwürdiger Schein?, Petersburg 2006.
2. Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, vol. 7, New York 1983, pp. 3648-3649, no. 1636bx (ill.). 
3. Arthur K. Wheelock, ed., Jan Lievens. A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington: National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam: The Rembrandt House Museum 2008/09, p. 246, no. 106.
4. And not that between Apollo and Marsyas, as indicated by Sumowski.
5. No painting of this theme is known by Lievens. There was a depiction of the contest between Apollo and Marsyas, showing Apollo playing the lyre, in the sale of the collection of the Count of Arundel, likely the same work later with the widow of Jürgen Ovens in 1691. See Hans Schneider and Rudi Ekkart, Jan Lievens: sein Leben und seine Werke. Amsterdam 1973, pp. 110-111, no. 78.
6. Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandtschüler, Landau 1983-1994, vol. 6 (1994), pp. 3691-3692, nos. 2185a-2194.
7. Nos. 2857-2861 in: Sumowski, Drawings (see note 2), vol. 12, Addenda (in translation, forthcoming in 2023).
8. Ibid., vol. 3, p. 1965, note 65. Currently assigned no. 2857 in vol. 12 (see note 2); sale, Paris (Christie’s), 21.3.2002, lot 114.
9. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 1961, 1965, 1977 (illus.). Sale, London (Bonhams), 29 October 2014, lot 147 (colour illus.).
10. Amsterdam, Sotheby’s, 11 November 1997, lot 25, colour ill., as Lievens. Sumowski is far more hesitant here than with the Mettingen drawing: Drawings (see note 2), pp. 3904-3905, no. 1757xx, illus.: “…an unqualified attribution cannot be entertained  because there is no material for comparison.”
11. Jan Lievens, Peasant Dwelllings under Trees with Milkmaid, pen in brown and brush in brown and grey, 108 x 193 mm, Dresden, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen Dresden, inv. no. C 1453; see Sumowski, Drawings (see note 2), pp. 3724-3725, no. 1672 (illus.).
12. See: Michiel Roscam Abbing, De schilder & schrijver Samuel van Hoogstraten, 1627-1678. Eigentijdse bronnen & oeuvre van gesigneerde schilderijen, Leiden 1993, pp. 40-41; Volker Manuth, “Dordrecht: bakermat voor Rembrandts leerlingen”, Bulletin Dordrechts Museum 3 (2006), pp. 3-7; and: David de Witt, Abraham van Dijck (1635-1680). Life and Work of a Late Rembrandt Pupil, Zwolle 2020, pp. 11-13.
13. As also observed in Paarlberg, Bisschop (see note 12), p. 24.
14. On their friendship see De Witt, Abraham van Dijck (see note 4), p. 108.
15. David de Witt, The Bader Collection: Dutch and Flemish Paintings, Kingston 2008, pp. 63-64, no. 31), correcting Sumowski’s dating to the early 1660s, with the observation of hesitancy in handling that points to an earlier period.
16. Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, vol. 2, The Hague 1719, p. 220. They seem to have largely been lost. The only example linked to him is A Boy Asleep in an Enclosed Chair, c. 1655/60, oil on wood, 97.2 x 66.5 cm, London, with Johnny van Haeften in 2007; see Sumowski, Gemälde (see note 6), vol. 6 (1994), p. 3692, no. 2192, p. 3776 (illus., as Bisschop). It is unsigned, and clearly derived from a similar work signed and dated 1654 by the Haarlem painter Johannes Verspronck: oil on panel, 96 x 75.7 cm, Belgium, private collection. On this basis it has been attributed to that artist as well see: Rudi Ekkart in: Pride and Joy. Children’s Portraits in The Netherlands 1500-1700, exh. cat. Haarlem: Frans Halsmuseum; Antwerp: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, 2000-2001, pp. 227-229, no. 60. However, the thicker application of paint and harsher contrasts in the London version diverge from the one signed by Verspronck, and indeed more closely approximate Bisschop’s painting style of around 1660. If by him, this would suggest that Verspronck supplied an additional impulse for making such cutout paintings, besides Van Hoogstraten and his championing of illusionism.
17. Houbraken, Schouburgh (see note 16), vol. 2 (1719), pp. 157-158.
18. See the important analysis by Thijs Weststeijn: The Visible World. Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Art Theory and the Legitimation of Painting in the Dutch Golden Age, Amsterdam 2008.
19. Sander Paarlberg, “Bisschop op zijn best. Dordrechts Museum krijgt zijn eigen Melkmeisje”, Bulletin van de Vereniging Rembrandt 25, no. 1, (2015), pp. 22-24, colour illus.
20. Samuel van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de Hooghe Schoole der Schilderkonst, Dordrecht, 1678, p. 12.
21. We do not include a painting attributed to Bisschop: The Young Artist in his Studio, c. 1653, oil on canvas, 90.8 × 76.8 cm, Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, inv. no. 38.29, as attributed to Cornelis Bisschop; George Keyes, in: Masters of Dutch Painting: The Detroit Institute of Arts, London 2004, pp. 28–29, no. 8 (ill.). The drawing shown in the lower left, a classic two-chalk drawing on blue-grey paper, underscores the stylistic evidence against his authorship, pointing instead to the circle around Govert Flinck (1615-1660) and Jacob Adriaensz. Backer (1608-1651); perhaps Adam Camerarius (?–1666).
22. Constantijn Daniël à Renesse, Rembrandt and his Pupils Drawing from a Nude Model, black chalk, brush in brown, 180 x 266 mm, Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, inv. no. AE 665; on the attribution see Peter Schatborn, Rembrandt and his circle: drawings in the Frits Lugt collection, Bussum 2010, p. 335.
23. Rembrandt, Rembrandt’s Studio with a Half-Nude Model, c. 1654/58, pen and brush in brown, with white body colour, 205 x 190 mm, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, inv. no. P.I.192 (WA1855.8): Peter Schatborn in Rembrandt : The Complete Etchings and Drawings, Cologne 2019, p. 269, no. T438 (colour illus., as c. 1654).
24. Rembrandt, Bathsheba with King David’s Letter, 1654, oil on canvas, 142 x 142 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. M.I. 975: Ernst van de Wetering, Rembrandt’s paintings revisited : a complete survey, Dordrecht, Boston and Lancaster 2014, pp. 623-624, no. 231; Volker Manuth, Marieke de Winkel and Rudie van Leeuwen, Rembrandt: the Complete Paintings, Cologne 2019, pp. 507-508, no. 23. As Van de Wetering explains, the pose of Bathsheba was originally conceived with an upward glance and turn of the head.
25. Rembrandt, A Woman Sitting Half-Dressed beside a Stove, 1658, etching, buring and drypoint, 226 x 194 mm, in seven states: Erik Hinterding and Jaco Rutgers, The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700, vol. 25-II: Rembrandt, Ouderkerk aan den IJssel 2013, pp. 292-294, no. 307.
26. Houbraken, Schouburgh (see note 16), vol. 1 (1718), p. 271.
27. As discussed by the author in: David de Witt and Franziska Gottwald, “Rembrandt & Light” in: Rembrandt’s Light, exh. cat. Dulwich, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2019-2020, pp. 33-34 (the date of the drawing mistakenly altered in editing; should read c. 1654/58).

Drawing animals “from life”

Drawing based on direct perception was a must for seventeenth-century artists, not only during their training but also in conducting their profession.²⁹ By for example studying animals in real life they learned how to depict them accurately and convincingly. This practice is not only evident from the many artist’s sketches of animals that have been preserved but also from written advice to artists, such as published by Willem Goeree in 1670 “one should especially make sure to seize opportunities when it comes to rarities, such as lions, tigers, bears, elephants, camels and such kinds of wild animals, which one seldomly gets to see with one’s own eyes, and sometimes needs to have seen in order to incorporate them into one’s inventions”.³⁰

Rembrandt too made sketches of animals based on his own observations.³¹ Exotic animals when he had the chance but also dogs, horses, cows and pigs. These drawings formed part of an extensive collection of study material – autograph drawings and prints as well as numerous works on paper by other artists – that Rembrandt kept in his art cabinet. The inventory of Rembrandt’s collection from 1656 mentions among other items in this room “one ditto (Chinese basket) full of drawings by Rembrandt being animals after life.”³²

There are various Rembrandtesque sketches of lions, dating to different periods. A number of these are attributed to Rembrandt.³³ Others have been identified as by the hand of (anonymous) pupils. Lions and other animals appeared regularly at the Amsterdam fair.³⁴ Evidently, Rembrandt took his pupils along to such events. Did this also happen when Hansken was in Amsterdam? From Rembrandt’s hand there are at least three known drawings of Hansken (including fig. 1).³⁵ A fourth, in a New York collection, is not accepted by all Rembrandt drawing specialists as autograph.³⁶ Could a highly competent pupil have made the sketch? Spontaneity and very specific observations characterize these four sketches as the product of live drawing sessions with Hansken as model.

In the leadup to the exhibition, Rembrandt drawings scholar Peter Schatborn pointed out an unpublished drawing in a French private collection, of an elephant seen from behind (fig. 2).³⁷ In the report that he had prepared for the owners he identified the sketch as a product of a drawing session after life.³⁸ Perhaps even carried out at the Amsterdam fair in September 1637, while Rembrandt was making his first drawings of Hansken (fig. 1). The style of the drawing is closely related to the manner in which Rembrandt drew at the end of the 1630s. And just like Rembrandt’s sketch of Hansken it is executed in black chalk. But on account of the less skilled drawing hand Peter Schatborn identified the maker as an (anonymous) pupil of Rembrandt.

A physical characteristic of the paper on which the drawing was made supports this analysis: it bears a watermark (foolscap) that mainly occurs in paper from the second half of the seventeenth century.³⁹ The identification of the draughtsman as someone from the circle around Rembrandt is very convincing, as is the dating of the sheet. And on first glance the suggestion that the artist joined Rembrandt in sitting around the elephant Hansken drawing seems believable. But herein we stumble upon a problem: the tusk that has been included. Female Asian elephants namely do not have such tusks, and also not Hansken.⁴⁰  It is also highly unlikely that this kind of detail would have been added to a sketch after life. But how must we then explain this drawing?

The Buttocks of a Male Elephant

Hansken was a major attraction and many went to admire her. This may have put Rembrandt in mind to include her in an etching. A year after Rembrandt drew Hansken for the first time, he incorporated an elephant into a representation of Adam and Eve in Paradise, at the point of committing the great sin of their lives (fig. 3). It is the only instance of an elephant in a narrative scene by Rembrandt’s hand.

The earliest purchasers of this print will undoubtedly have drawn the link between the elephant in the background and the animal that just previously had been on view in Amsterdam.⁴¹ In this way Rembrandt’s print served as a visual reminder of a rare event. Rembrandt hereby, in a subtle way, joined an established tradition. Commemorative prints had namely been made of elephants that previously been in Europe.⁴² One of these proves to be crucial to understanding the drawing of the elephant’s buttocks.

On 24 September 1563 a live Asian elephant went on display in Antwerp. The animal was given the name Emanuel.⁴³ The etcher Gerard van Groeningen (Paludanus, active between c. 1561 and 1576) produced a commemorative print of the animal in that year or shortly thereafter (fig. 4).⁴⁴ There the elephant concerned is represented in eight different poses, set in a fantasy mountainous landscape.

To the left Emanuel appears from behind; in the same pose and direction as in the French drawing and with a tusk (fig. 5). Although the dimensions of the elephant in the drawing digress somewhat from the printed one, and details vary somewhat from the etched elephant – the trunk has a simplified form and the tail hangs slightly differently – it is very likely that this figure served as model for the draughtsman.

The anonymous artist clearly worked from a printed, and not from a living model. In light of the similarities and differences with the print by Van Groeningen, the motif was freely – and thereby not very precisely – copied. Such a method fit with current practice: over the course of their working lives artists worked from prints and other works of art, as well as from life. In order to develop and maintain their drawing skill but also to research and practice with motifs.

Suggestion of a herd

If the drawing of the elephant buttocks was made by a pupil of Rembrandt, then he would have had access to the print. Did Rembrandt perhaps own an impression? An observation of one of Rembrandt’s autograph drawings of Hansken could possibly support this hypothesis.

Van Groeningen’s print shows, according to the Latin inscription, how an elephant is able to move its legs. In older texts it was asserted that elephants could not kneel because they did not possess knee joints. By way of observations from the live elephant Emanuel this assumption could be waylaid. But, by showing Emanuel in various positions, and in an imaginary landscape, Van Groeningen suggests that Emanuel was part of a herd.

It was quite common for artists to combine multiple views of the same subject in one scene or sheet of sketches. Rembrandt did this as well in a drawing of Hansken. After his earliest representations of Hansken, Rembrandt observed and drew her again, probably in 1641 (fig. 7).⁴⁵ This time he depicted the elephant in three different poses: while she stands, eats, and lies on the ground. In the process, Rembrandt fused his sketches, giving the suggestion of a herd of elephants.

Emanuel and Hansken were, at the moments that they were in Europe, the only living elephants on the European continent. And although there was little known about elephants, it was told in older and contemporary sources that they lived in herds.⁴⁶  Hansken’s owner Cornelis van Groenevelt also shared information with spectators who posed questions. The print of the Antwerp elephant may have served as visual inspiration for Rembrandt to present his observations of Hansken with the suggestion of a small herd.

Elephants on a small scale

At any rate, the etching by Van Groeningen must have enjoyed some fame, as it inspired various artists. Between 1581 and 1600 an anonymous artist took over the eight elephant views in a book on animals that was published in Antwerp or Amsterdam.⁴⁷ And in 1629 the Bohemian artist Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) took them as a model.

Hollar etched the illustrations for a publicity print for another male elephant. That animal was in Europe shortly before Hansken and bore the name Don Diego.⁴⁸ In this publicity print there is a main scene framed by a series of depictions of the tricks that the animal performed (fig. 8). When we zoom in on the main scene it is evident how much it is based on the print by Van Groeningen (fig. 9). In the centre an elephant stands in profile in a fantasy landscape. Around that animal other elephants can be seen, in very small scale, as if they are far away in the landscape. All of these elephants are copied from the print by Van Groeningen.

The reversed pose confirms the relationship for the small elephants: the copied figures ended up in mirror image on the paper as a result of the printing process. Among the small elephants is one seen from behind, this time with the head and trunk turned to the right. Because of the direction and the difference in scale it is not likely that the pupil of Rembrandt took Hollar’s print of 1629 as his model for his drawing. But it is in turn not impossible that Rembrandt knew this print as well, or even owned it since Rembrandt was an admirer of Hollar. In 1656 he owned several of his prints.⁴⁹

The print of Don Diego could have provided Rembrandt with inspiration, for his abovementioned etching of Adam and Eve. There he chose to represent the elephant in a very small scale, far away, where she comes walking in a hollow (fig. 10). In his first encounter with Hansken, it would have been her large scale that would have made an impression.

Would he have known beforehand that he was going to see a large animal? He took along with him a large sheet of paper to the city centre to record her, but did not entirely succeed given the correction he made to the trunk, in order to keep it inside the pictorial frame.

But Rembrandt could also have come up with the idea of a small elephant via another route: from the prints of the Italian artist Antonio Tempesta (1555-1630). Rembrandt admired  his work as well and took it as a model, already early in his career.⁵⁰ At his insolvency he owned multiple art books filled with Tempesta’s graphic work.⁵¹

One of the larger etchings in his oeuvre is the ‘Aetas Aurea’, The Golden Age, of 1599 (fig. 11). It shows a paradisiacal world in which humanity and animals peacefully coexist. In the background a small elephant boisterously raises its trunk (fig. 12). The same motif appears in several prints by Tempesta.⁵²

It is therefore likely that Rembrandt was already familiar with the motif when he started working on his etching of Adam and Eve.

It was said of elephants that they greet the sun out of divine intuition. Rembrandt possibly knew such folklore and wanted to incorporate it in his narrative scene filled with symbolism.⁵³ The pose of the elephant in his etching is not a literal quotation, but rather a free interpretation by Rembrandt of depictions of elephants by other artists and from his own memory.

As long as it is “after life”

In his work Rembrandt relied on his own observations, but also those of others. By bringing together an enormous collections of prints by artists he admired he created an extensive image bank for himself and his pupils. And among these he kept his sketches. On the basis of all these works on paper he could draw inspiration and consult visual material. In this way working from nature and from art went hand in hand. Certainly when such printed examples were themselves made after life.

The inventory of Rembrandt’s possessions of 1656 shows how both of these forms coexisted: besides his own autograph paintings and drawings of landscapes, people and animals there are multiple works by other artists explicitly cited as having been made after life: “een moor nae ’t leven afgegooten“ (a Moor cast from life), “agt stuck pleysterwerck op ’t leven afgegoten” (eight plaster casts from life) and “een leeuw en een bul op ’t leven gebouceert” (a lion and a bull rendered from life). Elsewhere in Rembrandt’s house are mentioned “drie hondekens nae ’t leven van Titus van Rijn” (three “doggies” after life by Titus van Rijn) and “een vissie nae ’t leven” (a fish after life).⁵⁴ The knowledge that these objects provided an accurate image of the things represented was evidently important to indicate.⁵⁵

It is partly for this reason that the print by Gerard van Groeningen would have been reused. It must have been seen, on account of its detail and variation – recorded by Van Groeningen on the basis of his own observations – as a trustworthy source. Especially in a time when there were very few other true-to-life images of elephants available.

As much as a century later Van Groeningen’s print served as model – directly, or indirectly via the print of Don Diego – for the commemorative print of a female elephant that made the next trek through Europe after Hansken (fig. 13).⁵⁶  For several poses the maker of this print based himself on figures that can be traced back to Van Groeningen’s print.

The motif of the elephant’s buttocks is also used there: this time elaborated into a scene in which the animal shows its behind while swinging people through the air. In the caption it is suggested that the display of its buttocks was one of the tricks that the elephant performed. If she swung people through the air at the same time, is highly questionable. At any rate she would not have used tusks, as she also did not have them.⁵⁷ And just like in the French drawing, we are looking here at an image of the male elephant Emanuel that journeyed through Europe a century earlier.

Hybrid practice

We have sketched above a practice in which artists based themselves equally readily on printed models even when they could go and see and study an animal in real life. Rembrandt’s small etched elephant also seems to witness to this approach. But his print of Adam and Eve is in many respects an example of a hybrid artistic practice.

Rembrandt must have been aware not only of prints of elephants in circulation, but also ones of dragons. Between 9 and 13 February 1638, he purchased various prints by Albrecht Dürer from the collection of Gommer Spranger.⁵⁸  Christ in Limbo must have been among them (fig. 14).⁵⁹ There the devil appears in the guise of a dragon. The similar in pose of the dragon in Rembrandt’s etching is often seen as conscious borrowing by Rembrandt from the German artist he greatly admired.

For a fantastic beast such as a dragon Rembrandt leaned on the powers of imagination of his illustrious predecessor. But on his own Rembrandt sought out the correct poses and interaction of the two main figures (fig. 15 and 16).⁶⁰ Perhaps with the use of models, and thus “after life”. Here he chose – against all conventions – to render Adam and Eve not with ideal beauty but as common, realistic people. The result of all of these forms of inspiration was a scene rich in significance, with many references to myths and stories, and a female elephant that had just previously been in Amsterdam.⁶¹

1. For an overview and analysis of the phenomenon of the atelier scene in Dutch art, see Katja Kleinert, Atelierdarstellungen in der niederländischen Genremalerei des 17. Jahrhunderts : realistisches Abbild oder glaubwürdiger Schein?, Petersburg 2006.
2. Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, vol. 7, New York 1983, pp. 3648-3649, no. 1636bx (ill.). 
3. Arthur K. Wheelock, ed., Jan Lievens. A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington: National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam: The Rembrandt House Museum 2008/09, p. 246, no. 106.
4. And not that between Apollo and Marsyas, as indicated by Sumowski.
5. No painting of this theme is known by Lievens. There was a depiction of the contest between Apollo and Marsyas, showing Apollo playing the lyre, in the sale of the collection of the Count of Arundel, likely the same work later with the widow of Jürgen Ovens in 1691. See Hans Schneider and Rudi Ekkart, Jan Lievens: sein Leben und seine Werke. Amsterdam 1973, pp. 110-111, no. 78.
6. Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandtschüler, Landau 1983-1994, vol. 6 (1994), pp. 3691-3692, nos. 2185a-2194.
7. Nos. 2857-2861 in: Sumowski, Drawings (see note 2), vol. 12, Addenda (in translation, forthcoming in 2023).
8. Ibid., vol. 3, p. 1965, note 65. Currently assigned no. 2857 in vol. 12 (see note 2); sale, Paris (Christie’s), 21.3.2002, lot 114.
9. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 1961, 1965, 1977 (illus.). Sale, London (Bonhams), 29 October 2014, lot 147 (colour illus.).
10. Amsterdam, Sotheby’s, 11 November 1997, lot 25, colour ill., as Lievens. Sumowski is far more hesitant here than with the Mettingen drawing: Drawings (see note 2), pp. 3904-3905, no. 1757xx, illus.: “…an unqualified attribution cannot be entertained  because there is no material for comparison.”
11. Jan Lievens, Peasant Dwelllings under Trees with Milkmaid, pen in brown and brush in brown and grey, 108 x 193 mm, Dresden, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen Dresden, inv. no. C 1453; see Sumowski, Drawings (see note 2), pp. 3724-3725, no. 1672 (illus.).
12. See: Michiel Roscam Abbing, De schilder & schrijver Samuel van Hoogstraten, 1627-1678. Eigentijdse bronnen & oeuvre van gesigneerde schilderijen, Leiden 1993, pp. 40-41; Volker Manuth, “Dordrecht: bakermat voor Rembrandts leerlingen”, Bulletin Dordrechts Museum 3 (2006), pp. 3-7; and: David de Witt, Abraham van Dijck (1635-1680). Life and Work of a Late Rembrandt Pupil, Zwolle 2020, pp. 11-13.
13. As also observed in Paarlberg, Bisschop (see note 12), p. 24.
14. On their friendship see De Witt, Abraham van Dijck (see note 4), p. 108.
15. David de Witt, The Bader Collection: Dutch and Flemish Paintings, Kingston 2008, pp. 63-64, no. 31), correcting Sumowski’s dating to the early 1660s, with the observation of hesitancy in handling that points to an earlier period.
16. Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, vol. 2, The Hague 1719, p. 220. They seem to have largely been lost. The only example linked to him is A Boy Asleep in an Enclosed Chair, c. 1655/60, oil on wood, 97.2 x 66.5 cm, London, with Johnny van Haeften in 2007; see Sumowski, Gemälde (see note 6), vol. 6 (1994), p. 3692, no. 2192, p. 3776 (illus., as Bisschop). It is unsigned, and clearly derived from a similar work signed and dated 1654 by the Haarlem painter Johannes Verspronck: oil on panel, 96 x 75.7 cm, Belgium, private collection. On this basis it has been attributed to that artist as well see: Rudi Ekkart in: Pride and Joy. Children’s Portraits in The Netherlands 1500-1700, exh. cat. Haarlem: Frans Halsmuseum; Antwerp: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, 2000-2001, pp. 227-229, no. 60. However, the thicker application of paint and harsher contrasts in the London version diverge from the one signed by Verspronck, and indeed more closely approximate Bisschop’s painting style of around 1660. If by him, this would suggest that Verspronck supplied an additional impulse for making such cutout paintings, besides Van Hoogstraten and his championing of illusionism.
17. Houbraken, Schouburgh (see note 16), vol. 2 (1719), pp. 157-158.
18. See the important analysis by Thijs Weststeijn: The Visible World. Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Art Theory and the Legitimation of Painting in the Dutch Golden Age, Amsterdam 2008.
19. Sander Paarlberg, “Bisschop op zijn best. Dordrechts Museum krijgt zijn eigen Melkmeisje”, Bulletin van de Vereniging Rembrandt 25, no. 1, (2015), pp. 22-24, colour illus.
20. Samuel van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de Hooghe Schoole der Schilderkonst, Dordrecht, 1678, p. 12.
21. We do not include a painting attributed to Bisschop: The Young Artist in his Studio, c. 1653, oil on canvas, 90.8 × 76.8 cm, Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, inv. no. 38.29, as attributed to Cornelis Bisschop; George Keyes, in: Masters of Dutch Painting: The Detroit Institute of Arts, London 2004, pp. 28–29, no. 8 (ill.). The drawing shown in the lower left, a classic two-chalk drawing on blue-grey paper, underscores the stylistic evidence against his authorship, pointing instead to the circle around Govert Flinck (1615-1660) and Jacob Adriaensz. Backer (1608-1651); perhaps Adam Camerarius (?–1666).
22. Constantijn Daniël à Renesse, Rembrandt and his Pupils Drawing from a Nude Model, black chalk, brush in brown, 180 x 266 mm, Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, inv. no. AE 665; on the attribution see Peter Schatborn, Rembrandt and his circle: drawings in the Frits Lugt collection, Bussum 2010, p. 335.
23. Rembrandt, Rembrandt’s Studio with a Half-Nude Model, c. 1654/58, pen and brush in brown, with white body colour, 205 x 190 mm, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, inv. no. P.I.192 (WA1855.8): Peter Schatborn in Rembrandt : The Complete Etchings and Drawings, Cologne 2019, p. 269, no. T438 (colour illus., as c. 1654).
24. Rembrandt, Bathsheba with King David’s Letter, 1654, oil on canvas, 142 x 142 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. M.I. 975: Ernst van de Wetering, Rembrandt’s paintings revisited : a complete survey, Dordrecht, Boston and Lancaster 2014, pp. 623-624, no. 231; Volker Manuth, Marieke de Winkel and Rudie van Leeuwen, Rembrandt: the Complete Paintings, Cologne 2019, pp. 507-508, no. 23. As Van de Wetering explains, the pose of Bathsheba was originally conceived with an upward glance and turn of the head.
25. Rembrandt, A Woman Sitting Half-Dressed beside a Stove, 1658, etching, buring and drypoint, 226 x 194 mm, in seven states: Erik Hinterding and Jaco Rutgers, The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700, vol. 25-II: Rembrandt, Ouderkerk aan den IJssel 2013, pp. 292-294, no. 307.
26. Houbraken, Schouburgh (see note 16), vol. 1 (1718), p. 271.
27. As discussed by the author in: David de Witt and Franziska Gottwald, “Rembrandt & Light” in: Rembrandt’s Light, exh. cat. Dulwich, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2019-2020, pp. 33-34 (the date of the drawing mistakenly altered in editing; should read c. 1654/58).
28. See www.elephanthansken.com for a current collection of all the traces left by Hansken and her owner, brought together thanks to the research of Michiel Roscam Abbing. In 2016 M. Roscam Abbing, Rembrandts olifant. In het spoor van Hansken appeared, followed in 2021 by an updated edition in English translation entitled Rembrandt’s Elephant. Following in Hansken’s Footsteps, both with Leporello in Amsterdam.
29. In Het Schilder-boeck of 1604 (Haarlem) Karel van Mander calls drawing the father of all of the arts. Constant practice, especially taking everything that nature offers as model, will make the artist successful; see fol. 8r+v, Van het teyckenen, oft Teycken-const. Tweede Capittel.
30. W. Goeree, Inleydingh Tot de Praktijck Der Al-gemeene Schilder-Konst, Middelburg 1670, p. 121.
31. For an overview see P. Schatborn, E. Hinterding, Rembrandt. Alle tekeningen en etsen, Cologne 2019, pp. 285-301.
32. No. 249 in the inventory, see document/remdoc/e12724. For more background on Rembrandt’s collection, see B. Broos e.a., Rembrandt’s Treasures, Amsterdam 1999.
33. Peter Schatborn accepts six lion drawings as autograph: Rembrandt, A Lioness or Young Lion with Prey (a Bird), Reclining, with Head to the Left, 1637-1641. Charcoal and wash, with white highlights, on prepared paper, 126 x 239 mm. London, British Museum, inv. no. Oo,9.71; Rembrandt, Reclining Lioness or Young Lion, with Head to the Right, 1637-1641. Charcoal and wash, with white highlights, on prepared paper, 125 x 180 mm. London, British Museum, inv. no. Oo,9.75; Rembrandt, Reclining Lioness or Young Lion, from the Front, 1637-1641. Charcoal and wash, with white highlights, on prepared paper, 115 x 150 mm. New York, The Leiden Collection, inv. no. RR-100; Rembrandt, Reclining Lion with Prey, c. 1650. Pen and brush in ink, brush in white paint, with traced contours, 140 x 203 mm. Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Collection Franz Koenigs, inv. no. R 12; Rembrandt, Reclining Lion, c. 1650. Pen and brush in ink, 138 x 207 mm. Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. RF4721; Rembrandt, Reclining Lion, c. 1660. Pen in brown on prepared paper, 122 x 212 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-T-1901-A-4524.
34. For lions, see M. Roscam Abbing, P. Tuynman, “Rembrandts drawings of the elephant Hansken”, in M. Roscam Abbing (ed.), Rembrandt 2006: Essays, Leiden 2006, pp. 173-189, p. 189.
35. Rembrandt, Young Asian Elephant (Hansken), 1637. Black chalk, 233 x 354 mm. Vienna, Albertina, inv. no. 17558; Rembrandt, Asian Elephant (Hansken) in three different poses with steward. Black chalk, 239 x 354 mm. Vienna, Albertina, inv. no. 8900; Rembrandt, Asian Elephant (Hansken) with Spectators. Black chalk and charcoal, 179 x 256 mm. London, British Museum, inv. no. Gg,2.259.
36. Rembrandt or pupil, Asian Elephant (Hansken), c. 1637. Black chalk and graphite, counterproof. 194 x 189 mm. New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, inv. no. I, 205.
37. The drawing has in the meantime been published in M. Roscam Abbing, Rembrandt’s Elephant (see note 1), pp. 22-23. The interpretation of the drawing there is based on the research presented in this article.
38. In the possession of Peter Schatborn, the owners of the drawing, and the author of this article.
39. There is no available image of the watermark, so further identification is not possible at the moment.
40. Female Asian elephants generally do not have tusks. But where present, they do not grow to longer than 10 cm, which does render them visible between the folds of the skin. Hansken had short visible tusks of this kind. Her skeleton, which was preserved after her death in 1655, and is kept on display at the natural history museum La Specola, shows evidence of this: the skull shows the stumps of tusks. The English traveller and writer wrote in 1641 in his diary: “his teeth were but short being a female, and not old, as they told us”. Zie E.S. de Beer (red.), The diary of John Evelyn, Vol. 2. In the same year Ernst Brinck observed: “zijn naar buiten uitstekende slagtanden waren nog maar weinig meer dan een vinger lang” (his protruding tusks were only a little more than a finger long). See also Roscam Abbing and Tuynman, “Rembrandt’s Drawings…” (see note 7), pp. 173-189. There it is explained how in 1633 Hansken’s tusks were not yet visible. In 1641 they were, according to the description of Evelyn and Brinck. They may have been broken off after then, not subsequently growing long enough to be visible.
41. Roscam Abbing and Tuynman, “Rembrandt’s Drawings…” (see note 7), p. 184 and Roscam Abbing, Rembrandt’s Elephant (see note 1), pp. 24-25.
42. Jan Mollijns, Commemorative Print of the Asian Elephant Emanuel, 1563. Hand coloured woodcut, 285 x 400 mm. London, The British Museum, inv. no. 1928,0310.97, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1928-0310-97; Gerard van Groeningen, Commemorative Print of the Asian Elephant Emanuel, in Eight Different Poses, in or after 1563. Etching, 405 x 541 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-P-OB-59.019; Wenceslaus Hollar (after Gerard van Groeningen), Commemorative Print of the Asian Elephant Don Diego, 1629. Etching, 245 x 283 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-P-1976-16.
43. See Chronycke van Antwerpe sedert het jaer 1500 tot 1575. Gevolgd van Eene beschryving van de historie en het landt van Brabant, sedert het jaer 51 vóór J.-C., tot 1565 na J.-C., volgens een onuitgegeven handschrift van de XVIe eeuw, edition of 1843, Antwerp, p. 59: “(…) anno 1563, int eynde van september, doen quam tot Antwerpen tschepe eenen olifant vuyt Portugael, off daer ontrent, oudt by de negen jaeren, hooge acht voeten; desen ginck sdaechs achter straeten dattet een yegelyck sien moechte: desen was seer tam ende wert geregeert van eenen moor doende alwat den moor hem gebiede: desen olifant hiet Emanuel.” (in the year 1563, at the end of September, there came by ship to Antwerp an elephant from Portugal, around nine years old, eight feet tall; it went by day through the streets so that all could see it: it was very tame and was led by a Moor, doing everything the Moor commanded: this elephant was called Emanuel). See e.g. also S. Dackerman, Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, New Haven 2011, cat. no. 34.
44. See note 15. For the impression in the collection of the Rijksmuseum see http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.119126.
45. Hansken appeared in Amsterdam on four occasions: in the summer months of 1633 and at the fairs (kermissen) of 1637, 1641 and 1647. One of the drawings by Rembrandt can be connected to the fair of 1637, because Rembrandt dated the sheet. Peter Schatborn dates the other two drawings of Hansken by Rembrandt to the same year. However the drawing of Hansen in three poses (Albertina, inv. no. 8900) appears to have been made on a later occasion, in 1641. The animal in that drawing is noticeably older than in the sketch of 1637. See also Roscam Abbing and Tuynman, “Rembrandt’s Drawings…” (see note 7), pp. 173-189. Further research on the paper in the future may yield more information on the dating.
46. Up to Rembrandt’s time, there was limited knowledge in Europe concerning elephants. What people thought to know was based on what Pliny the Elder had written in his Natural History (77-79 C.E.). Or on medieval legends such as could be read in the Physiologus, an ancient Greek moralizing text on plants and (mythical) animals. Over the course of time there appeared more and newer editions of these stories. Jacob van Maerlants Der naturen bloeme (c. 1350) is one example, in which the texts are no longer presented in Latin but in Dutch (“Dietsch”). In 1588 Christophel Plantijn in Antwerp published a collection of texts – including the Physiologus – under the title Sancti Patris Nostri Epiphanii, Episcopi Constantiae Cypri, ad Physiologum. Eiusdem in die festo Palmarum sermo. A century later, at the end of the 17th century, the skeleton Hansken, the elephant that died in 1655 in Florence, became accessible to scholars. This led to new insights into the existence of an ancestor species, the mammoth. A Latin description of Hansken’s skeleton by John Ray formed the basis in the 18th century for Carolus Linnaeus’ scientific description of the elephant in terms of its species.
47. For the copy of the album in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, see: http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.353205. For the two prints in its, respectively of five and three elephants, see: http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.353210 and http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.353211.
48. For the copy in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, see: http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.33090. Don Diego was in Europe from 1623 to 1635 in Europa. For more information on Don Diego see L. Rice, “Poussin’s Elephant”, Renaissance Quarterly 70 (2017), pp. 548-593; M. Roscam Abbing, “Poussin’s Elephant Revisited”, in Source: Notes in the History of Art 39 (2020), pp. 109-119.
49. “Op de kunstcaemer (….) [235] Een Oost-Indies benneken daarin verscheyde prenten van Rembrant, Hollaert, Cocq en andere meer”. See document/remdoc/e12723.
50. [i] For his etching of Joseph and the Wife of Potiphar of 1634 (B39/ NHD128) Rembrandt looked to the etching of the same theme by Tempesta, of 1613. And Tempesta’s prints of lion hunts served as model for Rembrandt in his own depictions of the theme, the two small lion hunts of c. 1629 (B115/ NHD28, B116/ NHD29) and his large lion hunt of 1641 (B114/ NHD187). See e.g. B. van den Boogert, J. van der Veen, Dat kan beter! Rembrandt en de oude meesters, Amsterdam 2013, pp. 52-55.
51. Nos. 210 – 212 in the inventory. See document/remdoc/e12721 and document/remdoc/e12722.
52. See for example in the collection of the Rijksmuseum: God Creates the Animals http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.183114, Cain Murdering Abel http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.183148, Orpheus Enchanting the Animals with his Music http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.183809, Combat of the Centaurs and Various Animals http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.608702, God Commands Adam And Eve Not To Eat of The Tree of Knowledge http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.183140.
53. See also Roscam Abbing, Rembrandts olifant (see note 1), pp. 22-23; Rembrandt’s Elephant (see note 1), pp. 24-25. Besides the iconography there described of the elephant as a chaste animal, and thereby symbol of humanity before the Fall into Sin, Rembrandt incorporated two myths about elephants. The myth of the mating ritual of elephants refers namely to the sin of the first people in the world. In order to stimulate arousal in the male, the female offers an aphrodisiac. Eve gives the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to Adam, and this fruit in fact serves as an aphrodisiac. Because after eating this fruit they become aware of their desires. And further it was said of elephants and dragons that they were symbols respectively of good and evil, and that they were each other’s greatest enemies. The draco (Latin, translatable as dragon or serpent) hides in a tree, in order to drop down onto an elephant walking by. What follows is a fight to the death, in which both animals perish. Rembrandt also refers to this coming event, as symbol of the struggle between good and evil that will result from Adam and Eve’s fall into sin.
54. Respectively nos. 161, 178, 189, 298 and 307 in the inventory, see: document/remdoc/e12719, document/remdoc/e12719, document/remdoc/e12720, document/remdoc/e12727.
55. The fact Rembrandt’s insolvency inventory contains such detailed information is one of the reasons to believe that Rembrandt himself dictated how the objects were to be described at the taking of the inventory, on 25 and 26 July 1656.
56. For further information on this elephant see: M. Roscam Abbing, “‘So Een Wunder heeft men hier nooijt gesien’ De Indische vrouwtjesolifant (1678/80-1706) van Bartel Verhagen”, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 106 (2014), pp. 68-95.
57. The tusks were probably added because they appear in the original print by Van Groeningen and were seen as a typical feature of an elephant. Hansken too was given prominent tusks in some illustrations. In one instance (a drawing from life, but embellished from imagination) it is clear that the artist tried to indicate how tusks would look on her. Stefano della Bella, Elephant (Hansken), with a Black Man. Pen and brush in ink, 128 x 159 mm. Present location unknown (sale,London, Christie’s, 18 March 1975, lot 17). For more on this drawing see: https://www.elephanthansken.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/fig.-17.jpg. Around 1647 a publicity or commemorative print of Hansken was also made. For the impression in the Rijksmuseum see http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.432625. Also in this print, she was mistakenly endowed with tusks, following the example of the print of Don Diego, which also served as model for the arrangement of the print with a central image surrounded by smaller images.
58. See document/remdoc/e4447.
59. Idem. RemDoc does not supply the detailed list of the works that Rembrandt purchased. The Rembrandt Documents (W. Strauss and M. van der Meulen, New York 1979) does summarize them (see doc. no. 1638/2). It is evident that over the auction days Rembrandt purchased various individual prints by Albrecht Dürer, a woodcut series of The Life of the Virgin, and a Passion series. The print Christ in Limbo was part of Dürer’s engraved Passion of 1511-1513.
60. See also J. Schaeps e.a. Leiden viert feest! Hoogtepunten uit een academische collectie, 2014, cat. no. 17.
61. See also Roscam Abbing, Rembrandts olifant (see note 1), pp. 22-23; Roscam Abbing, Rembrandt’s Elephant (see note 1), p. 24; Joost van den Vondel also incorporated Hansken’s presence into his work. She was on display in the city in September 1637 as Vondel was completing his play Gijsbrecht van Aemstel. This work premièred on 3 January 1638 in honour of, and in, the Amsterdam Schouwburgh on the Keizersgracht. In one of the scenes (line 1304) Vondel refers to one of the tricks Hansken performed during her appearances; see Roscam Abbing, Rembrandts olifant (see note 1), pp. 49-51.

The painted oeuvre of Rembrandt has to a certain extent been delimited by the Rembrandt Research Project. Although the conclusions there formulated are not always shared by all, the discussion generally concerns works that are long known. The resurfacing of a completely unknown painting is extremely rare. Likewise, the emergence of an archival discovery is not an everyday occurrence. The archival researches of Abraham Bredius (1855-1946), Isabella van Eeghen (1913-1996), Bas Dudok van Heel (1938) and others have unearthed a rich treasure trove concerning the life and work of Rembrandt and his milieu. The very extensive Amsterdam Notarial Archive consistently showed itself to be a nearly inexhaustible source for drawing historical links and making new discoveries (fig. 1). Of course, new research also encountered known material. Dudok van Heel remarked in 1987 that a red or blue pencil crayon line meant that Bredius had beat him to it.⁶² Other researchers also left their traces (figs. 2, 3).

Leafing by hand through the protocols or close reading of microfilms is very time consuming and researchers followed the path dictated by their research. Already in Bredius time it was clear that some notaries were more regularly involved with art and artists; those parts of the archive offered better chances. Going through the entire notarial archive, which extends to 3.5 kilometres of bookshelves and covers a period of nearly 350 years (1578-1915), was utterly impossible in human terms, even if research was limited to a timespan of ten or twenty years. One remained dependent on the card index on individual names and subjects compiled by Simon Hart (1911-1981) and other archive employees (which covered around 5% of the entire archive), serendipity or lucky finds while doing other research.

All Amsterdam Records (Alle Amsterdamse Akten)

Searching by hand or microfilm through the notarial archive is increasingly becoming a part of the past. Starting in 2016, with the project Alle Amsterdamse Akten of the Amsterdam City Archives, and then indexed by volunteers. By October 2021 there were 8,8 million scans available on-line, mainly of documents from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is anticipated that by the end of 2021 the entire seventeenth-century section of the archive will be digitized, including the protocols with water and fire damage. This will turn out to be a treasure trove of information that has hitherto hardly been unlocked or used, a wealth of data from a period in which Amsterdam was one of Europe’s largest and most important cities. Thanks to its unique historical value, the archive was included in 2017 in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. Current accessibility is limited to indexes by date, document type, individual names and locations outside of Amsterdam. The results are available to all through a search function on the website of the City Archives.⁶³ The index already includes the impressive amount of 3.1 million individual names, a number that is steadily growing. Compared to the old boxes of index cards from the twentieth century, the Alle Amsterdamse Akten project represents an enormous leap ahead.⁶⁴ It is however not yet possible to search the archive by word, so that human recognition, just as before, forms the basis for indexing. But here also changes are taking place. From March 2021 the Amsterdam City Archives hosts a search function in which documents transcribed by the computer program Transkribus are completely searchable using HTR (Handwritten Text Recognition).⁶⁵ Although currently limited to a number of 300,000 documents, about 1.5% of the estimated 20 million scans that the notarial archive comprises, it is already evident that this combination of digital technology will revolutionise the use of written documents for historical research. The Rembrandt document described in this article is a direct result of this technology.

Two New Rembrandt References

The two hitherto unknown references to Rembrandt were found by the computer in the settlement of the estate of master carpenter Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh, who died in 1661. In the account of the management of the estate drawn up by the notary Gillis Borsselaer (active in Amsterdam 1636-1675) the expenses and income from the years 1661-1665 are listed in chronological order.⁶⁶ On 1 December 1663 a payment to the city messenger is noted, relating to three different issues: Rembrandt, the renters of a house in the Grote Kattenburgerstraat and the title of a document (probably a transfer of ownership): “Betaelt voor oncosten van Stadtsbode gelt van Rembrant de schilder te roepen met de luijden vande kelder ende kamer op kattenburch met een brieff opt Oostindische huijs overgeteijckent samen f. 1:13:- (Expenses paid to the city messenger to summon Rembrandt the painter, with the persons in the cellar and the room in the Grote Kattenburgerstraat with a document at the Oost-Indisch Huis transferred total f. 1:13:-)”. The city messenger brought Rembrandt the notice that he was to appear, and the expense post of 7 December 1663 reveals why: “Betaelt aen Rembrant de schilder voor schilderen vande overleden f. 15:14:- (Paid to Rembrandt the painter for painting the deceased f. 15:14:-)”(fig. 4).

Seeing as how the deceased Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh had already been dead for two years by then, there are three possibilities. The first is that the costs were incurred shortly after the death of Wiltingh and were paid only later. The administrators indeed regularly settled outstanding accounts. Rembrandt could have gone to Wiltingh’s house after the notification from the city messenger in order to make a deathbed portrait there. That would be highly exceptional in Rembrandt’s oeuvre and the price of fifteen guilders and fourteen stivers is strikingly low. And given that all costs after Wiltingh’s death were scrupulously recorded, and no further payments to Rembrandt appear, this is the total amount. Moreover one would not expect the city messenger to be engaged for such a request. The city messengers communicated notifications in the judicial sphere and maintained corresponding registers.⁶⁷ The settlement of the estate contains other examples. In the autumn of 1662 a city messenger delivered an arrest and twice visited “Els inde kelder op kattenburch (Els in the cellar on the Kattenburch)”, a renter who apparently refused to pay and subsequently went bankrupt, whereupon the estate also had to cover the costs of cleaning up her cellar.⁶⁸

A second possibility is more likely, namely that Wiltingh was portrayed by Rembrandt already before he died, and that that there was still an amount owing for this that had to be settled in a formal way – therefore the engagement of the city messenger. Despite the fact that the word “remaining” is missing in the text, which indicates in several other estate entries that partial payment had already been made, nonetheless we think that fifteen guilders and fourteen stivers was too modest a sum of money for a portrait painted by Rembrandt. It is more likely that Wiltingh had already advanced a much more substantial sum. A known example of a similar arrangement is the advance of seventy-five guilders that Diego d’Andrada paid Rembrandt in 1654 for the portrait of “seeckere jonge dochter (a certain young woman)”. D’Andrada would pay the balance when the portrait “volcomentlyck sal sijn opgemaeckt (will be fully completed)”.⁶⁹ And lastly there is still a third possibility, namely that Rembrandt would have made a copy after an existing portrait. Even then the amount is strikingly low and the question arises what the function would be of such a doublet. The East-Netherlandish migrant family to which Wiltingh belonged would not have had a tradition of family portraits, and the idea that a copy would have been destined for one of Wiltingh’s heirs is still quite speculative. And also in such an instance the use of the city messenger would have been very odd.

A third reference to a painter in the estate probably does not have to do with Rembrandt; at least, there is no evidence for this. On 1 June 1662 one of the executors of the estate, Coop Roelofsz Hoijer, received 96 and 12 stivers voor payments he had previously made: ‘Betaelt aen Coophoeijer soo wegen de schilder, Isercramer ende f. 70 vant scheepspart als anders dat den boedel aen hem schuldich was volgens contract f. 96:-:12 (Paid to Coop Hoijer on account of the painter, ironmonger and f. 70 of the share in a ship and for other things that the estate was owing him according to the contract f. 96:-:12)’.⁷⁰ This payment probably had to do with construction of houses in the Grote Kattenburgerstraat, for which payments to construction workers formed an important part of the settlement of the estate.

It is lastly very likely that the references to Rembrant de schilder do indeed concern Rembrandt van Rijn, and not an unknown painter with the same name. In 1665 Rembrandt had already been a famous artist for decades, who deliberately signed his work “Rembrandt” from the 1630s onwards. In ten Amsterdam estate inventories from the period 1660-1663, in which one or more works by Rembrandt appear, he is only mentioned once with his full name.⁷¹ Moreover, Rembrandt as a given name was relatively rare. For the period 1650-1670 the Amsterdam marriage registers list only two adults with the same first name: in 1654 the inland mariner Rembrant Gerritsz van Uithoorn and in 1669 the herbalist Rembrandt Lubbertse.⁷² That Rembrandt took receipt of the money does not necessarily mean, by the way, that the portrait was painted by him. It could in theory have been carried out by someone from his atelier. From this period, besides his son Titus, only Arent de Gelder (1645-1727) and Gottfried Kneller (1646-1723) have been named as his pupil or assistant.

Who was Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh?

Rembrandts Amsterdam clientele has been thoroughly researched; it mostly drew from the well-to-do citizens of the city. How do we place master carpenter Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh in this picture, who was he? The settlement of his estate forms an important source for addressing this question, supplemented by other archival data. The resulting picture is not yet complete, but gives a fairly good impression of his activities and of his close relatives. Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh (before c. 1630-1661) first surfaces in the Amsterdam documents when he purchases citizenship (poorterschap) on 20 January 1651 as carpenter.⁷³ He was likely unmarried and without children, at least there are no references to be found in the Amsterdam archives and he left no descendants when he died.⁷⁴ His date of birth is unknow, but he will have been of adult age and he had some capital at his disposal; purchasing citizenship was expensive: fifty guilders. The registration specifies his home town as Hasselt, very likely the small city on the Zwarte Water north of Zwolle.⁷⁵ Only citizens could become members of the carpenter’s or St. Joseph’s Guild and thereupon undergo a master’s examination, which would allow them to run a business on their own. It is uncertain when he became a master given that the guild archive for this period has been lost. A possible early reference dates to 17 January 1653, when one Jacob Wessels serves as guarantor for the purchase of a building lot on the east side of the Singel by Romeyn de Hoogh, a second cousin of the artist and troublemaker. ⁷⁶ Starting only in 1655 do we have data available concerning Wiltingh’s activity in two fields, as a commissioned carpenter and as an entrepreneur. He participated in two building projects by city architect Daniel Stalpaert (1615-1676) and he was active as project developer.

18 May 1661 the executors booked the following income entry: “De heeren van Sgraven lant waeren schuldich ende hebben betaelt van timmeren vande kerck aldaer f. 590:-:- (The Lords of ’s-Gravenland were indebted and have paid for carpentry work on the church there f. 590:-:-)”. The church of ’s-Graveland was built in 1657-1658 on the design of Daniel Stalpaert en he will also have coordinated the construction (fig. 5). Wiltingh had contracted on 5 March 1657 for building the roof for a sum of 2050 guilders. This included the roof structure, the tower and the panelling of the ceiling vaults. He took over the costs of the wood, as well as labour costs and beer for the woodworkers.⁷⁷ He may have undertaken other carpentry work as well. A general account of the building costs mentions that “de kap ende Ander hout werck heeft gemaeckt Jacob van haasselt meester tuijmmerman tot Amsterdam die tselvige werck hadde aen genoemen (The roof and other carpentry work were done by Jacob van Hasselt master carpenter of Amsterdam who had contract to do this work)”. The construction of the church – excluding the foundations – had been estimated to cost between 10,000 and 11,000 guilders, and another source cites a total amount of 12,345 guilders.⁷⁸

Daniel Stalpaert was also responsible for the supervision of the construction of the Amsterdam City Hall on Dam Square .⁷⁹ Although this prestige project was one of the most important architectural designs and building projects of the seventeenth century Dutch Republic, our knowledge of the building-process is limited.⁸⁰ One thing is clear: the sheer size of the project outstripped the capacity of the city construction office, and much work was subcontracted. Untill now hardly anything was known about the carpenters involved in the construction of the City Hall. It turns out that master carpenter Wiltingh was one of the carpenters working in the construction of the roof of the City Hall, together with master carpenter Dirck Isacqsz. Concerning the construction costs a dispute had arisen, that was set aside on Wiltingh’s initiative when Isacqsz visited him at his sickbed and he did not have much longer to live. Wiltingh said: “Meester Dirck wij hebben wat differentie wegen de kap vant stadts huijs, van ontfanck ende uijtgift, maer t is weijnich, ick salder niet lange wesen, laeten wij malcanderen quitteren ende daer van swijgen’ (“Master Dirck we had our differences concerning the roof of the City Hall, income and expenses, but it is little, I do not have long to live, let’s wipe the slate clean and let that be the end of it.”). Whereupon Isacqsz responded “laet het soo doot ende te niet wesen, ende sullen daer van niet meer sprecken off pretenderen” (So let it be finished and undone, and let’s not talk about it or make claims any more.).⁸¹ The roof was completed in 1659. According to a description of the City Hall of 1808, construction was contracted to three builders, each earning 6,000 guilders.⁸² Their names are unfortunately not known, so it is impossible to determine the role of neither Isacqsz nor Wiltingh more specifically.

In 1650 Amsterdam was an important European trading metropolis with more than 170,000 residents, and Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh was one of the many migrants who gravitated towards the growing city on Amstel. Already starting in 1652, plans were being made for the further expansion of the city, and in order to accommodate the steadily growing population plots within the city were repurposed and existing houses were expanded or rebuilt. Carpenter and bricklayers functioned herein as project developers. They bought existing houses and building plots and the new houses were then sold or rented out.⁸³ Wiltingh worked together with others as project developer, likely to spread out the risk and because his financial means were otherwise insufficient. On 1 February 1655 he bought together with the baker Coop Roelofsz Hoijer (1617/18-1664), probably his brother-in-law, a house in the Jonkerstraat (no. 43 in 1875) for 1017 guilders.⁸⁴ In the verpondingsregister, a tax on real estate, it is noted that construction work began in 1659. On 1 October 1661 the estimated annual rental income, the basis for the real estate tax, was raised from 50 to 120 guilders.⁸⁵ The house, “daer eertijts de hoop ende nu de schilpat uijthangt” (“formerly with the sign of Hope, now of The Turtle”).was then worth 3600 guilders.⁸⁶ This was undoubtedly a new house, although modest in size, and not to be compared to the buildings on the main streets and canals. The lots were small and the Jonker- and Ridderstraat suffered the reputation of being a crowded neighbourhood where unschooled workers, foreigners and sailors stayed, and harboured many prostitutes and cheap bordellos.⁸⁷ For comparison: the Rembrandt House was sold in 1658 for 11,000 guilders and its rental income was pegged at 350 guilders in the real estate tax register.⁸⁸

A second building project, about which we know a great deal thanks to the estate documents, comprised of new houses on the newly-formed island Kattenburg. Together with the city master-bricklayer Jan Willemsz Brederode (1621-1671; in city service 1659-1671)⁸⁹ Wiltingh purchased for 5159 guilders four building lots in the Grote Kattenburgerstraat, on which they built five houses, equally modest in scale (in 1875 nos. 6-14, fig. 6-7).⁹⁰ Wiltingh knew Brederode from the building of the church in ’s-Graveland, where he had carried out the bricklaying.⁹¹ Wiltingh furthermore stood as guarantor, together with Brederode, for the purchase of a building lot in the Kleine Kattenburgerstraat by Dirck Isaacsz, the master carpenter Wiltingh again knew from the roof on the City Hall.⁹² The properties on Kattenburch island were the first available lots in the fourth expansion of the city, mainly carried out from 1658-1681. They were auctioned on 7 January 1660 and the new houses were completed in the same year.⁹³ On 10 May 1661 Wiltingh and Brederode split up the new building block: Brederode took three houses (nos. 6-10) and Wiltingh two (nos. 12-14), of which one was sold to Roeloff van Aelst (no. 12).⁹⁴ The estate settlement contains many entries starting in August 1661 for house rent paid by a baker and a tobacconist, and by the residents of an inhabited cellar and front and rear rooms higher up. There are also numerous payments to excavators, pile drivers, wood sellers, bricklayers and other construction workers. When Wiltingh died in May 1661 all of the accounts had evidently not been settled. Furthermore there were unforeseen expenses because the island settled into the IJ. The houses sank, making extra pile driving necessary, and the street had to be raised with sand and “potaert” (clay).⁹⁵

Settlement of the Estate

Wiltingh died after a period of illness and was buried on 17 May 1661 in a rented grave in the Nieuwe Kerk.⁹⁶ It is clear from the estate accounts that he received a well-appointed funeral,with food and drinks for the guests afterward. The registration of the burial lists his address as on the Rouaanse Kaai (fig. 8), the east side of the Singel canal between the Korsjespoortsteeg and the Brouwersgracht, a house he had rented.⁹⁷ The city government tried in the seventeenth century to upgrade the Singel to the fourth main canal by bestowing on it the name of Koningsgracht (“Kings Canal”).⁹⁸ This renaming did not prove to be an enduring succes, but as a wide residential canal situated between the upscale Herengracht canal and the old centre, the Singel certainly belonged among the city’s better neighbourhoods. Wiltinghs testament, which was drawn up on 10 May 1661 by notary Gerrit Steeman, has unfortunately been lost. In this last will Wiltingh probably had assigned his movable property and at the same time named two estate executors: his (likely) brothers-in-law Jan Roelofsz Boldingh (1617/18-after 1674) and Coop Roelofsz Hoijer (1617/18-1664).⁹⁹

The latter was previously involved in the construction project on the Jonkerstraat. Both men settled the remaining open accounts and saw to it that the two heirs received their share, as far as the estate, encumbered with debts, allowed.¹⁰⁰ Wiltinghs sister Willemtie Wessels received an advance inheritance of 1000 guilders.¹⁰¹ The other heir was Jan Hendricxen Wiltingh (1642/43-after 1664), of whom Boldingh and Hoijer were appointed guardian in Wiltinghs testament¹⁰² ;from the documents it is clear that they were close relatives¹⁰³ . In 1661 Jan Hendricxen resided at Wiltinghs home on the Singel. Upon Wiltingh’s death, Jan Roelofsz Boldingh took care of Jan Henricxen Wiltingh. For the latter the estate did not leave very much. On 16 August 1665 he departed as 22-year-old sailor aboard the VOC-ship Cecilia for the East,¹⁰⁴ and nothing further is known about his fate. After his departure followed in October 1666 another settlement of the estate and after this the documents fall silent. A last act dates from 1701 when Debora Bolding, daughter of Jan Roelofsz Boldingh, sold the house on the Grote Kattenburgerstraat (no.14).¹⁰⁵

A Possible Identification: the Man with Arms Akimbo

From the above it is clear that Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh took on major building projects, such as the roof of the church in ’s-Graveland. Besides this he also built on his own account. His contacts with the city construction office were not limited merely to taking on contracts; with the master-bricklayer Jan Willemsz Brederode he worked together on a building project on Kattenburg. Wiltingh lived in a respectable neighbourhood in the city and his grave was in one of the two main churches in the city. He can therefore be positioned in the urban middle class, in the milieu of independent tradesmen and contractors. Gary Schwartz has already indicated that part of Rembrandt’s portrait clientele came from this socioeconomic group, just like Rembrandt himself, by the way.¹⁰⁶ A familiar example is Catharina Hooghsaet, who lived in the Haarlemmerstraat as an independent woman and was painted by Rembrandt in 1657.¹⁰⁷

But what happened to the portrait of Wiltingh? The settlement of the estate is essentially a bookkeeping, and it shows that the painting was not sold in the years 1661-1666 to benefit the estate. The testament of Wiltingh that notary Gerrit Steeman drew up on 10 May 1661 has unfortunately been lost in the fire that raged in the protocol chamber of the City Hall on the night of 12 to 13 October 1762. It is likely that Wiltingh’s moveable goods including the painting, were already assigned in the testament, because it is striking that the settlement of the estate does not refer to an inventory of the house of the deceased. The advance inheritance issued to his sister Willemtie will also have been mentioned in the testament, and perhaps the portrait came into her possession. Future research into Wiltingh’s family will hopefully yield further information.

Another remaining question is: what did the portrait look like? Within the oeuvre demarcated by the Rembrandt Research Project there is only one possible candidate: an unidentified male portrait from 1658 (fig. 9). The provenance of this painting goes back to 1798, when it was auctioned off with the collection of the Liverpool collector and Rembrandt connoisseur Daniel Daulby (d. 1797); previous collections are not known.¹⁰⁸ The dress of the sitter does not correspond to the usual costume of affluent urban Dutchmen of the period. The explanation for this is usually sought in his possible origins in Southern Europe or in his occupation as seafarer.¹⁰⁹ But there is no reason to identify him as mariner or even a naval hero, as has been done in the past, since the portrait lacks any nautical or military attributes.¹¹⁰ What the painting does show, is a self-assured man, and even though his clothes and beret are old fashioned, the pose strongly reminds of Rembrandt’s Selfportrait in Working Dress of 1652 (fig. 10). Like Rembrandt, Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh came from outside Amsterdam, and it is plausible that he looked to emphasize his status as a successful self-made craftsman with a striking, self-confident pose.

1. For an overview and analysis of the phenomenon of the atelier scene in Dutch art, see Katja Kleinert, Atelierdarstellungen in der niederländischen Genremalerei des 17. Jahrhunderts : realistisches Abbild oder glaubwürdiger Schein?, Petersburg 2006.
2. Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, vol. 7, New York 1983, pp. 3648-3649, no. 1636bx (ill.). 
3. Arthur K. Wheelock, ed., Jan Lievens. A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington: National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam: The Rembrandt House Museum 2008/09, p. 246, no. 106.
4. And not that between Apollo and Marsyas, as indicated by Sumowski.
5. No painting of this theme is known by Lievens. There was a depiction of the contest between Apollo and Marsyas, showing Apollo playing the lyre, in the sale of the collection of the Count of Arundel, likely the same work later with the widow of Jürgen Ovens in 1691. See Hans Schneider and Rudi Ekkart, Jan Lievens: sein Leben und seine Werke. Amsterdam 1973, pp. 110-111, no. 78.
6. Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandtschüler, Landau 1983-1994, vol. 6 (1994), pp. 3691-3692, nos. 2185a-2194.
7. Nos. 2857-2861 in: Sumowski, Drawings (see note 2), vol. 12, Addenda (in translation, forthcoming in 2023).
8. Ibid., vol. 3, p. 1965, note 65. Currently assigned no. 2857 in vol. 12 (see note 2); sale, Paris (Christie’s), 21.3.2002, lot 114.
9. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 1961, 1965, 1977 (illus.). Sale, London (Bonhams), 29 October 2014, lot 147 (colour illus.).
10. Amsterdam, Sotheby’s, 11 November 1997, lot 25, colour ill., as Lievens. Sumowski is far more hesitant here than with the Mettingen drawing: Drawings (see note 2), pp. 3904-3905, no. 1757xx, illus.: “…an unqualified attribution cannot be entertained  because there is no material for comparison.”
11. Jan Lievens, Peasant Dwelllings under Trees with Milkmaid, pen in brown and brush in brown and grey, 108 x 193 mm, Dresden, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen Dresden, inv. no. C 1453; see Sumowski, Drawings (see note 2), pp. 3724-3725, no. 1672 (illus.).
12. See: Michiel Roscam Abbing, De schilder & schrijver Samuel van Hoogstraten, 1627-1678. Eigentijdse bronnen & oeuvre van gesigneerde schilderijen, Leiden 1993, pp. 40-41; Volker Manuth, “Dordrecht: bakermat voor Rembrandts leerlingen”, Bulletin Dordrechts Museum 3 (2006), pp. 3-7; and: David de Witt, Abraham van Dijck (1635-1680). Life and Work of a Late Rembrandt Pupil, Zwolle 2020, pp. 11-13.
13. As also observed in Paarlberg, Bisschop (see note 12), p. 24.
14. On their friendship see De Witt, Abraham van Dijck (see note 4), p. 108.
15. David de Witt, The Bader Collection: Dutch and Flemish Paintings, Kingston 2008, pp. 63-64, no. 31), correcting Sumowski’s dating to the early 1660s, with the observation of hesitancy in handling that points to an earlier period.
16. Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, vol. 2, The Hague 1719, p. 220. They seem to have largely been lost. The only example linked to him is A Boy Asleep in an Enclosed Chair, c. 1655/60, oil on wood, 97.2 x 66.5 cm, London, with Johnny van Haeften in 2007; see Sumowski, Gemälde (see note 6), vol. 6 (1994), p. 3692, no. 2192, p. 3776 (illus., as Bisschop). It is unsigned, and clearly derived from a similar work signed and dated 1654 by the Haarlem painter Johannes Verspronck: oil on panel, 96 x 75.7 cm, Belgium, private collection. On this basis it has been attributed to that artist as well see: Rudi Ekkart in: Pride and Joy. Children’s Portraits in The Netherlands 1500-1700, exh. cat. Haarlem: Frans Halsmuseum; Antwerp: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, 2000-2001, pp. 227-229, no. 60. However, the thicker application of paint and harsher contrasts in the London version diverge from the one signed by Verspronck, and indeed more closely approximate Bisschop’s painting style of around 1660. If by him, this would suggest that Verspronck supplied an additional impulse for making such cutout paintings, besides Van Hoogstraten and his championing of illusionism.
17. Houbraken, Schouburgh (see note 16), vol. 2 (1719), pp. 157-158.
18. See the important analysis by Thijs Weststeijn: The Visible World. Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Art Theory and the Legitimation of Painting in the Dutch Golden Age, Amsterdam 2008.
19. Sander Paarlberg, “Bisschop op zijn best. Dordrechts Museum krijgt zijn eigen Melkmeisje”, Bulletin van de Vereniging Rembrandt 25, no. 1, (2015), pp. 22-24, colour illus.
20. Samuel van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de Hooghe Schoole der Schilderkonst, Dordrecht, 1678, p. 12.
21. We do not include a painting attributed to Bisschop: The Young Artist in his Studio, c. 1653, oil on canvas, 90.8 × 76.8 cm, Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, inv. no. 38.29, as attributed to Cornelis Bisschop; George Keyes, in: Masters of Dutch Painting: The Detroit Institute of Arts, London 2004, pp. 28–29, no. 8 (ill.). The drawing shown in the lower left, a classic two-chalk drawing on blue-grey paper, underscores the stylistic evidence against his authorship, pointing instead to the circle around Govert Flinck (1615-1660) and Jacob Adriaensz. Backer (1608-1651); perhaps Adam Camerarius (?–1666).
22. Constantijn Daniël à Renesse, Rembrandt and his Pupils Drawing from a Nude Model, black chalk, brush in brown, 180 x 266 mm, Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, inv. no. AE 665; on the attribution see Peter Schatborn, Rembrandt and his circle: drawings in the Frits Lugt collection, Bussum 2010, p. 335.
23. Rembrandt, Rembrandt’s Studio with a Half-Nude Model, c. 1654/58, pen and brush in brown, with white body colour, 205 x 190 mm, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, inv. no. P.I.192 (WA1855.8): Peter Schatborn in Rembrandt : The Complete Etchings and Drawings, Cologne 2019, p. 269, no. T438 (colour illus., as c. 1654).
24. Rembrandt, Bathsheba with King David’s Letter, 1654, oil on canvas, 142 x 142 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. M.I. 975: Ernst van de Wetering, Rembrandt’s paintings revisited : a complete survey, Dordrecht, Boston and Lancaster 2014, pp. 623-624, no. 231; Volker Manuth, Marieke de Winkel and Rudie van Leeuwen, Rembrandt: the Complete Paintings, Cologne 2019, pp. 507-508, no. 23. As Van de Wetering explains, the pose of Bathsheba was originally conceived with an upward glance and turn of the head.
25. Rembrandt, A Woman Sitting Half-Dressed beside a Stove, 1658, etching, buring and drypoint, 226 x 194 mm, in seven states: Erik Hinterding and Jaco Rutgers, The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700, vol. 25-II: Rembrandt, Ouderkerk aan den IJssel 2013, pp. 292-294, no. 307.
26. Houbraken, Schouburgh (see note 16), vol. 1 (1718), p. 271.
27. As discussed by the author in: David de Witt and Franziska Gottwald, “Rembrandt & Light” in: Rembrandt’s Light, exh. cat. Dulwich, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2019-2020, pp. 33-34 (the date of the drawing mistakenly altered in editing; should read c. 1654/58).
28. See www.elephanthansken.com for a current collection of all the traces left by Hansken and her owner, brought together thanks to the research of Michiel Roscam Abbing. In 2016 M. Roscam Abbing, Rembrandts olifant. In het spoor van Hansken appeared, followed in 2021 by an updated edition in English translation entitled Rembrandt’s Elephant. Following in Hansken’s Footsteps, both with Leporello in Amsterdam.
29. In Het Schilder-boeck of 1604 (Haarlem) Karel van Mander calls drawing the father of all of the arts. Constant practice, especially taking everything that nature offers as model, will make the artist successful; see fol. 8r+v, Van het teyckenen, oft Teycken-const. Tweede Capittel.
30. W. Goeree, Inleydingh Tot de Praktijck Der Al-gemeene Schilder-Konst, Middelburg 1670, p. 121.
31. For an overview see P. Schatborn, E. Hinterding, Rembrandt. Alle tekeningen en etsen, Cologne 2019, pp. 285-301.
32. No. 249 in the inventory, see document/remdoc/e12724. For more background on Rembrandt’s collection, see B. Broos e.a., Rembrandt’s Treasures, Amsterdam 1999.
33. Peter Schatborn accepts six lion drawings as autograph: Rembrandt, A Lioness or Young Lion with Prey (a Bird), Reclining, with Head to the Left, 1637-1641. Charcoal and wash, with white highlights, on prepared paper, 126 x 239 mm. London, British Museum, inv. no. Oo,9.71; Rembrandt, Reclining Lioness or Young Lion, with Head to the Right, 1637-1641. Charcoal and wash, with white highlights, on prepared paper, 125 x 180 mm. London, British Museum, inv. no. Oo,9.75; Rembrandt, Reclining Lioness or Young Lion, from the Front, 1637-1641. Charcoal and wash, with white highlights, on prepared paper, 115 x 150 mm. New York, The Leiden Collection, inv. no. RR-100; Rembrandt, Reclining Lion with Prey, c. 1650. Pen and brush in ink, brush in white paint, with traced contours, 140 x 203 mm. Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Collection Franz Koenigs, inv. no. R 12; Rembrandt, Reclining Lion, c. 1650. Pen and brush in ink, 138 x 207 mm. Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. RF4721; Rembrandt, Reclining Lion, c. 1660. Pen in brown on prepared paper, 122 x 212 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-T-1901-A-4524.
34. For lions, see M. Roscam Abbing, P. Tuynman, “Rembrandts drawings of the elephant Hansken”, in M. Roscam Abbing (ed.), Rembrandt 2006: Essays, Leiden 2006, pp. 173-189, p. 189.
35. Rembrandt, Young Asian Elephant (Hansken), 1637. Black chalk, 233 x 354 mm. Vienna, Albertina, inv. no. 17558; Rembrandt, Asian Elephant (Hansken) in three different poses with steward. Black chalk, 239 x 354 mm. Vienna, Albertina, inv. no. 8900; Rembrandt, Asian Elephant (Hansken) with Spectators. Black chalk and charcoal, 179 x 256 mm. London, British Museum, inv. no. Gg,2.259.
36. Rembrandt or pupil, Asian Elephant (Hansken), c. 1637. Black chalk and graphite, counterproof. 194 x 189 mm. New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, inv. no. I, 205.
37. The drawing has in the meantime been published in M. Roscam Abbing, Rembrandt’s Elephant (see note 1), pp. 22-23. The interpretation of the drawing there is based on the research presented in this article.
38. In the possession of Peter Schatborn, the owners of the drawing, and the author of this article.
39. There is no available image of the watermark, so further identification is not possible at the moment.
40. Female Asian elephants generally do not have tusks. But where present, they do not grow to longer than 10 cm, which does render them visible between the folds of the skin. Hansken had short visible tusks of this kind. Her skeleton, which was preserved after her death in 1655, and is kept on display at the natural history museum La Specola, shows evidence of this: the skull shows the stumps of tusks. The English traveller and writer wrote in 1641 in his diary: “his teeth were but short being a female, and not old, as they told us”. Zie E.S. de Beer (red.), The diary of John Evelyn, Vol. 2. In the same year Ernst Brinck observed: “zijn naar buiten uitstekende slagtanden waren nog maar weinig meer dan een vinger lang” (his protruding tusks were only a little more than a finger long). See also Roscam Abbing and Tuynman, “Rembrandt’s Drawings…” (see note 7), pp. 173-189. There it is explained how in 1633 Hansken’s tusks were not yet visible. In 1641 they were, according to the description of Evelyn and Brinck. They may have been broken off after then, not subsequently growing long enough to be visible.
41. Roscam Abbing and Tuynman, “Rembrandt’s Drawings…” (see note 7), p. 184 and Roscam Abbing, Rembrandt’s Elephant (see note 1), pp. 24-25.
42. Jan Mollijns, Commemorative Print of the Asian Elephant Emanuel, 1563. Hand coloured woodcut, 285 x 400 mm. London, The British Museum, inv. no. 1928,0310.97, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1928-0310-97; Gerard van Groeningen, Commemorative Print of the Asian Elephant Emanuel, in Eight Different Poses, in or after 1563. Etching, 405 x 541 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-P-OB-59.019; Wenceslaus Hollar (after Gerard van Groeningen), Commemorative Print of the Asian Elephant Don Diego, 1629. Etching, 245 x 283 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-P-1976-16.
43. See Chronycke van Antwerpe sedert het jaer 1500 tot 1575. Gevolgd van Eene beschryving van de historie en het landt van Brabant, sedert het jaer 51 vóór J.-C., tot 1565 na J.-C., volgens een onuitgegeven handschrift van de XVIe eeuw, edition of 1843, Antwerp, p. 59: “(…) anno 1563, int eynde van september, doen quam tot Antwerpen tschepe eenen olifant vuyt Portugael, off daer ontrent, oudt by de negen jaeren, hooge acht voeten; desen ginck sdaechs achter straeten dattet een yegelyck sien moechte: desen was seer tam ende wert geregeert van eenen moor doende alwat den moor hem gebiede: desen olifant hiet Emanuel.” (in the year 1563, at the end of September, there came by ship to Antwerp an elephant from Portugal, around nine years old, eight feet tall; it went by day through the streets so that all could see it: it was very tame and was led by a Moor, doing everything the Moor commanded: this elephant was called Emanuel). See e.g. also S. Dackerman, Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, New Haven 2011, cat. no. 34.
44. See note 15. For the impression in the collection of the Rijksmuseum see http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.119126.
45. Hansken appeared in Amsterdam on four occasions: in the summer months of 1633 and at the fairs (kermissen) of 1637, 1641 and 1647. One of the drawings by Rembrandt can be connected to the fair of 1637, because Rembrandt dated the sheet. Peter Schatborn dates the other two drawings of Hansken by Rembrandt to the same year. However the drawing of Hansen in three poses (Albertina, inv. no. 8900) appears to have been made on a later occasion, in 1641. The animal in that drawing is noticeably older than in the sketch of 1637. See also Roscam Abbing and Tuynman, “Rembrandt’s Drawings…” (see note 7), pp. 173-189. Further research on the paper in the future may yield more information on the dating.
46. Up to Rembrandt’s time, there was limited knowledge in Europe concerning elephants. What people thought to know was based on what Pliny the Elder had written in his Natural History (77-79 C.E.). Or on medieval legends such as could be read in the Physiologus, an ancient Greek moralizing text on plants and (mythical) animals. Over the course of time there appeared more and newer editions of these stories. Jacob van Maerlants Der naturen bloeme (c. 1350) is one example, in which the texts are no longer presented in Latin but in Dutch (“Dietsch”). In 1588 Christophel Plantijn in Antwerp published a collection of texts – including the Physiologus – under the title Sancti Patris Nostri Epiphanii, Episcopi Constantiae Cypri, ad Physiologum. Eiusdem in die festo Palmarum sermo. A century later, at the end of the 17th century, the skeleton Hansken, the elephant that died in 1655 in Florence, became accessible to scholars. This led to new insights into the existence of an ancestor species, the mammoth. A Latin description of Hansken’s skeleton by John Ray formed the basis in the 18th century for Carolus Linnaeus’ scientific description of the elephant in terms of its species.
47. For the copy of the album in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, see: http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.353205. For the two prints in its, respectively of five and three elephants, see: http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.353210 and http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.353211.
48. For the copy in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, see: http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.33090. Don Diego was in Europe from 1623 to 1635 in Europa. For more information on Don Diego see L. Rice, “Poussin’s Elephant”, Renaissance Quarterly 70 (2017), pp. 548-593; M. Roscam Abbing, “Poussin’s Elephant Revisited”, in Source: Notes in the History of Art 39 (2020), pp. 109-119.
49. “Op de kunstcaemer (….) [235] Een Oost-Indies benneken daarin verscheyde prenten van Rembrant, Hollaert, Cocq en andere meer”. See document/remdoc/e12723.
50. [i] For his etching of Joseph and the Wife of Potiphar of 1634 (B39/ NHD128) Rembrandt looked to the etching of the same theme by Tempesta, of 1613. And Tempesta’s prints of lion hunts served as model for Rembrandt in his own depictions of the theme, the two small lion hunts of c. 1629 (B115/ NHD28, B116/ NHD29) and his large lion hunt of 1641 (B114/ NHD187). See e.g. B. van den Boogert, J. van der Veen, Dat kan beter! Rembrandt en de oude meesters, Amsterdam 2013, pp. 52-55.
51. Nos. 210 – 212 in the inventory. See document/remdoc/e12721 and document/remdoc/e12722.
52. See for example in the collection of the Rijksmuseum: God Creates the Animals http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.183114, Cain Murdering Abel http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.183148, Orpheus Enchanting the Animals with his Music http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.183809, Combat of the Centaurs and Various Animals http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.608702, God Commands Adam And Eve Not To Eat of The Tree of Knowledge http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.183140.
53. See also Roscam Abbing, Rembrandts olifant (see note 1), pp. 22-23; Rembrandt’s Elephant (see note 1), pp. 24-25. Besides the iconography there described of the elephant as a chaste animal, and thereby symbol of humanity before the Fall into Sin, Rembrandt incorporated two myths about elephants. The myth of the mating ritual of elephants refers namely to the sin of the first people in the world. In order to stimulate arousal in the male, the female offers an aphrodisiac. Eve gives the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to Adam, and this fruit in fact serves as an aphrodisiac. Because after eating this fruit they become aware of their desires. And further it was said of elephants and dragons that they were symbols respectively of good and evil, and that they were each other’s greatest enemies. The draco (Latin, translatable as dragon or serpent) hides in a tree, in order to drop down onto an elephant walking by. What follows is a fight to the death, in which both animals perish. Rembrandt also refers to this coming event, as symbol of the struggle between good and evil that will result from Adam and Eve’s fall into sin.
54. Respectively nos. 161, 178, 189, 298 and 307 in the inventory, see: document/remdoc/e12719, document/remdoc/e12719, document/remdoc/e12720, document/remdoc/e12727.
55. The fact Rembrandt’s insolvency inventory contains such detailed information is one of the reasons to believe that Rembrandt himself dictated how the objects were to be described at the taking of the inventory, on 25 and 26 July 1656.
56. For further information on this elephant see: M. Roscam Abbing, “‘So Een Wunder heeft men hier nooijt gesien’ De Indische vrouwtjesolifant (1678/80-1706) van Bartel Verhagen”, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 106 (2014), pp. 68-95.
57. The tusks were probably added because they appear in the original print by Van Groeningen and were seen as a typical feature of an elephant. Hansken too was given prominent tusks in some illustrations. In one instance (a drawing from life, but embellished from imagination) it is clear that the artist tried to indicate how tusks would look on her. Stefano della Bella, Elephant (Hansken), with a Black Man. Pen and brush in ink, 128 x 159 mm. Present location unknown (sale,London, Christie’s, 18 March 1975, lot 17). For more on this drawing see: https://www.elephanthansken.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/fig.-17.jpg. Around 1647 a publicity or commemorative print of Hansken was also made. For the impression in the Rijksmuseum see http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.432625. Also in this print, she was mistakenly endowed with tusks, following the example of the print of Don Diego, which also served as model for the arrangement of the print with a central image surrounded by smaller images.
58. See document/remdoc/e4447.
59. Idem. RemDoc does not supply the detailed list of the works that Rembrandt purchased. The Rembrandt Documents (W. Strauss and M. van der Meulen, New York 1979) does summarize them (see doc. no. 1638/2). It is evident that over the auction days Rembrandt purchased various individual prints by Albrecht Dürer, a woodcut series of The Life of the Virgin, and a Passion series. The print Christ in Limbo was part of Dürer’s engraved Passion of 1511-1513.
60. See also J. Schaeps e.a. Leiden viert feest! Hoogtepunten uit een academische collectie, 2014, cat. no. 17.
61. See also Roscam Abbing, Rembrandts olifant (see note 1), pp. 22-23; Roscam Abbing, Rembrandt’s Elephant (see note 1), p. 24; Joost van den Vondel also incorporated Hansken’s presence into his work. She was on display in the city in September 1637 as Vondel was completing his play Gijsbrecht van Aemstel. This work premièred on 3 January 1638 in honour of, and in, the Amsterdam Schouwburgh on the Keizersgracht. In one of the scenes (line 1304) Vondel refers to one of the tricks Hansken performed during her appearances; see Roscam Abbing, Rembrandts olifant (see note 1), pp. 49-51.
62. S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, Dossier Rembrandt. Documenten, tekeningen en prenten, Amsterdam 1987, pp. 4-5.
63. See: https://archief.amsterdam/indexen/.
64. In the process of this indexing several hitherto unknown references to (possible) Rembrandt paintings in inventories surfaced, such as for example Rembrandt’s portrait of Cornelis Claesz Anslo and Aaltje Gerrits Schouten, which according to the testament of their granddaughter Teuntje Hartens hung in the front hall on the Nieuwmarkt; Myrthe Bleeker, “Een Rembrandt in het voorhuis”, Alle Amsterdamse Akten, 8 February 2021, https://www.alleamsterdamseakten.nl/artikel/2648/een-rembrandt-in-het-voorhuis/. Source: Stadsarchief Amsterdam (Amsterdam City Archives) (SAA), access no. 5075, Archief van de Notarissen ter Standplaats Amsterdam (Archive of Notaries in Amsterdam), inv.no. 8511, akte 732, 19 December 1732. Jirsi Reinders en Mark Ponte,“Cardinaal van Rembrandt”, Ons Amsterdam 73 (2021), pp. 38-39; https://onsamsterdam.nl/cardinaal-van-rembrandt-van-rijn. See also the Rembrandt Dossier on the same website: https://www.alleamsterdamseakten.nl/tag/299/rembrandt/.
65. SAA, “Google door honderdduizenden historische handschriften”, 9 March 2021, https://www.amsterdam.nl/stadsarchief/nieuws/transkribus/ (accessed 20 October 2021). The search platform can be used at https://transkribus.eu/r/amsterdam-city-archives/#/. More information on Transkribus can be found at: https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/?sc=Transkribus.
66. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1476 (unpaginated) (scans Archiefbank: KLAG03161000143 – KLAG03161000150) (minuutakte) and SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1492, f. 305r-312r Afschrift (archive copy), both of 7 August 1665. On 22 October 1666 there was a subsequent report on the management of the estate: SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1493, f. 156v-159r; idem concerning the pre-bequest to Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh’s sister Willemtie Wessels: SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1493, f. 154v-156v.
67. Jan Wagenaar, Amsterdam in zyne opkomst, aanwas, geschiedenissen, voorregten, koophandel, gebouwen, kerkenstaat, schoolen, schutteryen, gilden en regeeringe, vol. 3, Amsterdam 1768, pp. 499-502. The city messengers registers have not survived.
68. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1492, f. 310r-v.
69. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 2196, p. 191; Remdoc no. 1654/4: http://remdoc.huygens.knaw.nl/#/document/remdoc/e1661.
70. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1476, z.f. (scan Archiefbank: KLAG03161000148) (minutes record); SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1492, f. 309v Afschrift (archive copy), both 7 August 1665. In the minutes there is a comma between “schilder” (painter) and “Isercramer” (ironmonger), which is missing in the archive copy.
71. Estate inventory of Koert Kooper; Remdoc (see note 8) no. 1660/4: Maerten Daey (1660/8), Clara de Valaer (1660/15), Magdalena van Lemens (Remdoc 1661/4), Christoffel Hirschvogel (1661/10), Willem van Campen (1661/11), Willem Schrijver (1661/14), Matthijs Hals (1662/1), Johanna de Smit (1662/1a), Gerard van der Voorde (1663/8). Only in the inventory of Clara de Valaer is the painter named as “Rembrant van Rhyn”.
72. SAA, access no. 5001, Archief van de Burgerlijke Stand: doop-, trouw- en begraafboeken van Amsterdam (baptism, marriage and burial books of Amsterdam) (retroacta of the citizen’s registry), inv. no. 473, p. 471; inv. no. 493, p. 120. On 12 November 1654, a child of Rembrandt Gerdes was baptized in the Noorderkerk, inv. no. 76, p. 18. On 19 July 1664, Rembrant van Ruijnen was buried together with his child in the St. Anthoniskerkhof, inv. no. 1193, p. 98.
73. SAA, access no. 5033, Archief van de Burgemeesters (Burgomasters’ archive): poorterboeken (citizenship books), inv. no. 2, Register van gekochte poorters (Registry of citizens by purchase), p. 474. Wiltingh is not mentioned in the incomplete surviving registration of baptisms of Hasselt in the years 1591-1597, 1614-1618 and 1632-1651; Historisch Centrum Overijssel, access no. 124 Doop-, trouw- en begraafboeken (dtb, retroacta van de Burgerlijke Stand) in Overijssel (Baptism, marriage and burial books (dtb, retroacts of the civil registry) in Overijssel), inv.nr. 247, Doopboek Hasselt (baptism book Hasselt) 1591-1689.
74. This is also evident from his listing in the registers of the collateral succession: SAA, access no. 5046, Archief van de Secretaris: stukken betreffende de ontvangst van de twintigste penning op de Collaterale Successie, inv. no. 2, f. 5v (scan 85). (Archive of the City Secretary; records concerning the collection of the twentieth penny on the indirect inheritance)
75. Considering the (familial) relations, this provenance is likelier than from the city of Hasselt in todays Belgian province of Limburg.
76. SAA, access no. 5039, Thesaurieren Ordinaris (Treasurers Extraordinary), inv. no. 554, f. 272v. The purchase price was 5600 guilders. In this registry of plots sold by the city during the period 1630-1658 this is the only reference to one Jacob Wessels. The purchases of the lot was Romeyn de Hooghe III (1605-1669), and his brother Daniel de Hooghe (1614-1657) was the second guarantor. On these members of the De Hooghe family: Henk van Nierop, The life of Romeyn de Hooghe 1645-1708. Prints, Pamphlets, and Politics in the Dutch Golden Age, Amsterdam Studies in the Dutch Golden Age, Amsterdam 2018, Genealogical Table 1-2, p. 42 and pp. 420-421.
77. Nationaal Archief (National Archives), access no. 3.19.41, Collected papers, from the Van Reede van Oudtshoorn Family, 1321-1902, inv. no. 152, Stukken betreffende den bouw van een kerk, schoolhuis en pastorie te Oudshoorn. 1662-1672, Memoerie vande Oncosten vande kerck van Sgravenlant, with an itemized list of the wooden components of the roof, c. 1659. Meta Döbken, “De ontstaansgeschiedenis”, De kerk te Oudshoorn, Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, pp. 7-19: 16, refered to the existence of this document but did not specify any details.
78. See note 16:, Memorie vande Oncoosten…”, c. 1659.
79. Pieter Vlaardingerbroek, “De stadsarchitect Daniel Stalpaert (1648-1676): ontwerper of projectmanager?”, Maandblad Amstelodamum 97 (2010), p. 53-61; Gea van Essen, “Daniel Stalpaert (1615-1676) stadsarchitect van Amsterdam en de Amsterdamse stadsfabriek in de periode 1647 tot 1676”, Bulletin KNOB 99 (2000), pp. 101-120; Gea van Essen, Het stadsfabriekambt. De organisatie van de publieke werken in de noordelijke Nederlanden in de zeventiende eeuw, Utrecht 2011.
80. Pieter Vlaaardingerbroek, Het paleis van de Republiek. Geschiedenis van het stadhuis van Amsterdam, Zwolle 2011, p. 99, 129-135.
81. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1492, f. 353r-v.
82. Vlaardingerbroek, Paleis (see note 19), p. 99, 134. A fine of 600 guilders was payable for missing the delivery date.
83. See: Jaap Evert Abrahamse, Heidi Deneweth, Menne Kosian en Erik Schmitz, “Gouden kansen? Vastgoedstrategiën van bouwondernemers in de stadsuitleg van Amsterdam in de Gouden Eeuw”, Bulletin KNOB 114 (2015), pp. 229-257.
84. SAA, access no. 5061, Archieven van de Schout en Schepenen, van de Schepenen en van de Subalterne Rechtbanken (Archive of the Sherriff and Aldermen, of the Aldermen and of the Subaltern Courts), inv. no. 2169, f. 69r. The mutual purchase becomes evident from the settlement of the estate: SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1492, f. 305v. The Jonkerstraat largely disappeared in the renovation of the neighbourhood, by then decrepit, around 1930; Jonkerstraat 43 was demolished in 1930. Transfers of ownership (Eigendomsoverdrachten) for Jonkerstraat 43 (Verponding 1734: Wijk 10, nr. 2725): SAA, access no. 5061, Archieven van de Schout en Schepenen, inv. no. 2169, f. 69r (29-9-1656); SAA, access no. 5066, Archief van de Schepenen: register van willige decreten van het Hof van Holland (registry of all the decrees of the Court of Holland), inv. no. 227, f. 203r-204r (22-7-1669); SAA, access no. 5062, Archief van de schepenen: kwijtscheldingsregisters (real estate sales registers), inv. no. 84, f. 206v-207r (16-10-1710); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 158, f. 11v-12v (11-2-1784).(Treasurers Extraordinary)
85. SAA, access no. 5044, Archief van de Thesaurieren Extraordinaris, inv. no. 282, f. 17r.
86. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1492, f. 305v.
87. Lotte van de Pol, Het Amsterdamse hoerdom. Prostitutie in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw, Amsterdam 1996, pp. 96-98.
88. SAA, access no. 5061, Archieven van de Schout en Schepenen, inv. no. 2120, f. 155v (RemDoc 1658/3); SAA, access no. 5044, Thesaurieren Extraordinaris (Treasurers Extraordinary), inv. no. 281, f. 154r.
89. Van Essen 2000 (see note 18), p. 115, Van Essen 2011 (see note 18) pp. 43-44.
90. Auction: SAA, access no. 5039, Archief van de Thesaurieren Ordinaris (Treasurers Extraordinary), inv. no. 555, f. 6r-7v (lots A10-A13). Houses: SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1492, f. 305r. The Grote Kattenburgerstraat disappeared during the city renewal of the 1960s. The houses nos. 8-10 were demolished in November 1945, no. 14 in January 1950 and no. 6 in February 1966. Transfers of ownership Grote Kattenburgerstraat 6 (Verponding 1734: Wijk (District) 16, no. 350): SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters (real estate sales registers), inv. no. 51, f. 141r (16-6-1661); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 55, f. 67v-68v (11-10-1667); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 128, f. 123v-124r (18-7-1754); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 171, f. 263v (15-12-1797); SAA, access no. 5061, Archieven van de Schout en Schepenen, inv. no. 2181, f. 123v (24-1-1810). Transfers of ownership Grote Kattenburgerstraat 8 (Verponding 1734: Wijk 16, nr. 349): SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 51, f. 141v (16-6-1661); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 53, f. 135v (2-11-1661); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 151, f. 144v-145v (28-10-1777); Eigendomsoverdrachten Grote Kattenburgerstraat 10 (Verponding 1734: Wijk 16, nr. 348): SAA, access no. 5061, Archieven van de Schout en Schepenen, inv. no. 2172, f. 244r (24-7-1685); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 65, f. 20v-21r (12-3-1687); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 84, f. 265r (16-5-1710); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 106, f. 1r-v (8-1-1732); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 147, f. 26r-27r (30-6-1773); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 170, f. 289v (25-10-1796). Transfers of ownership Grote Kattenburgerstraat 12 (Verponding 1734: Wijk 16, nr. 347): SAA, access no. 5067, Archief van de Schepenen: register van afschrijvingen bij de willige decreten, inv. no. 23, f. 170r (1-4-1678); SAA, access no. 5066, willige decreten Hof van Holland, inv. no. 34, f. 191r-192v (1-4-1678); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 74, f. 101v (27-8-1700); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 93, f. 141r-v (28-4-1719); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 98, f. 341v (9-11-1724); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 112, f. 3v (28-1-1738); SAA, 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 134, f. 254v-255r (27-8-1760); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 163, f. 372v-373 r (17-7-1798). Transfers of Ownership Grote Kattenburgerstraat 14 (Verponding 1734: Wijk 16, nr. 346): SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 75, f. 135r-136r (11-5-1701); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 102, f. 381r-v (8-10-1728); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 198, f. 301r-304r (20-11-1810).
91. Döbken, Ontstaansgeschiedenis (see note 16), pp. 7-19: 16; Van Reede van Oudtshoorn papers (see note 16).
92. SAA, access no. 5039, Thesaurieren Ordinaris (Treasurers Ordinary), inv. no. 555, f. 14r (lot A 26).
93. SAA, access no. 5044, Thesaurieren Extraordinaris (Treasurers Extraordinary), inv. no. 226, pp. 325-326. On 6-12-1660 one of the houses was rented out; SAA access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 3069, f. 276v-277r.
94. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1492, f. 305r.
95. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1492, f. 309v, 310v en 311v.
96. SAA, access no. 5001, doop-, trouw- en begraafboeken (baptism, marriage and burial books), inv. no. 1055, blad f. 125v.
97. In the Verpondingsregister (tax on real estate) of 1659-1661 he is not mentioned as owner, SAA, access no. 5044, Thesaurieren Extraordinaris (Treasurers Extraordinary), inv. no. 282, f. 209v-210.
98. Jaap Evert Abrahamse, De grote uitleg van Amsterdam. Stadsontwikkeling in de zeventiende eeuw, Bussum 2010, pp. 236-237.
99. Marriage banns of Coop Roeloffss [Hoijer] of Dwingeloo, baker’s apprentice, living in the Dirk van Hasseltssteeg, 29 years old, and Trijntje Jans of Solingen, SAA, access no. 5001, doop-, trouw- en begraafboeken (baptism, marriage and burial books), inv. no. 464, p. 307 (23 March 1647); Hoijer was buried on 10 July 1664 together with his niece or close relative Annetje Roelofs, residing in the house “op de cuijp” by the Engelsesteeg; SAA, access no. 5001, doop-, trouw- en begraafboeken (baptism, marriage and burial books), inv. no. 1055, f. 151v. Marriage banns of Jan Roeloffs [Boldingh] of Dwingeloo, baker’s apprentice, 32 years old, living in the Dirk van Hasseltssteeg, and Marrittie Abrahams, SAA, access no. 5001, doop-, trouw- en begraafboeken, inv. no. 467, p. 464 (19 February 1650). Boldingh probably acquired citizenship on 28 April 1651 as a baker from Coevorden; SAA, access no. 5033, Archief van de Burgemeesters (Burgomasters’ archive): poorterboeken (citizenship books), inv. no. 2, Register van gekochte poorters (Registry of citizens by purchase), p. 482. He is still mentioned on 7 May 1675; SAA, access no. 5063, Archief van de Schepenen: register van schepenkennissen (Archive of the Alderman, register of debt documents), inv.no. 54, f. 32v.
100. In October 1666 it was said of the portion of heir Willemtie Wessels: “But seeing as this estate is burdened with many and large debts, it is uncertainfor Willemtie Wessels, having already spent her advance inheritance, that anything will be left after covering all the debts. (Maer alsoo desen boedel noch met vele en groote schulden belast, en onsecker is, datter voor Willemtie Wessels, haer prelegaet alreede wech hebbende, iet boven de voldoeninge van alle schulden zal overschieten) een; SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1493, f. 158r. On 1-5-1663 it was said of heir Jan Hendricxen Wiltingh that he “possessed very little means” (“seer weijnich middelen heeft”); SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1491, p. 578. When he left for East India, he owed Boltingh and his wife the amount of 631 guilders, 3 stivers and 8 pennies; SAA access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv.nr 1492, f. 353v-354r).
101. Report: SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1493, f. 154v-156v.
102. As “testamentaire vooghden over de nagelatene erfgenamen van Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh”, this would imply that also Willemtie Wessels was still a minor in 1661; SAA, access no. 5062, Archief van de Schepenen: kwijtscheldingsregisters (Archive of the Aldermen, real estate sales registers), inv. no. 23, f. 135v.
103. On 1 May 1663 both Boldingh and Hoeijer are mentioned as guardians and administrators of their nephew (“neve”) Jan Hendricxen Wiltingh; SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1491, p. 578. In his last will of 30 July 1665 Jan Hendricxen Wiltingh appointed his cousin (“neve”) Boldingh as his heir. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv.nr 1492, f. 352v. Most likely, Jan Hendricxen Wiltingh was a son of a brother of Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh and a sister of Boldingh en Hoijer, though we should keep in mind that “neve” at the time also referred to other close relatives.
104. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv.nr 1492, f. 352v; Dutch Asiatic Shipping (DAS), voyage 1035.1.
105. Debora Bolding was the widow of Johannes Paschen. minister at Dwingeloo; SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters (real estate sales registers), inv. no. 75, f. 135r-136r. Her marriage banns in Amsterdam, with Boldingh as a witness: SAA, access no. 5001, doop-, trouw- en begraafboeken (baptism, marriage and burial books), inv. no. 501, p.32 (6 October 1674).
106. Gary Schwartz, De grote Rembrandt, Zwolle 2006, pp. 197-213, esp. 207-213.
107. H.F. Wijnman, “Rembrandt’s portret van Catrina Hoogsaet”, Uit de kring van Rembrandt en Vondel, Amsterdam 1959, pp. 19-38.
108. Peter C. Sutton, Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Leiden 1606 – 1669 Amsterdam). Portrait of a Man with Arms Akimbo, New York (undated) [2011], pp. 9, 11. For an alternative reading of the dress, as historicizing, see: Jacquelyn Coutré, Rembrandt van Rijn’s Portrait of a Man with Arms Akimbo. Kingston 2016 (pdf: downloadable at: https://agnes.queensu.ca/product/rembrandt-van-rijns-portrait-of-a-man-with-arms-akimbo/).
109. Ernst van de Wetering, Rembrandt’s paintings revised. A complete survey, Dordrecht 2017, pp. 646-647, no. 261, Portrait of a Man with Arms Akimbo; Sutton [2011] (see note 46), pp. 4-5.
110. Volker Manuth, Marieke de Winkel and Rudie van Leeuwen, Rembrandt: The complete paintings, Cologne 2019, pp. 610, 633.

In this article, though we briefly address the first question and review the current state of scholarly opinion, we are concerned primarily with second and third questions. How can we account for the fact that most extant volumes contain no illustrations at all; and what might explain the substitution of a new set of illustrations for those by Rembrandt? We show that a recently uncovered document in the record book of the Amsterdam Portuguese-Jewish community sheds some new light on these matters and may point toward a plausible explanation for the switch.

Menasseh and Rembrandt

Menasseh ben Israel (Lisbon 1604 – Middelburg 1657) was among the rabbis of the three Portuguese-Jewish congregations that existed in Amsterdam in the early decades of the seventeenth century. When these congregations merged to form the Talmud Torah congregation in 1639, Menasseh was appointed third in rank of the four rabbis. He was also a prolific author and printer of Judaica, and arguably the most famous Jew in Europe in the period. Gentile scholars from all over the Continent consulted him on Jewish theological and philosophical topics.

It is a commonplace in the literature to claim that Rembrandt and Menasseh were not just neighbors, but friends and collaborators.¹¹¹ Menasseh was certainly not, as some have asserted, Rembrandt’s “neighbor on the Breestraat” or living “in a house across the street.”¹¹²  However, the two men did live in the same neighborhood and not very far from each other. While Rembrandt was living on the Breestraat from 1632 to 1635, and then again—after brief residencies on the Doelenstraat between 1635 to 1637 and in the “Suikerbakkerij” on the Binnen-Amstel between 1637 to 1639—from 1639 to around 1658, Menasseh resided in (and ran his printing business from) a house on the “Nieuwe Houtmarkt,” a vague designation for somewhere on the Vlooienburg island, which was just across the Houtgracht from the Breestraat. This was not a very large quarter of the city, and thus it easy to believe that such prominent individuals as Rembrandt and Menasseh knew each other (or at least knew of each other); no doubt they occasionally passed one another on the street. They also had some mutual acquaintances, including several members of the city’s Portuguese-Jewish community. There is, for example, the physician Ephraim Bueno, who sat for a small oil portrait by Rembrandt¹¹³ that served as the modello for the etched portrait of Bueno that he also made (dated 1647); the wealthy Dr. Bueno was also a financial backer of Menasseh’s printing business.

One item typically offered as a reason for thinking there was more than just a passing familiarity between the artist and the rabbi is an etching that Rembrandt made in 1636, the one that appears in Edmé-François Gersaint’s 1751 catalogue raisonné with the label “Le portrait du Juif Manassé, Ben-Israel” (fig. 1).¹¹⁴  Scholars have been insisting for some time that this is not a portrait of Menasseh ben Israel. To be sure, there is nothing in the etching itself to indicate that it is a portrait of a rabbi or even a Jew, much less of Menasseh. The identification comes relatively late, first appearing in print with Gersaint himself, who was followed uncritically by later cataloguers.¹¹⁵ Nonetheless, at least one recent authoritative study is more inclined to accept the Menasseh identification, “not in the least because Gersaint has proven to be a reliable chroniquer”¹¹⁶ , although the same author elsewhere grants that “the basis for the identification is perhaps shaky and doubt may well be justified.”¹¹⁷ Thus, the jury is still out on this one.

More intriguing is an element in Rembrandt’s painting “Belshazzar’s Feast” (mid-1630s), for which Menasseh is, on highly plausible grounds, often said to have provided guidance (fig. 2).¹¹⁸

In the Biblical episode from the Book of Daniel (5:1–30), Belshazzar is giving a banquet using the vessels of gold and silver that his father, Nebuchadnezzar, had taken from the Temple sanctuary in Jerusalem when all of a sudden a very strange vision emerges: a hand writing something on the palace wall behind the king. Everyone is puzzled by the apparition, and the Israelite exile Daniel is the only member of the court who can read the message and provide an interpretation. The Aramaic text, he tells the king, says “Mene, mene, tekel, ufarsin”: a list of declining units of measure that means, essentially, “Your days are numbered.”

In Rembrandt’s painting, a surprised Belshazzar turns around as a hand emerges from a cloud and writes the message in Hebraic characters. The biblical text does not say why none of the king’s guests or ministers could read the words, nor does it give any indication as to the form in which the message was written. This gave rise to some debate among the ancient rabbis as to how the writing must have looked to the confused banqueters. Were the words encrypted in some way? Were they written backward, from left to right? Were letters transposed? Or were the words to be read right to left but vertically downward rather than horizontally across?¹¹⁹

This last, vertical format of the mysterious text is exactly how it is depicted in Rembrandt’s painting. It is also the only one of the rabbinic explanations that is presented by Menasseh in his discussion of the Belshazzar episode in his book De Termino Vitae (1639), where he includes a diagram of the words that resembles perfectly the image in Rembrandt’s painting (fig. 3).¹²⁰ It thus seems very likely that Rembrandt, wondering just how he should depict the divine message in his painting of a scene from Hebrew Scripture, and perhaps at the recommendation of some acquaintance in the Portuguese-Jewish community, walked down the street and over the Houtgracht bridge to consult with the extroverted rabbi known for his ecumenical, and often very friendly, relationships with non-Jews.

Menasseh’s book was published in 1639, and depending on the dating of the painting this could be several years after Rembrandt had finished the work.¹²¹ But the theory about the format of the divine writing would have been on Menasseh’s mind for a while, and he certainly could have helped Rembrandt with this in person, before writing his book. The idea that Menasseh did advise Rembrandt on “Belshazzar’s Feast” is thus fairly compelling, and represents at least one, albeit probably brief, instance of collaboration.¹²²

Piedra Gloriosa / The Glorious Stone

The project that is most often cited as proof of a working partnership between artist and rabbi, and the one that concerns us here, is Menasseh’s book Piedra Gloriosa (full title: Even yekarah. Piedra Gloriosa o de la Estatua de Nebuchadnesar [The Glorious Stone, or On the Statue of Nebuchadnezzar]), a messianic treatise that Menasseh published in 1655, a few months before his departure for England to negotiate the readmission of the Jews to a kingdom from which they had been formally banned since 1290, and just two years before his death.

Much of Menasseh’s treatise is a commentary on the Book of Daniel, which, like the story of Esther, was of great importance in the early modern period to both Jews in the Sephardic diaspora and Judaizing conversos still living in Spain and Portugal. Among other things, Menasseh offers an interpretation of the episode from Daniel in which Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, dreams of a “huge and dazzling” statue—with a head of gold, breast and arms of silver, torso of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of clay and iron—that is then toppled and shattered by a boulder (Daniel 2:31–36). In the Biblical story, Daniel explains the king’s dream as forecasting the doom facing his and subsequent kingdoms. Daniel then foretells of “a kingdom established by the God of heaven that will never be destroyed … it shall shatter and make an end to all those kingdoms, it shall itself endure forever.”

It was not very difficult for Menasseh to find messianic import in Daniel’s dream interpretation. The stone that crushes the king’s statue, “hewn from a mountain without the intervention of human hands”, represents the Messiah sent by God. Having swept away all other empires of the world—the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans, represented by the materially composite statue—God will replace them with the Kingdom of Israel. “This stone is the Messiah, a stone that, striking the feet of the statue, will put an end to all the kingdoms of the Fourth Monarchy, will become an immense mountain and will fill the world.”¹²³

Not content to provide a reading of these passages from Daniel, Menasseh argues that the same messianic message is present throughout the Hebrew Bible. It is there in the Pentateuch’s narratives of the patriarchs, as well as in the writings of the prophets. It is certain, he says, that “God revealed to [Moses] the entire history of the Jews up to the end of time”¹²⁴ , and so the Torah is full of indications about the fate of the Four Monarchies and the establishment of the Fifth. Indeed, Menasseh says, “there is no prophet to whom God has not revealed this mystery.”¹²⁵

Remarkably, Menasseh goes on to claim that the stone that topples the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream is in fact identical with stones that appear in two other well-known Biblical stories. It is the same exact rock as that on which Jacob’s head rests while he dreams about angels going up and down a ladder and which he then sets up as a sacred pillar onto which he pours oil (Genesis 28:10-19). “We have here the same stone,” Menasseh insists, “the stone of the Messiah.”¹²⁶ Then there is the stone with which David, representing the Messiah, slays the Philistine giant Goliath, who stands for both the statue of Nebuchadnezzar and the four captivities of Israel (I Samuel 17). David, Menasseh notes, had five stones in his bag. Four of them are “useless,” and represent the Four Monarchies. “The fifth one stands for the one that shattered the Statue. It is the same stone on which Jacob poured oil, and the same one of which Daniel spoke.”¹²⁷

The finale of the treatise is Menasseh’s extended discussion of Daniel’s vision of the beasts (7:1-27). Daniel relates that during the reign of Belshazzar, “I saw a great sea churned up by the four winds of heaven, and four huge beasts coming up out of the sea.” One was a lion with eagle’s wings; a second was a bear; and a third was a four-headed leopard with four bird wings on its back. Most terrifying of all was a fourth beast, “dreadful and grisly, exceedingly strong, with great iron teeth and bronze claws. It crunched and devoured, and then trampled underfoot all that was left. It differed from all the beasts that preceded it in having ten horns.” One of the horns had “eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouth that spoke proud words.” This last beast was killed and its carcass thrown into flames. Then, Daniel, continues,

“I saw one like a man coming with the clouds of heaven; he approached the Ancient in Years and was presented to him. Sovereignty and glory and kingly power were given to him so that all people and nations of every language should serve him; his sovereignty was to be an everlasting sovereignty which should not pass away, and his kingly power such as should never be impaired.”

On Menasseh’s reading, the four beasts are, once again, the four doomed kingdoms, while the man coming down from heaven is the Messiah. His fifth kingdom will be an everlasting worldly dominion.¹²⁸ “The monarchy of Israel”, Menasseh insists, “will be temporal and terrestrial”, with the Davidic king sent by God ruling all nations under one law.

A Collaboration?

Menasseh was ready to publish his Spanish book in early 1655. However, he thought it should contain some illustrations. His interpretive analyses of the toppling of Nebuchadnezzar’s statue, Jacob dreaming of the ladder, David felling Goliath, and especially Daniel’s graphic vision of the beasts all needed visual aids. Menasseh relates that he was responsible for four images of just these episodes for the book. Here is what he says in the preface Al Lector / To the Reader:

Iuntamente par mayor claridad de lo que se dize, he hecho en laminas, con grande propriedad, 4. figuras (Additionally, for better clarity of what is said, I have done [made] 4 figures [images] on plates, with great propriety [accuracy?]).

He then describes the four illustrated scenes in detail, adding that “Todo esto ha costado, y aun algun trabajo y industria (All of this was costly, and [required] even some work and industry).”¹²⁹

Now a number of extant copies of the Piedra Gloriosa do (or apparently at one time did) contain such illustrations, but—contrary to what one might expect from what Menasseh says in the preface—they are not by Menasseh himself.¹³⁰ Rather, as we have mentioned, and is well known, they are by Rembrandt (figs. 4-7).¹³¹ Many commentators have taken this as evidence that there was a direct and personal collaboration between the rabbi and the artist on the book.¹³² Thus, in the mid-twentieth century, Franz Landsberger, in his book-length essay Rembrandt, the Jews and the Bible, says of the relationship between Menasseh and Rembrandt that “we know only that Rembrandt made a portrait and etching of the distinguished rabbi, and that he furnished illustrations for one of the latter’s books; these illustrations, however, seem never to have been published.”¹³³  The first claim about what “we know” is, as we have seen, uncertain; the second claim is true, in a sense to be examined; and the truth value of the third claim depends on what is meant by “published.” More recently, Christian Tümpel says simply that “in the mid-1650s, Menasseh asked his neighbor in the Breestraat for four illustrations for his book Piedra Gloriosa.”¹³⁴

Other scholars have questioned whether, and even denied that, Rembrandt produced these images for Menasseh’s book at the author’s request. They cite, in addition to the lack of any documentation of a collaboration or mention of it by either party, the unsuitability of etchings to illustrate books that have more than a very limited print run.¹³⁵ It is possible, though, that the etchings were meant to be printed in only a limited number—for example, to be included in just a few gift presentation copies of the book “for friends and people who, like Isaac Vossius [to whom the book is dedicated], had been involved in the book in a special way.”¹³⁶

So one question is: Was there a collaboration between Rembrandt and Menasseh ben Israel on the book Piedra Gloriosa? More precisely, did Menasseh commission from Rembrandt the four etchings that appear in some copies of the book?

Despite skepticism by some scholars, it seems extremely likely that there was indeed a collaboration here.¹³⁷ When Menasseh says, in his preface, that “I have done [made] 4 figures [images] on plates”, he might seem to be claiming that he himself made etched illustrations for the book. But no prints by his hand appear in any copy or, as far as we know, are extant in any other format. Nor could he, without serious technical training, have produced multiple states of etched plates of sufficiently high artistic quality.¹³⁸ The more likely reading of the sentence, then, is not that Menasseh made etched plates of four images, but that he had some etched plates made according to his vision of what the illustrations should look like, “for better clarity of what is said.” That is, Menasseh was responsible for designing, and perhaps even sketching out, what the illustrations should be, just as he describes them in the preface. He then passed all this along to an illustrator, who then executed the designs in etchings, perhaps with Menasseh’s input through each state of the etchings.¹³⁹ That the artist to whom Menasseh gave his designs was Rembrandt seems the perfectly natural conclusion to draw from the facts that (a) Menasseh says he designed and commissioned some illustrations, and (b) the illustrations that appear in some copies of the book (closely matching the description of the illustrations that Menasseh provides) are by Rembrandt.

One of the arguments that has been offered against Menasseh being the subject of that 1636 etched portrait is that he could not have afforded it given his weak financial condition.¹⁴⁰ Perhaps similar considerations, then, might seem to tell against Menasseh commissioning book illustrations from Rembrandt. It is true that Menasseh suffered from debts and life-long money problems.¹⁴¹ Part of the problem was that, while he was third in rank among the Talmud Torah rabbis, he had by far the lowest salary—only 150 guilders per year (whereas the chief rabbi, Saul Levi Mortera, was earning 600 guilders per year, while the rabbi second in rank, Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, was earning 450 guilders).

However, in 1654, Menasseh was awarded a substantial annual stipend, 600 guilders, in order to dissuade him from going to England.¹⁴² This extra income could have allowed him to afford what Rembrandt might have demanded for the commission. Of course, we do not know what Rembrandt asked in order to do the job. The same year that Menasseh published Piedra Gloriosa, Rembrandt was commissioned to produce “a portrait of Otto van Kattenburch which the aforementioned van Rijn shall etch from life, equal in quality to his portrait of Mr. Jan Six, for the sum of 400:0:00.”¹⁴³ Six was a wealthy member of the Amsterdam city council, and Rembrandt’s 1647 etching of him (240 x 193 mm) was about the same size as the uncut plate for the Piedra Gloriosa prints (280 x 160 mm). Thus, if the Kattenburch etching was to be similar in dimensions to the Six etching (and, by extension, to the Piedra Gloriosa plate) and its cost was 400 fl, one can surmise that, under ordinary circumstances, Rembrandt might have asked for something in that range from Menasseh. On the other hand, a flattering portrait of a wealthy individual would have been priced quite a bit higher than a creative history scene (or set of scenes), especially for a rabbi of limited means. Moreover, as one scholar notes, “the valuation of 400 guilders for a portrait plate was exceptional.” ¹⁴⁴ Whatever Rembrandt asked, if anything, would still have been an extraordinary expense for someone who always struggled financially, even with the new stipend. But perhaps Menasseh saw it as an investment in his own book and expected to recoup the initial outlay through sales. Another likely possibility is that Rembrandt did the work out of vriendendienst, as a favor for a friend.¹⁴⁵ Or maybe he produced the etchings on speculation, expecting to take his cut from sales of the book with the illustrations.¹⁴⁶

How did the collaboration come about? The most plausible scenario, which we described above, is that Menasseh directly enlisted Rembrandt’s participation in this project, especially if there was a “history” between the two, namely, the previous collaboration on the “Belshazzar” painting. Even if, as some have suggested, there was no such earlier working relationship¹⁴⁷ , then perhaps Menasseh, never shy about engaging gentiles in social and professional matters, simply approached one of the city’s most celebrated artists and gifted etchers who also happened to live nearby and asked him to lend his talents to a new book.

Another possibility is that Rembrandt and Menasseh were brought together by a third party, one of several people who knew both of them. After all, their respective circles of acquaintances did overlap. One candidate is Ephraim Bueno. Another candidate is Gerbrand Anslo, a Mennonite cloth merchant who had studied Hebrew and rabbinics with Menasseh. Anslo and Menasseh apparently enjoyed a warm, interfaith friendship. They passed the time together in each other’s home; Anslo wrote a laudatory poem about Menasseh (whom he calls “most learned of the rabbis”) for Menasseh’s treatise De Resurrectione mortuorum/On The Resurrection of the Dead (1636); and Menasseh dedicated the Latin edition of his book on free will and human sin, Dissertatio de fragilitate humana/Dissertation on Human Fragility (1642), to Anslo.¹⁴⁸ Anslo’s father Cornelis Claesz Anslo had sat for two portraits by Rembrandt—a painted double-portrait with his wife (1641)¹⁴⁹ , and a solo etched portrait¹⁵⁰—and Gerbrand was a good friend of fellow Mennonite Hendrick Uylenburgh, Rembrandt’s erstwhile employer and cousin in-law.¹⁵¹

Yet another possible candidate, close to Menasseh but somewhat removed from Rembrandt, is the book’s dedicatee, Isaac Vossius. Menasseh’s dedication reads “To the very noble and most learned lord, Isaac Vossius, gentleman of the chamber of the Queen of Sweden.” Vossius, the son of Menasseh’s good friend, the humanist scholar Gerard Vossius, was still serving as librarian to Queen Christina, despite the fact that she had abdicated the throne in June 1654 after converting to Catholicism. From Christina’s new home base in exile in the southern Netherlands, Vossius, through correspondence and occasional trips to Amsterdam, was in regular contact with Menasseh over the purchase of books for her library. As far as we know, Vossius was not among  Rembrandt’s acquaintances. However, he was connected with some of Rembrandt’s patrons and sitters, including Six. Six was not only the subject of the etching mentioned above, but he also sat for his extraordinary portrait by Rembrandt in 1654, just before Menasseh completed the Piedra Gloriosa. Vossius and Six were, by Vossius’s own testimony, close friends. In one of his letters, Vossius good-naturedly complains about the way that Six’s bidding at book auctions drives the prices up, “so unprofitable was his friendship to me. Still”, he says, “we are friends and will be forever.”¹⁵²  So perhaps Vossius, on behalf of Menasseh, prompted Jan Six to ask Rembrandt if he would produce some illustrations for the new book by Vossius’s rabbi friend.¹⁵³

The problem with this story, however, is that Vossius did not share his father’s high opinion either of Menasseh’s books or of the rabbi himself. He reportedly regarded Menasseh’s messianic views as “ludicrous speculations.”¹⁵⁴ As a conversionist, he counseled the Jews to abandon their own false messianic hopes and embrace “the kingdom of God and Christ.”¹⁵⁵  It seems unlikely, then, that he would have gone to the trouble to help Menasseh find someone to illustrate those vain hopes.

Of course, an alternative explanation for the presence of the Rembrandt etchings in Piedra Gloriosa—one that might account for the fact that they are in only a few of the extant copies—is that they were commissioned not by Menasseh himself for a complete or partial print run, but by someone else, who then inserted them into copies that he or she had purchased. This hypothesis, however, is very difficult to square with the fact that Menasseh himself tells us about the four illustrations in the book. Not only do we have his remarks in the preface, which describe precisely what appears in Rembrandt’s etchings, but in several places throughout the book he refers to the images or picture “we have made” (read: “we have had made”).¹⁵⁶ It would be very odd to find Menasseh doing this in a book for which illustrations would be commissioned and inserted only by someone else subsequent to the book’s publication.

A Mystery and a Solution

Even if we accept that Menasseh and Rembrandt collaborated on Menasseh’s messianic volume, many questions remain. The one we want to address is this: Why is it that Rembrandt’s etchings appear (or apparently once appeared) in only nine of the known twenty-three extant volumes, with ten of those books lacking any illustrations whatsoever? Adding to the mystery is the fact that at least four extant copies of the book have copperplate engravings by another artist (figs. 8 and 9). (The artist responsible for these has often been assumed to be a Jewish artist from Italy now living in Amsterdam, Salom Italia¹⁵⁷ ; this is now a contested claim, with good reason, and so we will refer to the author of the second set of prints as “Salom Italia.”¹⁵⁸ ) These “new” images—on the plausible assumption that Rembrandt’s etchings came first and that the engravings were indeed intended as a substitute for them—are very similar in depicted content to Rembrandt’s illustrations (aside from their inferior artistic quality), with one remarkable difference. In Rembrandt’s etched illustration of Daniel’s vision, there is a clearly anthropomorphic representation of God as an old, bearded man in robes sitting in the heavens; in the “Italia” engravings, by contrast, the bodily depiction of God is replaced by an illuminated empty space above the heavenly choir.

This, naturally, has given rise to new domains of speculation. Are the “Italia” engravings, which are mostly (but not entirely) consistent with Menasseh’s description of the illustrations in his preface, original to those volumes in which they appear? Or did these volumes initially include Rembrandt’s etchings, which were removed before binding? The really interesting question, of course, is this: Why the substitution in the first place? Was Menasseh unhappy with

Rembrandt’s etchings, especially the anthropomorphic representation of God sitting on His throne, and thus did he commission a less offensive set of pictures, as some have argued?¹⁵⁹

This explanation seems unlikely to us. If Menasseh did not approve of the representation of God, then why does this etching appear among the Rembrandt illustrations in those other copies of the book? On the assumption that it was Menasseh who commissioned the prints, and assuming as well that client and artist were working together throughout the process, then Menasseh would have had plenty of opportunity to protest the appearance of God through all four states of that etching.¹⁶⁰ In fact, in his preface, Menasseh describes this illlustration right down to the bodily detail of God’s hand. He says that

Finalmente en la quarta, las 4 bestias, y entre ellas aquel javali con diez cuernos, y otro pequeño con boca y ojos: levantando las nuves a aquel que como hijo de hombre que es el Messiah, se presenta a la Soberana Magestad, para recebir de su mano poderosa el imperio universal del mondo.

Finally, in the fourth [illustration], the four beasts, and among them that boar with ten horns, and another one small with mouth and eyes: the clouds raising that [person] who, as son of man who is the Messiah, presents himself to the Sovereign Majesty [that is, to God] to receive from his powerful hand the universal empire of the world.¹⁶¹

Referring to this scene later in the book, Menasseh once again describes the details of the illustration:

… presentando delante la divina Magestad, y su Altissimo Trono, dará de su propria mano, el imperio universal del mundo.

… presenting [the Messiah] in front of the divine Majesty, and his Highest Throne, [God] will give from his own hand, the universal empire of the world.¹⁶²

There is no hint of any scruples here. The idea that Menasseh did not approve of the corporeal depiction of an anthropomorphic God literally sitting on a throne is therefore rather implausible.¹⁶³ Thus, the mystery persists, or so it would seem.

However, there is a document, hiding in plain sight in an archival volume that scholars have long known and consulted, that provides the foundation for a more plausible explanation than any other hypotheses for (a) the switch from Rembrandt’s etchings to another artist’s renderings, and/or (b) the absence of illustrations in most extant copies of a book whose text refers, in detail in several places, to illustrations. In the first volume of the Livro dos Acordos da Naçao (the general record book of the Portuguese-Jewish community of Amsterdam, now in the Amsterdam Municipal Archives), which covers the years 1638—just before the merger into Talmud Torah—through 1680 (5398-5440), there is a memo dated 29 Nisan 5415 (6 May 1655).¹⁶⁴ The document reads as follows (in a rough English translation¹⁶⁵ ):

“On Nisan 29, the members of the Ma’amad being gathered together, the rabbi haham Menasseh ben Israel presented himself in front of them, requesting a book that he composed about the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, which he [Menasseh] had given to be reviewed after printing. And the members of the Ma’amad, having disapproved of it for it was against the ascamot [regulations], the said rabbi responded to the members of the Ma’amad and swore by the Holy God to not print another one [copy? edition?] without first bringing its principal [i.e., its content?] [before?] the aforementioned members of the Ma’amad: and ratifying his oath, he [Menasseh] left the chamber of the Ma’amad. There were present all the seven that made this decree, so that it may be registered for all time.¹⁶⁶“

At the bottom of the document are the signatures of the seven men sitting on the community’s ma’amad (board of lay directors) that year.

This document raises many more questions than it answers. Among these, and relevant to our discussion, are the following: What did the ma’amad actually have in hand when they passed judgment on Piedra Gloriosa? Had Menasseh already printed a full run of the edition and was he only now asking for the congregation’s approval after the fact? Or did he present the leaders with only a set of pre-publication proofs? It was clearly not only a manuscript that they saw, since the censorship record mentions that Menasseh brought them “a book … after being printed”, but this could refer either to a single exemplar of the work’s pages to be approved before printing a full run, or it could mean a copy from a full print run; either of these would likely have consisted solely in unbound sheets. More important for our purpose, did whatever Menasseh present to the ma’amad for approval contain Rembrandt’s illustrations?

That Menasseh’s messianist book was “disapproved of [Reprovado]” by the Amsterdam ma’amad has previously gone unrecognized (despite the fact that scholars of the history of the city’s Portuguese-Jewish community have long been examining the Livro dos Acordos). To be sure, Menasseh could be a difficult person, and his relationship with the communal leadership and the other rabbis was often rocky. He even earned a herem (a ban or ostracism) at one point for his insubordination.¹⁶⁷  Nor was this the first time that the ma’amad disapproved of what was coming off Menasseh’s printing press; they let him know in no uncertain terms that they were not pleased when, in 1628, soon after establishing his business, he published Joseph Solomon Delmedigo’s Sefer Elim, and they initially refused him permission to publish it.¹⁶⁸ However, the fact that they also initially forbade him to publish the Piedra Gloriosa—and perhaps, for all we know, never granted permission at all—is only now evident from this entry in the Livro dos Acordos.¹⁶⁹

Because the book was deemed “against the regulations”, Menasseh was told not to print another copy. While the censure document does not specify what exactly the parnassim (directors) on the board found offensive about the book, it may very likely be that the problem for them at least, if not for Menasseh, was Rembrandt’s etchings—in particular, the representation of God in bodily, anthropomorphic form. As far as we can determine, there are no differences whatsoever in the text itself among the various extant copies—both those that contain Rembrandt’s etchings and those that contain the “Italia” engravings or no illustrations at all—and so no changes were made in that regard. (It should be noted, too, that, contrary to what some scholars have asserted, the “Salom Italia” illustrations were not prepared for a new edition of the book, since there was no second edition or even second printing.¹⁷⁰ )

There are, on the other hand, clear differences between the “Italia” illustrations and Rembrandt’s. Most of these differences are merely aesthetic or relatively insignificant from a substantive perspective, and thus are unlikely to be changes related to anything in Rembrandt’s illustrations having raised alarm. For example, in the illustration of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, Rembrandt’s statue stands before a rocky grotto, while the “Italia” statue is on a bare background of horizontal lines and there is a Latin motto (impleuit omnem terram, “he filled the whole earth”) along the boulder coming in from the right; in the David and Goliath scene, the orientation is reversed and there is a more mountainous background with a more clearly delineated mounted cavalry lurking there (fig. 10). None of these changes are as remarkable or as significant as the absence of God in the “Italia” representation of Daniel’s vision.

Thus, there seems to be good reason to think that the commission of the “Salom Italia” engravings and their substitution for the Rembrandt etchings in some copies and/or the preparation of copies without any illustrations at all was not due to Menasseh’s own displeasure over the depiction of God. Rather, it was Menasseh’s response to the ma’amad’s objections to that feature and the resulting censorship from within the Amsterdam Portuguese-Jewish community.¹⁷¹

About the authors

Steven Nadler is Vilas Research Professor and William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is also affiliate faculty in the Department of Art History and the Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies, and director of the Institute for Research in the Humanities. His most recent book is Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die (Princeton, 2020).

Victor Tiribás is a PhD candidate in History at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.

1. For an overview and analysis of the phenomenon of the atelier scene in Dutch art, see Katja Kleinert, Atelierdarstellungen in der niederländischen Genremalerei des 17. Jahrhunderts : realistisches Abbild oder glaubwürdiger Schein?, Petersburg 2006.
2. Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, vol. 7, New York 1983, pp. 3648-3649, no. 1636bx (ill.). 
3. Arthur K. Wheelock, ed., Jan Lievens. A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington: National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam: The Rembrandt House Museum 2008/09, p. 246, no. 106.
4. And not that between Apollo and Marsyas, as indicated by Sumowski.
5. No painting of this theme is known by Lievens. There was a depiction of the contest between Apollo and Marsyas, showing Apollo playing the lyre, in the sale of the collection of the Count of Arundel, likely the same work later with the widow of Jürgen Ovens in 1691. See Hans Schneider and Rudi Ekkart, Jan Lievens: sein Leben und seine Werke. Amsterdam 1973, pp. 110-111, no. 78.
6. Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandtschüler, Landau 1983-1994, vol. 6 (1994), pp. 3691-3692, nos. 2185a-2194.
7. Nos. 2857-2861 in: Sumowski, Drawings (see note 2), vol. 12, Addenda (in translation, forthcoming in 2023).
8. Ibid., vol. 3, p. 1965, note 65. Currently assigned no. 2857 in vol. 12 (see note 2); sale, Paris (Christie’s), 21.3.2002, lot 114.
9. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 1961, 1965, 1977 (illus.). Sale, London (Bonhams), 29 October 2014, lot 147 (colour illus.).
10. Amsterdam, Sotheby’s, 11 November 1997, lot 25, colour ill., as Lievens. Sumowski is far more hesitant here than with the Mettingen drawing: Drawings (see note 2), pp. 3904-3905, no. 1757xx, illus.: “…an unqualified attribution cannot be entertained  because there is no material for comparison.”
11. Jan Lievens, Peasant Dwelllings under Trees with Milkmaid, pen in brown and brush in brown and grey, 108 x 193 mm, Dresden, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen Dresden, inv. no. C 1453; see Sumowski, Drawings (see note 2), pp. 3724-3725, no. 1672 (illus.).
12. See: Michiel Roscam Abbing, De schilder & schrijver Samuel van Hoogstraten, 1627-1678. Eigentijdse bronnen & oeuvre van gesigneerde schilderijen, Leiden 1993, pp. 40-41; Volker Manuth, “Dordrecht: bakermat voor Rembrandts leerlingen”, Bulletin Dordrechts Museum 3 (2006), pp. 3-7; and: David de Witt, Abraham van Dijck (1635-1680). Life and Work of a Late Rembrandt Pupil, Zwolle 2020, pp. 11-13.
13. As also observed in Paarlberg, Bisschop (see note 12), p. 24.
14. On their friendship see De Witt, Abraham van Dijck (see note 4), p. 108.
15. David de Witt, The Bader Collection: Dutch and Flemish Paintings, Kingston 2008, pp. 63-64, no. 31), correcting Sumowski’s dating to the early 1660s, with the observation of hesitancy in handling that points to an earlier period.
16. Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, vol. 2, The Hague 1719, p. 220. They seem to have largely been lost. The only example linked to him is A Boy Asleep in an Enclosed Chair, c. 1655/60, oil on wood, 97.2 x 66.5 cm, London, with Johnny van Haeften in 2007; see Sumowski, Gemälde (see note 6), vol. 6 (1994), p. 3692, no. 2192, p. 3776 (illus., as Bisschop). It is unsigned, and clearly derived from a similar work signed and dated 1654 by the Haarlem painter Johannes Verspronck: oil on panel, 96 x 75.7 cm, Belgium, private collection. On this basis it has been attributed to that artist as well see: Rudi Ekkart in: Pride and Joy. Children’s Portraits in The Netherlands 1500-1700, exh. cat. Haarlem: Frans Halsmuseum; Antwerp: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, 2000-2001, pp. 227-229, no. 60. However, the thicker application of paint and harsher contrasts in the London version diverge from the one signed by Verspronck, and indeed more closely approximate Bisschop’s painting style of around 1660. If by him, this would suggest that Verspronck supplied an additional impulse for making such cutout paintings, besides Van Hoogstraten and his championing of illusionism.
17. Houbraken, Schouburgh (see note 16), vol. 2 (1719), pp. 157-158.
18. See the important analysis by Thijs Weststeijn: The Visible World. Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Art Theory and the Legitimation of Painting in the Dutch Golden Age, Amsterdam 2008.
19. Sander Paarlberg, “Bisschop op zijn best. Dordrechts Museum krijgt zijn eigen Melkmeisje”, Bulletin van de Vereniging Rembrandt 25, no. 1, (2015), pp. 22-24, colour illus.
20. Samuel van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de Hooghe Schoole der Schilderkonst, Dordrecht, 1678, p. 12.
21. We do not include a painting attributed to Bisschop: The Young Artist in his Studio, c. 1653, oil on canvas, 90.8 × 76.8 cm, Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, inv. no. 38.29, as attributed to Cornelis Bisschop; George Keyes, in: Masters of Dutch Painting: The Detroit Institute of Arts, London 2004, pp. 28–29, no. 8 (ill.). The drawing shown in the lower left, a classic two-chalk drawing on blue-grey paper, underscores the stylistic evidence against his authorship, pointing instead to the circle around Govert Flinck (1615-1660) and Jacob Adriaensz. Backer (1608-1651); perhaps Adam Camerarius (?–1666).
22. Constantijn Daniël à Renesse, Rembrandt and his Pupils Drawing from a Nude Model, black chalk, brush in brown, 180 x 266 mm, Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, inv. no. AE 665; on the attribution see Peter Schatborn, Rembrandt and his circle: drawings in the Frits Lugt collection, Bussum 2010, p. 335.
23. Rembrandt, Rembrandt’s Studio with a Half-Nude Model, c. 1654/58, pen and brush in brown, with white body colour, 205 x 190 mm, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, inv. no. P.I.192 (WA1855.8): Peter Schatborn in Rembrandt : The Complete Etchings and Drawings, Cologne 2019, p. 269, no. T438 (colour illus., as c. 1654).
24. Rembrandt, Bathsheba with King David’s Letter, 1654, oil on canvas, 142 x 142 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. M.I. 975: Ernst van de Wetering, Rembrandt’s paintings revisited : a complete survey, Dordrecht, Boston and Lancaster 2014, pp. 623-624, no. 231; Volker Manuth, Marieke de Winkel and Rudie van Leeuwen, Rembrandt: the Complete Paintings, Cologne 2019, pp. 507-508, no. 23. As Van de Wetering explains, the pose of Bathsheba was originally conceived with an upward glance and turn of the head.
25. Rembrandt, A Woman Sitting Half-Dressed beside a Stove, 1658, etching, buring and drypoint, 226 x 194 mm, in seven states: Erik Hinterding and Jaco Rutgers, The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700, vol. 25-II: Rembrandt, Ouderkerk aan den IJssel 2013, pp. 292-294, no. 307.
26. Houbraken, Schouburgh (see note 16), vol. 1 (1718), p. 271.
27. As discussed by the author in: David de Witt and Franziska Gottwald, “Rembrandt & Light” in: Rembrandt’s Light, exh. cat. Dulwich, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2019-2020, pp. 33-34 (the date of the drawing mistakenly altered in editing; should read c. 1654/58).
28. See www.elephanthansken.com for a current collection of all the traces left by Hansken and her owner, brought together thanks to the research of Michiel Roscam Abbing. In 2016 M. Roscam Abbing, Rembrandts olifant. In het spoor van Hansken appeared, followed in 2021 by an updated edition in English translation entitled Rembrandt’s Elephant. Following in Hansken’s Footsteps, both with Leporello in Amsterdam.
29. In Het Schilder-boeck of 1604 (Haarlem) Karel van Mander calls drawing the father of all of the arts. Constant practice, especially taking everything that nature offers as model, will make the artist successful; see fol. 8r+v, Van het teyckenen, oft Teycken-const. Tweede Capittel.
30. W. Goeree, Inleydingh Tot de Praktijck Der Al-gemeene Schilder-Konst, Middelburg 1670, p. 121.
31. For an overview see P. Schatborn, E. Hinterding, Rembrandt. Alle tekeningen en etsen, Cologne 2019, pp. 285-301.
32. No. 249 in the inventory, see document/remdoc/e12724. For more background on Rembrandt’s collection, see B. Broos e.a., Rembrandt’s Treasures, Amsterdam 1999.
33. Peter Schatborn accepts six lion drawings as autograph: Rembrandt, A Lioness or Young Lion with Prey (a Bird), Reclining, with Head to the Left, 1637-1641. Charcoal and wash, with white highlights, on prepared paper, 126 x 239 mm. London, British Museum, inv. no. Oo,9.71; Rembrandt, Reclining Lioness or Young Lion, with Head to the Right, 1637-1641. Charcoal and wash, with white highlights, on prepared paper, 125 x 180 mm. London, British Museum, inv. no. Oo,9.75; Rembrandt, Reclining Lioness or Young Lion, from the Front, 1637-1641. Charcoal and wash, with white highlights, on prepared paper, 115 x 150 mm. New York, The Leiden Collection, inv. no. RR-100; Rembrandt, Reclining Lion with Prey, c. 1650. Pen and brush in ink, brush in white paint, with traced contours, 140 x 203 mm. Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Collection Franz Koenigs, inv. no. R 12; Rembrandt, Reclining Lion, c. 1650. Pen and brush in ink, 138 x 207 mm. Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. RF4721; Rembrandt, Reclining Lion, c. 1660. Pen in brown on prepared paper, 122 x 212 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-T-1901-A-4524.
34. For lions, see M. Roscam Abbing, P. Tuynman, “Rembrandts drawings of the elephant Hansken”, in M. Roscam Abbing (ed.), Rembrandt 2006: Essays, Leiden 2006, pp. 173-189, p. 189.
35. Rembrandt, Young Asian Elephant (Hansken), 1637. Black chalk, 233 x 354 mm. Vienna, Albertina, inv. no. 17558; Rembrandt, Asian Elephant (Hansken) in three different poses with steward. Black chalk, 239 x 354 mm. Vienna, Albertina, inv. no. 8900; Rembrandt, Asian Elephant (Hansken) with Spectators. Black chalk and charcoal, 179 x 256 mm. London, British Museum, inv. no. Gg,2.259.
36. Rembrandt or pupil, Asian Elephant (Hansken), c. 1637. Black chalk and graphite, counterproof. 194 x 189 mm. New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, inv. no. I, 205.
37. The drawing has in the meantime been published in M. Roscam Abbing, Rembrandt’s Elephant (see note 1), pp. 22-23. The interpretation of the drawing there is based on the research presented in this article.
38. In the possession of Peter Schatborn, the owners of the drawing, and the author of this article.
39. There is no available image of the watermark, so further identification is not possible at the moment.
40. Female Asian elephants generally do not have tusks. But where present, they do not grow to longer than 10 cm, which does render them visible between the folds of the skin. Hansken had short visible tusks of this kind. Her skeleton, which was preserved after her death in 1655, and is kept on display at the natural history museum La Specola, shows evidence of this: the skull shows the stumps of tusks. The English traveller and writer wrote in 1641 in his diary: “his teeth were but short being a female, and not old, as they told us”. Zie E.S. de Beer (red.), The diary of John Evelyn, Vol. 2. In the same year Ernst Brinck observed: “zijn naar buiten uitstekende slagtanden waren nog maar weinig meer dan een vinger lang” (his protruding tusks were only a little more than a finger long). See also Roscam Abbing and Tuynman, “Rembrandt’s Drawings…” (see note 7), pp. 173-189. There it is explained how in 1633 Hansken’s tusks were not yet visible. In 1641 they were, according to the description of Evelyn and Brinck. They may have been broken off after then, not subsequently growing long enough to be visible.
41. Roscam Abbing and Tuynman, “Rembrandt’s Drawings…” (see note 7), p. 184 and Roscam Abbing, Rembrandt’s Elephant (see note 1), pp. 24-25.
42. Jan Mollijns, Commemorative Print of the Asian Elephant Emanuel, 1563. Hand coloured woodcut, 285 x 400 mm. London, The British Museum, inv. no. 1928,0310.97, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1928-0310-97; Gerard van Groeningen, Commemorative Print of the Asian Elephant Emanuel, in Eight Different Poses, in or after 1563. Etching, 405 x 541 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-P-OB-59.019; Wenceslaus Hollar (after Gerard van Groeningen), Commemorative Print of the Asian Elephant Don Diego, 1629. Etching, 245 x 283 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-P-1976-16.
43. See Chronycke van Antwerpe sedert het jaer 1500 tot 1575. Gevolgd van Eene beschryving van de historie en het landt van Brabant, sedert het jaer 51 vóór J.-C., tot 1565 na J.-C., volgens een onuitgegeven handschrift van de XVIe eeuw, edition of 1843, Antwerp, p. 59: “(…) anno 1563, int eynde van september, doen quam tot Antwerpen tschepe eenen olifant vuyt Portugael, off daer ontrent, oudt by de negen jaeren, hooge acht voeten; desen ginck sdaechs achter straeten dattet een yegelyck sien moechte: desen was seer tam ende wert geregeert van eenen moor doende alwat den moor hem gebiede: desen olifant hiet Emanuel.” (in the year 1563, at the end of September, there came by ship to Antwerp an elephant from Portugal, around nine years old, eight feet tall; it went by day through the streets so that all could see it: it was very tame and was led by a Moor, doing everything the Moor commanded: this elephant was called Emanuel). See e.g. also S. Dackerman, Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, New Haven 2011, cat. no. 34.
44. See note 15. For the impression in the collection of the Rijksmuseum see http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.119126.
45. Hansken appeared in Amsterdam on four occasions: in the summer months of 1633 and at the fairs (kermissen) of 1637, 1641 and 1647. One of the drawings by Rembrandt can be connected to the fair of 1637, because Rembrandt dated the sheet. Peter Schatborn dates the other two drawings of Hansken by Rembrandt to the same year. However the drawing of Hansen in three poses (Albertina, inv. no. 8900) appears to have been made on a later occasion, in 1641. The animal in that drawing is noticeably older than in the sketch of 1637. See also Roscam Abbing and Tuynman, “Rembrandt’s Drawings…” (see note 7), pp. 173-189. Further research on the paper in the future may yield more information on the dating.
46. Up to Rembrandt’s time, there was limited knowledge in Europe concerning elephants. What people thought to know was based on what Pliny the Elder had written in his Natural History (77-79 C.E.). Or on medieval legends such as could be read in the Physiologus, an ancient Greek moralizing text on plants and (mythical) animals. Over the course of time there appeared more and newer editions of these stories. Jacob van Maerlants Der naturen bloeme (c. 1350) is one example, in which the texts are no longer presented in Latin but in Dutch (“Dietsch”). In 1588 Christophel Plantijn in Antwerp published a collection of texts – including the Physiologus – under the title Sancti Patris Nostri Epiphanii, Episcopi Constantiae Cypri, ad Physiologum. Eiusdem in die festo Palmarum sermo. A century later, at the end of the 17th century, the skeleton Hansken, the elephant that died in 1655 in Florence, became accessible to scholars. This led to new insights into the existence of an ancestor species, the mammoth. A Latin description of Hansken’s skeleton by John Ray formed the basis in the 18th century for Carolus Linnaeus’ scientific description of the elephant in terms of its species.
47. For the copy of the album in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, see: http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.353205. For the two prints in its, respectively of five and three elephants, see: http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.353210 and http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.353211.
48. For the copy in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, see: http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.33090. Don Diego was in Europe from 1623 to 1635 in Europa. For more information on Don Diego see L. Rice, “Poussin’s Elephant”, Renaissance Quarterly 70 (2017), pp. 548-593; M. Roscam Abbing, “Poussin’s Elephant Revisited”, in Source: Notes in the History of Art 39 (2020), pp. 109-119.
49. “Op de kunstcaemer (….) [235] Een Oost-Indies benneken daarin verscheyde prenten van Rembrant, Hollaert, Cocq en andere meer”. See document/remdoc/e12723.
50. [i] For his etching of Joseph and the Wife of Potiphar of 1634 (B39/ NHD128) Rembrandt looked to the etching of the same theme by Tempesta, of 1613. And Tempesta’s prints of lion hunts served as model for Rembrandt in his own depictions of the theme, the two small lion hunts of c. 1629 (B115/ NHD28, B116/ NHD29) and his large lion hunt of 1641 (B114/ NHD187). See e.g. B. van den Boogert, J. van der Veen, Dat kan beter! Rembrandt en de oude meesters, Amsterdam 2013, pp. 52-55.
51. Nos. 210 – 212 in the inventory. See document/remdoc/e12721 and document/remdoc/e12722.
52. See for example in the collection of the Rijksmuseum: God Creates the Animals http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.183114, Cain Murdering Abel http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.183148, Orpheus Enchanting the Animals with his Music http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.183809, Combat of the Centaurs and Various Animals http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.608702, God Commands Adam And Eve Not To Eat of The Tree of Knowledge http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.183140.
53. See also Roscam Abbing, Rembrandts olifant (see note 1), pp. 22-23; Rembrandt’s Elephant (see note 1), pp. 24-25. Besides the iconography there described of the elephant as a chaste animal, and thereby symbol of humanity before the Fall into Sin, Rembrandt incorporated two myths about elephants. The myth of the mating ritual of elephants refers namely to the sin of the first people in the world. In order to stimulate arousal in the male, the female offers an aphrodisiac. Eve gives the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to Adam, and this fruit in fact serves as an aphrodisiac. Because after eating this fruit they become aware of their desires. And further it was said of elephants and dragons that they were symbols respectively of good and evil, and that they were each other’s greatest enemies. The draco (Latin, translatable as dragon or serpent) hides in a tree, in order to drop down onto an elephant walking by. What follows is a fight to the death, in which both animals perish. Rembrandt also refers to this coming event, as symbol of the struggle between good and evil that will result from Adam and Eve’s fall into sin.
54. Respectively nos. 161, 178, 189, 298 and 307 in the inventory, see: document/remdoc/e12719, document/remdoc/e12719, document/remdoc/e12720, document/remdoc/e12727.
55. The fact Rembrandt’s insolvency inventory contains such detailed information is one of the reasons to believe that Rembrandt himself dictated how the objects were to be described at the taking of the inventory, on 25 and 26 July 1656.
56. For further information on this elephant see: M. Roscam Abbing, “‘So Een Wunder heeft men hier nooijt gesien’ De Indische vrouwtjesolifant (1678/80-1706) van Bartel Verhagen”, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 106 (2014), pp. 68-95.
57. The tusks were probably added because they appear in the original print by Van Groeningen and were seen as a typical feature of an elephant. Hansken too was given prominent tusks in some illustrations. In one instance (a drawing from life, but embellished from imagination) it is clear that the artist tried to indicate how tusks would look on her. Stefano della Bella, Elephant (Hansken), with a Black Man. Pen and brush in ink, 128 x 159 mm. Present location unknown (sale,London, Christie’s, 18 March 1975, lot 17). For more on this drawing see: https://www.elephanthansken.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/fig.-17.jpg. Around 1647 a publicity or commemorative print of Hansken was also made. For the impression in the Rijksmuseum see http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.432625. Also in this print, she was mistakenly endowed with tusks, following the example of the print of Don Diego, which also served as model for the arrangement of the print with a central image surrounded by smaller images.
58. See document/remdoc/e4447.
59. Idem. RemDoc does not supply the detailed list of the works that Rembrandt purchased. The Rembrandt Documents (W. Strauss and M. van der Meulen, New York 1979) does summarize them (see doc. no. 1638/2). It is evident that over the auction days Rembrandt purchased various individual prints by Albrecht Dürer, a woodcut series of The Life of the Virgin, and a Passion series. The print Christ in Limbo was part of Dürer’s engraved Passion of 1511-1513.
60. See also J. Schaeps e.a. Leiden viert feest! Hoogtepunten uit een academische collectie, 2014, cat. no. 17.
61. See also Roscam Abbing, Rembrandts olifant (see note 1), pp. 22-23; Roscam Abbing, Rembrandt’s Elephant (see note 1), p. 24; Joost van den Vondel also incorporated Hansken’s presence into his work. She was on display in the city in September 1637 as Vondel was completing his play Gijsbrecht van Aemstel. This work premièred on 3 January 1638 in honour of, and in, the Amsterdam Schouwburgh on the Keizersgracht. In one of the scenes (line 1304) Vondel refers to one of the tricks Hansken performed during her appearances; see Roscam Abbing, Rembrandts olifant (see note 1), pp. 49-51.
62. S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, Dossier Rembrandt. Documenten, tekeningen en prenten, Amsterdam 1987, pp. 4-5.
63. See: https://archief.amsterdam/indexen/.
64. In the process of this indexing several hitherto unknown references to (possible) Rembrandt paintings in inventories surfaced, such as for example Rembrandt’s portrait of Cornelis Claesz Anslo and Aaltje Gerrits Schouten, which according to the testament of their granddaughter Teuntje Hartens hung in the front hall on the Nieuwmarkt; Myrthe Bleeker, “Een Rembrandt in het voorhuis”, Alle Amsterdamse Akten, 8 February 2021, https://www.alleamsterdamseakten.nl/artikel/2648/een-rembrandt-in-het-voorhuis/. Source: Stadsarchief Amsterdam (Amsterdam City Archives) (SAA), access no. 5075, Archief van de Notarissen ter Standplaats Amsterdam (Archive of Notaries in Amsterdam), inv.no. 8511, akte 732, 19 December 1732. Jirsi Reinders en Mark Ponte,“Cardinaal van Rembrandt”, Ons Amsterdam 73 (2021), pp. 38-39; https://onsamsterdam.nl/cardinaal-van-rembrandt-van-rijn. See also the Rembrandt Dossier on the same website: https://www.alleamsterdamseakten.nl/tag/299/rembrandt/.
65. SAA, “Google door honderdduizenden historische handschriften”, 9 March 2021, https://www.amsterdam.nl/stadsarchief/nieuws/transkribus/ (accessed 20 October 2021). The search platform can be used at https://transkribus.eu/r/amsterdam-city-archives/#/. More information on Transkribus can be found at: https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/?sc=Transkribus.
66. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1476 (unpaginated) (scans Archiefbank: KLAG03161000143 – KLAG03161000150) (minuutakte) and SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1492, f. 305r-312r Afschrift (archive copy), both of 7 August 1665. On 22 October 1666 there was a subsequent report on the management of the estate: SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1493, f. 156v-159r; idem concerning the pre-bequest to Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh’s sister Willemtie Wessels: SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1493, f. 154v-156v.
67. Jan Wagenaar, Amsterdam in zyne opkomst, aanwas, geschiedenissen, voorregten, koophandel, gebouwen, kerkenstaat, schoolen, schutteryen, gilden en regeeringe, vol. 3, Amsterdam 1768, pp. 499-502. The city messengers registers have not survived.
68. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1492, f. 310r-v.
69. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 2196, p. 191; Remdoc no. 1654/4: http://remdoc.huygens.knaw.nl/#/document/remdoc/e1661.
70. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1476, z.f. (scan Archiefbank: KLAG03161000148) (minutes record); SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1492, f. 309v Afschrift (archive copy), both 7 August 1665. In the minutes there is a comma between “schilder” (painter) and “Isercramer” (ironmonger), which is missing in the archive copy.
71. Estate inventory of Koert Kooper; Remdoc (see note 8) no. 1660/4: Maerten Daey (1660/8), Clara de Valaer (1660/15), Magdalena van Lemens (Remdoc 1661/4), Christoffel Hirschvogel (1661/10), Willem van Campen (1661/11), Willem Schrijver (1661/14), Matthijs Hals (1662/1), Johanna de Smit (1662/1a), Gerard van der Voorde (1663/8). Only in the inventory of Clara de Valaer is the painter named as “Rembrant van Rhyn”.
72. SAA, access no. 5001, Archief van de Burgerlijke Stand: doop-, trouw- en begraafboeken van Amsterdam (baptism, marriage and burial books of Amsterdam) (retroacta of the citizen’s registry), inv. no. 473, p. 471; inv. no. 493, p. 120. On 12 November 1654, a child of Rembrandt Gerdes was baptized in the Noorderkerk, inv. no. 76, p. 18. On 19 July 1664, Rembrant van Ruijnen was buried together with his child in the St. Anthoniskerkhof, inv. no. 1193, p. 98.
73. SAA, access no. 5033, Archief van de Burgemeesters (Burgomasters’ archive): poorterboeken (citizenship books), inv. no. 2, Register van gekochte poorters (Registry of citizens by purchase), p. 474. Wiltingh is not mentioned in the incomplete surviving registration of baptisms of Hasselt in the years 1591-1597, 1614-1618 and 1632-1651; Historisch Centrum Overijssel, access no. 124 Doop-, trouw- en begraafboeken (dtb, retroacta van de Burgerlijke Stand) in Overijssel (Baptism, marriage and burial books (dtb, retroacts of the civil registry) in Overijssel), inv.nr. 247, Doopboek Hasselt (baptism book Hasselt) 1591-1689.
74. This is also evident from his listing in the registers of the collateral succession: SAA, access no. 5046, Archief van de Secretaris: stukken betreffende de ontvangst van de twintigste penning op de Collaterale Successie, inv. no. 2, f. 5v (scan 85). (Archive of the City Secretary; records concerning the collection of the twentieth penny on the indirect inheritance)
75. Considering the (familial) relations, this provenance is likelier than from the city of Hasselt in todays Belgian province of Limburg.
76. SAA, access no. 5039, Thesaurieren Ordinaris (Treasurers Extraordinary), inv. no. 554, f. 272v. The purchase price was 5600 guilders. In this registry of plots sold by the city during the period 1630-1658 this is the only reference to one Jacob Wessels. The purchases of the lot was Romeyn de Hooghe III (1605-1669), and his brother Daniel de Hooghe (1614-1657) was the second guarantor. On these members of the De Hooghe family: Henk van Nierop, The life of Romeyn de Hooghe 1645-1708. Prints, Pamphlets, and Politics in the Dutch Golden Age, Amsterdam Studies in the Dutch Golden Age, Amsterdam 2018, Genealogical Table 1-2, p. 42 and pp. 420-421.
77. Nationaal Archief (National Archives), access no. 3.19.41, Collected papers, from the Van Reede van Oudtshoorn Family, 1321-1902, inv. no. 152, Stukken betreffende den bouw van een kerk, schoolhuis en pastorie te Oudshoorn. 1662-1672, Memoerie vande Oncosten vande kerck van Sgravenlant, with an itemized list of the wooden components of the roof, c. 1659. Meta Döbken, “De ontstaansgeschiedenis”, De kerk te Oudshoorn, Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, pp. 7-19: 16, refered to the existence of this document but did not specify any details.
78. See note 16:, Memorie vande Oncoosten…”, c. 1659.
79. Pieter Vlaardingerbroek, “De stadsarchitect Daniel Stalpaert (1648-1676): ontwerper of projectmanager?”, Maandblad Amstelodamum 97 (2010), p. 53-61; Gea van Essen, “Daniel Stalpaert (1615-1676) stadsarchitect van Amsterdam en de Amsterdamse stadsfabriek in de periode 1647 tot 1676”, Bulletin KNOB 99 (2000), pp. 101-120; Gea van Essen, Het stadsfabriekambt. De organisatie van de publieke werken in de noordelijke Nederlanden in de zeventiende eeuw, Utrecht 2011.
80. Pieter Vlaaardingerbroek, Het paleis van de Republiek. Geschiedenis van het stadhuis van Amsterdam, Zwolle 2011, p. 99, 129-135.
81. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1492, f. 353r-v.
82. Vlaardingerbroek, Paleis (see note 19), p. 99, 134. A fine of 600 guilders was payable for missing the delivery date.
83. See: Jaap Evert Abrahamse, Heidi Deneweth, Menne Kosian en Erik Schmitz, “Gouden kansen? Vastgoedstrategiën van bouwondernemers in de stadsuitleg van Amsterdam in de Gouden Eeuw”, Bulletin KNOB 114 (2015), pp. 229-257.
84. SAA, access no. 5061, Archieven van de Schout en Schepenen, van de Schepenen en van de Subalterne Rechtbanken (Archive of the Sherriff and Aldermen, of the Aldermen and of the Subaltern Courts), inv. no. 2169, f. 69r. The mutual purchase becomes evident from the settlement of the estate: SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1492, f. 305v. The Jonkerstraat largely disappeared in the renovation of the neighbourhood, by then decrepit, around 1930; Jonkerstraat 43 was demolished in 1930. Transfers of ownership (Eigendomsoverdrachten) for Jonkerstraat 43 (Verponding 1734: Wijk 10, nr. 2725): SAA, access no. 5061, Archieven van de Schout en Schepenen, inv. no. 2169, f. 69r (29-9-1656); SAA, access no. 5066, Archief van de Schepenen: register van willige decreten van het Hof van Holland (registry of all the decrees of the Court of Holland), inv. no. 227, f. 203r-204r (22-7-1669); SAA, access no. 5062, Archief van de schepenen: kwijtscheldingsregisters (real estate sales registers), inv. no. 84, f. 206v-207r (16-10-1710); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 158, f. 11v-12v (11-2-1784).(Treasurers Extraordinary)
85. SAA, access no. 5044, Archief van de Thesaurieren Extraordinaris, inv. no. 282, f. 17r.
86. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1492, f. 305v.
87. Lotte van de Pol, Het Amsterdamse hoerdom. Prostitutie in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw, Amsterdam 1996, pp. 96-98.
88. SAA, access no. 5061, Archieven van de Schout en Schepenen, inv. no. 2120, f. 155v (RemDoc 1658/3); SAA, access no. 5044, Thesaurieren Extraordinaris (Treasurers Extraordinary), inv. no. 281, f. 154r.
89. Van Essen 2000 (see note 18), p. 115, Van Essen 2011 (see note 18) pp. 43-44.
90. Auction: SAA, access no. 5039, Archief van de Thesaurieren Ordinaris (Treasurers Extraordinary), inv. no. 555, f. 6r-7v (lots A10-A13). Houses: SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1492, f. 305r. The Grote Kattenburgerstraat disappeared during the city renewal of the 1960s. The houses nos. 8-10 were demolished in November 1945, no. 14 in January 1950 and no. 6 in February 1966. Transfers of ownership Grote Kattenburgerstraat 6 (Verponding 1734: Wijk (District) 16, no. 350): SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters (real estate sales registers), inv. no. 51, f. 141r (16-6-1661); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 55, f. 67v-68v (11-10-1667); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 128, f. 123v-124r (18-7-1754); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 171, f. 263v (15-12-1797); SAA, access no. 5061, Archieven van de Schout en Schepenen, inv. no. 2181, f. 123v (24-1-1810). Transfers of ownership Grote Kattenburgerstraat 8 (Verponding 1734: Wijk 16, nr. 349): SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 51, f. 141v (16-6-1661); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 53, f. 135v (2-11-1661); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 151, f. 144v-145v (28-10-1777); Eigendomsoverdrachten Grote Kattenburgerstraat 10 (Verponding 1734: Wijk 16, nr. 348): SAA, access no. 5061, Archieven van de Schout en Schepenen, inv. no. 2172, f. 244r (24-7-1685); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 65, f. 20v-21r (12-3-1687); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 84, f. 265r (16-5-1710); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 106, f. 1r-v (8-1-1732); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 147, f. 26r-27r (30-6-1773); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 170, f. 289v (25-10-1796). Transfers of ownership Grote Kattenburgerstraat 12 (Verponding 1734: Wijk 16, nr. 347): SAA, access no. 5067, Archief van de Schepenen: register van afschrijvingen bij de willige decreten, inv. no. 23, f. 170r (1-4-1678); SAA, access no. 5066, willige decreten Hof van Holland, inv. no. 34, f. 191r-192v (1-4-1678); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 74, f. 101v (27-8-1700); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 93, f. 141r-v (28-4-1719); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 98, f. 341v (9-11-1724); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 112, f. 3v (28-1-1738); SAA, 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 134, f. 254v-255r (27-8-1760); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 163, f. 372v-373 r (17-7-1798). Transfers of Ownership Grote Kattenburgerstraat 14 (Verponding 1734: Wijk 16, nr. 346): SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 75, f. 135r-136r (11-5-1701); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 102, f. 381r-v (8-10-1728); SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters, inv. no. 198, f. 301r-304r (20-11-1810).
91. Döbken, Ontstaansgeschiedenis (see note 16), pp. 7-19: 16; Van Reede van Oudtshoorn papers (see note 16).
92. SAA, access no. 5039, Thesaurieren Ordinaris (Treasurers Ordinary), inv. no. 555, f. 14r (lot A 26).
93. SAA, access no. 5044, Thesaurieren Extraordinaris (Treasurers Extraordinary), inv. no. 226, pp. 325-326. On 6-12-1660 one of the houses was rented out; SAA access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 3069, f. 276v-277r.
94. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1492, f. 305r.
95. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1492, f. 309v, 310v en 311v.
96. SAA, access no. 5001, doop-, trouw- en begraafboeken (baptism, marriage and burial books), inv. no. 1055, blad f. 125v.
97. In the Verpondingsregister (tax on real estate) of 1659-1661 he is not mentioned as owner, SAA, access no. 5044, Thesaurieren Extraordinaris (Treasurers Extraordinary), inv. no. 282, f. 209v-210.
98. Jaap Evert Abrahamse, De grote uitleg van Amsterdam. Stadsontwikkeling in de zeventiende eeuw, Bussum 2010, pp. 236-237.
99. Marriage banns of Coop Roeloffss [Hoijer] of Dwingeloo, baker’s apprentice, living in the Dirk van Hasseltssteeg, 29 years old, and Trijntje Jans of Solingen, SAA, access no. 5001, doop-, trouw- en begraafboeken (baptism, marriage and burial books), inv. no. 464, p. 307 (23 March 1647); Hoijer was buried on 10 July 1664 together with his niece or close relative Annetje Roelofs, residing in the house “op de cuijp” by the Engelsesteeg; SAA, access no. 5001, doop-, trouw- en begraafboeken (baptism, marriage and burial books), inv. no. 1055, f. 151v. Marriage banns of Jan Roeloffs [Boldingh] of Dwingeloo, baker’s apprentice, 32 years old, living in the Dirk van Hasseltssteeg, and Marrittie Abrahams, SAA, access no. 5001, doop-, trouw- en begraafboeken, inv. no. 467, p. 464 (19 February 1650). Boldingh probably acquired citizenship on 28 April 1651 as a baker from Coevorden; SAA, access no. 5033, Archief van de Burgemeesters (Burgomasters’ archive): poorterboeken (citizenship books), inv. no. 2, Register van gekochte poorters (Registry of citizens by purchase), p. 482. He is still mentioned on 7 May 1675; SAA, access no. 5063, Archief van de Schepenen: register van schepenkennissen (Archive of the Alderman, register of debt documents), inv.no. 54, f. 32v.
100. In October 1666 it was said of the portion of heir Willemtie Wessels: “But seeing as this estate is burdened with many and large debts, it is uncertainfor Willemtie Wessels, having already spent her advance inheritance, that anything will be left after covering all the debts. (Maer alsoo desen boedel noch met vele en groote schulden belast, en onsecker is, datter voor Willemtie Wessels, haer prelegaet alreede wech hebbende, iet boven de voldoeninge van alle schulden zal overschieten) een; SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1493, f. 158r. On 1-5-1663 it was said of heir Jan Hendricxen Wiltingh that he “possessed very little means” (“seer weijnich middelen heeft”); SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1491, p. 578. When he left for East India, he owed Boltingh and his wife the amount of 631 guilders, 3 stivers and 8 pennies; SAA access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv.nr 1492, f. 353v-354r).
101. Report: SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1493, f. 154v-156v.
102. As “testamentaire vooghden over de nagelatene erfgenamen van Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh”, this would imply that also Willemtie Wessels was still a minor in 1661; SAA, access no. 5062, Archief van de Schepenen: kwijtscheldingsregisters (Archive of the Aldermen, real estate sales registers), inv. no. 23, f. 135v.
103. On 1 May 1663 both Boldingh and Hoeijer are mentioned as guardians and administrators of their nephew (“neve”) Jan Hendricxen Wiltingh; SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv. no. 1491, p. 578. In his last will of 30 July 1665 Jan Hendricxen Wiltingh appointed his cousin (“neve”) Boldingh as his heir. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv.nr 1492, f. 352v. Most likely, Jan Hendricxen Wiltingh was a son of a brother of Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh and a sister of Boldingh en Hoijer, though we should keep in mind that “neve” at the time also referred to other close relatives.
104. SAA, access no. 5075, Notarissen (Notaries), inv.nr 1492, f. 352v; Dutch Asiatic Shipping (DAS), voyage 1035.1.
105. Debora Bolding was the widow of Johannes Paschen. minister at Dwingeloo; SAA, access no. 5062, kwijtscheldingsregisters (real estate sales registers), inv. no. 75, f. 135r-136r. Her marriage banns in Amsterdam, with Boldingh as a witness: SAA, access no. 5001, doop-, trouw- en begraafboeken (baptism, marriage and burial books), inv. no. 501, p.32 (6 October 1674).
106. Gary Schwartz, De grote Rembrandt, Zwolle 2006, pp. 197-213, esp. 207-213.
107. H.F. Wijnman, “Rembrandt’s portret van Catrina Hoogsaet”, Uit de kring van Rembrandt en Vondel, Amsterdam 1959, pp. 19-38.
108. Peter C. Sutton, Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Leiden 1606 – 1669 Amsterdam). Portrait of a Man with Arms Akimbo, New York (undated) [2011], pp. 9, 11. For an alternative reading of the dress, as historicizing, see: Jacquelyn Coutré, Rembrandt van Rijn’s Portrait of a Man with Arms Akimbo. Kingston 2016 (pdf: downloadable at: https://agnes.queensu.ca/product/rembrandt-van-rijns-portrait-of-a-man-with-arms-akimbo/).
109. Ernst van de Wetering, Rembrandt’s paintings revised. A complete survey, Dordrecht 2017, pp. 646-647, no. 261, Portrait of a Man with Arms Akimbo; Sutton [2011] (see note 46), pp. 4-5.
110. Volker Manuth, Marieke de Winkel and Rudie van Leeuwen, Rembrandt: The complete paintings, Cologne 2019, pp. 610, 633.
111. Writing in 1915, Frits Lugt refers to Menasseh as Rembrandt’s “intimate and highly esteemed friend [intieme en hooggeschatte vriend]” (Wandelingen met Rembrandt in en om Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1915, p. 87). More recently, Christian Tümpel claims that Rembrandt and Menasseh “formed a friendship that lasted more than two decades” (Rembrandt: Images and Metaphors, London 2006, p. 109), while Simon Schama says that “the relationship with Menasseh was real and it was serious” (Rembrandt’s Eyes, New York 1999, p. 607). This is, in fact, a very common view. Henri van de Waal, for example, describes “a firm and lasting relationship between the artist who showed such an interest in the Jews and the ‘apostle to the Gentiles’ [i.e., Menasseh]” (“Rembrandt’s Radierungen zur Piedra Gloriosa des Menasseh ben Israel”, Imprimatur: Jahrbuch für Bücherfreunde 12 (1954–1955), pp. 52-61). For biographies of Menasseh, see Cecil Roth, A Life of Menasseh ben Israel: Rabbi, Printer, and Diplomat, 2nd ed., Philadelphia 1945; Lionel Ifrah, L’Aigle d’Amsterdam: Menasseh ben Israel (1604-1657), Paris 2001; Adri Offenberg, “Menasseh ben Israel (1604-1657): A Biographical Sketch”, Menasseh ben Israel Instituut Studies 6 (2011); and Steven Nadler, Menasseh ben Israel: Rabbi of Amsterdam, New Haven 2018.
112. See Roth, A Life (see note 1), p. 169; Gary Schwartz, Rembrandt. His Life, His Paintings, New York 1985, p. 175; Reiner Hausherr, “Zur Menetekel-Inschrift auf Rembrandts Belsazarbild”, Oud Holland 78 (1963), pp. 142–49; and Schama, Rembrandt’s Eyes (see note 1), p. 418.
113. Oil on panel, 19 x 15 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (SK-A-3982).
114. Edmé-François Gersaint, Catalogue raisonné de toutes les pièces qui forment l’oeuvre de Rembrandt, Paris 1751, p. 195.
115. Jasper Hillegers says that “Gersaint, it emerges, based his conclusion specifically on existing information about Rembrandt’s oeuvre”; see “A Painter Goes to the Rabbi: Rembrandt and Menasseh ben Israel”, in Epco Runia and David DeWitt, eds., Rembrandt’s Social Network: Family, Friends and Acquaintances, exhibition catalog from the Museum Het Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam 2018, pp. 113–117 (p. 115). And Stephanie Dickey notes that Gersaint visited Amsterdam in 1702, which could have been the occasion for him to pick up anecdotal information about Rembrandt and his sitters; see “A Network in Line: Rembrandt’s Portrait Etchings”, in Runia and De Witt, Rembrandt’s Social Network, Amsterdam, 2019, pp. 53–59 (p. 55n5). For an assessment of Gersaint’s reasoning, see S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, “Rembrandt en Menasseh ben Israel”, Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis 93 (1994), pp. 22–29; Dudok van Heel rejects the Menasseh identification. Adri Offenberg argues that it is “highly unlikely” that Menasseh would have commissioned a portrait etching from Rembrandt in 1636, given his “dire financial straits” (“Nogmaals Rembrandt en de rabbijn—rabbijn?”, Vrij Nederland, 15 August 1992, p. 6). Gary Schwartz finds it inconceivable that Rembrandt would not have given a book to a sitter who was not only a scholar and a rabbi but a publisher/printer (The Rembrandt Book, New York 2006, p. 302). For the literature on the debate, see Erik Hinterding, Rembrandt Etchings from the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., Bussum and Paris 2008, vol. 1, pp. 473–475.
116. Erik Hinterding and Jaco Rutgers, Rembrandt, 7 vols., The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, 1450-1700, Ouderkerk aan den Ijssel and Amsterdam 2013, vol. 2, p. 3. Hinterding and Rutgers say that “the traditional identification seems not less speculative than the more recently proposed ones”; but we believe that what they mean is that the traditional identification as Menasseh is not more speculative than alternative ones. Of course, if all the identifications are equally speculative, then there is no warrant for claiming that one is more probable than another.
117. Hinterding, Rembrandt Etchings (see note 5), vol. 1, p. 474.
118. Oil on canvas, 167.6 x 209.2 cm., National Gallery, London. The suggestion of a Rembrandt–Menasseh collaboration on this painting was first made by Johannes Dyserinck, “Eene Hebreeuwsche inscriptie op eene schilderij van Rembrandt”, De Nederlandsche Spectator 49 (1904), pp. 160–61. The argument was expanded by Reiner Hausherr, “Zur Menetekel-Inschrift” (see note 2); and the thesis has since become a commonplace in the literature.
119. See Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, 22a; Midrash Rabbah, Song of Songs, III.4.ii.
120. Menasseh ben Israel, De Termino Vitae, Amsterdam 1639, p. 160.
121. The dating by art historians ranges from 1635 to 1639.
122. Michael Zell notes that Protestant and Catholic exegetes generally avoided the issue of the unreadability of the message “by assuming that God had blinded them to the prophecy”, and concludes that “Rembrandt therefore most likely learned the sequence from Menasseh” (Reframing Rembrandt: Jews and the Christian Image in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam, Berkeley 2002, p. 62); on the dating issue, Zell suggests that “Menasseh might well have written out the inscription in this [vertical] arrangement for Rembrandt before the book appeared” (p. 62). Shelley Perlove and Larry Silver regard a collaboration here as “most likely” (Rembrandt’s Faith: Church and Temple in the Dutch Golden Age, University Park, PA 2009, p. 134), while Schama says that Menasseh “almost certainly supplied the painter with the additionally esoteric effect of having the Hebrew/Aramaic letters read in vertical columns rather than horizontally from right to left” (Rembrandt’s Eyes [see note 1], p. 418). Schwartz initially says that, with respect to this painting, “we must assume that Rembrandt derived his information directly from Menasseh” (Rembrandt [see note 2], p. 175). In subsequent work, however, he is more skeptical that Rembrandt received any Jewish help here (Gary Schwartz, The Rembrandt Book, New York 2006, pp. 301–2); and eventually he outright rejects the idea that Menasseh had any involvement in Rembrandt’s painting, arguing that the Hebrew error in the inscription (a zayin instead of a final nun) would never have passed muster if Menasseh had been his advisor (Gary Schwartz, “Rembrandt’s Hebrews”, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 51 (2009), pp. 33–38 [pp. 35–36]). The authors of the exhibition catalogue The “Jewish” Rembrandt, in keeping with the general tenor of their study, are equally suspicious, saying that “it is not certain that Rembrandt had personal contact with Menasseh in relation to the Hebrew inscription on ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’”; see Miriam Alexander-Knotter, Jasper Hillegers, Edward van Voolen and Gary Schwartz, The “Jewish” Rembrandt: The Myth Unravelled, Zwolle and Amsterdam 2006, p. 20. See, likewise, Jasper Hillegers, “A Painter Goes to the Rabbi” (see note 5).
123. Menasseh ben Israel, Even Yekarah. Piedra Gloriosa o de la Estatua de Nebuchadnesar, Amsterdam 1655, p. 25. Accessible online: https://cf.uba.uva.nl/en/collections/rosenthaliana/menasseh/20c14/index.html
124. Menasseh ben Israel, Piedra Gloriosa (see note 13), p. 139.
125. Menasseh ben Israel, Piedra Gloriosa (see note 13), p. 176.
126. Menasseh ben Israel, Piedra Gloriosa (see note 13), p. 102.
127. Menasseh ben Israel, Piedra Gloriosa (see note 13), pp. 164–165.
128. Menasseh’s interpretation of these verses from Daniel take up the final ten sections of Piedra Gloriosa (pp. 186–259).
129. Menasseh ben Israel, Piedra Gloriosa (see note 13), pp. v–vi.
130. Hillegers, for one, reads Menasseh here as saying that he made the etchings himself; “A Painter Goes to the Rabbi” (see note 5), p. 116.
131. As far as we can determine, there are at least twenty-three extant copies of Piedra Gloriosa. Fourteen of these copies do not have any of Rembrandt’s illustrations; of those fourteen, ten do not have any illustrations at all. But we can confirm that there are seven copies of the book that have all four Rembrandt illustrations bound within their covers, and another two copies that almost certainly had them. On this, see Steven Nadler, “Rembrandt and the Illustrations for Menasseh ben Israel’s Piedra Gloriosa (1655): A Reckoning”, Studia Rosenthaliana 47 (2021), pp. 27–47.
132. It seems to have been Gersaint who first suggested that Rembrandt and Menasseh collaborated on “un Livre Espagnol“; Catalogue raisonné (see note 4), p. 22. There is substantial literature on Rembrandt’s four etchings themselves. For discussion of them with regard to their aesthetic dimensions, their composition, and their development over the various states, as well as what they might (or might not) say about Rembrandt’s “faith” and his approach to the Book of Daniel, see Zell, Reframing Rembrandt (see note 12), pp. 72-84; Perlove and Silver, Rembrandt’s Faith (see note 12), pp. 134–137; and Laurence Sigal-Klagsbald, ed., Rembrandt et la Nouvelle Jérusalem: Juifs et Chrétiens à Amsterdam au Siècle d’Or, exhibition catalogue, Paris 2007, pp. 318–323.
133. Franz Landsberger, Rembrandt, the Jews and the Bible, Philadelphia 1946, p. 35. Later in his essay, Landsberger says “that these etchings ever appeared in the Manasseh book, as is generally assumed, is subject to doubt” (p. 98).
134. Tümpel, Rembrandt (see note 1), p. 109. For the claim that there was a true collaboration on Piedra Gloriosa, see also Van de Waal, “Rembrandt’s Radierungen” (see note 1); Perlove and Silver, Rembrandt’s Faith (see note 12), p. 134; Sigal-Klagsbald, Rembrandt et la Nouvelle Jérusalem (see note 22), p. 319; and Steven Nadler, Rembrandt’s Jews, Chicago 2003, p. 137, among many other sources. Henri Méchoulan says that “le rabbin s’est adressé tout naturellement à Rembrandt, non seulement parce qu’il est le plus grand artiste de son temps, mais parce qu’il sait que le peintre lit la Bible sans commentaire étranger”; see “Introduction” in Menasseh ben Israel, De la fragilité humaine et de l’inclination de l’homme au péché, Paris 1996, pp. 7–71 (p. 24). Méchoulan also suggests that Menasseh commissioned the illustrations from Rembrandt for his book “pour lui donner plus de poids, pour montrer au monde la catholicité de son message”; see “Esquisse d’un portrait présumé de Menasseh Ben Israël à travers quelques dédicaces”, in Sigal-Klagsbald, Rembrandt et la Nouvelle Jérusalem (see note 22), pp. 73–81 (p. 79). Even those who tend to be skeptical or highly conservative about a Rembrandt–Menasseh relationship tend to make an exception for this project for example, Schwartz, The Rembrandt Book (see note 12), p. 301.
135. Thus F. J. Dubiez says “dat Menasseh hier aandeel in zou hebben gehad kan beter zo snel mogelijk worden vergeten”; see: “Drie beeldende kunstenaars en drie rabbijnen te Amsterdam in de zeventiende eeuw”, Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis 91 (1992), pp. 23–29 (p. 28). Likewise, Offenberg, “Nogmaals Rembrandt en de rabbijn—rabbijn?” (see note 5), p. 23; and Alexander-Knotter et al., The “Jewish” Rembrandt (see note 12), pp. 24–26.
136. This, at least, is the explanation provided by F. F. Blok, Isaac Vossius and His Circle, Leiden 2000, p. 419. Hinterding reviews the differences in the ways in which the prints are cut and bound into the different volumes; see Rembrandt Etchings (see note 5), vol. 1, p. 84.
137. Nadler was formerly skeptical of a direct collaboration, and offered an alternative account involving Isaac Vossius and Jan Six, in Menasseh ben Israel (see note 1), Appendix. However, persuaded by arguments by Victor Tiribás and Gary Schwartz, he no longer believes that complicated hypothesis to be plausible.
138. Some of the etchings exist in three to five states. For a detailed study, see Eugène Dutuit, L’Oeuvre complet de Rembrandt, 2 vols., Paris 1883, vol. 1, pp. 83–87; and Hinterding and Rutgers, Rembrandt (see note 6), vol. 3, pp. 116–123, vol. 2, pp. 248–251.
139. Hinterding notes that “there was no doubt that the artist was given instructions during the execution”, although he also says that “we do not know for certain who the client was”; Rembrandt Etchings (see note 5), vol. 1, p. 83.
140. Offenberg, “Nogmaals Rembrandt en de rabbijn—rabbijn?” (see note 5).
141. These are detailed throughout Nadler, Menasseh ben Israel (see note 1).
142. Stadsarchief Amsterdam 334: Archief van de Portugees-Israëlitische Gemeente, no. 19 (“Ascamot A”), fol. 356; accessible online at: https://archief.amsterdam/inventarissen/scans/334/5.1.1.1.1/start/220/limit/10/highlight/2
143. 25 December 1655; Walter L. Strauss and Marjon van der Meulen, The Rembrandt Documents, New York 1979, p. 334. Accessible online at: http://remdoc.huygens.knaw.nl/#/document/remdoc/e14171
144. Dickey, “A Network in Line” (see note 5), p. 53.
145. See Erik Hinterding, Ger Luijten and Martin Royalton-Kisch, Rembrandt the Printmaker, Chicago and London 2000, p. 324, for the suggestion that possibly Rembrandt “made the plate out of friendship for the author, as his services would otherwise have been beyond the rabbi’s financial reach.”
146. Our thanks to David DeWitt and the other editors of the Kroniek for these latter two suggestions.
147. Schwartz, “Rembrandt’s Hebrews” (see note 12); Alexander-Knotter et al., The “Jewish” Rembrandt (see note 12).
148. Nadler, Menasseh ben Israel (see note 1), pp. 87–88.
149. Oil on canvas, 176 x 201 cm., Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (828L; Bredius 409).
150. Bartsch 272.
151. Rembrandt had married Uylenburgh’s cousin Saskia in 1634. On the connection between the Anslo family and Uylenburg, see Friso Lammertse and Jaap van der Veen, Uylenburgh & Son. Art and Commerce from Rembrandt to De Lairesse, Zwolle and Amsterdam 2006, p. 22.
152. Isaac Vossius to Nicolas Heinsius, 8 July 1651, in Pieter Burmann, ed., Sylloge Epistolarum a viris illustribus scriptarum, 5 vols., Leiden 1727, vol. 3, pp. 617–18. Thanks to Geert Mak for bringing this letter to our attention.
153. This was the theory suggested in Nadler, Menasseh ben Israel (see note 1), Appendix, but no longer seems very plausible.
154. Blok, Isaac Vossius (see note 26), p. 417.
155. See Blok, Isaac Vossius (see note 26), p. 418. Blok suggests, in fact, that Vossius did not even read the book in its entirety.
156. See, for example, Menasseh ben Israel, Piedra Gloriosa (see note 13), p. 87.
157. Salom Italia is the author of an engraving that may be our only authentic portrait of Menasseh.
158. The catalog of Italia’s work by M. Narkiss does include four engravings for Menasseh’s book; see “The Oeuvre of the Jewish Engraver Salom Italia” [Hebrew], Tarbiz 25 (1956), pp. 441-451; 26 (1957), pp. 87-101. However, the most recent literature on Italia does not mention them at all; see, for example, Sharon Assaf and Emily D. Bilski, Salom Italia’s Esther Scrolls and the Dutch Golden Age, Amsterdam 2011.
159. This was first suggested by Israel Solomons, “The Second Series of Illustrations for the Piedra Gloriosa of Menasseh ben Israel”, The Jewish Chronicle, 27 July 1906, pp. 31–40. See also Landsberger, Rembrandt, the Jews and the Bible (see note 23), and Van de Waal, “Rembrandt’s Radierungen” (see note 1).
160. On the four states of this etching, see Hinterding and Rutgers, Rembrandt (see note 6), vol. 2, pp. 250–251.
161. Menasseh ben Israel, Piedra Gloriosa (see note 13), p. vi.
162. Menasseh ben Israel, Piedra Gloriosa (see note 13), p. 254.
163. Yet another hypothesis that has been floated is that the substitution was all just a practical matter, with “Italia’s” copperplate engravings ultimately better suited for reproducible book illustration. See Ludwig Münz, Rembrandt’s Etchings, 2 vols., N. Maclaren, trans., London 1952, vol. 2, p. 89; and Offenberg, “Menasseh ben Israel” (see note 1), p. 23.
164. Stadsarchief Amsterdam 334: Archief van de Portugees-Israëlitische Gemeente, no. 19 (“Ascamot A”), fol. 386; accessible online at https://archief.amsterdam/inventarissen/inventaris/334.nl.html#A01504000002, scan #237. We first published the document, with an account of its background, in Steven Nadler and Victor Tiribás, “Jewish Censorship of Menasseh ben Israel’s Piedra Gloriosa”, Jewish Quarterly Review 111 (2021), pp. 323–334.
165. The translation is by Tiribás. For the original Portuguese text, see Nadler and Tiribás, “Jewish Censorship” (see note 54). The “discovery” of the document was made by Tiribás.
166. After Tiribás transcribed this document for the Jewish Quarterly Review article, we learned that a full transcription of volume 1 of the Libro dos Acordos, by Maxim P. A. M. Kerkhof, had just been published by the Cátedra de Estudos Sefarditas “Alberto Benveniste”, Universidade de Lisboa 2018-2019. The transcription, however, is missing a number of documents, and is not always reliable.
167. See Nadler, Menasseh ben Israel (see note 1), pp. 102–5.
168. Nadler, Menasseh ben Israel (see note 1), pp. 54–57.
169. We examine the circumstances of the censorship in greater detail in Nadler and Tiribás, “Jewish Censorship” (see note 54).
170. There seems to be a scholarly tradition that the extant copies of Menasseh’s book that contain the “Salom Italia” illustrations represent a second edition. See, for example, Van de Waal, “Rembrandt’s Radierungen” (see note 1), p. 111. Tümpel claims that this second edition came out after Menasseh’s death in 1657; Rembrandt (see note 1), p. 114. Dutuit, on the other hand, recognized early on that there was only one edition; L’Oeuvre complet de Rembrandt (see note 28), vol. 1, p. 87. On this, see Nadler, “Rembrandt and the Illustrations for Menasseh ben Israel’s Piedra Gloriosa” (see note 21).
171. Our thanks to Gary Schwartz for his suggestions on matters related to this article.