On Monday, 19 December 2022, at the age of 66, drs. Ger Luijten, art historian and director of the Fondation Custodia in Paris, very suddenly passed away. With his death, the art historical world has lost not only a particularly amicable person, but also an important connoisseur and champion. The Rembrandt House collaborated with Ger and his team in Paris on various projects; driven by a mutual love of works on paper, old as well as new. But also in his earlier role as Head of the Print Collection at the Rijksmuseum, the Rembrandt House could always count on Ger’s enthusiastic and generous collaboration, arising from a powerful drive to share art with others.

After completing his studies in Art History at Utrecht University, Ger embarked on his museum career in 1987 at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, where he served until 1990 as research assistant for the Rotterdam collection of prints and drawings. He left for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to become Chief Curator of prints of the Rijksprentenkabinet, where in 2001 he was appointed Head of the Print Collection. Exhibitions he produced during this period on drawings and prints of the 16^th and 17^th centuries yielded important catalogues such as Dawn of the Golden Age. Northern Netherlandish Art, 1580-1620 and Mirror of Everyday Life: Genre Prints in the Netherlands, 1550-1700. As part of his work in explaining and sharing the art of printmaking, Ger also played an important role as editor of catalogues of oeuvres of Dutch and Flemish printmakers who appeared in the Hollstein series. He served on the editorial boards of scholarly periodicals, including Simiolus. And he was closely involved, as board member, in activities and developments at the RKD and the Vereniging Rembrandt.

Collaboration between Ger and the Rembrandt House mostly took place during his early years as director of the Fondation Custodia. In 2010 Ger succeeded the retired Mària van Berge-Gerbaud as director, and for the twelve ensuing years Ger devoted himself with heart and soul to the foundation that administers the legacy of Frits Lugt, and to the staff that cares every day for this important Dutch collection in Paris. The collection of the Fondation is linked to that of the Rembrandt House Museum thanks to the presence of work by Rembrandt. Besides works by many other artists, Frits Lugt acquired a considerable number of prints by Rembrandt, of extraordinary quality. And at the same time also a large group of drawings, plus no less than two handwritten letters by the master. In 2010/11 the Rembrandt House Museum and Fondation Custodia dedicated an exhibition to Frits Lugt and his collection, entitled Kabinet van een kenner (Un cabinet particulier / A connoisseur’s cabinet). And in 2012 the Fondation and the Rembrandt House were two of the three venues to present selections of drawings from the collection of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, on the occasion of the completion of a comprehensive collection catalogue of this German collection of Netherlandish works on paper.  

Besides a fascination for Rembrandt, our institutions also share a love of contemporary graphic art. Both the Rembrandt House and Fondation own a substantial collection of work by contemporary graphic artists – more specifically etchers, whose work is indebted to Rembrandt. In collaboration with the Hercules Segers Foundation and on the initiative of former Rembrandt House director Ed de Heer many exhibitions of these graphic artists were presented. Under Mària van Berge-Gerbaud the Fondation had already joined this initiative. Upon his appointment Ger continued with it and in 2013 the two museums organized the exhibition Peter Vos. Metamorfosen. When new leadership of the Rembrandt House decided in 2017 to take leave of these monographic exhibitions, Ger continued with renewed passion. In recent years he opened the Paris venue for graphic artists Anna Metz and Siemen Dijkstra, among others.

Ger’s love of the arts, and in particular for art that is refined and poetic, found expression not only in important exhibitions and publications but also in personal contact with others. Enthusiastic, and drawing on vast knowledge, Ger always knew how to clarify what art has to say. The gift of conveying knowledge and passion made him a great teacher of young art historians and everyone who worked with him. The memories of Ger’s inspiring personality, but also of visits to the Fondation, where Ger toured us through the museum and his new collection of “sublime” oil sketches, will always remain with us.

Leonore van Sloten, Senior Curator, Rembrandt House Museum

Portraiture evidently suited Jan Lievens (1607-1674) well. His earliest independent work, according to Jan Jacobsz Orlers (1570-1646), was a likeness of his mother that earned him immediate local fame.¹ Later, Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) encouraged the young Lievens in the same direction. Despite his initial misgivings, Lievens produced a striking and memorable likeness of the Stadholder’s secretary, even evoking his preoccupied state of mind (fig. 2).² It was certainly the right specialty for his subsequent move to London (1632), where Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) was kept busy with portrait commissions. Lievens did not break through the market there, however, and proceeded to Antwerp (1634). He evidently sought courtly patronage, such as he later achieved with commissions in The Hague and Berlin³. Recently, a portrait has resurfaced that strongly suggests that he did achieve at least one high-level commission for a portrait painting during his nine years in the city on the Scheldt.

A Rediscovered Portrait

In November 2020, a bust-length portrait of a mature man in near profile appeared in a mixed sale in Vienna, as from the “Circle of Bartholomeus van der Helst” (fig. 1).⁴ This was not an overestimation, as the high quality of the work was evident, but it was nonetheless inaccurate. The handling displays none of the smooth and broad application typical of Van der Helst, nor his typical dynamism of sweeping lines. Closer inspection reveals a remarkable, even dazzling range of textural effects, especially in the frizzy hair but also in the skin, beard stubble, and fabric. These are choregraphed to enhance the sitter’s presence, in a grand presentation closely aligned with the work of a different Dutch artist, namely Jan Lievens, and more specifically that of his Antwerp period, from 1634 to 1644. It was purchased at the sale by David and Michelle Berrong-Bader and was cleaned by Michel van de Laar, revealing minor losses, and the possible remnants of a monogram (fig. 3). This striking painting is currently on loan to the Rembrandt House Museum.

It is perhaps not very surprising that this work went largely unrecognized at the sale, as there are no directly comparable painted portraits by Lievens from the same period. Instead the most relevant paintings are found among Lievens’s tronies from the period, most significantly the Old Man in Schwerin (fig. 4), with its striking rendering of a full beard in layers of fine strokes in opaque paint, some of it dragged⁵ This striking technique employs physical texture, known as kenlijkheid,⁶. to catch the eye and draws these lines forward, conjuring an open, nest-like structure for the beard. It provides a direct parallel to the handing of the hair at the side of the head in the Bader-Berrong painting (figs. 5, 6). The effect is enhanced by the use of black, grey, white and ochre for the various layers of depth. We already see a leadup in the colour play of cool greys and ochres in Lievens’s signal and final masterpiece in Leiden, the Job on the Dungheap of 1631, now in Ottawa,

⁷ and the closely related Penitent Magdalene in the Bader Collection at Queen’s University in Kingston.⁸ These brilliant technical experiments carried out in friendly competition with Rembrandt in Leiden, until 1631, still echo around six years later in the newly resurfaced portrait.

At the same time, the impact of Anthony van Dyck’s portraiture studied in London and Antwerp also reveals itself. The gently undulating surface and fluid, sweeping contours of the collar and edges of folds of the jerkin depart from the stiff solidity of the Leiden years, witnessed in the Huygens portrait. We see this development already in Lievens’s drawn portrait of his friend and fellow artist in Antwerp, the still life specialist Jan Davidsz. de Heem (1606-1684: fig. 7).⁹ In his Head of an Old Man in New Orleans, which bears a monogram and date of 1640, Lievens appears to have gone even further in adopting Van Dyck’s manner (fig. 8).¹⁰ He has moved further away from the flamboyant textural effects of his Leiden years, and towards a smoother idealization of the figure. Even accounting for possible wear, the beard and hair no longer show the prickly, toothy effect of the webs of thin opaque dragged strokes in the Schwerin and Bader-Berrong paintings; these can therefore be placed earlier. The soft and atmospheric handling approximates another male tronie, in the Bader Collection in Kingston, which must also date around 1640.¹¹

The date and place of a portrait often find reflection in the fashion represented. The most prominent element in the Bader-Berrong portrait is the broad, flat collar. It is largely the same as worn in several portraits drawn by Lievens in Antwerp around 1636/37, including that of Jan Davidsz. de Heem (fig. 7), and of Adriaen Brouwer (1603-1638). ¹² It is quite different from the lace collars that dominate elite male portraiture in Amsterdam and London in the second half of the 1630s. When Lievens portrayed Constantijn Huygens in a drawing on a visit to Leiden in 1639, it was, by contrast, in a lace collar.¹³ Yet it appears to have been a general preference for portrait representations in each location, and that behind the scenes, in real life, lace and flat collars were both worn in both locations. Marieke de Winkel speculates that the preference for flat collars in Antwerp portraits may even have been dictated by painters who saw the surface of the flat collar as better suited to the fluid lines and undulating surfaces characterizing local painting fashion in general and who may have been disinclined to labour over the details of lace.¹⁴

Lievens was himself otherwise not shy when it came to description of detail. He devoted special attention to the man’s striking jerkin peering out from under the collar. Liquid strokes of thin black and ochre paint describe a stiff textile with a reflective surface pattern, likely brocade. ¹⁵  The artist occasionally employed such strokes as part of his demonstrative mastery of brush and paint, as he did in the metallic trim on the front of the doublet of the young merchant Adriaen Trip, painted soon after Lievens moved to Amsterdam in 1644 (figs. 9 and 10).

The kind of imposing presentation in the Bader-Berrong painting was favoured by Lievens, as already observed by Huygens soon after he encountered the artist in a visit to Leiden in 1628.¹⁶ Wearing the shoes of the liefhebber, or art lover, the secretary to the stadholder was exercising powers of observation and analysis in the well-known passage of his autobiography contrasting Lievens’s inclinations with Rembrandt’s talent for conjuring grand emotions even in small figures. His characterization of Lievens was later echoed in the inscription on the print after Anthony van Dyck’s portrait of the artist: “Pictor Humanarvm Figvrarem Maiorvm”(Painter of Grand Human Figures).¹⁷

Already his earliest known paintings fill the frame with the subject. This can also be said of his first known formal portrait, depicting Huygens himself (fig. 2).¹⁸  He forms a stable and imposing pyramidal shape in the picture plane, with his rich black cloak billowing out to the right and left. The overall focus falls on the sharply defined eyes, with their fixed gaze to the right, emphasized by tonal contrast of iris against the whites of the eyes, and shadows cast by the light from the side.

Despite Huygens’s high praise, Lievens did not right away attract substantial commissions for painted portraits. An intriguing pen portrait of King Charles I may represent a fleeting high point of his stay in London, although Orlers claims he also painted a portrait of the British royal family.¹⁹

Commissions for painted portraits appear to have represented a threshold Lievens found difficult to cross in his first ventures outside the United Provinces. Only one example from the Antwerp period (1634-1644) was previously known, and it is notable for its eccentricity (fig. 11). Egidius Petrus de Morrion is shown peering through an illusionistic carved frame, bearing an illusionistic piece of paper identifying the sitter and claiming an astonishing age of 112 years. The cartouche is completed with the artist’s signature and a date of 1637. Strangely, we know nothing else about De Morrion. The Latinized first and second names (for Gillis and Pieter or Peter) strongly suggest a scholarly profile, and the man’s sharp gaze and smile evoke intellect and wit. It could be that he was portrayed for reasons other than his extreme age. But the portrait does not project high social or political status, and thus falls short of the court patronage ambitions that drew Lievens to London and Antwerp.

From the 1630s we mainly have drawn portraits, mostly of fellow artists. In Antwerp, he drew striking portraits of painters Adriaen Brouwer and Jan Davidsz. De Heem, who, judging by the inclusion of all three in Brouwer’s famous Smokers in New York, were his friends.²⁰ His portrait prints of these and other acquaintances, including flower painter Daniel Seghers, were inspired by Van Dyck’s series of famous men and women, the Iconography, and likely intended to form part of a similar series.²¹

Curiously, Lievens did manage to secure high level patronage for drawn portraits. In terms of characterization of the sitter, the work from these years most closely related to the Bader-Barrong portrait is a drawing of the military captain Hieronymus de Bran (in a lace collar, exceptionally: fig. 12).²² It appears to have been intended for inclusion in the Iconography.²³ The context must have been similar for both: a portrait of a man in a high political or military position, as their formal poses exude fortitude. The gold chain both men wear speaks of a gift of favour from a King or Emperor, usually awarded for service, often political or military but sometimes also literary or artistic. We do not see a medallion identifying the ruler. We also do not have any other attributes or clear connections leading to a specific identity for the handsome sitter here. It is tempting to look to Lievens’s most prominent commissions for history paintings in these years, but these were for the Jesuits, and were obtained through his father-in-law, a prominent Antwerp sculptor already working on the same projects.²⁴ An impressive drawn portrait of a man has been identified as Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (1585-1646), the noble collector who fled to Antwerp in the wake of the demise of Charles I.²⁵ The expressive head betrays a downcast sentiment, in line with his distressed situation in exile, in Antwerp, around 1643. By this time, Lievens was probably already looking to move on in search of patronage.

A comparably high social status is represented in the portrait now on loan to the Rembrandt House Museum. The sitter gazes slightly upwards, and seems to sets his sights on higher aspirations, probably more worldly than spiritual, as Lievens did. A similar, slightly elevated gaze occurs in Lievens’ portrait of Huygens (fig. 2) and subsequently in several tronies, in which the artist also experimented with a grand effect.²⁶ It reflected his image of himself as well. His confident attitude rubbed several people the wrong way, first of all Huygens himself, but also the Earl of Ancram (c. 1579-1655), who wrote with clear irritation at Lievens’s claim to be the best painter in all of Northern Europe.²⁷ Status mattered to Lievens, in ways it did not to his friend Rembrandt, who turned out one bourgeois portrait after another after arriving in Amsterdam. Around 1637, in Antwerp, Lievens evidently found his moment, and later in the Northern Netherlands he would indeed attract commissions, also for portraits, at the highest levels.

David de Witt is Senior Curator at The Rembrandt House Museum

My thanks to Stephanie Dickey for her careful reading of this article, and for her valuable insights and suggestions.

1. Jan Jacobsz. Orlers, Beschrijvinge der Stadt Leyden, 2nd ed., Leiden, 1641, p. 376.
2. See the translation from the original Latin: “Constantijn Huygens on Lievens and Rembrandt,” in: Arthur K. Wheelock et al., Jan Lievens. A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington: National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam: Museum Het Rembrandthuis, 2008-2009, p. 287.
3. See: Arthur K. Wheelock, “Jan Lievens: Bringing New Light to an Old Master,” in: Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 13-23; and: Lloyd DeWitt, Evolution and Ambition in the Career of Jan Lievens (1607-1674), Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, 2006: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277127128_Evolution_and_Ambition_in_the_Career_of_Jan_Lievens_1607-1674
4. Property from Aristocratic Estates and Important Provenance, Vienna (Dorotheum), 8 September 2020, lot 59 (as Circle of Bartholomeus van der Helst).
5. Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, Landau, vol. 5, 1990, p. 3109, no. 2127, ill. p. 3279
6. Ernst van de Wetering, Rembrandt: the Painter at Work, Amsterdam, 1997, pp. 182-185.
7. Jan Lievens, Job in his Misery, monogrammed and dated 1631, canvas, 171.5 x 148.6 cm, Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada (4093). See Lloyd DeWitt in Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 130-131, no. 25 (colour illus.).
8. Jan Lievens, The Penitent Magdalene, c. 1631. Canvas, 63.5 x 49.5 cm. Kingston, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, gift of Dr. and Mrs. Alfred Bader, 1975 (18.126). See David de Witt in Wheelock, Lievens, pp. 128-129, no. 24 (colour illus.).
9. Portrait of Jan Davidsz. de Heem, c. 1635/37, black chalk with some white body colour, 265 x 201 mm, London, British Museum (1895,0915.1199); Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, New York, vol. 7 (1983), pp. 3682-3683, no. 1652x (illus.).
10. See entry by Lloyd DeWitt in: Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 154-155, no. 38 (colour illus.).
11. Jan Lievens, Head of a Bearded Old Man, c. 1640. Panel, 55 x 43 cm (oval), Kingston, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, gift of Alfred and Isabel Bader. See: David de Witt, The Bader Collection: Dutch and Flemish Paintings. Kingston, 2008, p. 198, no. 117 (colour illus.).
12. Jan Lievens, Portrait of Adriaen Brouwer, c. 1635/37, black chalk with touches of pen in black, 221 x 185 mm, Paris, Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt (1203); Sumowski, Drawings (see note 9), pp. 3356-3357, no. 1594 (illus.).
13. Jan Lievens, Portrait of Constantijn Huygens, 1639, black chalk with touches of pen in brown, 238 x 174 mm, London, British Museum (1836.8.11.342); see Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), p. 242-243, no. 103 (colour illus.).
14. Email correspondence with the author, 9 September 2020.
15. My thanks to Stephanie Dickey for this information (email, 31 October 2022), confirmed by Marieke de Winkel.
16. See Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), p. 286.
17. Lucas Vorsterman, after Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Jan Lievens, c. 1630-1645, engraving, 241 x 158 mm, in 6 states, for the series: Icones Principorum Vivorum Doctorum Pictorum…; see: Marie Mauquoy-Hendrickx, L’Iconographie d’Antoine van Dyck, 2nd ed., Brussels, 1991, vol. 1, p. 155, no. 85; vol. 2, pl. 54 (illus.).
18. Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 112-113, no. 112 (colour illus.).
19. Jan Lievens, Portrait of Charles I, pen in brown, 183 x 140 mm, Turin, Biblioteca Reale (D. C. 16365); Sumowski, Drawings (see note 9), pp. 3898-3899, no. 1754xx, (illus.); Orlers, Beschrijvinge (see note 1), pp. 375-377.
20. Karolien de Klippel, “Adriaen Brouwer, Portrait Painter: New Identifications and an Iconographic Novelty,” Simiolus 30 (2003), pp. 196-216.
21. Stephanie Dickey, “Jan Lievens and Printmaking,” in Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 60-62. On the Iconography, see Mauquoy-Hendrickx, Iconographie (see note 7).
22. DeWitt, Evolution (see note 3), p. 192, illus. fig. 144 (Lievens c. 1635/43, H. de Bran); attribution by Werner Sumowski: written correspondence with the museum of 28 July 1986; and: Drawings of the Rembrandt School, vol. 12 (Addenda), Leiden (forthcoming), no. 3104x.
23. See Mauquoy-Hendrick, Iconography (see note 17), vol. 1, p. 214, no. 190; vol. 2, pl. 119.
24. See DeWitt, Evolution (see note 3), pp. 160-164.
25. Jan Lievens, Portrait of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, black and red chalk, 180 x 140 mm, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett (KdZ 5869); Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), p. 249, no. 109 (colour illus.).
26. Jan Lievens, Profile Head of an Old Woman in Oriental Dress, c. 1630, panel, 43.2 x 33.7 cm, Kingston, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, gift of Alfred and Isabel Bader, 2005 (48-002). See entry by David de Witt in Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 122-123, no. 21 (colour illus.).
27. Letter to his son the Earl of Lothian, May 1654: Correspondence of Sir Robert Kerr, First Earl of Ancram, and His Son William, Third Earl of Lothian, vol. 2, London, 1875, p. 383; C. Hofstede de Groot, “Hollandsche Kunst in Schotland,” Oud Holland 11 (1893), p. 214.

A book by the prominent 17^th-century Dutch physician and acquaintance of Rembrandt, Nicolaes Tulp, contains a print of an anthropoid ape. The University of British Columbia (UBC) Library owns a copy of the book in which an original red chalk drawing occupies the place of the engraving. Hugh Sinclair, its last private owner, believed it was the preparatory drawing for the print, and that it was drawn by Rembrandt. In this article we will examine the evidence and unravel a Rembrandt myth, which to this date has remained under the radar of Rembrandt specialists.

A drawing attributed to Rembrandt

In 1965, the University of British Columbia (UBC) Library acquired the collection of historical medical books from the medical researcher Hugh Macdonald Sinclair (1910-1990).²⁸ The purchase of this collection forms a significant portion of the Gibson Collection of Medicine and Science. An inventory, listing the contents of the 65 tea chests containing approximately 7000 books, accompanied the purchase.²⁹

While most of the items in the list are brief records with some minor annotations prepared by the collector, Hugh Sinclair, there is one full page detailing his copy of the Observationum Medicarum of 1641, written by the Amsterdam physician and surgeon Nicolaes Tulp (1593-1674). In UBC’s copy of the first edition, there is an original red chalk drawing representing a seated ‘Orang-outang’ (Fig. 1) whereas in other copies of this edition, one finds a print of the same composition, in mirror image (Fig. 2).³⁰ In his description, Sinclair presumes this drawing to be the original from which the engraving for the plate was made and argues that it was drawn by Rembrandt. However, the drawing, which is neither dated nor signed, has never been discussed in the literature on Rembrandt. Its existence has also never been signalled in the literature on the discovery of anthropoid apes, for which orangutan was a generic term until the end of the eighteenth century.

The birth of a Rembrandt myth

A review of the Library’s acquisition files revealed that there was a great deal of press coverage concerning the acquisition and the Rembrandt claim. For example, UBC Reports, a newsletter of the university, made a big splash of the acquisition:

A rare 1641 edition of a medical text by Nicholaas Tulp, physician to Rembrandt, which has been bound into it a red chalk drawing of a chimpanzee, allegedly by the great Dutch painter. The chalk drawing is the original used to make a copper engraving which is used to illustrate other copies of the Tulp book also in the collection.³¹

Other newspaper clippings and correspondence in the acquisition files pick up the claim. The Oxford Times (February 25, 1966) quotes Dr. Sinclair about the sale “… including a copy of Tulp’s Observations worth 3,000 pounds and containing a drawing attributed to Rembrandt”. An article in the Vancouver Sun (March 24, 1966) entitled, UBC has puzzle painting, reflects caution when quoting Dr. William Gibson (Professor and Head of the History of Medicine and Science Department): “We’re not making it a cause celebre” and explaining that the university had no plans to get experts to verify or disprove whether the drawing was an original Rembrandt.

Motivation to investigate further

In 2017, while researching the Gibson Collection, Charlotte Beck, a librarian at UBC re-discovered Sinclair’s inventory of the collection he sold to UBC in 1965 and the note in the original catalogue record for Tulp’s Observationum Medicarum, “attributed by some to be by Rembrandt,” caught her attention. With Katherine Kalsbeek, Head of Rare Books and Special Collections, she began to investigate the basis for this attribution. Recently a new impulse arose at the UBC to investigate this matter further.

At the Rembrandt House Museum in the summer of 2021 another copy of the 1641 edition of the Observationum Medicarum appeared in the exhibition Hansken. Rembrandt’s Elephant. Rembrandt was fascinated by unfamiliar animals from distant regions and his drawings of the elephant Hansken bear witness to this.³² A similar interest surfaces in Tulp’s book. Never before had such a human-like animal reached the European continent alive. The book was exhibited opened to the page with the engraving (Fig. 2). Next to it was a seventeenth-century map of Guinea in Africa, on which the same animal (actually a chimpanzee), appears in the same seated position.

Nina Siegal reviewed the exhibition for The New York Times.³³ Her piece caught the attention of Katherine Kalsbeek in Vancouver. She contacted Michiel Roscam Abbing, guest curator of the exhibition. The present article is the result of the collaborative research that followed.

Claims made by Sinclair

In the last line of his description, Sinclair recalls a visit to his library by the “late Professor William Jackson of Harvard”. Jackson, at the time an internationally renowned bibliographer and a librarian at the Houghton Library, part of Harvard College Library, died in Boston on October 4, 1964, which implies that Sinclair wrote the inventory in connection to the sale. Sinclair begins his entry with a brief description of both editions of Tulp’s book in his possession, from 1641 and 1739 respectively.³⁴ This is followed by an elaboration of the drawing in the earliest edition. Sinclair argues that the drawing should be attributed to Rembrandt. He had discussed this with scholars, including Professor Jackson. The entry is published here for the first time (Fig. 3): 

Tulp, Nicolaas (1593-1674). Observationum medicarum libri tres. Amstelredami, 1641. Bount in contemporary vellum with on title-page: “Simon Mollerius Chirurgus jure me possidet 1641 die 18 Nov.”

Also another edition: Observationes medicae. Edition sexta. LB, 1739. Bound in contemporary calf, gilt, with the plate of the “orang-outang” on p. 271.

The first of these is the rare first edition of 1641, which was the first book to contain a plate of a man-like ape, called by Tulp for the first time “orang-outang” (in fact, a chimpanzee). (The true orang was first described in 1658; the gorilla was not even discovered until 1847). But in this copy of the first edition, the plate which should be at p. 275 is replaced by an original red chalk drawing, mirror image of the actual plate. The drawing bound into the book is obviously the original from which the copper engraving for the plate was made, and there are the following strong reasons for believing it was drawn by Rembrandt.

Tulp was the first to describe the vasa lactea and the ileocaecal valve. Apart from being the outstanding general practitioner of his time in Amsterdam, he also was an important figure in the civic affairs of the town (four times Burgomaster; eight times City Treasurer; City Councillor from 1629-53; etc.). Rembrandt (1606-1669) was his close friend, and the famous “Anatomy Lesson” of 1632 shows Tulp as the central figure carrying out the dissection. Tulp in the above book refers to a patient of his who is certainly Rembrandt (chap. XVIII, pp. 37-9): “Insignis Pictor … in arte sua abunde sagax, et vix ulli secundus”: the painter was so pleased of his cure by Tulp that he could not adequately praise his healer. So these friends were presumably in close contact in Amsterdam around 1641 (the year Rembrandt painted Anna Wijmer whose son Jan married Tulp’s daughter Margaretha).

At this time Prince Frederik Hendrik of Nassau was sent an alive “orang-outang” from the Dutch East Indies. It was a centre of attraction in Amsterdam, and was carefully described by Tulp who also pictured it in his book. The excitement caused by the arrival of the ape in Amsterdam is further shown by a second representation, made for William Grotius (brother of the celebrated Hugo) which he sent to friends in Paris; this led to the French philosopher and naturalist Claude Peiresc placing the animal between monkey and man (E.T. Hamy: Documents inédits sur l’Homo Sylvestris rapporté d’Angola en 1630. Bull. Mus. Hist. Nat., Paris, 1897, 5, 277-282).

Who more likely for Tulp to ask to draw this interesting ape than his friend and patient Rembrandt who was so indebted to him? Further, Rembrandt himself kept a pet monkey which he still included in his large family portrait after its lamented death. He drew dead birds, “The slaughtered ox” three times, elephants and lions. In this early period he used red and black chalk on various occasions, although his later drawings are almost exclusively in pen and wash. The red chalk drawing in this book is supremely well done, and the cross-hatching in particular is exactly similar to that in red chalk drawings preserved in the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam.

Dr. Heckscher, in his great study Rembrandt’s Anatomy of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp (1958) states (p. 152): “Menno Hertzberger, Amsterdam, offered and sold recently a copy of the Observationes in which the place of the plate is taken by an excellent drawing that might conceivably be the original design”. This is the book referred to. Soon after I obtained it, the Dutch Government tried to stop export. Professor Horst Gerson, Director of the Netherlands Institute of Art History, later informed Dr. Heckscher that he believed the drawing preceded the print; and Dr. Menno Hertzberger, when he recently visited my library, told me it had been attributed to Rembrandt. The late Professor William Jackson of Harvard came to see the book and told me he was quite certain the drawing bound in was the original for the published copper engraving.

Claims made by others

Sinclair does not say when he bought the book, but he does say from whom. The Amsterdam antiquarian Menno Hertzberger (1897-1982) specialized in historical medical publications. In his sales catalogue from 1954, the book is offered under lot 442 and the drawing is shown on page 71.³⁵ In the catalogue Hertzberger gives the following detailed description:

This engraving, representing an “orang outang” or chimpanzee, is replaced by a sketch in red chalk of the same subject in inversed sense. We have found no mention of any other copy having this feature. The drawing appears to be by a contemporary hand and, as such, might be the earliest in existence showing this animal and might have served for the engraving. Possibly it was made by the Surgeon Simon Mollerius, the first owner of the copy, whose autograph, dated 1641, is found on title together with two later ownership’s entries.

As the catalogue entry notes, the book was bought in 1641 by Simon Mollerius, according to the ownership inscription dated November 28, 1641 (Fig. 4). Mollerius married IJtje Gerrits on 1 January 1633 in Amsterdam. He was 25 years old and came from Emden in Germany. In February 1642 Mollerius sold a house in the Oude Looiersstraat. On October 10, 1649 he was buried in the Westerkerk as “master Simon Mollerius” and living on the Prinsengracht. Surgeons took care of the sick and were allowed to perform simple medical treatments. They were trained by the Surgeons Guild. Mollerius undoubtedly attended Tulp’s lessons and he would have benefitted from the medical chapters in the book.

In 1958, art historian William S. Heckscher (1904-1999) published a monographic study on Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, now in the Mauritshuis (Fig. 5). In this study, Heckscher refers to the chimpanzee that Tulp describes, as well as the copy of the book sold by Hertzberger, and its drawing. Hertzberger’s own copy of the sales catalogue records six handwritten names in the margin of lot 442, five of which precede with a cross (Fig. 6).³⁶ No doubt he sent a copy to these six, one of them “Heckscher”, assuming they might be interested in purchasing the book. The only name without a cross is the buyer, “Dr. Sinclair”. Heckscher received the sales catalogue and noted its assertion that the drawing might be the original after which the engraving was made.³⁷ Hertzberger suggests that the drawing might have been made by the book’s first owner, the surgeon Mollerius. But here he contradicts himself: how could a drawing have been made by the first owner of the book if that same drawing served as an example of the engraving that should have been included in that book? Heckscher does not follow this suggestion and neither of them mention Rembrandt.

The assumption that the drawing was the model for the engraving was understandable though, because the drawing seems to be a mirror image of the engraving. According to Sinclair, the art historians he consulted were of that opinion. Horst Gerson (1907-1978), the then director of the Netherlands Institute for Art Historical Documentation, later informed Heckscher that he (also) believed that the drawing preceded the print. Professor William Jackson was likewise convinced that the drawing was the original from which the copper engraving was made. Sinclair does not mention that he was also in direct contact with Heckscher.³⁸

A later owner of the copy had the drawing made

Analysis of the binding of the book provides new insight into the genesis of the drawing. It is not pasted or bound as a separate sheet, but made on the sheet of paper on which the engraving should have been printed. This is easy to explain. Two print runs were required in 1641. In the first, the inscription and page number were printed in the lead type (“Medicarum Lib. III.    275”) and the space below was left blank for the second printing run. The second printing was necessary to print the image of the copper plate. In this specific case, only the first print run took place, and the copy was sold without the engraving of the described chimpanzee. A printer’s error. This means that the drawing could never have been made before 1641 and could never have been the original to which the engraving was made.

In the year after Mollerius’ death, in 1650, a Dutch translation of Tulp’s book entitled De drie boecken der medicijnsche aenmerkingen, was published. This was an unauthorized translation. Tulp had nothing to do with it, but was naturally vexed, and toward the end of his life produced his own translation from the Latin. It did not go to press, however, most likely because of Tulp’s death in 1674.³⁹ Unsurprisingly, the Amsterdam bookseller who published the unauthorized translation, Jacob Benjamyn (c. 1624-1673), did not have at his disposal the copper plates that were used in 1641. These remained in Tulp’s possession and would be used for two subsequent Latin editions, in 1652 and in 1672, still during Tulp’s lifetime. They were also intended to be used to illustrate Tulp’s own, never-published translation.⁴⁰ Benjamyn had very good copies made, which have never been used for any other edition. The engraving of the great ape is a mirror image of the engraving from 1641 (Fig. 7).

The unknown draftsman of the chimpanzee in the copy that Sinclair bought from Hertzberger followed the engraving of the translated edition of 1650 to fill in the blank page with the missing image. We can be sure as he also took over the engraved text on both sides of the head, “Tab. XIIII” and “Homo sylvestris. Orang-outang,” exactly after the example he had before him (Fig. 8).

So what can be concluded is that, after Mollerius’ death in 1649, in or after 1650, a later owner commissioned the illustration in red chalk. A second entry, dated October 18, 1682, shows that the book was then owned by Dethard Meppen (1656-1702), a lawyer who obtained his doctorate in Jena in 1677.⁴¹ It is unknown who owned the book between 1649 and 1682.

Sinclair’s hypotheses

In theory the draftsman could still have been Rembrandt, since he died in 1669. Sinclair argued that Rembrandt was responsible for the drawing. He relates that Hertzberger had visited his library and assured him that the drawing was attributed to Rembrandt.⁴² However there is no evidence of any other scholar’s support of this view. Tulp’s description of one of his patients, an unnamed painter cured by him, leads Sinclair to unreservedly assume that that unnamed patient must be Rembrandt: “Who more likely for Tulp to ask and draw this interesting ape than his friend and patient Rembrandt who was so indebted to him?”

Sinclair further states that shortly after purchasing the book, the Dutch government tried to stop its export. If there really was an attempt to ban export, it must have had to do with the attribution to Rembrandt. However, during our research in the National Archives in The Hague we were unable to confirm this event.⁴³ Nor has any correspondence about this case with Sinclair been found in Menno Herzberger’s personal archive.⁴⁴ In the Netherlands, the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (Wet tot Behoud van Cultuurbezit) today the Heritage Act (Erfgoedwet) only came into effect in 1985. In the 1950s there was not even any legal basis to ban the export of such an item.⁴⁵

The book collector achieves some traction when he points to drawings by Rembrandt in red chalk with a similar hatching. Sinclair states that drawings with cross-hatching that is ‘exactly similar’ are kept in the Rembrandt House Museum. However, there was and is not a single red chalk drawing by Rembrandt in the Museum’s collection. In 2021 Sinclair’s attribution was confidently rejected on stylistic grounds by Peter Schatborn, former head of the Rijksmuseum’s Print Room, one of world’s leading Rembrandt experts, and compiler of the most recent catalogue of Rembrandt’s drawings.⁴⁶

The arrival of the anthropoid ape in Europe

Tulp wrote in his report that the ‘Orang-outang’ was a gift to Stadholder Frederik Hendrik and, in his memory, came from Angola. He does not record the year he saw the animal. But Sinclair had found a publication stating that the ape arrived in Holland in 1630.⁴⁷ He does not elaborate on this information however, and does not mention that Rembrandt was still living in Leiden at that time, and would only meet Tulp and paint the Anatomy Lesson in Amsterdam two years later.

Ernst Brinck (1582-1649), the regent from Harderwijk who made notes about the elephant Hansken, also confirms 1630 as the year of the chimpanzee’s arrival. His notes specify that the ape arrived in Amsterdam and was brought by ships of the West India Company.⁴⁸ It is unknown how long the animal lived.

It is plausible that a portrait was made of the chimpanzee on its arrival in Amsterdam. In 1641 that portrait was available to Tulp who had an engraving made after it. No longer extant, this original had already been in the hands of the Amsterdam mapmaker Willem Jansz Blaeu (1571-1638). Blaeu’s map of Guinea from 1634, dedicated to Nicolaes Tulp, shows the sitting ape (Fig. 9).⁴⁹ Sinclair was evidently unaware that the original portrait was known and published some seven years before publication of Tulp’s book.

Conclusion

The long-standing myth that Rembrandt was the creator of this drawing seems to have originated with Hugh Sinclair himself. We can now conclude that the drawing in Sinclair’s book is a later version, made in or after 1650, after a copy of a copy of the original portrait of the chimpanzee that must have been made shortly after the animal’s arrival in Amsterdam in 1630. Based on our research, it is evident that the drawing in Sinclair’s book was commissioned by a later owner of the book and done by an unknown artist.

Katherine Kalsbeek (BA, MLIS) has worked with UBC Library since 2004 and is currently the Head, Rare Books & Special Collections (RBSC).

Michiel Roscam Abbing (1958) was awarded his doctorate at Amsterdam University with a thesis on Rembrandt documents, Rembrant toont syn konst (1999). He compiled a list of New Rembrandt documents (2006) and was guest-curator of the exhibition Hansken, Rembrandt’s elephant (2021) in the Rembrandt House Museum. 

Charlotte Beck, a reference librarian at Woodward Library, UBC, is the liaison for the rehabilitation sciences and as the history of science and medicine librarian has oversight for the Gibson collection.

1. Jan Jacobsz. Orlers, Beschrijvinge der Stadt Leyden, 2nd ed., Leiden, 1641, p. 376.
2. See the translation from the original Latin: “Constantijn Huygens on Lievens and Rembrandt,” in: Arthur K. Wheelock et al., Jan Lievens. A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington: National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam: Museum Het Rembrandthuis, 2008-2009, p. 287.
3. See: Arthur K. Wheelock, “Jan Lievens: Bringing New Light to an Old Master,” in: Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 13-23; and: Lloyd DeWitt, Evolution and Ambition in the Career of Jan Lievens (1607-1674), Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, 2006: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277127128_Evolution_and_Ambition_in_the_Career_of_Jan_Lievens_1607-1674
4. Property from Aristocratic Estates and Important Provenance, Vienna (Dorotheum), 8 September 2020, lot 59 (as Circle of Bartholomeus van der Helst).
5. Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, Landau, vol. 5, 1990, p. 3109, no. 2127, ill. p. 3279
6. Ernst van de Wetering, Rembrandt: the Painter at Work, Amsterdam, 1997, pp. 182-185.
7. Jan Lievens, Job in his Misery, monogrammed and dated 1631, canvas, 171.5 x 148.6 cm, Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada (4093). See Lloyd DeWitt in Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 130-131, no. 25 (colour illus.).
8. Jan Lievens, The Penitent Magdalene, c. 1631. Canvas, 63.5 x 49.5 cm. Kingston, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, gift of Dr. and Mrs. Alfred Bader, 1975 (18.126). See David de Witt in Wheelock, Lievens, pp. 128-129, no. 24 (colour illus.).
9. Portrait of Jan Davidsz. de Heem, c. 1635/37, black chalk with some white body colour, 265 x 201 mm, London, British Museum (1895,0915.1199); Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, New York, vol. 7 (1983), pp. 3682-3683, no. 1652x (illus.).
10. See entry by Lloyd DeWitt in: Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 154-155, no. 38 (colour illus.).
11. Jan Lievens, Head of a Bearded Old Man, c. 1640. Panel, 55 x 43 cm (oval), Kingston, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, gift of Alfred and Isabel Bader. See: David de Witt, The Bader Collection: Dutch and Flemish Paintings. Kingston, 2008, p. 198, no. 117 (colour illus.).
12. Jan Lievens, Portrait of Adriaen Brouwer, c. 1635/37, black chalk with touches of pen in black, 221 x 185 mm, Paris, Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt (1203); Sumowski, Drawings (see note 9), pp. 3356-3357, no. 1594 (illus.).
13. Jan Lievens, Portrait of Constantijn Huygens, 1639, black chalk with touches of pen in brown, 238 x 174 mm, London, British Museum (1836.8.11.342); see Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), p. 242-243, no. 103 (colour illus.).
14. Email correspondence with the author, 9 September 2020.
15. My thanks to Stephanie Dickey for this information (email, 31 October 2022), confirmed by Marieke de Winkel.
16. See Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), p. 286.
17. Lucas Vorsterman, after Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Jan Lievens, c. 1630-1645, engraving, 241 x 158 mm, in 6 states, for the series: Icones Principorum Vivorum Doctorum Pictorum…; see: Marie Mauquoy-Hendrickx, L’Iconographie d’Antoine van Dyck, 2nd ed., Brussels, 1991, vol. 1, p. 155, no. 85; vol. 2, pl. 54 (illus.).
18. Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 112-113, no. 112 (colour illus.).
19. Jan Lievens, Portrait of Charles I, pen in brown, 183 x 140 mm, Turin, Biblioteca Reale (D. C. 16365); Sumowski, Drawings (see note 9), pp. 3898-3899, no. 1754xx, (illus.); Orlers, Beschrijvinge (see note 1), pp. 375-377.
20. Karolien de Klippel, “Adriaen Brouwer, Portrait Painter: New Identifications and an Iconographic Novelty,” Simiolus 30 (2003), pp. 196-216.
21. Stephanie Dickey, “Jan Lievens and Printmaking,” in Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 60-62. On the Iconography, see Mauquoy-Hendrickx, Iconographie (see note 7).
22. DeWitt, Evolution (see note 3), p. 192, illus. fig. 144 (Lievens c. 1635/43, H. de Bran); attribution by Werner Sumowski: written correspondence with the museum of 28 July 1986; and: Drawings of the Rembrandt School, vol. 12 (Addenda), Leiden (forthcoming), no. 3104x.
23. See Mauquoy-Hendrick, Iconography (see note 17), vol. 1, p. 214, no. 190; vol. 2, pl. 119.
24. See DeWitt, Evolution (see note 3), pp. 160-164.
25. Jan Lievens, Portrait of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, black and red chalk, 180 x 140 mm, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett (KdZ 5869); Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), p. 249, no. 109 (colour illus.).
26. Jan Lievens, Profile Head of an Old Woman in Oriental Dress, c. 1630, panel, 43.2 x 33.7 cm, Kingston, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, gift of Alfred and Isabel Bader, 2005 (48-002). See entry by David de Witt in Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 122-123, no. 21 (colour illus.).
27. Letter to his son the Earl of Lothian, May 1654: Correspondence of Sir Robert Kerr, First Earl of Ancram, and His Son William, Third Earl of Lothian, vol. 2, London, 1875, p. 383; C. Hofstede de Groot, “Hollandsche Kunst in Schotland,” Oud Holland 11 (1893), p. 214.
28. On Sinclair: Jeannette Ewin, Fine Wines and Fish Oil: The Life of Hugh Macdonald Sinclair, Oxford 2001.
29. The typescript is available in the “Library acquisition file for the Sinclair collection”.
30. UBC Library, WZ250 .T9 1641.
31. “7,000 rare books arrive”, UBC Reports 12, no. 3 (March-April, 1966). https://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/pdfs/ubcreports/UBC_Reports_1966_03_00.pdf
32. Michiel Roscam Abbing, Rembrandt’s Elephant. Following in Hansken’s Footsteps, Amstelveen 2021.
33. Nina Siegal, “When Rembrandt Met an Elephant”, The New York Times, July 16, 2021.
34. UBC Library, WZ250 .T9 1641 and WZ260 .T83 1739 with the title Observationes Medicae.
35. Allard Pierson, University of Amsterdam, Archives of Menno Hertzberger (UBA235). Sales catalogue Medicine Hippocrates-Claude Bernard, Amsterdam [February 1954], lot 442.
36. Note 8 for this annotated copy.
37. He also kept the relevant page from the catalogue in his files. Hamburg, Warburg Haus, Heckscher Archiv, Box 121 (‘Rembrandt: Dr. Tulp’), folder ‘Dr. Tulp Photo’s I’. Sinclair’s copy is kept in UBC Library call number Z999.74.
38. According to Heckscher’s own administration he sent letters to Hugh Sinclair on 15 February and 2 March 1963. Hamburg, Warburg Haus, Heckscher Archiv, Box 52 (‘Heckscher: Korrespondenz und Arbeiten’). We thank Ms. Fanny Weidehaas of the Heckscher Archiv for her assistance. These letters were not found among Sinclair’s papers in The Museum of English Rural Life at the University of Reading. We thank Ms. Emma Farmer for checking these files.
39. The translation was not published until 1991: Nicolaes Tulp, Geneesinzichten van Dr. Nicolaes Tulp etc., eds. (and transcriptions) C.G.L. Apeldoorn and T. Beijer. Amsterdam, 1991.
40. The title page of the manuscript reads: “Nicolaes Tulp. Inzichten over de geneeskunst in vier boeken met koperen platen” (Nicolaes Tulp. Medical Insights in Four Books with Copper Plates).
41. “D. Meppen Norda Frisii 1682 d. 18 8.bris”. We thank Koert van der Horst, retired keeper of manuscripts of the Utrecht University Library, for this identification. A third (unidentified) ownership’s inscription reads: “L. Fries stud. med. 1838 16/2.”
42. The visit is not recorded in Sinclair’s Visitors book. Reading, The Museum of English Rural Life, Papers of Hugh Macdonald Sinclair, D HS 1/7/1: Visitor’s book 1941-1989: Dr Hugh Sinclair’s book of visitors to his home, Lady Place in Sutton Courtenay. We are grateful to Ms. Hollie Piff for checking.
43. In the National Archives in The Hague we consulted the archives of the Department of Archeology and Nature Conservation, inv. no. 105 (Stukken betreffende de aanvraag van vergunningen voor de in- en uitvoer van voorwerpen van geschiedenis en kunst. 1946-1964).
44. Allard Pierson, University of Amsterdam, Archives of Menno Hertzberger (UBA235), personal archives.
45. Kindly provided information by Ms. Nina Duggen, Inspectie Overheidsinformatie en Erfgoed (Information and Heritage Inspectorate).
46. Peter Schatborn and Erik Hinterding, Rembrandt. The Complete Drawings and Etchings, Cologne 2019. Peter Schatborn gave his judgement in an email of September 15, 2021, in translation: “In any case, the drawing was not made by Rembrandt. The stylistic differences are too great and I can’t find any drawing by Rembrandt that is comparable”.
47. Ernest Theodore Hamy, ‘Documents inédits sur l’Homo sylvestris rapporté d’Angola en 1630′, Bulletin du Muséum d’histoire naturelle 3 (1897), pp. 277-282.
48. Michiel Roscam Abbing is currently preparing a book-length study, The Ape of Tulp, in which these data are to be published.
49. Peter van der Krogt and Erlend de Groot, The Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem of the Austrian National Library V (Utrecht 2005), pp. 88-89 (no. 35:40). The suggestion that Blaeu, who died in 1638, had access to the engraving of the chimpanzee and that this engraving was made by Tulp long before 1641, as argued by Kees Zandvliet (De Wereld van de familie Blaeu, Zutphen 2023, p. 66) must be rejected.

In the undisputed hand of Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, the intriguing inscription that appears beneath the drawing of an Old Testament scene, The Departure of Rebecca, c. 1637, has generated various studies (fig. 1).⁵⁰ The rarity of the artist’s annotations, in general, has served to intensify scholarly interest in them. Discussions of the inscription have examined its relationship to the drawing’s attribution, the artist’s teaching methods, and his instructional intent. This study posits that the inscription’s specific wording raises additional significant questions, which have yet to be considered.

Written in ink different from that of the drawing, Rembrandt’s directive reads: “This should contain the figures of many neighbours who witness the departure of the noble bride.”⁵¹ In another hand, “Rembrandt” appears just above the inscription. The master’s critique emphasises the importance of having many “gebueren” (neighbours) in attendance at the housefront of Rebecca’s parents as she departs for her marriage to Isaac, even while the related biblical text lacks any reference to such persons.⁵²

This study considers the significance of Rembrandt’s specific instructions to include neighbours, rather than generic figures, “who witness the departure of the noble bride.” Gary Schwartz also noted that the Old Testament story does not allude to neighbours, and he accounted for Rembrandt’s artistic licence by concluding the artist wished to approximate everyday experience.⁵³  Schwartz, however, did not elaborate further on his observation.

Rembrandt’s instructions to add many neighbours in the drawing of Rebecca’s departure from her home did, in fact, result in a scene that resembled everyday life for a seventeenth-century Dutch viewer. I argue that neighbours’ well-embedded social practices—in particular, gatherings on domestic stoops and engagement with each other’s nuptial rituals—account for the artistic licence taken by Rembrandt with the biblical text. In the drawing, both the inclusion of neighbours at the housefront and their interest in the procession leading Rebecca to her marriage would have evoked in viewers their own, comparable experiences as neighbours.

Similarly in some other biblical works, as Amy Golahny has shown, Rembrandt melded reality that he had observed or experienced with imagined history.⁵⁴ Contemporary with The Departure of Rebecca, Rembrandt’s black chalk drawing A Blind Beggar with a Boy and a Dog (private collection), for example, showcases figures he observed in daily life that he later incorporated in the biblical etchings such as The Hundred Guilder Print, c. 1647–1649 (B.074), and The Blind Tobit, 1651 (B.042), and which also appear in some students’ drawings.⁵⁵

Like most of his urban contemporaries, Rembrandt belonged to self-determined and robust neighbourhood organizations (gebuyrten) in Leiden and Amsterdam. The written regulations (buurtbrieven) of such official organizations typically mandated membership of all who lived within the respective unit’s geographical footprint.⁵⁶ Many official gebuyrten decrees, as well as unofficial expectations, relied on neighbours’ familiarity with each other’s daily affairs. Residents frequently shared news and gossip on domestic stoops, and at housefront windows and open doors to maintain the collective honour of their neighbourhood. Communal conviviality helped to construct and reinforce the neighbourhoods’ shared goals of brotherhood, friendship, and unity.⁵⁷ Typically, neighbours also observed or attended various social gatherings, including before, during, and after the marriage of fellow residents. I argue that the expectation among neighbours to keep abreast of news and gossip shared informally on front stoops, and to participate in celebratory occasions, including nuptial festivities, informed the assumptions, advice, and wording of Rembrandt’s inscription beneath the drawing The Departure of Rebecca.

The various Old Testament events described in Genesis 24 that led to the marriage of Isaac and Rebecca appear in numerous seventeenth-century Dutch paintings, prints, and drawings, including those by Rembrandt and his pupils.⁵⁸ The specific scene in The Departure of Rebecca captures the realization of instructions initially given by Abraham to his servant Eliezer to find a wife for the patriarch’s son, Isaac. With camels and gifts, Eliezer left Abraham and embarked on his mission. As evening fell, he approached a well where he foretold that if a woman agreed to share her water with him and his camels, she would be Isaac’s future wife. In time, Rebecca fulfilled the servant’s request.⁵⁹ Eliezer revealed his objective to Rebecca’s brother and father, who, along with Rebecca, happily agreed to the marriage. Subsequently, Rebecca and her companions climbed onto camels and followed Eliezer on his return journey to join Isaac.

In the drawing, several figures assemble on or near the domestic threshold of Rebecca’s parents, or peer out from the housefront’s doorway and open windows. Since some of the figures overlap the drawn details of the window and door, their addition may postdate Rembrandt’s inscribed instructions.⁶⁰ A man—presumably Rebecca’s brother or father—overlooks the scene from the low balcony attached to the façade.

Seen at an oblique angle, the domestic structure fills most of the right side of the composition. The home’s expansive stoop extends into the foreground, parallels the bottom edge of the composition, and readily affords the viewer, as neighbour, close visual and spatial engagement with the event. On the right, Rebecca bids farewell to her mother. The additional individuals gather behind them. A camel kneels on the stoop ready for Rebecca’s journey. Behind the docile animal, a standing man holds a large open umbrella at an angle. On the left, a retinue of people on foot and on horseback begins to take its leave. After the Old Testament’s account of Rebecca’s departure, which the scene in the drawing anticipates, the text describes the subsequent journey through the countryside to meet Isaac, who took her as his wife.

Studies of Rembrandt’s inscription have addressed the relevance of the artist’s instructions for the drawing’s inconclusive attribution to either the master himself or to one of his pupils.⁶¹ The latter include Salomon Koninck or a Koninck group; perhaps Govert Flinck; and Gerbrand van den Eeckhout.⁶²

One scholar has argued that Rembrandt wrote the comment on his own drawing in order to provide a model as a correction to a pupil’s image.⁶³ However, Rembrandt rarely inscribed his own drawings and unlikely with self-criticism.⁶⁴ Instead, as several scholars have convincingly concluded, the master’s inscription appears on a student’s drawing about that work, rather than on his own drawing.⁶⁵ Such studio instruction by Rembrandt was long-lived. Under the master’s tutelage, the painter Samuel van Hoogstraten learned from comparable corrections and recommended such artistic training in his Introduction to the Academy of Painting, or the Visible World, 1678.⁶⁶

Further discussions of Rembrandt’s inscription—like analyses of his other written comments on, and corrections of, students’ drawings—have assessed the master’s artistic instructions vis-à-vis the scene’s compositional and narrative elements.⁶⁷ Although the inscription evokes art theory’s concern for the appropriate number of figures in a text-based story, art theory does not account for Rembrandt’s explicit call for neighbours, rather than generic figures.⁶⁸

To the observations that Rembrandt’s instructions addressed compositional and iconographic elements of the scene, I add discussion of significant Dutch social practices, which, I contend, the master evoked in his specific call for the depiction of neighbours. The social network, social exchange, and social control inherent in seventeenth-century Dutch neighbourhoods provide a rich interpretive context, which further illuminates the significance of Rembrandt’s inscription on the drawing.

Rembrandt and Neighbourhood Culture

The artist would have been intimately familiar with the social practices, social network, and social exchange of neighbourhoods, which constituted a primary organizing unit of social control in everyday relations. Small in footprint, Dutch neighbourhoods were typically circumscribed by the borders of only one or two streets or one side of a canal, and adjacent alleys. Membership typically included all residents living within the small community’s geographical parameters: men and women; natives and immigrants; and diverse socioeconomic classes, trades, and religions.⁶⁹ Neighbours selected a governing board from among themselves consisting of various administrators. They oversaw neighbourhood meetings; played conciliatory and mediatory roles to protect order and quiet; ensured the rights, responsibilities, and honour of residents; and enforced the binding regulations, which did not warrant the intervention of civic authorities.⁷⁰

Neighbourhood organizations resulted from a desire for calm, stability, camaraderie, and the preservation of individual and communal honour. The most compelling goal of seventeenth-century Dutch neighbourhood organizations centred around harmonious shared experience. Attendance at various informal gatherings as well as official social events fostered a sense of community. To maintain a neighbourhood’s mores and reinforce convivial relations, regulations required residents to participate in each other’s lives and stay abreast of good and bad news through daily interaction of all kinds, including conversation and gossip.⁷¹ At housefront thresholds, stoops, and windows, much as we see in The Departure of Rebecca, neighbours kept aware of communal news of large and little consequence. They also intervened as witnesses to social infractions and negotiated resolutions to conflicts.

Rembrandt was certainly familiar with the official regulations, unofficial expectations, social values, and experiences of neighbourhood life. In Leiden, where he was born in 1606, his family lived in the Pelikaanshoek (Pelican Corner) neighbourhood.⁷² Prominent administrative roles held by Rembrandt’s father and brother in their neighbourhood organization would have provided the artist even greater familiarity with the social control characteristic of gebuyrten. While the young Rembrandt still lived in Leiden, his father Harmen Gerritsz van Rijn, a miller, served as chairman (heer) of the family’s neighbourhood. From 1643 until his death in 1652, Rembrandt’s brother, Adriaen Harmensz van Rijn, served as heer of the same Leiden neighbourhood organization.⁷³

The various drawings by Rembrandt that evince his familiarity with neighbourhood life at the intersection of home and street are close in date to The Departure of Rebecca, c. 1637. The subjects and compositions of the drawings pictorially educe the ebb and flow of neighbourhood social exchange before a housefront, as Rembrandt’s inscription similarly called for in the Old Testament scene. A resident either sits on a domestic stoop or peers out from an open window or half-open Dutch door. The figures’ positions and their gazes invite neighbourhood encounters.

In Seated Man Wearing a Flat Cap, c. 1635–1640, for example, a resting figure on his stoop gazes directly out at the viewer as passerby/neighbour (fig. 2). Woman Holding a Child Frightened by a Dog, on the Doorstep of a House, c. 1635–1636, pictures a woman leaning out of a housefront window surveying the scene below (fig. 3). On the top step, a smiling mother kneels and embraces a frightened toddler, while a carefree dog edges close. In Three Women and a Child by a Door, c. 1645, a female figure behind a half-open Dutch door leans on the ledge of the bottom half and watches two women and a child, seated below on the stoop and step (fig. 4).

Such scenes attest to the good cheer and engagement essential to shared goals of friendship, brotherhood, and unity, which neighbours enjoyed on domestic front stoops, steps, and in the adjacent street. Rembrandt also called for such neighbourly engagement in the scene of Rebecca’s departure from the front stoop of her parents’ house. A century and a half later, in 1773, Jan le Francq de Berkheij, a professor of natural history at Leiden University, published his short description of that city—Rembrandt’s hometown—in which he described neighbourly gatherings at housefronts.

A very old custom of sociability [gezelligheid] occurs on summer evenings when various neighbours, after eating, come together outside the front door, usually in the street, on the bench, or in the house’s front room [voorhuis], and treat each other to a cup of coffee or beer, [a custom] which they refer to as “benching” [banken], and [which] usually lasts until eleven o’clock or later.⁷⁴

The long-lived, gezellig custom among Leiden neighbours, who gathered socially “outside the front door, usually in the street, on the bench, or in the house’s front room,” was also enjoyed in other Dutch cities.

Neighbours as Nuptial Celebrants

Rembrandt’s instructions to depict “many neighbours who witness the departure of the noble bride” also allude to the commonplace attendance by neighbours at each other’s marital events. Their presence at an array of such occasions would have informed Rembrandt’s inscription. While seventeenth-century Dutch neighbours often observed or joined celebratory events in honour of a betrothed or newly married couple, the bride and groom (or their parents), in turn, fulfilled a widespread regulation to honour their neighbourhood at the time of a wedding. An example of such a decree was published on 24 March 1593, by the city fathers of Leiden—Rembrandt’s hometown.⁷⁵ The 1593 General Regulation included “Article 6. Marriages,” which remained in effect in Leiden throughout the seventeenth century. The ruling declared that

He who marries off a son or daughter, or himself marries—whether one stays in the neighbourhood; whether one leaves for another neighbourhood—is obliged to make a respectable contribution to the neighbourhood where he lives according to his own discretion, civility, and the state of his marriage.⁷⁶

A “respectable contribution” referred to one that was monetary and made to the neighbourhood’s cash box, which funded communal enterprises, such as the annual neighbourhood feast.⁷⁷  Such reciprocity of significant engagement and support by neighbours on behalf of a newly betrothed couple amongst them, on the one hand, and by a newly married couple or their parents on behalf of their neighbourhood, on the other hand, further illuminates Rembrandt’s call for the inclusion of neighbours in The Departure of Rebecca.

By Dutch tradition, when an engaged couple departed from the bride’s home to be married, neighbours and other interested observers gathered on her household stoop and in the adjacent street. Among all Dutch marriage customs involving neighbours, this ritualised step in the nuptial narrative most closely parallels details and circumstances in The Departure of Rebecca. Similarities between the custom and the drawing include the bride’s departure from her home for the wedding ceremony; the domestic threshold setting; and the array of bystanders and onlookers, including neighbours, whose depiction Rembrandt called for in the scene. The drawing, however, does not replicate that ritualised step in the contemporary nuptial narrative. Consistent with the biblical account, Rebecca’s future groom, Isaac, who remained at some distance away, does not accompany her as she departs from her home.

The specific Dutch ritual of the bride’s departure from her home was documented in an etched and engraved print, Bride and Bridegroom on Their Way to the Church/ Dutch Reformed Church Marriage Ceremony, 1730, by Bernard Picart (working in Amsterdam beginning in 1711) (fig. 5).⁷⁸ An engaged couple leaves the bride’s home for their Dutch Reformed church wedding.⁷⁹ Although impressions of Picart’s print sold individually, the artist also reproduced the image in his five-volume publication Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (Ceremonies and religious customs of all the people of the world).⁸⁰

In the Netherlandish edition of Picart’s volumes, the Dutch text that expounds upon the print Bride and Bridegroom on Their Way to the Church/ Dutch Reformed Church Marriage Ceremony references neighbours who watch the couple’s departure from the bride’s home. Notably, this passage corresponds to the instructions that Rembrandt inscribed under the drawing in which Rebecca leaves her parents’ house. The text in Picart’s publication advises that “the full splendour of the future spouses can be seen by all of the neighbours and the crowd of people, who approach from all sides of the house.”⁸¹

In Picart’s print, numerous figures, including neighbours, in everyday dress stand in the left foreground, the right middle ground, and in the background and they happily observe the departure of the engaged couple.⁸²  On the right, a small boy has climbed a tree to get a better view. In the middle distance, a woman—perhaps late for the occasion—runs across a bridge in the direction of the foreground gathering.

After a seventeenth-century Dutch wedding ceremony, a second traditional procession composed of the bride, her neighbours, and friends travelled together to meet the groom. The bride and celebrants made their way to the groom at his house or an inn, where elaborate wedding festivities typically took place.⁸³ Although the scene in The Departure of Rebecca marks an earlier moment in a nuptial narrative, neighbours figure prominently in both Rembrandt’s call for their inclusion in the drawing and in their actual participation in the second type of Dutch wedding procession.

Jan Steen’s The Village Wedding, 1653, depicts the post-wedding parade of celebrants led by the bride (fig. 6). The groom descends the steps to greet his approaching wife, who is accompanied in the procession by family members, neighbours, and friends. As noted by Petra van Boheemen, in Steen’s scene “half the neighbourhood has run out to be present at the meeting” of the couple.⁸⁴

Other seventeenth-century Dutch marriage customs also manifest the widespread engagement of neighbours in wedding-related events. Such traditions further contextualise the social practices invoked by Rembrandt’s instructions to include neighbours in the drawing of Rebecca’s departure to join her future groom. Elaborate celebratory meals occurred before, as well as after Dutch marriage ceremonies. Like family and friends, neighbours often received formal invitations to attend them.⁸⁵

Sometime between 1590 and 1595, the Englishman Fynes Moryson noted in his journal of travels through the northern Netherlands that on the third day after a typical wedding ceremony, the couple invited their “neighbours and ordinary freundes” for “supper and dauncing.” His comments appear midst his more detailed observations about Dutch marriage celebrations.⁸⁶ Preparations for engagement and wedding festivities began days in advance, included special food and drink, and often a dinner or banquet.⁸⁷

Several Old Testament pictures by Rembrandt and his contemporaries showcase wedding banquets with numerous guests.⁸⁸ Viewers may have assumed the revellers included neighbours in a melding of lived experience with imagined history. Close in date to The Departure of Rebecca, c. 1637, Rembrandt’s painting The Wedding of Samson, 1638, stages several celebrants at the Old Testament meal (fig. 7). In comments on the painting four years later, a Leiden observer noted a similar blending of lived Dutch customs with the imagined biblical past. In his Lof der Schilder-konst (Praise of Painting), 1642, Philips Angel observed: “since all the guests are not concerned with one and the same matter, [Rembrandt] showed others making merry, not listening to [Samson’s] riddle, but holding up a glass of wine and laughing. Others were kissing—in short, it was a merry wedding feast . . . the actions were of the kind found in our modern wedding feasts.”⁸⁹

In addition to paintings of Old Testament wedding festivities, Dutch portraits of newly married couples place them midst their nuptial celebrations. Presumably, the wide range of guests included neighbours. Willem Cornelisz Duyster’s Wedding Feast, long known as “The Wedding of Adriaen Ploos van Amstel and Agnes van Bijler, 1616,” c. 1625, exemplifies such a celebration with numerous participants (fig. 8). Since the average size of an urban, Dutch nuclear family consisted of approximately three and three-quarter persons, including two children, but rarely extended family members, the large number of celebrants in Duyster’s painting suggests they include neighbours.⁹⁰

Gatherings on domestic stoops as well as nuptial customs that neighbours shared provide a revealing context in which to elucidate Rembrandt’s inscription: “This should contain the figures of many neighbours who witness the departure of the noble bride.” Like other occasions staged in genre imagery, Old Testament scenes, and portraiture, The Departure of Rebecca includes engaged neighbours. Although Rembrandt’s biblical imagery has long been admired for its universal themes, the evocation of neighbourhood social practices in his inscription demonstrates that lived reality also informed his conception of the past. As a member himself of Leiden and Amsterdam neighbourhoods, Rembrandt valued the rich texture of neighbourly relationships in his own art and in that of his pupils.

Linda Stone-Ferrier is a professor of seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish art in the Kress Foundation Department of Art History at the University of Kansas. Her book, The Little Street: The Neighborhood in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Culture, was published in August 2022 by Yale University Press.

1. Jan Jacobsz. Orlers, Beschrijvinge der Stadt Leyden, 2nd ed., Leiden, 1641, p. 376.
2. See the translation from the original Latin: “Constantijn Huygens on Lievens and Rembrandt,” in: Arthur K. Wheelock et al., Jan Lievens. A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington: National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam: Museum Het Rembrandthuis, 2008-2009, p. 287.
3. See: Arthur K. Wheelock, “Jan Lievens: Bringing New Light to an Old Master,” in: Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 13-23; and: Lloyd DeWitt, Evolution and Ambition in the Career of Jan Lievens (1607-1674), Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, 2006: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277127128_Evolution_and_Ambition_in_the_Career_of_Jan_Lievens_1607-1674
4. Property from Aristocratic Estates and Important Provenance, Vienna (Dorotheum), 8 September 2020, lot 59 (as Circle of Bartholomeus van der Helst).
5. Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, Landau, vol. 5, 1990, p. 3109, no. 2127, ill. p. 3279
6. Ernst van de Wetering, Rembrandt: the Painter at Work, Amsterdam, 1997, pp. 182-185.
7. Jan Lievens, Job in his Misery, monogrammed and dated 1631, canvas, 171.5 x 148.6 cm, Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada (4093). See Lloyd DeWitt in Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 130-131, no. 25 (colour illus.).
8. Jan Lievens, The Penitent Magdalene, c. 1631. Canvas, 63.5 x 49.5 cm. Kingston, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, gift of Dr. and Mrs. Alfred Bader, 1975 (18.126). See David de Witt in Wheelock, Lievens, pp. 128-129, no. 24 (colour illus.).
9. Portrait of Jan Davidsz. de Heem, c. 1635/37, black chalk with some white body colour, 265 x 201 mm, London, British Museum (1895,0915.1199); Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, New York, vol. 7 (1983), pp. 3682-3683, no. 1652x (illus.).
10. See entry by Lloyd DeWitt in: Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 154-155, no. 38 (colour illus.).
11. Jan Lievens, Head of a Bearded Old Man, c. 1640. Panel, 55 x 43 cm (oval), Kingston, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, gift of Alfred and Isabel Bader. See: David de Witt, The Bader Collection: Dutch and Flemish Paintings. Kingston, 2008, p. 198, no. 117 (colour illus.).
12. Jan Lievens, Portrait of Adriaen Brouwer, c. 1635/37, black chalk with touches of pen in black, 221 x 185 mm, Paris, Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt (1203); Sumowski, Drawings (see note 9), pp. 3356-3357, no. 1594 (illus.).
13. Jan Lievens, Portrait of Constantijn Huygens, 1639, black chalk with touches of pen in brown, 238 x 174 mm, London, British Museum (1836.8.11.342); see Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), p. 242-243, no. 103 (colour illus.).
14. Email correspondence with the author, 9 September 2020.
15. My thanks to Stephanie Dickey for this information (email, 31 October 2022), confirmed by Marieke de Winkel.
16. See Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), p. 286.
17. Lucas Vorsterman, after Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Jan Lievens, c. 1630-1645, engraving, 241 x 158 mm, in 6 states, for the series: Icones Principorum Vivorum Doctorum Pictorum…; see: Marie Mauquoy-Hendrickx, L’Iconographie d’Antoine van Dyck, 2nd ed., Brussels, 1991, vol. 1, p. 155, no. 85; vol. 2, pl. 54 (illus.).
18. Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 112-113, no. 112 (colour illus.).
19. Jan Lievens, Portrait of Charles I, pen in brown, 183 x 140 mm, Turin, Biblioteca Reale (D. C. 16365); Sumowski, Drawings (see note 9), pp. 3898-3899, no. 1754xx, (illus.); Orlers, Beschrijvinge (see note 1), pp. 375-377.
20. Karolien de Klippel, “Adriaen Brouwer, Portrait Painter: New Identifications and an Iconographic Novelty,” Simiolus 30 (2003), pp. 196-216.
21. Stephanie Dickey, “Jan Lievens and Printmaking,” in Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 60-62. On the Iconography, see Mauquoy-Hendrickx, Iconographie (see note 7).
22. DeWitt, Evolution (see note 3), p. 192, illus. fig. 144 (Lievens c. 1635/43, H. de Bran); attribution by Werner Sumowski: written correspondence with the museum of 28 July 1986; and: Drawings of the Rembrandt School, vol. 12 (Addenda), Leiden (forthcoming), no. 3104x.
23. See Mauquoy-Hendrick, Iconography (see note 17), vol. 1, p. 214, no. 190; vol. 2, pl. 119.
24. See DeWitt, Evolution (see note 3), pp. 160-164.
25. Jan Lievens, Portrait of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, black and red chalk, 180 x 140 mm, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett (KdZ 5869); Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), p. 249, no. 109 (colour illus.).
26. Jan Lievens, Profile Head of an Old Woman in Oriental Dress, c. 1630, panel, 43.2 x 33.7 cm, Kingston, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, gift of Alfred and Isabel Bader, 2005 (48-002). See entry by David de Witt in Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 122-123, no. 21 (colour illus.).
27. Letter to his son the Earl of Lothian, May 1654: Correspondence of Sir Robert Kerr, First Earl of Ancram, and His Son William, Third Earl of Lothian, vol. 2, London, 1875, p. 383; C. Hofstede de Groot, “Hollandsche Kunst in Schotland,” Oud Holland 11 (1893), p. 214.
28. On Sinclair: Jeannette Ewin, Fine Wines and Fish Oil: The Life of Hugh Macdonald Sinclair, Oxford 2001.
29. The typescript is available in the “Library acquisition file for the Sinclair collection”.
30. UBC Library, WZ250 .T9 1641.
31. “7,000 rare books arrive”, UBC Reports 12, no. 3 (March-April, 1966). https://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/pdfs/ubcreports/UBC_Reports_1966_03_00.pdf
32. Michiel Roscam Abbing, Rembrandt’s Elephant. Following in Hansken’s Footsteps, Amstelveen 2021.
33. Nina Siegal, “When Rembrandt Met an Elephant”, The New York Times, July 16, 2021.
34. UBC Library, WZ250 .T9 1641 and WZ260 .T83 1739 with the title Observationes Medicae.
35. Allard Pierson, University of Amsterdam, Archives of Menno Hertzberger (UBA235). Sales catalogue Medicine Hippocrates-Claude Bernard, Amsterdam [February 1954], lot 442.
36. Note 8 for this annotated copy.
37. He also kept the relevant page from the catalogue in his files. Hamburg, Warburg Haus, Heckscher Archiv, Box 121 (‘Rembrandt: Dr. Tulp’), folder ‘Dr. Tulp Photo’s I’. Sinclair’s copy is kept in UBC Library call number Z999.74.
38. According to Heckscher’s own administration he sent letters to Hugh Sinclair on 15 February and 2 March 1963. Hamburg, Warburg Haus, Heckscher Archiv, Box 52 (‘Heckscher: Korrespondenz und Arbeiten’). We thank Ms. Fanny Weidehaas of the Heckscher Archiv for her assistance. These letters were not found among Sinclair’s papers in The Museum of English Rural Life at the University of Reading. We thank Ms. Emma Farmer for checking these files.
39. The translation was not published until 1991: Nicolaes Tulp, Geneesinzichten van Dr. Nicolaes Tulp etc., eds. (and transcriptions) C.G.L. Apeldoorn and T. Beijer. Amsterdam, 1991.
40. The title page of the manuscript reads: “Nicolaes Tulp. Inzichten over de geneeskunst in vier boeken met koperen platen” (Nicolaes Tulp. Medical Insights in Four Books with Copper Plates).
41. “D. Meppen Norda Frisii 1682 d. 18 8.bris”. We thank Koert van der Horst, retired keeper of manuscripts of the Utrecht University Library, for this identification. A third (unidentified) ownership’s inscription reads: “L. Fries stud. med. 1838 16/2.”
42. The visit is not recorded in Sinclair’s Visitors book. Reading, The Museum of English Rural Life, Papers of Hugh Macdonald Sinclair, D HS 1/7/1: Visitor’s book 1941-1989: Dr Hugh Sinclair’s book of visitors to his home, Lady Place in Sutton Courtenay. We are grateful to Ms. Hollie Piff for checking.
43. In the National Archives in The Hague we consulted the archives of the Department of Archeology and Nature Conservation, inv. no. 105 (Stukken betreffende de aanvraag van vergunningen voor de in- en uitvoer van voorwerpen van geschiedenis en kunst. 1946-1964).
44. Allard Pierson, University of Amsterdam, Archives of Menno Hertzberger (UBA235), personal archives.
45. Kindly provided information by Ms. Nina Duggen, Inspectie Overheidsinformatie en Erfgoed (Information and Heritage Inspectorate).
46. Peter Schatborn and Erik Hinterding, Rembrandt. The Complete Drawings and Etchings, Cologne 2019. Peter Schatborn gave his judgement in an email of September 15, 2021, in translation: “In any case, the drawing was not made by Rembrandt. The stylistic differences are too great and I can’t find any drawing by Rembrandt that is comparable”.
47. Ernest Theodore Hamy, ‘Documents inédits sur l’Homo sylvestris rapporté d’Angola en 1630′, Bulletin du Muséum d’histoire naturelle 3 (1897), pp. 277-282.
48. Michiel Roscam Abbing is currently preparing a book-length study, The Ape of Tulp, in which these data are to be published.
49. Peter van der Krogt and Erlend de Groot, The Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem of the Austrian National Library V (Utrecht 2005), pp. 88-89 (no. 35:40). The suggestion that Blaeu, who died in 1638, had access to the engraving of the chimpanzee and that this engraving was made by Tulp long before 1641, as argued by Kees Zandvliet (De Wereld van de familie Blaeu, Zutphen 2023, p. 66) must be rejected.
50. Much of the previous literature cites the drawing as The Departure of Rebecca from Her Parents’ House. The Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, which owns the drawing, adopted the shorter title (https://www.staatsgalerie.de/en/html).
51. “dit behoorde vervoucht te weesen me[t] veel gebueren die deese hoge bruijt sien vertrek[k]en”: Peter Schatborn, “The Core Group of Rembrandt Drawings, I: Overview,” Master Drawings 49 (2011), p. 320.
52. According to the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, “geburen” may mean “figures” or “bystanders,” as two scholars interpreted the word in Rembrandt’s inscription: (https://gtb.ivdnt.org/iWDB/search?actie=article&wdb=WNT&id=M017638.re.1&lemma=geburen&domein=0&conc=true). For “figures,” see: Volker Manuth, in: Rembrandt: A Genius and His Impact, exh. cat. Canberra, Australian National Gallery; Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, 1997, p. 270, cat. no. 53. For “bystanders,” see: Marieke de Winkel, Fashion and Fancy: Dress and Meaning in Rembrandt’s Paintings, Amsterdam 2006, pp. 214–215). However, in the full context of Rembrandt’s inscription and the drawing’s iconography, “geburen” most strongly refers to neighbours, as translated for example by Gary Schwartz and Peter Schatborn. See: Gary Schwartz, The Rembrandt Book, New York 2006, p. 107, fig. 195; Schatborn, “Core” (see note 2), p. 320.
53. Schwartz, Rembrandt (see note 3), p. 107.
54. Amy Golahny, “Rembrandt and ‘Everyday Life’: the Fusion of Genre and History,” in: Genre Imagery in Early Modern Northern Europe: New Perspectives, London 2016, pp. 174, 177.
55. The Rembrandt drawing (130 x 185 mm) was sold at Christie’s (London) on 3 July 2012, lot. 50, sale 5688. Golahny, “Rembrandt” (see note 5), pp. 170–174, figs. 7.5–9.
56. Herman Roodenburg, “Naar een etnografie van de vroegmoderne stad: de ‘gebuyrten’ in Leiden en Den Haag,” in: Cultuur en maatschappij in Nederland 1500–1850. Een historisch-antropologisch perspectief, Meppel 1992, p. 233.
57. For a discussion of neighbourhoods’ goals, see: Herman Roodenburg, “’Freundschaft’, ‘Brüderlichkeit’ und ‘Einigkeit’: Städtische Nachbarschaften im Westen der Republik,” in: Ausbreitung bürgerlicher Kultur in den Niederlanden und Nordwestdeutschland, Münster 1991, pp. 11, 12, 21; Gabrielle Dorren, “Communities within the Community: Aspects of Neighbourhood in Seventeenth-Century Haarlem,” Urban History 25 (1998), pp. 180, 188.
58. See, for example, Rembrandt’s drawings Benesch 491, 503, 566, 988 and his painting Portrait of a Couple as Isaac and Rebecca, c. 1665–1669 (oil on canvas, 121.5 x 166.5 cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum).
59. All Biblical translations from: The New English Bible with the Apocrypha, New York 1971.
60. Schatborn, “Core” (see note 2), p. 320.
61. The Staatsgalerie Stuttgart attributes the inscription to Rembrandt and the drawing to either Rembrandt or Gerbrand van den Eeckhout. Hans Martin Kaulbach, Curator of German and Netherlandish Prints and Drawings before 1800, Graphische Sammlung, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, email message to the author, 25 April 2018.
62. For Koninck see for example: Horst Gerson, Philips Koninck; ein beitrag zur Erforschung der holländischen Malerei des XVII. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1936, p. 174, Z.LXV. For Flinck: Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner, Rembrandt: des Meisters Handzeichnungen, Stuttgart 1933, part 2, p. 247. For Van den Eeckhout: Martin Royalton-Kisch, Drawings by Rembrandt and His Circle in the British Museum, exh. cat., London, British Museum 1992, p. 202, cat. no. 97; Holm Bevers, “Drawing in Rembrandt’s Workshop,” in: Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference, exh. cat., Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum 2009, p. 27; Schatborn, “Core” (see note 2), pp. 320, 322, note 38. For an argument against the Van den Eeckhout attribution, see: Eric Jan Sluijter and Nicolette Sluijter-Seijffert, “Rembrandt’s Pupils? The Attribution of Early Drawings to Gerbrand van den Eeckhout and Jan Victors,” in: Connoisseurship Essays in Honour of Fred G. Meijer, Leiden 2020, pp. 289–296.
63. Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, New York 1979–1992, vol. 3, p. 1734, 806xx; Bevers, “Drawing” (see note 13), pp. 27, notes 97–98.
64. Seymour Slive, Rembrandt Drawings, Los Angeles 2009, p. 215; Schatborn, “Core” (see note 2), p. 320; Bevers, “Drawing” (see note 13), p. 2.
65. Cornelis Hofstede de Groot and Bob Haak, Rembrandt Zeichnungen, Köln 1974, p. 13; Manuth, Rembrandt (see note 3), p. 270, cat. no. 53.
66. Samuel van Hoogstraten, De Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkunst anders de zichtbaere werelt, Rotterdam 1678, p. 192. Bevers, “Drawing” (see note 13), p. 25, notes 86–87.
67. Bevers, “Drawing” (see note 13), pp. 25–27, 187, 189­–90; Schatborn, “Core” (see note 2), p. 320.
68. Bevers, “Drawing” (see note 13), p. 27.
69. Roodenburg, “Naar” (see note 7), pp. 222–224; Dorren, “Communities” (see note 8), p. 177; Llewellyn Bogaers, “Geleund over de onderdeur: Doorkijkjes in het Utrechtse buurtleven van de vroege middeleeuwen tot in de zeventiende eeuw,” in: Bijdragen en mededelingen betreffende de geschiedenis der Nederlanden 112 (1997), pp. 349, 357, 359.
70. Roodenburg, “Naar” (see note 7), pp. 224, 233–234; Bogaers, “Geleund” (see note 20), pp. 340–342, 348.
71. Catherina Lis and Hugo Soly, “Neighborhood Social Change in Western European Cities,” International Review of Social History 38 (1993), p. 5.
72. Kees Walle, Buurthouden. De geschiedenis van burengebruiken en buurtorganisaties in Leiden (14e–19e eeuw), Leiden 2005, pp. 75, 306.
73. Regionaal Archief Leiden (RAL); Stadsarchief (SA) II inv.nr. 1216, f. 149 and RAL SA II inv.nr. 1217, f. 10 vso; cited in: Walle, Buurthouden (see note 23), p. 231, note 77.
74. Jan le Francq van Berkheij, Natuurlyke historie van Holland, 12 parts in 9 vols., Amsterdam 1769–1811, vol. 3, part 2, pp. 1045–1046; Roodenburg, “Naar” (see note 7), p. 225.
75. RAL; SA II inv.nr. 16; Aflezingboek F, f. 58 vso; cited in: Walle, Buurthouden (see note 23), pp. 43, 227, notes 141, 270.
76. Algemene Verordening, n.p.; cited in: Walle, Buurthouden (see note 23), pp. 46, 275.
77. Roodenburg, “’Freundschaft’” (see note 8), p. 15; Bogaers, “Geleund” (see note 20), p. 349.
78. Ilja Veldman and Lynne Richards, “Familiar Customs and Exotic Rituals: Picart’s Illustrations for Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples,” Simiolus: Netherlandish quarterly for the history of art, vol. 33 (2007/2008), p. 94.
79. Picart’s widow explained that “the prints of the Reformed congregation were drawn from life and are very accurate.” Bernard Picart and Anne Vincent, Impostures innocentes ou recueil d’estampes d’après divers peintres illustres . . . etc. gravées par Bernard Picart avec son éloge historique et le catalogue de ses ouvrages, Amsterdam 1734, p. 9; Veldman and Richards, “Familiar” (see note 29), p. 99, note 20.
80. Veldman and Richards, “Familiar” (see note 29), p. 97.
81. Bernard Picart, Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, Amsterdam 1723–1743, p. 345.
82. As Petra van Boheemen noted, the “interest of the neighbourhood is visible” in Picart’s print. Petra van Boheemen et al., Kent, en versint, eer datje mint: vrijen en trouwen, 1500–1800, Apeldoorn, Historisch Museum Marialust; Zwolle 1989, p. 170.
83. Van Boheemen, Kent (see note 33), pp. 170–172; H. Perry Chapman, Jan Steen, Painter and Storyteller, exh. cat., Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum 1996, pp. 116–118 note 1, cat. no. 6.
84. Van Boheemen, Kent (see note 33), p. 170.
85. Irma Thoen, Strategic Affection? Gift Exchange in Seventeenth-Century Holland, Amsterdam 2007, p. 106.
86. Fynes Moryson and Charles Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe. Unpublished Chapters of Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary Being a Survey of the Condition of Europe at the End of the 16th Century, London 1903, pp. 379–380.
87. A. Lynn Martin, Alcohol, Sex, and Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, New York 2001, pp. 52–53; Thoen, Strategic (see note 36), p. 105.
88. See, for example, Jan Steen’s The Wedding of Tobias and Sarah, c. 1667–1668, oil on canvas, 131 x 172 cm, Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum; Chapman, Jan Steen (see note 34), pp. 203–205, cat. no. 32.
89. Philips Angel, Lof der schilder-konst, Leyden 1642, p. 48. Translation from: Philips Angel, Michael Hoyle, and Hessel Miedema, “Philips Angel, Praise of Painting,” Simiolus, Netherlandish Quarterly for the History of Art 24 (1996), p. 246.
90. A. M. van der Woude, “Variations in Size and Structure of the Household in the United Provinces of the Netherlands in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in: Household and Family in Past Time: Comparative Studies in the Size and Structure of the Domestic Group over the Last Three Centuries in England, France, Serbia, Japan and Colonial North America, with Further Materials from Western Europe, Cambridge 1972, p. 315.

The most basic facts of Rembrandt’s life, his birth and death, are sparsely documented. In 1641, the Leiden city historian Jan Orlers listed the artist’s birthdate as 15 July 1606. Lacking a baptismal record, most scholars have taken Orlers at his word.⁹¹ The only source for Rembrandt’s date of death is the Memoriael, or family record book, kept by Nicolaes Sebastiaensz Vinck (1608-1679), an apothecary who grew up in Leiden and moved to Amsterdam a few years before Rembrandt did (fig. 1). In a list of events from 1669, Vinck writes that his neef (relative or cousin), ‘Rembrandt van Rhyn, painter’, died on 4 October (fig. 2). The ‘4’ is corrected from a ‘5’, suggesting that Vinck received the information at some remove from the event, but the date aligns with burial records indicating that Rembrandt was interred in the Westerkerk in Amsterdam on 8 October 1669.⁹²

A partial transcription of Vinck’s Memoriael was published in 1906 but failed to catch the attention of Rembrandt scholars.⁹³  In 1956, Dirk Rühl cited Vinck’s account in an article on heraldry and the Van Rijn family.⁹⁴ When Walter Strauss compiled The Rembrandt Documents in 1979, he repeated Rühl’s brief citation and dismissed Vinck as a ‘distant relative’.⁹⁵ There the matter rested until 2022, when research for a new publication contextualizing Rembrandt’s death prompted us to seek out Vinck’s Memoriael for a first-hand look. We found it in the archives of Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken (not in the Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie in The Hague, as stated by Rühl and Strauss).⁹⁶ As it turns out, this family chronicle sheds light not only on Rembrandt’s death, but also on his childhood in Leiden.

            The clue lies in two entries that follow Vinck’s reference to Rembrandt:

            den 4 8b[er] is overleeden neeff Rembrant van Rhijn schilder

            item neeff Corn[elis] Swanenburch

            item Silvester van Swaneburch

Remarkably, these notes have not been examined until now. A similar chronicle written by Willem Jacobsz. van Heemskerk (1613-1692), husband of Maria van Swanenburgh (1616-1680), confirms that ‘Silvester van Swaneburch’ can be identified as the son born in Naples in 1610 to the Leiden painter Jacob van Swanenburgh (1578-1638) and his Neapolitan wife, Margaretha Cardone (d. 1639). Vinck’s ‘neeff Corn[elis]’ must be Silvester’s second cousin, the eldest child of Jacob van Swanenburgh’s first cousin, Huygh Claesz van Swanenburgh, alias van Rossum (1578/79-1635), and Adriana Claesdr. van Leeuwen (d. 1640). Huygh was a cloth merchant, and Cornelis followed his father’s profession, becoming a staalmeester in 1641. Born the same year as Rembrandt, Cornelis was buried in Leiden on 7 October 1669. Silvester van Swanenburgh died soon after.⁹⁷

This essay explores Rembrandt’s connections with the Vinck and Van Swanenburgh families and their implications for his life and career. Given the importance of family alliances in early modern Dutch society, we consider relations by marriage as well as by blood. Through this research, Nicolaes Vinck and Silvester van Swanenburgh gain substance as persons in Rembrandt’s social network. A key discovery is that if Silvester was related to Vinck, and hence to Rembrandt, so too was Silvester’s father: Jacob van Swanenburgh, Rembrandt’s first teacher.

Family Ties: Vinck and Rembrandt Rembrandt’s mother, Neeltje (or Cornelia) Willemsdr. van Zuytbroeck (1568-1640), is often identified as the model who posed for numerous studies of elderly ladies by the young artist and his associates in Leiden (fig. 3).104 Neeltje’s family tree provides the connection to Nicolaes Vinck (fig. 4).105 Neeltje and Bastiaen Dircsz. Vinck (before 1581-1623), Nicolaes’s father, shared the same grandmother, Reymptgen (or Rijmpje / Rimigia) van Banchem (or Bancken) (c. 1510-1581/5).106 Strauss suggested that Rembrandt’s unusual first name was chosen to honor her.107 Reymptgen’s husband Cornelis van Tetrode (d. 1564) adopted his mother’s surname, Vinck. Their children included Rembrandt’s grandmother (Neeltje’s mother) Elisabeth Cornelisdr. [Van Tetrode] (1530-1603), Nicolaes Vinck’s grandfather Dirk Cornelisz. Vinck (1542-1632), who became a grain dealer, and Gerrit Cornelisz. Vinck (before 1544-after 1588), a painter and baker.108  In 1581, Rembrandt’s widowed great-grandmother Reymptgen was living with her son Dirck Cornelisz. Vinck and his wife in a house called ’t Gulden Warcken (’the Golden Hog’) on the Warmoesmarkt in Leiden. The census document records their household immediately before that of Rembrandt’s grandparents, Elisabeth Cornelisdr. and Willem van Zuytbroeck, a baker (d. 1609). Thus, Rembrandt’s mother Neeltje and Nicolaes Vinck’s father Bastiaen grew up next door to one another.109 Nicolaes was born on 14 December 1608, two and a half years after Rembrandt. It seems likely they knew each other as children.   Vinck tells us that on 16 May 1628, he moved to Amsterdam to join the apothecary practice of Roelof Ortsz Walsburch. On 20 April 1629, Walsburch and his wife drowned in the IJ.110 This tragic accident enabled Vinck to purchase their house and business, located on the Kalverstraat on the corner of the Watersteeg, close to the Begijnhof; he lived there for the rest of his life.111  On 10 May 1636, Vinck and Maria Dircks Haegen were married at the Begijnkerk; the renowned Catholic pastor Leonardus Marius (1588-1652) officiated.112 Other family members also joined the Catholic community in Amsterdam. Baptisms in the Begijnkerk are recorded, and several of the women became beguines, including Vinck’s sister Clara (1617-1657), who lived in the Begijnhof until her death.113 His brother Albert (1611-1683), a grocer and baker, married Maria Jansdr. Poef (d. 1654) in Amsterdam on 2 January 1642 and became a citizen (poorter) a few months later.114 In 1647, they buried their mother, Jannetje Gerritsdr. de Man (1585-1647), in the Begijnkerk.115 Like Nicolaes and his wife, Clara and Albert would also be buried there.116 Belonging to another branch of this family tree was the painter Karel van der Pluym (1625-1672) (fig. 5). Karel was the only child of Rembrandt’s cousin Cornelia Cornelisdr van Zuytbroeck (d. 1652); her father, Cornelis Willemsz. van Zuytbroeck (1566-1631), a baker, was Neeltje’s brother (thus, Rembrandt’s uncle).117 Karel’s father was Domenicus van der Pluym (d. 1661), a prosperous plumber and slater in Leiden. In the 1640s and 1650s, Karel produced history paintings and figure studies that follow Rembrandt’s example so closely that it seems clear he moved to Amsterdam to study with his cousin. He might have lodged with another uncle, Willem Jansz van der Pluym (d. 1675), whose inventory includes a portrait drawing of himself by Rembrandt. Other documents show that the families kept in touch. Karel gave up painting a few years after he returned to Leiden in 1648. He joined the city’s governing Council of Forty in 1664 and died a wealthy man. If Rembrandt and his son Titus had not predeceased him, they would have been among his beneficiaries.118 Although Nicolaes Vinck has been overlooked as a ‘distant relative’, his genealogical connection to Rembrandt was closer than that of Karel van der Pluym. His father, Bastiaen Dircksz. Vinck, and Rembrandt’s mother, Neeltje, were first cousins; Van der Pluym’s grandfather Cornelis was their second cousin. So far, however, there is no evidence that Rembrandt maintained a relationship with the Vincks as he apparently did with the Van der Pluyms. This might partly be explained by the fact that Vinck’s social network was largely Catholic. Yet, Nicolaes Vinck, his brother Albert, and Rembrandt were cousins, close in age and social status, who lived near each other as children and moved from Leiden to Amsterdam within a few years of each other. Profession offers another possible contact point: apothecaries often supplied painters with pigments.119 While Rembrandt developed close ties with another apothecary, Abraham Francen (1612-after 1678), their friendship may have been based on their shared passion for collecting, documented in Rembrandt’s etched portrait of Francen surrounded by his treasures (c. 1657).120 We do not know from whom Rembrandt purchased his painting materials.

Vinck, Van Swanenburgh, and Rembrandt’s Training as a Painter The connection between the Van Swanenburghs and the Vincks is found in Nicolaes’s mother, Jannetje Gerritsdr. de Man (fig. 6). She was the daughter of Gerrit Arentsz. de Man, a Catholic baker and zoutzieder (salt refiner), and Jacobge Claesdr. van Swanenburgh. This lineage adds another artist to the family tree: Gerrit was the brother of the landscape painter Jan Arentsz. de Man (d. 1625), named by Orlers as teacher to Jan van Goyen (1596-1656).121 Jacobge was the youngest sister of the painter and burgomaster Isaac Claesz. van Swanenburgh (1537-1614) and, hence, the aunt of Rembrandt’s instructor, Jacob van Swanenburgh.122 In the Leiden census of 1581 (before Jannetje was born), the couple De Man and their three children were recorded living on the Boterstraat, around the corner from the Vinck and Van Zuytbroeck families on the Warmoesmarkt, mentioned above.123 The involvement of these families in grain dealing, milling, and baking bound them together within the city’s economy. It is highly likely that they were in contact. As a child, Jannetje Gerritsdr. de Man may well have observed her older brother, Isaac van Swanenburgh, instructing her cousin Jacob in the art of painting. In 1591, Jacob left Leiden for adventures abroad. From 1596 to 1615, he resided in Naples, where he married and joined a community of Dutch and Flemish artists.124 The year after his father died, he returned to Leiden, and in 1618, he brought his wife to live there along with their son Silvester and two daughters. In Leiden, Jacob continued to produce the dramatic history paintings and scenes of hellfire and witchcraft that had brought him notoriety in Italy (fig. 7), but he also received commissions for decorative painting from the Stadholder’s court.125 In 1620, Rembrandt’s parents enrolled him in Leiden University, and it has recently been discovered that he renewed his registration in 1622.126 Nevertheless, as Orlers describes, he was determined to pursue a career in painting, and his parents chose Jacob van Swanenburgh as his first instructor. Perhaps Jannetje Gerritsdr. de Man played a role in establishing contact between Rembrandt’s parents and her cousin Jacob. Orlers states that Rembrandt spent three years in Jacob’s studio before going to Amsterdam to work for six months with Pieter Lastman (1583-1633).127 During these years (1622-25), Silvester van Swanenburgh would surely have encountered Rembrandt in the family home. Silvester resided on the Breestraat in Leiden until 1654, when he moved to Huis ter Lucht on the Donkersteeg.128 By 1637, he was established as a public notary, and in 1638 he is listed as a citizen (poorter) of Leiden and secretaris van het baljuwschap van Rijnland (Secretary of the Bailiwick of Rijnland). He still held that post when he was recorded on 12 October 1669 as sick in bed; he must have died shortly thereafter.129 Many authors have sought to explain why Rembrandt’s parents chose Jacob van Swanenburgh as his first teacher. There is little obvious connection between the two artists’ approaches to subject matter or style. Yet, this disparity is less concerning than it seems: from his initial instructor, Rembrandt would be expected to learn fundamental skills rather than a specific style, and many painters developed independently as they matured.130 Constantijn Huygens, not realizing that Rembrandt’s parents were prosperous, supposed they sought a local artist ‘whose fees were modest’, but this dismissive statement seems disingenuous when we realize that Jacob received court patronage and that Huygens’ own son, Constantijn the Younger, was tutored by Jacob’s cousin Johan and married into the family.131 The simplest explanation is lack of choice: in Leiden in the 1620s, only Jacob van Swanenburgh and Joris van Schooten (1587-1651) were painting historical subjects. Van Schooten, teacher of Rembrandt’s friend and rival Jan Lievens (1607-1674), was better known for portraiture.132 That said, the assumption that Rembrandt set out to be a history painter is challenged by the large number of genre scenes and tronies (figure studies) he created in his early years, together with Lievens and their associates. The iconographic fluidity of Rembrandt’s early work suggests that he aspired to an even higher goal: to be a ‘universal artist’, adept at all aspects of his craft.133 A case in point is the cryptic Musical Allegory (fig. 8), in which we recognize Rembrandt’s mother in the richly dressed old woman, while Lievens plays the harpist whose rude gesture signals a moralizing connotation for the scene.134 The inventiveness of Van Swanenburgh’s dramatic imagery must have caught Rembrandt’s interest, while techniques and anecdotes collected abroad would have dazzled an ambitious young artist who had never left his native city. All this may explain why Rembrandt was content to stay in Van Swanenburgh’s workshop for three years, but, as Orlers stated, the choice to send him there was made by his parents. As far as we know, they were not scholars or art collectors. One of their older sons took over the family business; another became a baker and grain dealer. Baking and milling were respectable professions that could lead to prosperity, but they were also practical trades, pursued by a network of families whose interests and connections were more local than global. Perhaps for Rembrandt’s parents, international cachet was all very well, but faith and family ties would have resonated more directly.135 Although Catholicism after 1618 became a political liability, Rembrandt’s mother, who came from a Catholic family, might have appreciated the fact that Jacob van Swanenburgh and his Italian wife were Catholic.136 We can now add the reassuring factor of a family relationship, through the Vincks, with the distinguished Van Swanenburgh clan. Rembrandt’s choice of profession seems less surprising when we realize there were already artists in the family.

Family Network and Art Patronage in Leiden While our research sheds light on Rembrandt’s choice of teacher, it does not yet add evidence of Leiden patronage for him.137 In fact, several people in his network seem to have preferred the work of Lievens. Arnold Houbraken transcribed a poem published in 1662 by the Leiden author Dirk Traudenius, Op de gedootverfde beeldenis van de Heer Secretaris Silvester van Swanenburg door Johan Lievens (‘On the painted likeness of Mr. Secretary Silvester van Swanenburgh by Jan Lievens’). The text adopts a conventional trope praising the portrait as almost lifelike enough to speak.138 Lievens left Leiden in 1632, but he returned in 1639 for a commission to paint The Magnanimity of Scipio for the Leiden Town Hall. Completed in 1641, the painting was praised by Orlers, and the Leiden city fathers awarded Lievens the impressive sum of 1500 guilders and a gold medal.139 Perhaps it was in this context that Lievens painted Silvester to celebrate his role as Heer Secretaris. Since Rembrandt and Lievens continued to share interests and patrons as they matured, Silvester’s portrait belongs by extension to Rembrandt’s milieu.140  Thus, it remains intriguing that Silvester chose Lievens and not Rembrandt. The same can be said for the Van Leeuwens, a prominent Leiden family with which the Van Swanenburghs and two of Rembrandt’s brothers were connected by marriage.141 In his recent study of the Leiden art market, Piet Bakker found 43 mentions of Lievens in 22 Leiden inventories, including a painting of ‘The Five Senses’ in the estate of the wealthy brewer Adriaen van Leeuwen (1641), husband of Jacob van Swanenburgh’s niece Maria (fig. 9). He found only 16 paintings by Rembrandt in 10 estates.142 Orlers stated that Jan van der Graft — father-in-law of ‘our’ Cornelis van Swanenburgh — owned so many paintings by Lievens that he could not list them all, yet he did not mention one painting by Rembrandt in a Leiden collection.143 It begins to seem that Rembrandt’s family contacts were not so useful after all. Perhaps even at this early stage, his work appealed more to elite connoisseurs such as Petrus Scriverius (1576-1680), the scholar who owned two of his early history paintings. Further research is warranted.144   By 1632, Rembrandt and Lievens had joined an exodus of youthful talent from Leiden that also included Jan van Goyen and Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606-1683/4).145 Lievens sought court patronage in London, while Amsterdam offered Rembrandt a more liberal religious climate and a richer art market. In Nicolaes Vinck, Rembrandt would have found a cousin already established in the city. The fact that Vinck took note of the artist’s death more than thirty years later hints at the possibility of continued contact. That he squeezed in the two Van Swanenburgh entries just below suggests connection as well as chronology. The previous generation of this family network included Jacob van Swanenburgh, first cousin of Vinck’s mother, cousin-in-law of Rembrandt’s mother, father of Silvester, and teacher of Rembrandt.   Stephanie Dickey is Professor of Art History and Bader Chair in Northern Baroque Art at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. She recently co-curated the exhibition Rembrandt in Amsterdam: Creativity and Competition (Städel Museum, Frankfurt, and Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, 2021-22) and is the author of numerous publications on Rembrandt and artists in his circle.   Angela Jager is Curator of Dutch and Flemish Old Master Painting at the RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History. She has published on the mass market for seventeenth-century paintings and the international trade in Dutch art. In her research, she draws on a variety of archival sources on early modern artists, art dealers and their clients.

1. Jan Jacobsz. Orlers, Beschrijvinge der Stadt Leyden, 2nd ed., Leiden, 1641, p. 376.
2. See the translation from the original Latin: “Constantijn Huygens on Lievens and Rembrandt,” in: Arthur K. Wheelock et al., Jan Lievens. A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington: National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam: Museum Het Rembrandthuis, 2008-2009, p. 287.
3. See: Arthur K. Wheelock, “Jan Lievens: Bringing New Light to an Old Master,” in: Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 13-23; and: Lloyd DeWitt, Evolution and Ambition in the Career of Jan Lievens (1607-1674), Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, 2006: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277127128_Evolution_and_Ambition_in_the_Career_of_Jan_Lievens_1607-1674
4. Property from Aristocratic Estates and Important Provenance, Vienna (Dorotheum), 8 September 2020, lot 59 (as Circle of Bartholomeus van der Helst).
5. Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, Landau, vol. 5, 1990, p. 3109, no. 2127, ill. p. 3279
6. Ernst van de Wetering, Rembrandt: the Painter at Work, Amsterdam, 1997, pp. 182-185.
7. Jan Lievens, Job in his Misery, monogrammed and dated 1631, canvas, 171.5 x 148.6 cm, Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada (4093). See Lloyd DeWitt in Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 130-131, no. 25 (colour illus.).
8. Jan Lievens, The Penitent Magdalene, c. 1631. Canvas, 63.5 x 49.5 cm. Kingston, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, gift of Dr. and Mrs. Alfred Bader, 1975 (18.126). See David de Witt in Wheelock, Lievens, pp. 128-129, no. 24 (colour illus.).
9. Portrait of Jan Davidsz. de Heem, c. 1635/37, black chalk with some white body colour, 265 x 201 mm, London, British Museum (1895,0915.1199); Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, New York, vol. 7 (1983), pp. 3682-3683, no. 1652x (illus.).
10. See entry by Lloyd DeWitt in: Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 154-155, no. 38 (colour illus.).
11. Jan Lievens, Head of a Bearded Old Man, c. 1640. Panel, 55 x 43 cm (oval), Kingston, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, gift of Alfred and Isabel Bader. See: David de Witt, The Bader Collection: Dutch and Flemish Paintings. Kingston, 2008, p. 198, no. 117 (colour illus.).
12. Jan Lievens, Portrait of Adriaen Brouwer, c. 1635/37, black chalk with touches of pen in black, 221 x 185 mm, Paris, Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt (1203); Sumowski, Drawings (see note 9), pp. 3356-3357, no. 1594 (illus.).
13. Jan Lievens, Portrait of Constantijn Huygens, 1639, black chalk with touches of pen in brown, 238 x 174 mm, London, British Museum (1836.8.11.342); see Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), p. 242-243, no. 103 (colour illus.).
14. Email correspondence with the author, 9 September 2020.
15. My thanks to Stephanie Dickey for this information (email, 31 October 2022), confirmed by Marieke de Winkel.
16. See Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), p. 286.
17. Lucas Vorsterman, after Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Jan Lievens, c. 1630-1645, engraving, 241 x 158 mm, in 6 states, for the series: Icones Principorum Vivorum Doctorum Pictorum…; see: Marie Mauquoy-Hendrickx, L’Iconographie d’Antoine van Dyck, 2nd ed., Brussels, 1991, vol. 1, p. 155, no. 85; vol. 2, pl. 54 (illus.).
18. Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 112-113, no. 112 (colour illus.).
19. Jan Lievens, Portrait of Charles I, pen in brown, 183 x 140 mm, Turin, Biblioteca Reale (D. C. 16365); Sumowski, Drawings (see note 9), pp. 3898-3899, no. 1754xx, (illus.); Orlers, Beschrijvinge (see note 1), pp. 375-377.
20. Karolien de Klippel, “Adriaen Brouwer, Portrait Painter: New Identifications and an Iconographic Novelty,” Simiolus 30 (2003), pp. 196-216.
21. Stephanie Dickey, “Jan Lievens and Printmaking,” in Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 60-62. On the Iconography, see Mauquoy-Hendrickx, Iconographie (see note 7).
22. DeWitt, Evolution (see note 3), p. 192, illus. fig. 144 (Lievens c. 1635/43, H. de Bran); attribution by Werner Sumowski: written correspondence with the museum of 28 July 1986; and: Drawings of the Rembrandt School, vol. 12 (Addenda), Leiden (forthcoming), no. 3104x.
23. See Mauquoy-Hendrick, Iconography (see note 17), vol. 1, p. 214, no. 190; vol. 2, pl. 119.
24. See DeWitt, Evolution (see note 3), pp. 160-164.
25. Jan Lievens, Portrait of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, black and red chalk, 180 x 140 mm, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett (KdZ 5869); Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), p. 249, no. 109 (colour illus.).
26. Jan Lievens, Profile Head of an Old Woman in Oriental Dress, c. 1630, panel, 43.2 x 33.7 cm, Kingston, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, gift of Alfred and Isabel Bader, 2005 (48-002). See entry by David de Witt in Wheelock, Lievens (see note 2), pp. 122-123, no. 21 (colour illus.).
27. Letter to his son the Earl of Lothian, May 1654: Correspondence of Sir Robert Kerr, First Earl of Ancram, and His Son William, Third Earl of Lothian, vol. 2, London, 1875, p. 383; C. Hofstede de Groot, “Hollandsche Kunst in Schotland,” Oud Holland 11 (1893), p. 214.
28. On Sinclair: Jeannette Ewin, Fine Wines and Fish Oil: The Life of Hugh Macdonald Sinclair, Oxford 2001.
29. The typescript is available in the “Library acquisition file for the Sinclair collection”.
30. UBC Library, WZ250 .T9 1641.
31. “7,000 rare books arrive”, UBC Reports 12, no. 3 (March-April, 1966). https://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/pdfs/ubcreports/UBC_Reports_1966_03_00.pdf
32. Michiel Roscam Abbing, Rembrandt’s Elephant. Following in Hansken’s Footsteps, Amstelveen 2021.
33. Nina Siegal, “When Rembrandt Met an Elephant”, The New York Times, July 16, 2021.
34. UBC Library, WZ250 .T9 1641 and WZ260 .T83 1739 with the title Observationes Medicae.
35. Allard Pierson, University of Amsterdam, Archives of Menno Hertzberger (UBA235). Sales catalogue Medicine Hippocrates-Claude Bernard, Amsterdam [February 1954], lot 442.
36. Note 8 for this annotated copy.
37. He also kept the relevant page from the catalogue in his files. Hamburg, Warburg Haus, Heckscher Archiv, Box 121 (‘Rembrandt: Dr. Tulp’), folder ‘Dr. Tulp Photo’s I’. Sinclair’s copy is kept in UBC Library call number Z999.74.
38. According to Heckscher’s own administration he sent letters to Hugh Sinclair on 15 February and 2 March 1963. Hamburg, Warburg Haus, Heckscher Archiv, Box 52 (‘Heckscher: Korrespondenz und Arbeiten’). We thank Ms. Fanny Weidehaas of the Heckscher Archiv for her assistance. These letters were not found among Sinclair’s papers in The Museum of English Rural Life at the University of Reading. We thank Ms. Emma Farmer for checking these files.
39. The translation was not published until 1991: Nicolaes Tulp, Geneesinzichten van Dr. Nicolaes Tulp etc., eds. (and transcriptions) C.G.L. Apeldoorn and T. Beijer. Amsterdam, 1991.
40. The title page of the manuscript reads: “Nicolaes Tulp. Inzichten over de geneeskunst in vier boeken met koperen platen” (Nicolaes Tulp. Medical Insights in Four Books with Copper Plates).
41. “D. Meppen Norda Frisii 1682 d. 18 8.bris”. We thank Koert van der Horst, retired keeper of manuscripts of the Utrecht University Library, for this identification. A third (unidentified) ownership’s inscription reads: “L. Fries stud. med. 1838 16/2.”
42. The visit is not recorded in Sinclair’s Visitors book. Reading, The Museum of English Rural Life, Papers of Hugh Macdonald Sinclair, D HS 1/7/1: Visitor’s book 1941-1989: Dr Hugh Sinclair’s book of visitors to his home, Lady Place in Sutton Courtenay. We are grateful to Ms. Hollie Piff for checking.
43. In the National Archives in The Hague we consulted the archives of the Department of Archeology and Nature Conservation, inv. no. 105 (Stukken betreffende de aanvraag van vergunningen voor de in- en uitvoer van voorwerpen van geschiedenis en kunst. 1946-1964).
44. Allard Pierson, University of Amsterdam, Archives of Menno Hertzberger (UBA235), personal archives.
45. Kindly provided information by Ms. Nina Duggen, Inspectie Overheidsinformatie en Erfgoed (Information and Heritage Inspectorate).
46. Peter Schatborn and Erik Hinterding, Rembrandt. The Complete Drawings and Etchings, Cologne 2019. Peter Schatborn gave his judgement in an email of September 15, 2021, in translation: “In any case, the drawing was not made by Rembrandt. The stylistic differences are too great and I can’t find any drawing by Rembrandt that is comparable”.
47. Ernest Theodore Hamy, ‘Documents inédits sur l’Homo sylvestris rapporté d’Angola en 1630′, Bulletin du Muséum d’histoire naturelle 3 (1897), pp. 277-282.
48. Michiel Roscam Abbing is currently preparing a book-length study, The Ape of Tulp, in which these data are to be published.
49. Peter van der Krogt and Erlend de Groot, The Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem of the Austrian National Library V (Utrecht 2005), pp. 88-89 (no. 35:40). The suggestion that Blaeu, who died in 1638, had access to the engraving of the chimpanzee and that this engraving was made by Tulp long before 1641, as argued by Kees Zandvliet (De Wereld van de familie Blaeu, Zutphen 2023, p. 66) must be rejected.
50. Much of the previous literature cites the drawing as The Departure of Rebecca from Her Parents’ House. The Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, which owns the drawing, adopted the shorter title (https://www.staatsgalerie.de/en/html).
51. “dit behoorde vervoucht te weesen me[t] veel gebueren die deese hoge bruijt sien vertrek[k]en”: Peter Schatborn, “The Core Group of Rembrandt Drawings, I: Overview,” Master Drawings 49 (2011), p. 320.
52. According to the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, “geburen” may mean “figures” or “bystanders,” as two scholars interpreted the word in Rembrandt’s inscription: (https://gtb.ivdnt.org/iWDB/search?actie=article&wdb=WNT&id=M017638.re.1&lemma=geburen&domein=0&conc=true). For “figures,” see: Volker Manuth, in: Rembrandt: A Genius and His Impact, exh. cat. Canberra, Australian National Gallery; Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, 1997, p. 270, cat. no. 53. For “bystanders,” see: Marieke de Winkel, Fashion and Fancy: Dress and Meaning in Rembrandt’s Paintings, Amsterdam 2006, pp. 214–215). However, in the full context of Rembrandt’s inscription and the drawing’s iconography, “geburen” most strongly refers to neighbours, as translated for example by Gary Schwartz and Peter Schatborn. See: Gary Schwartz, The Rembrandt Book, New York 2006, p. 107, fig. 195; Schatborn, “Core” (see note 2), p. 320.
53. Schwartz, Rembrandt (see note 3), p. 107.
54. Amy Golahny, “Rembrandt and ‘Everyday Life’: the Fusion of Genre and History,” in: Genre Imagery in Early Modern Northern Europe: New Perspectives, London 2016, pp. 174, 177.
55. The Rembrandt drawing (130 x 185 mm) was sold at Christie’s (London) on 3 July 2012, lot. 50, sale 5688. Golahny, “Rembrandt” (see note 5), pp. 170–174, figs. 7.5–9.
56. Herman Roodenburg, “Naar een etnografie van de vroegmoderne stad: de ‘gebuyrten’ in Leiden en Den Haag,” in: Cultuur en maatschappij in Nederland 1500–1850. Een historisch-antropologisch perspectief, Meppel 1992, p. 233.
57. For a discussion of neighbourhoods’ goals, see: Herman Roodenburg, “’Freundschaft’, ‘Brüderlichkeit’ und ‘Einigkeit’: Städtische Nachbarschaften im Westen der Republik,” in: Ausbreitung bürgerlicher Kultur in den Niederlanden und Nordwestdeutschland, Münster 1991, pp. 11, 12, 21; Gabrielle Dorren, “Communities within the Community: Aspects of Neighbourhood in Seventeenth-Century Haarlem,” Urban History 25 (1998), pp. 180, 188.
58. See, for example, Rembrandt’s drawings Benesch 491, 503, 566, 988 and his painting Portrait of a Couple as Isaac and Rebecca, c. 1665–1669 (oil on canvas, 121.5 x 166.5 cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum).
59. All Biblical translations from: The New English Bible with the Apocrypha, New York 1971.
60. Schatborn, “Core” (see note 2), p. 320.
61. The Staatsgalerie Stuttgart attributes the inscription to Rembrandt and the drawing to either Rembrandt or Gerbrand van den Eeckhout. Hans Martin Kaulbach, Curator of German and Netherlandish Prints and Drawings before 1800, Graphische Sammlung, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, email message to the author, 25 April 2018.
62. For Koninck see for example: Horst Gerson, Philips Koninck; ein beitrag zur Erforschung der holländischen Malerei des XVII. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1936, p. 174, Z.LXV. For Flinck: Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner, Rembrandt: des Meisters Handzeichnungen, Stuttgart 1933, part 2, p. 247. For Van den Eeckhout: Martin Royalton-Kisch, Drawings by Rembrandt and His Circle in the British Museum, exh. cat., London, British Museum 1992, p. 202, cat. no. 97; Holm Bevers, “Drawing in Rembrandt’s Workshop,” in: Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference, exh. cat., Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum 2009, p. 27; Schatborn, “Core” (see note 2), pp. 320, 322, note 38. For an argument against the Van den Eeckhout attribution, see: Eric Jan Sluijter and Nicolette Sluijter-Seijffert, “Rembrandt’s Pupils? The Attribution of Early Drawings to Gerbrand van den Eeckhout and Jan Victors,” in: Connoisseurship Essays in Honour of Fred G. Meijer, Leiden 2020, pp. 289–296.
63. Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, New York 1979–1992, vol. 3, p. 1734, 806xx; Bevers, “Drawing” (see note 13), pp. 27, notes 97–98.
64. Seymour Slive, Rembrandt Drawings, Los Angeles 2009, p. 215; Schatborn, “Core” (see note 2), p. 320; Bevers, “Drawing” (see note 13), p. 2.
65. Cornelis Hofstede de Groot and Bob Haak, Rembrandt Zeichnungen, Köln 1974, p. 13; Manuth, Rembrandt (see note 3), p. 270, cat. no. 53.
66. Samuel van Hoogstraten, De Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkunst anders de zichtbaere werelt, Rotterdam 1678, p. 192. Bevers, “Drawing” (see note 13), p. 25, notes 86–87.
67. Bevers, “Drawing” (see note 13), pp. 25–27, 187, 189­–90; Schatborn, “Core” (see note 2), p. 320.
68. Bevers, “Drawing” (see note 13), p. 27.
69. Roodenburg, “Naar” (see note 7), pp. 222–224; Dorren, “Communities” (see note 8), p. 177; Llewellyn Bogaers, “Geleund over de onderdeur: Doorkijkjes in het Utrechtse buurtleven van de vroege middeleeuwen tot in de zeventiende eeuw,” in: Bijdragen en mededelingen betreffende de geschiedenis der Nederlanden 112 (1997), pp. 349, 357, 359.
70. Roodenburg, “Naar” (see note 7), pp. 224, 233–234; Bogaers, “Geleund” (see note 20), pp. 340–342, 348.
71. Catherina Lis and Hugo Soly, “Neighborhood Social Change in Western European Cities,” International Review of Social History 38 (1993), p. 5.
72. Kees Walle, Buurthouden. De geschiedenis van burengebruiken en buurtorganisaties in Leiden (14e–19e eeuw), Leiden 2005, pp. 75, 306.
73. Regionaal Archief Leiden (RAL); Stadsarchief (SA) II inv.nr. 1216, f. 149 and RAL SA II inv.nr. 1217, f. 10 vso; cited in: Walle, Buurthouden (see note 23), p. 231, note 77.
74. Jan le Francq van Berkheij, Natuurlyke historie van Holland, 12 parts in 9 vols., Amsterdam 1769–1811, vol. 3, part 2, pp. 1045–1046; Roodenburg, “Naar” (see note 7), p. 225.
75. RAL; SA II inv.nr. 16; Aflezingboek F, f. 58 vso; cited in: Walle, Buurthouden (see note 23), pp. 43, 227, notes 141, 270.
76. Algemene Verordening, n.p.; cited in: Walle, Buurthouden (see note 23), pp. 46, 275.
77. Roodenburg, “’Freundschaft’” (see note 8), p. 15; Bogaers, “Geleund” (see note 20), p. 349.
78. Ilja Veldman and Lynne Richards, “Familiar Customs and Exotic Rituals: Picart’s Illustrations for Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples,” Simiolus: Netherlandish quarterly for the history of art, vol. 33 (2007/2008), p. 94.
79. Picart’s widow explained that “the prints of the Reformed congregation were drawn from life and are very accurate.” Bernard Picart and Anne Vincent, Impostures innocentes ou recueil d’estampes d’après divers peintres illustres . . . etc. gravées par Bernard Picart avec son éloge historique et le catalogue de ses ouvrages, Amsterdam 1734, p. 9; Veldman and Richards, “Familiar” (see note 29), p. 99, note 20.
80. Veldman and Richards, “Familiar” (see note 29), p. 97.
81. Bernard Picart, Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, Amsterdam 1723–1743, p. 345.
82. As Petra van Boheemen noted, the “interest of the neighbourhood is visible” in Picart’s print. Petra van Boheemen et al., Kent, en versint, eer datje mint: vrijen en trouwen, 1500–1800, Apeldoorn, Historisch Museum Marialust; Zwolle 1989, p. 170.
83. Van Boheemen, Kent (see note 33), pp. 170–172; H. Perry Chapman, Jan Steen, Painter and Storyteller, exh. cat., Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum 1996, pp. 116–118 note 1, cat. no. 6.
84. Van Boheemen, Kent (see note 33), p. 170.
85. Irma Thoen, Strategic Affection? Gift Exchange in Seventeenth-Century Holland, Amsterdam 2007, p. 106.
86. Fynes Moryson and Charles Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe. Unpublished Chapters of Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary Being a Survey of the Condition of Europe at the End of the 16th Century, London 1903, pp. 379–380.
87. A. Lynn Martin, Alcohol, Sex, and Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, New York 2001, pp. 52–53; Thoen, Strategic (see note 36), p. 105.
88. See, for example, Jan Steen’s The Wedding of Tobias and Sarah, c. 1667–1668, oil on canvas, 131 x 172 cm, Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum; Chapman, Jan Steen (see note 34), pp. 203–205, cat. no. 32.
89. Philips Angel, Lof der schilder-konst, Leyden 1642, p. 48. Translation from: Philips Angel, Michael Hoyle, and Hessel Miedema, “Philips Angel, Praise of Painting,” Simiolus, Netherlandish Quarterly for the History of Art 24 (1996), p. 246.
90. A. M. van der Woude, “Variations in Size and Structure of the Household in the United Provinces of the Netherlands in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in: Household and Family in Past Time: Comparative Studies in the Size and Structure of the Domestic Group over the Last Three Centuries in England, France, Serbia, Japan and Colonial North America, with Further Materials from Western Europe, Cambridge 1972, p. 315.
91. Jan Jansz Orlers, Beschrijvinge der stadt Leyden, 2nd ed., Leiden 1641, p. 375; Walter L. Strauss et al., Rembrandt Documents, New York 1979, doc. 1641/8. For rare objections, see Roelof van Straten, Young Rembrandt. The Leiden Years, 1606-1632, Leiden 2005, p. 16; Benjamin Binstock, ‘The birth of Rembrandt’, in Michiel Roscam Abbing, ed., Rembrandt 2006. Essays, Leiden 2006, pp. 267-278 (arguing for 1607).
92. Strauss, Rembrandt Documents, doc. 1669/6.
93. E.B.F.F. Wittert van Hoogland, ‘Genealogie van den tak van het geslacht van Tetrode, welke zich Vinck genoemd heeft. Reconstructie van de genealogie voorkomende in het stam- en wapenboek van aanzienlijke Nederlandsche geslachten. Memoriael Gemaeck door N(icolaas) S(ebastiaensz.) V(inck)’, Genealogische en heraldische bladen 1 (1906), pp. 122-149.
94. Dirk Rühl, ‘Het wapen van Rembrandt’s broeder Willem Harmensz. van Rijn een gelegenheids-wapen? Een heraldisch probleem’, Gens Nostra. Maandblad van de Nederlandsche Genealogische Vereniging 11 (1956), pp. 117-128, esp. p. 127.
95. Strauss et al., Rembrandt Documents, doc. 1669/4 (misspelling the name as ‘Vlinck’). See also: http://remdoc.huygens.knaw.nl/#/document/remdoc/e13470 (accessed 22 December 2022).
96. Warm thanks to Ingrid Pot for her kind assistance, and to P.J.M. De Baar for an impromptu consultation on the document, manuscript LB 6761 klein deel, Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken, Leiden (hereafter ELO). The notebook is chronological but unpaginated; we therefore cite Wittert van Hoogland. See further Stephanie S. Dickey, ‘Ars longa vita brevis. Rembrandt’s death and the status of the artist in late seventeenth-century Amsterdam’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 72 (2022), pp. 234-271.
97. R.E.O. Ekkart, ‘Familiekroniek Van Heemskerck en Van Swanenburg (I)’, Jaarboek van het Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie 32 (1978), pp. 41-70; idem., ‘Familiekroniek Van Heemskerck en Van Swanenburg (II)’, Jaarboek van het Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie 33 (1979), pp. 44-75 (deaths of Cornelis and Sylvester van Swanenburgh, pp. 54, 72, 75). See also Gary Schwartz, Rembrandt, his life, his paintings, New York 1985, p. 22; https://www.mijnstambomen.nl/leiden/swanenburg.htm (accessed 16 December 2022). The dates of Silvester van Swanenburgh’s death and burial are unrecorded; he prepared his will on 12 October 1669, being siechelick van lichaem leggende te bedde (sick in bed); ELO, 0506, notary Justus Gerstecoren, no. 1144, deed 124, 12-10-1669.
98. Wittert van Hoogland, ‘Genealogie’, p. 135.
99. Wittert van Hoogland, ‘Genealogie’, pp. 136, 137. Burial: https://archief.amsterdam/archief/5001/1056 (accessed 16 December 2022).
100. Wittert van Hoogland, ‘Genealogie’, pp. 135.
101. Ekkart, ‘Familiekroniek’, pp. 54, 72.
102. Rudi van Maanen and Leendert van Maanen, ‘De grote epidemie van 1669-1670’, Leids Jaarboekje 2021, pp. 67-83, with further references.
103. See Dickey, ‘Ars longa vita brevis‘, with further references.
104. See esp. Christaan Vogelaar and Gerbrand Korevaar, eds., Rembrandt’s Mother. Myth and Reality, exh. cat. Leiden: Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal 2005, pp. 88-91, 97-98, cat. 3-6, 9-10.
105. We are grateful to Jos Beerens and Weixuan Li for advice on software to visualize this data.
106. Reymptgen’s husband, Cornelis Bartholomeusz (Meesz.) van Tetrode (1505-1550), a grain dealer in Leiden, died before Neeltje and Bastiaen were born. See Strauss et al., Rembrandt Documents, doc. 1561/1, 1574/3, 1579/1, 1581/1,1582/2.
107. Strauss et al., Rembrandt Documents, p. 24.
108. Gerrit Cornelisz. Vinck is registered living in Leiden 1544-1583; Historisch Leiden in Kaart, https://historischleideninkaart.nl/persoonformulier/?Id=8986 (accessed 16 December 2022). He became poorter of Delft in 1584; Stadsarchief Delft, 1.733, fol. 054v, 5-5-1584. See also W.C. Tettero, Genealogie van Tetrode 1300-1600, Voorburg 2000, p. 61; J.P. Jacobs, ‘Rembrandt verwant met Philips van Leyden’, De Nederlandse Leeuw 102 (1985), column 457-465.
109. See also ELO, Stadsarchief van Leiden, 0501A, 6597, Register Vetus 1582-1601, p. 8v. ’t Gulden Warken belonged to Reymptgen In 1579; by 1581, she had transferred ownership to Dirck; Strauss et al., Rembrandt Documents, p. 31 and doc. 1579/1, 1581/1, 1585/1.
110. Wittert van Hoogland, p. 123. Walsburch was buried several weeks later; SAA DTB 5001, 1054, p. 46vo, 8-5-1629. Prenuptual agreement, SAA 5075, 445, not. Palm Mathijsz, 17-2-1631.
111. SAA DTB 5001, 671, p. 33 (marriage bans) 27-1-1628; DTB 1054, p. 46vo, 8-5-1629 (burial record).
112. Wittert van Hoogland, p. 124. They married on 10 May at the Begijnhof and 13 May at the Amsterdam Town Hall.
113. Wittert van Hoogland, p. 126. Clara became a begijn in 1643 and registered her will as a bejaaarde geestelijke dochter, wonende op het Begijnhof, in 1655, appointing her brothers her heirs; SAA 5075, 2454, not. R. Duee, akte nummer 57860, 8-10-1655.
114. Wittert van Hoogland, p. 127; SAA, DTB 676, p. 145, 2-1-1642; 5033 Poorterboeken, no. 2, p. 199, 24-4-1642. In 1647 Albert purchased a home on the Haarlemmerstraat; SAA, 5073, Kwijtscheldingen, no. 928, 5-1-1647. He posted the banns for his second marriage, to Grietje Harmens van der Aa, on 2 December 1655; SAA, DTB 682, p. 356, 2-12-1655.
115. Wittert van Hoogland, p. 127.
116. SAA DTB, 1055, p. 94v (Clara); 1056, p. 252, 26-6-1683 (Albert).
117. Cornelis was recorded on 24 April 1587 as a baker, age 21. In 1600, he purchased a house later owned by Karel van der Pluym. Strauss et al., Rembrandt Documents, doc. 1581/2, 1662/4; Schwartz, Rembrandt, p. 18 (diagram of Rembrandt’s family tree by P.J.M. de Baar).
118. Strauss et al., Rembrandt Documents, doc. 1662/4; Marieke de Winkel, ‘”Cousin” Karel van der Pluym and the benefit of family’, in Epco Runia and David de Witt, eds., Rembrandt’s Social Network. Family, friends, acquaintances, exh. cat., Amsterdam: Museum het Rembrandthuis 2019, pp. 61-65, citing a red and black chalk drawing on vellum, dated 1634 (private collection in New York).
119. See Koos Levy-Halm, ‘Where did Vermeer buy his painting materials? Theory and practice’, in Ivan Gaskell and Michiel Jonker, eds., National Gallery Studies in the History of Art, Vol. 55, Vermeer Studies, 1988, pp. 137-143; Jo Kirby, ‘The painter’s trade in the seventeenth century: theory and practice’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin 20 (1999), pp. 5-49.
120. See Stephanie S. Dickey, Rembrandt. Portraits in Print, Amsterdam/Philadelphia 2004, pp. 141-149; Runia and De Witt, eds., Rembrandt’s Social Network, p. 124.
121. Orlers, Beschryvinge, p. 373; https://rkd.nl/explore/artists/51111 (accessed 2 January 2023)
122. Rudolf E.O. Ekkart, Isaac Claesz. van Swanenburgh 1537-1614, Zwolle 1998, p. 14. For the prenuptial agreement, Jacobge was assisted by her father Claes Isaacsz and her brothers Isaac Claesz and Claes Claesz; ELO, 0508 Het oude rechterlijke archief van Leiden, no. 76B-2, fol. 375, 15-10-1570.
123. ELO, 0501A, Stadsarchief van Leiden, 1574-1816, no. 1289, Register van de volkstelling 1581, fol. 9.
124. See Marije Osnabrugge, The Neapolitan Lives and Careers of Netherlandish Immigrant Painters (1575-1655), Amsterdam 2019, esp. pp. 66-73, 115-123. The Antwerp-born portraitist Abraham Vinck (1574/75-1619) associated with Jacob van Swanenburgh in Hamburg 1589-1598 and later in Naples; in 1602, he witnessed Van Swanenburgh’s marriage to Margaretha Cardone. He lived in Amsterdam 1609-1619. Rembrandt’s bankruptcy inventory includes ‘een doode Contrefijtsel van Abraham Vinck‘; Strauss et al., Rembrandt Documents, doc. 1656/12, no. 86, but we have not yet found a link between Abraham and the Vinck family discussed here.
125. Ekkart, Isaac Claesz. van Swanenburgh, esp. p. 71; Schwartz, Rembrandt, pp. 22-23.
126. Strauss et al., Rembrandt Documents, doc. 1620/1; Jef Schaeps and Mart van Duijn, Rembrandt en de Universiteit Leiden, Leiden 2019, esp. p. 28.
127. Orlers, Beschryvinge, p. 375.
128. Ekkart, ‘Familiekroniek’, pp. 71-72. Schwartz, Rembrandt, p. 17; Van Straten, Young Rembrandt, p. 24.
129. ELO, Register van poorterinschrijvingen F, 1267, fol. 279v, 16-4-1638; Buurquestieboeken, 48G, fol. 105v, no. 2355, 12-9-1661; 0506, Notary Justus Gerstecoren, 1144, deed no. 124, 12-10-1669.
130. Ernst van de Wetering, ‘Rembrandt’s gift and the underrated importance of his apprenticeship with Jacob isaacsz. van Swanenburg’, in Ernst van de Wetering and Bernhard Schnackenburg, eds., The Mystery of the Young Rembrandt, exh. cat., Kassel: Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister and Amsterdam: Museum het Rembrandthuis 2001, pp. 32-38.
131. Strauss, et al., Rembrandt Documents, p. 69, doc. 1630/5; Schwartz, Rembrandt, p. 23; English translation: Wheelock, ed., et al., Jan Lievens, p. 286.
132. Bakker, ‘Rembrandt and the emergence’; Vogelaar, ‘Rembrandt in Leiden’; Orlers, Beschryvinge, p. 376.
133. See Boudewijn Bakker, ‘Rembrandt and the humanist ideal of the universal painter’, in Stephanie S. Dickey, ed., Rembrandt and his Circle. Insights and Discoveries, Amsterdam 2017, pp. 67-98.
134. Volker Manuth, Marieke de Winkel and Rudie van Leeuwen, Rembrandt. The Complete Paintings, Cologne 2019, cat. 121.
135. Carel Vosmaer, Rembrandt. Sa vie et ses oeuvres, The Hague 1877, pp. 28-35, 469, 461, unaware of Vinck’s Memoriael, posited a relationship to the Van Swanenburghs on Rembrandt’s father’s side. Ekkart, Isaac Claesz van Swanenburgh, p. 11, dismissed this. However, Claes Cornelisz van Berckel, half-brother of Harmen Gerritsz van Rijn, was married to Brechtje Mourijnsdr. van Swanenburch. The half-brothers lived next door to each other on the Weddesteeg in 1605 and 1624 and owned a mill together; ELO, Buurquesties 48B, blad 2, aktenummer 520, 4-4-1605; 48D, blad 201, aktenumer 1339, 22-4-1624; Tiende Register, Bon Noord-Rijnevest (B), Stadsvrijdom en molens op de wallen, archiefnummer 501A, Stukken betreffende afzonderlijke onderwerpen; Registratie van onroerend goed 1585-1816 (1819), inventarisnummer 6634, blad 31, 1602-1724. It is not yet clear how Brechtje Mourijnsdr. connects to Jacob and Silvester van Swanenburgh. See also Schwartz, Rembrandt, pp. 21-25.
136. For context, see S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, ‘Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), een remonstrantsgezind schilder uit calvinistisch Leiden’, in idem., De jonge Rembrandt onder tijdgenoten. Godsdienst en schilderkunst in Leiden en Amsterdam, Nijmegen 2006, pp. 177-223.
137. On art patronage in Leiden, see esp. Gerbrand Korevaar, ‘Leiden in Rembrandt’s time’, in Van de Wetering and Schnackenburg, Mystery, pp. 12-21; Piet Bakker, ‘Rembrandt and the emergence of the Leiden art market’, in Jacquelyn N. Coutré, ed., Leiden ca. 1630. Rembrandt Emerges, exh. cat., Kingston: Agnes Etherington Art Centre 2019, pp. 66-95. We are grateful to Piet Bakker for advice on the present essay.
138. Dirk Traudenius, Tyd-zifter, Amsterdam 1662, p. 16; Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlandtsche konstschilders en schilderessen, Amsterdam 1718-21, III, p. 33; H. Schneider, ed. by R.E.O. Ekkart, Jan Lievens, Sein Leben und Seine Werke, Amsterdam 1973, p. 151, no. 262; https://houbraken-translated.rkdstudies.nl/3-1-59/page-30-39/ (accessed 16 December 2022,) with English translation. The painting has not been discovered.
139. Wheelock, ed., Jan Lievens, pp. 3, 16-17, fig. 19. The painting was destroyed in 1929.
140. On their extended connection, see Stephanie S. Dickey, ‘Jan Lievens in Rembrandt’s house’, Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis 2008, pp. 36-53.
141. As noted above, Cornelis van Swanenburgh’s mother was Adriana van Leeuwen. Rembrandt’s oldest brother, Adriaen van Rijn, married Lystbertgen Symonsdr van Leeuwen in 1617, and Willem van Rijn married Willempje Pietersdr van Steylandt, widow of Jacob Symonsz van Leeuwen, in 1636; Rühl, ‘Het wapen’, pp. 117-119, 123.
142. Bakker, ‘Rembrandt and the Emergence’, pp. 81-83; Wheelock, ed., Jan Lievens, p. 84, cat. 2.
143. Orlers, Beschryvinge, pp. 367-377; Bakker, ‘Rembrandt and the emergence’, p. 82. One of these was a ‘Pylatus’, possibly Pilate Washing his Hands (Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art); Wheelock, ed., Jan Lievens, p. 289.
144. Strauss et al., Rembrandt Documents, doc. 1663/7; Schwartz, Rembrandt, p. 37; Dudok van Heel, ‘Rembrandt van Rijn’, pp. 190-193; Christopher Brown, An van Camp and Christiaan Vogelaar, eds., Young Rembrandt, exh. cat., Leiden: Museum De Lakenhal and Oxford: Ashmolean Museum 2019, pp. 24, 158-160. Angela Jager is preparing a study of art patronage in Rembrandt’s family network.
145. Bakker, ‘Rembrandt and the Emergence’, pp. 85-90.  See also C. Willemijn Fock, trans. by Anne Baudoin, ‘Art ownership in Leiden in the seventeenth century’, Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art  13:1 (2021), DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2021.13.1.4.