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 guardian. 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 16th and 17th 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, and 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 17th-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 (1571-1638) 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.

Nicolaes Vinck and his Memoriael As noted on his title page (fig. 1), Vinck started the chronicle in Leiden in 1627. Milestones in the lives of several generations fill its small, densely packed pages. While some entries are brief, others convey vivid details. When a child is born, Vinck often records which older relative the child is named for and who stands as godparent. He describes painful deliveries, protracted illnesses, and difficult deaths. For instance, his neef Lambert Teunissen suffered for five days before dying on 23 May 1669; he had fallen off a wagon that then rolled over him.98 On a page for 1679, a line is drawn and new handwriting appears. Nicolaes’s eldest son Sebastiaen (1638–1717) writes that his father ‘Claes Vinck’ died between four and five in the morning of 14 November after ailing for several weeks. He was laid to rest in the Begijnkerk in Amsterdam beside his wife, Maria Dircks Haegen (1614-1678), who had died on 4 August 1678.99 Sebastiaen and other descendants continue to add data to the Memoriael until the mid-1760s. When Vinck turned the page of his notebook after listing the deaths of Rembrandt and the Van Swanenburghs, he recorded one of the few general reflections in his text: Anno 1669 was een jaer van groote sieckte ende sturven door veel Hollandsche steeden verscheyde gequalificeerde burgers principael tot Leyden daer allevier de burgemeesters overleeden. (‘1669 was a year heavy with disease, and in many cities in Holland various distinguished burghers died, especially in Leiden, where all four burgomasters passed away’.)100 The Van Heemskerk chronicle also mentions this epidemic and the deaths of many relatives during this period, including two within fifteen hours in October: Silvester and another cousin, Mr. Isaac van Swanenburgh (c. 1643-1669).101 Historical research has confirmed a widespread outbreak of an unspecified disease in 1669; Amsterdam was affected but Leiden was especially hard hit.102 It is unlikely that Rembrandt died from this epidemic; there are numerous indications that the artist continued painting and receiving visitors until his final days, suggesting that his death was quite sudden.103

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.

On the third of June this year Willemijn Fock, Emeritus Professor of the History of Applied Arts at Leiden University, passed away at the age of 78. In the late 1990s she was engaged by The Rembrandt House Museum as advisor on the reinstallation of the interior according to the situation in Rembrandt’s time.

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

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

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

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

Leonore van Sloten, Curator, The Rembrandt House Museum

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.

On 11 August of this year Ernst van de Wetering, former Head of the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) and Professor Emeritus of Art History of the Early Modern Period at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), passed away. As the world’s foremost Rembrandt connoisseur, Ernst van de Wetering was of great significance to the Rembrandt House Museum. Years of intensive collaboration between him and the museum led to high profile exhibitions, that brought the museum onto the international stage. And his research into Rembrandt’s working methods and studio practice contributed to the installation and the educational activities of the museum as a seventeenth-century artist’s house.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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.

In addition to the world before their eyes, seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish artists also turned their gaze around, to themselves in self-portraits, and even to the ateliers in which they were working, in numerous drawings and paintings. These give us behind-the-scenes glimpses of period practice. This is especially helpful given the precious few written sources they left us, compared to their counterparts in Italy, or France. Such scenes help fill in the gaps, even when we account for artistic license, embellishments, and distortions shaped by prior traditions.¹⁴⁶ One example in the Liberna Collection in Mettingen, a drawing in pen and wash, is particularly striking because it shows a moment of instruction (fig. 1). A painter points at a large drawing shown to him by a pupil on the floor, with a stick or brush in his hand. He pauses from his work on the painting taking shape on his easel behind him to offer instruction and correction. It is of course important to know whose viewpoint this was. Until now, the existing attribution has led us in the wrong direction, however.

Attribution to Lievens

Scholars have assigned this sheet to an artist closely linked to Rembrandt: his Leiden friend and associate Jan Lievens (1607-1674). This attribution dates from 1983, when this work appeared under his name in the seventh volume of Werner Sumowski’s series Drawings of the Rembrandt School.¹⁴⁷ The chief point of comparison with Lievens’s drawings lay in the bold, linear strokes of the pen. This attribution was carried over with the drawing’s presentation in the major monographic Lievens exhibition of 2008-2009, under the aegis of Gregory Rubinstein.¹⁴⁸ There appears to be further evidence about the artist and studio here represented sitting high on the ledge. The round shield mounted with a point and the bust fitted out with costume drapery are familiar from depictions of artists at work by Rembrandt and his followers, with whom Lievens associated as well (figs. 2, 3). However, Sumowski dated the sheet quite late, to the 1660s. After departing from Leiden in 1631, Lievens led an itinerant existence, often in financial need. The scenario of this drawing would have to reflect a moment of prosperity enabled by one of several major commissions he won in his later years. Or it may instead show the situation of a fellow artist, or even an imagined situation. This assumes however that it is by Lievens. The detailed interior is unconventional for him however, and we do not recognize the face of an artist who depicted himself almost as readily as Rembrandt.

 

A Link to Another Artist: Cornelis Bisschop

At the same time we must consider a hitherto unnoticed, alternative link to another member of the Rembrandt circle: the Dordrecht painter Cornelis Bisschop (1630-1674). It is the painting on the easel, depicting The Contest between Apollo and Pan.¹⁴⁹ Apollo has summoned Pan to the contest after hearing King Midas boasting about his flute-playing, and the mountain god Tmolos acts as judge. He favours Apollo, who then punishes Midas by endowing him with the ears of a donkey, an animal limited to raucous braying. In the drawn painting, the ass-eared Midas leans in protest toward the contemptuous Apollo to the right, while Pan raises his pipe to the viewer. The composition and figures relate directly to Bisschop’s depiction of the same theme in The Bader Collection at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario (fig. 4).¹⁵⁰ Especially evident is the silhouette of Apollo, carrying a violin under his arm, and walking away to the right while turning for one last glance at Midas (fig. 5). Only, in the painting he turns his back to us. The disgraced Midas echoes the drawn figure’s unusual pose more closely, albeit in mirror image, with his arms flung out in exclamation against the negative judgement of the mountain god Tmolos. His champion, Pan, is likewise shown much as in the drawing, holding his pipe to his lips and turned slightly to the left. The tree also takes a similar place; only the unconventional representation of Tmolos, as a ghostly face (likely a self-portrait) in a cloud, is not reflected in the painting drawn into the sheet in Mettingen. The cloud itself is shown. The Kingston painting had previously been attributed to various Rembrandt pupils, including Barent Fabritius, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout and Nicolaes Maes, until Sumowski assigned it to Bisschop in 1989. It aligns with the smooth and broad rendering of surfaces and figures Bisschop had developed by the later 1650s.

This striking connection raises the possibility that Bisschop, and not Lievens, is the author of the Mettingen atelier scene. His drawings are not well known, however. Werner Sumowski did discuss the artist in his series on the paintings of the Rembrandt school,¹⁵¹ but not in his series on the drawings. At least, not in the published volumes. This series remains incomplete, as many scholars know: we are still waiting for the bibliography to complete the authour-date references in the text. Sumowski passed away in 2015, and shortly thereafter the Rembrandt House Museum learned that he had bequeathed the manuscript of an unpublished Addendum volume. Contact with the series publisher Abaris books then revealed the existence of another unpublished volume, of Anonymous drawings. It contained the long awaited bibliography. Both will be translated, and prepared for pubication in 2023, with the support of Bader Philanthropies. The Addendum volume contains a small section of five drawings attributed to Cornelis Bisschop (who did not feature in the earlier volumes because he was, strictly speaking, not a known pupil of the master himself).¹⁵²  It leads with a single core drawing (a secure sheet providing the basis for further attributions), one that he had already cited earlier, although only in a note (fig. 6).¹⁵³ Depicting The Angel Appearing to Elijah, its composition aligns closely with a painting of the same theme, reasonably attributed to Bisschop, last with the Chicago collector and opera tenor Harry Moore (fig. 7).¹⁵⁴

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

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

A Second Late Drawing Linked to Bisschop

In the further exploration of the possible attribution of the Mettingen sheet to Bisschop, we are confronted by the lack in the literature of a secure, later drawing that could serve as a reference core work for the period in which it would be expected to fall, around 1660-1670. However, a candidate does emerge among the drawings Sumowski attributes to Lievens, in another another anomalous sheet, which again offers a previously unnoted, direct link to a late painting by Bisschop.¹⁵⁵  The vertical kitchen scene with a maid formerly with Houthakker in Amsterdam (fig. 11) closely relates to Bisschop’s striking kitchen scene in the museum in Dordrecht (fig. 10). Both exhibit a similarly oversized setting, a space with a particularly high ceiling, even incorporating an elevated gallery at the back, above an arched doorway. The motif of the boy blowing on the coals in the brazier is another clear, even decisive, link between painting and drawing; likewise that of the striding figure farther back (who is in turn similar to the bowed-over assistant at the mixing stone in Mettingen). The many correspondences strongly suggest that Bisschop is the author of this drawing.

In turn, it shows strong links to the Mettingen atelier scene, which lend support to the proposed attribution of that drawing to Bisschop. The drawn Kitchen Scene includes a similarly leaning, dynamic main figure contributing to a turbulent composition. The pen handling is dominated by tight curved lines drawn with a loaded pen, leaving pools of ink. Furthermore, both sheets show a structure of washes in a range of tones, an approach Lievens had largely left behind after his early years in Leiden; in his mature drawings he favoured hatching for tone, with strong contrasts, occasionally supplemented by wash.¹⁵⁶ In addition, there is even a curious but telltale shared trait, of a slash in the cheek of the main figure in both, an exaggerated suggestion of the cheekbone, with artificial effect. The high fireplace mantel provides yet another distinctive link underscoring Bisschop’s authorship of the Mettingen sheet. As it inclines less to decorative effect, it more likely dates a bit earlier than the kitchen scene, to around 1660.

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

The proposed attribution of the atelier scene to Bisschop places its origins among artists who were well acquainted with Rembrandt (much like Lievens was), but demonstrably more keenly interested in discussions concerning artistic theory and practice. Bisschop associated with various pupils of Rembrandt not just by way of tutelage under Bol in Amsterdam, around 1650-1652, but even more so in his subsequent years of practice back in his native city. Dordrecht became a hotspot of artistic activity oriented towards Rembrandt, after several native pupils returned to settle there after instruction under him, around 1653/54,¹⁵⁷ and especially after the return of the older pupil and teacher Samuel van Hoogstraten from travels, in 1656.

It appears more than likely that Bisschop cultivated direct ties with Van Hoogstraten.¹⁵⁸ His use of tonal washes in the atelier scene is closely tied to Van Hoogstraten’s distinctive pictorial combination of pen and brush in many of his drawings. It shows up as well in the work of Abraham van Dijck, pupil of Rembrandt and Van Hoogstraten, and evidently also a friend of Bisschop.¹⁵⁹ Bisschop may also even have taken the prompt for the theme from Van Hoogstraten, who incorporated a painting of the famous mythological musical contest, with a calmer and more spacious composition, in one of the illusionistic interior spaces in his famous Perspective Box in the National Gallery in London, painted in Dordrecht around the same time as Bisschop’s panel (fig. 13).¹⁶⁰

This shared interest was the likely context in turn for Bisschop’s production of illusionistic cutout paintings. They drew such attention that they ended up the focus of Arnold Houbraken’s biography of him. He is the only artist (of over six hundred presented) Houbraken identifies as producing them, and he goes on to relate that he placed them throughout his house in logical contexts, with the aim of pleasurably deceiving the unsuspecting viewer.¹⁶¹ Previously unnoted, the verso of the Kingston panel features a related illusionistic rendering of wood panelling, with edges skilfully articulated in light and shade to evoke the fall of light. The unusually thick (1 cm), unbeveled panel appears to have been incorporated into a three-dimensional architectural or furniture fixture, such as a door. The parallel with Houbraken’s description of cutout paintings is conspicuous, and supports the attribution made by Sumowski (unaware of these features), to Bisschop (fig. 14). Bisschop evidently followed the older master’s interest in illusionistic effects. He was probably aware of Van Hoogstraten’s triumph at the Vienna court with a similar visual deception, which earned him a gold chain from the Emperor.¹⁶² Houbraken dismissed the cutouts as trifling (consistent with his prioritization of idealization and lofty subject matter). But they likely expressed a serious interest in evoking the visible world, and how we perceive it, aligned with the core aim of Van Hoogstraten’s treatise, Inleyding tot de Hooghe Schoole der Schilderkonst, published in the year of his death, 1678.¹⁶³ In a similar vein, Bisschop also followed Van Hoogstraten in the perspectival rendering of interiors. His kitchen scene in Dordrecht is striking for the grandeur it lends to the everyday theme, and he very likely sought to conjure a parallel to Van Hoogstraten’s monumental fantasy architectural scenes.¹⁶⁴

 

Interest in Theory and Art Instruction

The wider function of Van Hoogstraten’s treatise was art instruction, the very action displayed in the Mettingen drawing. Neither Van Dijck nor Bisschop is known to have had pupils, so it is very tempting to see this drawing as evoking the atmosphere in the studio of Van Hoogstraten, Dordrecht’s most prominent art pedagogue. There does seem to be a resemblance to Van Hoogstraten, for instance in the full lips and straight nose, but a clearly identifiable portrait may not have been intended here, but instead simply the figure of an artist. Even more than for his art, Van Hoogstraten is famous for his treatise, which in the first place aimed to teach the young painter. In nine “books”, each thematically associated with one of the nine Muses, he presented his extensive knowledge of the practice of painting, some of which he inherited from his own teacher Rembrandt. A vast array of rhetorical terms and principles are cited and applied in defining this art and encouraging young pupils in its practice. In one touching anecdote he recalls stern correction of a drawing by his teacher Rembrandt,¹⁶⁵ which is eerily conjured in the painter’s assertive and insistent pose here, doing precisely the same thing. Perhaps the painting on the easel, showing the rejection of Pan’s unrefined music, was meant to underscore the significance of sound aesthetic judgement.

 

Drawings for Connoisseurs: Demonstrating Theory in Practice

The function of such a scene would have been similar to the two well-known drawn views of Rembrandt’s workshop in the 1650s.¹⁶⁶ One, in Darmstadt, by pupil Constantijn Daniël à Renesse, anecdotal and possibly imagined but based on direct experience, shows Rembrandt himself leading a session of study from the nude model by pupils and fellow artists.¹⁶⁷ The other is Rembrandt’s own pictorial rendering of Rembrandt’s studio in the Ashmolean Museum, which likewise demonstrates drawing from the nude model.¹⁶⁸ Often linked to Rembrandt’s 1654 painting of Bathsheba in the Louvre,¹⁶⁹ it actually corresponds more closely in costume, setting, and unusual half-nude pose to Rembrandt’s famous etching of A Half-Dressed Model by a Stove.¹⁷⁰ This richly tonal print is signed and dated 1658, and was conceived as a masterwork, comparable to the Hundred-Guilder Print. It was subsequently hotly pursued by connoisseurs, in all of its states, as Arnold Houbraken relates with exasperation.¹⁷¹ The lavish, worked-up drawing in Oxford, showing his studio arrangement, was likely produced for the same audience: it quite distinct from Rembrandt’s spontaneous figure studies from life. Connoisseurs valued drawings precisely for their spontaneous reflection of initial artistic ideas and conceptions, compared to finished paintings, and Rembrandt too fed this interest with such works. The liefhebbers would have noted and appreciated the clear rendering in a pictorial technique of the lighting effect, also seen in the etching, drawing attention to Rembrandt’s innovative use of a sheet of cloth suspended high before the window, to capture more daylight and reflect it down, providing light from above, such as also recommended by Willem Goeree.¹⁷²

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

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

Hansken is the most famous elephant of the seventeenth century, partly thanks to Rembrandt, who drew her on several occasions. But there is much more material that gives insight into her life: prints, news reports, written sources, and even her skeleton.¹⁷³  In the summer of 2021 a selection of these objects went on view at the Rembrandt House Museum, in the exhibition Hansken, Rembrandt’s Elephant. One recently discovered object that originally seemed to be related to Hansken did not make it into the final exhibition selection but merits a separate elucidation. It concerns a drawing of an elephant looking at its buttocks. Further research has shed new light on how this specific sheet was created. This article takes a closer look at the question.

Drawing animals “from life”

Drawing based on direct perception was a must for seventeenth-century artists, not only during their training but also in conducting their profession.¹⁷⁴ By for example studying animals in real life they learned how to depict them accurately and convincingly. This practice is not only evident from the many artist’s sketches of animals that have been preserved but also from written advice to artists, such as published by Willem Goeree in 1670 “one should especially make sure to seize opportunities when it comes to rarities, such as lions, tigers, bears, elephants, camels and such kinds of wild animals, which one seldomly gets to see with one’s own eyes, and sometimes needs to have seen in order to incorporate them into one’s inventions”.¹⁷⁵

Rembrandt too made sketches of animals based on his own observations.¹⁷⁶ Exotic animals when he had the chance but also dogs, horses, cows and pigs. These drawings formed part of an extensive collection of study material – autograph drawings and prints as well as numerous works on paper by other artists – that Rembrandt kept in his art cabinet. The inventory of Rembrandt’s collection from 1656 mentions among other items in this room “one ditto (Chinese basket) full of drawings by Rembrandt being animals after life.”¹⁷⁷

There are various Rembrandtesque sketches of lions, dating to different periods. A number of these are attributed to Rembrandt.¹⁷⁸ Others have been identified as by the hand of (anonymous) pupils. Lions and other animals appeared regularly at the Amsterdam fair.¹⁷⁹ Evidently, Rembrandt took his pupils along to such events. Did this also happen when Hansken was in Amsterdam? From Rembrandt’s hand there are at least three known drawings of Hansken (including fig. 1).¹⁸⁰ A fourth, in a New York collection, is not accepted by all Rembrandt drawing specialists as autograph.¹⁸¹ Could a highly competent pupil have made the sketch? Spontaneity and very specific observations characterize these four sketches as the product of live drawing sessions with Hansken as model.

In the leadup to the exhibition, Rembrandt drawings scholar Peter Schatborn pointed out an unpublished drawing in a French private collection, of an elephant seen from behind (fig. 2).¹⁸² In the report that he had prepared for the owners he identified the sketch as a product of a drawing session after life.¹⁸³ Perhaps even carried out at the Amsterdam fair in September 1637, while Rembrandt was making his first drawings of Hansken (fig. 1). The style of the drawing is closely related to the manner in which Rembrandt drew at the end of the 1630s. And just like Rembrandt’s sketch of Hansken it is executed in black chalk. But on account of the less skilled drawing hand Peter Schatborn identified the maker as an (anonymous) pupil of Rembrandt.

A physical characteristic of the paper on which the drawing was made supports this analysis: it bears a watermark (foolscap) that mainly occurs in paper from the second half of the seventeenth century.¹⁸⁴ The identification of the draughtsman as someone from the circle around Rembrandt is very convincing, as is the dating of the sheet. And on first glance the suggestion that the artist joined Rembrandt in sitting around the elephant Hansken drawing seems believable. But herein we stumble upon a problem: the tusk that has been included. Female Asian elephants namely do not have such tusks, and also not Hansken.¹⁸⁵  It is also highly unlikely that this kind of detail would have been added to a sketch after life. But how must we then explain this drawing?

 

The Buttocks of a Male Elephant

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

The earliest purchasers of this print will undoubtedly have drawn the link between the elephant in the background and the animal that just previously had been on view in Amsterdam.¹⁸⁶ In this way Rembrandt’s print served as a visual reminder of a rare event. Rembrandt hereby, in a subtle way, joined an established tradition. Commemorative prints had namely been made of elephants that previously been in Europe.¹⁸⁷ One of these proves to be crucial to understanding the drawing of the elephant’s buttocks.

On 24 September 1563 a live Asian elephant went on display in Antwerp. The animal was given the name Emanuel.¹⁸⁸ The etcher Gerard van Groeningen (Paludanus, active between c. 1561 and 1576) produced a commemorative print of the animal in that year or shortly thereafter (fig. 4).¹⁸⁹ There the elephant concerned is represented in eight different poses, set in a fantasy mountainous landscape.

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

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

 

Suggestion of a herd

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

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

It was quite common for artists to combine multiple views of the same subject in one scene or sheet of sketches. Rembrandt did this as well in a drawing of Hansken. After his earliest representations of Hansken, Rembrandt observed and drew her again, probably in 1641 (fig. 7).¹⁹⁰ This time he depicted the elephant in three different poses: while she stands, eats, and lies on the ground. In the process, Rembrandt fused his sketches, giving the suggestion of a herd of elephants.

Emanuel and Hansken were, at the moments that they were in Europe, the only living elephants on the European continent. And although there was little known about elephants, it was told in older and contemporary sources that they lived in herds.¹⁹¹  Hansken’s owner Cornelis van Groenevelt also shared information with spectators who posed questions. The print of the Antwerp elephant may have served as visual inspiration for Rembrandt to present his observations of Hansken with the suggestion of a small herd.

 

 

 

Elephants on a small scale

At any rate, the etching by Van Groeningen must have enjoyed some fame, as it inspired various artists. Between 1581 and 1600 an anonymous artist took over the eight elephant views in a book on animals that was published in Antwerp or Amsterdam.¹⁹² And in 1629 the Bohemian artist Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) took them as a model.

Hollar etched the illustrations for a publicity print for another male elephant. That animal was in Europe shortly before Hansken and bore the name Don Diego.¹⁹³ In this publicity print there is a main scene framed by a series of depictions of the tricks that the animal performed (fig. 8). When we zoom in on the main scene it is evident how much it is based on the print by Van Groeningen (fig. 9). In the centre an elephant stands in profile in a fantasy landscape. Around that animal other elephants can be seen, in very small scale, as if they are far away in the landscape. All of these elephants are copied from the print by Van Groeningen.

The reversed pose confirms the relationship for the small elephants: the copied figures ended up in mirror image on the paper as a result of the printing process. Among the small elephants is one seen from behind, this time with the head and trunk turned to the right. Because of the direction and the difference in scale it is not likely that the pupil of Rembrandt took Hollar’s print of 1629 as his model for his drawing. But it is in turn not impossible that Rembrandt knew this print as well, or even owned it since Rembrandt was an admirer of Hollar. In 1656 he owned several of his prints.¹⁹⁴

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

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

But Rembrandt could also have come up with the idea of a small elephant via another route: from the prints of the Italian artist Antonio Tempesta (1555-1630). Rembrandt admired  his work as well and took it as a model, already early in his career.¹⁹⁵ At his insolvency he owned multiple art books filled with Tempesta’s graphic work.¹⁹⁶

One of the larger etchings in his oeuvre is the ‘Aetas Aurea’, The Golden Age, of 1599 (fig. 11). It shows a paradisiacal world in which humanity and animals peacefully coexist. In the background a small elephant boisterously raises its trunk (fig. 12). The same motif appears in several prints by Tempesta.¹⁹⁷

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

It was said of elephants that they greet the sun out of divine intuition. Rembrandt possibly knew such folklore and wanted to incorporate it in his narrative scene filled with symbolism.¹⁹⁸ The pose of the elephant in his etching is not a literal quotation, but rather a free interpretation by Rembrandt of depictions of elephants by other artists and from his own memory.

 

As long as it is “after life”

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

The inventory of Rembrandt’s possessions of 1656 shows how both of these forms coexisted: besides his own autograph paintings and drawings of landscapes, people and animals there are multiple works by other artists explicitly cited as having been made after life: “een moor nae ’t leven afgegooten“ (a Moor cast from life), “agt stuck pleysterwerck op ’t leven afgegoten” (eight plaster casts from life) and “een leeuw en een bul op ’t leven gebouceert” (a lion and a bull rendered from life). Elsewhere in Rembrandt’s house are mentioned “drie hondekens nae ’t leven van Titus van Rijn” (three “doggies” after life by Titus van Rijn) and “een vissie nae ’t leven” (a fish after life).¹⁹⁹ The knowledge that these objects provided an accurate image of the things represented was evidently important to indicate.²⁰⁰

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

As much as a century later Van Groeningen’s print served as model – directly, or indirectly via the print of Don Diego – for the commemorative print of a female elephant that made the next trek through Europe after Hansken (fig. 13).²⁰¹  For several poses the maker of this print based himself on figures that can be traced back to Van Groeningen’s print.

The motif of the elephant’s buttocks is also used there: this time elaborated into a scene in which the animal shows its behind while swinging people through the air. In the caption it is suggested that the display of its buttocks was one of the tricks that the elephant performed. If she swung people through the air at the same time, is highly questionable. At any rate she would not have used tusks, as she also did not have them.²⁰² And just like in the French drawing, we are looking here at an image of the male elephant Emanuel that journeyed through Europe a century earlier.

 

Hybrid practice

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

Rembrandt must have been aware not only of prints of elephants in circulation, but also ones of dragons. Between 9 and 13 February 1638, he purchased various prints by Albrecht Dürer from the collection of Gommer Spranger.²⁰³  Christ in Limbo must have been among them (fig. 14).²⁰⁴ There the devil appears in the guise of a dragon. The similar in pose of the dragon in Rembrandt’s etching is often seen as conscious borrowing by Rembrandt from the German artist he greatly admired.

For a fantastic beast such as a dragon Rembrandt leaned on the powers of imagination of his illustrious predecessor. But on his own Rembrandt sought out the correct poses and interaction of the two main figures (fig. 15 and 16).²⁰⁵ Perhaps with the use of models, and thus “after life”. Here he chose – against all conventions – to render Adam and Eve not with ideal beauty but as common, realistic people. The result of all of these forms of inspiration was a scene rich in significance, with many references to myths and stories, and a female elephant that had just previously been in Amsterdam.²⁰⁶

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

The painted oeuvre of Rembrandt has to a certain extent been delimited by the Rembrandt Research Project. Although the conclusions there formulated are not always shared by all, the discussion generally concerns works that are long known. The resurfacing of a completely unknown painting is extremely rare. Likewise, the emergence of an archival discovery is not an everyday occurrence. The archival researches of Abraham Bredius (1855-1946), Isabella van Eeghen (1913-1996), Bas Dudok van Heel (1938) and others have unearthed a rich treasure trove concerning the life and work of Rembrandt and his milieu. The very extensive Amsterdam Notarial Archive consistently showed itself to be a nearly inexhaustible source for drawing historical links and making new discoveries (fig. 1). Of course, new research also encountered known material. Dudok van Heel remarked in 1987 that a red or blue pencil crayon line meant that Bredius had beat him to it.²⁰⁷ Other researchers also left their traces (figs. 2, 3).

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

All Amsterdam Records (Alle Amsterdamse Akten)

Searching by hand or microfilm through the notarial archive is increasingly becoming a part of the past. Starting in 2016, with the project Alle Amsterdamse Akten of the Amsterdam City Archives, and then indexed by volunteers. By October 2021 there were 8,8 million scans available on-line, mainly of documents from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is anticipated that by the end of 2021 the entire seventeenth-century section of the archive will be digitized, including the protocols with water and fire damage. This will turn out to be a treasure trove of information that has hitherto hardly been unlocked or used, a wealth of data from a period in which Amsterdam was one of Europe’s largest and most important cities. Thanks to its unique historical value, the archive was included in 2017 in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. Current accessibility is limited to indexes by date, document type, individual names and locations outside of Amsterdam. The results are available to all through a search function on the website of the City Archives.²⁰⁸ The index already includes the impressive amount of 3.1 million individual names, a number that is steadily growing. Compared to the old boxes of index cards from the twentieth century, the Alle Amsterdamse Akten project represents an enormous leap ahead.²⁰⁹ It is however not yet possible to search the archive by word, so that human recognition, just as before, forms the basis for indexing. But here also changes are taking place. From March 2021 the Amsterdam City Archives hosts a search function in which documents transcribed by the computer program Transkribus are completely searchable using HTR (Handwritten Text Recognition).²¹⁰ Although currently limited to a number of 300,000 documents, about 1.5% of the estimated 20 million scans that the notarial archive comprises, it is already evident that this combination of digital technology will revolutionise the use of written documents for historical research. The Rembrandt document described in this article is a direct result of this technology.

 

Two New Rembrandt References

The two hitherto unknown references to Rembrandt were found by the computer in the settlement of the estate of master carpenter Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh, who died in 1661. In the account of the management of the estate drawn up by the notary Gillis Borsselaer (active in Amsterdam 1636-1675) the expenses and income from the years 1661-1665 are listed in chronological order.²¹¹ On 1 December 1663 a payment to the city messenger is noted, relating to three different issues: Rembrandt, the renters of a house in the Grote Kattenburgerstraat and the title of a document (probably a transfer of ownership): “Betaelt voor oncosten van Stadtsbode gelt van Rembrant de schilder te roepen met de luijden vande kelder ende kamer op kattenburch met een brieff opt Oostindische huijs overgeteijckent samen f. 1:13:- (Expenses paid to the city messenger to summon Rembrandt the painter, with the persons in the cellar and the room in the Grote Kattenburgerstraat with a document at the Oost-Indisch Huis transferred total f. 1:13:-)”. The city messenger brought Rembrandt the notice that he was to appear, and the expense post of 7 December 1663 reveals why: “Betaelt aen Rembrant de schilder voor schilderen vande overleden f. 15:14:- (Paid to Rembrandt the painter for painting the deceased f. 15:14:-)”(fig. 4).

Seeing as how the deceased Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh had already been dead for two years by then, there are three possibilities. The first is that the costs were incurred shortly after the death of Wiltingh and were paid only later. The administrators indeed regularly settled outstanding accounts. Rembrandt could have gone to Wiltingh’s house after the notification from the city messenger in order to make a deathbed portrait there. That would be highly exceptional in Rembrandt’s oeuvre and the price of fifteen guilders and fourteen stivers is strikingly low. And given that all costs after Wiltingh’s death were scrupulously recorded, and no further payments to Rembrandt appear, this is the total amount. Moreover one would not expect the city messenger to be engaged for such a request. The city messengers communicated notifications in the judicial sphere and maintained corresponding registers.²¹² The settlement of the estate contains other examples. In the autumn of 1662 a city messenger delivered an arrest and twice visited “Els inde kelder op kattenburch (Els in the cellar on the Kattenburch)”, a renter who apparently refused to pay and subsequently went bankrupt, whereupon the estate also had to cover the costs of cleaning up her cellar.²¹³

A second possibility is more likely, namely that Wiltingh was portrayed by Rembrandt already before he died, and that that there was still an amount owing for this that had to be settled in a formal way – therefore the engagement of the city messenger. Despite the fact that the word “remaining” is missing in the text, which indicates in several other estate entries that partial payment had already been made, nonetheless we think that fifteen guilders and fourteen stivers was too modest a sum of money for a portrait painted by Rembrandt. It is more likely that Wiltingh had already advanced a much more substantial sum. A known example of a similar arrangement is the advance of seventy-five guilders that Diego d’Andrada paid Rembrandt in 1654 for the portrait of “seeckere jonge dochter (a certain young woman)”. D’Andrada would pay the balance when the portrait “volcomentlyck sal sijn opgemaeckt (will be fully completed)”.²¹⁴ And lastly there is still a third possibility, namely that Rembrandt would have made a copy after an existing portrait. Even then the amount is strikingly low and the question arises what the function would be of such a doublet. The East-Netherlandish migrant family to which Wiltingh belonged would not have had a tradition of family portraits, and the idea that a copy would have been destined for one of Wiltingh’s heirs is still quite speculative. And also in such an instance the use of the city messenger would have been very odd.

A third reference to a painter in the estate probably does not have to do with Rembrandt; at least, there is no evidence for this. On 1 June 1662 one of the executors of the estate, Coop Roelofsz Hoijer, received 96 and 12 stivers voor payments he had previously made: ‘Betaelt aen Coophoeijer soo wegen de schilder, Isercramer ende f. 70 vant scheepspart als anders dat den boedel aen hem schuldich was volgens contract f. 96:-:12 (Paid to Coop Hoijer on account of the painter, ironmonger and f. 70 of the share in a ship and for other things that the estate was owing him according to the contract f. 96:-:12)’.²¹⁵ This payment probably had to do with construction of houses in the Grote Kattenburgerstraat, for which payments to construction workers formed an important part of the settlement of the estate.

It is lastly very likely that the references to Rembrant de schilder do indeed concern Rembrandt van Rijn, and not an unknown painter with the same name. In 1665 Rembrandt had already been a famous artist for decades, who deliberately signed his work “Rembrandt” from the 1630s onwards. In ten Amsterdam estate inventories from the period 1660-1663, in which one or more works by Rembrandt appear, he is only mentioned once with his full name.²¹⁶ Moreover, Rembrandt as a given name was relatively rare. For the period 1650-1670 the Amsterdam marriage registers list only two adults with the same first name: in 1654 the inland mariner Rembrant Gerritsz van Uithoorn and in 1669 the herbalist Rembrandt Lubbertse.²¹⁷ That Rembrandt took receipt of the money does not necessarily mean, by the way, that the portrait was painted by him. It could in theory have been carried out by someone from his atelier. From this period, besides his son Titus, only Arent de Gelder (1645-1727) and Gottfried Kneller (1646-1723) have been named as his pupil or assistant.

 

Who was Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh?

Rembrandts Amsterdam clientele has been thoroughly researched; it mostly drew from the well-to-do citizens of the city. How do we place master carpenter Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh in this picture, who was he? The settlement of his estate forms an important source for addressing this question, supplemented by other archival data. The resulting picture is not yet complete, but gives a fairly good impression of his activities and of his close relatives. Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh (before c. 1630-1661) first surfaces in the Amsterdam documents when he purchases citizenship (poorterschap) on 20 January 1651 as carpenter.²¹⁸ He was likely unmarried and without children, at least there are no references to be found in the Amsterdam archives and he left no descendants when he died.²¹⁹ His date of birth is unknow, but he will have been of adult age and he had some capital at his disposal; purchasing citizenship was expensive: fifty guilders. The registration specifies his home town as Hasselt, very likely the small city on the Zwarte Water north of Zwolle.²²⁰ Only citizens could become members of the carpenter’s or St. Joseph’s Guild and thereupon undergo a master’s examination, which would allow them to run a business on their own. It is uncertain when he became a master given that the guild archive for this period has been lost. A possible early reference dates to 17 January 1653, when one Jacob Wessels serves as guarantor for the purchase of a building lot on the east side of the Singel by Romeyn de Hoogh, a second cousin of the artist and troublemaker. ²²¹ Starting only in 1655 do we have data available concerning Wiltingh’s activity in two fields, as a commissioned carpenter and as an entrepreneur. He participated in two building projects by city architect Daniel Stalpaert (1615-1676) and he was active as project developer.

18 May 1661 the executors booked the following income entry: “De heeren van Sgraven lant waeren schuldich ende hebben betaelt van timmeren vande kerck aldaer f. 590:-:- (The Lords of ’s-Gravenland were indebted and have paid for carpentry work on the church there f. 590:-:-)”. The church of ’s-Graveland was built in 1657-1658 on the design of Daniel Stalpaert en he will also have coordinated the construction (fig. 5). Wiltingh had contracted on 5 March 1657 for building the roof for a sum of 2050 guilders. This included the roof structure, the tower and the panelling of the ceiling vaults. He took over the costs of the wood, as well as labour costs and beer for the woodworkers.²²² He may have undertaken other carpentry work as well. A general account of the building costs mentions that “de kap ende Ander hout werck heeft gemaeckt Jacob van haasselt meester tuijmmerman tot Amsterdam die tselvige werck hadde aen genoemen (The roof and other carpentry work were done by Jacob van Hasselt master carpenter of Amsterdam who had contract to do this work)”. The construction of the church – excluding the foundations – had been estimated to cost between 10,000 and 11,000 guilders, and another source cites a total amount of 12,345 guilders.²²³

Daniel Stalpaert was also responsible for the supervision of the construction of the Amsterdam City Hall on Dam Square .²²⁴ Although this prestige project was one of the most important architectural designs and building projects of the seventeenth century Dutch Republic, our knowledge of the building-process is limited.²²⁵ One thing is clear: the sheer size of the project outstripped the capacity of the city construction office, and much work was subcontracted. Untill now hardly anything was known about the carpenters involved in the construction of the City Hall. It turns out that master carpenter Wiltingh was one of the carpenters working in the construction of the roof of the City Hall, together with master carpenter Dirck Isacqsz. Concerning the construction costs a dispute had arisen, that was set aside on Wiltingh’s initiative when Isacqsz visited him at his sickbed and he did not have much longer to live. Wiltingh said: “Meester Dirck wij hebben wat differentie wegen de kap vant stadts huijs, van ontfanck ende uijtgift, maer t is weijnich, ick salder niet lange wesen, laeten wij malcanderen quitteren ende daer van swijgen’ (“Master Dirck we had our differences concerning the roof of the City Hall, income and expenses, but it is little, I do not have long to live, let’s wipe the slate clean and let that be the end of it.”). Whereupon Isacqsz responded “laet het soo doot ende te niet wesen, ende sullen daer van niet meer sprecken off pretenderen” (So let it be finished and undone, and let’s not talk about it or make claims any more.).²²⁶ The roof was completed in 1659. According to a description of the City Hall of 1808, construction was contracted to three builders, each earning 6,000 guilders.²²⁷ Their names are unfortunately not known, so it is impossible to determine the role of neither Isacqsz nor Wiltingh more specifically.

In 1650 Amsterdam was an important European trading metropolis with more than 170,000 residents, and Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh was one of the many migrants who gravitated towards the growing city on Amstel. Already starting in 1652, plans were being made for the further expansion of the city, and in order to accommodate the steadily growing population plots within the city were repurposed and existing houses were expanded or rebuilt. Carpenter and bricklayers functioned herein as project developers. They bought existing houses and building plots and the new houses were then sold or rented out.²²⁸ Wiltingh worked together with others as project developer, likely to spread out the risk and because his financial means were otherwise insufficient. On 1 February 1655 he bought together with the baker Coop Roelofsz Hoijer (1617/18-1664), probably his brother-in-law, a house in the Jonkerstraat (no. 43 in 1875) for 1017 guilders.²²⁹ In the verpondingsregister, a tax on real estate, it is noted that construction work began in 1659. On 1 October 1661 the estimated annual rental income, the basis for the real estate tax, was raised from 50 to 120 guilders.²³⁰ The house, “daer eertijts de hoop ende nu de schilpat uijthangt” (“formerly with the sign of Hope, now of The Turtle”).was then worth 3600 guilders.²³¹ This was undoubtedly a new house, although modest in size, and not to be compared to the buildings on the main streets and canals. The lots were small and the Jonker- and Ridderstraat suffered the reputation of being a crowded neighbourhood where unschooled workers, foreigners and sailors stayed, and harboured many prostitutes and cheap bordellos.²³² For comparison: the Rembrandt House was sold in 1658 for 11,000 guilders and its rental income was pegged at 350 guilders in the real estate tax register.²³³

A second building project, about which we know a great deal thanks to the estate documents, comprised of new houses on the newly-formed island Kattenburg. Together with the city master-bricklayer Jan Willemsz Brederode (1621-1671; in city service 1659-1671)²³⁴ Wiltingh purchased for 5159 guilders four building lots in the Grote Kattenburgerstraat, on which they built five houses, equally modest in scale (in 1875 nos. 6-14, fig. 6-7).²³⁵ Wiltingh knew Brederode from the building of the church in ’s-Graveland, where he had carried out the bricklaying.²³⁶ Wiltingh furthermore stood as guarantor, together with Brederode, for the purchase of a building lot in the Kleine Kattenburgerstraat by Dirck Isaacsz, the master carpenter Wiltingh again knew from the roof on the City Hall.²³⁷ The properties on Kattenburch island were the first available lots in the fourth expansion of the city, mainly carried out from 1658-1681. They were auctioned on 7 January 1660 and the new houses were completed in the same year.²³⁸ On 10 May 1661 Wiltingh and Brederode split up the new building block: Brederode took three houses (nos. 6-10) and Wiltingh two (nos. 12-14), of which one was sold to Roeloff van Aelst (no. 12).²³⁹ The estate settlement contains many entries starting in August 1661 for house rent paid by a baker and a tobacconist, and by the residents of an inhabited cellar and front and rear rooms higher up. There are also numerous payments to excavators, pile drivers, wood sellers, bricklayers and other construction workers. When Wiltingh died in May 1661 all of the accounts had evidently not been settled. Furthermore there were unforeseen expenses because the island settled into the IJ. The houses sank, making extra pile driving necessary, and the street had to be raised with sand and “potaert” (clay).²⁴⁰

 

Settlement of the Estate

Wiltingh died after a period of illness and was buried on 17 May 1661 in a rented grave in the Nieuwe Kerk.²⁴¹ It is clear from the estate accounts that he received a well-appointed funeral,with food and drinks for the guests afterward. The registration of the burial lists his address as on the Rouaanse Kaai (fig. 8), the east side of the Singel canal between the Korsjespoortsteeg and the Brouwersgracht, a house he had rented.²⁴² The city government tried in the seventeenth century to upgrade the Singel to the fourth main canal by bestowing on it the name of Koningsgracht (“Kings Canal”).²⁴³ This renaming did not prove to be an enduring succes, but as a wide residential canal situated between the upscale Herengracht canal and the old centre, the Singel certainly belonged among the city’s better neighbourhoods. Wiltinghs testament, which was drawn up on 10 May 1661 by notary Gerrit Steeman, has unfortunately been lost. In this last will Wiltingh probably had assigned his movable property and at the same time named two estate executors: his (likely) brothers-in-law Jan Roelofsz Boldingh (1617/18-after 1674) and Coop Roelofsz Hoijer (1617/18-1664).²⁴⁴

The latter was previously involved in the construction project on the Jonkerstraat. Both men settled the remaining open accounts and saw to it that the two heirs received their share, as far as the estate, encumbered with debts, allowed.²⁴⁵ Wiltinghs sister Willemtie Wessels received an advance inheritance of 1000 guilders.²⁴⁶ The other heir was Jan Hendricxen Wiltingh (1642/43-after 1664), of whom Boldingh and Hoijer were appointed guardian in Wiltinghs testament²⁴⁷ ;from the documents it is clear that they were close relatives²⁴⁸ . In 1661 Jan Hendricxen resided at Wiltinghs home on the Singel. Upon Wiltingh’s death, Jan Roelofsz Boldingh took care of Jan Henricxen Wiltingh. For the latter the estate did not leave very much. On 16 August 1665 he departed as 22-year-old sailor aboard the VOC-ship Cecilia for the East,²⁴⁹ and nothing further is known about his fate. After his departure followed in October 1666 another settlement of the estate and after this the documents fall silent. A last act dates from 1701 when Debora Bolding, daughter of Jan Roelofsz Boldingh, sold the house on the Grote Kattenburgerstraat (no.14).²⁵⁰

A Possible Identification: the Man with Arms Akimbo

From the above it is clear that Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh took on major building projects, such as the roof of the church in ’s-Graveland. Besides this he also built on his own account. His contacts with the city construction office were not limited merely to taking on contracts; with the master-bricklayer Jan Willemsz Brederode he worked together on a building project on Kattenburg. Wiltingh lived in a respectable neighbourhood in the city and his grave was in one of the two main churches in the city. He can therefore be positioned in the urban middle class, in the milieu of independent tradesmen and contractors. Gary Schwartz has already indicated that part of Rembrandt’s portrait clientele came from this socioeconomic group, just like Rembrandt himself, by the way.²⁵¹ A familiar example is Catharina Hooghsaet, who lived in the Haarlemmerstraat as an independent woman and was painted by Rembrandt in 1657.²⁵²

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

Another remaining question is: what did the portrait look like? Within the oeuvre demarcated by the Rembrandt Research Project there is only one possible candidate: an unidentified male portrait from 1658 (fig. 9). The provenance of this painting goes back to 1798, when it was auctioned off with the collection of the Liverpool collector and Rembrandt connoisseur Daniel Daulby (d. 1797); previous collections are not known.²⁵³ The dress of the sitter does not correspond to the usual costume of affluent urban Dutchmen of the period. The explanation for this is usually sought in his possible origins in Southern Europe or in his occupation as seafarer.²⁵⁴ But there is no reason to identify him as mariner or even a naval hero, as has been done in the past, since the portrait lacks any nautical or military attributes.²⁵⁵ What the painting does show, is a self-assured man, and even though his clothes and beret are old fashioned, the pose strongly reminds of Rembrandt’s Selfportrait in Working Dress of 1652 (fig. 10). Like Rembrandt, Jacob Wesselsz Wiltingh came from outside Amsterdam, and it is plausible that he looked to emphasize his status as a successful self-made craftsman with a striking, self-confident pose.

 

 

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