Indirect lost wax cast, with arms and legs cast separately and attached through soldering. The left arm has been filled with metal, possibly lead, to secure the join. Finished with a warm, reddish-brown, organic patina. XRF measurement and visual inspection shows that it is a cast possibly made during Van Tetrode’s lifetime, but more likely a generation later in Florence: matches in alloy composition have been found with a number of bronzes from around 1560-70, but even more convincingly with works from the period 1610-30 in Florence. The advanced casting technique – with separately cast arms and legs – and high level of finish also point to an origin in Florence.¹¹With thanks to Arie Pappot for these observations. X-rays of the object are published in M.H. Schwartz, F.G. Bewer, H. Lie and F. Scholten, European Sculpture from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, New York 2008, p. 231. Various alloys were used for the different parts.
Alloy torso quaternary alloy with tin, some zinc and lead; some impurities (Cu 88.90%; Sn 3.05%; Zn 1.94%; Pb 5.09%; Fe 0.25%; Ni 0.22%; Ag 0.12%; Sb 0.49%; As 0.20%; Co 0.02%)
Alloy left arm quaternary alloy with some tin, some zinc and lead; low impurities (Cu 85.38%; Sn 1.67%; Zn 3.23%; Pb 9.71%; Fe 0.51%; Ni 0.21%; Ag 0.09%; Sb 0.27%; As 0.11%)
Alloy right arm leaded brass alloy with some tin; some impurities (Cu 86.59%; Sn 1.49%; Zn 6.11%; Pb 4.52%; Fe 0.35%; Ni 0.21%; Ag 0.12%; Sb 0.52%; As 0.24%)
Alloy left leg leaded brass alloy; some impurities (Cu 86.38%; Sn 0.85%; Zn 8.00%; Pb 3.20%; Fe 0.58%; Ni 0.22%; Ag 0.09%; Sb 0.34%; As 0.17%)

M.H. Schwartz, F.G. Bewer, H. Lie and F. Scholten, European Sculpture from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, New York 2008, p. 231 (with X-rays)

…; collection Hendricus Hermanus Stephanus Philipsen (1907-1974) and his wife Anna Philipsen-Zmilczak (1911-1979), Amsterdam, date unknown;²²The couple married on 28 April 1945 and lived at 12-1 Gerard Douplein, Amsterdam. With thanks to Marc Noom (written communication 15 July 2024). by whom bequeathed to Johanna Maria Noom-Schermer (1935-2018), Amsterdam and Castricum, May 1979; ³³She was married to Wilhelmus Noom (1930-2018) in 1956. The couple lived for many years in Amsterdam before moving to Castricum. With thanks to Marc Noom, Amsterdam (written communication 15 July 2024). on loan to her son Marc Noom, Amsterdam-Slotervaart;⁴⁴With thanks to Margaret Schwartz (Sotheby’s, New York), who brought me in touch with the owner Marc Noom (written communication 1 March 2024) and to Emile van Binnebeke (written communication 1 February 2023). The latter recalled that the owner, Marc Noom, had recognized the bronze as a valuable piece when seeing a poster of the 2003 Tetrode exhibition in the Rijksmuseum, on which the écorché from the Hearn Family Trust appeared (oral communication 3 February 2023). his sale New York (Sotheby’s), 22 January 2004, no. 160, to Peter Guggenheim (1927-2012) and John V. Abbott Jr (1925-2020) for the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, New York; their sale, New York (Christie’s), 27 January 2015, no. 71 (bought in);⁵⁵After-sale through Katherine Zock, London. sold after-sale, $1,600,000, to Peter Pritchard (1956-2020), New York;⁶⁶Born in London, Pritchard read Philosophy, Politics & Economics at Queen’s College, University of Oxford. In 1986 he established in New York what became Pritchard Industries, one of the largest regional providers of building services in the United States. He was an established art collector – from Old Masters and European decorative arts to Renaissance bronze and later contemporary art. his sale, New York (Christie’s), 27 January 2023, no. 210, $1,375,000, to the museum, with the support of the VriendenLoterij and H.B. van der Ven, The Hague, 2023

Object number: BK-2023-1

Credit line: Purchased with the support of de VriendenLoterij and H.B. van der Ven, The Hague

The Delft-born sculptor Willem van Tetrode (c. 1525-1580) spent much of his artistic career abroad: via Paris (1542-1547), he travelled to Florence, Rome, Pitigliano, and again to Florence, before finally settling in his hometown Delft in 1567 to work on two new altars for the city’s Old Church. Six years later, he was active in Cologne; he died in Westphalia in 1580.⁷⁷For Tetrode’s biography, see F. Scholten, ‘Willem van Tetrode, alter Praxiteles’, in F. Scholten (ed.), Willem van Tetrode, Sculptor (c. 1525-1580)/Guglielmo Fiammingo Scultore, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/New York (The Frick Collection) 2003, pp. 10-77. Van Tetrode’s international career is partly to blame for the fact that he has long remained a great unknown in art history, a fate shared by several of his contemporaries. Not until 1939 was it discovered that Willem van Tetrode was identical to the sculptor Guglielmo Fiammingo, so highly praised by Vasari for creating a grandiose art cabinet (stipo) commissioned by the Duke of Pitigliano (and intended as a diplomatic gift for King Philip II of Spain). More recently, the sculptor’s significance for the artistic formation of artists such as Goltzius and Adriaen de Vries, his key role in the introduction of the genre of bronze statuettes in the Netherlands and Northern Germany, and his pioneering work in the creation of the sixteenth-century art cabinet (mobile stipo) in Italy have become clear. Van Tetrode’s two monumental altars of alabaster, marble, and bronze made for the Old Church in Delft greatly influenced the development of a sixteenth-century sculpted, all’antica retable in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, the two altars were unfortunately lost during an iconoclasm in 1573.⁸⁸F. Scholten, ‘Willem van Tetrode, alter Praxiteles’, in F. Scholten (ed.), Willem van Tetrode, Sculptor (c. 1525-1580)/Guglielmo Fiammingo Scultore, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/New York (The Frick Collection) 2003, pp. 53-58; A. Lipinska, ‘Between Contestation and Re-Invention: The Netherlandish Altarpiece in Turbulent Times (c. 1530-1600)’, in E.M. Kavaler, F. Scholten and J. Woodall (eds.), Netherlandish Sculpture of the 16th Century/Zestiende-eeuwse beeldhouwkunst uit de Nederlanden (Netherlandish Yearbook for History of Art/Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, vol. 67), Leiden/Boston 2017, pp. 78-117, esp. pp. 100-02.

Van Tetrode’s current oeuvre includes a small group of bronzes, some of which originated in Italy; his best-known inventions are the Hercules Pomarius (BK-1954-43) and the elegant but also alienating écorché discussed here. As far as we know, only five bronze casts of the latter have survived. In addition to the present work, considered to be the very best; a qualitatively almost equivalent bronze in the Hearn Family Trust in New York;⁹⁹Sechs Sammler stellen aus, exh. cat. Hamburg (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe) 1961, no. 60, ill. on p. 31; F. Scholten, ‘Willem van Tetrode, alter Praxiteles’, in F. Scholten (ed.), Willem van Tetrode, Sculptor (c. 1525-1580)/Guglielmo Fiammingo Scultore, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/New York (The Frick Collection) 2003, pp. 40-42 and no. 31; M.H. Schwartz, F.G. Bewer, H. Lie and F. Scholten, European Sculpture from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, New York 2008, no. 72, and pp. 7, 15, 16, 231. a cast in New Haven;¹⁰¹⁰New Haven (CT), Yale University Art Gallery, inv. no. 1956.17.9; see L.P. Amerson, The Problem of the Écorché: A Catalogue Raisonné of Models and Statuettes from the 16th Century and Later Periods, 1975 (unpubl. diss. Pennsylvania State University), pp. 325-34 , no. 35, (45.1 cm high). a finely modelled cast in Rome to which a tree stump has been added;¹¹¹¹Rome, Museo Nazionale del Palazzo Venezia, inv. no. PV10822, see P. Cannata, Sculture in bronzo. Roma. Il Palazzo di Venezia e le sue collezione di scultura, vol. 3), coll. cat. Rome 2011, pp. 178-80 (no. 204), 256-57. and a version with an integrally (?) cast base in Evansville.¹²¹²Evansville (IN), Evansville Museum of Arts, History & Science, with thanks to curator Andrew J. Gianopoulos for sharing information on this version (8 June 2023). An aftercast in lead was formerly in the Castiglioni collection in Vienna,¹³¹³L. Planiscig, _Sammlung Camillo Castiglioni, Wien, Berlin 1930, no. 300. while a plaster version of unclear date – ‘dancing’ and balancing on its hind leg, and erroneously known as Baccio Bandinelli’s Dancing Écorché – is preserved in Paris (Beaux-Arts de Paris).¹⁴¹⁴Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv.no. Kunstkammer 10141; for the plaster version, see L.P. Amerson, The Problem of the Écorché: A Catalogue Raisonné of Models and Statuettes from the 16th Century and Later Periods, 1975 (unpubl. diss. Pennsylvania State University), pp. 312-25; M.W. Kwakkelstein, Rubens: Study Heads and Anatomical Studies, part 1: Anatomical Studies (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, vol. 20), London/Turnhout 2021, fig. 1. Originally, there would have been many more plaster casts of the latter/Van Tetrode’s statuette in circulation, with most functioning as anatomical models used by seventeenth-century artists in the Low Countries. In this light, the mould of an ‘anatomy’ (noch een form van annatemij) mentioned in the 1624 inventory of the Delft silversmith Thomas Cruse can possibly be linked to Van Tetrode’s model. Further down on the same list, the (same?) mould is again mentioned as noch 1 form van een annatameij van Mr. H de Keyser, though no known écorché exists by De Keyser’s hand. Moreover, besides containing many more works by Van Tetrode, Cruse’s inventory was compiled in connection with a debt settlement with the prosperous Delft painter and beer brewer Aper Fransz van der Houve – the first Dutch collector of Van Tetrode’s work.¹⁵¹⁵A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländische Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts, 8 vols., The Hague 1915-22, vol. 3 (1916), pp. 795-813, vol. 4 (1917), pp. 1456-58; F. Scholten, ‘Willem van Tetrode, alter Praxiteles’, in F. Scholten (ed.), Willem van Tetrode, Sculptor (c. 1525-1580)/Guglielmo Fiammingo Scultore, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/New York (The Frick Collection) 2003, pp. 10-77, esp. pp. 66-69. Thomas Cornelis Cruse was born in Lübeck in 1586 and married in Amsterdam in December 1612. He is documented in the circle of Hendrick de Keyser in 1616, when buying tools from the goldsmith Andries Frerixsz or Frederiks Valckenaer (1566-1627); see Amsterdam City Archives, Notariële Archieven (acc. no. 5075), inv. no. 433, Akte no. 12898, fols. 148v-149r. Listings of plaster muscle figures in inventories may also point to the circulation of Van Tetrode’s écorché model among artists,¹⁶¹⁶In 1635, for example, the painter Barent van Someren had a Pleystermannetje en vroutge (‘Little plaster man and woman’) as well as an anatomye in his possession; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländische Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts, 8 vols., The Hague 1915-22, vol. 3 (1916), pp. 795-813, esp. p. 797 (sale of Barent van Someren’s collection in Amsterdam, 23 February 1635). while a concrete indication of the instructive significance of Van Tetrode’s muscleman in the Netherlands can be found in Crispijn van de Passe’s manual for artists. In the second volume of his Van ’t Licht der Teken en Schilderkonst (1643-44), he depicted the sculptor’s model still holding the full length of its own flayed skin in its hand.¹⁷¹⁷Crispijn van de Passe, Van ’t Licht der Teken en Schilderkonst, Amsterdam 1654 (ed. princ.1644), vol. 2, pl. 10. Twenty-five years later, Willem Goeree recommended the use of plaster écorchés to his drawing readers: ‘We will only draw attention to several general rules; the rest the Practitioner can see to discover for himself, to this end utilizing the most competent means, as namely, the frequent drawing after several Anatomye men, such as the various ones [that] are cast in Plaster’.¹⁸¹⁸Wy sullen alleen eenighe ghenerale Regulen aenwijsen, de reste kan den Oeffenaer self sien uyt te vinden, ghebruyckende daer toe de bequaemste middelen, als namentlijck, het veel Teyckenen na eenighe Anatomye-mannen, gelijck sulcke verscheyde zijn in Playster af-gegoten; Willem Goeree, Inleydinge tot de al-ghemeene teycken-konst, waer in de Gronden en Eygenschappen, die tot onfeylbaer en verstandigh begrijp van de Teycken-konst noodigh te weten zijn, kortelijck en klaer werden aen-ghewesen, Middelburg 1668, p. 28. Apparently, various kinds of anatomical models were available on the Dutch market; besides Van Tetrode’s écorché, for example, there is also a version as an archer, likewise perhaps traceable to an invention of his making.¹⁹¹⁹See for example Sechs Sammler stellen aus, exh. cat. Hamburg (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe) 1961, no. 50, ill. on p. 25 (als Cigoli). A plaster version of this model in Jan ter Borch’s De Tekenles (1634) was held in the former collection of Charles Broecklehurst, Macclesfield. My thanks to Isabella Lores-Chavez.

Van Tetrode likely brought his original model from Italy to Delft, from where it could begin its dissemination in artists’ workshops. As a result, the statuette regularly appears in works by seventeenth-century Flemish and Dutch painters. In paintings by Gerard van Honthorst, Cornelis Saftleven, Job Berckheyde and Johannes Voorhout, among others, the model is depicted as a plaster workshop prop.²⁰²⁰Gerard van Honthorst, Self-Portrait (?), Rijksmuseum, inv. no. SK-A-1479; Cornelis Saftleven, The Duet, c. 1635, Vienna, Akademie der bildenden Künste, inv. no. 696; Job Berckheyde, Boy Studying, Lit by a Candle, sale Vienna (Dorotheum), 9 June 1999, no. 73; sale New York (Sotheby’s), 27 May 2004, no. 22; Johannes Voorhout, Woman and Maidservant in a Painter’s Studio, Rijksdienst Cultureel Erfgoed (RCE), inv. no. NK 1973. In addition, several study sheets by Rubens (and by Paneels after him), have been preserved with sketches of the écorché from different angles.²¹²¹L.P. Amerson, The Problem of the Écorché: A Catalogue Raisonné of Models and Statuettes from the 16th Century and Later Periods, 1975 (unpubl. diss. Pennsylvania State University), p. 326; U. Heinen, Rubens zwischen Predigt und Kunst: Der Hochaltar für die Walburgenkirche in Antwerpen, Weimar 1996, pp. 136-38; M.W. Kwakkelstein, Rubens: Study Heads and Anatomical Studies, part 1: Anatomical Studies (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, vol. 20), London/Turnhout 2021, nos. 1-13, 16, 19-24; D. Jaffé, Rubens, a Master in the Making, exh. cat. London (National Gallery) 2005, p. 102, no. 34; S.R. Cohen, ‘Rubenss France: Gender and Personification in the Marie de Me´dicis Cycle’, ‘The Art Bulletin 85 (2003), no. 3, pp. 490-522. As a group, these drawings show well how the painter used the three-dimensional model for a wide variety of poses of an expressive muscle figure in action.²²²²M.W. Kwakkelstein, Rubens: Study Heads and Anatomical Studies, part 1: Anatomical Studies (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, vol. 20), London/Turnhout 2021, pp. 25-29. Rubens incorporated the statuette’s pose seen from various angles in different ways, such as in his Raising of the Cross for the high altar of Antwerp Cathedral (1610-11).²³²³Cf. M.W. Kwakkelstein, Rubens: Study Heads and Anatomical Studies, part 1: Anatomical Studies (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, vol. 20), London/Turnhout 2021, figs. 5, 6.

We also find a free, plastic interpretation of the écorché on the funeral monument for Prince-Bishop Dietrich von Fürstenberg in Paderborn, a work by Heinrich Gröninger completed in 1622.²⁴²⁴C. Stiegemann, Heinrich Gröninger, um 1578-1631: Ein Beitrag zur Skulptur zwischen Spätgotik und Barock im Fürstbistum Paderborn, Paderborn 1989, no. A22 and esp. fig. 129. Finally, there is a drawing in red chalk (552 x 381 mm) of the ‘dancing’ écorché which, on stylistic grounds, can be attributed to the Florentine painter and architect Lodovico Cardi, known as Cigoli (1559–1613), or to an artist from his immediate artistic circle.²⁵²⁵With thanks to Rick Scorza, who drew my attention to this drawing and suggested Cigoli’s pupil Sigismondo Coccapani as a possible author, written correspondance 21 April 2026. The sheet is an important indication that Van Tetrode’s model was still circulating in Florence in the early seventeenth century – even if we cannot be certain that the dancing variant was his own invention. Cigoli, who was particularly interested in anatomy, had developed his own écorché, albeit in a less dynamic pose.²⁶²⁶V. Krahn (ed.), Von allen seiten Schön: Bronzen der Renaissance und des Barock, exh. cat. Berlin (Staatliche Museum zu Berlin), 1995, no. 124. All these documented citations and interpretations affirm that the characterization of Van Tetrode’s écorchés as being ‘more Wunderkammer objects than useful teaching aids’ is entirely unfounded. In actuality, the model made an important and long-lasting contribution to the distribution of knowledge about the human anatomy among artists in the Low Countries.²⁷²⁷L. Bourla, ‘Cigoli’s Écorché and Giambologna’s Circle, Sculpture Journal 24 (2015), pp. 317-32, esp. p. 318.

The model for this bronze écorché no doubt originated from the time of Van Tetrode’s stay in Florence, around 1562-65. It was precisely during this period that artists in the Tuscan city began to actively study human anatomy through dissection. Michelangelo can be seen as a trailblazer, partly thanks to his friendship with the renowned anatomist Realdo Colombo, whose De re anatomica is considered an Italian reply to Andreas Vesalius’ authoritative anatomy book De humani corporis fabrica from 1543.

Noteworthy, however, is that during these years it was especially the fiamminghi who actively engaged in the anatomical study of humans and animals in Italy, as evidenced by a terracotta écorché by Willem Van den Broecke (‘Paludanus’) from 1569,²⁸²⁸Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. no. KK 9892. which inspired the Amsterdam engraver to produce a series of four monumental red chalk drawings (RP-T-2022-417, (-418, (-419 and (-420), most likely to be issued in print form, a ‘muscle horse’ by Johan Gregor van der Schardt (c. 1562),²⁹²⁹L. Principi, ‘Una anatomia cavallesca: Van der Schardt, Sculptor in Bronze between Bologna and Mantua’, Simiolus 41 (2019), pp. 191-208. For an écorché attributed to Van der Schardt in a portrait of the Groningen anatomist active in Nuremberg Volcker Coiter (1534-1576) from 1575, see H. Honnes de Lichtenberg, Johan Gregor van der Schardt, Bildhauer bei Kaiser Maximilian II., am dänischen Hof und bei Tycho Brahe, Copenhagen 1991, pp. 68-69 and fig. 26. and a muscleman in bronze attributed to Giambologna’s Northern French collaborator, Francavilla of Francheville.³⁰³⁰V. Krahn (ed.), Von allen seiten Schön: Bronzen der Renaissance und des Barock, exh. cat. Berlin (Staatliche Museum zu Berlin), 1995, nos. 102 and 103 (Krakow, Universiteitsmuseum Jagiellonsckiega); see also P. Wengraf, Renaissance & Baroque Bronzes from the Hill Collection, New York/London 2014, pp. 100-03, and M.W. Kwakkelstein, Rubens: Study Heads and Anatomical Studies, part 1: Anatomical Studies (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, vol. 20), London/Turnhout 2021, p. 54 and fig. 18.

In Florence, the Fleming Johannes Stradanus (1523-1605, born in Bruges as Johannes van der Straet) was among the founders of the Accademia del Disegno in Florence, which included the organization of an annual dissection of a human body in its statutes as early as July 1563.³¹³¹Z. Wazbinski, L’Accademia medicea del Disegno a Firenze nel Cinquecento, 2 vols., Florence 1987, vol. 2, p. 438. Together with his fellow painter Allori, Stradanus was entrusted with the organization of the first anatomical lesson given in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuove in the winter of the same year.³²³²F. Jacobs, ‘(Dis)assembling: Marsyas, Michelangelo, and the Accademia del Disegno’, The Art Bulletin 84 (2002), pp. 426-48, esp. p. 436 and n. 66. His commitment to the study of human anatomy is directly expressed in his programmatic drawing (and a well-known print after it), an allegory of the academy, made ten years later.³³³³F. Scholten (ed.), Willem van Tetrode, Sculptor (c. 1525-1580)/Guglielmo Fiammingo Scultore, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/New York (The Frick Collection) 2003, fig. 41. In the foreground far right, a small anatomical theatre is set up with a flayed man hanging from a cord and a standing skeleton, around which all kinds of young artists sit drawing.

The background of this growing interest in human anatomy among artists in Italy during the mid-sixteenth century is the notion that a correct, natural and lively depiction of a human figure can only be achieved by an artist possessing a thorough knowledge of the body’s structure and functioning beneath the skin: the interplay of bones, muscles, tendons and veins.³⁴³⁴F. Jacobs, ‘(Dis)assembling: Marsyas, Michelangelo, and the Accademia del Disegno’, The Art Bulletin 84 (2002), pp. 426-48, esp. p. 438

Van Tetrode’s bronze écorché is one of, if not the earliest known sculptural example of this almost scientific fascination with the internal structure of the human body that had emerged in Florence.³⁵³⁵For another early écorché in bronze, likely cast after a wax muscleman, see P. Wengraf, Renaissance & Baroque Bronzes from the Hill Collection, New York/London 2014, pp. 100-07 (no. 4). She dates this work, without reason, as ‘cast before 1550’. A date around 1580 seems more plausible, cf. L.P. Amerson, The Problem of the Écorché: A Catalogue Raisonné of Models and Statuettes from the 16th Century and Later Periods, 1975 (unpubl. diss. Pennsylvania State University), p. 232; C. Höper, Bartolomeo Passarotti (1529-1592), 2 vols., Worms 1987, vol. 1, pp. 189-90, and vol. 2, no. Z 328; M.W. Kwakkelstein, Rubens: Study Heads and Anatomical Studies, part 1: Anatomical Studies (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, vol. 20), London/Turnhout 2021, pp. 43, 57 and figs. 21, 25. See also two bronze écorchés attributed to an anonymous artist and to Lodovico Cigoli (1559-1613), the latter version having been praised by Baldinucci as la più bella, ed utile fatica, che abbia veduta in questi ultimi Secoli in la nostra Italia el’ Europa tutta, see L.P. Amerson, The Problem of the Écorché: A Catalogue Raisonné of Models and Statuettes from the 16th Century and Later Periods, 1975 (unpubl. diss. Pennsylvania State University), p. 157; M.W. Kwakkelstein, Rubens: Study Heads and Anatomical Studies, part 1: Anatomical Studies (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, vol. 20), London/Turnhout 2021, p. 55 and figs. 13, 19. The sculptor’s study of human anatomy eventually led him to develop an exaggerated musculature as a stylistic device in several of his later works, such as the Hercules Pomarius, in which he was soon followed by the painter and engraver Hendrick Goltzius.³⁶³⁶F. Scholten (ed.), Willem van Tetrode, Sculptor (c. 1525-1580)/Guglielmo Fiammingo Scultore, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/New York (The Frick Collection) 2003, pp. 69-70, and figs. 83, 84. Interestingly, Van Tetrode also incorporated some of the musculature of the classical Laocoön group in his écorché, particularly the chest of Laocoön himself, whose arm positions he copied in mirrored form.

What also stands out is the unusual pose of the figure, which makes an elegant arm movement as it takes a step forward while at the same time almost falling over backwards. Here the dead, skinned cadaver has been brought to life – a logical choice if wishing to display a human figure’s muscles in action. Artists are precisely interested in the movements of head, torso, and limbs, which convey the action of the muscles most powerfully and expressively. Undoubtedly, the dynamic pose helps explain the model’s popularity. The pose of Van Tetrode’s bronze recalls that of one of the Dioscuri in Rome, though in a highly mannered form.³⁷³⁷Cf. F. Scholten (ed.), Willem van Tetrode, Sculptor (c. 1525-1580)/Guglielmo Fiammingo Scultore, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/New York (The Frick Collection) 2003, figs. 95, 96.

A drawing attributed to Stradanus shows a flayed man (St Bartholomew?) in the same pose as Van Tetrode’s écorché,³⁸³⁸Florence, Uffizi, Gabinetto Disegni e stampe degli Uffizi, see F. Scholten (ed.), Willem van Tetrode, Sculptor (c. 1525-1580)/Guglielmo Fiammingo Scultore, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/New York (The Frick Collection) 2003, fig. 45. while an engraving by Galle after another drawing by Stradanus (depicting the flaying of Marsyas) shows a variation of it, but this time leaning back against a tree. That both fiamminghi would have met in Florence around 1562 is very plausible given Stradanus’ central role in Florentine art life and Van Tetrode’s attempt to gain a foothold in the city. Interestingly, Stradanus’ drawing reproduces only that which is essential to the bronze: namely, the idea that the man is skinned and holds up both the knife and his own flayed skin, as if he was his own executioner. Van Tetrode’s bronze does not show the skin, though the écorché still holds a small piece of it in his right hand. As often with the sculptor, his primary interest was not the depiction of such an iconography with all its accompanying motifs; instead, he focussed on the essence of the pose and the musculature associated with that pose or movement. Nevertheless, through this paradoxical and macabre iconography, both drawing and sculpture convey a motivation that goes beyond pure scientific curiosity: both respond to the attraction in the early modern era for morbid matters on the border of life and death, sexuality and pain, expressed, among other things, in numerous fashionable references to anatomy and dissection in plays and literature of this period.³⁹³⁹P. Ariès, The Hour of our Death, New York 1981, p. 369; J. Sawday, The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture, London/New York 1995, pp. 43-53.

In a way, the ambivalence of the self-skinned but still living man is already expressed in Ovid’s story of Apollo’s flaying of the satyr Marsyas. During his torture, the latter cried out: Quid me mihi detrahis? (‘Who is it that peels me off myself?’). The me mihi (‘me of myself’) seems to express that the skin is an independent entity (‘me’) without which the flayed (‘myself’) can nevertheless exist. This ambivalence implies that the step from the skinned Apollo to the ‘self’, as perpetrator and victim at the same time, is no longer so great.⁴⁰⁴⁰J. Sawday, The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture, London/New York 1995, 186 (referring to Valverde’s figure: ‘... in keeping with the convention of self-dissection, Marsyas and Apollo have merged into a single flayed figure who holds a knife in one hand and in the other, his own skin’). Auto-section and living muscle figures, as opposed to dead bodies in anatomical theatre, became a pictorial tradition of their own early on, especially in the sixteenth-century illustrations accompanying anatomical treatises.⁴¹⁴¹Cf. J. Sawday, The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture, London/New York 1995, figs. 14 (Spigelius, De humani corporis fabrica, 1627, tab. II), 17 (Berengarius, Commentaria, 1521), 24 (Valverde, Historia de la composicion del cuerpo humano, 1556, tab. I). The most notable, early example is an illustration in Valverde’s Historia de la composicion del cuerpo humano from 1556. Van Tetrode’s écorché also belongs to this tradition. As one of the earliest plastic examples of a muscleman, created in the immediate vicinity of the first public dissections for artists in Florence, it is a key work in the history of anatomical study by painters and sculptors, at the intersection of early modern medical science and art.

Frits Scholten, 2026
This entry is a revised version of F. Scholten, ‘“Why are you stripping me from myself?” Willem van Tetrode’s Écorché and his Nachleben’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 73 (2025), pp. 258-74

D. Jaffé, Rubens, a Master in the Making, exh. cat. London (National Gallery) 2005, p. 102 (no. 34); M.H. Schwartz, F.G. Bewer, H. Lie and F. Scholten, European Sculpture from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, New York 2008, pp. 7, 15, 16, 19, 140-41 (no. 72), 231; L. Bourla, ‘Cigoli’s Écorché and Giambologna’s Circle, Sculpture Journal 24 (2015), pp. 317-32, esp. p. 325 and fig. 10; F. Scholten, ‘“Why are you stripping me from myself?” Willem van Tetrode’s Écorché and his Nachleben’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 73 (2025), pp. 258-74; F. Scholten, The Modeller: Adriaen de Vries in Search of the Viva Figura, Boston/Leiden 2025, pp. 154, 155 and fig. 6.6; I. Lores-Chavez, Plaster Casts in the Life and Art of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painters: Absence and Presence, Boston/Leiden 2025, p. 32 and fig. 1.4

F. Scholten, 2026, 'Willem Danielsz. van Tetrode, Écorché (Muscleman), Florence, c. 1562 - c. 1630', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200842346