Carved from one piece, with the ivory mattress buttons cut separately.

Good.

…; collection Willy Halsema-Kubes (1937-1992),¹¹She was the curator of sculpture of the Rijksmuseum from 1969 to 1992. Amsterdam and Huizen, date unknown; her husband Joop Halsema, Huizen 1992, by whom donated to the museum, 2002

Object number: BK-2002-19-1

Credit line: Gift of J. Halsema, Huizen

The attribution of this ivory Sleeping Putto to the workshop of the Antwerp sculptor Artus Quellinus I (1609-1668) is based on the existence of a virtually identical work signed and dated: A. QVELINVS.1641. Purchased by Henry Walters in Amsterdam in 1900, this ivory is today preserved at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore (fig. a).²²Description with an illustration of the signature in R.H. Randall, Masterpieces of Ivory from the Walters Art Gallery, coll. cat. Baltimore 1985, pp. 9, 10, 252-53 (no. 377) and colour plate 79. M. Boudon-Machuel, François du Quesnoy 1597-1643, Paris 2005, p. 297, no. 69 (dér. 1). No more than minor differences are discernible when comparing the Rijksmuseum piece to this latter work. The two works differ only slightly in size, with the Baltimore ivory measuring an additional 1.5 centimetres in length. Also, the treatment of the drapery folds and hair diverge somewhat. Lastly, the Amsterdam statuette lies on a mattress adorned with small buttons found nowhere on the other piece. Accordingly, one may conclude that both putti are derived from the same model but possibly executed by two different hands. If the signature on the Baltimore ivory validates its authorship – for which there is no reason to doubt – then the Amsterdam ivory can best be interpreted as a work carved by one of Quellinus’s close workshop assistants.

The year 1641 on the Baltimore ivory falls perfectly in line with Artus Quellinus’s development as an artist. From circa 1635 to 1639, Quellinus worked in Rome in the studio of the Flemish sculptor François du Quesnoy (1597-1643).³³J. Gabriels, Artus Quellien, de Oude: ‘Kunstryck belthouwer’, Antwerp 1930, pp. 27- 28. Accordingly, the ivory was carved approximately two years following the sculptor’s return to his native city of Antwerp. Unsurprisingly, it still quite clearly reflects the influence of Du Quesnoy, a sculptor famed largely for his characteristically chubby children’s figures. In fact, Quellinus’s Sleeping Putto is a variant of a design conceived by Du Quesnoy. Even if lost in its original form, the model has been preserved via numerous derivatives.⁴⁴A terracotta variant in the Casa Buonarotti, Florence (inv. no. 374) was long viewed as the original, a finding recently rejected by Boudon-Machuel, see M. Boudon-Machuel, François du Quesnoy 1597-1643, Paris 2005, p. 298, no. 69 (dér. 4). Because this version is somewhat larger than the two ivories (16 x 9.5 cm), Van der Mark views it as a possible study made by Quellinus when still in Italy, see B. van der Mark, ‘Een slapend kindje van Quellinus’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 51 (2003), pp. 147-55, esp. p. 150 and fig. 7. The Casa Buonarotti also has an enlarged copy of the same statuette (inv. no. 373), measuring 27 x 14 cm, see U. Procacci, La Casa Buonarotti a Firenze, Milan 1967, fig. 47. Bellori, Du Quesnoy’s biographer, described the putto as one of the most highly esteemed of the sculptor’s children’s figures: ‘Among the other small putti, which he modelled in large numbers so as to be cast in bronze and silver, viewed most beautiful is the one who sleeps and with his cheek on the pillow, measuring approximately a half palmo [= c. 11 cm] …’.⁵⁵Fra gli altri puttini che in non poco numero egli modellava per formarli di rame e d’argento, sono giudicati bellissimi quello che dorme e posa la guancia su l’origliere di grandezza circa un mezzo palmo (...), see Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Le vite de’ pittori, scultori e architetti moderni (ed. E. Borea), Turin 1976 (original ed. Rome 1672), p. 295. M. Boudon-Machuel, François du Quesnoy 1597-1643, Paris 2005, p. 297, no. 69. In his design for the tomb monument of Ferdinand van den Eynde (Santa Maria dell’Anima, Rome), an Antwerp native who died in Rome, Du Quesnoy adopted the same sleeping child type on a larger scale in the form of a hovering angel executed in marble. Quellinus, during his years in Du Quesnoy’s workshop, likely witnessed the monument’s completion (1633/35-1640).

The great popularity of Du Quesnoy’s sleeping putto (and his models for other children’s figures) led to manifold copies in various media and sizes.⁶⁶M. Boudon-Machuel, François du Quesnoy 1597-1643, Paris 2005, pp. 297-99 (no. 69, dér 1-9); B. van der Mark, ‘Een slapend kindje van Quellinus’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 51 (2003), pp. 147-55, esp. figs. 7, 11. For copies by Delvaux in terracotta and marble, see A. Jacobs, Laurent Delvaux (Gand, 1696-Nivelles, 1778), Paris 1999, pp. 485-87 (nos. S 284 to S 289). See also A. Jacobs and J. Toussaint, Les Le Roy (XVIIIe-XXe s.): Une dynastie d’artistes, exh. cat. Namur (Musée des Arts anciens du Namurois) 2006, no. 20 (copy by Pierre-François le Roy (1739-1812). A 19th-century variant in boxwood, signed Strübel f., surfaced on the German art market (see Europäische Skulptur-European sculpture, sale cat. (Dr Bernhard Decker Kunsthandel) Frankfurt am Main, 2013, no. 17 and sale Cologne (Lempertz), 14 November 2015, no. 1840. This indicates that a large number of casts of this specific composition are certain to have existed in the seventeenth century and later. In 1643, following ‘il Fiammingo’s’ death, Jerôme du Quesnoy II (1602-1654) assumed the task of bringing his brother’s artistic legacy to Brussels and oversaw the dissemination of his brother François’s models outside Italy.

The signed Baltimore ivory demonstrates, however, that Artus Quellinus also played a role in the dissemination of Du Quesnoy’s inventions. As Boudon-Machuel rightly observed, his versions in ivory are among the earliest copies, which in turn were additionally copied by his pupils.⁷⁷M. Boudon-Machuel, François du Quesnoy 1597-1643, Paris 2005, pp. 297-98. Besides the ivory in Baltimore and the Amsterdam putto, a third, identical ivory of the sleeping infant is preserved at Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto (Thomson Collection, inv. no. 106865). Other works inspired by Du Quesnoy’s model were made during Quellinus’s time in Amsterdam – where he is documented in the years 1646, 1647 and 1650-1665 ¬– spent largely in connection with his work on the new Amsterdam town hall (the present-day Royal Palace on the Dam Square). Examples include the sleeping child in Nicolaes Berchem’s The Upbringing of Zeus (Mauritshuis, The Hague), a painting from 1648 made prior to the artist’s trip to Italy, and two drawn studies of the sleeping putto.⁸⁸B. van der Mark, ‘Een slapend kindje van Quellinus’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 51 (2003), pp. 147-55, esp. pp. 151-53 and figs. 9, 10. In this same year, a similar sleeping infant boy was incorporated on the cover of a silver box made by the Amsterdam silversmith Hendrik Barents.⁹⁹K.A. Citroen, F. van Erpers Royaards and J. Verbeek, Meesterwerken in zilver: Amsterdams zilver 1520-1820, Lochem/Amsterdam 1984, no. 39. My thanks to Marius van Dam for this information. In 1662, the Amsterdam painter Govert Flinck owned an entire ‘beeldekas’ (sculpture cabinet) filled with works by Quellinus. A version of the sculptor’s sleeping putto is certain to have been among these works, as Flinck painted a playful variant of the recumbent toddler in 1652.¹⁰¹⁰Potdam, Schloss Caputh, inv. no. GK I 50916, see F. Scholten, Quellinus: Sculptor of Amsterdam, Amsterdam 2010, p. 59 and fig. 67. The bell founder Pieter Hemony (1619-1680), who, with his brother François, cast Quellinus’s bronze statues crowning the Amsterdam town hall, modelled a Sleeping Christ Child with a Cross in terracotta, fully signed and dated 1675, and directly based on the ivory sleeping putti (Museum Kasteel Sypestein, Loosdrecht).¹¹¹¹F. Scholten, Quellinus: Sculptor of Amsterdam, Amsterdam 2010, p. 58 and fig. 65.

A sleeping putto was also among the works Artus Quellinus bequeathed to his brother and heir, Erasmus Quellinus, as cited in an inventory of the latter’s possessions from 1678. Of the more than one hundred sculptures held in Erasmus’s groot Cantoir (large office), a majority originated from his brother’s workshop. Cited in this inventory are two works – Een slapende Kindeken (A sleeping Child) and Een ivoor kindeken (An ivory child) – that aptly correspond to the ivories in Baltimore and Amsterdam. Also listed are various kindekes by Du Quesnoy, whose name is explicitly stated next to these works, which Artus Quellinus possibly transported from Rome when returning to Antwerp in 1639.

Van der Mark rightly pointed out the classical antique origin of the sleeping putto motif – most frequently appearing in the form of Eros, the god of love, or Hypnos – and the role of the young Michelangelo in the theme’s popularization during the Renaissance.¹²¹²B. van der Mark, ‘Een slapend kindje van Quellinus’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 51 (2003), pp. 147-55, esp. pp. 147-48. One factor certainly contributing to the fascination for the subject of a sleeping child is the oft-told anecdote, passed down by Michelangelo’s biographers Condivi and Vasari, of the artist’s Sleeping Cupid from 1495, a work apparently then mistaken for an excavated work from Antiquity. The same anecdote perhaps also influenced Du Quesnoy and Quellinus.¹³¹³A. Condivi, Vita di Michelangelo Buonarotti, Pisa 1746 (original ed. Rome 1553), pp. 16-18; G. Vasari, La vita di Michelangelo nelle redazioni del 1550 e del 1568 (ed. P. Barocchi), vol. 1, Milan/Naples 1962, pp. 15-16. See also K. Lange, Der schlafende Amor des Michelangelo, Leipzig 1898; P. Norton, ‘The Lost “Sleeping Cupid” of Michelangelo’, The Art Bulletin 39 (1957), pp. 251-57, and A. Tempestini, ‘Il “Cupido dormiente” di Michelangelo e un dipinto veneto dei primi del Cinquecento’, in R.G. Kecks (ed.), Musagetes: Festschrift für Wolfram Prinz zu seinem 60. Geburtstag am 5. Februar 1989, Berlin 1991, pp. 287-98. The addition of an upholstered mattress to antique versions of the sleeping Eros can most likely be attributed to Du Quesnoy, possibly intended as a playful reference to Bernini’s carved marble mattress of 1620 made for a famous statue from classical Antiquity, the Hermaphrodite (Musée du Louvre, Paris). In Quellinus and Du Quesnoy’s day, this statue was in Rome, in the possession of Cardinal Scipione Borghese and on display at the Villa Borghese as early as 1638.¹⁴¹⁴F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, New Haven/London 1981, no. 48. For travellers viewing the Borghese collection in Rome, it was precisely Bernini’s naturalistic mattress that gave the statue an important added dimension. A small, ivory replica of the Hermaphrodite is known to have been made by Du Quesnoy, purchased by John Evelyn in Rome in the early 1640s.¹⁵¹⁵F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, New Haven/London 1981, p. 235; M. Boudon-Machuel, François du Quesnoy 1597-1643, Paris 2005, p. 262. This suggests ‘il Fiammingo’ was not only familiar with the mattress motif, but that he had also set out to reproduce this restored antique sculpture in small-scale ivory. Quellinus, in his turn, subsequently adopted the same theme from his famed fellow countryman.

Frits Scholten, 2026

B. van der Mark, ‘Een slapend kindje van Quellinus’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 51 (2003), pp. 147-55; F. Scholten, Quellinus: Sculptor of Amsterdam, Amsterdam 2010, fig. 4

F. Scholten, 2026, 'workshop of Artus (I) Quellinus, Sleeping Putto, Antwerp, c. 1640 - c. 1650', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200419547