Rijksmuseum

Object data

point of brush and grey wash, over black chalk and graphite; framing line in black chalk

height 331 mm × width 211 mm

Inscriptions

signed and dated: lower right, in black chalk, C. Casteleijn. 1653
inscribed on verso: lower right, in a nineteenth-century hand, in pencil, 48
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: countermark with letters MDED; similar to Laurentius 2007, II, no. 690 (Veere: 1653)

Provenance

…; ? sale, Cornelis van den Berg (1699-1774, Haarlem), Haarlem (C. van Noorde et al.), 29 August 1775 sqq., no. 323 (‘Een Dito [Titel], voor een Anatomi’s Werk, door Casteleyn’), with one other drawing, fl. 2:14:;¹...; from the dealer H.J. Valk, Amsterdam, fl. 16, to the museum (L. 2228), 1890

Object number: RP-T-1890-A-2395

The artist

Casper Casteleyn (Haarlem c. 1625 – place unknown, after 1661)

Casper (or Jasper) Casteleyn was the fifth child of the Haarlem-born Mennonite printer and bookseller of Flemish origin, Vincent Casteleyn (1587-1658), and his wife, Maycke Jaspers (?-1661). Of Casper’s eight siblings, four followed their father’s footsteps: Johannes Casteleyn (1612-c. 1653) was a bookseller and paper merchant in Amsterdam; Pieter Casteleyn (1618-1676) was the editor from 1651 to 1676 of the Hollantse Mercurius; Jacob Casteleyn (?-?) was a member of the Guild of booksellers in 1650; and Abraham Casteleyn (1628-1682) was the founder of the Oprechte Haarlemse Courant in 1656. Two of his brothers were trained as painters. The eldest, Vincent Casteleyn II (1609-1659), first studied medicine, then was apprenticed to Pieter de Grebber (1595/1605-c. 1600), entered the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1636, moved to Amsterdam two years later and to Rotterdam in 1647. The other artist brother was the publisher Pieter Casteleyn, who was taught in 1635 by Willem de Poorter (1608-in or after 1649/51) and also by Pieter de Grebber.

Casper Casteleyn was himself admitted as a painter to the Haarlem Guild of St Luke on 6 May 1653. His earliest work dates from the previous year, his design in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1852,1211.23), for the engraved and etched Portrait of Dirck Raphaelsz Camphuysen, etched by Salomon Savery (1593/94-1683) in 1652 (e.g. RP-P-OB-5582).² The following year Casper designed the present title-page of an anatomy book. The designs by Casper for the pages of his brother’s Hollantse Mercurius were engraved by Savery, as well as by Cornelis Visscher (1628/29-1658).

Although not so well known today, in the seventeenth century Casteleyn was apparently regarded as a renowned painter. Cornelis de Bie, in his Gulden cabinet (1662), mentions a ‘Casteleyn’, usually likened with Casper, who was inclined to art since his youth and who was still active in 1662.³ Only a few paintings can now be securely given to the artist, including Granida and Daifilo (1652) in the State Hermitage, St Petersburg (inv. no. ??-7647). His latest dated painting is Minerva Visiting a Prisoner (1659) in the Muzeum Kolekcij im. Jana Pawla II, Warsaw (inv. no. unknown).⁴ History paintings by him are mentioned in seventeenth-century inventories, and according to a sale catalogue of 1893, he might have been active until circa 1670.⁵ Only a few signed drawings by the artist are known, and the boundary between his oeuvre and that of his elder brothers Vincent II and Pieter is not always clear.
Annemarie Stefes 2019

References
C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vry schilder-const, Antwerp 1661-62, p. 384; A. van der Willigen, Les Artistes de Harlem: Notices historiques avec un précis sur la Gilde de St. Luc, Haarlem/The Hague 1870, pp. 30, 106; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, I (1906), p. 248; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, VI (1912), pp. 140-41 (entry by E.W. Moes); A. Bredius (ed.), Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts, 8 vols., The Hague 1915-22, VI (1919), pp. 1985, 1993-99, 2036; VII (1921), pp. 22, 138; P.C. Molhuysen et al. (eds.), Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek, 10 vols., Leiden 1911-37, IX (1933), col. 134-35; A. Beyer et al. (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, XVII (1997), p. 167; P. Groenendijk, Beknopt biografisch lexicon van Zuid- en Noord-Nederlandse schilders, graveurs, glasschilders, tapijtwevers et cetera van ca. 1350 tot ca. 1720, Utrecht 2008, p. 183; G. Verhoeven and S. van der Veen, De Hollandse Mercurius. Een Haarlems jaarboek uit de zeventiende eeuw, Haarlem 2011, pp. 21-27

Entry

The present sheet, from 1653, is the only known drawing by Casper Casteleyn that is both signed and dated. It was executed the same year that the artist was accepted as a master in the Haarlem Guild of St Luke. Although there are no traces of stylus indentation and no related print is known, the drawing, with its trompe-l’oeil border and blank area of drapery that would have been perfect for the incorporation of text, may have been made as a design for a title-page.

The central motif of the composition is an écorché figure with its skin removed to reveal the musculature, seen to full effect by the left arm suspended by a rope. The figure is flanked by a younger and an elderly couple, and at the foot of the pedestal by a boy and a girl (holding drapery that would have contained an inscription), thus symbolizing the Three Ages of Man. Allegorical figures of the Four Continents – Africa, Europe, Asia and America – are seen in the background behind the pedestal. Human bones and a skull complete the imagery, and there are traces of pentimenti of a skeleton behind the écorché figure. The exact purpose of this iconographical combination is unknown: it was possibly intended to preface a publication on anatomy or a drawing book.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2000/Annemarie Stefes, 2019

Literature

U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, VI (1912), pp. 140 (entry by E.W. Moes); P.C. Molhuysen et al. (eds.), Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek, 10 vols., Leiden 1911-37, IX (1933), col. 134

Citation

G. Wuestman, 2000/A. Stefes, 2019, 'Casper Casteleyn, Design for a Title-page, with an 'Écorché' Figure and the Three Ages of Man, Haarlem, 1653', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.31604

(accessed 3 June 2024 03:59:11).