Minerva in her Study

Amsterdam, c. 1636

Object data

black chalk, with pen and black ink, grey wash and opaque white; framing line in black ink

height 256 mm × width 201 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed (or signed?): upper left (next to Minerva’s head), in dark grey ink, F:bol.ft.
inscribed on verso: lower left, in dark brown ink, [...]; below that, in the same hand, in brown ink, [...]; next to that, in pencil, GH.99 – mhl -.; below that, in pencil, Habich coll; centre, in pencil, 357; lower centre, in pencil, F.Bol and 441; next to this, in pencil, 43 hsg (the number in a circle) and 2913hsg (in a circle); lower right, in pencil, E; below that, in pencil, 2 and 9; lower right, in pencil, 216
stamped on verso, lower left, with the mark of Houthakker (L. 1272); lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

Watermark: Fleur-de-lis within a shield, surmounted by a crown, with letters below, PPV or WR (in ligature)

Condition

Light brown stains; left of centre, abraded in places

Provenance

…; ? sale, Pierre Fouquet (1729-1800, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (P. van der Schley et al.), 13 April 1801 sqq., Album G, no. 22 (‘Een Vrouw in prachtige kleeding, zittende voor een tafel, met een tapytkleed bedekt, rustende met de linkerhand op een boek; verder een globe en krygstuig, meesterlyk, fraay met dito geteekend [in pen and India ink], door denzelven [F. Boll]’), fl. 3:50:-, to the dealer W. Gruyter, Amsterdam;¹ …; ? sale, Johann August Gottlieb Weigel (1773-1846, Leipzig), Stuttgart (H.G. Gutekunst), 15 May 1883 sqq., no. 112, DM 20, to the dealer G. Gutekunst, Stuttgart;² ? from whom acquired by Edward Habich (1818-1901), Boston and Kassel;³ his sale, Stuttgart (H.G. Gutekunst), 27 April 1899 sqq, no. 107, DM 39, to the dealer G. Mayer, Paris;⁴ …; collection Bernard Houthakker (1884-1963), Amsterdam (L. 1272), by 1932;⁵ his sale, Amsterdam (Sotheby’s), 17 November 1975 sqq., no. 121, fl. 5000, to the museum (L. 2228), with support from the Vereniging Rembrandt and the Prins Bernhardfonds

Object number: RP-T-1975-85

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

Entry

The training of young artists traditionally included making drawings after paintings by their masters. Pupils could practice reducing the composition and rendering the same forms and surfaces in a different technique, while creating a stock of images for their own use. Although Bol was about 20 years old when he went to study under Rembrandt in 1636, and had already trained as a painter in his native Dordrecht, he too started by drawing after Rembrandt’s work in order to get a feel for the master’s style.

This is a copy of Rembrandt’s majestic 1635 painting Minerva in her Study in the Leiden Collection, New York (inv. no. RR-107), which represents the patroness of the arts and goddess of wisdom seated in her study, surrounded by her attributes: the helmet, the shield with the head of Medusa and the books.⁶ The painting is one of several that Rembrandt produced in the mid-1630s depicting large-scale, single-figure ancient goddesses, such as the 1633 Bellona at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 32.100.23),⁷ and the 1635 Flora (Saskia van Uylenburgh in Arcadian Costume) in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG4930).⁸ The young Bol would have encountered this ambitious and unprecedented pictorial formula immediately upon his arrival in Rembrandt’s workshop, and the drawing probably dates to those early days.

Bol followed Rembrandt’s painting of Minerva closely, except for two small omissions. He did not depict the fragment of a thick tome placed in between the globe and Minerva’s open book visible in the painting, and he reduced the level of detail in the brocade decorations of the goddess’s dress and cloak. The sheet was likely cut on the left and right, for the composition of the painting extends a little more on both sides.

The drawing is inscribed F:bol.ft in dark grey ink on the upper left. Although Schatborn considered it an authentic signature in 1975, scholars have since categorized it as an old inscription, based on the lack of comparison with Bol’s known signatures.⁹ The colour of the ink, however, corresponds closely to some of the grey hues in the upper layers of the drawing, such as the darker contours of the jewelled clasp securing Minerva’s cloak, the shaded areas of her hair and Medusa’s facial features in the background. Considering that Bol probably executed the drawing so early in his career, the possibility of the inscription being one of his first attempts at developing a signature should not be excluded.

Particularly related in style and execution are two drawings in the British Museum, London, that Bol made after Rembrandt paintings of the same period as the Minerva, one that copies the 1635 Flora mentioned above (inv. no. Oo,10.133) and one after Rembrandt’s 1636 Standard Bearer (inv. no. Oo,10.132).¹⁰ The multiple functions of the two London drawings, and perhaps also of the present sheet, are elucidated by a fascinating yet enigmatic inscription by Rembrandt on the verso of his Susanna and the Elders drawing of circa 1636 in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (inv. no. KdZ 5296),¹¹ which appears to mention the sale of a Standard Bearer for one florin and fifteen stivers and a Flora for six stivers by 'Fardynandus'.¹² The low prices appear to indicate that the works in question are drawings, or one painting and a drawing.¹³ Indeed, a painted copy of the Standard Bearer in a private collection, which is attributed to Bol and sometimes to Govert Flinck survives,¹⁴ along with several painted copies of Rembrandt’s Flora.¹⁵

Bol’s elaborate drawings after Rembrandt paintings thus presumably functioned as the basis for his painted copies of the master’s work as well as independent drawings intended for sale in the workshop. Additionally, they provided source material for Bol’s own compositions, as illustrated by the recurrence of the figure of Flora as the figure of Saskia in Bol’s painting Saskia and Rembrandt in a Landscape from the early 1640s in Somerleyton Hall, Suffolk.¹⁶ Although no painted copies of Rembrandt’s Minerva have come down to us, nor any works by Bol in which he incorporated her, his fascination with this type of imposing female figure is also illustrated by his etched copy after Rembrandt’s etching known as the Great Jewish Bride (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1961-1189).¹⁷

Bonny van Sighem, 2000/Ilona van Tuinen, 2018

Literature

W.R. Valentiner, ‘Notes on Old and Modern Drawings. Drawings by Bol’, Art Quarterly 20 (1957), p. 55, fig. 2; W. Sumowski, ‘Zeichnungen Rembrandts und seines Kreises im Kupferstichkabinett der Veste Coburg’, Jahrbuch der Coburger Landesstiftungen 8 (1963), p. 92; A. Bredius, Rembrandt: The Complete Edition of the Paintings (rev. edn. by H. Gerson), London 1969 (orig. edn. Vienna 1936), p. 592, under no. 469; J.R. Judson, E. Haverkamp-Begemann and A.M. Logan, Rembrandt after Three Hundred Years: An Exhibition of Rembrandt and his Followers, exh. cat. Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago) and elsewhere 1969-70, p. 23; P. Schatborn, ‘Vijf tekeningen’, Jaarverslag Vereniging Rembrandt 1975, pp. 72, 74.; ‘Keuze uit de aanwinsten 1975’, p. 152; Nederlandse Rijksmusea 1976, pp. 58, 60, fig. 57; W. Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, 10 vols., New York 1979-92, vol. I (1979), no. 126x, with earlier additional literature, p. 274, under no. 125x, p. 278, under no. 127x; P. Schatborn and E. Ornstein-van Slooten, Rembrandt as Teacher, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 1984-85, no. 16; J. Bruyn, ‘Review of W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, vol. I, 1983’, Oud Holland 98 (1984), p. 160, n. 20; P. Schatborn, ‘Tekeningen van Rembrandts leerlingen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 33 (1985), no. 2, p. 94, n. 12; C. Tümpel, with A. Tümpel, Rembrandt: Mythos und Methode, Antwerp/Königstein im Taunus 1986, p. 402, under no. 106; C.S. Ackley et al., From Michelangelo to Rembrandt. Master Drawings from the Teyler Museum, exh. cat. New York (The Pierpont Morgan Library)/Chicago (The Art Institute of Chicago) 1989, p. 113, under no. 72, no. 1; J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, 6 vols., Dordrecht 2015, vol. III (1989), pp. 13-14, p. 157 under no. A 112, pp. 173-74 under no. A 114, fig. 6, p. 230, under no. A 120; T. Nakamura, ‘Rembrandt’s Workshop and Rembrandt as a Teacher’, in C. Brown et al., Rembrandt: His Teachers and his Pupils, exh. cat. Tokyo (Bunkamura Museum of Art) and elsewhere 1992, pp. 37, 204, fig. 13; C. White and C. Crawley, The Dutch and Flemish Drawings of the 15th to the early 19th centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge 1994, p. 206, under no. 317; B.C. van den Boogert et al., Goethe en Rembrandt. Tekeningen uit Weimar. Uit de grafische bestanden van de Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar, aangevuld met werken uit het Goethe-Nationalmuseum, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum het Rembrandthuis) 1999, p. 47; V. Manuth and M. de Winkel, ‘Rembrandt, een theaterganger?’ Desipientia 15 (2008), no. 1, pp. 9-10, fig. 12; T. Posada Kubissa in A. Vergara (ed.), Rembrandt: Pintor de Historias, exh. cat. Madrid (Museo del Prado) 2008-09, p. 154, under no. 20; M. Royalton-Kisch, Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the British Museum, coll. cat. London 2010, under Bol no. 1; P. Schatborn, Rembrandt and his Circle: Drawings in the Frits Lugt Collection, 2 vols., coll. cat. Paris 2010, p. 173, n. 22, under no. 61; V. Manuth in A.K. Wheelock, Jr. (ed.), The Leiden Collection Catalogue, New York 2017, under ‘Rembrandt: Minerva in Her Study, RR-107’, fig. 1; D. de Witt and L. van Sloten, ‘Ferdinand Bol: Rembrandt’s Disciple’, in N. Middelkoop (ed.), Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis/Amsterdam Museum) 2017-18, p. 44, fig. 41; P. Schatborn, ‘Govert Flinck and Ferdinand Bol: Drawings’, in N. Middelkoop (ed.), Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis/Amsterdam Museum) 2017-18, pp. 184-85, fig. 241; N. Middelkoop (ed.), Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis/Amsterdam Museum) 2017-18, no. 97

Citation

B. van Sighem, 2000/I. van Tuinen, 2018, 'Ferdinand Bol, Minerva in her Study, Amsterdam, c. 1636', in J. Turner (ed.), Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.28486

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