Carved in the round and mounted on a separately carved socle.

The right corner of the book has been restored. A section of the left sleeve is missing. With the original oak socle (h. 11 cm) ornamented with auricular and scroll decoration and a banderole hanging on a carved ring in front.

…; from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, transferred to the museum, 1890; from the museum, on loan to the Bijbels Museum, Amsterdam, 1983-1998 and 2004-2011

Object number: BK-NM-9281

This oak statuette of Erasmus (?1469-1536) is fully signed on the reverse side of the plinth by the Amsterdam sculptor Albert Vinckenbrinck (1605-1664). The work is a fairly precise reduction of the well-known, larger-than-life-size bronze by Hendrick de Keyser I (1565-1621) (fig. a). Erected in Rotterdam in 1622, this statue of the Roman Catholic humanist caused a great commotion at the time, particularly among the orthodox Counter-Remonstrants.¹¹For more on this topic, see J. Becker, Hendrick de Keyser: Standbeeld van Desiderius Erasmus in Rotterdam, Bloemendaal 1993. By the time Vinckenbrinck made his copy, the angry sentiment of those riled had long subsided. The high quality of Vinckenbrinck’s statuette points to a manufacture at the peak of his career, occurring shortly before or around 1650.²²M. Eisma, ‘Albert Jansz Vinckenbrinck: Ontwerper en beeldsnijder’, Amstelodamum 83 (1996), pp. 33-43, esp. p. 35. Erasmus’s well-proportioned body is atypical for Vinckenbrinck, whose own figures sometimes appear rather ungainly and thickset. Clearly, this disparity is largely due to his reliance on De Keyser’s composition. The marked agreement between the bronze statue and the present copy suggests Vinckenbrinck had direct access to one of De Keyser’s original models, perhaps one of the two scale models of the Erasmus statue held in an Amsterdam private collection up until the eighteenth century.³³J. Becker, Hendrick de Keyser: Standbeeld van Desiderius Erasmus in Rotterdam, Bloemendaal 1993, note 44.

Like De Keyser’s original, Vinckenbrinck’s Erasmus wears an ample, fur-lined tabard, gathered by a sash at the waist. A second garment worn beneath the tabard emerges at the neck and wrists. Depicted in a pacing stance, Erasmus reads from a thick folio supported with his left hand, while clasping several pages between the fingers of his right hand. Tight curls of hair emerge from the sides of his characteristic bonnet; a long, fur-lined scarf hangs freely over the shoulders. The only marked deviation from the model is the original carved wooden socle on which Erasmus stands: ornamented with auricular and scroll decoration and an uninscribed banderole hanging on a carved ringlet in front.

Both De Keyser’s and Vinckenbrinck’s portrayal of Erasmus follow an established visual tradition introduced in 1517,⁴⁴E. Treu, Die Bildnisse des Erasmus von Rotterdam, Basel 1959, p. 23-28. the year in which the philosopher was first portrayed in a painting by Quinten Massijs. The Rijksmuseum possesses a copy (SK-A-166) of the original held in the British Royal Collection.⁵⁵Royal Collection Trust, inv. no. RCIN 405759. Characteristic traits include the playful locks of hair emerging from Erasmus’s bonnet and the angular facial type with high cheekbones. De Keyser based his statue on the engraving Erasmus im Gehäus after a design by Hans Holbein (RP-P-1905-1185). In this woodcut of 1538/40, the humanist is depicted standing, with his right hand resting on a herm. Here too he wears a voluminous tabard that virtually engulfs his entire body, a motif De Keyser chose to adopt almost literally and which Vinckenbrinck subsequently copied.

Various examples of Vinckenbrinck’s wooden medallions bearing relief portraits of historical figures survive to the present day (cf. BK-BR-443). The Amsterdam Erasmus statuette is the only portrait made by the sculptor as a standing, independent sculpture. As far as can be ascertained, only this one copy exists. This suggests the statuette was privately commissioned, most likely by an Amsterdam humanist wishing to convey his admiration for Erasmus. It would most likely have been displayed in a gentleman’s study, a perfect setting for images of scholarly men.

Floor ter Haar and Bieke van der Mark, 2025

D.P.R.A. Bouvy, ‘Nederlandse beeldhouwkunst’, in T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer (ed.), Sprekend verleden: Wegwijzer voor de verzamelaar van oude kunst en antiek, Amsterdam 1959, pp. 45-70, esp. p. 68; J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 248, with earlier literature; J. Rasmüssen, ‘Dürers Verwandlung in der Skulptur zwischen Renaissance und Barock’, Kunstchronik 35 (1982), pp. 240-48, esp. p. 242; J. Becker, Hendrick de Keyser: Standbeeld van Desiderius Erasmus in Rotterdam, Bloemendaal 1993, pp. 71-72; F. Scholten, Gebeeldhouwde portretten/Portrait Sculptures, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1995, no. 14; G. Tournoy et al., Utopia & More, exh. cat. Leuven (Universiteitsbibliotheek) 2016-17, no. 78

F. ter Haar and B. van der Mark, 2024, 'Albert Jansz. Vinckenbrinck, Erasmus (?1469-1536), Amsterdam, c. 1650', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035661