Housing the Poor

Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot (signed by artist), 1647

Het huisvesten van de armen. Een brede weg met aan weerszijden Italiaanse gebouwen. Verschillende jonge mannen met hoeden met pluimen wijzen groepen bedelaars naar een huis aan de rechterkant van de weg waar zij onderdak kunnen krijgen.

  • Artwork typepainting
  • Object numberSK-C-446
  • Dimensionssupport: height 100.3 cm x width 140 cm, outer size: depth 6.5 cm (support incl. frame)
  • Physical characteristicsoil on canvas

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The Disbanding of the 'Waardgelders' (Mercenaries in the Pay of the Town Government) by Prince Maurits in Utrecht, 31 July 1618

Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot (signed by artist), 1625

The Disbanding of the 'Waardgelders' (Mercenaries in the Pay of the Town Government) by Prince Maurits in Utrecht, 31 July 1618

River View

Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot (signed by artist), 1650

River View

St Martin Cutting Off Part of his Cloak for a Beggar

Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot (signed by artist), 1623

St Martin Cutting Off Part of his Cloak for a Beggar

The Prodigal Son

manner of Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot, 1600 - 1699

The Prodigal Son

Drie bedelaars en een vrouw aan tafel in een herberg

Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot, 1610

Drie bedelaars en een vrouw aan tafel in een herberg

Drie bedelaars en een vrouw aan tafel in een herberg

Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot (mentioned on object), 1618 - 1648

Drie bedelaars en een vrouw aan tafel in een herberg

Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot

Housing the Poor

1647

Inscriptions

  • signature and date, lower left, on the piece of wood (J and C ligated, D and S ligated):JC. DS. 1647

Technical notes

The original support is a plain-weave canvas, which has been lined. Cusping is apparent on the left and right sides and at the bottom of the painting. There is a light coloured ground. The paint has been rather thinly applied with some impasto in the highlights, and visible brushmarking.

Scientific examination and reports

  • technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 22 april 2002

Condition

Fair. The painting is somewhat abraded and the varnish is matte and discoloured.

Conservation

  • H.H. Mertens, 1968: complete restoration; canvas relined

Provenance

? Commissioned by or for the Oudezijdshuiszittenhuis, Oude Kerk, Amsterdam; ? transferred with this institution to Leprozengracht, Amsterdam, 1655; first recorded in this institution in 1765;1Wagenaar II, 1765, p. 264: ‘… en een ander [schilderij], daar de uitdeeling geschiedt’. also recorded in this institution in 1808;2GAA, PA 349, Inventaris van de archieven tot 1808 van de colleges van regenten over het oudezijdshuiszittenhuis en over het nieuwezijdshuiszittenhuis en van 1808-70 van het college van regenten over de Huiszittendestadsarmen, inv. no. 6, Protocol van resolutiën 1781-89, p. 293: ‘No. 15 Een Vierkant Stuk geschildert door … Veerbeeldende een Italiaans Straat, waar in eene Verzameling Van Armoedigen en gebrekkelyke lieden. op doek. denkelijk ziende op Lucas 14.-’. transferred with this institution to the Nieuwezijdshuiszittenhuis, Prinsengracht, Amsterdam, 1808; transferred with this institution to the Armenhuis, Roetersstraat, Amsterdam, 1873; on loan to the museum from the City of Amsterdam since 2 October 1885

Object number: SK-C-446

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam

The artist

Biography

Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot (Utrecht c. 1586 - Utrecht 1666)

It is assumed that Droochsloot was born in 1586, the year his parents married, or shortly thereafter and that his place of birth was Utrecht, where his father had settled by 1581. He painted imaginary village scenes, topographical views and history pieces. It is not known with whom he trained, although the resemblance of his peasant figures with those of David Vinckboons indicates that it might have been with the latter. Droochsloot’s first dated painting Village Kermis,3Signed with monogram and dated 1615; sale, Vienna (Dorotheum), 14 September 1976, no. 37 (ill.). and his etchings are highly reminiscent of Vinckboons. The influence of Esaias van de Velde and Adriaen van de Venne is also discernable in Droochsloot’s oeuvre, and two of his early paintings include topographical views of The Hague,4The Princes of Orange on the Buitenhof, The Hague, Kunstmuseum Den Haag; photo RKD; Summer Landscape, 1624; sale, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), New York (Christie’s), 14 January 1993, no. 35 (ill.). where Van de Velde had settled in 1618 and Van de Venne in 1625. Droochsloot’s first dated work is an etching from 1610.5Illustrated in Amsterdam 1997, p. 113, fig. 4. Although his first dated painting is from 1615, he did not register as a master-painter in the Utrecht painters’ guild until 1616. Two years later he married Agnietgen van Rijnevelt in the Reformed Church. In 1623, 1641 and 1642 he was elected dean of the painters’ guild. A respected burgher, he also filled other public positions: in 1638 he was elected a lifelong regent of the St Job’s Hospice, in 1642 deacon of the Reformed Church, and in 1650 and 1651 sergeant in the Utrecht militia. Financial success eluded Droochsloot later in his career, and he was forced to take out several mortgages on his house. Beginning in the 1620s, he gave drawing lessons. His pupils included Jacob Duck (c. 1600-67) in 1621, a number of painters about whom nothing else is known (Jan Petersen, Peter van Straesborgh, Steven de Leeuw, and Cornelis Duck), as well as his own son, Cornelis Droochsloot (1630-after 1673), who continued his workshop after his death in 1666.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

References
Houbraken III, 1721, p. 288; Lilienfeld in Thieme/Becker IX, 1913, pp. 574-75; Van Luttervelt 1947; Bok in San Francisco etc. 1997, pp. 380-81; Luijten in Amsterdam 1997, pp. 113, 171-73, no. 31; Beaujean in Saur XXIX, 2001, p. 489

Entry

The subject of this painting, which shows the poor, and among them especially the infirm being given shelter, is a variant of one of the seven acts of mercy, the sheltering of the stranger.6The subject of the Seven Acts of Mercy is derived from Matthew 25:34-36. The subject matter would, of course, have been entirely appropriate for the Oudezijdshuiszittenhuis, which administered relief to the poor, and it is conceivable, therefore, that the painting was commissioned from the artist for this institution.7See Provenance. Droochsloot depicted the acts of mercy as a whole, as well as individual acts of mercy, throughout his career. One of his earliest dated works, executed in 1618 for the St Barbara and St Lawrence Hospice in Utrecht,8Utrecht, Centraal Museum; illustrated in coll. cat. Utrecht 1999, II, p. 825, no. 176. shows all seven acts set in what appears to be an actual Utrecht square, but, as Van Luttervelt has pointed out, is not.9Van Luttervelt 1947, pp. 114-15. The rather bizarre architecture in the present painting, in contrast, is obviously imaginary. The medieval character of the buildings and the figures dressed as Landsknechten (16th-century Swiss and German mercenary soldiers) suggests that the scene transpired in the distant past. As is frequently the case in Droochsloot’s oeuvre, the present painting is a slightly altered repetition of an earlier composition. A work from 1643 is closest in conception to the Rijksmuseum painting.10Panel, 45.1 x 86.3 cm: sale, London (Christie’s), 8 July 1977, no. 82 (ill.). In both paintings, the view of the town recedes on a diagonal far into the distance. A group of figures is gathered in the left foreground on a mound and a rectangular tower cast in shadow closes off the scenes on the left. The architecture and the figures, including the Landsknechten are also similar. In the 1643 painting, the poor are led to a building on the left, while in the Rijksmuseum work they enter a building on the right. Droochsloot employed a similar composition in 1644 to depict all seven acts of mercy (fig. a).

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 58.

Collection catalogues

1885, p. 37, no. 287; 1903, p. 86, no. 810; 1934, p. 85, no. 810; 1976, p. 200, no. C 446; 2007, no. 58

Citation

J. Bikker, 2007, 'Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot, Housing the Poor, 1647', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20027811

(accessed 6 December 2025 16:01:51).

Figures

  • fig. a Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot, The Seven Acts of Mercy, 1644. Oil on panel, 61 x 107 cm. The Hague, Museum Bredius, inv. no. 39.1946.

Footnotes

  • 1Wagenaar II, 1765, p. 264: ‘… en een ander [schilderij], daar de uitdeeling geschiedt’.
  • 2GAA, PA 349, Inventaris van de archieven tot 1808 van de colleges van regenten over het oudezijdshuiszittenhuis en over het nieuwezijdshuiszittenhuis en van 1808-70 van het college van regenten over de Huiszittendestadsarmen, inv. no. 6, Protocol van resolutiën 1781-89, p. 293: ‘No. 15 Een Vierkant Stuk geschildert door … Veerbeeldende een Italiaans Straat, waar in eene Verzameling Van Armoedigen en gebrekkelyke lieden. op doek. denkelijk ziende op Lucas 14.-’.
  • 3Signed with monogram and dated 1615; sale, Vienna (Dorotheum), 14 September 1976, no. 37 (ill.).
  • 4The Princes of Orange on the Buitenhof, The Hague, Kunstmuseum Den Haag; photo RKD; Summer Landscape, 1624; sale, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), New York (Christie’s), 14 January 1993, no. 35 (ill.).
  • 5Illustrated in Amsterdam 1997, p. 113, fig. 4.
  • 6The subject of the Seven Acts of Mercy is derived from Matthew 25:34-36.
  • 7See Provenance.
  • 8Utrecht, Centraal Museum; illustrated in coll. cat. Utrecht 1999, II, p. 825, no. 176.
  • 9Van Luttervelt 1947, pp. 114-15.
  • 10Panel, 45.1 x 86.3 cm: sale, London (Christie’s), 8 July 1977, no. 82 (ill.).