A Fight Between Two Street Musicians

Pressed in a mould, fired and gold-dust painting applied. The hole at the top is likely non-original, made for mounting purposes.

Minor breakages can be discerned throughout the relief. Much of the club in the hands of the man on the right is missing. The upper corners of the relief and the topmost section of the club of the man on the left have been replaced.

? sale Govert Bidloo (1649-1713), Leiden (Samuel Luchtmans), 1713, p. 109;¹¹Possibly identical to Een Boere Gevecht geboetzeert (a modelled peasant fight). …; from H.J. Hüber, Munich, fl. 1,003, to the museum, 1966

ObjectNumber: BK-1966-2

This terracotta relief is the only known sculptural work signed by the Amsterdam painter Pieter Jansz Quast (c. 1605/06-1647). The scene shows a confrontation between two street musicians. The musician on the left prepares to swing his club, held with both hands above his head, yet he is restrained by the man standing in front of him and a barefoot youth tugging on his coattails from the rear. The club once held in the hands of his opponent with a wooden leg, survives only in the form of a stub just below his fist, as the rest has broken off.²²Leeuwenberg, by contrast, interpreted the surviving section of the club in the musician’s left hand as the hilt of a knife, see J. Leeuwenberg, ‘Beeldhouwwerk van de schilder Pieter Quast’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 14 (1966), pp. 60-64, esp. p. 60. This second musician is restrained by two women wearing wooden shoes. A begging bowl hangs from the belt of the woman far right. A long-haired dog at the feet of the first musician growls at the violin lying on the ground at the right; together with the musical triangle, it suggests that music was being played just prior to the depicted event. On the basis of the grotesque, caricatural faces, the scene can be interpreted as a satirical tableau meant to ridicule the two men’s objectionable behaviour. Noteworthy in this context is the fact that Quast himself is known to have been involved in a serious physical altercation – documented in a civil act in the year 1643 – sparked by an acquaintance supposedly referring to the artist’s huysvrou (wife) as a whore.³³A. Bredius, ‘Pieter Jansz. Quast’, Oud Holland 20 (1902), pp. 65-82, esp. p. 71.

The present relief was rediscovered as a work by Pieter Quast in 1966 and acquired by the museum from a private collection in Munich.⁴⁴J. Leeuwenberg, ‘Beeldhouwwerk van de schilder Pieter Quast’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 14 (1966), pp. 60-64. Despite the absence of documented proof confirming Quast’s activities as a sculptor, the authorship of this terracotta is no matter of debate. The farcical depiction of a brawl fits perfectly with the painter’s repertoire, which includes numerous genre scenes of a satirical nature. Quast often drew his inspiration for such images from the theatrical plays and farces of his day.⁵⁵B.A. Stanton-Hirst, The Influence of the Theatre on the Works of Pieter Jansz. Quast, 1978 (diss. University of Wisconsin). The sweeping, sketch-like rendering of the scene is also very much in line with the artist’s style. The inscription on the back of the violin: P. QUAST 1629 (or 1628), incised in the wet clay, designates the relief as a work made in the artist’s youth.⁶⁶Quast’s two earliest signed and dated paintings are both from 1628: Vertumnus and Pomona, sale Amsterdam (Christie’s), 10 November 1997, no. 70 and Interior of a Horse Stable with an Officer, sale Cologne (Lempertz), 21 May 2005, no. 724. The gold-dust layer applied to the terracotta’s surface is likely original and meant to convey the appearance of brass or bronze.

On the basis of the present signed work, Leeuwenberg convincingly attributed two other reliefs to Pieter Quast’s name.⁷⁷J. Leeuwenberg, ‘Beeldhouwwerk van de schilder Pieter Quast’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 14 (1966), pp. 60-64, esp. pp. 62-64. Both are tavern scenes depicting the five senses (figs. a and b). The first, likewise a terracotta, is held in the collection of the Museum de Lakenhal (Leiden);⁸⁸Leiden, Museum de Lakenhal, inv. no. B 27, see E. Pelinck, Beschrijvende catalogus van beeldhouwwerken en boetseersels, wandtapijten en kussens, glasramen en drinkglazen, goud en zilver, coll. cat. Leiden (Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal) 1951, no. 48. the second, carved in walnut and today preserved in Jerusalem, features a long-haired dog virtually identical to that of the Amsterdam relief.⁹⁹Jerusalem, Israel Museum, donated by the Amsterdam art dealer Morpurgo, before this in a private collection, Laren. In 2008, another terracotta relief was added to Quast’s sculptural oeuvre , showing the Flagellation of Christ (fig. c) based on the engraving in Dürer’s Great Passion series (RP-P-OB-1164). Noteworthy is that all of the reliefs are furnished with a sloped ground plane that projects outward at the bottom, but leaving space to accommodate a frame.

Of the four compositions cited above, several casts and copies are in circulation.¹⁰¹⁰A mould was made of the relief in Leiden, today preserved at the municipal museum of Namur (19.5 x 21.5 cm). The same museum also has a modern copy made with this mould. A glazed terracotta version of the Jerusalem relief is preserved at the Gruuthusemuseum in Bruges (20 x 26 cm); a plaster cast (23.5 x 32 cm) was held in a private British collection up until 2008 (present whereabouts unknown). In 2010, a larger, polychromed version of the Utrecht relief was circulating on the art market in Leiden (29 x 31 cm), probably identical to the version sold at sale London (Sotheby’s), 5 July 2016, no. 117 (30.5 x 28.5 cm). With respect to the Amsterdam relief, the auction catalogue of the estate of the esteemed Amsterdam/Leiden physician and man of letters Govert Bidloo (1649-1713), includes ‘a modelled peasant fight’ (Een Boere Gevecht geboetzeert), which might refer to this, or another version of the composition.¹¹¹¹Sale Govert Bidloo (1649-1713), Leiden (Samuel Luchtmans), 1713, p. 109. Furthermore, a plaster replica¹²¹²Present whereabouts unknown, formerly in a private collection, Leeuwarden. Photo dated 1967 in Object File RMA. and a modern copy in walnut are known.¹³¹³Sale Dordrecht (A. Mak), 6-9 June 1967, no. 1136. A virtually identical terracotta version, formerly in the possession of the London dealer Chaucer, is larger in size and displays a greater sharpness (fig. d) when compared to the Amsterdam piece. It is paired with a pendant scene of a drinking company, also in terracotta (fig. e).¹⁴¹⁴Old Master Paintings and Sculpture and Works of Art: An Amateur’s Cabinet, sale cat. London (Chaucer Fine Arts) 1991, nos. 12-13. Neither of the two reliefs bears a signature, yet the originality of the second scene suggests we are dealing with an autograph pair. The difference in size and sharpness may perhaps even indicate that the London terracotta was the core model from which the mould for the Amsterdam relief was made. If so, Quast would logically have incised his signature solely in the wet clay of the copy, not the original. The successive firing of the model, the mould and the copy – entailing three shrinkage moments – would otherwise surely have resulted in the reduced legibility of his signature.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 237, with earlier literature; E. Bijzet, ‘Waer in den Aert en Stand zijn uitgedrukt heel stout: Pieter van Baurscheits Drinkebroers en de boertige kunst in de Nederlanden’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 56 (2008), pp. 424-45, esp. p. 440

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'Pieter Jansz. Quast, A Fight Between Two Street Musicians, Amsterdam, in or after 1628 - in or before 1629', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.24527