Allegory of Transience

Cornelis Visscher (II), c. 1654 - c. 1658

Cornelis Visscher drew this young woman with coarse as well as very fine hatching in black chalk. While gazing beyond the picture plane with her sparkling eyes, she points out a sheet with verse to the viewer. Its message, in combination with the skull, the statuette of Time, and the broken glass, could not be clearer: life is finite.

  • Artwork typedrawing
  • Object numberRP-T-1888-A-1533
  • Dimensionsheight 335 mm x width 270 mm
  • Physical characteristicsblack chalk, on vellum

Discover more

more by Cornelis Visscher (II)

The Large Cat

Cornelis Visscher (II) (mentioned on object), 1657

The Large Cat

The Large Cat

Cornelis Visscher (II) (mentioned on object), 1657

The Large Cat

Study of a Skull, Facing Left

Cornelis Visscher (II), c. 1654 - c. 1658

Study of a Skull, Facing Left

Kleine kat

Cornelis Visscher (II), 1638 - 1658

Kleine kat

Magdalena Moons

Cornelis Visscher (II) (mentioned on object), 1649

Magdalena Moons

Cat Licking Wax from a Candleholder

attributed to Cornelis Visscher (II), c. 1650 - c. 1654

Cat Licking Wax from a Candleholder

Cornelis Visscher (II)

Allegory of Transience

c. 1654 - c. 1658

Inscriptions

  • signed: centre right, in black chalk, C. de Visscher fecit

  • inscribed: lower right (on a piece of paper), by the artist, T verdwijnt gelijck een Roock / t is brooser als een Glas / Daer ghy op roemt O mensch / hoovaerdigh Stof en As

  • stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of the Vereniging Rembrandt (L. 2135); below this, with the mark of De Vos Jbzn (L. 1450); next to this, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Provenance

…; sale, Dionys Muilman (1702-72, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (J. de Bosch et al.), 29 March 1773 sqq., Album C, no. 138 (‘Een zinnebeeldige ordonnantie, toepasselyk op ’s menschen leven, verbeeldende een dame, zittende aan een tafel, waarop eenige zinnebeelden staan, uitvoerig, kragtig en fraay met zwart kryt, hoog 13½, breed 10½ duim [343 x 266 mm].’), fl. 28, to the dealer H. de Winter, Amsterdam,1Josi 1821, p. 26. or, fl. 255, to Hendrik Pothoven (1725/28-1807), Amsterdam;2Copy RKD. … ; ? anonymous sale, Amsterdam (P. van der Schley et al.), 29 April 1817 sqq., Album F, no. 1 (‘Eene zinspeling op de vergankelijkheid; voorgesteld door eene schoone vrouw, wijzende met haar hand over een doodshoofd waarop zij met haar linkerhand legt, en verder toepasselijk bijwerk. Alleruitmuntend en meesterlijk met z. k. behandeld, door C. Visscher.’), fl. 39:10:-, to the dealer J. de Vries, Amsterdam;3Copy RKD. …; collection Hendrik Willink (?- before 1819), Amsterdam;4According to the catalogue for the sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 22 May 1883 sqq., no 589. his sale, Amsterdam (C.S. Roos et al.), 6 december 1819, Album C, no. 2 (‘Eene Vanitas, verbeeld door eene jeugdige vrouw, met de hand op een doodshoofd rustende; uitvoerig met zwart krijt, door C. Visscher’), fl. 61, to the dealer J. de Vries, Amsterdam;5Copy RKD. …; ? sale, Jonkheer Hendrik Six, Heer van Hillegom (1790-1847, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (J. de Vries et al.), 7 July 1845 sqq., Album F, no. 280 (‘Eene allegorische voorstelling van het menschelijk leven; met zw. krijt.’), fl. 69, to Pieter Ernst Hendrik Praetorius (1791-1876), Amsterdam;6Hofstede de Groot notes, RKD. …; ? sale, Jonkheer Hendrik Six, Heer van Hillegom (1790-1847, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (J. de Vries et al.), 15 December 1851, Album F, no. 162 (‘Eene allegorische voorstelling van het menschelijke leven; met zwart krijt.’), fl. 50, to the dealer J. de Vries, Amsterdam;7Copy RKD. …; collection Jacob de Vos Jbzn (1803-82), Amsterdam (L. 1450); his sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 22 May 1883 sqq., no. 589, fl. 100, to the dealer G.C.V. Schöffer for the Vereniging Rembrandt (L. 2135);8Copy RKD. from whom on loan to the museum, 1883; from whom acquired by the museum (L. 2228), 1888

Object number: RP-T-1888-A-1533

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The artist

Biography

Cornelis Visscher (Haarlem 1628/29 - 1658 Amsterdam)

Little is known about his early life. Information regarding his birth is based on two surviving self-portraits, one from 1649 in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1895,0915.1343), and the other, dated 10 April 1653, in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. RP-T-1902-A-4624). He was presumably born in Haarlem, where he became a member of the Guild of St Luke in 1653. His father – who cannot be identified – must have been an artist as well, because in the admission book of the guild Visscher is described as ‘plaetsnijder en Meester outste zoon’ (‘engraver and the master’s oldest son’). Two younger brothers, Jan Visscher (1633/34-1712) and Lambert Visscher (1630/32-after 1690), also pursued artistic careers. The relationship between Cornelis and the relatively unknown painter Cornelis de Visscher (c. 1530-c. 1586) of Gouda is unclear. According to Van Mander, the latter was a skilled portraitist, but had some mental issues and died in a shipwreck on the North Sea.9K. van Mander, Het schilder-boeck waer in voor eerst de leerlustighe iueght den grondt der edel vry schilderconst in verscheyden deelen wort voorghedraghen, Haarlem 1604, p. 228. Perhaps the same person can be identified with Cornelis de Visscher, whose money was managed (presumably on behalf of his under-age children) by the orphans’ board of Gouda because he was considered mentally ill; in 1622, the widow of Cornelis’ brother, the painter Gerrit Gerritsz. de Visscher II (c. 1559-before 1622), collected the money from the orphans’ board on behalf of Cornelis’ two nephews, her sons Gerrit de Visscher III (?-?), a goldsmith living in Gouda, and Barent de Visscher (?-?).10Gouda, Streekarchief Midden-Holland, inv. no. OA196.

Cornelis Visscher probably received his first artistic training from his father. Later he must have been apprenticed to the Haarlem painter, engraver and draughtsman Pieter Soutman (1593/1601-1657), with whom he collaborated on several print series in 1649/50. Shortly after his admission in the Guild of St Luke in Haarlem, he moved to Amsterdam. In the 1650s, he received numerous commissions for portrait drawings and engravings of Haarlem and Amsterdam scholars, clergymen and writers, including Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679) (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-H-P-41). One of his last commissions was an engraved portrait of Constantijn Huygens I (1596-1687) after a lost drawing by the sitter’s son Christiaan Huygens (1629-95), which was included as the frontispiece to Huygens’ poem book Koren-bloemen (1658) (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-27.428). It was finished in the last months of 1657, when the artist was presumably suffering from ‘de steen’ (kidney stones). Visscher died the following year and was buried on 16 January in the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam. Despite his short life – he was only twenty-eight years old when he died – Visscher left an extensive oeuvre, consisting of more than 100 drawings and some 185 prints.

Marleen Ram, 2019

References
R. van Eijnden and A. van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst, 4 vols., Haarlem 1816-40, I (1816), pp. 71-77, IV (1840), pp. 96-97; P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, pp. 100-01; R.E.O. Ekkart, ‘Visscher, Cornelis (de)’, in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., London/New York 1996, XXXII, pp. 622-23; J. Hawley, ‘An Introduction to the Life and Drawings of Jan de Vissccher’, Master Drawings 52 (2014), no. 1, pp. 59-94; J. Hawley, ‘Cornelis Visscher and Constantijn Huygens’s Koren-bloemen’, Print Quarterly 32 (2015), no. 1, pp. 51-53

Entry

Visscher ambitiously filled the composition of the present drawing from top to bottom with vanitas symbols. While gazing upwards into the light, the young woman is pointing at a skull lying on a table in front of her. Confronting us with a youthful beauty that cannot last forever, we are reminded of the transience of life. This message is emphasized by other details, such as the broken glass, the smoking vase and the crack in the wall behind the woman. Moreover, the box with jewelry and gold, the violin and the terrestrial globe refer to the vanity of earthly pleasures and man’s desire for domination. Looming above all of this, in a niche in the wall, is the figure of Father Time with his hourglass and scythe. On the page of an open book on the table underneath the skull, Visscher wrote an accompanying verse, which translates as: ‘It disappears as smoke, it is more fragile than glass, all that you proudly praise, oh man, [is] dust and ashes’. The text does not seem to derive from one literary source but is rather a compilation of Dutch proverbs.

The present drawing, which is not a portrait but an allegory, is unique in its kind. Only a few prints and drawings by Visscher depict personifications or allegories, and he rarely made a portrait historié, such as the Portrait of a Lady in the Guise of Diana in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow (inv. no. 1092).11V. Sadkov et al., Netherlandish, Flemish and Dutch Drawings of the XVI-XVIII Centuries, Belgian and Dutch Drawings of the XIX-XX Centuries: The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, coll. cat. Moscow 2010, no. 432. Furthermore, the present work is one of Visscher’s most ambitious and successful drawings. Not only did he excel in rendering the complex composition, he also pushed his drawing skills to the limit by depicting complicated shapes and structures. The skull, for example, is shown lying on its side in foreshortened perspective. In this position, the complex internal bone structure of the jaw and the nasal cavity is exposed. Since Visscher made multiple studies of skulls, of which two are preserved in the Rijksmuseum (inv. nos. RP-T-1902-A-4628 and RP-T-1902-A-4629),12See also J. Hawley and M. Ram, ‘Reconstructing a Cut-up Sheet by Cornelis Visscher’, Master Drawings 56 (2018), no. 2, pp. 183-92. he must have felt confident enough to draw the skull from such a complicated angle and to risk ruining a masterful drawing.

The young woman could have been one of the artist’s regular models. The same young woman may be represented, for example, in both another drawing in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. RP-T-1898-A-3685),13P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, p. 100. and the Head of a Young Woman Looking to the Left, which appeared on the London art market in 2014.14Anonymous sale, London (Christie’s), 10 July 2014, no. 137. Her characteristic nose, with its long, slightly bumpy bridge and wide nostrils, and the symmetrical, rounded eyebrows are strikingly similar.

Bonny van Sighem, 2000/Marleen Ram, 2019

Literature

C. Josi, Collection d’imitations des dessins d’après les principaux maîtres hollandais et Flamands, commencée par C. Ploos van Amstel […] precedés d’un discours sur l’état ancient et moderne des arts dans les Pays Bas, 2 vols., London 1821, p. 36; Rembrandt und seine Zeitgenossen: Handzeichnungen aus dem Besitz des Rijksmuseums Amsterdam und der kgl. Museen Brüssel: Graphik aus dem Besitz des Museums, exh. cat. Dortmund (Schloss Cappenberg) 1949, no. 78; P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, pp. 100 (fig. 3), 144, under no. 97; A. Kofuku et al., Dutch Art in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterworks of the Golden Age from the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, exh. cat. Nagoya (Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art)/Tokyo (National Museum of Western Art) 2000, no. 96; V. Sadkov et al., Netherlandish, Flemish and Dutch Drawings of the XVI-XVIII Centuries, Belgian and Dutch Drawings of the XIX-XX Centuries: The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, coll. cat. Moscow 2010, p. 274, under no. 432

Citation

B. van Sighem, 2000/M. Ram, 2019, 'Cornelis (II) Visscher, Allegory of Transience, c. 1654 - c. 1658', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200145491

(accessed 10 December 2025 09:32:34).

Footnotes

  • 1Josi 1821, p. 26.
  • 2Copy RKD.
  • 3Copy RKD.
  • 4According to the catalogue for the sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 22 May 1883 sqq., no 589.
  • 5Copy RKD.
  • 6Hofstede de Groot notes, RKD.
  • 7Copy RKD.
  • 8Copy RKD.
  • 9K. van Mander, Het schilder-boeck waer in voor eerst de leerlustighe iueght den grondt der edel vry schilderconst in verscheyden deelen wort voorghedraghen, Haarlem 1604, p. 228.
  • 10Gouda, Streekarchief Midden-Holland, inv. no. OA196.
  • 11V. Sadkov et al., Netherlandish, Flemish and Dutch Drawings of the XVI-XVIII Centuries, Belgian and Dutch Drawings of the XIX-XX Centuries: The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, coll. cat. Moscow 2010, no. 432.
  • 12See also J. Hawley and M. Ram, ‘Reconstructing a Cut-up Sheet by Cornelis Visscher’, Master Drawings 56 (2018), no. 2, pp. 183-92.
  • 13P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, p. 100.
  • 14Anonymous sale, London (Christie’s), 10 July 2014, no. 137.