Modelled in relief and originally (partly) gilded.

The head of the putto riding the goat has broken off. A plaster cast of the relief made in the early 20th century does include the head. Unclear, however, is whether the head on the cast is a modern addition, or that it was cast from the original prior to sustaining this damage.¹¹Sale Amsterdam (Christie’s), 6 November 2007, no. 111, see also A. Pit, Catalogus van de beeldhouwwerken in het Nederlandsch Museum voor geschiedenis en kunst te Amsterdam, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1915, no. 51, 14.

…; ? the dealer Gerrit Uylenburgh, Amsterdam, by 1675;²²Possibly identical to no. 47 of the statues listed in his inventory of 27 and 28 March 1675, SAA, archive 5072 (Desolate Boedelkamer), inv. no. 603, fol. 87: Kindertiens ende een bockie van Quelinus (Children and a goat by Quelinus), see F. Lammertse and J. van der Veen, Uylenburg & Son: Art and Commerce from Rembrandt to De Lairesse 1625-1675, exh. cat. London (Dulwich Picture Gallery)/Amsterdam (Museum het Rembrandthuis) 2006, p. 298, no. 47.…; from an unknown owner, Leiden, fl. 13:2:8, to the Stadstekenacademie, Amsterdam, through the mediation of Izaäk Schmidt, 1806;³³M. Jonker et al., In beeld gebracht: Beeldhouwkunst uit de collectie van het Amsterdams Historisch Museum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1995, no. 127, note 1. transferred to the Prinsenhof, Amsterdam, 1878; on loan to the museum, since 1887

Object number: BK-AM-52-7

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam

Influenced by antique sarcophagi, the theme of the ‘children’s bacchanal’ became popular among artists working in Rome around 1620-30.⁴⁴A. Colantuono, ‘The Poetry of Atomism: Duquesnoy, Poussin, and the Song of Silenus’, in A. Colantuono and S.F. Ostrow (eds.), Critical Perspectives on Roman Baroque Sculpture, University Park, Penn. 2014, pp. 88-103. Works by Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) are among the first and most successful painted depictions of this motif. In sculpture, it was his close friend François du Quesnoy (1597-1643) whose reliefs, many copies of which were dispersed from Rome, sparked the theme’s popularity in France and the Low Countries, with Gerard van Opstal (cf. BK-NM-2934) producing some of the finest examples.

This terracotta is inspired by the right-hand group appearing on Du Quesnoy’s renowned marble relief Bacchanal of Eight Putti with a He-Goat in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj,⁵⁵M. Boudon-Machuel, François du Quesnoy 1597-1643, Paris 2005, no. 64b. which, as its name implies, features eight putti frolicking around a he-goat. In 2014, the Rijksmuseum acquired an autograph marble reduction of this marble (BK-2014-28). The modeller of the present terracotta version chose to omit the group on the left, which centres on a child wearing a mask. In the adapted composition, the focus lies entirely on the group to the right: a total of eight children -– helpers and followers of the wine god Bacchus – taunt and tease the besieged animal: tugging at his tail, pulling him by the horns, with one toddler straddling his back while another endeavours to do so (for the iconography see the entry on BK-2014-28).⁶⁶Cf. also the drawing attributed to François du Quesnoy, which shows a comparable, albeit mirror-image composition in the Albertina; see E. Dhanens (ed.), De beeldhouwkunst in de eeuw van Rubens in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden en het prinsbisdom Luik, exh. cat. Brussels (Museum voor Oude Kunst) 1977, no. 42. Contrary to the prototype, obviously set in the outdoors, the scene depicted here takes place against a background of hanging fabric swags. The putti’s poses also differ from the original, with only the he-goat’s stance virtually unmodified.

Past historians attributed the present terracotta to both Du Quesnoy and Van Opstal. There exists no doubt, however, that this work was modelled by Artus Quellinus I (1609-1668). From c. 1650 to 1665, this Antwerp sculptor oversaw the sculptural decoration of the former Amsterdam town hall (the present-day Royal Palace at Dam Square), then under construction. Quellinus perhaps viewed Du Quesnoy’s composition with his own eyes during his years working in the sculptor’s atelier in Rome in the second half of the 1630s. A terracotta in the Six Collection (Amsterdam) signed by Quellinus – fully modelled in the round – presents yet another original variant of a children’s bacchanal (fig. a). This group shows the Bacchus children hounding a youthful satyr. Their characteristic bulbous cheeks, expressive facial features and flaccid corporeality are likewise encountered on the present relief, with similarities also discernible in the treatment of the hair.

At least two additional reliefs featuring putti and a goat or he-goat attributed to Quellinus are known from written sources. The earliest dated version is cited in an unpublished sale catalogue from December 1836 listing (chiefly) ivories from the collection of the Rotterdam surgeon C. van Hattem: ‘A piece of the largest sort, depicting four children wrestling with a goat by Artus Quellinus sculpt. anno 1640’.⁷⁷Een stuk van het grootste soort, verbeeldende vier kinderen met een geit worstelende door Artus Quellinus schulpt anno 1640; T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer, ‘Het Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden en zijn beteekenis voor het Rijksmuseum, III’, Bulletin KNOB 9 (1956) pp. 269–308, esp. p. 280. If this dating is correct, then this ivory was carved in Antwerp in the same period as the ivory Sleeping Putto presently in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, which Quellinus signed and dated 1641,⁸⁸Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, inv. no. 71.393, see R.H. Randall, Masterpieces of Ivory from the Walters Art Gallery, coll. cat. Baltimore 1985, pp. 9, 10, 252-53 (no. 377) and pl. 79. M. Boudon-Machuel, François du Quesnoy 1597-1643, Paris 2005, p. 297, no. 69 (dér. 1). and of which the Rijksmuseum possesses a second version (BK-2002-19).⁹⁹B. van der Mark, ‘Een slapend kindje van Quellinus’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 51 (2003), pp. 146-55.

The present terracotta may be deemed a work produced during Quellinus’s years in Amsterdam, both in consideration of its Northern Netherlandish provenance (Leiden) and the more mature style, comparable to that of the group in the Six Collection and the clay models for the Amsterdam town hall. This is perhaps the same work described as a Kindertiens en een bockie van Quelinus (Children and a he-goat by Quellinus) in the 1675 inventory of possessions belonging to Gerrit Uylenburgh, an Amsterdam dealer well known to Quellinus.¹⁰¹⁰Uylenburgh, together with Quellinus, selected artworks for the ‘Dutch Gift’ presented to the new English king, Charles II, by the States of Holland in 1660; see F. Lammertse and J. van der Veen, Uylenburg & Son: Art and Commerce from Rembrandt to De Lairesse 1625-1675, exh. cat. London (Dulwich Picture Gallery)/Amsterdam (Museum het Rembrandthuis) 2006, pp. 64-70. Uylenburgh’s inventory also includes other works by Quellinus, see ibid., p. 298, nos. 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 47. Lammertse and Van der Veen identify the present relief as Kinderen met een bockie van Verhulst, no. 49 in Uylenburgh’s inventory. Rombout Verhulst worked with Quellinus on the sculptural decoration of the Amsterdam town hall. The terracotta’s style, however, displays no agreement with Verhulst’s work. Furthermore, a version slightly smaller than the present work is included in the Delft collector Valerius Röver’s self-compiled inventory, kept from 1730 on, listed as follows: ‘Playing children with a he-goat, bas-relief by Quellinus, height 12 thumb, wide 23 thumb… 10:10.’¹¹¹¹Spelende kindertjes met een bok, basrelief van Quellin, hoog 12 duijm, breet 23 duijm… 10:10; J.G. van Gelder, ‘“Beelden en rariteijten” in de verzameling Valerius Röver’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 31 (1980), pp. 341-54, esp. p. 344. The provenance of this latter relief (present whereabouts unknown) can possibly be traced – via the painter Adriaen van der Werff – back to the Beeldekas (cabinet of sculptures) of the Amsterdam painter Govert Flinck (1615-1660), in which all sorts of ‘Quellinia’ were represented.¹²¹²J.G. van Gelder, ‘“Beelden en rariteijten” in de verzameling Valerius Röver’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 31 (1980), pp. 341-54, esp. pp. 344-45.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025

A. Pit, Catalogus van de beeldhouwwerken in het Nederlandsch Museum voor geschiedenis en kunst te Amsterdam, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1915, no. 51-15; J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 307, with earlier literature; J.G. van Gelder, ‘“Beelden en rariteijten” in de verzameling Valerius Röver’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 31 (1980), pp. 341-54, esp. pp. 344-45; M.G. Emeis, Paleis op de Dam: De geschiedenis van het gebouw en zijn gebruikers, Amsterdam/Brussels 1981, p. 41; F. Scholten, ‘Rombout Verhulsts ivoren Madonna met Christus’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 51 (2003), pp. 102-17, esp. pp. 112-13; F. Lammertse and J. van der Veen, Uylenburg & Son: Art and Commerce from Rembrandt to De Lairesse 1625-1675, exh. cat. London (Dulwich Picture Gallery)/Amsterdam (Museum het Rembrandthuis) 2006, p. 237 and fig. 180

B. van der Mark, 2025, 'attributed to Artus (I) Quellinus, _, Amsterdam, c. 1650 - c. 1665', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), _European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035759