Marten de Cock

Landscape with the Ruins of a Round Tower

1625

Inscriptions

  • dated and inscribed by the artist: lower right, in brown ink, 1625 (?). Copenhage

  • inscribed on verso: upper centre, possibly in an eighteenth-century hand, in red chalk, M Cock

  • stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: coat of arms, surmounted by a crown (small fragment)

Condition

Thin spots in the corners

Provenance

…; sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 5 June 1905 sqq., no. 1224, fl. 9, to the museum (L. 2228)

ObjectNumber: RP-T-1906-21

The artist

Biography

Marten de Cock (? Antwerp 1578 - ? Augsburg 1661)

He was recorded as a resident of Amsterdam in 1630, but, according to Cornelis Ploos van Amstel (1726-1798), he was born in Antwerp in 1578, apparently the son of a goldsmith, and died in Augsburg in 1661. Ploos van Amstel recorded this birth and death information on the verso of a drawing in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels (inv. no. 4060/900).1J. de Grez, Inventaire des dessins et aquarelles donnés à l'état belge par Madame la douairière de Grez, coll. cat. Brussels (Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België) 1913, no. 900; E. de Wilde, Landscape in Flemish and Dutch Drawings of the 17th Century from the Collections of the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, exh. cat. Manchester (Whitworth Art Gallery) 1976, no. 12. It is no longer possible to discover his source for this information, assuming that it was not simply a figment of his imagination – which is not inconceivable, for hard facts about De Cock’s career are extremely sparse. The artist might have travelled elsewhere in Europe; a drawing dated 1625 in the Rijksprentenkabinet, inv. no. RP-T-1906-21, bears the autograph annotation Copenhage, while another drawing in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt-am-Main is signed and dated Martinus de Cock. fecit in Londen den 23 Juli 1630 (inv. no. 5539). These same works, however, have also been attributed to a namesake, Marten de Cock (1605-1631), who was born in Frankfurt-am-Main and also active in the Northern Netherlands,2https://rkd.nl/explore/artists/462982; accessed 6 July 2020. who may, in fact, turn out to be the same artist.

De Cock’s oeuvre consists primarily of fully worked-up, signed imaginary landscape drawings, but it also features three etchings, one of which is signed and dated 1620 (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1878-A-749),3F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, IV (1951), p. 194, nos. 1-3. and one painting, dated 1631, now in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (inv. no. NM 383).4G. Cavalli-Björkman and C. Fryklund, Dutch and Flemish Paintings, II: Dutch Paintings, c. 1600 - c. 1800, 2 vols., coll. cat. Stockholm 2005, p. 141.

His drawings are executed in pen and often finished with watercolour. With lively hatchings, loops and flecks, their style is somewhat conservative and fits within the mid-sixteenth-century Flemish tradition – especially the use of blue and green watercolour washes, with distinctive repoussoir elements – rather than the style of contemporary Dutch landscape artists.5D. Farr and W. Bradford, The Northern Landscape: Flemish, Dutch and British Drawings from the Courtauld Collections, exh. cat. New York (Drawing Center)/London (Courtauld Institute Galleries) 1986, no. 35; ‘Cock, Maerten (Maarten) de’ (2003), Grove Art Online, https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T018369; accessed 2 June 2020. Several motifs and stylistic devices in his drawings are based on the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1526/1530-1569), Hans Bol (1534-1593) and Paul Bril (1554-1626). He may have been one of the many artists who emigrated to the Dutch Republic from the Spanish Netherlands.

Carolyn Mensing, 2020

References
U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, VII (1912), p. 145 (as Marten de Cock, possibly identical to Marten de Cock (1605-1631); H. Gerson and B.W. Meijer (eds.), Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Amsterdam 1983 (rev. edn.; orig. edn. 1942), pp. 46, 150, 471; F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, IV (1951), p. 194; D. Farr and W. Bradford, The Northern Landscape: Flemish, Dutch and British Drawings from the Courtauld Collections, exh. cat. New York (Drawing Center)/London (Courtauld Institute Galleries) 1986, no. 35; Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, 94 vols., Munich 1992-, XX (1998), p. 72 (as Maerten (Maarten; Marten; Martyn) de Cock (Cockus; Cocus)

Entry

The last digit of the date could be read as a ‘3’, but I believe it to be a ‘5’, suggesting a date a year later than that of inv. no. RP-T-1881-A-152. Although the present sheet is inscribed as if executed in Copenhagen, the round tower is unlikely to depict an actual site in Denmark and was probably a motif drawn from the artist’s imagination or based on an earlier published source. It is very similar, for instance, to the building in an etching in a series by Guilliam van Nieulandt II (1584-1634) depicting Roman antiquities (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-4150).6The series, entitled Variae antiquitates Romanae. Sive Ruinae ad vivum delineatae per Guilhelmo a nieulandt, consists of a title-page and twenty-five views in and around Rome. In F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, XIV (1956), nos. 18-29, another series is described, a later edition of the one in the Rijksprentenkabinet, as consisting of a title-print and nineteen views. The print with the round building is no. 15 in that suite (ibid., no. 25). In 1618, Claes Jansz. Visscher (1587-1652) published a series of twenty-six copies after the original set; cf. ibid., nos. 50-75.

Marijn Schapelhouman, 1998

Literature

M. and P. Schatborn, Land en water. Hollandse tekeningen uit de 17de eeuw in het Rijksprentenkabinet, Zwolle 1987, p. 20; O. Le Bihan, L’Or et l’ombre: Catalogue critique et raisonné des peintures hollandaises du dix-septième et du dix-huitième siècles, conservées au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, coll. cat. Bordeaux 1990, p. 85 (n. 23); M. Schapelhouman and P. Schatborn, Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: Artists Born between 1580 and 1600, 2 vols., coll. cat. Amsterdam 1998, no. 107

Citation

M. Schapelhouman, 1998, 'Marten de Cock, Landscape with the Ruins of a Round Tower, Kopenhagen, 1625', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.33480

(accessed 19 July 2025 02:31:15).

Footnotes

  • 1J. de Grez, Inventaire des dessins et aquarelles donnés à l'état belge par Madame la douairière de Grez, coll. cat. Brussels (Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België) 1913, no. 900; E. de Wilde, Landscape in Flemish and Dutch Drawings of the 17th Century from the Collections of the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, exh. cat. Manchester (Whitworth Art Gallery) 1976, no. 12.
  • 2https://rkd.nl/explore/artists/462982; accessed 6 July 2020.
  • 3F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, IV (1951), p. 194, nos. 1-3.
  • 4G. Cavalli-Björkman and C. Fryklund, Dutch and Flemish Paintings, II: Dutch Paintings, c. 1600 - c. 1800, 2 vols., coll. cat. Stockholm 2005, p. 141.
  • 5D. Farr and W. Bradford, The Northern Landscape: Flemish, Dutch and British Drawings from the Courtauld Collections, exh. cat. New York (Drawing Center)/London (Courtauld Institute Galleries) 1986, no. 35; ‘Cock, Maerten (Maarten) de’ (2003), Grove Art Online, https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T018369; accessed 2 June 2020.
  • 6The series, entitled Variae antiquitates Romanae. Sive Ruinae ad vivum delineatae per Guilhelmo a nieulandt, consists of a title-page and twenty-five views in and around Rome. In F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols., Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, XIV (1956), nos. 18-29, another series is described, a later edition of the one in the Rijksprentenkabinet, as consisting of a title-print and nineteen views. The print with the round building is no. 15 in that suite (ibid., no. 25). In 1618, Claes Jansz. Visscher (1587-1652) published a series of twenty-six copies after the original set; cf. ibid., nos. 50-75.