…; purchased, fl. 125, by the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, 1877 (inv. no. 3331); transferred to the museum, 1883

Object number: SK-A-4279

This painting on the inside of a lid of a harpsichord is signed and dated 1626; but no artist with the name Schey or Schei is recorded. The artist has been assumed, most recently by De Maere and Wabbes, with no qualification, to be Flemish; but the patronymic seems not common in the southern Netherlands – or at least in Antwerp²²For instance, the name does not occur in the published Antwerp 17th-century inventories, see E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, XIII. – and does not occur in the registers of the Antwerp guild of St Luke.³³Except in the form of Schee – the surname of an apprentice sculptor listed in 1709/10, see P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ondere zinspreuk: ‘Wt Ionsten Versaemt’, 2 vols., Antwerp/The Hague 1864-76, II, pp. 666, 669. It is possible that, as the surname is succeeded by a colon in the inscription, it is an abbreviation like the Christian name. Thieme and Becker record a Ph. [Philip] Scheidam active in Hamburg in 1623;⁴⁴H. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 33 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXX, p. 13. this otherwise unknown artist seems to be the only candidate⁵⁵A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, 3 vols., Leipzig/Vienna 1906-11, II, p. 570 lists a Philips Scheiff, mentioned in Amsterdam in 1658, but he was an engraver (he also lists, as a landscape painter, Pieter Schei active c. 1678). who could be identified from printed sources with the signatory of the present work.

Maybe it was only because the Ruckers family⁶⁶See for instance, E. Kottick, A History of the Harpsichord, Bloomington (Ind.) 2003, pp. 130-31. – the most famous makers of harpsichords in northern Europe in the first half of the seventeenth century – was Antwerp-based that the artist responsible for the painted decoration of this lid was assumed to be active in that city. But the style of execution of this outdoor festivity is not typical of the Antwerp school in the 1620s.

The pictorial idiom is rather to be associated with the northern than the southern Netherlands in this decade; a stylistic point of departure might have been, for instance, the paintings of David Vinckboons I (1576-1631/33).⁷⁷For instance, his composition of 1601 engraved by Nicolaes de Bruyn, see F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700, Amsterdam/Roosendaal 1948-, IV, p. 99, no. 173. Gierveld has suggested⁸⁸A.J. Gierveld, ‘The Harpsichord and Clavichord in the Dutch Republic’, Tijdschrift van de Verenigning voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 31 (1981), no. 2, pp. 117-66, esp. p. 124. that the instrument may have been imported to the northern Netherlands – implying that the decoration was done there – by observing that the flag on the rowing boat, right, is the Dutch tricolour, inverted. This suggestion is likely to be correct as Giovanni Paolo Di Stefano believes that the harpsichord was indeed most probably a Ruckers instrument.⁹⁹Oral information. His evidence is based on the shape of the impressions in the paint towards the bottom edge of the front/top of the lid (the reverse of the side with which this entry is concerned) made by the branches of three hinges after their removal. The outline of these imprints and the number and placement of the pinholes conform with those of the branches of typical Ruckers main lid strap hinges.¹⁰¹⁰See G. O’Brien, Ruckers: A Harpsichord and Virginal Building Tradition, Cambridge 1990, pp. 169-70, and pl. 7.42. Of course this evidence is not conclusive as other makers could have used similar-shaped hinges. In this case they were removed presumably when the lid was detached from the instrument perhaps during a refurbishment (grand ravalement).¹¹¹¹See I. Kipnis (ed.), The Harpsichord and Clavichord: An Encyclopedia, New York/London 2007, pp. 394-95. How and where an artist such as Philip Scheidam, referred to above, was commissioned to decorate the lid must remain a matter of speculation.

Gierveld has described the present object as ‘a very fine painted lid’,¹²¹²A.J. Gierveld, ‘The Harpsichord and Clavichord in the Dutch Republic’, Tijdschrift van de Verenigning voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 31 (1981), no. 2, pp. 117-66, esp. p. 124. but the handling and the composition seem both naive and coarse belying the pretentious formulation of the inscription. And worthy of note is the absence of any comparable embellishment of a lid. A particular curiosity is the fictive, convex framing element: the strapwork-diapered panels with acanthus leaf centres and corners, the reposes decorated with trailing flower sprays applied with gold-coloured paint enhanced with black, are motifs most in favour around 1700.¹³¹³See in part P. Mitchell and L. Roberts, A History of European Picture Frames, London 1996, p. 39, fig. 28a and p. 43, fig. 30a. But it should be noted that the inside of a lid of an Andreas Ruckers harpsichord of 1641 is painted ‘a brick red with gilded decoration in a floral design’, see H. Schott, Catalogue of Musical Instruments, I: Keyboard Instruments, London (Victoria and Albert Museum) 1985, no. 15, p. 53.

This object is about the same size as three other harpsichord tops in the museum (SK-A-4263, SK-A-4288, and SK-A-4947. Taking the Ruckers’s formulae as a guide, these lids, placed above the soundboard, would have been most likely made for an achtvoet, double manual harpsichord.¹⁴¹⁴See H. Miedema, ‘Het Stadsklavecimbel van Amsterdam’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 48 (2000), pp. 257-79, esp. p. 272 as deduced for inv. no. SK-A-4947, whose measurements are very close to those of the present work. The painted view would have been visible when the lid was open; this acted as an amplifier while the instrument was being played. Often hinged to the spine or long side of the lid was a flap to protect the key-well, which would be folded back over it when open.

Gregory Martin, 2022

A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, 3 vols., Leipzig/Vienna 1906-11, II, p. 570; U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 33 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXX, p. 43; A.J. Gierveld, ‘The Harpsichord and Clavichord in the Dutch Republic’, Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 31 (1981), no. 2, pp. 117-66, esp. p. 118; J. de Maere and M. Wabbes, Illustrated Dictionary of 17th-century Flemish Painters, 3 vols., Brussels 1994, p. 351, no. 1043

1903, p. 242, no. 2158 (as in the musical instrument department of the Nederlandsch Museum); 1934, p. 260, no. 2158; 1976, p. 504, no. A 4279

G. Martin, 2022, 'Philip Schey, Harpsichord Lid Decorated with a Merry Company near a Country Mansion, 1626', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200110520