Commissioned by Diederik van Leyden II (1695-1764) for the grand salon of his house Rapenburg 48, Leiden, 1739;¹¹For the history of Rapenburg 48, and those residing there from 1739 on, see T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer et al., Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, vol. 5, Leiden 1990, pp. 509-46. with the house, to his son Pieter Cornelis van Leyden (?-1788), 1764; with the house, to his son Diederik van Leyden III (1744-1811), 1788; with the house, acquired by Pieter Johan Marcus (?-1811), 1791;²²T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer et al., Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, vol. 5, Leiden 1990, pp. 534-35. The 1791 sale included a comprehensive description of the house, with the chimney piece is mentioned separately as part of the zeer capitaal en buitengewoon groot zijsalet (‘extremely costly and extraordinarily large side salon’) ... mitsgaders door een schoorsteen van divers marmer, van onder tot boven aan het blaffon, op de hoeken van dezelve twee musiceerende kinderen van statuariemarmer, en voorts in ’t midden van dezelve schoorsteen gelijk ook boven de deuren van ’t zelve vertrek basrelieven, meede van statuariemarmer, alles zeer konstrijk gehouwen door den vermaarden J.B. Xavery ... . (‘… together with a chimney piece of various marble types, from below to above at the ceiling, at the corners of the same two music-making children of statuary marble, and furthermore in the middle of the same chimney piece and also directly above the doors of the same room bas-reliefs, likewise of statuary marble, all of it very masterfully sculpted by the esteemed J.B. Xavery … .’). to his widow, Ida Agatha Deutz (?-1830), 1811; with the house, acquired by Hendrick Cock (?-1866), 1830; with the house, to his daughter Bertha Cock, 1866; with the house, to her sister, Anna Maria Gesina Cock (?-1901), date unknown; with the house, to her brother Coenraad Cock (?-1908), 1901; with the house, to the Werndly family, 1908; from their sale, Amsterdam (Frederik Muller), 24 November 1908, no. 1, $3,216 (fl. 7,200) to Count Gerard Joseph Emile d’Aquin (1865-?) for William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951);³³According to the Hearst Records, Hearst bought the present chimney piece at the Frederik Muller sale on 24 November 1909. This is likely the consequence of a written error (1909 instead of 1908) (my thanks to Mary Levkov for this information, written correspondence 17 July 2007). While a second sale of items from the house at Rapenburg 48 did indeed occur in 1909 (on 27 April/1 May), it did not include the large chimney piece (T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer et al., Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, vol. 5, Leiden 1990, p. 546). For the proceeds, see C.W. Fock, ‘Cultuurbarbarisme met recht gewroken’, Bulletin Vereniging Rembrandt 6 (1996), no. 3, pp. 25-27, esp. p. 27. An annotation in the Brummer archive purports that Frederik Muller sold the chimney piece to ‘Mr. D’Aquin’ (Count d’Aquin) on the behalf of Randolph Hearst in April 1910, but an invoice had already been sent on 24 November 1909 for the same object. He is said to have paid $3,216. See New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Thomas J. Watson Library, The Brummer Gallery Records, inv. no. N5981. Brummer did a great deal of business with Hearst, mostly selling him antique and medieval art; see M.L. Levkov, Hearst the Collector, New York/Los Angeles 2008, pp. 71, 109, 114 (notes 17, 19), 223-25 (nos. 107, 108, 111), 234 (no. 122). For the dealer Count Gerard Joseph Emile d’Aquin (born in Rotterdam in 1865), a close friend of Hearst’s, see D. Nasaw, The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst, Boston 2000, p. 301. transferred to the International Studio Art Corporation (ISAC), after 1919;⁴⁴The International Studio Art Corporation in New York was a Hearst-owned company charged with uncrating, cataloguing, storing, and shipping art objects purchased and stored in a warehouse in the Bronx by Mr Hearst. acquired by the dealer Joseph Brummer (1883-1947), New York, 7 June 1944;⁵⁵From an annotation in the Artist File Jan Baptist Xavery, RMA it can be concluded that discussions (with Hearst or Brummer) concerning the Rijksmuseum’s purchase of the chimney piece had already occurred during the years of the Second World War 1940-1945. At this time, however, the physical transportation of the piece from the USA to The Netherlands was out of the question due to the war. Written on a card in the Brummer archive is the following: ‘Bought from International Studio Art Corporation, June 7, 1944’. from his sale, New York (Parke-Bennet) 20-23 April 1949, no. 838, $500, to the dealers Victor and Nicholas de Koenigsberg, New York and Buenos Aires; acquired by Gaby Salomon, Buenos Aires, October 1958; sale, his heirs, New York (Christie’s), 10 January 1995, no. 51 (bought in); to the museum as ‘after-sale’, $332,000 (fl. 581,000) with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt, 1995

Object number: BK-1995-3

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt, with additional funding from the Prins Bernhard Fonds

The present chimney piece was originally made for the grand salon at Rapenburg 48 in Leiden, one of the most impressive early-rococo interiors in the Netherlands. In the eighteenth century, the regent Diederik II van Leyden (1695-1764), scion of a prominent Leiden patrician family, lived with his family in this monumental seventeenth-century house, which he had inherited from his father.⁶⁶Information on Rapenburg 48 and its inhabitants came from T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer et al., Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, vol. 5, Leiden 1990, pp. 478-603, esp. pp. 503-15. Van Leyden began gradually modernising the house after 1719. The total transformation of the large salon left of the entrance – het grote salet – was completed only twenty years later, as confirmed by the date 1739 inscribed on the newly installed chimney piece. The modernization of the salon appears to have been based on a single overall design quite possibly conceived by one or two individuals: Jan Baptist Xavery (1697-1742), court sculptor in The Hague, responsible for the chimney piece and several other sculptural elements adorning the same room; or Jacob de Wit, charged with the painted ceiling added in 1743. Van Leyden had previous ties with Xavery via Baron Van Friesheim – father-in-law of his aunt Alida van Leyden – for whom the sculptor designed a funerary monument in Heusden in 1731 (cf. BK-NM-11378.⁷⁷T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer et al., Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, vol. 5, Leiden 1990, p. 507. Prior to this time, Xavery and De Wit were also known to have collaborated on projects of this sort, including the stadholder’s Huis ten Bosch Palace in The Hague.⁸⁸See also D. Kool and S. Braam, ‘De marmeren amoretten van Herengracht 468’, Amstelodamum 2021, no. 2, pp. 89-102, esp. pp. 93-95. The same can perhaps also be said of the design for Rapenburg 48, making it a collaborative endeavour. In any case, noteworthy is that the chimney piece’s large shell-shaped rocaille again reappears – albeit more modest in scale – on Xavery’s ceiling moulding above, and a third time in full glory on the frame of his overdoor piece on the wall opposite. The rocaille is a motif more commonly encountered in the sculptor’s oeuvre, such as the Hague Town Hall.⁹⁹K. Heyning, ‘Decoratief beeldhouwwerk in Den Haag tijdens het rococo’, in R. Baarsen et al., Rococo in Nederland, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001-02, pp. 24-35, esp. p. 26, figs. 15, 16; R. Baarsen, ‘Sculptor and Chairmaker? Throne Chairs from the Workshop of Jan Baptist Xavery’, Furniture History 42 (2006), pp. 101-13, esp. pp. 101-03, figs. 1-6. With the chimney piece, De Wit’s painted ceiling, and four large tapestries – from the atelier of the Brussels firm Leyniers – adorning the walls, the grand salon is certain to have exuded an air of princely grandeur, thus reflecting Diederik II van Leyden’s social aspirations. Up to the time of the interior’s sale in 1908, all of the room’s decorative furnishings had remained preserved intact.

The salon’s decoration was inspired by the themes of love and the arts, realised in the form of hanging tapestries with several depictions of amorous couples from Antiquity, and on the ceiling, painted allegories of Music (or Apollo and the Muses?) and Poetry by Jacob de Wit.¹⁰¹⁰T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer et al., Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, vol. 5, Leiden 1990, pp. 558-64. In 1912 De Wit’s ceiling was installed in the so-called Potter Room of the Mauritshuis, The Hague (inv. no. 731). A precedent for the chosen furnishing was possibly a similar interior in Delft from 1738: the so-called Ambonkamer (Ambon Room) in the house at Oude Delft 75, built for the burgomaster G.R. van Kinschot. Besides being furnished with comparable Brussels tapestries, this space also featured a monumental marble chimney piece designed by Joseph Bollina (?-1760), today preserved at Twickel Castle (Delden).¹¹¹¹H.M. van den Berg, ‘Interieurdecoratie in het tweede kwart van de 18de eeuw’, Delftse studiën, Assen 1967, pp. 256-59. This ensemble came from the collection of Jonkheer Adriaan van der Goes van Naters (1808-1885, Delft), sale Amersfoort (Schulman), 16 June 1897, nos. 96-100. Xavery’s chimney piece was highly suited to the Amsterdam house’s decoration programme, as the iconography of the sculpted scene likewise centred on musical and pastoral themes. The formal austerity of the brownish-grey veined marble mantelpiece greatly contrasts with the extraordinarily exuberant white marble sculpture. The overmantel relief shows the antique amorous pair from Ovid’s Heroides: Paris and Oenone. Flanking this central scene on the mantelpiece’s two outer corners are two large, seated figures: left, a freely sculpted shepherd boy with a flute; and right, a shepherd girl with a tambourine.¹²¹²In the sale catalogue, the theme was erroneously identified as Tereus and Procne. Also possible is that Xavery wished to create a scene from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, namely with Angelica and Medoro, see T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer et al., Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, vol. 5, Leiden 1990, p. 558. Supporting the scene’s identification as Paris and Oenone, however, is the fact that Xavery made a chimney piece in 1742 for the stadholder’s court, featuring another amorous pair from Ovid’s work: Apollo and the Cumaean Sibyl (BK-1997-12). For a similar tambourine-playing shepherdess in terracotta (by Xavery?), albeit standing, see C. Theuerkauff, Bildwerke des Barock. Bildhefte des Kunstmuseums Düsseldorf, vol. 2, Düsseldorf 1966, no. 36 (inv. no. 1935-11) as ‘Lorraine, last quarter 18th century?’. Together the two figures frame a widely expanding shell-shaped palmette. Other elements adorning the chimney piece include touches of white marble ornamentation in the form of corbels, hanging flower bouquets and an oval flower wreath.

As the highlight of Xavery’s chimney piece, the depiction of Paris, son of the Trojan king, and the water nymph Oenone is a highly unconventional theme, particularly as this shepherd’s idyll comes to a tragic end. Xavery’s depiction shows the mythological pair at the height of their love – soon after, Paris departs to kidnap the beautiful Helena, an act that leads to the Trojan War and ultimately costs him his life. With the recipe for a life-saving ointment in her possession, Oenone has the power to save Paris from his death. Instead, she chooses to leave her unfaithful lover to his fate. Distraught with sadness upon learning of his death, she throws herself onto the flames of Paris’s funeral pyre. In choosing this episode Xavery was undoubtedly inspired by Jacob de Wit’s painting of the same subject from two years earlier (SK-C-1577).¹³¹³Cf. A. de Koomen in R. Baarsen et al., Rococo in Nederland, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001-02, p. 185. For a preliminary sketch of De Wit’s painting, see D. Kool and S. Braam, ‘De marmeren amoretten van Herengracht 468’, Amstelodamum 2021, no. 2, pp. 89-102, esp. figs 8, 9. Diederik van Leyden might conceivably have chosen this theme to reflect his sadness over the loss of his wife, Sophia Dina de Rovere, in 1738. For the chimney piece and the surrounding ornamentation in the grand salon at Rapenburg 48, however, it seems more likely that his desire was to celebrate the glorification of the pastoral world, where the arts (the Muses) can flourish, and the apotheosis of Music and Poetry, as envisaged on De Wit’s painted ceiling, can be achieved.¹⁴¹⁴C. Vogelaar, ‘Reliëf met twee amoretten,’ Bulletin Vereniging Rembrandt 10 (2000), no. 2, p. 18 and A. de Koomen in R. Baarsen et al., Rococo in Nederland, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum ) 2001-02, p. 185;

Based on the high artistic quality and the exceptional application of a freestanding sculpture in the format of a fireplace mantle, Xavery’s sculpted chimney piece is without question the most important example of a cheminée à la française produced in the Netherlands.¹⁵¹⁵See A. Laing, ‘Die Entwicklung des “Cheminée à la française” und seiner Dekoration’, in H. Ottomeyer and P. Pröschel, Vergoldete Bronzen, Die Bronzearbeiten des Spätbarock und Klassizismus, Munich n.d., pp. 443-58. Moreover, it is the only surviving, wholly intact work of its kind in the sculptor’s oeuvre.¹⁶¹⁶The Rijksmuseum holds two other chimney piece reliefs by Xavery in its collection, and the terracotta modello for one of the two reliefs (inv. nos. BK-1974-109, BK-1983-21 and BK-1997-12). A smaller chimney piece by Xavery, dating from 1735, is at Huis Bartolotti, Herengracht 170-172, Amsterdam. A now lost chimney piece in the house at Prinsegracht 15 in The Hague, where Xavery also collaborated with De Wit, is mentioned in A. Staring, Jacob de Wit 1695-1754, Amsterdam 1958, pp. 111-12. The chimney piece is an ensemble of integrated components, in its allure comparable only to grand-scale works of sculpture crowning monumental building facades and adorning funerary monuments. It reflects both Xavery’s artistic innovation and his French orientation: freestanding sculpture is commonly encountered in French (and German) chimney piece designs of the eighteenth century, often in combination with gilded bronze ornamentation.¹⁷¹⁷A. Laing, ‘Die Entwicklung des “Cheminée à la française” und seiner Dekoration’, in H. Ottomeyer and P. Pröschel, Vergoldete Bronzen, Die Bronzearbeiten des Spätbarock und Klassizismus, Munich n.d., pp. 443-58, esp. figs. 8, 12 and 13. H. Schmitz, Deutsche Möbel des Barock und Rokoko, Stuttgart 1923, p. 183 (chimney piece from Stift Klosterneuburg with freestanding figures on the mantle). The earliest manifestations of the Rococo style are found above all in the large shell-shaped rocaille and in non-classical depictions of pastoral children’s figures. The use of rococo ornamentation in Xavery’s oeuvre appears as early as circa 1734, with such works therefore among the earliest examples of the new style in the Netherlands; only in the late 1730s does the tendency towards asymmetry and fanciful elements begin to occur in a more emphatic form, for example, in Xavery’s three chimney piece designs for the Amsterdams Herenlogement in The Hague from 1739.¹⁸¹⁸K. Heyning, ‘Decoratief beeldhouwwerk in Den Haag tijdens het rococo’, in R. Baarsen et al., Rococo in Nederland, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001-02, pp. 24-35, esp. p. 26; R. Baarsen, ‘Sculptor and Chairmaker? Throne Chairs from the Workshop of Jan Baptist Xavery’, Furniture History 42 (2006), pp. 101-13, esp. p. 102. Similarly, the frame of the overdoor piece from the same room at Rapenburg 48 (dated 1740) displays a greater asymmetry than the ornamentation on the chimney piece.¹⁹¹⁹J. Dröge, ‘Het ontwerp, de bouw en de inrichting van het Logement van de heren van Amsterdam te ’s-Gravenhage’, Jaarboek Monumentenzorg 1993, Zwolle/Zeist 1994, figs. 25, 26 and 27.

The chimney piece’s maker, Jan Baptist Xavery (1697-1742), was born in Antwerp. He received his training in the large workshop of the sculptor Michiel van der Voort (1667-1737), with possible subsequent sojourns in Vienna and Italy. In or before 1721,²⁰²⁰According to the Antwerp Van der Sanden manuscript, Xavery travelled to Rome via Vienna in 1719. There he would remain for two years before settling in The Hague, see L.J. van der Klooster, ‘Jan Baptist Xavery (1697-1742): Documentatie over enkele van zijn werken’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 21 (1970), pp. 99-138, esp. pp. 99-100. Xavery moved to The Hague, where he quickly established an esteemed reputation as a multifaceted sculptor of portraits, cabinet pieces in ivory and boxwood, funerary monuments, garden statuary, facade pediments, church furnishings and fireplace mantelpieces. Especially from 1733 on, when commissioned for work by the prince and later stadholder, William IV of Orange, Xavery garnered important commissions from members of the courtly circles, the government and foreign embassies.²¹²¹For an overview of Xavery’s most seminal works, see L.J. van der Klooster, ‘Jan Baptist Xavery (1697-1742): Documentatie over enkele van zijn werken’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 21 (1970), pp. 99-138. For this reason, he is generally seen as the most important eighteenth-century sculptor in the Dutch Republic.

The Rijksmuseum’s acquisition of Xavery’s chimney piece in 1995, purchased ‘after sale’ in New York, marked the fulfilment of a long-cherished desire first communicated in 1954. A detailed correspondence in the years 1954 to 1960, preserved in the museum archive, allows one to follow step by step what was to become a prolonged process leading up to the acquisition, with discouraging negotiations along the way. Contrary to the express wishes of the chimney piece’s last owner, Coenraad Cock,²²²²T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer et al., Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, vol. 5, Leiden 1990, p. 546. the interior of Rapenburg 48 was offered for sale after his death. Cock’s heirs were likely talked into selling by the dealer Frits Lugt, then a young man in the employment of the Dutch auction house Frederik Muller.²³²³J.F. Heijbroek, Frits Lugt (1884-1970): Leven voor de kunst, Bussum/Paris 2010, pp. 61-62. At the public sale held November 1908, the chimney piece was acquired by the colourful American newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951), in all probability for his recently purchased New York apartment on Riverside Drive.²⁴²⁴M.L. Levkov, Hearst the Collector, New York/Los Angeles 2008, p. 39. For reasons unknown, however, the marble chimney piece – composed of ten separate elements – was never installed in Hearst’s apartment, and subsequently ended up in a New York warehouse. On 7 June 1944, long before Hearst’s death, it was acquired by the New York dealer Joseph Brummer. Following the sale of Brummer’s estate in April 1949, the chimney piece left New York and transported Argentina. Acquired by the New York dealers Victor and Nicholas de Koenigsberg, it was introduced on the Argentine art market, to be sold via their branch office in Buenos Aires (‘Le Passé’). There was no more news until 1954, when Lunsingh Scheurleer, then curator at the Rijksmuseum, spent several months to ascertain the chimney piece’s latest whereabouts, learning that it was still in the possession of the same American-Argentine dealer, with an asking price of 5,000 dollars. In his letter of 24 May 1955, the curator stated his belief this was an exorbitant amount – particularly considering what the piece had sold for at the Brummer sale ($500) – and made an offer of 3,000 dollars on the Rijksmuseum’s behalf. After numerous written exchanges back and forth, finally culminating in De Koenigsberg’s admission that he was unwilling to go below 4,000 dollars, an agreement was reached for that amount on 7 October of the same year, with the dealer responsible for all transport arrangements.²⁵²⁵Written communication Lunsingh Scheurleer to De Koenigsberg, 7 October 1955. When the Argentine government refused to grant an export permit,²⁶²⁶Written communication De Koenigsberg to Lunsingh Scheurleer, 15 February 1956. however, the Dutch embassy in Buenos Aires was approached – on De Koenigsberg’s recommendation – in an official letter dated 6 April 1956 addressed to the Dutch minister of Foreign Affairs. In the end, this diplomatic assistance proved unnecessary: only six days later, a message arrived expressing the Argentine government’s willingness to grant the permit. Shipping costs to the Netherlands were estimated at 750 dollars. Despite this high amount, the acquisition process was allowed to continue, with the minister of Onderwijs, Kunst en Wetenschap (Education, Art and Science) finally approving the chimney piece’s purchase on 23 May 1956.

Shortly thereafter, a new problem arose. On 5 June, the Centrale Dienst voor In- en Uitvoer (Central Service of Imports and Exports) denied the transfer of payment in dollars to an Argentine bank account, as De Koenigsberg had requested. The solution was to have the Dutch embassy in Argentina act as an intermediary. On 3 December 1956, Lunsingh Scheurleer wrote De Koenigsberg that the transaction had been approved and that an invoice be sent. But to this letter there came no response. After two repeated letters sent from Amsterdam, it was not until 11 April 1957 that Nicholas de Koenigsberg responded on his brother’s behalf with a vague, non-committal letter. By this time, Lunshingh Scheurleer’s patience had run its course: ‘This affair is growing more and more tedious to us’. On 6 September, he warned the dealer to undertake action. By this time, however, information had been obtained via the Dutch ambassador that the chimney piece had never legally entered Argentina, with new complications to be expected concerning the export. These problems were also eventually waylaid with the embassy’s help, until a letter of 21 May 1958 arrived stating that the dealer was essentially no longer interested in the transaction.²⁷²⁷Written communication Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on behalf of the ambassador in Argentina, to the Rijksmuseum’s board of directors, 21 May 1958. By this time, three years had passed since the Rijksmuseum’s first contact with De Koenigsberg regarding the chimney piece and the sale had still not yet been completed. Another attempt to get De Koeningsberg to sell was made on 10 April 1959 via the dealer Heilbronner in Buenos Aires, a personal contact of Rijksmuseum director Röell. It was then that news came that the chimney piece had in fact already been sold in October 1958 to Gaby Salomon, a wealthy Buenos Aires industrialist and art collector, with the Rijksmuseum closed out of the deal. Apparently undeterred, Lunsingh Scheurleur took one final step on 25 July 1960: he wrote a letter to the new owner, conveying the museum’s vested interest in the chimney piece. Salomon replied that he was willing to offer the chimney piece to the museum in exchange for a ‘really first class French Louis XIVth marble chimneypiece of a similar height’ – in effect, a virtual impossibility.²⁸²⁸ Written communication Salomon to Lunsingh Scheurleer, 18 August 1960. With this, a long process, lasting more than six years, of trying to acquire Xavery’s masterpiece had come to an ostensible close. In the meantime, a modest wooden chimney piece from France had been installed in the place reserved for Xavery’s chimney piece in an area of the museum’s permanent collection. It was not until almost thirty-five years later that the chimney piece again surfaced on the art market, when featured in a Christie’s New York sale to be held on 10 January 1995.²⁹²⁹ Sale New York (Christie’s), 10 January 1995, no. 51. With the chimney piece by this time estimated at approximately 1 million guilders, obtaining the funds to make serious offer on such a short-term notice was virtually out of the question for the Rijksmuseum. Just when it seemed that hopes of acquiring this seminal work of Dutch national heritage were going to be dashed once again, a fortunate twist of fate occurred: the chimney piece went unsold. Following a brief negotiation, the Rijksmuseum was able to close an ‘after sale’ purchase, with Xavery’s chimney piece finally returning to the Netherlands almost ninety years after leaving the country.

Frits Scholten, 2026

Anonymous, ‘Het huis van wijlen mr. C. Cock te Leiden’, Het huis oud en nieuw, 1908, pp. 351-53; K. Sluyterman, Huisraad en binnenhuis in Nederland in vroeger eeuwen, The Hague 1918, p. 203; T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer et al., Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, vol. 5, Leiden 1990, pp. 478-603, esp. pp. 511-15, 534-35, 546-47, 556-58, figs. 97, 98; F. Scholten, ‘Gebeeldhouwde schouw,’ Bulletin Vereniging Rembrandt 5 (1995), no. 3, pp. 15-18; F. Scholten, ‘Recent Acquisitions at the Rijksmuseum’, The Burlington Magazine 138 (1996), p. 783, no. XVI; F. Scholten, ‘De bizarre aankoopgeschiedenis van een schouw’, Kunstschrift 1996, no. 3, pp. 4, 5; C.W. Fock, ‘Cultuurbarbarisme met recht gewroken’, Bulletin Vereniging Rembrandt 6 (1996), no. 3, pp. 25-27; Jaarverslag (Annual report Rijksmuseum) 1997, pp. 14-15; C. Vogelaar, ‘Reliëf met twee amoretten,’ Bulletin Vereniging Rembrandt 10 (2000), no. 2, pp. 16-18; R. Baarsen et al., Rococo in Nederland, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001-02, no. 97; F. Scholten in R. Baarsen et al., Netherlandish Art in the Rijksmuseum 1700-1800, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2006, no. 40; M.L. Levkov, Hearst the Collector, New York/Los Angeles 2008, p. 39 and fig. I.23; J.F. Heijbroek, Frits Lugt (1884-1970): Leven voor de kunst, Bussum/Paris 2010, pp. 61-62; D. Kool and S. Braam, ‘De marmeren amoretten van Herengracht 468’, Amstelodamum 2021, no. 2, pp. 89-102, esp. pp. 92-97

F. Scholten, 2026, 'Jan Baptist Xavery, Chimney Piece with Shepherd Boy and Girl Making Music and Overmantel Relief with Paris and Oenone _, The Hague, 1739', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), _European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200375703