Triptych with the Dance around the Golden Calf

The centre panel consists of two vertically grained oak planks (33.5 and 33.4 cm), 0.5 cm thick at the edges and 1.3 cm at the centre, where the planks are butt joined with two dowels. Each wing consists of a single vertically grained plank approx. 0.9 cm thick. Both wings are slightly trimmed at the top, and the right wing was also trimmed slightly on the left to make it fit into the 17th-century frame. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring of the central panel was formed in 1507. The panel could have been ready for use by 1518, but a date in or after 1532 is more likely. The youngest heartwood ring of the wings was formed in 1460. These panels could have been ready for use by 1471, but a date in or after 1485 is more likely. The planks used for the wings came from the same tree as the panel of Lucas van Leyden’s Virgin and Child (SK-A-3739). The white ground on all three panels was applied within the original frame. There is an unpainted border some 0.6 cm wide, and a well-preserved barbe on the centre panel (painted surface: 92.4 x 65.3 cm) and on both sides of the wings (painted surface insides of the wings: approx. 90.5 x 29.3 cm). The outer wings are painted in an imitation of marble in red and green, part of which has been planed off on the right side of the left panel and on the left side of the right panel (fig. e). The white ground is visible along the barbe on both sides of the wings and the central panel, as well as through the paint layers. The rather extensive underdrawing in a dry medium, probably black chalk, is partially visible with the naked eye, and fully visible with infrared reflectography. The underdrawing defines the contours of the figures in the foreground (fig. c) and indicates shadows with hatchings and the background figures in a rather sketchy way (fig. d). There are 30 colour notations at 20 different locations in the underdrawing. There are generally only two layers of paint. In a number of areas the details were modelled in an underlayer, over which a glaze was applied (in the reds, blues, yellows and greens). The light areas in the garments were mostly built up differently from the dark ones right from the start. In the red garments, for example, the light areas have a whitish underpaint with a thin red glaze, while the dark areas have only a red glaze. The foreground figures were carefully painted with great detail; the highlights and details were applied with a fine brush and rather stiff paint. The background figures were reserved and executed with a sketchier technique in rather subdued colours.

Filedt Kok 1978a, pp. 101-14; Filedt Kok 2008, pp. 36-49

Good. There is a small strip of discoloured retouching along the joins of the centre panel in the foliage and sky at the top.

…; recorded in a house in Kalverstraat, Amsterdam, 1604;¹¹Van Mander 1604, fol. 213v. …; collection Jaspar Losschaert [Loskert] (?-1658), Herengracht 214, Amsterdam;²²Annotations Hendrik Houmes, Medemblik, 1671; transcribed in Moes 1889, p. 150; estate inventory, Jaspar Losschaert, SAA, notary A. Lock, HNA 2182, fol. 185, 16 June 1667; with thanks to S.A.C. Dudok van Heel. his nephew, Jacob Wuytiers [Woutiers] (c. 1613-79), Herengracht 214, Amsterdam;³³Estate inventory, Jaspar Losschaert, SAA, notary A. Lock, HNA 2182, fol. 185, 16 June 1667; with thanks to S.A.C. Dudok van Heel. his estate inventory, 14 April 1679 (‘een schilderij van het vergulde Kalf gedaan van Lucas van Leyden’);⁴⁴SAA, notary A. Lock, HNA 2256, fols. 289-92, 14 April 1679, no. 1; see Bredius 1913, p. 205. With thanks to S.A.C. Dudok van Heel. his nephew, Dirck Wuytiers; his nephew and brother-in-law, Jacob Cromhout (1651-1708), Lord of Nieuwkercke, Herengracht 364;⁵⁵Jacob Cromhout was married to Margaretha Wuytiers. With thanks to S.A.C. Dudok van Heel. his sale (‘en noch eenige konstige Stukken, gekomen uyt het Cabinet van Zalig. Jasper Loskart’), Amsterdam, sold on the premises (J.P. Zomer), 7 May 1709 sqq., no. 31 (‘Daarse om ’t Gulden Kalf dansen, met een meenigte van Beelden, van Lucas van Leyden, in een schone Kas, ongemeen fraey’), fl. 1,470;⁶⁶Copy RKD; Hoet I, 1752, p. 133, no. 25. …; sale, Marquis de Blasiel (†), Paris (C. Pillet), 16 March 1870 sqq., no. 78, frs. 6,200, to Fichet;⁷⁷Copy RKD. …; from the deceased estate of Veuve Mme Bignier (?-1952), 5 Rue de Lissabone, Paris, frs. 2,800,000 (fl. 30,500), to the museum, June 1952; on loan to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2004-10

ObjectNumber: SK-A-3841

Divided over the centre panel and the wings of the triptych, this composition shows how the people of Israel disobeyed God by erecting an idol of a golden calf in the Sinai desert, which they danced around in an orgiastic feast. According to the Bible this happened after the long absence of their leader Moses, who was speaking with God on Mount Sinai. When, after 40 days and nights, he returned with the stone tablets of the law, he found his people dancing around the calf in a frenzy (Exodus 32).

The sinful behaviour of the festive Israelites, depicted in the foreground of the three panels, is the main subject of the triptych (Exodus 32:6). As Van Mander put it in his Schilder-Boeck of 1604: ‘At this banquet, the sensual appearance of the people and the impure desires revealed in their eyes can be seen depicted in a lively manner’.¹²¹²Van Mander 1604, fol. 213v. Moses is seen way off in the background of the centre panel, kneeling on a rocky outcrop (Exodus 24:15), and again further down the mountain with his brother Aaron, at the moment when he throws down the stone tablets on seeing the feasting Israelites (Exodus 32:19). A woman with a child is offering a man a piece of fruit in the centre foreground in a reference to the Fall of Man, underlining the idea that surrendering to sensual pleasures is contrary to God’s commandment.¹³¹³Smith 1992b. The colourful clothing, headdresses and turbans recall the Orient, and at the same time seem to be a reference to vanity (luxuria). It can be assumed that the triptych was a warning against the first commandment, ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’, and an exhortation to live according to those commandments. This moral provided an excuse for the evident pleasure with which Lucas van Leyden painted this biblical story, the anecdotal nature of which engages the viewer. Some scholars have rather speculatively suggested that this triptych and other later works by Lucas are warnings against the unorthodox ideas of the reformers.¹⁴¹⁴Wurfbain 1971; Silver 1973; Smith 1992a, pp. 68-85.

The depiction of isolated Old Testament subjects was a new phenomenon in early 16th-century painting, and the motif of the dance around the golden calf is rarely found in Dutch art. Old Testament stories had, however, been depicted as moral examples of the ten commandments in book illustrations, with the adoration of the golden calf being the traditional exemplum of the transgression of the first commandment. It was in that sense that the dance around the calf with Moses receiving the tablets of the law was depicted in a woodcut by Lucas Cranach in Luther’s Deutsche Catechismus of 1529. The subject was presented on a monumental scale in a painting of around 1530 on a vault in the church of Warmenhuizen, where it and three other Old Testament scenes were combined with a Last Judgement, probably designed by Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (fig. b).¹⁵¹⁵Hoogewerff II, 1937, pp. 541-49; Meuwissen 2014, p. 142. That ceiling painting shows Moses receiving the tablets of the law from God and then breaking them into pieces when he sees the dance around the calf, but as with Lucas van Leyden the emphasis is on the dancing and feasting of children and the sumptuously dressed figures.

This remarkably well-preserved triptych shows Lucas van Leyden at his best as a painter. Stylistically it is in keeping with his late engravings of 1529/30, which suggests that it should be dated around 1530, and that is confirmed by the dendrochronology. There is also a strong stylistic similarity to the tempera painting dated 1527, Moses Striking Water from the Rock,¹⁶¹⁶Boston, Museum of Fine Arts; illustrated in ENP X, 1973, no. 116, pl. 93; exh. cat. Leiden 2011, p. 58. and to The Healing of the Blind Man of Jericho, which is dated 1531.¹⁷¹⁷St Petersburg, Hermitage; illustrated in ENP X, 1973, no. 111, pls. 84-85; exh. cat. Leiden 2011, pp. 36-37. The sketchy underdrawing of the latter also fits in well with that of the Amsterdam triptych. In that underdrawing, which appears to have been executed in a dry medium, contours were used for the foreground figures, with hatching for the shadows (fig. c).

One notable feature of the underdrawing is the use of one or more letters, which were probably notations for the colours to be used in the painting or underpaint. There are no fewer than 30 of them at 20 different places. With a few exceptions, these notations for red (‘zo’, ‘sino’), green (‘grun’), blue (‘b’), white (‘v’), yellow (‘m’) and purple (‘p’) were followed in the paint.¹⁸¹⁸These colour notations were not properly deciphered in Filedt Kok 1978a, pp. 110-13. See Van Asperen de Boer ‘et al.’ 1986, pp. 105, 116, note 107; Filedt Kok 2008a, pp. 43-46.

The background figures were painted extremely cursorily with a limited palette, and are only indicated in the underdrawing with a few contour lines (fig. d). The foreground figures are far more worked up, with calligraphic detailing. A fine brush was used in the faces and clothing to add extremely lively details, and the heightenings were built up in the paint in a draughtsman-like way. The palette is close to Cornelis Engebrechtsz’s, but is brighter and more transparent. The landscape has a convincing spatial structure, with dark green trees in the middleground giving way to light green and blue for the distant mountains.¹⁹¹⁹Filedt Kok 1978a, pp. 101-14.

The non-liturgical subject matter and the simple decoration of the outer wings with red and green imitation marble, indicate that it was intended for domestic use (fig. e). Nothing is known about the person who commissioned it, but Van Mander states that in 1604 it was in a house in Kalverstraat in Amsterdam. It may have been at number 45 with Aegje van Swieten, a member of the Van Swieten family which had commissioned the Triptych with the Last Judgement from Lucas in 1526-27.²⁰²⁰I am grateful to S.A.C. Dudok van Heel for pointing out that Aegje van Swieten (1565-1627) married Olphus den Otter (1561-1615) in 1599 and lived at No. 45 Kalverstraat. This was formerly the house of Sybrant Occo. Around 1630 it left the house in Kalverstraat and came into the possession of the Amsterdam collector Jaspar Loskert (?-1658), who probably had the ebony frame made for it, a so-called kas (fig. f).²¹²¹See Filedt Kok 2008a, pp. 55-56; the frame is made of oak covered with black ebony and with a decoration of carved ebony. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring of the oak wood used for the frame was formed in 1591, so the wood could have been ready for use by 1602, but a date in or after 1608 is more likely. The wood of the frame was analysed by Peter Klein; report, 28 April 1998, RMA. Six of Loskert’s paintings, including the famous Darmstadt Madonna by Hans Holbein, stayed together and passed by descent, first to Jacob and Dirck Wuytiers, and then to Jacob Cromhout, who married a daughter of Wuytiers. His collection was auctioned after his death in 1709, and it was not until 1952 that the triptych, which had been presumed lost, was discovered in Paris and was bought by the Rijksmuseum.²²²²See Provenance, and Filedt Kok 2008a, pp. 51-56. It was then removed from its 17th-century frame and given a simpler, modern one, but it was returned to its old ebony frame in 2008.

(J.P. Filedt Kok)

Van Mander 1604, fol. 213v; Beets 1952b; Van Schendel 1953; Amsterdam 1958, p. 111, no. 137; Reznicek-Buriks 1965, p. 244; Wurfbain 1971; ENP X, 1973, p. 88, no. add. 179, p. 96; Silver 1973, pp. 407-09; Filedt Kok 1978a, pp. 101-14; Vos 1978a, pp. 122-25; Vos 1978b, p. 499; Gibson 1980, p. 108; Filedt Kok in Amsterdam 1986a, pp. 149-51, no. 37; Van Asperen de Boer et al. 1986, pp. 105, 116, note 107; Gibson 1986, pp. 44-46; Smith 1992a, pp. 39-42, 106-09, 305-06, no. 11; Smith 1992b; Miedema III, 1996, p. 22; Filedt Kok in Van Os et al. 2000, pp. 134-45; Filedt Kok 2008a; Filedt Kok in Rotterdam 2008a, pp. 247-50, no. 43

1956, pp. 117-18, no. 1452 A2; 1960, p. 175, no. 1452 A2; 1976, p. 345, no. A 3841

J.P. Filedt Kok, 2008, 'Lucas van Leyden, Triptych with the Dance around the Golden Calf, Leiden, c. 1530', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8891