Carved in the round.

Minor damage to the hat. The bottom segment of the left crutch has been replaced. The plinth has split, with a section missing in back. A second plinth has been glued to the underside for additional reinforcement.

…; from the dealer Brimo de Laroussilhe, Paris, Ffrcs 23,500 (fl. 7,335), to the museum, 1955

Object number: BK-1955-19

The composition of this boxwood statuette of a beggar is based on an etching by Jacques Callot (1592-1635) in his highly popular series from 1622-23, entitled Les Gueux – more accurately, a mirror-image version by an anonymous copyist was used (RP-P-1903-A-23877). At the time of its acquisition, Leeuwenberg cited stylistic grounds to attribute the statuette to the Amsterdam woodcarver Albert Vinckenbrinck (1605-1664).¹¹Verslagen der Rijksverzamelingen van geschiedenis en kunst 1955, p. 15. Support for this attribution came from two old sales catalogues listing boxwood reliefs and statuettes purportedly carved by the sculptor after etchings by Callot.²²Sale collection Pieter Locquet (Amsterdam), 22 September 1783, nos. 102, 103; sale collection J.A. Brentano (Amsterdam), 3 April 1822, no. 32. See D. Franken, ‘Albert Jansz Vinckenbrinck’, Oud Holland 5 (1887), pp. 73-92, esp. p. 90, nos. 26-28. Halsema-Kubes wrongly states that prints by Jacques Callot were listed in Vinckenbrinck’s estate inventory, see W. Halsema-Kubes, ‘Kleinplastiek van Albert Jansz. Vinckenbrinck’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 39 (1991), pp. 414-25, esp. p. 415. In 1991, Halsema-Kubes nevertheless repudiated this attribution as unfounded.³³W. Halsema-Kubes, ‘Kleinplastiek van Albert Jansz. Vinckenbrinck’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 39 (1991), pp. 414-25, esp. p. 415. Vinckenbrinck’s figures display recognizable, somewhat unwieldy corporeal types, very unlike the well-proportioned, far more slickly executed beggar. The figure also bears no signature, while as far as can be ascertained Vinckenbrinck applied his monogram or name to all of his carvings without exception (cf. BK-15435; BK-KOG-2486; BK-2011-47).

Callot’s genre figures were much loved well into the nineteenth century in France, Germany and the Netherlands, where they formed a popular source of inspiration for engravers, painters and sculptors. Ivory-carved variants of the present Beggar with Crutches and a Wooden Leg also exist, likely made in the first quarter of the eighteenth century in Dresden.⁴⁴Cf. Catalogus van de 26e Oude Kunst- en Antiekbeurs der Vereniging van Handelaren in Oude Kunst in Nederland, Delft 1974, p. 169 (ill.); A. Julius, Jean Cavalier och några andra elfenbenssnidare: Studier i elfenbensplastik i Sverige, Uppsala, 1926, plate 15 (ill. top left); U. Arnold, W. Schmidt et al., Barock in Dresden: Kunst und Kunstsammlungen unter der Regierung des Kurfürsten Friedrich August I. von Sachsen und Könings August II. von Polen gennant August der Starke 1694-1733 und des Kurfürsten Friedrich August II. von Sachen und Könings August III. von Polen 1733-1763, exh. cat. Essen (Villa Hügel) 1986, no. 572; J. Kappel, Bauern, Händler, Komödianten und andere Leute: Die Sammlung barocker Elfenbeinfigürchen im Grünen Gewölbe zu Dresden, exh. cat. Bielefeld (Museum Huelsmann) 2002, nos. 31 and 33; sale Paris (Christie’s), 23 April 2013, no. 196. Another ivory inspired by a print from Le Gueux, representing a beggar with his arm in a sling, is preserved at the Musée des Beaux Arts in Lyon, and is localized in the ivory-carving centre of Dieppe and dated to the last quarter of the eighteenth century.⁵⁵Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts, inv. no. L 377. As far as can be ascertained, the Amsterdam statuette is the only boxwood version. The Rijksmuseum acquired the piece from a Paris dealer in 1955. This provenance, in combination with the style and the material used, indicates a date of origin in the second half of the seventeenth century and a manufacture in France or the Southern Netherlands, where a predilection for such meticulously carved cabinet sculptures in boxwood is known to have existed. Contrary to Leeuwenberg’s surmise,⁶⁶Verslagen der Rijksverzamelingen van geschiedenis en kunst 1955, p. 15 and J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, p. 194. there is no reason to believe that the mirror-image copy of Callot’s etching from which the sculptor worked was printed in the Northern Netherlands.⁷⁷With thanks to Marijn Schapelhouman.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 252, with earlier literature; W. Halsema-Kubes, ‘Kleinplastiek van Albert Jansz. Vinckenbrinck’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 39 (1991), pp. 414-25, esp. pp. 414-15

B. van der Mark, 2025, 'anonymous or , Beggar with Crutches and a Wooden Leg, Southern Netherlands or France, c. 1625 - c. 1700', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200115904