Carved in relief and furnished with ebonized line engravings.

…; transferred from the Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden, The Hague to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, 1875; transferred to the museum, 1885

Object number: BK-NM-617

Starting at the end of the sixteenth century, the first large exotic shell collections were being assembled in the Northern Netherlands. These natural curiosities could be imported from overseas thanks to the Dutch colonies and trade relations. As a result, cabinets containing these objects were becoming increasingly larger in scale, with the absolute high point occurring in the eighteenth century.¹¹For shell cabinets in the Northern Netherlands, see E. Bergvelt and R. Kistemaker (eds.), De wereld binnen handbereik: Nederlandse kunst- en rariteitenverzamelingen, 1585-1735), exh. cat. Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum) 1992, pp. 194-202. Especially the Nautilus shell was often furnished with an engraved decoration by skilled hands or encased in a precious metal frame, thus making it a highly suitable object for display in a Kunst- und Wunderkabinett. By contrast, Bellekin’s decorated shells were in all probability intended to be shown as individual items in a collector’s cabinets. The silver frames in which these shells are sometimes encased – often utilitarian objects such as snuff boxes (cf. BK-NM-13008) – are therefore always of later date.²²W.H. van Seters, ‘Oud-Nederlandse parelmoerkunst: het werk van leden der familie Belquin, parelmoergraveurs en schilders in de 17de eeuw’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 9 (1958), pp. 173-237, esp. p. 228. Cf. the silver box from 1741 in the collection of the Amsterdam Museum, in which a pair of Bellekin pearly oyster shells have been mounted, H. Vreeken, A. den Dekker et al., Goud en zilver met Amsterdamse keuren: De verzameling van het Amsterdams Historisch Museum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2003, no. 62.

The shell of the Great Pearl Oyster (Pteria maxima Jameson) was perfectly suited for such purposes, thanks to its ample surface and the substantial thickness of the layer of mother of pearl. Moreover, both halves of the shell can be engraved. Occasionally, as with the present reliefs, the two halves form an ensemble. In most cases, the shell’s concave exterior was used, requiring first that the outer shell layer be removed to expose the mother of pearl. Georg Rumphius (1627-1702), a natural historian working for the East India Company on the Moluccan island Ambon, explains this process in his publication on shells, in which he likewise addresses other techniques of mother-of-pearl working.³³Georg Rumphius, D’Amboinsche Rariteitkamer, Amsterdam 1705, p. 61.

The Bel(le)quin family of mother-of-pearl engravers originated from Metz and settled in the Northern Netherlands at the onset of the seventeenth century.⁴⁴Biographical data was primarily obtained from W.H. van Seters, ‘Oud-Nederlandse parelmoerkunst: het werk van leden der familie Belquin, parelmoergraveurs en schilders in de 17de eeuw’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 9 (1958), pp. 173-237, esp. pp. 191-237. This family was specialized in the artistic working of mother of pearl with ebonized line engravings (cf. NG-KOG-1655). Its youngest and most important member was the Amsterdam mother-of-pearl engraver Cornelis Bellekin (active c. 1650-1700), who often combined the techniques of etching and engraving with sculptural relief carvings. In addition to the customary mother-of-pearl shells, great green turban and great top shells, he was one of the few artists to successfully apply these techniques in the Nautilus shell’s extremely thin layer of mother of pearl (cf. BK-1957-18 and -19).⁵⁵The mother of pearl layer of the great green turban and great top shells is thicker and therefore less tricky to carve and engrave. These shells were more customary. He also succeeded in decorating a number of ostrich eggs with relief carving and engravings.⁶⁶E. Bergvelt and R. Kistemaker (eds.), De wereld binnen handbereik: Nederlandse kunst- en rariteitenverzamelingen, 1585-1735), exh. cat. Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum) 1992, no. 93. Bellekin’s innovative spirit is further exemplified by his invention of a newly devised tool for drilling diamonds, pearls and agate, which he advertised on 2 February 1696 in the Donderdagse Courant, a local Amsterdam newspaper.

In his day, Cornelis Bellekin was the leading mother-of-pearl engraver in the Dutch Republic. This was after a failed attempt to garner success as a painter in Middelburg in 1662-63. His peasant tableaux painted in the spirit of Teniers and Van Ostade are subjects also found on his earliest shells. The two pieces discussed here, bearing depictions of scene from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, are of later date and exemplary of the mythological genre in which he was most proficient.

Bellekin’s mother-of-pearl carvings were greatly admired in the Northern Netherlands, finding their way into the most prominent collections. The art cabinet of the Amsterdam merchant’s widow Petronella Oortmans-de la Court (1624-1707) contained a drawer filled with twenty different shells, ‘all carved most masterfully by the famous Bellekin’.⁷⁷alle op het alderkonstigste door den beroemden Bellekin gesneeden; Sale collection Petronella Oortmans-De la Court, Amsterdam (Raket and Zomer), 20-21 October 1707, p. 9, drawer 30. See also p. 19: _De Vlugt van Egipten van Parlemoer, konstig uyt- en inwendig gesneden, door Bellekin’ and the following lot: Een weerga, verbeeldende de Geboorte Christi, van dito. His work was also amply represented in the renowned cabinet of natural curiosities of the Amsterdam apothecary Albertus Seba (1655-1736) and the resplendent cabinet of the amateur (garden) designer and collector Simon Schijnvoet (1652-1727).⁸⁸Sale Simon Schijnvoet, Amsterdam (Haring and Posthumus), 26 August 1744, p. 1. Sale Albertus Seba, Amsterdam (Sluyter et al.), 1752, drawers 97 and 37, drawer 103. Since 2001, one shell originating from this collection – bearing the depiction of a forest god playing a pan flute, a nymph with tambourine and three dancing children’s figures in a landscape – has been preserved in the Amsterdam Museum, inv. no. KA 20835.

Although unsigned, there is no doubt concerning the attribution of these shells to Cornelis Bellekin. The combination of relief-carving and engraving is present, so typical of his work, but also his characteristic free-standing plants in the foreground of the scenes. Bellekin clearly had some difficulty with rendering human corporeal forms. This is nevertheless a constant in his oeuvre. As far as can be ascertained, the scene with Glaucus and Scylla (shown here) is a personal invention. The scene with Perseus en Andromeda (BK-NM-616), by contrast, he adopted from an engraving by Jan Saenredam after Hendrick Goltzius from 1601 (RP-P-OB-10.601).⁹⁹Cf. also Albert Vinckenbrinck’s version of this scene executed in boxwood, sale London (Bonhams), 22 May 1996, no. 85.

Since 1972, the Amsterdam Museum also possesses a pair of unsigned Bellekin pearl oyster shells with the same combination of scenes, albeit in somewhat modified compositions. Here the shells have been reworked as the lid and bottom of a silver, shell-shaped box (figs. a and b).¹⁰¹⁰H. Vreeken, A. den Dekker et al., Goud en zilver met Amsterdamse keuren: De verzameling van het Amsterdams Historisch Museum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2003, no. 62. The lid of a silver snuff box in the former collection of Jonkheer L.Ch. van Loon in Amsterdam also has a comparable scene of Andromeda, this time furnished with the monogram ‘C.B.f.’, a signature commonly used by Cornelis Bellekin.¹¹¹¹W.H. van Seters, ‘Oud-Nederlandse parelmoerkunst: het werk van leden der familie Belquin, parelmoergraveurs en schilders in de 17de eeuw’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 9 (1958), pp. 173-237, esp. p. 221. A fourth pearl oyster shell with the same scene, likewise with a different composition, is held in the collection of the Württembergisches Landesgewerbemuseum in Stuttgart.¹²¹²G.E. Pazaurek, Perlmutter, Berlin 1937, plate XLIX, 1. Nevertheless, the divergent technique and the monogram ‘C.B.’ engraved on this shell – unusual for Bellekin – suggest that this piece is a copy.¹³¹³W.H. van Seters, ‘Oud-Nederlandse parelmoerkunst: het werk van leden der familie Belquin, parelmoergraveurs en schilders in de 17de eeuw’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 9 (1958), pp. 173-237, esp. p. 221.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 341a, with earlier literature

B. van der Mark, 2025, 'attributed to Cornelis Bellekin, Pearl Oyster Shell with Glaucus and Scylla, Amsterdam, c. 1670 - c. 1700', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035787