Support The panel consists of three horizontally grained oak planks (approx. 29.3, 29 and 32.7 cm), approx. 0.5-1.5 cm thick. The reverse was thinned in four vertical bands to which L-shaped blocks were glued to hold crossbars (the latter now removed). There are remnants of a bevel at the bottom. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1607. The panel could have been ready for use by 1618, but a date in or after 1624 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The singe, thin, beige ground does not extend over the edges of the support. It contains some large white pigment particles with a small addition of minute earth pigment particles in a slightly translucent beige matrix.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared reflectography.
Paint layers The paint does not extend over the edges of the support. X-radiography, infrared reflectography (IRR) and macro X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (MA-XRF) revealed that the painting was conceived in three stages. With the naked eye, some of the subsequent changes are also faintly visible in the paint surface, especially in raking light. Initially the panel was turned 90º counterclockwise and depicted a knee-length portrait of a woman with a broad, white collar and lace headdress. Her right arm is akimbo and in her right hand she holds what appears to be a fan. From the MA-XRF lead map (Pb-L) it can be concluded that her left arm is extended downwards and she supports herself with her palm resting on an object. The MA-XRF copper map (Cu-K) reveals a very fine floral pattern in her dress and the outer (perhaps lace) edge of the fan. Considering the amount of detail visible in the X-rays, infrared images and MA-XRF maps, this portrait must have been completely finished before it was painted over. This was confirmed by cross-sections, which reveal not only a multi-layered paint build-up in the portrait of the woman, but also a varnish layer in between it and the book still life. The latter was executed wet in wet, in a rather broad and free manner with visible brushwork. The individual strokes often follow the forms of the objects, which contributes to the suggestion of volume. Details, such as the lines and dabs that indicate the separate pages of the books, show the use of a fairly unctuous paint, with some impasto along one edge of the brushstrokes. These sometimes skipped over the underlying layer, resulting in a lively textured surface. For the third stage, the ‘breakfast piece’ at the lower left, a different technique was used with smooth, dense, wet-in-wet paint application without discernible brushstrokes, and thick, impasted, almost sculpted paint for the highlights and reflections. The difference in execution and the fact that this part was added over the finished book composition, indicate that this phase was probably completed later.
Gwen Tauber, Ige Verslype, 2025

A. Wallert, ‘Drie halen, één betalen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 54 (2006), pp. 144-53

Fair. The thinning of the reverse has weakened the panel. Insect damage is apparent at the bottom, and in three places new pieces of wood were inserted. Extensive retouching is visible in ultraviolet light at the edges of the panel, along the joins, at the contours of the glass and bread, and in the pages of the book with the dark cover on the far right of the composition where the headdress of the portrait had become visible. The varnish has slightly yellowed.

...; the dealer Basil Wheeler, London;¹¹Note RMA....; the dealer Montpellier Galleries, London, as P. Potter, 28 April 1960;²²Note RMA....; the dealer Han Jüngeling, The Hague (on loan to the Dordrechts Museum), 1960-63;³³L.J. Bol, 5 Aanwinsten [van het] Dordrechts Museum: Bruiklenen en aankopen december 1960, Dordrecht 1960, p. 14; L.J. Bol, Nederlandse stillevens uit de 17de eeuw, exh. cat. Dordrecht (Dordrechts Museum) 1962, p. 14; note RMA. from whom, fl. 75,000, to the museum, as a gift from the Commissie voor Fotoverkoop, 1963

Object number: SK-A-4090

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Stichting tot Bevordering van de Belangen van het Rijksmuseum

The existence of this monumental still life with its larger-than-life-sized objects only became known in 1960, when it was exhibited in Dordrecht as the work of an anonymous Leiden artist.¹⁹¹⁹L.J. Bol, 5 Aanwinsten (van het) Dordrechts Museum: Bruiklenen en aankopen december 1960, Dordrecht 1960, pp. 5-8, 14-15, no. 1. By the time the Rijksmuseum purchased the panel in 1963 an X-radiograph had been made which revealed that the present composition had been executed over a fully finished portrait of a woman. Analysis of the X-radiography also demonstrated that the pewter jug, glass of wine and pewter plate with bread roll in the lower left corner had not been reserved but had been placed on top of the already completed still life with books.²⁰²⁰See also Technical notes. The museum considered the latter to be by Rembrandt, while the added elements of the ‘breakfast piece’ were ascribed to the Amsterdam painter Jan Jansz den Uyl.²¹²¹Haak in Verslagen der Rijksverzamelingen van geschiedenis en kunst 1963 (annual report of the Rijksmuseum), pp. 18, 21. See also B. Haak, Rembrandt: Zijn leven, zijn werk, zijn tijd, Amsterdam 1968, pp. 68-69. It is interesting to note in this context that Laurens J. Bol in 1960 had pointed out that similar pewter jugs occur in still lifes by Jan Jansz den Uyl and his brother-in-law Jan Jansz Treck, but dismissed them as candidates for the attribution of Still Life with Books; L.J. Bol, 5 Aanwinsten (van het) Dordrechts Museum: Bruiklenen en aankopen december 1960, Dordrecht 1960, p. 15. The attribution to Jan Lievens was first proposed in 1968 by Bauch, who pointed out in particular the similarities between the books and those in the artist’s series of the four Evangelists in Bamberg and the St Paul in Kingston.²²²²K. Bauch, ‘Zum Werk des Jan Lievens, II’, Pantheon 25 (1967), pp. 259-69, esp. pp. 261-62. The Four Evangelists (Historisches Museum Bamberg) and the St Paul (Agnes Etherington Art Centre) are illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, pp. 1868-72. Subsequently, most scholars have rightly concurred with Bauch’s findings.²³²³An exception was P.J.J. van Thiel et al., All the Paintings of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam: A Completely Illustrated Catalogue, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1976, p. 473, no. A 4090, where the painting was given to Rembrandt’s circle. That attribution was changed to Lievens in P.J.J. van Thiel et al., All the Paintings of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam: First Supplement 1976-1991, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1992, p. 63, no. A 4090.

Indeed, the closed book directly behind the bread roll is identical to the one in the Bamberg St Mark and the Kingston St Paul. More importantly, the execution of its limp yellowish-brown parchment cover is remarkably similar, if somewhat more refined in the Rijksmuseum Still Life, and the frothy impasto edges of the pages also have a parallel in the Bamberg and Kingston paintings. The subdued colouring and subtle chiaroscuro are also in keeping with Lievens’s approach in those works. As far as the added jug, glass, plate and roll are concerned, their rendering is too robust to be by Den Uyl, but it does have analogies in other pictures by Lievens.²⁴²⁴W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1812, no. 1300, lists other works by Lievens with wine glasses and pewter dishes with which the execution of the ‘breakfast piece’ within the present painting can be compared. Painted more smoothly and densely than the rest of the still life, they may have been conceived by Lievens himself somewhat later on, as his style became increasingly refined during his Leiden years. Although the ‘breakfast piece’ constitutes a more substantial change to the composition, it is consistent with Lievens’s habit during the Leiden period of significantly modifying his pictures while working on them. Examples include the Rijksmuseum Old Woman Reading of 1624-25, in which the figure’s left hand was apparently an afterthought, and Samson and Delilah of 1626-27, in which Delilah’s left arm is a later addition,²⁵²⁵See the entries on SK-A-4702 and SK-A-1627. and The Lute Player in Baltimore from around 1628, which underwent a complete colour transformation as well as alterations to the position of the lute.²⁶²⁶The Walters Art Museum; illustrated in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2008-09, p. 107. The changes are discussed in E.M. Gifford, ‘Lievens’ Technique: “Wonders in Smeared Paint, Varnishes, and Oils”’, in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2008-09, pp. 40-53, esp. p. 45. Because of the rather more detailed technique of the present painting it should be placed later than the Bamberg Evangelists and the St Paul in Kingston, which were probably executed in 1626 or 1627. A broad dating between 1628 and 1632 would therefore seem to be warranted.²⁷²⁷B. Schnackenburg, Jan Lievens: Friend and Rival of the Young Rembrandt: With a Catalogue Raisonné of his Early Leiden Works 1623-1632, Petersberg 2016, p. 437, suggests a date of 1632.

While no signed still lifes by Lievens have come down to us, several are listed in seventeenth-century probate inventories.²⁸²⁸For examples see A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, I, The Hague 1915, p. 218; ibid., IV, 1917, p. 1305. Klessmann in R. Klessmann (ed.), Jan Lievens: Ein Maler im Schatten Rembrandts, exh. cat. Braunschweig (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum) 1979, p. 62, bases the attribution of Vanitas Still Life in Museum de Fundatie, Heino, to Lievens in part on the description of a painting in the 1642 inventory of Nicolaes Sohier’s estate. That work, however, may have had an oval format instead of the rectangular one of the picture now in Heino. See the transcription of Sohier’s inventory in the Montias Database of 17th Century Dutch Art Inventories, record no. 5342. It was, therefore, a genre in which he worked. The mention in a 1742 auction catalogue of ‘A piece depicting a table on which [there is] a globe with books and other embellishments by Jan Lievens, height five feet six inches, width four feet three inches’,²⁹²⁹Sale, Theodor Hartzoecker (1695-c. 1740, Utrecht) et al., The Hague (auction house not known), 1 May 1742, no. 127; G. Hoet, Catalogus of naamlyst van schilderyen, met derzelver pryzen zedert een langen reeks van jaaren zoo in Holland als op andere plaatzen in het openbaar verkogt: Benevens een verzameling van lysten van verscheyden nog in wezen zynde cabinetten, II, The Hague 1752, p. 54: ‘Een stuk verbeeldende een Tafel waarop een Globe met Boeken en ander Bywerk, door Jan Lievense hoog vyf voet zes duim breed vier voet drie duim.’ It measured roughly 157 x 120 centimetres and was therefore too large to be the present work. indicates that Lievens produced more than one book still life. Unfortunately, none of the descriptions of still-life paintings in seventeenth-century inventories are specific enough to identify them with the one in the Rijksmuseum. Wheelock’s suggestion that the ‘large breakfast piece by Master Jan Lievens’ listed in the 1640 inventory of the estate of the Leiden book dealer, city magistrate and historian Jan Jansz Orlers is identical with the Rijksmuseum panel is difficult to accept, as no mention is made of the prominently displayed books.³⁰³⁰Wheelock in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2008-09, p. 102: ‘een groot inbyten geschildert by Mr Jan Lievens soon’.

In addition to the books and the ‘breakfast piece’ at the lower left, the picture includes a lute case, a celestial and a terrestrial globe, as well as artist’s paraphernalia. On the shelf on the back wall paint brushes lie next to a bowl and a flask, possibly containing oil or varnish, and beneath the shelf a maulstick rests on two nails, from one of which a palette dangles. There have been various interpretations of the work. At first it was simply regarded as a vanitas illustrating the transience of human knowledge, music and the visual arts.³¹³¹See, for example, B. Haak, Rembrandt: Zijn leven, zijn werk, zijn tijd, Amsterdam 1968, p. 68. This reading was later challenged by Chong and Kloek, who pointed out the lack of such obvious vanitas symbols as skulls, extinguished candles or hourglasses.³²³²Chong and Kloek in A. Chong and W.T. Kloek (eds.), Still-Life Paintings from the Netherlands 1550-1720, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Cleveland (The Cleveland Museum of Art) 1999-2000, p. 147. For them, the books, lute case and globes allude to the reflective side of the visual arts, represented by the items in the still life associated with painting, which are placed as it were on the same footing as the other liberal arts.³³³³Chong and Kloek in A. Chong and W.T. Kloek (eds.), Still-Life Paintings from the Netherlands 1550-1720, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Cleveland (The Cleveland Museum of Art) 1999-2000, p. 147. Wheelock’s later view, which by no means contradicts theirs, is the first to attempt to explain the presence of the glass of wine and the bread roll. According to him they are Eucharistic symbols, and ‘by introducing them into a composition containing objects referring to art, music, and worldly knowledge, Lievens created an image that includes the spiritual and intellectual realms essential for nourishing both body and soul’.³⁴³⁴Wheelock in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2008-09, p. 102. In 2011, Van Thiel made short shrift of Wheelock’s interpretation by pointing out that Christ obviously proclaimed that his blood was represented by red, not white, wine.³⁵³⁵P.J.J. van Thiel, ‘An Interpretation of the Still Life with Books, Jug, Glass and Bread Roll, Attributed to Jan Lievens’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011), pp. 287-98, esp. p. 292. In Wheelock’s defence it should perhaps be noted that several scholars have interpreted glasses of white wine in breakfast pieces as Eucharistic symbols; see, for example, C. Klemm, ‘Weltdeutung: Allegorien und Symbole in Stilleben’, in U. Bernsmeier et al., Stilleben in Europa, exh. cat. Münster (Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte)/Baden-Baden (Staatliche Kunsthalle) 1979-80, pp. 140-218, esp. pp. 182-90; H.D. Gregory, ‘Een smakelijke maaltijd: Verhaal en betekenis in de stillevens van Pieter Claesz’, in P. Biesboer et al., Pieter Claesz: Meester van het stilleven in de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum)/Zurich (Kunsthaus)/Washington (National Gallery of Art) 2004-05, pp. 97-112, esp. pp. 107-08.

For Van Thiel the key to interpreting the still life was the lute case, the presence of which instead of or in combination with an actual lute is, as he noted, unique.³⁶³⁶P.J.J. van Thiel, ‘An Interpretation of the Still Life with Books, Jug, Glass and Bread Roll, Attributed to Jan Lievens’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011), pp. 287-98, esp. pp. 291-94. In an emblem with the motto ‘Degeneres’ (the Degenerates) in the Latin Emblemata published in 1564 (Dutch edition 1566) by the Hungarian humanist Joannes Sambucus, the lute case – the only time this humble object is given a starring role – indicates to the reader that it resembles a lute but is not one, for it cannot make a sound, and it compares itself to degenerate people who ‘boast of their noble origins but do not live up to them’.³⁷³⁷P.J.J. van Thiel, ‘An Interpretation of the Still Life with Books, Jug, Glass and Bread Roll, Attributed to Jan Lievens’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011), pp. 287-98, esp. p. 294. In Van Thiel’s view other objects in the composition also masquerade as something they are not. The brushes, palette and maulstick represent pictura, or painting, which ‘imitates and is not what she pretends to be’.³⁸³⁸P.J.J. van Thiel, ‘An Interpretation of the Still Life with Books, Jug, Glass and Bread Roll, Attributed to Jan Lievens’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011), pp. 287-98, esp. p. 294. The books too are impostors; most of them are ledger bindings characterized by limp covers instead of the text block and board bindings of ordinary books.³⁹³⁹For an exhaustive description of the books depicted here, see P.J.J. van Thiel, ‘An Interpretation of the Still Life with Books, Jug, Glass and Bread Roll, Attributed to Jan Lievens’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011), pp. 287-98, esp. pp. 287-90. They are not printed tomes containing scholarship, but are essentially loosely bound files holding practical information such as the handwritten records of a notary or the proceedings of a trial.⁴⁰⁴⁰P.J.J. van Thiel, ‘An Interpretation of the Still Life with Books, Jug, Glass and Bread Roll, Attributed to Jan Lievens’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011), pp. 287-98, esp. p. 293. The wine and bread roll may, according to Van Thiel, symbolize God’s blessings, forming an antithesis to the ‘corruption’ represented by the lute case, painter’s paraphernalia and books, because God’s blessings are bestowed on the righteous.⁴¹⁴¹P.J.J. van Thiel, ‘An Interpretation of the Still Life with Books, Jug, Glass and Bread Roll, Attributed to Jan Lievens’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011), pp. 287-98, esp. p. 294.

As intriguing as Van Thiel’s reading is, it fails to convince, and not in the first place because, as he himself admitted, it assumes that the still life was commissioned by an erudite person who would have been familiar with the emblem in Sambucus’s sixteenth-century Emblemata. While one can readily imagine that the painting could have been made at the request of a learned individual, perhaps someone associated with the university in Leiden, the fact that ledger bindings figure as books containing scholarship in other works by Lievens – and for instance Rembrandt – runs counter to Van Thiel’s argument that they can only be interpreted here as files containing notary records or other practical information. In Lievens’s pictures of the Evangelists Mark and Luke in Bamberg and his St Paul in Kingston such bindings clearly serve as biblical manuscripts. In Rembrandt’s 1627 St Paul in Prison in Stuttgart,⁴²⁴²Staatsgalerie; illustrated in J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, I, The Hague/Boston/London 1982, p. 144. the 1628 Old Men Disputing in Melbourne⁴³⁴³National Gallery of Victoria; illustrated in J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, I, The Hague/Boston/London 1982, pp. 160, 164 (detail). and the 1634 Scholar Seated at a Table with Books in Prague,⁴⁴⁴⁴National Gallery; illustrated in J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, II, The Hague/Boston/London 1986, pp. 511, 515 (detail). they apparently also contain scholarly texts, whether handwritten or printed. Moreover, the two smaller books in front of the globes do not fall into the category of ledger bindings.

It is perhaps because they were associated with scholarly writings that Lievens gave the ledger bindings such a prominent role here. Many of the numerous book still lifes produced in the Dutch Republic in the second half of the 1620s and early 1630s include clear allusions to vanitas, either in the form of such symbols as skulls and snuffed-out candles, or by way of the titles of the tomes depicted.⁴⁵⁴⁵See, for example, the many examples of (mostly Leiden) book still lifes illustrated in M.L. Wurfbain and I. Bergström, IJdelheid der ijdelheden: Hollandse Vanitas-voorstellingen uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 1970. I. Bergström, Dutch Still-Life Painting in the Seventeenth Century, London 1957, p. 163, and others have pointed out that some of the books included in these still lifes deal with transient themes. A number of the vanitas still lifes that prominently feature books also depict musical instruments, and occasionally palettes and other painter’s paraphernalia.⁴⁶⁴⁶An example of the latter is Jacob Westerbaen’s 1629 Vanitas (present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in M.L. Wurfbain and I. Bergström, IJdelheid der ijdelheden: Hollandse Vanitas-voorstellingen uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 1970, no. 35); see also Jan Davidsz de Heem’s Still Life with Books of c. 1628-29 (SK-A-2565). Although the Rijksmuseum work does not contain any explicit vanitas symbolism, the tattered condition of the aged books, the chipped stone ledge on which they lie and the dark and foreboding atmosphere do convey an undeniable sense of transience.⁴⁷⁴⁷See also R.B. Sonnema, The Early Dutch Vanitas Still-Life, diss., California State University, Fullerton 1980, pp. 57-58. If the message is that death spells the end of such worldly accomplishments as writing, learning, music and painting, perhaps the lute case was included, instead of a lute itself, in order literally to visualize that music has been silenced. The globes may also represent knowledge and learning, or their presence was meant to lend the vanitas theme a universal character.⁴⁸⁴⁸Globes are usually assigned the latter meaning in still-life paintings. They are also discussed in those terms in P.J.J. van Thiel, ‘An Interpretation of the Still Life with Books, Jug, Glass and Bread Roll, Attributed to Jan Lievens’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011), pp. 287-98, esp. p. 294. Finally, there is the question of the meaning of the wine and bread roll that were added to the composition as an afterthought, probably by Lievens himself. While the Eucharistic interpretation of these still-life elements proposed by Wheelock is not very convincing, Van Thiel’s suggestion that they symbolize God’s blessings is based on a rather obscure source, namely the record of an entertainment performed by a Haarlem chamber of rhetoric at a ceremonial entry in the second decade of the seventeenth century.⁴⁹⁴⁹P.J.J. van Thiel, ‘An Interpretation of the Still Life with Books, Jug, Glass and Bread Roll, Attributed to Jan Lievens’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011), pp. 287-98, esp. p. 298, note 33. Independent ‘breakfast pieces’ with glasses of wine and bread have been regarded in the literature as representations of the theme of temperantia, or moderation, one of the four cardinal virtues.⁵⁰⁵⁰See, for example, Segal’s discussion of Jan Davidsz de Heem’s 1628 Breakfast Piece (Gotha, Schlossmuseum) in S. Segal and L. Helmus, Jan Davidsz de Heem en zijn kring, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum)/Braunschweig (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum) 1991, p. 131 (ill.); and Meijer’s reflections on Pieter Claesz’s 1636 Breakfast Piece and Willem Claesz Heda’s 1634 Still Life with Oysters, a Rummer, a Lemon and a Silver Bowl in F.G. Meijer, Stillevens uit de Gouden Eeuw/Still Life Paintings from the Golden Age, coll. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boymans-van Beuningen) 1989, pp. 68, 80 (ill.). By observing moderation one can live a righteous life on earth and have a chance of resurrection after death. The message of Lievens’s painting may therefore be that eternal life is not achieved by man’s earthly accomplishments but rather by the practice of temperance in all things.

Jonathan Bikker, 2025

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

L.J. Bol, 5 Aanwinsten [van het] Dordrechts Museum: Bruiklenen en aankopen december 1960, Dordrecht 1960, pp. 5-8, 14-15, no. 1 (as Leiden School); L.J. Bol, Nederlandse stillevens uit de 17de eeuw, exh. cat. Dordrecht (Dordrechts Museum) 1962, p. 14 (as Leiden School); K.G. Boon, E.R. Meijer and T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer, ‘Schenkingen en aankopen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 11 (1963), pp. 63-65, esp. p. 63 (as Rembrandt and Jan Jansz den Uyl); Haak in Verslagen der Rijksverzamelingen van geschiedenis en kunst 1963 (annual report of the Rijksmuseum), pp. 18, 21 (as Rembrandt and Jan Jansz den Uyl); K. Bauch, ‘Zum Werk des Jan Lievens, II’, Pantheon 25 (1967), pp. 259-69, esp. pp. 261-62; B. Haak, Rembrandt: Zijn leven, zijn werk, zijn tijd, Amsterdam 1968, pp. 68-69 (as Rembrandt and Jan Jansz den Uyl); H. Schneider and R.E.O. Ekkart, Jan Lievens: Sein Leben und seine Werke, Amsterdam 1973, p. 354, no. S 380 (as possibly Lievens and Jan Jansz den Uyl); W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1812, no. 1300; A. Chong and W.T. Kloek (eds.), Still-Life Paintings from the Netherlands 1550-1720, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Cleveland (The Cleveland Museum of Art) 1999-2000, pp. 146-48, no. 18, with earlier literature; Wheelock in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2008-09, p. 102, no. 11; P.J.J. van Thiel, ‘An Interpretation of the Still Life with Books, Jug, Glass and Bread Roll, Attributed to Jan Lievens’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011), pp. 287-98; B. Schnackenburg, Jan Lievens: Friend and Rival of the Young Rembrandt: With a Catalogue Raisonné of his Early Leiden Works 1623-1632, Petersberg 2016, pp. 127, 130-33, 435, 437, no. 244

1976, p. 473, no. A 4090 (as circle of Rembrandt); 1992, p. 63, no. A 4090

Jonathan Bikker, 2025, 'Jan Lievens, Still Life with Books, c. 1628 - c. 1632', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200107940