Carved in relief.

In a 17th-century, possibly original accompanying frame, carved in pinewood with ebony veneer and ripple moulding in stained pearwood.

…; from the dealer J. Denijs, Amsterdam, fl. 275, to the museum, 1952

Object number: BK-16545

This marble relief depicts Aeneas’s flight from the burning city of Troy, as described by Virgil in his epic poem The Aeneid (2:671-729). The Trojan hero carries his elderly father, Anchises, on his back, as he is unable to proceed on his own. Walking before them on the left is Aeneas’s young son, Ascanius (also known as Julus), who carries a small chest (containing the treasures of Troy?) marked with the letters ‘AVF’. Upon fleeing Troy and after numerous peregrinations, Aeneas travels to the region of Latium, where his descendants will eventually found the city of Rome. The depicted scene quite faithfully follows an engraving by Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio (c. 1500-1565) (RP-P-H-H-98), a work in its turn based on a detail from the famous fresco of The Fire in the Borgo in the Vatican, designed by Raphael, which dates from 1514-17.¹¹A fragmentary statuette of Aeneas and Anchises in the collection (BK-14217) is based on the same engraving. This fresco also loosely inspired Bernini’s statue of Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius (c. 1618-19) in the Galleria Borghese.²²Rome, Galleria Borghese, inv. no. CLXXXII).

Despite the presence of the monogram, a convincing identification of the relief’s maker remains elusive. Past authors have suggested that the letters ‘AVF’ might stand for Albert Vinckenbrinck Fecit. This is very unlikely, however, as this Amsterdam woodcarver monogrammed his sculptures with ‘ALVB’ or ‘AVB’ and is not known to have worked in stone.³³J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, p. 193. All attributions of stone sculptures to Vinckenbrinck have proved unfounded, see G. Galland, Geschichte der holländischen Baukunst und Bildnerei im Zeitalter der Renaissance, der nationalen Blüte und des Klassicismus, Frankfurt am Main 1890, pp. 330 and 340; E. Neurdenburg, De zeventiende eeuwsche beeldhouwkunst in de noordelijke Nederlanden: Hendrick de Keyser, Artus Quellinus, Rombout Verhulst en tijdgenooten, Amsterdam 1948, p. 124; J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 254. He also preferred biblical to mythological scenes. Finally, the high quality of the present sculpture contradicts rather than affirms an attribution to the sculptor’s name: Vinckenbrinck had difficulty in attaining the proper physical proportions, even when he had access to a graphic model.

The relief’s maker must instead likely be sought among the assistants or apprentices of the Antwerp sculptor Artus Quellinus I (1609-1668), who worked together with a large team on the sculptural decoration of the new Amsterdam Town Hall (now Royal Palace) on Dam Square in the period 1650-1665. In terms of the shallow relief and the graphic quality of the finishing, parallels to the present work can be discerned on the marble mantelpiece frieze with the Triumphal Procession of Fabius Maximus in the Burgomaster’s Chamber in this monumental building.⁴⁴K. Fremantle, The Baroque Town Hall of Amsterdam, Utrecht 1959, figs. 69-72. Vreeken noted stylistic similarities between the present work and a marble relief dated 1663 entitled Death (also known as the Plague Sufferer), which he attributed to Albert Vinckenbrinck.⁵⁵Amsterdam Museum, inv. no. BB 192, see M. Jonker et al., In beeld gebracht: Beeldhouwkunst uit de collectie van het Amsterdams Historisch Museum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1995, no. 143. In actuality, this relief was made by Artus Quellinus’s workshop.⁶⁶B. van der Mark, ‘Artus Quellinus: The Light of Sculpture in Our Century’, in B. van der Mark (ed.), Artus Quellinus: Sculptor of Amsterdam, pp. 14-39, esp. note 63 and fig. 21 on p. 30. The figure of Death featured on this relief is identical to the figure on the right side of the marble portal to the ducal burial chamber (Fürstengruft) in Schleswig Cathedral, which his workshop executed in 1661-63.⁷⁷See B. van der Mark, ‘Artus Quellinus: The Light of Sculpture in Our Century’, in B. van der Mark (ed.), Artus Quellinus: Sculptor of Amsterdam, pp. 14-39, esp. fig. 15, or see Bildindex der Kunst und Architectur, image no. fm510071. For this commission, see H. Schmidt, Das Portal der herzoglichen Gruft im Dom zu Schleswig: Ein Werk des Artus Quellinus’, Oud Holland 32 (1914), pp. 225-32.

One tenable alternative for the monogrammist AVF is Albert Vinckenbrinck’s son, Abraham (1639-1686), who was also a sculptor.⁸⁸As far as can be ascertained, no other known candidates are listed in Amsterdam archival records with the monogram AV or AVF to whom the relief might be attributed, see M. van den Bichelaer, De Amsterdamse beeldenindustrie in de Gouden Eeuw; Onderzoek naar de beeldhouwerspopulatie in Amsterdam tussen 1600 en 1700 op basis van de ondertrouwregisters, 2013 (unpublished thesis, University of Amsterdam). From about 1655 on, Abraham Vinckenbrinck would have been old enough to work as one of Quellinus’s apprentices on the city hall and possibly even on the mantelpiece frieze in the burgomaster’s chamber.⁹⁹Galland attributed the mantelpiece frieze to Abraham’s father, Albert Vinckenbrinck, a surmise that, as far as can be determined, has garnered no support elsewhere. G. Galland, Geschichte der holländischen Baukunst und Bildnerei im Zeitalter der Renaissance, der nationalen Blüte und des Klassicismus, Frankfurt am Main 1890, p. 340. Unfortunately, the absence of other documented works attributed to this sculptor precludes a further evaluation of this theory. Halsema-Kubes’s previous attribution of the boxwood-carved Rat Poison Pedlar (BK-NM-2926), linked to Abraham partly on the basis of the monogram ‘AVS’, has since been forfeited, as the sculptor Ambrosius van Swol has emerged as a better candidate.¹⁰¹⁰M.J. Bok, ‘De Utrechtse verwanten van de beeldsnijder Albert Janszn Vinckenbrinck’, Amstelodamum 83 (1996), pp. 167-72, esp. p. 170.

Aeneas is in many ways an exemplar of the Roman value of pietas: one’s belief in the gods, loyalty to one’s country and respect for one’s parents and ancestors. In the literature and art of the seventeenth century, the symbolism of Aeneas was both applied to and used by religious asylum-seekers from the Southern Netherlands. In his tragedy entitled Hierusalem Verwoest (Jerusalem Destroyed) from 1620, Joost van den Vondel literally compares them to the Trojans, who were forced to flee their country led by Aeneas.¹¹¹¹J.F.M. Sterck et al., De werken van Vondel: tweede deel 1620-1627, Amsterdam 1929, pp. 78-79. Jacoba Lampsins, the granddaughter of a fleeing Calvinist who identified her own fate and that of her two sons with the story of Aeneas, requested that Ferdinand Bol incorporate two scenes from the hero’s life in the mural paintings adorning the salon in her house at 6 Nieuwegracht in Utrecht (SK-A-1576 and SK-A-614).¹²¹²M. van Eikema Hommes, Art and Allegiance in the Dutch Golden Age: The Ambitions of a Wealthy Widow in a Painted Chamber by Ferdinand Bol, Amsterdam 2012, pp. 149-154.

Although by no means inconceivable, there is no tangible indication that the present marble relief was also meant to convey a deeper, underlying symbolism. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the Aeneid had also quite simply garnered a broader and renewed interest in the Northern Netherlands, sparked in 1646 by Vondel’s first complete Dutch translation of the renowned epos, followed by his second translation in verse form in 1660, and translations by Jacob Westerbaen and Dirck Doncker, published in 1661/62 and 1663 respectively.¹³¹³E.J. Sluijter, ‘Onderwerpen uit de Aeneis in de Noord-Nederlandse schilderkunst van de zeventiende en de eerste helft achttiende eeuw’, Hermeneus: Tijdschrift voor antieke cultuur 54 (1982), pp. 314-28, esp. p. 320. During the second half of the seventeenth century, the same interest ultimately led to the theme’s growing popularity in the visual arts and theatrical plays. Nevertheless, the motif of Aeneas carrying his father on his back is seldom encountered in Dutch sculpture from this period. Besides the present relief, the scene is also the subject of a marble sculpture carved in the round, today preserved at the Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp and (erroneously) attributed to Artus Quellinus I.¹⁴¹⁴Antwerp, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. no. 5126, see KIK-IRPA, object no. 103895.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 253, with earlier literature; M. Jonker et al., In beeld gebracht: Beeldhouwkunst uit de collectie van het Amsterdams Historisch Museum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1995, p. 211

B. van der Mark, 2025, 'possibly Abraham Vinckenbrinck, Aeneas Carrying his Father Anchises from Burning Troy, Amsterdam, c. 1660', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20017575