The figures have been carved and the landscape engraved on the surface. The relief was probably only converted into the lid of a snuff-box at a later stage.

The top of one of the trees has a crack in it, a small piece of foliage is missing.

…; acquired in London by Erica Joy Bieruma Oosting-Nijbakker (1921-1968), Hilversum, date unknown; her parents Mr and Mrs Nijbakker-Morra, 1968; by whom donated to the museum in the memory of their daughter Erica Joy Bieruma Oosting-Nijbakker, 1970

Object number: BK-1970-115

Credit line: Gift of Mr and Mrs Nijbakker-Morra, Hilversum, in memory of their daughter Erica Joy Bieruma Oosting-Nijbakker

The lid of this silver snuff-box is formed by a mother-of-pearl plaquette dated 1732 and signed by Jan Bernard Barckhuysen (c. 1684-1760) depicting Diana Discovering the Pregnancy of Callisto. It is the earliest known dated mother-of-pearl carving by Barckhuysen and is, moreover, one of his most successful examples. From 1717 to 1745 Barckhuysen was a seal engraver at the Guelders Mint in Harderwijk.¹¹For Barckhuysen, see W.H. van Seters, ‘Parelmoerkunstenaars in de 18de eeuw: Het werk van J.B. Barckhuysen, J.C. Konsé en C. la Motte’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 17 (1966), pp. 247-63, esp. pp. 248-59 and J. Verbeek, ‘J.B. Barckhuysen (ca. 1684-1760): Parelmoersnijder’, Antiek 7 (1972), pp. 277- 86. He made his countless works in mother-of-pearl in his spare time. Despite the somewhat varying quality of his oeuvre, together with Johannes Christiaan Konsé (1700-1758) and Cornelis la Motte (1749-1804), Barckhuysen is considered to be one of the foremost mother-of-pearl carvers working in the Netherlands in the eighteenth century.

The represented scene on the relief is derived from Ovid (Met. II:416-507). It shows the dramatic moment when Diana’s companions unveil the pregnant body of her nymph Callisto, and, since she is no longer a virgin, the goddess of the hunt expels her. Yet Jupiter was the guilty party. He had disguised himself as Diana and raped Callisto while she was out hunting. Barckhuysen hardly ever made his own designs, if at all, but generally based them on existing prints. In this case it was a print by Jan Saenredam (RP-P-OB-10.564) made in 1599 after a drawing by Goltzius.

For this representation, Barckhuysen combined two techniques to improve the spatial depth: the figures, hunting dogs, arrows and quivers have been carved in relief, the landscape with the trees and the stream have been applied using line engraving. Barckhuysen is thought to have sold his plaquettes unmounted.²²W.H. van Seters, ‘Parelmoerkunstenaars in de 18de eeuw: Het werk van J.B. Barckhuysen, J.C. Konsé en C. la Motte’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 17 (1966), pp. 247-63, esp. p. 256. Still, they were probably intended to decorate a silver object from the start since he gave them a suitable geometrical shape which was easy to mount.³³As opposed to most of the plaquettes by his 17th-century colleague Cornelis Bellekin which still have the original shell-shape, cf. BK-NM-616, for instance. It is not known when this oval piece was made into a lid of a silver snuff-box, or by whom. In this case there is no hallmark.⁴⁴The box can be of a substantial later date, as is the case with a plaquette featuring Flora and Zephyr which was mounted to a silver box by the Amsterdam silversmith Cornelis Rudolf Stolting in 1786, long after Barckhuysen had died, see sale Amsterdam (Sotheby’s), 27 June 2007, no. 80. In 1757 Barckhuysen made a lid for a tobacco-box in mother-of-pearl, decorated with a hunting scene with Diana reminiscent of the present carving.⁵⁵In 2016 with the dealer Peter van Os Antiques & Fine Art, Huissen.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025

B. van der Mark, 2025, 'Ian Bernhard Barckhuysen, Diana Discovering the Pregnancy of Callisto, Lid of a Snuff-Box, 1732', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/2009564