The Idolatry of King Solomon (I Kings 11:4-8)

Support The support consists of two pieces of plain-weave canvas with a vertical seam at approx. 58 cm from the right edge, and has been starch-paste lined. The tacking edges have been preserved on the left and right, the ones at the top and bottom have been removed. The support was extended with the lining canvas by approx. 1.5 cm at both the top and bottom.
Preparatory layers The triple ground extends up to the tacking edges on the left and right, and up to the current edges of the support at the top and bottom. The first, brownish-red layer consists of fine red, brown, white and some coarser black pigment particles. The second, beige-grey ground contains coarse white and slightly smaller ochre-coloured and black pigment particles. The third, dark grey-brown layer is composed of black, white and a few coarse ochre-coloured pigment particles. Brushstrokes in the ground are visible throughout the paint surface.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the tacking edges on the left and right, and up to the current edges of the support at the top and bottom. The figures and their faces were laid out in translucent dark brown paint. This undermodelling has remained visible along some contours and in parts of the hair. The faces were built up wet in wet and from dark to light. The apparel, draperies and altar were constructed from a mid-tone with lighter and darker paint applied wet in wet. A red glaze was used in the carpet in the foreground, the mantle of the kneeling figure in the centre and the bodice of the woman behind him on the far right. Bright colours are limited mainly to the foreground, while the rest of the palette consists of subdued browns and greys. The paint surface is smooth, with dotted highlights indicating metal or metal thread, for example in the bowl and sword in the foreground and the clothing of the king and the kneeling woman beside him.
Anna Krekeler, 2023

Fair. The canvas has a restored tear of approx. 12 cm above the cow’s head on the left. The varnish is very thick, has areas of a white haze throughout and saturates poorly.

…; ? collection Geraerd Luycke;¹¹C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vrij schilder const, inhoudende den lof vande vermarste schilders, architecte, beldthowers ende plaetsnijders van deze eeuw, Antwerp 1662, p. 250; see also Entry.…;²²The painting was probably in England in the 19th century, given the embossed stamp of British picture liner Francis Leedham (1794-1870) on the stretcher. from the dealer Sulley & Co., London, fl. 3,000, to the museum, through the mediation of the Vereniging Rembrandt, 1905

ObjectNumber: SK-A-2220

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The Old Testament story of King Solomon’s idolatry, in which the aged monarch, once renowned for his wisdom, is persuaded by his foreign wives and concubines to worship heathen gods, was tackled by a number of artists from Rembrandt’s circle. Willem de Poorter’s painting from around 1636-40 in the Rijksmuseum may well be the earliest of those treatments.⁶⁶See SK-A-757. Another artist in Rembrandt’s circle who depicted the subject is Gerbrand van den Eeckhout; see W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, Landau/Pfalz 1984, p. 730, no. 417 (Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, dated 1654) and p. 738, no. 453 (Milwaukee, private collection). There is no extant painting by Rembrandt himself, but the subject did intrigue him, as evidenced by a red chalk drawing dated to around 1637 in O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, I, London 1973, p. 39, no. 136, fig. 162. Although horizontal rather than vertical in format and much larger,⁷⁷As compared to De Poorter’s 62 x 48.5 cm panel. this 1644 canvas by Salomon Koninck incorporates the standard diagonal composition already present in De Poorter’s work. Both pictures show the king in the centre on an elevated platform surrounded by a few of his women, one of whom is seen from behind. Here she acts as a repoussoir on the right, and has been given a counterpart on the left in the form of a young man accompanying a sacrificial cow. In order to emphasize the exoticism of Solomon’s harem and the idols they worshipped, De Poorter included a couple of black females, whereas Koninck shows two young black servants, one assisting the priest and the other holding a parasol above a wife on the right.

The wall in the background has a vaulted opening which provides a view through to a large circular building, quite likely the Temple in Jerusalem that was raised under Solomon’s direction during his years of wisdom and glory, before he was corrupted by his foreign wives and concubines.⁸⁸See R. Wischnitzer, ‘Rembrandt, Callot and Tobias Stimmer’, The Art Bulletin 39 (1957), pp. 224-30, for the pictorial tradition of the Temple in Jerusalem. Koninck probably derived this motif from a red chalk drawing of the subject by Rembrandt from around 1637.⁹⁹O. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, I, London 1973, p. 39, no. 136, fig. 162. Even the lopsided supporting elements of the arch reflect the eccentric design of the interior in the sheet. In both works, the clarity and unity of the temple of the true religion are contrasted with the illogical and structurally unsound architecture of the heathen temple. One assumes that Koninck was also inspired by the Rembrandt prototype to depict the idol as a seated Venus accompanied by Amor.¹⁰¹⁰The heathen statue worshipped by Solomon in De Poorter’s picture is also of Venus and Amor. On the depiction of Venus in paintings of King Solomon’s idolatry see the entry on SK-A-757. The round pedestal upon which the statue is mounted, as well as the curtained canopy above it, and possibly the king’s raised hands, suggest that Koninck also knew Philips Galle’s 1565 engraving of Solomon’s idolatry.¹¹¹¹Illustrated in M. Sellink and M. Leesberg, The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700: Philips Galle, I, ed. M. Leesberg, Rotterdam 2001, p. 186, no. 129.

The strange container on the altar reproduces the famed gilded silver jug with lid created by Adam van Vianen in 1614, now in the Rijksmuseum.¹²¹²BK-1976-75. Koninck included it in a number of his paintings (as did Pieter Lastman and Gerbrand van den Eeckhout), but in contrast to his other works, the organic, anti-classical style of the ewer, carried through in the altar and the priest’s headdress, may well have an iconographic function here; Koninck perhaps intended its convoluted and seemingly uncontrolled curves as a metaphor for the irrational worship of the heathen idol. At the very least, it serves to underline the diverse extraction of Solomon’s wives and concubines, and the gods they venerated.

As is typical of Koninck’s history paintings, sumptuous reds and bold yellow accents stand out in a predominantly subdued palette. Another hallmark of his style is the preoccupation with shimmering fabrics and highlights in the hair of the figures. With their small pointy noses, beady eyes and tiny mouths – not to mention their frizzy coiffures and the intensely blushing cheeks of the women – all appear to have the same genetic makeup; Solomon’s wives could easily pass as sisters, and the king himself could be mistaken for a twin brother of the priest. Also characteristic for the artist is the shaft of bright light that enters the further dark stage from the left. Koninck’s model for the pronounced chiaroscuro in this and other works was Rembrandt’s history pieces from the 1630s, such as Daniel and Cyrus before the Idol Bel of 1633.¹³¹³Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum; illustrated in J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, II, The Hague/Boston/London 1986, p. 299. Middelkoop’s suggestion that here it is the admonishing light of God and that Solomon raises his hands in supplication to it is not very convincing.¹⁴¹⁴N. Middelkoop, The Golden Age of Dutch Art: Seventeenth Century Paintings from the Rijksmuseum and Australian Collections, exh. cat. Perth (Art Gallery of Western Australia)/Adelaide (Art Gallery of South Australia)/Brisbane (Queensland Art Gallery) 1997-98, p. 104. Not only is there no biblical basis for such an intervention, but no other pictures of the theme include such a scene, and it seems strange that God’s light should come from the left side of the composition where the idol and sacrificial cow are located rather than from the back, where the Jewish Temple is situated.

In his biography of Salomon Koninck in Het gulden cabinet of 1662, Cornelis de Bie records a work of this subject in the possession of a certain Geraerd Luycke,¹⁵¹⁵C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vrij schilder const, inhoudende den lof vande vermarste schilders, architecte, beldthowers ende plaetsnijders van deze eeuw, Antwerp 1662, p. 250. possibly the Amsterdam silk merchant Gerard (or Gerrit) Luijcken (c. 1616-1677) who originated from Zevenbergen. His ownership of Koninck’s Idolatry of King Solomon is not documented, but that he had a taste for paintings can be inferred from a 1636 transaction in which he borrowed a number of pictures from the art dealer and artist Elias Hoomis to decorate his house on the occasion of his marriage to Anna Pietersdr Bloemendael.¹⁶¹⁶For this transaction see A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, V, The Hague 1918, pp. 1807-08. Given his profession, Luijcken would have appreciated the attention Koninck paid to the rendering of fabrics in the present canvas.

Jonathan Bikker, 2023

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, pp. 1628, 1642, no. 1084, with earlier literature; N. Middelkoop, The Golden Age of Dutch Art: Seventeenth Century Paintings from the Rijksmuseum and Australian Collections, exh. cat. Perth (Art Gallery of Western Australia)/Adelaide (Art Gallery of South Australia)/Brisbane (Queensland Art Gallery) 1997-98, pp. 104-05, no. 39, with earlier literature; E.J. Sluijter, Rembrandt’s Rivals: History Painting in Amsterdam 1630-1650, Amsterdam/Philadelphia 2015, p. 202

1910, pp. 441-42, no. 1375a; 1934, p. 157, no. 1375a; 1960, p. 165, no. 1375 A 1; 1976, p. 326, no. A 2220

Jonathan Bikker, 2023, 'Salomon Koninck, The Idolatry of King Solomon (I Kings 11:4-8), 1644', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.12067