Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges are severely damaged and the remnants have been folded out to the front with the lining.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends over the remnants of the tacking edges. The first, light beige layer is followed by a reddish-brown layer.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends over the remnants of the tacking edges. The composition was built up from the back to the front, the sky being executed first, followed by the foreground, trees and figures. The ground was left exposed locally, both in the foreground and clouds, to play a role in the final painting. It was also left uncovered in the zone between the hills and the sky, where it was brushed out after the foreground had been finished. The patches of sky visible between the foliage of the trees were all reserved, with one or two areas being reinforced later. The leaves were applied in a stamped manner, locally using impasto.
Michel van de Laar [publication date 2026]

Good. There are two old, repaired and retouched tears above and beside the eunuch, as well as fine, retouched drying cracks throughout. The painting was cleaned locally. The last part of the signature is covered by old varnish.

…; from the dealer P. & D. Colnaghi, London, fl. 38,396.50, to the museum, April 1979

Object number: SK-A-4713

Although the viewer’s eye is immediately drawn to the three colourful figures in the foreground, the main scene is actually the one on the right. Standing in the water are the Apostle Philip and the eunuch, a court official of the Ethiopian queen Candace, as described in the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament. The two men met on the way from Jerusalem to Gaza while the latter was reading Isaiah. After Philip instructed him about this book of the Bible and told him about Jesus, the eunuch asked to be baptized in a body of water they were passing, and Philip did so (Acts 8:38). It is this moment that Herman van Swanevelt has depicted. Two Ethiopian servants at the centre hold their master’s turban and red cloak trimmed with gold. The eunuch’s coach and two horses are half-hidden by the slanting tree trunk in the left foreground.

In 1982, three years after the purchase of this painting, a drawing with the same composition was donated to the Rijksmuseum,³³RP-T-1982-74. and because it corresponds so closely, down to details such as the bent branch above the protagonists’ heads, it was thought that it was not a preliminary study but an autograph ricordo.⁴⁴Schapelhouman in M. Schapelhouman and P. Schatborn, Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: Artists Born between 1580 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1998, I, pp. 144-45. However, on the evidence of similar drawings by Van Swanevelt, such as the designs for the frescoes for Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Steland made a reasonable case for its being a preliminary study after all.⁵⁵A.C. Steland, ‘Studien zu Herman van Swanevelt: Zeichnungen zu Fresken und Gemälden’, Oud Holland 115 (2001-02), pp. 19-60, esp. p. 26; A.C. Steland, Herman van Swanevelt (um 1603-1655): Gemälde und Zeichnungen, I, Petersburg 2010, p. 251, no. Z 1,3.

The painting dates from Van Swanevelt’s Roman period, when he began producing sun-drenched, wooded landscapes with small figures informed by the work of older artists such as Cornelis van Poelenburch and Bartholomeus Breenbergh. Claude Lorrain is also cited as a source of inspiration in the earlier literature, but it has now become clear that both artists developed in parallel.⁶⁶For the stylistic development in Van Swanevelt’s Italian works see especially M.R. Waddingham, ‘Herman van Swanevelt in Rome’, Paragone, no. 121 (1960), pp. 37-50; Blankert in A. Blankert, H.J. de Smedt and M.E. Houtzager, Nederlandse 17e eeuwse Italianiserende landschapschilders, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum) 1965, pp. 98-105; G. Jansen, ‘Herman van Swanevelt als peintre-graveur’, in A. Blankert et al., Het zuiden tegemoet: De landschappen van Herman van Swanevelt 1603-1655, exh. cat. Woerden (Stadsmuseum) 2007, pp. 33-47, esp. pp. 33-41; A.C. Steland, Herman van Swanevelt (um 1603-1655): Gemälde und Zeichnungen, I, Petersburg 2010, pp. 21-50, 97-99. The main studies dealing with his drawings are A.C. Steland, ‘Studien zu Herman van Swanevelt: Zeichnungen zu Fresken und Gemälden’, Oud Holland 115 (2001-02), pp. 19-60; A.C. Steland, ‘Herman van Swanevelt als Radierer: Zur Chronologie der Entwürfe und der Drucke’, Oud Holland 118 (2005), pp. 38-78; and Steland’s two-volume oeuvre catalogue of 2010 (op. cit.). Stock elements in Van Swanevelt’s landscapes are the view through to a hilly background, tinted pink here, and the highly detailed rendering of the vegetation. Steland mentions Agostino Tassi as an influence on the staffage in this scene. Van Swanevelt became acquainted with his work when he was painting friezes in the Palazzo Pamphilj in Rome in the first half of the 1630s.⁷⁷A.C. Steland, Herman van Swanevelt (um 1603-1655): Gemälde und Zeichnungen, I, Petersburg 2010, pp. 28, 99, 132. One of those works by Tassi, with elongated figures to which Van Swanevelt’s are closely related, is reproduced in ibid., II, 2010, p. 709.

According to the museum’s 1992 catalogue the picture is inscribed ‘HSWANEVELT ROMA 163[.]’, but examination under the stereomicroscope in 2008 failed to reveal the last two letters of the city or the date.⁸⁸Other discrepancies are the ‘V’ between the ‘H’ and the ‘S’, which was not spotted in 1992, and the ‘F’ for ‘fecit’. An execution in the 1630s is nevertheless plausible. Since the drawn design can be assigned to around 1634-35 on stylistic grounds,⁹⁹A.C. Steland, Herman van Swanevelt (um 1603-1655): Gemälde und Zeichnungen, I, Petersburg 2010, p. 251 (‘um 1634’) Cf. A.C. Steland, ‘Studien zu Herman van Swanevelt: Zeichnungen zu Fresken und Gemälden’, Oud Holland 115 (2001-02), pp. 19-60, esp. p. 26 (‘um 1635’). it is reasonable to assume that the painting was made then as well.¹⁰¹⁰A.C. Steland, Herman van Swanevelt (um 1603-1655): Gemälde und Zeichnungen, I, Petersburg 2010, p. 132 (‘nach 1633 bis spätestens um 1635’). The painting was dated to the second half of the 1630s in the acquisitions section (‘Keuze uit de aanwinsten’) of the Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 27 (1979), pp. 189-205, esp. p. 190, fig. 3.

Van Swanevelt depicted the baptism of the eunuch at least twice. In Bordeaux there is an unsigned canvas of his with the subject in vertical format that must be dated a few years after the Rijksmuseum painting.¹¹¹¹Musée des Beaux-Arts, canvas, 162 x 133 cm; illustrated in A.C. Steland, Herman van Swanevelt (um 1603-1655): Gemälde und Zeichnungen, II, Petersburg 2010, p. 419. For the dating see ibid., I, 2010, p. 155. See also O. le Bihan, L’or et l’ombre: Catalogue critique et raisonné des peintures hollandaises du dix-septième et du dix-huitième siècles, conservées au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, coll. cat. Bordeaux 1990, pp. 305-09, who also discusses the visual tradition.

Gerdien Wuestman [publication date 2026]

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

A.C. Steland, ‘Studien zu Herman van Swanevelt: Zeichnungen zu Fresken und Gemälden’, Oud Holland 115 (2001-02), pp. 19-60, esp. pp. 26-27; A.C. Steland, Herman van Swanevelt (um 1603-1655): Gemälde und Zeichnungen, I, Petersburg 2010, pp. 28, 132, no. G 1,2, with earlier literature

1992, p. 86, no. A 4713

Gerdien Wuestman, 2026, 'Herman van Swanevelt, Landscape with the Baptism of the Eunuch, Rome, c. 1634 - c. 1635', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026384