Sculpted in the round, with the reverse roughly finished.

The right rear corner of the plinth has broken off; the eagle’s head is missing.

? Commissioned by Pieter Rutgers (1672-1727) for his country house Rozenburg, Watergraafsmeer (Amsterdam), c. 1710-25;¹¹The provenance is based on oral communication from P.M. Fischer, supplemented by H.F. Wijnman in I.H. van Eeghen et al., Vier eeuwen Herengracht: Geveltekeningen van alle huizen aan de gracht: Twee historische overzichten en de beschrijving van elk pand met zijn eigenaars en bewoners, Amsterdam 1976, nos. 280, 284 and 286. See also P.M. Fischer, Ignatius en Jan van Logteren: Beeldhouwers en stuckunstenaars in het Amsterdam van de 18e eeuw, Alphen aan de Rijn 2005, pp. 14-15. to his nephew and nieces, David (1691-1728), Margaretha (1686-1736) and Hillegonda Rutgers (1692-1743), 284 Herengracht, Amsterdam, 1729; with the house, to their cousin Margaretha Rutgers (1688-1755) and transferred to 286 Herengracht, Amsterdam, 1743; with the house, to her daughter, Ursula van Mekeren (1708-1781), 1755; with the house, to her son, Pieter de Wolff Jr. (1731-1825), 1782; sold, with the house, to Stephanus d’Isaij (c. 1737-1815), 1798; with the house, to his daughter Catharina d’Isaij (1773-1845), 1815; sold, with the house, to her granddaughter Catharina Wijnanda Sara van Swinden (1828-1894), 1846; sold, with the house, to Jacob Zomerdijk Bussink (1810-1884), 1848; sold, with the house, to Jacob Reinders (1837-1868) and his brother Herman (1834-1887), 1862; sold, with the house, to Bernardus Henricus Spaan (1850-1934), 1891; sold to Henricus Johannes van Ogtrop (1866-1914) and transferred to 280 Herengracht, Amsterdam, 1910;²²I.H. van Eeghen et al., Vier eeuwen Herengracht: Geveltekeningen van alle huizen aan de gracht: Twee historische overzichten en de beschrijving van elk pand met zijn eigenaars en bewoners, Amsterdam 1976, p. 494. with the house, to his widow Aleida Gijsberta Maria van Ogtrop-Hanlo (1870-1944), 1914; with the house, to her children (among them Pieter Anton Lodewijk van Ogtrop), 1944; sold, with the house, to Vennootschap Bruns, Ten Brink & Co, 1954; sold, with the house, to the N.V. H. Oyens & Zonen (from 1969 to 1973 called: N.V. Oyens & Van Eeghen N.V.; since 1974 called: Bank Slavenburg, Oyens & Van Eeghen), 1968; from the Bank Slavenburg, Oyens & Van Eeghen, fl. 3,500, to the museum, 1979

Object number: BK-1979-100

This Mercury came from Rozenburg, a country house in the former municipality of Watergraafsmeer outside Amsterdam. The estate was built by the merchant Govert Loten in 1642, at which time it was bestowed the name Vischkaantje.³³For Rozenburg, see J.H. Kruizinga, ‘Roemrucht Rozenburg’, Ons Amsterdam 10 (1958), pp. 258-60. With the estate’s subsequent purchase by the Amsterdam silk manufacturer Jacob van Lennep (1631-1704) in 1681, the name was changed to Meerlust. Via Van Lennep, the estate entered the possession of Pieter Rutgers (1672-1727), his son-in-low. With the elevation of Pieter’s father, David Rutgers (1629-1707), to the noble class by Emperor Leopold I in 1697, the appellation ‘van Rozenburg’ was added to the family’s name. Ostensibly at Pieter’s instigation, the name was subsequently given to the Amsterdam country estate. In Daniël Stopendael’s engraving of the house from 1725, when as yet in the Rutgers’s possession, two statues on pedestals can be seen standing in the middle of flower beds, but neither statue is identifiable as the present Mercury.⁴⁴Matthaeus Brouërius Nidek and Daniël Stopendael, Het verheerlykt Watergraafs- of Diemer-Meer by de Stadt Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1725, pl. 23. Following her father’s death, Pieter’s daughter sold the Rozenburg estate to one Jan van Eik in 1729. The Mercury was moved from the Rozenburg estate to the family’s new urban residence at 284 Herengracht (purchased in 1728, with the renovation completed in 1731), the home of Pieter’s nephew David Rutgers (1691-1728) and his sisters, Margaretha (1686-1736) and Hillegonda (1692-1743). Up to the time of its acquisition by the Rijksmuseum in 1979, the statue stood in the gardens of this property or of the houses adjacent.⁵⁵I.H. van Eeghen et al., Vier eeuwen Herengracht: Geveltekeningen van alle huizen aan de gracht: Twee historische overzichten en de beschrijving van elk pand met zijn eigenaars en bewoners, Amsterdam 1976, p. 494.

On stylistic grounds, the present sandstone Mercury can be considered ‘a typical Dutch statue from the early eighteenth century’, as Fischer put it.⁶⁶een typisch Hollands beeld uit de vroege 18de eeuw; P.M. Fischer, Ignatius en Jan van Logteren: Beeldhouwers en stuckunstenaars in het Amsterdam van de 18e eeuw, Alphen aan de Rijn 2005, p. 15. One can reasonably presume that the statue was made specifically for the Rozenburg estate: it stood in the country house’s garden together with a group of five additional garden sculptures bearing the same signature: a Neptune, a Amphitrite, a Forced Abduction of Proserpina, a Voluntary Abduction of Proserpina, and two sphinxes. These five works, together with twenty-five other garden sculptures and ornaments (‘Italian school’), are listed in the sale catalogue of ‘Oud Rosenburgh’.⁷⁷Sale collection M. Gelke, widow of W. Beukman, country house Oud Rosenburgh, Watergraafsmeer (G. Ruijs/T. Ruijs) 20 June 1893, nos. 1-5. According to Fischer these sculptures were all carved in the first decades of the eighteenth century by an Amsterdam sculptor, with Pieter Rutgers as the most likely patron.

Contradicting Fischer’s surmise, however, seems the presence of the enigmatic signature J. Finelli and the incised year 1632. Fischer rightly described these inscriptions as apocryphal. Apart from the signature written in cursive letters – a type of signature popular among sculptors only after 1700 – no sculptor named ‘Finelli’ was ever active in the Northern Netherlands. One explanation is that the signature was possibly added so as to evoke an association between the Rozenburg statues and the Roman Baroque sculptor Giuliano Finelli (1601-1653). The aforementioned 1893 sale catalogue even makes this association explicit, by including a brief biographical sketch on the sculptor.⁸⁸Sale collection M Gelke, widow of W. Beukman, country house Oud Rosenburgh, Watergraafsmeer (G. Ruijs/T. Ruijs) 20 June 1893, p. 1 (under the heading: Beeldhouwwerken van Julien Finelli, with a biographical note on the sculptor from the Bibliographie universelle ancienne et modern, Paris 1812, vol. 6, p. 284). Yet the style of the Mercury displays no trace of the technical and artistic virtuosity exhibited in works by this Italian sculptor.⁹⁹D. Dombrowski, Giuliano Finelli: Bildhauer zwischen Neapel und Rom, Frankfurt am Main 1997. Moreover, one can scarcely imagine how a sculptor working in Italian marble might ever resort to carving a statue in Bentheimer sandstone.

In Fischer’s view, this is certain to have been an intentional attempt to give the sculpture an indisputable Italian air, thus firmly placing the statue in Bernini’s circle, possibly at the instigation of the patron (Pieter Rutgers?) or a later owner. If so, one can only conclude that either Pieter Rutgers or the anonymous author of this plan was exceptionally knowledgeable about Italian Baroque sculpture, as Finelli’s name appears nowhere in published artists’ biographies of the seventeenth century. Just as improbable is that the sculptor’s fame might have extended as far north as Amsterdam. Finelli’s earliest vita, included in Lione Pascoli’s Vite de’pittori, scultori, ed architetti moderni, was published no earlier than 1736, followed by a mention of the sculptor’s name in Bernardo de Dominici’s Vite dei Piitori Scultori ed Architetti Napoletani of 1745.¹⁰¹⁰D. Dombrowski, Giuliano Finelli: Bildhauer zwischen Neapel und Rom, Frankfurt am Main 1997, p. XVII. It therefore seems likely that the inscription was added later, i.e. at some point in the mid- or second half of the eighteenth century.

The precise identity of the sculptor behind the Mercury’s apocryphal signature has not yet been ascertained. Given the Rozenburg country estate’s close proximity to Amsterdam – likewise the origin of the house’s owners – one can only conclude he is to be sought among the sculptors active in the city in the first half of the eighteenth century.

Frits Scholten, 2025

L. Calkoen, ‘Geschiedenis van het Klockhuys Heerengracht 280’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 11 (1913), pp. 141-50, esp. pp. 149-50; H.F. Wijnman in I.H. van Eeghen et al., Vier eeuwen Herengracht: Geveltekeningen van alle huizen aan de gracht: Twee historische overzichten en de beschrijving van elk pand met zijn eigenaars en bewoners, Amsterdam 1976, p. 494 (1st column); P.M. Fischer, Ignatius en Jan van Logteren: Beeldhouwers en stuckunstenaars in het Amsterdam van de 18e eeuw, Alphen aan de Rijn 2005, pp. 14-15

F. Scholten, 2025, 'anonymous, Mercury, Amsterdam, c. 1710 - c. 1725', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20046930