Crying Boy Stung by a Bee

Carved in high relief and partly painted. Remnants of red paint can still be discerned in the mouth cavity and the underside of tongue. Four pieces have been inlaid by the artist: two small pieces under each ear; a rectangular section with the bee at the right temple; a square section on the right side of the forehead; and an elongated piece at the tip of the nose. The grooves in the corner of the left eye extend into the wood figuring.

There is a restoration to the left ear.¹¹This was carried out in 1958 by an Amsterdam conservator, as communicated by the previous owner (written communication, 19 March 2015). The termination of the neck has been given a raised border in walnut, probably by a later hand.²²My thanks to Iskander Breebaart, 17 July 2011.

…; ? collection Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517-1586) and/or his nephew François Perrenot de Granvelle (?1559-1607), Besançon, Palais Granvelle, by 1607;³³My thanks to Arie Pappot for this information; email communication 25 March 2025. See Auguste Castan, ‘Monographie du palais Granvelle à Besançon’, Mémoires de la Société d'émulation du Doubs 4 (1867), part 2 (1866), pp. 37-78 (‘Inventaire des meubles de la maison de Granvelle’), spec. p. 75 (Une teste d'un enffant criard, taillée en bois, d'Albert Durez, ayant une mouche le piquant au front, d'haulteur de neufz polces, no 111.) (A head of a screaming child, carved in wood, by Albert Durez [= Albrecht Dürer], with a fly biting him on the forehead, height of nine thumbs). The height of 9 thumbs (= 24.5 cm) generally corresponds to the diameter of the tondo (25.2 cm). The inventory was compiled directly following the death of François Perrenot, the last male descendant of the Granvelle family, in 1607. That the sculpture ended up in Besançon via the same François cannot be ruled out; he was the son of Thomas Perrenot de Chantonnay (1521-1571) and Helena van Brederode (c.1525-1572), who was Dutch.…; collection of the Orla or Szaszor family,⁴⁴The coat of arms on the lacquer seal on the reverse side can be identified as that of one of two Polish noble families. According to Karel van Mander, Het Schilder-boeck, Haarlem 1604, fol. 279r., a Polish nobleman possessed several works by Cornelis Ketel painted ‘with the foot’ (met de voet geschilderde werken): Een Poolsche Graef, Andreas Lescinski, Graef van Leschno gheheeten, heeft van hem [= Ketel] oock eenige tronien met den voet. (A Polish Count, Andreas Lescinski, called Count of Leshno, also possess several tronies with the foot by him [=Ketel]). Given the close amicable ties between Cornelis Ketel and Hendrick de Keyser, one might therefore inquire whether the present Crying Boy Stung by a Bee perhaps also ended up in a Polish collection via a family member or agent of this count. For Count Andreas Lescziński (1559-1606), who supported the Reformation and lived in Leszno, see H. Miedema (ed.), Karel van Mander: The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, from the First Edition of the Schilder-boeck (1603-1604): Commentary on lives: fol. 262r01-291r47, Doornspijk 1994, p. 152. For the close friendship between Ketel and De Keyser, see F. Scholten, ‘Ketel and De Keyser’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 69 (2021), no. 4, pp. 354-63. Poland, ? 18th century; …;  sale collection Simon Wolf (‘Sim’) Josephus Jitta (1818-1897, Amsterdam), Paris (Drouot), 5-22 March 1883, no. 432 (as ‘Italian, 16th century’),⁵⁵No. 432 Buis - Tête d’enfant pleurant et grimaçant piqué par une guèpe, sculpture en haut-relief, grandeur presque nature, appliquée sur un disque en bois noir. Pièce d’un beau caractère, de travail italien du XVIe siècle (Boxwood - Head of a weeping and grimacing child stung by a wasp, sculpture in high relief, almost life-size, applied to a black wooden disc. Piece beautiful in character, Italian work of the 16th century). (bought-in at Ffrcs 1,500),⁶⁶Copy RMA. from his sale, Amsterdam (Frederik Muller), 9 November 1897, no. 250 (as ‘Italian, 16th century, attributed to Michelangelo’),⁷⁷No. 250 Tête d’enfant criant, grimaçant et dont les cheveux sont hérissés par la douleur que lui cause une piqûre de guèpe. Sculpture en buis, en haut relief, grandeur presque nature, appliquée sur une disque en bois noir. Très-beau travail italien du XVIe siècle, attribué à Michel-Ange (Head of a child crying, grimacing and whose hair is standing on end from the pain of a wasp sting. Boxwood sculpture, in high relief, almost life-size, applied to a black wooden disc. Very beautiful Italian work of the 16th century, attributed to Michelangelo). fl. 320, to his nephew Daniel Josephus Jitta (1854-1925);⁸⁸Copy RMA. See also Het Nieuws van de Dag, Friday, 12 November 1897, 2nd page, p. 7. his son Joseph Alfred Josephus Jitta (1890-1943), 1925;⁹⁹In a photo from 1928 (copy in Object File, RMA), the present Crying Boy Stung by a Bee can be seen in the living room of the home of Joseph Alfred Josephus Jitta, father of the last owner (Carla R. Josephus Jitta, Amsterdam). A bronze kneeling satyr by Desiderio da Firenze (sale London (Sotheby’s), 6 July 2007, no. 61) can also be seen on the right of same photo. See also written communication, Carla R. Josephus Jitta, 18 Augustus 2009, in Object File. acquired by his brother Abraham Carel Josephus Jitta (1887-1958); his niece Carolina Rosi (‘Carla’) Josephus Jitta (1931-2024);¹⁰¹⁰Carla R. Josephus Jitta was the daughter of Joseph Alfred Josephus Jitta. She writes (translated from the Dutch): ‘My grandfather Daniel must have purchased the child’s head from the estate of his uncle, Sim. (Uncle Sim had no children, just as his brother Joseph). My father is certain to have inherited it from his father and at some point sold to his brother Abraham Carel, from whom I inherited the head.’; written communication, Carla R. Josephus Jitta, 18 August 2009). And ‘In the 1950s, my uncle, who then had [the child’s head] in his possession, once had it assessed via the director of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague; result: it was said to be South German. After I inherited it in 1959, Jobs Wertheim, the sculptor and a cousin of my father, showed photos of it [to someone] in the Rijksmuseum.’ by whom donated to the museum,with right of usufruct, 2007; transferred to the museum, 2012

ObjectNumber: BK-2007-24

Credit line: Private gift

When sold as part of J.W. Jitta’s large art collection in Amsterdam in 1897, this expressive boxwood relief of a crying boy was thought to have been carved by Michelangelo. A label on the reverse, dating from the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, not only records this rather absurd attribution to one of the greatest sculptors in art history, but also conveys the high regard with which its quality was apparently perceived. The sculpture sold for 320 guilders, a large sum for its day but one nevertheless scarcely reflecting its purported authorship. In a letter of 13 October 1926 addressed to the daughter of the Amsterdam art collector Otto Lanz, the relief’s then owner, J.A. Josephus Jitta, wrote that the renowned Dutch art expert ‘professor Vogelzang [sic]’ had attributed the head ‘to the sixteenth-century Bavarian sculptor “Kilian”.’¹¹¹¹J.A. Josephus Jitta’s letter to Gertrud Kijzer-Lanz, dated 13 October 1926 (copy in Object File). Reference is made to Professor Willem Vogelsang of Utrecht, the first professor of art history in the Netherlands and a scholar of medieval sculpture. This description is almost surely mistaken, given that no sculptor is known to have come from this Augsburg artist’s family of engravers, goldsmiths and painters. In 1973, Avery came with a more convincing attribution for the child’s head, instead establishing ties to the seventeenth-century Amsterdam sculptor Hendrick de Keyser (1565-1621). Indeed, striking parallels exist to the bronze weeping putti adorning De Keyser’s opus magnum – William of Orange’s monumental tomb in Delft (fig. a) – and the mascarons of mourning children on the façade of the Delft town hall.¹²¹²C. Avery, ‘Hendrick de Keyser as a Sculptor of Small Bronzes: His Orpheus and Cerberus Identified’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 21 (1973), pp. 3-24, esp. fig. 22. An even greater agreement can be observed when comparing the boxwood carving to a small bronze bust of a crying child, which Avery also linked to De Keyser (fig. b).¹³¹³Two versions of this bronze are known: one in a private collection (see C. Avery, ‘Hendrick de Keyser as a Sculptor of Small Bronzes: His Orpheus and Cerberus Identified’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 21 (1973), pp. 3-24, esp. p. 24, note 44) and another preserved at the Los Angeles County Museum (inv. no. M.84.37, purchased with funds provided by James E. Clark), former collection David Weill, Sale Paris (Drouot), 16 June 1971, no. 94; bought by Cyril Humphris, London (1972). The two heads are identical along general lines, though keeping in mind the bronze was conceived in the round, while the boxwood face was executed in high relief and mounted on a tondo.¹⁴¹⁴Based on the lacquer seal and inscription on the reverse, this wooden tondo can be dated back to at least the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, it could very well reflect the original form. Cf. for example J. Gerchow (ed.), Ebenbilder: Kopien von Körpern – Modelle des Menschen, Ostfildern-Ruit 2002, no. I-4 (two memento mori tondi, 1589, with a child’s head in wax). The agreement is so precise that the casting model for the bronze could only have been taken directly from the wooden carving and thereafter modified in the wax.

Despite the stylistic affinity between the present child’s head and the above-cited bronzes, several evident differences must also be noted. Largely attributable to the technical limitations of the bronze medium are the higher level of detail and greater three-dimensionality of the boxwood head. The wooden child has individual, extending pointed locks of hair. When executed in bronze, by contrast, the curls of the hair virtually cling to the head. Similarly, the furrows of the skin on the relief-carved piece appear to be modelled with greater liveliness and covering the skull more fluidly, with the ears sticking out from the head further. The most noticeable difference between the Amsterdam relief and the bronze heads, however, is the presence of an anecdotal detail that provides the most logical reason for the child’s extreme display of emotion: a honeybee just above the right temple that stings the little boy. Avery maintained that the present work is a copy carved in wood, modelled after one of De Keyser’s bronzes.¹⁵¹⁵‘It is difficult to assess the age of the piece from a photograph, but its relationship to our bronze appears to be derivative’, see C. Avery, ‘Hendrick de Keyser as a Sculptor of Small Bronzes: His Orpheus and Cerberus Identified’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 21 (1973), pp. 3-24, esp. p. 21. Nevertheless, the logic behind the iconographic motif of the stinging bee, further supported by the greater level of detail and three-dimensionality, indicate just the opposite: namely, that the wood-carved child’s head is in fact the most original version, with the bronze being a more decorative, simplified variant thereof.

That the present Crying Boy was unlikely carved after De Keyser’s own lifetime is confirmed by its stylistic similarity to the auricular ornamentation (kwabstijl) first appearing on Northern Netherlandish silver circa 1610. De Keyser must have been fascinated with the new style and drew his inspiration from such works, especially those by the Utrecht goldsmith Adam van Vianen (1568-1627) – with which he was undoubtedly familiar – or the fantastical, grotesque engraving designs of Arent van Bolten.¹⁶¹⁶For Van Vianen, see J.R. ter Molen, Van Vianen: Een Utrechtse familie van zilversmeden met een internationale faam, 2 vols., Leiderdorp 1984; also see G. Luijten et al., Dawn of the Golden Age: Northern Netherlandish Art 1580-1620, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1993-94, nos. 65-69 and 111-15. The whimsical forms of the child’s extended ears and the flowing lines of the face – visible even below the tongue – seem almost direct quotations of the organic forms that characterize Van Vianen’s kwab silver.¹⁷¹⁷In Germany, the auricular style is similarly referred to as the Ohrmuschelstil. As a result, the crying boy’s countenance becomes virtually caricatural in appearance, reminiscent of grotesque mascarons. De Keyser applied such fantasized masks – often depicted with gaping mouths – in a variety of ways, as decorative elements in his architecture and even as design elements terminating his busts.¹⁸¹⁸See the busts of Vincent Coster (1608), Joachim van Wtewael (1606) and the fragment of a bust of Coster, all works held in the collection of the Rijksmuseum (G. Luijten et al., Dawn of the Golden Age: Northern Netherlandish Art 1580-1620, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1993-94, nos. 58, 59). For De Keyser’s architecture, see K. Ottenheym, P. Rosenberg and N. Smit, Hendrick de Keyser, Architectura Moderna: Moderne bouwkunst in Amsterdam 1600-1625, Amsterdam 2008, pp. 6, 8, 9 (ills.). By no means insignificant in this context – as previously noted by Avery – is the boy’s similarity to an auricular-style Christ Child in Ter Brugghen’s Adoration of the Magi from 1619 (Rijksmuseum). Accordingly, the determination of this boxwood Crying Boy as a work from the first quarter of the seventeenth century made in the Northern Netherlands becomes arguable on stylistic grounds, with an attribution to Hendrick de Keyser most apparent. This is further supported by De Keyser’s portrait bust of William of Orange, which, like the Crying Boy, exists both in the form of a sculpture in the round and a half-version executed in high relief.¹⁹¹⁹F. Scholten, ‘Hele en halve hoofden, kanttekeningen bij terracotta portretten van Hendrick de Keyser’, in P. van den Brink and L.M. Helmus (eds.), Album discipulorum J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer, Zwolle 1997, pp. 185-95, esp. figs. 2-5. The choice of boxwood as a sculpture medium is likewise exemplified by a statuette of St John the Evangelist attributable to De Keyser, in the Victoria and Albert Museum.²⁰²⁰London, Victoria and Albert Museum, inv. no. 165.1864; the statuette is a clear variant of De Keyser’s large alabaster statue of St John the Evangelist, made for the rood loft of the Sint-Janskathedraal in Den Bosch (1613), see G. Luijten et al., Dawn of the Golden Age: Northern Netherlandish Art 1580-1620, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1993-94, no. 60.

The stinging honeybee on the boxwood relief possibly provides a key to understanding the sculpture’s iconographic meaning. Carved from a separate piece of wood and inserted into the child’s head, it could also have been added later.²¹²¹Yet this is unlikely the case. More probable is that the addition was made for practical purposes by the sculptor himself when carving the piece. If originally conceived as such, however, its presence may be tied to an idyll traditionally ascribed to the Greek poet Theocritus (third century BC) that relates the anecdote of Cupid the honey-thief: ‘When the thievish Love one day was stealing honeycomb from the hive, a wicked bee stung him, and made all his finger-tips to smart. In pain and grief, he blew on his hand and stamped and leapt upon the ground, and went and showed his hurt to Aphrodite, and made complaint that so a little a beast as a bee could make so great a wound. Whereat his mother laughing, ‘What?’ cries she, ‘art not a match for a bee, and thou so little and yet able to make wounds so great?’²²²²J.M. Edmonds (transl.),The Greek Bucolic Poets (J.M. Loeb Classical Library 28), Cambridge (Mass.) 1912, Idyll no. 19: ‘The honey-stealer’. The poem is anonymous in the manuscripts and the conception of Love is not Theocritean. In the early sixteenth century, this verse was available in various translations, among them an English translation by Thomas More. The poem was chiefly seen as an admonition against love’s ‘sweet’ temptation. Dürer made a drawing (Vienna, Albertina) based on the theme in 1514, followed by Lucas Cranach, who rendered the episode in various painted versions around 1526.²³²³G. Messling, De wereld van Lucas Cranach: Een kunstenaar ten tijde van Dürer, Titiaan en Metsys, Brussels/Tielt 2010, nos. 97, 98. In strict terms, the Idylls only make mention of Cupid being stung by a bee in the finger. By as early as Cranach, however, images also show the bee stinging him in the head.

Prior to the seventeenth century, Theocritus’s idyll involving Cupid had no clear visual tradition in the Northern or Southern Netherlands. In De Keyser’s day, however, the story was fairly well known. This is largely attributable to Daniel Heinsius’ Emblemata Amatoria, a collection of poems dedicated to the god of love published in Amsterdam in 1616. One of the verses bears the title Cupido honich-dief, uyt Theocritus (Cupid Honey-Thief, from Theocritus’).²⁴²⁴Daniël Heinsius, Emblamata amatoria, Amsterdam 1616: De soon van Venus soete man, / Die nimmermeer stil wesen kan, / Was opgestaen recht voor den dach, / Als yeder noch in ruste lach, / En ginck al heymelick bespien / De honich-korven van de bien, / Hy meynde ‘thonich was soo goet, / Het was soo wonderlicken soet. / Maer eer hy haelde zijn gerief, / De beesten prickelden den dief. / De lecker liep aen alle kant, / Hy spranck, hy blaesde vast in d’handt, / En toonde Venus die daer stondt / Al schreyende de nieuwe wondt. /Hy seyde, moeder, hoe kant sijn, / Dat sulcken dier maeckt sulcke pijn? /_ De moeder sey de, sijt ghy groot_ / Die yeder brengt in sulcken noot?. (The son of Venus sweet man, / Who nevermore can be still, / Arose just before the day, / When all yet laid in rest, / And went all secretly spying, / The honey hives of the bees, / He guessed the honey was so good, / It was so wonderfully sweet. / Yet before he got his pleasure, / The beasts stung the thief. / The sweetness poured in every direction, / He jumped, he blew constantly on his hand, / And showed Venus, who there stood, / Already crying, the new wound. / He said, mother, how can it be / That such animals cause such pain? / The mother said, though art big, / Who brings such agony to all?). The episode also appears in an anonymous collection of poems entitled Thronus Cupidinis, of which the third edition was published in Amsterdam in 1620.²⁵²⁵H. Luijten and M. Blankman, Minne- en zinnebeeld: Bloemlezing uit de Nederlandse emblematiek, Amsterdam 2003, pp. 93-97.

The Crying Boy is a relatively early example of the growing interest in showing the emotions of the human face in sculpture, which only comes to full fruition in the seventeenth century – partly influenced by sculptural studies of the Laocoön – and culminates in F.X. Messerschmidt’s series of caricatural heads.²⁶²⁶For example, Bernini’s Anima Dannata (R. Wittkower, _Bernini, the Sculptor of the Roman Baroque, Milan 1990, p. 233, no. 7, c. 1619), Gabriel Grupello (see E. Rümmler, C. Theuerkauff et al., Europäische Barockplastik am Niederrhein: Grupello und seine Zeit, exh. cat. Düsseldorf (Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf) 1971, nos. 31, 92); Andreas Schluter (J. Rasmussen and S. Asche, Barockplastik in Norddeutschland, exh. cat. Hamburg (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe) 1977, nos. 164-67); Balthasar Permoser (Bust of Marsyas, c. 1680-85, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 2002.468). Notheworthy is that several Italian, Early-Baroque scenes in this same genre, more or less contemporaneous with De Keyser’s Boy, also show children or youths being bitten by an animal. Examples include Caravaggio’s Boy Bitten by a Lizard (c. 1597-98) and Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Putto Bitten by a Dolphin (c. 1618).²⁷²⁷Cf. F. Scholten and G. Swoboda (eds.), Caravaggio-Bernini: The Early Baroque in Rome, exh. cat. Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2019-20, nos. 3, 78. It appears that De Keyser had begun to explore the theme of the crying child when commencing work on William of Orange’s tomb monument in Delft (starting in 1613). The bronze weeping putti and heads of cherubs incorporated in his design are sculptural details clearly related to the Crying Boy relief, most evident in the torch-and-shield bearing putti at the top of the tomb and the winged mascarons surmounting the cartouche with epitaph.²⁸²⁸See for example G. Luijten et al., Dawn of the Golden Age: Northern Netherlandish Art 1580-1620, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1993-94, p. 407, fig. 62a. A similar depiction of mourning, though far less expressive, can also be observed on an alabaster head of a child attributed to the De Keyser-workshop.²⁹²⁹G. Luijten et al., Dawn of the Golden Age: Northern Netherlandish Art 1580-1620, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1993-94, no. 62 (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen); see also F. Scholten, ‘Hendrik de Keyser, Gerrit Lambertsen van Cuilenborch and the Sculptures of the Marble Gallery of Frederiksborg Castle’, in T. Lyngby (ed.), The Marble Gallery at Frederiksborg Castle, Copenhagen 2022 (forthcoming). More akin, however, is a crying angel’s head clearly derived from the monument in Delft on the Van Brouchoven wall monument in the Sint-Pieterskerk in Leiden (design by Arent van ‘s Gravenzande, c. 1645). Additionally, two mourning angels from a Christ as Man of Sorrows by Gerhard Gröninger (1582-1652) in the Marienkirche in Ahlen (Westphalia) were clearly inspired by De Keyser’s bronze putti on the Delft tomb.³⁰³⁰G. Jászai, Das Werk des Bildhauers Gerhard Gröninger (1582-1652) (Bildhefte des Westfälischen Landesmuseums für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Münster 28), Münster s.a., pp. 132-33. Gröninger travelled to the Netherlands at some point in the period 1619-22 to arrange marble deliveries for the main altar of the Sankt-Paulus-Dom in Münster. During his stay, he may also have visited Delft.

Moreover, there is a strong possibility that the Amsterdam boxwood sculpture was produced somewhat earlier than the funeral monument of William of Orange, as is suggested by the mention of ‘Une teste d’un enffant criard, taillée en bois, d’Albert Durez [Albrecht Dürer], ayant une mouche le piquant au front, d’haulteur de neufz po[u]lces, nº 111.31’ in the 1607 estate inventory of Cardinal Granvelle. The head described here, given the close agreement, is quite conceivably the Amsterdam work, though one cannot rule out that De Keyser might have produced more than one. In any event, its mention in Granvelle’s inventory demonstrates that the sculpture (or one highly similar to it) existed before 1607. The erroneous attribution to Dürer reflects a broader tendency (‘Dürer revival’) in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century to attach the German painter’s name to all sorts of cabinet sculpture, often also furnished with fake 'AD'-monograms.

In the Northern and Southern Netherlands, sculpted heads of crying children became fairly common no earlier than the end of the seventeenth century, for example, in the oeuvre of the sculptor Johan Claudius de Cock (1667-1735).³¹³¹See for example C. Avery, Fingerprints of the Artist: European Terracotta Sculpture from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)/Cambridge (Fogg Art Museum) 1979-82, no. 111; sale London (Bonhams), 11 December 2007, no. 525; the dealer H. Nijstad, Lochem (1973) and the dealer J. Beekhuizen, Amsterdam 1977 (terracotta bust with inscription in ink Joannes Claudius de Cock (photo in the Object File). In some cases, such mournful little boys possibly formed pendants of laughing children, thus representing youthful, humorous parodies of the classical philosopher’s duo, Heraclitus and Democritus.³²³²Cf. N. Penny, Catalogue of European Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum: 1540 to the Present Day, 3 vols., coll. cat. Oxford 1992, pp. 17-19, no. 457 and sale London (Christie’s), 24 April 2008, no. 414.

Among examples of eighteenth-century German cabinet sculpture, several ivories can be linked to the Amsterdam Crying Boy. Case in point are three weeping child’s heads in Braunschweig, one of which has been attributed to Johann Christoph Ludwig Lücke (c. 1703-c. 1780).³³³³C. Scherer, Die Braunschweiger Elfenbeinsammlung: Katalog der Elfenbeinbildwerke, coll. cat. Braunschweig (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum) 1931, nos. 226 (Nederlandish, first half 17th century?), 327 (Germany, first half 18th century?), 328 (attributed to Johann Christoph Ludwig Lücke). C. Theuerkauff, ‘Johann Christoph Ludwig Lücke - "Ober-Modell-Meister und Inventions-Meister" in Meissen, "Ober-Direktor" zu Wien’, Alte und Moderne Kunst 27 (1982), Heft 183, pp. 21-32, esp. p. 23 and fig. 9. An anonymous (French or German?) crying head of a child in marble that surfaced on the French art market in 2014 was erroneously attributed to De Keyser, see sale Lyon (Berard, Peron and Girard-Claudon), Vente mobilier, objets d’art, tableaux anciens, 19 October 2014.This sculptor’s oeuvre also includes two less sentimental but more dynamically carved crying infants: a miniature bust in London and a small, ivory-carved medallion relief in Schwerin.³⁴³⁴C. Theuerkauff, ‘Johann Christoph Ludwig Lücke - "Ober-Modell-Meister und Inventions-Meister" in Meissen, "Ober-Direktor" zu Wien’, Alte und Moderne Kunst 27 (1982), Heft 183, pp. 21-32, esp. p. 23 and fig. 10 (signed L.v.L.; London, Victoria and Albert Museum, inv. no. A 2-1931) and K.A. Möller, Elfenbein: Kunstwerke des Barock, coll. cat. Schwerin (Staatliches Museum) 2000, no. 24. De Keyser’s influence on Lücke and others can be explained by plaster casts of the present boxwood Cupid or its bronze derivate circulating in the eighteenth century. A painting of the atelier of the Antwerp sculptor Guillaume (Willem) de Groff (c. 1680-1742) by Jan Josef Horemans (1682-1759) confirms that such casts indeed existed: a plaster ‘mask’ of the Crying Boy rests on the shelf visible far right.³⁵³⁵My thanks to Dr Charles Avery, who drew this painting to my attention (written communication, 22 April 2015). An inscribed annotation on Lücke’s ivory relief in Schwerin somewhat reflects an eighteenth-century sculptor’s appreciation for carvings displaying such a high level of expressive naturalism: ‘A crying child’s head. The expression is so strong that, in the mouth, one can see the uvula of the palate […]’.³⁶³⁶Ein schreiender Kinderkopf. Die Expression ist so stark, dass man im Munde den Zapfen am Gaumen bemerkt …; K.A. Möller, Elfenbein: Kunstwerke des Barock, coll. cat. Schwerin (Staatliches Museum) 2000, no. 24. The same words can just as readily be applied to the Crying Boy – a masterpiece of Northern Netherlandish cabinet sculpture from the early seventeenth century, characterized by a perfect balance of natural observation, physiognomic expression and stylization.

Frits Scholten, 2025

C. Avery, ‘Hendrick de Keyser as a Sculptor of Small Bronzes: His Orpheus and Cerberus Identified’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 21 (1973), pp. 3-24, esp. p. 21 and fig. 25; (reprint in C. Avery, Studies in European Sculpture, vol. 1, London 1981, pp. 175-89, esp. p. 185 and fig. 25; F. Scholten, ‘Recent Acquisitions (2004-09) of Sculpture at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam’, The Burlington Magazine 151 (2009), pp. 805-12, esp. p. 805, no. I. T. Toebosch, Uitverkoren zondebokken, een familiegeschiedenis, Amsterdam 2010, p. 97; F. Scholten, ‘Hendrick de Keyser’s Honey Thief’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 63 (2015), no. 1, pp. 52-65; Scholten in G.J.M. Weber (ed.), 1600-1700: Dutch Golden Age, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2018, no. 21

F. Scholten, 2025, 'attributed to Hendrick de (I) Keyser, Crying Boy Stung by a Bee, Amsterdam, c. 1615 - c. 1620', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.451369