Art at Auction in 17th-Century Amsterdam

340 Pages·2003·3.62 MB·English

by  John Michael Montias

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This book exploits a trove of original documents that have survived on the
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auctions organized by the Orphan Chamber of Amsterdam in the first half
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of the seventeenth century. For the first time, the names of some 2000
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buyers of works of art at auction in the 29 extant notebooks of the Chamber
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have been systematically analyzed.
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On the basis of archival research, data have been assembled on the E
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occupation of these buyers (most of whom were merchants), their origin
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(Southern Netherlands, Holland, and other), their religion, their year of O
birth, their date of marriage, the taxes they paid and other indicators of N
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their wealth. Buyers were found to cluster in groups, not only by extended
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family but by occupation, religion (Remonstrants, Counter-Remonstrants)
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and avocation (amateurs of tulips and of porcelain, members of Chambers
of Rhetoricians, and so forth). A
The subjects of the works of art they bought and the artists to which r
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they were attributed are also analyzed. The second part of the book on
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“Selected Buyers”, is devoted to art dealers who bought at auction and four t

to buyers who had special connections with artists, including principally A
Rembrandt. As a whole, the book offers a penetrating insight into the u
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culture of the Amsterdam elite in the seventeenth century.
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InArt at Auction in 17th Century AmsterdamMontias

has created a richly patterned panorama of the i
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interactions between artists, art lovers and art JOHN MICHAEL
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dealers who were active in one of Europe’s most  Art
important art scenes of the 17th century. t M O N T I A S
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ERNST VAN DE WETERING
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John Michael Montias (1928) was trained as
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an economist (Ph.D. Columbia University, y in

1958). In the first part of his career, he A
specialized in the comparison of economic    m
th Century
systems. Since 1975, he has devoted most of s
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his research to the art market in the seven- www.aup.nl e
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teenth century Netherlands. d Amsterdam
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Amsterdam University Press
Amsterdam University Press
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art at auction
in 17th century amsterdam
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Cover illustration: Andries Both, A Painter’s Studio or Store Room,
British Museum, London
Cover design: Kok Korpershoek, Amsterdam
Lay-out: Het Steen Typografie, Maarssen
isbn90 5356 591 4
nur 654
© Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2002
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the written permission of both the
copyright owner and the author of this book.
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Art at Auction
in 17th Century Amsterdam
john michael montias
Amsterdam University Press
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For my wife Marie Agnes Montias
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements 7
Archival References 8
Monetary Equivalents 8
Notice 8
Part I - The Auctions
Introduction 11
01 Orphan Chamber Auctions in Amsterdam 15
02 How Auction Sales of the Orphan Chamber
Were Conducted 20
03 Extant Records of Auction Sales in
Chronological Perspective 27
04 Aggregate Statistics of Sales and the Owners
of Goods Sold 33
05 The Buyers at Auction Sales 41
06 The Wealth of Buyers 52
07 Clusters of Private Buyers 57
08 Remonstrants and Counter-Remonstrants 77
09 What Did They Buy and at What Prices? 87
10 Attributions 93
11 Echoes 100
12 Concluding Words on Auctions 108
Part II - Profiles of Selected Buyers
Introduction 113
13 Art Dealers I: Artists and Merchants in the Trade 114
14 Art Dealers II: Johannes de Renialme 130
15 Art Dealers III: The Story of a Merchant Who Thought
He Could Sell Paintings to a King 144
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16 Art Collectors and Painters I: Rubens’s Promise to Hans Thijsz. 153
17 Art Collectors and Painters II: Jacob Swalmius and Rembrandt 164
18 Art Collectors and Painters III: Marten van den Broeck and
Rembrandt’s Losses at Sea 180
19 Art Collectors and Painters IV: Jan van Maerlen and
His Extended Family 188
20 Art Collectors and Painters V: Jean le Bleu, François Venant and
Rembrandt’s “Feast of Belshazzar” 204
21 A Collector with Connections to Major Cultural Figures:
Robbert van der Hoeve and the “Muiden Circle” 209
22 What Santa Claus Brought to the Youth of Amsterdam 220
23 When Sellers and Buyers Were Related: Elbert
and Cornelis Symonsz. Pool, Jeltge Claes, and Pieter Claesz. Codde 226
24 A Collector Who Held On to His Purchase for Over Fifty Years 234
25 An Afterword on Mentalités 243
Bibliography 249
Published Sources 251
Notes 259
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Acknowledgements
It is a pleasure to look back on the numerous letters, e-mail exchanges, and conversa-
tions that I have had over the years with my friends and colleagues about the contents
of this book. They all added to my knowledge or corrected mistakes I had made.
I mention Marten Jan Bok first because, in addition to his frequent help, he encour-
aged me to write a book about auctions of works of art in Amsterdam, at a time when
I had just begun to collect sales inventories for my database.1I am also grateful to him
for helping me in the finishing stages of publishing this book, with checking informa-
tion, with the collection of illustrations, and with other matters to which I was not
able to attend. Paul Crenshaw read the latest version of the book in typescript and
gave me the benefit of his perceptive comments. Albert Blankert, Alan Chong, Neil
DeMarchi, Amy Golahny, Anne Goldgar, Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, Walter
Liedtke, Otto Naumann, Gary Schwartz, and Michael Zell commented on individ-
ual chapters, some of which were published elsewhere. Jeroen van Meerwijk con-
tributed to my research on notarial inventories and made a special investigation at
my request of the court cases involving the art dealer Johannes de Renialme in the
Rijksarchief in The Hague. S. Middelhoek and Wout Spies helped with my genealog-
ical research on the Van Maerlen and Van Soldt families (Chapter 19) and on Rob-
bert van der Hoeve (Chapter 21). In the last stages of revision, Louisa Ruby of the
Frick Art Reference Library answered many questions about my database on Ams-
terdam inventories, to which, due to a computer breakdown, I no longer had access.
David Smith of CUADRA Associates gave me his patient, unstinting, and efficient
help with my software problems and with the development of my databank on Ams-
terdam auction sales and inventories. Suzanne Bogman and Chantal Nicolaes of Am-
sterdam University Press, who carefully copy-edited the typescript, helped to guide
the book to its completion. I am grateful to them all.
John Michael Montias
New Haven, June 2002
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References to Archival Sources
The archival references in this book, unless otherwise specified, are to manuscript
sources preserved in the Municipal Archives of Amsterdam (Gemeentearchief Am-
sterdam, abbreviated GAA, but generally omitted). Within the GAA, I make use
exclusively of three archives: notarial (abbreviated NA), Orphan Chamber
(Weeskamer, abbreviated WK) and Bankruptcy Chamber (Desolate Boedelskamer,
abbreviated DBK).
Monetary Equivalents
17thcentury prices and values, throughout this book, are either expressed in gulden
(abbreviated ƒ), stuivers (20 to the gulden, abbreviated st.), and penningen (16 to the
stuiver, abbreviated pen.), or in Flemish pounds (6 gulden to a pound). Prices are
usually expressed as in the following example: ƒ 10: 5: 3. This should be read as
10 gulden, 5 stuivers, 3 penningen. In some tables, to save space, the stuivers have
been converted to fractions of a gulden, rounded off to the second decimal. Thus,
ƒ 10.26 is equal to ƒ 10: 5: 3. Occasional reference is also made to schellingen, worth
6 st. and to rijksdaalders (or rycxdaelders), worth 2 ƒ 10 st.
It is useful to remember that a semi-skilled carpenter was paid about 1 gulden a
day and that a typical merchant’s house in Amsterdam cost anywhere from ƒ 5,000
to 13,000 ƒ (which was the price for which Rembrandt bought his large house on
the Breestraat).
Notice
A reasonable attempt has been made to write the proper names in this book in a con-
sistent manner. This means choosing one variant of each name as it was written in the
17th century and sticking through it. This standard has not systematically been
achieved. However, the main variants of the “standard spelling” have been inserted
in the index in parentheses wherever such minor inconsistencies have been detected.
8 john michael montias
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Part I The Auctions