This handsome monograph was published to accompany the exhibition devoted to the Netherlandish sculptor Artus Quellinus (1609–1668) at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam in 2025. Rather than being a catalogue, this is a collection of short and erudite essays on different aspects of Quellinus’s life and work, together providing an illuminating survey of his oeuvre. Contributors include Frits Scholten, Alice Taatgen, Marjan Pantjes, Liesbeth van Noortwijk and Derek Biront, as well as the editor, Bieke van der Mark.

Despite his recognized importance as a baroque sculptor, Quellinus has not until now been the focus of a major exhibition. The present publication indirectly explains why this is the case: the core of his work resides in the exceptional statues and reliefs produced for the Amsterdam Town Hall, now known as the Royal Palace, dating from the 1650s and 60s. Other major works by Quellinus comprise tombs in the Netherlands and elsewhere. To display even a fraction of such marbles in a museum setting would be out of the question. In addition to these monumental works, Quellinus’s other sculptures encompass portrait busts, some ivories and numerous terracotta models. Many of these are discussed in the book, although, as stated above, it is not designed primarily as a catalogue.

Bieke van der Mark’s opening essay helpfully summarises Quellinus’s career, and the artistic context in which he worked, noting that Antwerp, his native city, had fallen into decline during the first half of the seventeenth century, following the revolt against the Spanish in 1568 and the subsequent 80 Years War. Amsterdam was conversely a thriving centre of trade, rising to civic and cultural prominence during the century. Quellinus was awarded the commission for the sculptural programme at Amsterdam Town Hall because he was renowned as the foremost sculptor of his time in the Netherlands. For this reason, he and his wife moved to Amsterdam in 1650, so that he could work on the decoration of the Town Hall, the architecture of which was being designed by the architect Jacob van Campen (1597–1657). Quellinus lived in Amsterdam for fifteen years, until 1665, working for the burghers on this major project, though he additionally carried out work for patrons elsewhere.

The book is divided thematically, rather than chronologically, with erudite contributions from a range of authors, including the editor, on for example the sculptor’s formation in Antwerp, where he was influenced by Rubens (1577–1640), though he was never apprenticed to the Flemish master. Quellinus also spent time in Rome from 1634/6, where he was welcomed by François Du Quesnoy (1597–1643), and became a member of an informal study group, known as the Academy of Antiquity. These two strands – the style of Rubens, along with the classical heritage – became intertwined in Quellinus’s work: generous, fleshy forms, combined with classicising facial features and poses. Frits Scholten discusses the lively and naturalistic portrait busts, such as a late work, a striking likeness of the Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt dating from 1664-5. This half-length shows the subject holding his gloves, his intelligent and sensitive face finely rendered in marble. For British sculpture lovers, such a portrait seems to prefigure the work of Michael Rysbrack (1694–1770), working in England in the following century.

As well as illustrating and discussing Quellinus’s own work, this book looks at the output of other Netherlandish artists, noting his eminent predecessors and contemporaries, including Hendrik de Keyser (1565–1621), Gérard van Opstal (1594–1641), Jérome Du Quesnoy (1602–1654), François Dieussart (c.1600–1661) and Lucas Faydherbe (1617–1697). These renowned artists represent a central aspect of Northern sculpture at this date. But Quellinus could be said to be the apex of this fertile era. The reliefs and statues he carved in the Tribunal at the Town Hall of Amsterdam epitomise his genius, bringing to the North all he had learnt in Italy, yet at the same time transforming the visual language into an idiom to be admired by the civic authorities and individual patrons of the Netherlands, and by innumerable art lovers ever since.

The authors have produced a first-rate study of Quellinus which is both scholarly and accessible. Two editions are available, in Dutch and English respectively, meaning it is accessible to anglophone readers, as well as those in Quellinus’s native land.

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