The Golden Compasses

The History of the House of Plantin-Moretus

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Chapter 10
The Patrician Residence^1.

The ‘great house’ has been seen expanding from a rather modest home concentrated round simple workrooms into one of the architectural wonders of Antwerp. From the inventories of the family possessions and particularly from those taken on their deaths, the masters of the Golden Compasses can be seen turning their premises into a luxurious residence and filling it with art treasures, stage by stage, as they expanded the building itself.

Each generation contributed something, but on the other hand, on the death of every master or master's widow the interior furnishings and collections were divided and dispersed again among the heirs: a rhythmic alternation of gathering and scattering so that of the treasures which filled the Plantin House in days gone by only a fraction remains. Yet considering the many generations of the Moretus family and the impressive number of heirs in every generation, the most surprising thing is that so much has been preserved in the house in the Vrijdagmarkt.

Comfort and external luxury seem to have meant little to Plantin. By the time of the master printer's death his house may possibly have contained a few more furnishings and objets d'art than were listed in the modest inventory of the auction of 1562,^2. but even in later years the printer had little money to spare for embellishing the domestic life of himself and his family.

1. There is as yet no general study of the art treasures gathered by the Moretuses or of the Plantin-Moretus Museum collections. Rooses's catalogues - and the Sabbe revisions of these - contain interesting and useful information (cf. p. 259, note 1).

2. See p. 43.

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Only one simple work of art in the Plantin-Moretus Museum was probably acquired by the founder of the house. This is his portrait, by an anonymous sixteenth-century master, but even this painting may have been commissioned and paid for by one of his sons-in-law. In any case, the piece is not included in the inventory taken on the death of Jeanne Rivière, in 1596.^1. This inventory simply lists some everyday household effects and useful articles, together with some silver and gold ornaments, including a massive gold medal portraying the Prince of Orange and a little medal bearing the head of a King Henry of France - but none with a portrait of Philip II! The total value amounted to a mere 2,718 fl. 8¾ st.^2.

Nor do Jan I Moretus and Martina Plantin seem to have indulged in many personal expenses. The total value of the movable property left by the widow of Jan I Moretus in 1616 was assessed at 7,165 fl. 19½ st. The lion's share of this property, amounting to 3,213 fl. 14 st., was acquired by Balthasar I (partly as his rightful share and partly by purchase from the other heirs). Only a list of these possessions remains.^3. They included a gilded head of Justus Lipsius (worth 93 fl. 9 st.), a gold chain and medal with the head of Archduke Albert (245 fl.), and a few pictures, none of great value.^4.

With Balthasar I a new, more artistically aware generation began. The crippled son of Jan I Moretus turned the humble Plantin home into an architectural jewel. He was also the first of the family to acquire other than soberly utilitarian furniture and to adorn the walls of his house with other than second or third-rate paintings. It is not possible to trace these activities of the humanist, art-loving Balthasar in detail. A thorough combing of his correspondence and accounts might still conceivably bring interesting particulars to light, but for the present all that is available is some information about his purchases of paintings (especially from his childhood friend Rubens) and his orders to Hans van Mildert and Pauwel Diricx for the decoration of his ‘new building’. These orders have already been mentioned above;^5. the relationship with Rubens will be discussed in more detail below.^6.

1. Arch. 99, pp. 703-754.

2. See p. 168, concerning Jeanne Rivière's estate.

3. Arch. 102, pp. 597-599.

4. See p. 325 for these paintings.

5. That is to say for the period 1620-1622 (see pp. 280-281). For the wood carvings executed by Pauwel Diricx in the years 1637-1639, see p. 314.

6. See pp. 317-318, 323-324.

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Balthasar II was his unmarried uncle's heir. It was one of the delights of this Moretus to draw up inventories (and wills). Among the inventories he left is one of all he possessed on 31st December 1658 (and a second, with a few amendments, of 31st December 1662),^1. in which with the meticulousness of a notary he listed everything, down to the merest trifle, with the estimated value beside it. Setting out as it does the possessions of a distinguished mid-seventeenth-century gentleman, this is a unique document, and one which deserves to be published and studied.

In 1658 Balthasar II valued the ‘great house’ at 40,000 fl., the printing-press (that is, the equipment of the printing house, including the stocks of lead type, woodblocks and copperplates) at 24,000 fl., his personal library at 10,000 fl., his jewels at 6,039 fl. 11 st., his gold and silver at 6,519 fl. 18 st. and the total of his remaining movables at 17,861 fl.

This remainder includes an impressive quantity of linen (totalling 5,324 fl. 2 st. in value), pewter (624 fl. 8 st.), copper (289 fl.), ironmongery (102 fl.), a reasonable number of beds and pillows (594 fl.; including a pair of ‘beds for ten [persons] with their bolsters’ and also a pair ‘with bolsters for nine [persons]’),^2. an item headed ‘woodwork’, which covers bedsteads, tables, benches, dressers, sideboards, screens, etc. (800 fl.), supplemented by a separate item for chairs (480 fl.) and for chests (50 fl., including a ‘bride's coffer’ for 12 fl.); also blankets (149 fl.), cushions (70 fl.), tablecloths (338 fl.), and ‘all the clothes, both for the body of my wife and for mine own body, I estimate in all the value of 1,200 fl.’

These were articles which, apart from their number and fine quality, were among the customary furnishings of the middle class dwelling of those days. A further series of items is more luxurious: fine porcelain (542 fl. 10 st.), more than no paintings (4,080 fl.), a long list of gilt leather and tapestries (1,130 fl.) and hangings (723 fl.). There was not a room that does not seem to have been hung with costly embossed leather and tapestries or scarcely less expensive materials - even the servants' rooms.^3.

1. Both included in the same register: Arch. 108.

2. Original Dutch text: ‘... bedde van thienen met den hooft-peulinck... bedde met hooft-peulinck van neghen’.

3. Arch. 108, p. 46 (1658 inventory): ‘Reghister vande goude leyren ende tapyten. Het goude leyr hanghende inde groote camer, de groote blom blaeuw, 400 fl.; het goude leyr boven op de groote camer swart en goudt, 200 fl.; de tapyten op de nieuwe camer ghestimeert op 200 fl.; het goude leyr inde eetcamer, de groote blom blaeuw Spaensch, 120 fl.; het goude leyr op arise slaepcamer boven, blauw, 60 fl.; het goude leyr op het maeghdecamerken, gout op goudt, 50 fl.; het goude leyr in Lipsius earner goudt en groen, 50 fl.; het goude leyr ligghende op den solder, 50 fl.’ [Register of the gilt leather and tapestries. The gilt leather hanging in the big room, the large blue flower, 400 fl.; the gilt leather in the big room upstairs, black and gold, 200 fl.; the tapestries in the new room estimated at 200 fl.; the gilt leather in the dining-room, the large Spanish blue flower, 120 fl.; the gilt leather in our bedroom upstairs, blue, 60 fl.; the gilt leather in the maid's room, gold on gold, 50 fl.; the gilt leather in the Lipsius room, gold and green, 50 fl.; the gilt leather lying in the attic, 50 fl.] - a total of 1,130 fl. - Arch. 108, p. 53 (1658 inventory): ‘Behanghsels 1 root cramoisyne damaste behanghsel met een damaste sargie ende wieghdcleet ende vier damaste bollen, 500 fl.; 1 root lakene behanghsel met eene lakene sargie, 200 fl.; 1 groen kemelshaere behanghsel op de tapyte earner, 40 fl.; 1 groen heerensaeyen behanghsel op onse slaepcamer, 30 fl.; 1 gheel Akensche saeye behanghsel op het maeghdecamerken, 20 fl.; 2 pavilloenen op de knechtscamer, 15 fl.; 2 pavilloenen op de bovenkindercamer; 1 ghestrept behanghsel op de knechtscamer, 6 fl.’ [Hangings 1 crimson-red damask hanging with a damask bedcover and cradle-cover and four damask tassels, 500 fl.; I red woollen hanging with a woollen bedcover, 200 fl.; I green camel-hair hanging in the tapestry room, 40 fl.; 1 green rough serge hanging in our bedroom, 30 fl.; 1 yellow Aachen worsted hanging in the maid's room, 20 fl.; 2 canopies in the servants' room, 15 fl.; 2 canopies in the upstairs children's room; 1 striped hanging in the servants' room, 6 fl.'] - a total of 723 fl.

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Balthasar concludes his register of furnishings with a summary of articles for which he could think of no general heading, and which can be called ‘sundries’ (1,365 fl. 4 st.). The latter include, besides four plaster heads in the library (4 fl.), the ‘figure of Laocoon with its table’ (12 fl.), a few not too expensive mirrors, ‘a guncase with three firelocks, a musket, 2 pistols, 4 rapiers and a pocket pistol’ (40 fl.), etc., a number of valuable objets d'art and scientific instruments: a tortoise-shell escritoire with stand (300 fl.), a large mirror with tortoise-shell frame (120 fl.), a bronze crucifix (100 fl.), a clavicymbal with legs (but without the lid, which is noted separately among the paintings: 36 fl.), a ‘horologe’ in the Lipsius room (60 fl.), ‘two globi celestis et terrestris... with their stands’ (60 fl.), ‘a copper sphere, two medium globes, various mathematical instruments’ (in all: 100 fl.).

The splendour and pomp of the interior of the great house in those years must have been worthy of its new architectural frame. Christophe Plantin's grandson and great-grandson turned their home into a little treasure-house where they need not be ashamed to receive kings and princes. Despite the successive divisions of the estate the interior of the Plantin house continued to be splendid and impressive; anything lost to the house was

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(76) Opposite: The office or comptoir (now Room 10), upholstered with Malines gilt leather.

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(77) Opposite: The big drawing-room on the ground floor (now Room 2). Against one of the walls, each at one side of the fireplace, are two artistic cabinets (cf. plates 81 and 82). The portraits are by Rubens.

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immediately replaced by the new owners with equally or even more beautiful pieces. It will not be attempted here to follow their comings and goings. Several inventories and allocations of property have in any case been lost. Others are not always very detailed or exact.^1. An exception deserves to be made of the house inventory on the decease of Anna Maria de Neuf, widow of Balthasar III Moretus, in 1714.^2.

Balthasar II left a systematic, priced inventory of all that his house contained. The inventory of 1714 gives no values and is not systematic, but in it room after room is conjured up and a picture is presented of the whole as it then was.

This, for instance, is how the three big reception rooms on the ground floor in the east wing looked in 1714 (Rooms 1, 2 and 3):^3. ‘First downstairs in the little marble room (Room 1): first twelve black Spanish leather double chairs; item the gilt leathers with black ground; a mirror with gilt frame;

1. Apart from the inventories of Balthasar II quoted above and the one given in note 2 the most important of these are: the inventory of the estate of Anna Goos, Balthasar III's widow, 1691 (Arch. 719; it should be supplemented by reference to particulars of the distribution of the estate in Arch. 724, nos. 143 sqq.) and that of Joannes Jacobus Moretus, 1757 (Arch. 486).

2. Arch. 720.

3. Original Dutch text: ‘Eerst beneden inde cleyne marmere caemer: eerst twelf swarte Spaensche leire dobbel stoelen; item de goude leiren swarten grondt; eenen spiegel met vergulden leyste; eene ingeleyde taefel; twee witte venstergordijnen; item een schilderye schouwstuk wesende Kersnacht van Gerardus Segers; item eenen schouwdoeck. Inde eerste groote caemer neffens de voergaende: eerst de goude leiren witten grondt; een schribaen met silver beslaeghen; twee porceleyne teylen; eenen cop van peirle-moeye in silver verguldt; acht groen fluweele dobbele stoelen ende twelff ghelycke fluweele enkele stoelen; vijf witte gordijnen voor de vensters; eene groene syde gordyne voor de deure; een schouwcleet; eene ysere plaete met copere ringen inde schouw met tange ende schup; eenen schouwdoeck; eene schilderye schouwstuck wesende de Offerhande vande Dry Coninghen van Rubbens geschildert; een Teurckx tapyt; eene ingeleyde taeffel van schiltpadde; eenen spieghel met schiltpadden leyste. In de tweede groote caemer neffens de voorgaende: eerst sess en dertigh pourtraitten waer aff eenige syn vande familie ende de andere vande fameuste auteurs hangende boven de tapyten; item de tapyten verbeeldende landtschappen met figueren, bestaende in thien stucken soo groote als cleyne; item een schribaen met silvere plaeten; item twelff roode fluweele stoelen ende twelff roode fluweele dobbele stoelen van spaens houdt; twee groote spiegels met schiltpadde leysten; twee ingeleyde schiltpadde taefels; item geschilderde blaffeturen; item seyde gordynen voor de vensters; item eene schilderye schouwstuck van Boeyermans geschildert; eenen schouwdoeck; item thien silvere armen; item eene silvere gedreven fruytschotel; eene straede van roode stoffe vande lenghde van de caemer; een gebronseerde buste onder de schouw.’

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an inlaid table; two white window curtains; item an overmantel painting depicting Christmas Night by Gerard Zegers; item an overmantel canvas. In the first big room next to the above (Room 2): first the gilt leathers with white ground; an escritoire with silver fittings; two porcelain plates; a mother-of-pearl bowl in silver gilt; eight green velvet double chairs and twelve single chairs of the same [green] velvet; five white curtains at the windows; a green silk curtain at the door; a hearthrug; an iron grate with copper rings in the hearth with tongs and shovel; an overmantel canvas; an overmantel painting depicting the Gifts of the Three Kings, painted by Rubens; a Turkish carpet; an inlaid table of tortoise-shell; a mirror with tortoise-shell frame. In the second big room next to that (Room 3): first thirty-six portraits, of which some are of the family and others of famous authors, hanging over the tapestries; item the tapestries depicting landscapes with figures, consisting of ten pieces both large and small; item an escritoire with silver plates; item twelve red velvet chairs and twelve red velvet double chairs of Spanish wood; two large mirrors with tortoise-shell frames; two inlaid tortoise-shell tables; item painted shutters; item silk curtains at the windows; item an overmantel painting by Boeyermans; an overmantel canvas; item ten silver brackets; item a silver chased fruit dish; a piece of red cloth the length of the chamber; a bronze bust under the chimneypiece.’

This was how the Justus Lipsius room looked in 1714, or rather, this was what it contained:^1. ‘A small painting showing the Church of St. Peter of Aardenburg and filled in by Biset; an overmantel painting depicting the sacrifice of Paul and Barnabas; the portrait of Father Moretus the Minorite; item black gilded leathers with gilt ground; a wood inlaid table; a writing desk; an inlaid nutwood table; a tick-tack board; twelve black leather men's chairs; a mirror with black frame; two porcelain bowls; six white porcelain

1. Original Dutch text: ‘Eene deyne schilderye wesende de kerck van Ste Petrus van Eerdenburgh geschildert ende van Biset gestoffeert; eene schilderye schouwstuck wesende het sacrificie van Paulus ehde Bernabass; het pourtrait van pater Moretus minderbroeder; item swarte goude leiren met gouden gronde; eene houte ingheleyde taefel; een schryflaeyken; eene ingheleyde noteleyre taefel; een tictac bardt; twelf swarte leire mansstoelen; eenen spighel met swarten leyste; twee porceleyne commen; sesse witte porceleyne ciocolat commen met vergulde voeten; sesse porceleyne thé taskens met schoteltiens ende vergulde voeten; dry witte lynwaerte gordynen; sesthien serpentine soo pottekens als tassen; item brandyser, schup, tange ende blaesbalck; eenen tennen come ende thée pot.’

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chocolate bowls with gilt stands; six porcelain tea cups with saucers and gilt stands; three white linen curtains; sixteen little serpentine pots and cups; item fire-irons, shovel, tongs and bellows; a pewter coffee and teapot.’

This was how one of the bedrooms was equipped - the one called the ‘corner room’:^1. ‘First gilt leathers with black ground; a bedstead with grey cloth hangings with fringes, a bedspread, a flowered cotton calico, a tablecloth, a straw mattress in two parts, a bed with pillows and bedclothes, and bed valance; a hardwood table; a carved wooden dressing-table, consisting of a mirror, a square casket, two round boxes, a pair of smaller boxes, a clothes-brush, and a pair of carved candelabra; a small case covered with green velvet; an overmantel painting symbolizing the seven sins; item the portrait of the deceased lady of the house with gilt frame; a small painting portraying Christ; two small portrait miniatures of Christ and Mary in tortoise-shell frames; a tortoise-shell crucifix with palmwood Christ; a black painted softwood prie-dieu; a washstand; an iron grate with copper balls and rings; a hearth-cloth of brown silk stuff; five men's and two women's red plush chairs; item seventeen porcelain chocolate cups with seven gilt stands; item thirteen Indian potlets and cocoanuts; a tortoise-shell escritoire with stand; item five white curtains with the iron runners’.

What is left of all this pomp and splendour? Relatively little, if comparison is made with the inventories, but quite a lot if a tour is made of the rooms of the Plantin-Moretus Museum. Not all the works of art in the present museum were included in the transfer of 1876. Over the years the

1. Original Dutch text: ‘Eerst goude leyren swarten gronde; een ledicant met grauw laken behanghsel met frennien, een spreye, eenen geblomden cattoenen culcke, en tafelcleedt, eene stroye matras van twee stucken, een bedde met peul en beddecleedt, ende toer de lict; eene harthaute taeffel; eene gesnede houte toilette, bestaende in eenen spieghel, eene viercante casken, twee ronde doosen, twee gelyck cleynder dooskens, eenen cleerborstel, ende twee gelycke gesnede candelarkens; een cleyn kistien becleedt met groen fluweel; eene schilderye schoustuck verbeeldende de seven sondaeren; item het pourtrait vande jonckvrouwe aflyvige met vergulden leyste; eene cleyne schildereye verbeldende Christus; twee cleyne pourtraitten miniature verbeldende Christus ende Maria in schiltpadde leysten; een cruys van schiltpadde met eenen palmenhouten Christus; eene swart geschilderde weeckhoute knielbancke; eenen lampetvoet; eene ysere plaete met copere bollen ende ringhen; een bruyn syde stoffen schouwcleedt; vyf mans ende twee vrouwe roode trype stoelen; item seventhien porcelyne ciocolat tassen met seven vergulde voeten; item derthien Indiaense pottekens ende cocusnoten; een schiltpadden scribaen met voedt; item vyf witte gordynen met de ysere geerden.’

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Museum administration has bought a number of pieces or borrowed them from other Antwerp institutions to fill the rooms: chairs, tables, chests,^1. gilt leathers,^2. clocks,^3. lustres,^4. ceramic tiles (set in the fireplaces),^5. grates,^6. paintings,^7. etc. Admirers of the Museum have often shown their appreciation by gifts and legacies.^8.

But the most beautiful and also the most interesting pieces as far as the history of art and culture is concerned were handed over in 1876 with the great house, having formerly graced the drawing-rooms, dining-rooms and bedrooms of the Moretus family. In practically every room of the Museum a number of these silent but eloquent witnesses to the prosperity of the Antwerp printing family can be admired.

1. See pp. 308-309

2. See pp. 311-312

3. See p. 309.

4. As far as is known all the lustres in the Museum have been acquired since 1876.

5. It has been impossible to find out whether any items in this part of the Museum collections were included in the transfer of 1876. In any case the majority were acquired and added after 1876.

6. Cf. the preceding note.

7. See pp. 316 sqq.

8. Especially paintings (cf. p. 320); also some furniture (cf. below), clocks (cf. p. 309), and sculptures (cf. p. 316).

Furniture

The Plantin-Moretus Museum boasts a number of very interesting seventeenth and eighteenth-century chests and tables, but it is practically impossible to specify now which of them formerly belonged to the Moretus family and which were acquired subsequently by the Museum authorities.^9.

Only the two art cabinets (displayed in Room 2) and the tortoise-shell table (Room 1) are known for certain to have been Moretus possessions. The two art cabinets are all that remain of the countless escritoires of every shape and size which were once distributed among the rooms of the great house. They are really magnificent specimens of their type. One is covered with tortoise-shell, framed in rosewood and ebony and decorated with twenty-three Biblical themes painted on white marble; the cupboard is supported by four negroes. This is very typical Baroque work of the first half of the seventeenth century and may possibly be identified with the tortoise-shell escritoire with stand (value 300 fl.) in the 1658 inventory. The

9. The beautiful Boule cabinet in Louis-Quinze style, exhibited in Room 16, is part of the L.J.J. Somers bequest, 1895.

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(78) Opposite: The Lipsius room (now Room 11). The room has been known by this name since the early seventeenth century as it was used by the great scholar on his visits to the Plantin house. It is upholstered with very rare Spanish gilt leather. The painting over the fireplace is called The Four Philosophers: it shows Lipsius, Jan Woverius and Philip Rubens, with the painter Rubens in the background. It is a contemporary copy of a painting by Rubens, the original of which is now in the Palazzo Pitto at Florance

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(79) Opposite: The drawing-room on the first floor (now Room 21). Originally used by Balthasar I as a library. The fireplace contains wood-carving by Pauwel Diericx (c. 1640). The fine gilt leather upholstery is later (c. 1700). Against the left wall is a showcase with china and earthenware that once belonged to the Moretus family.

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other art cabinet - in rosewood and inlaid with niello-work in pewter - is of somewhat later date. It was specially made for the Moretus family - witness Plantin's printer's mark on the little door inside.^1. This must be one of the two ‘silver-fitted escritoires’ listed in the inventory of 1714.^2.

The table inlaid with tortoise-shell is another fine specimen of Antwerp luxury furniture of the seventeenth century; it may be one of the three ‘inlaid tortoise-shell tables’ which in 1714 adorned the reception-rooms on the lower floor.

1. The intertwined initials on a panel of the outer door might be read L V O; their meaning remains obscure.

2. The two cabinets are discussed in the study of C. van Herck, ‘Antwerpsche scribanen’ in Jaarboek van Antwerpen's Oudheidktundige Kring, 9, 1933, pp. 53-83.

Clocks

The silver-gilt clock in the form of a clocktower which now stands on one of the cabinets was, according to Moretus family tradition, a gift from Archduke Albert and his wife Isabella; it can be identified with the ‘horologe’ (value 60 fl.) which in 1658 stood in the Justus Lipsius room.^3.

3. The rest of the clocks in the Museum have been acquired since 1876 or are on loan from the Antwerp Archaeological Museum (the Vleeshuis). The clock in Room 16 which is a companion piece to the Boule cabinet and executed in the same style is also part of the L.J.J. Somers bequest; another Louis-Quinze clock in Room 21 was bequeathed by F.H.-M. van Hal, 1897.

Musical Instruments

Over the years the Moretus family bought various valuable harpsichords. A ‘clavicymbal with its stand’ is listed at 36 fl. in the inventory of 1658; the lid, painted by Van Balen, was listed separately among the paintings and assessed at 80 fl. A ‘great clavicymbal tailpiece by the old Cochet’ had the place of honour in the first library in 1714. Petrus Joannes Couchet had delivered this piece in 1673 for the sum of 336 fl., and the legs separately (‘of limewood, painted in tortoise manner’) for 29 fl.^4.

These two harpsichords have vanished without trace, but another very unusual musical instrument took their place and has been preserved. It combines into one instrument a harpsichord and a spinet, and as such is extremely remarkable and rare (only two or three similar harpsichord-spinet

4. Arch. 710, Furniture, no. 3.

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combinations seem to be known). An inscription gives the maker, place (Roermond), and date: ‘Ioannes Iosephus Coenen, presbyter et organista cathedralis me fecit. Ruramundae A^o 1734.’^1.

1. There is a detailed description of the instrument in the later editions of the Rooses and Sabbe Catalogus.

Globes

In 1658 Balthasar II owned ‘two globi celestis et terrestris... with their stands’ (valued at 60 fl.) and ‘a copper sphere, two medium globes, various mathematical instruments’ (100 fl. in all). These instruments were listed in the inventory of 1691, but on the death of Anna Maria de Neuf, the two smaller globes had already disappeared; after 1714 all trace is lost of the other pieces.

Later masters of the Gulden Passer were to make good the loss in part by the purchase of a new pair of globes, which, luckier than their predecessors, are displayed to this day in the library with their original elegantly carved stands. These celestial and terrestrial globes were made in Paris by Robert de Vaugondy fils, and bear the date 1751.

These are both interesting and rare pieces, but still more interesting for the history of cartography and voyages of discovery are the terrestrial and heavenly globes which were acquired by the Museum at the end of the previous century and now occupy a place of honour in the geography room: two rare pieces from the workshop of the Van Langeren dynasty, the most eminent spherographers and cartographers of the Southern Netherlands in the first half of the seventeenth century.^2.

2. The globes - which were originally kept in the City Archives - have inscriptions which indicate that Arnold-Floris van Langeren (died between 1628 and 1635?) was the maker. It has been suggested that they date from 1609 or 1620 (P. Génard, ‘Les globes du géographe Arnould Florent van Langren’ in Bulletin de la Société royale de Géographie d'Anvers, 8, 1883, p. 153), but legends on the terrestrial globe give later dates - 1622, 1627 and 1644 (cf. Denucé, Oud-Nederlandsche kaartmakers in betrekking met Plantijn, II, p. 91, note 1). The part on which these inscriptions appear, however, seems to be of later date than the rest of the work. The celestial globe has also been retouched.

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Porcelain and ceramics

Among the family possessions handed over to the City of Antwerp in 1876 there was also a small collection of porcelain and faience, now distributed among the various rooms of the Museum.^1. The collection does not offer anything very remarkable to the connoisseur, comprising only a few faience dishes and bowls, bearing the Plantin compasses or the coat-of-arms of the Moretus family.^2.

This porcelain and earthenware represents only a fraction of what the Moretus family owned and used at that time. The greater part was divided and distributed among the heirs, but we can assume that in the course of the years much of it was broken and carelessly thrown away. Excavations in the Museum cellars between January and April 1944 brought broken family possessions of this kind to light: sixteenth and seventeenth-century pots and bowls, pipe-bowls etc., of which the least damaged are now reverently displayed on a table in the kitchen (Room 8).

The excavation of the cellars also disclosed a quantity of tiles which were found to be fragments of the tile pictures so beloved and so characteristic of the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There were enough tiles left of two or three of these for the pictures to be reconstructed and the date and place of manufacture to be fixed. They proved to be rare Antwerp work of the late sixteenth century.^3.

1. There is a manuscript catalogue in Dutch and French by C. van Herck.

2. Considered by Van Herck to be seventeenth-century Hamburg or North Netherlands' work.

3. C. van Herck, ‘Een vondst van Antwerpsche tegeltableaux uit het einde der XVI^e eeuw’ in Jaarboek van de Koninklijke Oudheidkundige Kring van Antwerpen, 20-21, 1944-1950, pp. 121-127.

Embossed leather

When Balthasar II's inventory of 1658 first revealed something of the home life of the masters of the Golden Compasses, the most elegant showrooms of the house were found to be hung with ‘gilt leathers’.^4. Later the Moretus family repeatedly decorated additional rooms^5. with these costly hangings,

4. See p. 303, note 3.

5. As did Balthasar III when decorating the Bonte Huid. On 26th December 1675 he noted: ‘In voorcamer beneden aen de straet: 189⅔ ellen goude leir maken 2¾ camers ende 13⅔ ellen leire den gront met swarte side gestroeyt: 246 fl. 15 st.... In de groote camer achter tegen het groot comptoir: 220½ ellen goude leir maken 3¼ camers en 12½ ellen leir, den gront peirel couleur en gout, eenige blommen geschildert met groen en root: 283 fl. 14 st.’ [In the front downstairs room facing the street: 189⅔ yards of gilt leather making 2¾ rooms and 13⅔ yards of leather, its background strewn with black silk: 246 fl. 15 st. In the large room behind the big office: 220½ yards of gilt leather making 3¼ rooms and 12½ yards of leather, the background pearl-coloured and gold, with some flowers painted green and red: 283 fl. 14 st.] (Arch. 723, p. 183). In 1682 there was delivered to him ‘een cammerleer van de patroen Afrique silver ende goudt, de blommen en beesten geschildert naer het leven, de grondt van swarte syde wesende’ [a leather room hanging with an Africa pattern in silver and gold, the flowers and animals drawn from life, the background being of black silk]. (Arch. 710, folio 12.)

[p. 312]

which were regarded as ‘movable’ goods and as such were regularly divided among the heirs. Of the impressive number of gilt leathers which decked the walls of the house in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, only a fraction has survived.^1. These few, however, with the leather hangings bought by the Museum authorities after 1876,^2. are enough to make the Plantin house one of the few museums where this wall decoration, so typical of the houses of the property-owning middle class in the Western Europe of the sixteenth, seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century, is really well represented.

The leather hangings in the Lipsius room - the ‘gilt leather black and gold’ (valued at 200 fl.) which decorated the ‘great chamber above’ in 1658, but by 1691 was already hanging in the Lipsius room - constitute one of the few known examples in the world of a complete room of genuine Cordovan leather, the original ‘guadamacil’.^3. The rest of the leather hangings in the Plantin house are more likely to have come from Southern Netherlands workshops (Malines, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries).^4.

1. In Rooms 10 (the office), 11 (the Lipsius room), 19 (the Rubens room) and 21 (the Drawing-room).

2. In Rooms 22 (the Archives room), 23 (the Geography room), 25 (the Small Drawing-room) and 26 (the Bedroom).

3. See plate 84. Cf. H. Clouzot, Cuirs décorés. II ‘Cuirs de Cordoue’, [1920], plate 6.

4. On the trade in Spanish and Malines gilt leather in Antwerp in the seventeenth century, see J. Denucé, ‘Spaansch en Mechelsch goudleder te Antwerpen in de XVII^e eeuw’ in Antwerpsch Archievenblad, 2nd series, 9, 1934, pp. 161-185.

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Tapestries

Two sets of tapestries were handed over to the City of Antwerp with the great house in 1876. One is the work of a Flemish-Brabant (possibly Brussels) workshop of the sixteenth century (now in Room 1). It now consists of seven tapestries, but these were probably cut up in the past by one of the Moretus family to fit the room for which they were intended: the seven pieces can be reduced to three large and one small tapestry (probably a fragment of a larger piece which has disappeared). On the border of the dress of one of the figures is the name ‘Thomyris’, so it may be assumed that the tapestries were meant to depict events from the life of the legendary queen of the Massagetes, who defeated and had beheaded Cyrus, King of Persia - or from the life of Cyrus himself.

These tapestries once belonged to the Losson-van Hove family, whose coat-of-arms appears here and there on the borders of the tapestries. But to judge from the Plantin compasses, which are woven into the borders in several places, they must have been taken over during manufacture by one of the owners of the Golden Compasses. The fact that the tapestry work dates from the sixteenth century led Max Rooses to assume that this owner must have been Christophe Plantin himself.^1. The borders are, however, of a later date than the tapestries themselves. From the style, they were made in the seventeenth century, perhaps with the specific purpose of framing the central panels. So it may also have been a Moretus, probably Balthasar I or Balthasar II, who bought this set of tapestries.

The second series comprises five tapestries: landscapes with shepherds, huntsmen, sellers of game, a dancing bear, loving couples, a quack. It is Oudenarde work from the end of the seventeenth century (now in Room 6).

The archives of the Plantin house furnish little information about these acquisitions. In his inventory of 1658, Balthasar II confines himself to the summary note, ‘tapestries in the new chamber: 200 fl.’ The inventory on the death of Anna Maria Goos, 1691, is not much more informative. The ‘tapestry chamber’ (probably the.same as the ‘second big room’ of 1714, now Room 3) is listed as being hung with tapestries depicting landscapes. The inventory of Anna Maria de Neuf, 1714, gives a few more details: the

1. Rooses, Catalogus.

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‘second big room’ contained ‘tapestries depicting landscapes with figures, consisting of ten pieces, both large and small’.^1. This, however, poses a new problem: does this refer to the two series, the pieces of which were all hung up together? Or does it simply refer to the first set, which would mean that a number of its tapestries have disappeared without trace?

1. Cf. the description of this drawing-room, p. 306.

Sculpture

Mention has already been made of how Balthasar I decorated the inner courtyard he had created for the Golden Compasses (and the entrance to his new bookshop) with carvings, and how his successors continued this tradition.^2. It has also been noted that Plantin's grandson commissioned Pauwel Diricx to carve many ornaments for the new building in 1620-22, including a number of decorations on the beams and the elegant little lion, which still watches faithfully over the stairs below the gallery.^3. For the ‘new building’ of 1637-39, Balthasar I called on this Antwerp craftsman again. The frames round the entrance door to the present proof-readers' room (Room 9) and the door leading to the Antwerp printers' room (Room 20) and the fireplace ornamentation in the corner room (Room 19) and in the salon on the first floor (Room 21)^4. were executed by Pauwel Diricx in those years.

The front part erected in 1761-63 was also suitably adorned. In 1781 the widow of Franciscus Joannes Moretus ordered from the Antwerp sculptor Daniel Herreyns a number of wood reliefs with allegorical subjects - Architecture, Geography, Painting, Mathematics, Sculpture, Astronomy - to be set above the doors in the hall and a few rooms on the first floor.^5.

A riddle is posed by the low relief carving round the exit door of Room 6: two columns on both sides of the door together with their capitals and adjacent panels, carved with remarkable decorative motifs in the Early Flemish Renaissance style (c. 1550). According to the information provided by Max Rooses,^6. it may be assumed that these wood carvings were already

2. See pp. 285-286.

3. See pp. 280-281.

4. The first of these rooms was designated by Balthasar as an office or shop; the last two were library rooms.

5. Rooses, Catalogus. Cf. Arch. 734, Art, no. 73.

6. Rooses, Catalogus (first French edition, 1881, p. 47). Cf. L. Degeorge, La maison Plantin á Anvers, 1886, p. 72.

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framing this door in 1876-77, i.e. when the room in question was still the stable of the old Plantin house and had not yet been converted into a drawing-room. This stable was the ground floor of the Houten Passer (Wooden Compasses), which, before being demoted to a stable, and apart from the brief period when it served as a bookshop, had been a rented house. The carving, which may date from before the erection of the Houten Passer in 1579-80, may have been put there by one of the tenants and left behind or taken over by the Moretus family. In any case, it deserves careful examination by experts.

The Moretus family were very fond of bas-relief as a decorative feature, but they seem to have had less taste for sculpture as an independent form of artistic expression. The inventories of the house in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries mention a statue or statuette only occasionally. The two little ivories, seventeenth-century Flemish work, depicting St. Martin and St. George, listed on the death of J.J. Moretus, 1757, and valued by the assessors at 30 fl., are now displayed in Room 21. The few other pieces have been lost, with the exception of the busts put up in the libraries by the Moretus family in the seventeenth century^1. and still on show there; but these are plaster representations of Greek and Roman philosophers and emperors, and are of little intrinsic value or importance.

Nevertheless, the Plantin-Moretus Museum does possess a few really remarkable pieces dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and belonging to the Moretus family collections, which must have been overlooked in the inventories: the graceful terracotta Virgin of Loreto (seventeenth century), resplendent above the presses in the printing-office (Room 14); the three wood carvings representing Virtue, Doctrine and Honour (eighteenth century, now standing in the type room: Room 13); a series of busts in terracotta portraying masters of the Golden Compasses (models for the busts in the courtyard)^2. and a few less important pieces.^3.

More important to the history of art are the twelve Apostles and the five images of Popes, prelates, and monks, executed in limewood; with their

1. Cf. p. 361.

2. Busts of Balthasar II, Balthasar III (two different works), Balthasar IV and Joannes Jacobus: they are all exhibited in Room 18.

3. Including a terracotta bust of Brabo (Room 22).

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dynamic force and powerful expression, they are splendid examples of Flemish wood sculpture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They are the lopped heads of life-size statues, still bearing on the back the staples with which they were once fastened to a pillar in some unknown church, before they were acquired by the Moretus family. But when and how this happened is still a mystery.^1. It is not impossible that this purchase or acquisition was of comparatively recent date, possibly in the Napoleonic period, after the sale of church property. This would explain why these seventeen fine statues of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were not included in the older inventories - and also why they left the church (or churches) of which they must have been among the loveliest ornaments.

The nineteenth century is also represented by a few works of art from the original collection of the Moretus family: the almost life-size Apollo carved in stone in 1809 by the Brussels sculptor Guillaume Godecharle (1750-1835), placed in the great hall, and a small bas-relief in beaten leather, Christ before Caiaphas, signed Justin (possibly Justin Mathieu, 1796-1864).^2.

1. Cf. J. Denucé, ‘De twaalfapostelen van het Muzeum Plantin- Moretus’ in De Stroom, 1, 1918, pp. 54-58.

2. Sculptures acquired by the Museum authorities since 1876 have been confined to: two wooden statuettes of the Virgin (Rooms 4 and 17); two marble busts of Leopold de Wael, Burgomaster of Antwerp (by Eugeen van der Linden) and Edward Moretus (by Robert Fabri), officially presented to the Museum by a committee on 12th August 1881 (in the Museum, entrance); the Red Lion, a seventeenth-century terracotta sign belonging to the Verdussens, the famous Antwerp printing family, presented to the Museum in 1943 by Mrs. de Puydt, one of the last descendants of the family (cf. H. Bouchery, ‘De “Rode Leeuw” der Verdussens’ in De Gulden Passer, 20, 1942, p. 297); and the bronze bust of Maurice Sabbe by Willy Kreitz, presented by a committee in 1952.

Paintings^3.

Paintings aroused the collector's passion in the Moretus family far more than sculpture. They evinced a great preference for portraits, a few of which go back to the time of Plantin and Jan I Moretus. They are all the work of anonymous masters: the portraits of Christophe Plantin;^4. of Magdalena

3. There is a manuscript catalogue by H. Bouchery. The important documentary information is given in Rooses's and Sabbe's Catalogus. On the subject of the works painted by Rubens see H. Bouchery and F. van den Wijngaert, P.P. Rubens en het Plantijnsche huis, 1941 (more particularly Part I, ‘Petrus Paulus Rubens en Balthasar I Moretus’ by H. Bouchery).

4. Probably a copy after the painting of an also anonymous master in the University Library at Leiden. The date of 1554 on the painting should be read 1584. The Leiden portrait has the right year.

[p. *81]

(80) Opposite: The drawing-room in the front building. This room (now the Emile Verhaeren Salon) was fitted out in 1763. The wall paintings are the work of Theodoor de Bruyn.

[p. *82]

(81) Baroque cabinet from the first half of the seventeenth century. It is covered with tortoise shell, framed in rosewood and ebony, and decorated with Biblical scenes painted on white marble. It is supported by four negro figures. Cf. plate 77.

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Plantin and Egidius Beys; of Jacob Moerentorf and Adriana Gras, Jan I Moretus's parents; of Nicholas de Sweert and Elisabeth Janssens de Bisthoven, the parents of Jan II Moretus's wife, Maria de Sweert (refurbished by Jacob van Reesbroeck in 1659). The first five of these may be the ‘5 portraits of grandfathers and mothers, Margerite Moeyken’, listed at 30 fl. in the inventory on the death of Martina Plantin, 1616.

In October 1620 Jan Woverius gave his friend Balthasar I Moretus a portrait of their beloved teacher, Justus Lipsius, showing the scholar at the age of 38.^1. Plantin's grandson was also to spend considerable sums on building up a gallery of portraits of members of the family, friends, and famous personalities. For most of these he commissioned no less an artist than Rubens himself. The first series, between 1613 and 1616, comprised the portraits of the founder of the house, Christophe Plantin; Balthasar's father, Jan I Moretus; his teacher, Justus Lipsius; a few great Renaissance scholars and patrons of the arts: Pope Leo X, Lorenzo de' Medici, King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, Pico della Mirandola, and King Alphonso X of Aragon.^2. Possibly the portraits of Pope Nicholas V and Cosimo de' Medici also belong to this series but they are not listed in Rubens's invoices.

In 1633 Balthasar I arranged through Jan Woverius to have the portraits of Cardinals Baronius and Bellarminus painted in Brussels by a painter whose name is not known. With these, as he wrote to his friend on 7th January 1623, he had enough portraits ‘to decorate my little hall’ (aululae meae exornandae).^3. But a few years later, between 1630 and 1636, the printer and humanist ordered from Rubens another series of portraits: it was now the turn of the wives of Christophe Plantin and Jan I Moretus - Jeanne Rivière and Martina Plantin - who could at last be hung beside their husbands; the parents of Jan I Moretus, Jacob Moerentorf and Adriana Gras, were copied from the anonymous sixteenth-century paintings mentioned above; three other great scholars and friends of the house - Arias Montanus, Abraham Ortelius and Pierre Pantin - were also included in the gallery.

For the first series Balthasar paid Rubens 14 fl. 8 st. per painting. For the

1. Rooses, Catalogus.

2. Together with the portraits of Plato and Seneca, of which more later.

3. Arch. 138, folio 94. Cf. H. Bouchery and F. van den Wijngaert, op. cit., p. 29.

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second the painter charged 24 fl. per work. Balthasar tried to haggle for the old price but the master was not to be cajoled even by his bosom friend and Balthasar had to pay the new price demanded. For Rubens these sums are very much on the low side. His fees were usually a great deal more than the 24 fl. which Balthasar thought too high. Some Rubens experts believe that although the painter received the money, the work was in fact done by pupils.^1. This was undoubtedly the case with the portraits of the art patrons. Pope Leo X, Lorenzo de' Medici, Pico della Mirandola, King Alphonso, King Matthias Corvinus, as well as Pope Nicholas V and Cosimo de' Medici were actually painted by none too skilled pupils. But the portraits of members of Balthasar's family (Christophe Plantin, Jeanne Rivière, Jacob Moerentorf, Adriana Gras, Jan I Moretus, Martina Plantin) and of intimate family friends (Justus Lipsius, Abraham Ortelius, Arias Montanus, Pierre Pantin) reveal the hand of the master. For those paintings Rubens must have done more than simply oversee his pupils' work: even if he did not paint the whole picture, the heads were certainly the product of his genius.

With this portrait gallery Balthasar seems to have been content, but his nephew and successor carried on the tradition. Balthasar I, with the inferiority complex derived from his physical infirmity, stubbornly refused to have his portrait painted in his lifetime, even by his good friend Rubens. The first portrait made of him was commissioned by Balthasar II; it shows Plantin's grandson on his death-bed. From this painting the artist Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert made another portrait, less sinister and more in the genre idiom. For these ‘twee contrefaictsels van oom saligher, een doot, een naer het leven’ [two likenesses of my late Uncle, one dead, one as in life] Willeboirts received the sum of 96 fl. (11th October 1641).

Balthasar II gave the same painter other commissions. For the portrait of Father Balthasar Corderius he paid Willeboirts the sum of 50 fl. in February 1647. It was the same artist who perhaps painted portraits of Gaspar Gevartius, Erycius Puteanus, Godefridus Wendelinus.^2.

Willeboirts Bosschaert was not the only painter patronized by Balthasar II.

1. This view is held by H. Bouchery among others: op. cit., pp. 33-34.

2. This is the opinion of Max Rooses. It is, however, not impossible that these portraits were, in fact, executed by another artist, e.g. Erasmus Quellin, who also painted some other humanists' portraits for Balthasar II: see p. 319.

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He had portraits made of Joannes Malderus, Bishop of Antwerp, of Jan Woverius, his uncle's bosom friend (the sum of 21 fl. was paid for both portraits together on 31st July 1650), and of Jean Jacques Chifflet and Jules Chifflet, his own close personal friends (23 fl. was paid for both portraits on 17th March 1650), by his cousin Balthasar van Meurs.

Erasmus Quellin was also approached. Apart from a grisaille of Balthasar I, after the portrait by Bosschaert, and intended as a model for an engraving, this artist supplied portraits of Balthasar's father, Jan II Moretus, and of Aubertus Miraeus (together 16 fl., paid on 10th September 1642), and - a little later - that of the Antwerp humanist-physician Ludovicus Nonnius (together with a sketch for a frontispiece, 15 fl., paid on 18th April 1647).^1.

It was Jacob van Reesbroeck, however, who painted the portraits of Balthasar and his nearest family. In 1659 and 1660 Moretus paid this artist the sum of 100 fl. 10 st. for the portraits of himself, his wife Anna Goos and his mother Maria de Sweert, and 44 fl. ‘for the portrait of our son Balthasar, when he went to live in Paris’.^2.

It was also probably thanks to Balthasar I and Balthasar II that the portrait gallery was enriched with the portraits of the Italian humanists Angelo Poliziano and Marsilio Ficino, the French polemicist Mathias de Morgues, and two Jesuit scholars from the Netherlands, Leonardus Lessius and Carolus Scribanus. The archives of the Plantin house give no information about these acquisitions, so that even the painters' names are unknown. This is also true of the author of the portrait of Balthasar II aged 23, whose indistinct monogram has been variously interpreted as that of Antoine Palamedes and that of Melchior Mierevelt.

After Balthasar II the Moretus family in general was content to have portraits made of their immediate entourage. There are a few exceptions. On 8th July 1717, 75 fl. 12 st. was paid to Jan van Helmont for the portraits of J.J. Moretus, his wife Theresia Mathilda Schilders, and Pope Clement XI. For the rest there are only family portraits. A few artists can still be identified and the prices they asked discovered in the Plantin archives: F. Tassaert asked 5 guineas per painting for the portraits of F.J. Moretus and his wife Maria Theresia Borrekens, and 2½ guineas for that of their son Ludovicus,

1. He made perhaps some other humanists' portraits for Balthasar II: cf. p. 318.

2. In 1660 Balthasar III, then aged 14, was sent to the Seigneur de Morfontaines (until 1663).

[p. 320]

and is credited in the accounts with the sum of 142 fl. 3 st. under this heading on 29th July 1762 (the portrait of Ludovicus has not been preserved).

The other Moretus portraits which have survived from the second half of the seventeenth and the eighteenth century have to be classed as the work of anonymous artists: the portrait of Balthasar III Moretus, and the two portraits of his wife Anna Maria de Neuf; the two portraits of Balthasar IV and his wife Isabella Jacoba de Mont; another portrait of J.J. Moretus and his wife Theresia Mathilda Schilders.

The later Moretus descendants also had a number of portraits of their ancestors copied, probably to adorn other rooms of their houses. Balthasar Beschey, for instance, received the sum of 21 fl. in 1757 for a copy of the portrait of Balthasar I. The odier copies - of Christophe Plantin, Jeanne Rivière, Jacob Moerentorf, Jan I Moretus and Martina Plantin - were done by unknown painters at unspecified dates after the originals by Rubens.

This makes an impressive total of 71 portraits, 41 of the family and 30 of eminent native and foreign humanists and art patrons.^1. The Museum authorities were able to supplement this part of the collection to some extent with purchases and gifts.^2.

Compared to this portrait gallery, the genre paintings from the original

1. Humanists and scholars from the Netherlands, or who worked there, were: Benedictus Arias Montanus (1527-1598), Jean Jacques Chifflet (1588-1660), Jules Chifflet (1610-1676), Balthasar Corderius (1592-1650), Gaspar Gevartius (1593-1660), Leonardus Lessius (1554-1623), Justus Lipsius (1547-1606; two portraits), Joannes Malderus (1563-1633), Aubertus Miraeus (1573-1640), Mathieu de Morgues (1582-1670), Ludovicus Nonnius (born c. 1553), Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598), Petrus Pantinus (1556-1611), Erycius Puteanus (1574-1646), Carolus Scribanus (1561-1629), Godefridus Wendelinus (1580-1667), and Jan Woverius (1576-1635). Foreign humanists and art patrons were: the Popes Nicholas V (died 1455), Leo X (1475-1521), Clement XI (1649-1721); Cardinals Caesar Baronius (1538-1607) and Robert Bellarminus (1542-1621); King Alphonso of Aragon and Naples (1384-1418), King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (1443-1490), Cosimo de' Medici (1389-1464) and Lorenzo de' Medici (1448-1492), Marsilius Ficinus (1433-1499), Angelus Politianus (1454-1494) and Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494).

2. Portraits of the Plantin-Moretus family: Christophe Plantin (a miniature by an anonymous master - purchased in 1880); Frans Raphelengius (a modern copy by A. Thijs after an anonymous work at Leiden - 1938-39); Melchior Moretus (by S. de Bray - acquired between 1893 and 1897); Edward Moretus (by J. Delin - commissioned by the City of Antwerp, 1879); Edward Moretus and Albertina du Bois, his wife (both works by J. Delin - donated in 1953); Constant J.H. Moretus, 1797-1866, and Maria de Stephanis, his wife who died in 1853 (miniatures by Mansion - both purchased in 1901); Augustin T.S. Moretus, 1791-1871 (by B. Pagani - donated in 1950) and Pauline della Faille, 1796-1864, his wife (anonymous -donated in 1950). Portraits of scholars: Alexander Grapheus, c. 1519-1585 (by an anonymous master - gift of J. Dillen); Cornelius Musius, 1500-1572 (anonymous - purchased in 1899). Portraits of an unknown man and woman by an anonymous artist of the seventeenth or eighteenth century (F.H. van Hal bequest, 1897).

[p. *83]

(82) Opposite: Late seventeenth-century cabinet. Rosewood, inlaid with niellowork in pewter. Cf. plate 77.

[p. *84]

(83) Opposite: A musical instrument which combined harpsichord and spinet. An inscription states that it was made by Joannes Josephus Coenen, priest and organist at Roermond Cathedral, 1734.

[p. 321]

Moretus collections are rather few in number. Some of them bear a signature or can be ascribed on the basis of the Plantin archives. Two works by Rubens must be discussed in another context.^1. Among the remaining paintings are found: Gaspar Broers (1682-1716), Battle at Ekeren (30th June 1703), purchased in 1716 at an auction for 52 fl.; Jacob Leyssens (1661-1710), St. Joseph with the Holy Child (listed in the inventory on the death of J.J. Moretus, 1757, and assessed at 12 fl.); Joannes Lingelbach (1622-74), Still Life with hare (referred to in the 1757 inventory as ‘Hare by Lingelenbach: 20 fl.’);^2. Jan Filips van Thielen (1618-1667), Flower piece; P. Thijs, (1624/6-1677/79), Christ on the Cross (bought in 1757 for 63 fl. and used as an altarpiece in the chapel installed in the large library); Lucas van Uden (1595-1672), Winter Landscape (described as ‘winter piece by Lucas van Uden: 25 fl.’ in the 1757 inventory); Peter Verdussen (1662-after 1710), Landscape with Bridge (referred to in the 1757 inventory as ‘Landscape by Verdussen, the figures by Broers: 16 fl.’); Jan Baptist Wolfert (1625-after 1656), Huntsmen's Rest; Frans Ykens (1601-93), Madonna and Child in a Wreath of Flowers and Fruit; Gerard Zegers (1591-1651), Adoration of the Shepherds (a large ‘overmantel canvas’, bought in 1649 for 400 fl. and assessed at 450 fl. in the 1658 inventory); and the Country Pleasures and a few grisailles executed by Theodoor de Bruyn in 1761-63 for the dining-room in the front extension.

Two are anonymous copies of work by Rubens. ‘The Lion hunt, overmantel painting, a good copy after Rubens’ is in fact a very good painting which was on the wall of one of the salons as early as 1658 and even then assessed at 40 fl., that is, considerably more than the original portraits of members of the family and scholars by Rubens which ‘taken all together’ were put at 10 fl. each. There is no documentary data about Doubting

1. The Van Meurs printer's mark and the design in grisaille for a title-page - in the chapter devoted to the illustration of the Plantinian book (Vol. II).

2. Included in the anonymous works in Bouchery's catalogue. The author has made his attribution on the grounds of the 1757 inventory.

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Thomas (after the painting now in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp); this copy is in any case of inferior quality.

Data and attributions are also lacking for the artists responsible for St. Paul at the house of St. Aquila and St. Priscilla, a fine work by a seventeenth-century master; The Flight into Egypt (seventeenth century) and a number of canvases of the school of Rubens.

The subject and authorship of one painting are in dispute: the seated man peering through spectacles at the papers on the desk in front of him is generally referred to as ‘The proof-reader’, and very often the still more detailed description is given: ‘Cornelis Kiliaan [proof-reader under Christophe Plantin] at work.’ In 1874, when an inventory was drawn up of the paintings owned by Edward Moretus, this beautiful sixteenth or seventeenth-century painting was ascribed to Adriaan van de Venne (1589-1665). Having at first accepted this attribution, after 1893 Max Rooses apparently supported the authorship of Pieter van der Borcht (1545-1608). The Moretus inventories, however, give the name of Van de Venne, if only in the 1757 inventory, where the painting is mentioned as ‘The Philosopher of Vanden Venne: 4 fl.’ The painting is mentioned for the first time in the 1696 inventories, in which it is described once as ‘studerende philosofken’ [studying philosopher] and elsewhere as ‘een advocaet studerende’ [a lawyer studying]. In 1714 mention is also made of a ‘studying lawyer’. The traditional view, which sees this man, diligently intent on his papers, as a proof-reader, and more particularly as Cornelis Kiliaan, is thus not confirmed in the Moretus archives. The painting itself seems, in any case, to have come into the possession of the family only in the second half of the seventeenth century. This series of genre paintings was supplemented by a few canvases after 1876, some of them quite noteworthy.^1.

1. Old masters: Abel Grimmer, Landscape with Biblical scene (bequeathed in 1937 by Mrs. E. Vanderlinden); and an early copy after Rubens, The Four Philosophers (purchased in 1922). Modern masters: Jozef Bellemans, In Christophe Plantin's workshop (gift of Miss Leclef, 1953); Edouard de Jans, Abraham Ortelius in his study (presented in 1939 by E. Beuckeleers-Donche); and Cornelis Seghers, The Invention of Printing (presented by D. Vervoort). Other paintings have been included in the collection since 1876, but the date and manner of their acquisition cannot be ascertained: E. Quellin, Christ and the Woman of Samaria; M. Schoevaerts, The Antwerp Roadstead; H. Sporckmans, The Carmelite Order confirmed by the Pope; and the anonymous, seventeenth-century Disciples at Emmaus.

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In the collection of the Plantin-Moretus Museum the portraits therefore predominate. This, however, is not because the family concentrated over the centuries on collecting this sort of painting. It is simply because the portraits were more or less always included among the ‘fixed effects’ of the house and were left as a priority to the successive masters of the Gulden Passer. It was the genre paintings which principally fell victim to division by inheritance.

The history of these disappearances is in its way as fascinating as the history of the Moretus collection. It is also more difficult to follow. The problem has as yet been studied in detail only in relation to the paintings of Rubens.^1.

Apart from the portraits referred to above and the few grisaille sketches which must be dealt with in another connection,^2. Balthasar I Moretus also bought other works from his childhood friend. The first series of portraits, done between 1613 and 1616, also includes paintings of Seneca and Plato, while at a time which cannot be accurately fixed (after 1624 anyway) Rubens's account was credited with 150 fl. ‘pour cinq figures peintes sur paneel, a scavoir N. Dame avec l'Enfant Jésus, St. Joseph, St. Jaspar, St. Melchior et St. Balthasar... à 30 fl. la piece’; ‘pour deux visages peints sur paneel de Christus et Maria’. The last two panels are not mentioned again in the 1658 inventory: they had probably already disappeared from the house by then. Balthasar II, however, could still note: ‘Joseph, Mary, and Three Kings in five pieces, originals by Rubens: 100 fl.’ - and: ‘Seneca and Plato in two pieces, original by Rubens: 30 fl.’ And he was able to add a new and valuable work: ‘Drij Coninghen, schoustuck van Rubens: 600 fl.’ [Three Kings, overmantel painting by Rubens: 600 fl.].

In 1691, after the death of Anna Goos, the Seneca and Plato fell to the lot of Balthasar III. They are probably included in the anonymous body of 36 ‘portraits hanging over the tapestries’ [in the ‘second big room’] noted in the inventory of Anna Maria de Neuf, widow of Balthasar III, 1714. At all events, when they are mentioned by name again it is in the auction

1. H. Bouchery and F. van den Wijngaert, op. cit.

2. Cf. p. 321, note 1. - Balthasar I also bought paintings from. Rubens for use outside the Golden Compasses: The Resurrection of Christ (1610-1612, for his father's tomb in Antwerp Cathedral, where it can still be seen); and The Martyrdom of St. Just (1628-1629, intended for the Church of the Annonciades, Antwerp, now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux).

[p. 334]

catalogue of the property of the widow Verdussen (Antwerp, 1777). The Seneca then disappeared again, and was bought back in 1923 by the Plantin-Moretus Museum from an antique shop, whose only information was that the work came from the Baltic area, where it had hung for many years in a castle (near Riga?). It is a magnificent painting, which can be regarded as the finest work in the Museum collection. The Plato, after being mentioned for the last time in the auction of Albert Fonson's goods (Oudenarde, 1820), has been lost. The Three Kings - Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar - were certain to be found in the collection of a family which had chosen the Star of Bethlehem as its symbol and named its sons after these kings. Nevertheless, the Three Kings also departed from the Gulden Passer after 1714 (and before 1781), together with Mary and Joseph. Mary and Joseph have not reappeared, but it has been possible to follow up the Three Kings. Until 1881 they stayed together, then their ways parted - Melchior and Gaspar went to the United States;^1. the Moorish King Balthasar, having belonged to Hermann Goering during the Second World War, is now in the possession of a Brussels collector, who has lent the work to the Rubens house in Antwerp.^2.

The most impressive - and most valuable - of the Rubens paintings bought by the Moretus family to embellish the great house was, however, the ‘Three Kings, overmantel painting’. It was listed again in the estate of Anna Maria de Neuf (1714), but between that date and 1748 it was bought from a Moretus by ‘M. Godefroy le peintre’, who travelled the Low Countries to acquire paintings on behalf of the Parisian banker Charles Godefroy. The big canvas - 7′ 1″ × 8′ 7½″ - after a short stay in Paris, then journeyed to Potsdam, where it enriched the collections of the King of Prussia.

Apart from these originals, Balthasar I and Balthasar II also bought a few copies of Rubens's paintings. The Lion Hunt, listed in 1658, stayed in the Plantin house. The rest have been lost since 1714: Christ, Mary and the Thirteen Apostles, a total of fifteen paintings, bought on 14th January 1615 by Balthasar I from his brother-in-law, the engraver Theodoor Galle, for

1. The ‘Greek’ king Gaspar has returned to Europe in recent years - albeit perhaps temporarily. It was auctioned in London in 1962 (Sotheby & Co. catalogue, 27th June 1962).

2. Cf. Anvers, ville de Plantin et de Rubens. Catalogue de l'exposition... Bibliothèque nationale, 1954, p. 245.

[p. *85]

(84) Sample of Spanish gilt leather from the wall of the Lipsius Room.

[p. *86]

(85) Opposite: Sixteenth-century Brussels wall tapestry from the ‘Tapestry Room’ if (now Room 1). The borders are seventeenth-century and show alternately Plantin's compasses and the coat-of-arms of the Losson-Van Hove family (see top of photograph, slightly left of centre). Possibly one of the Moretuses (either Balthasar I or Balthasar II) purchased the tapestries from a member of the Losson-Van Hove family before the borders had been completed.

[p. 325]

110 fl. (and quoted by Balthasar II in 1658 at 60 fl.), and ‘Joseph ende Maria, boffetstuck nae Rubens: 15 fl.’ [Joseph and Mary, sideboard piece after Rubens: 15 fl.], which first appear in the inventory of 1658.

The tribulations of the works of another master have been followed up already: the Labor et Constantia by Erasmus Quellin, a large ‘overmantel painting’ (4′ 7″ × 7′ 11″) for which Balthasar I Moretus paid 250 fl. to the artist on 20th September 1640, was rediscovered in the 1930's by Maurice Sabbe, the curator of the Museum, in the castle of Baron de Weichs of Roesberg near Brühl (between Cologne and Bonn). The works of art which decorate the castle were assembled by Baron Karel de Keverberg (1768-1841), who was Governor of the Province of Antwerp from 1815 to 1817 and after 1817 of the Province of East Flanders. It was probably in those years that Erasmus Quellin's painting passed from the possession of some member of the Moretus family (or a related family) into that of the Dutch nobleman.^1.

The many other works which have come and gone again in the house are still waiting for an art historian to track them down. Many of the paintings were only listed in summary form in the inventories. For instance it is quite impractical to try to identify the works which Balthasar I inherited from his mother in 1616: eight small round paintings (‘rondekens’) of the prodigal son (20 fl.), 1 overmantel canvas (2 fl. 10 st.), 1 painting of Resurrection (8 fl.), 1 landscape by Momper (8 fl.), 1 woman with puppy in Evangelio (7 fl. 5 st.), 1 parrot painted (1 fl.), 1 Arias Montanus (6 fl.), I Matthew de Denario (30 fl.), 1 Martha and Magdalene cooking (18 fl.), 1 Blessed Virgin with copper brackets (8 fl. 10 st.), 1 painting of Paul and Barnabas (10 fl.), 1 Ecce Homo (22 fl.), ...1 Saviour by Master Michiels (20 fl.), 1 Martha and Magdalene cooking (12 fl.), 1 Mary Magdalene with [long] hair (8 fl.), 1 Emmaus (12 fl.).^2.

But in the list of over 110 paintings which Balthasar II could note as his property in 1658, he names the artists of a number of the vanished works, which may simplify further detective work and ultimate identification. The

1. M. Sabbe, ‘Labore et Coustantia. Een schilderij van Erasmus Quellin’ in De Gulden Passer, 12, 1934, pp. 107-109; M. Sabbe, ‘Nog over het schilderij “Lahore et Constantia” van Erasmus Quellin’ in De Gulden Passer, 13, 1935, pp. 37-38.

2. For the ‘5 contrefeytsels’ [likenesses] see p. 317.

[p. 326]

list is long and impressive enough to tempt the experts to hunt further:^1. ‘Whitsuntide, overmantel painting by Van Balen (300 fl.); Christ among the doctors, sideboard piece by Abraham Janssens (400 fl.);^2. Paul and Barnabas, overmantel piece by Langhen Pierre (500 fl.); Ptolemeus Philadelphus, overmantel piece by Seghers (200 fl.); Mary, Joachim, and Joseph, overmantel piece by Jordaens (80 fl.); the Risen Christ, sideboard piece by Michiel Coxie (60 fl.); Stag-hunting, overmantel piece, copy after Snyders (40 fl.); Winter Scene by Momper, with figures by Breugel the Elder (25 fl.); a landscape by Tobias Verhaecht (15 fl.); Christ sitting on a rock, a small piece by Mostart (15 fl.); clavicymbal lid, original by Van Balen (80 fl.).’^3.

In what collections (and with what attributions?) are now to be found the ‘fine overmantel piece’ painted by Nicolaas Boyermans, and depicting the ‘History of Scipio Africanus’, bought by Balthasar III Moretus for 200 fl.;^4. the ‘Lipsius in Parnassus’ (5 fl.) listed in 1691; and the smaller paintings in the estate of Joannes Jacobus Moretus, 1757?^5.

1. Only those works for which Balthasar II noted the artist's name are mentioned here.

2. Bought by Balthasar I on 17th October 1624 for 480 fl. (Arch. 734, Art, no. 73 bis.).

3. Original Dutch text: ‘Sinxen schoustuck van Van Balen (300 fl.); Christus onder de doctoren, boffetstuck van Abraham Janssens (400 fl.); Paulus eude Barnabas, schoustuck van Langhen Pierre (500 fl.); Ptolemeus Philadelphus, schoustuck van Seghers (200 fl.); Maria, Joachim ende Joseph, schoustuck van Jordaens (80 fl.); Christus verrysende, boffetstuck van Michiel Coxie (60 fl.); Hertenjacht, schoustuck, copye nae Snyders (40 fl.); Winterken van Momper, ghestoffeert van den Ouden Breugel (25 fl.); Een lantschap van Tobias Verhaegt (15 fl.); Christus op densteen sittende, een cleyn stuxken van Mostart (15 fl.); Claversinghel schele, origineel van Van Balen (80 fl.).’

4. Arch. 723, folio 183.

5. Arch. 486, pp. 21-23: ‘Vier copere plaetjens copyen naerBreugel (36 fl.); Twee zee gesightjens van Casteels (6 fl.); Twee stuckxkens van Van Hal verbeldende Susanne met de ouderlingen en Joseph vlughtende vande vrouw van Putiphar (6 fl.); Een ditto verbeldende clyne kinderkens van Van Hal (3 fl.); Een landschapken van Sibrechts (4 fl.); Dry landschapkens en eene historiestuckxken van Baeck (6 fl.); Een landschap van Meulenaer (8 fl.); Een Venetiaens gesight onbekent (6 fl.); Een zeegesight van Casteels (6 fl.); Een ditto van ditto (3 fl.); Een landschap van Momper met de figuren van den Fluweelen Breugel (25 fl.); Eenen schouwdoeck van den jongen Boel (24 fl.); Een Hl. Dryvuldigheyt (3 fl.); Sint Peeterskerck van Roomen geschildert door Van Herrenbergh, gestoffeert van Bijt (80 fl.); Een tygerjaght van Feyt (12 fl.); Een zeevaertjen van Van Eyck (7 fl.); Eene Flora het figuer van Eyckens, de blommen en vrughten van Verbruggen (30 fl.); Een Drij Koningen onbekent (5 fl.); De Pont Neuf van Parijs (7 fl.); Een rond zeegesicht van Momper (10 fl.); Een teekening van Picart verbeldende de afdoeninge van Christus van het cruys (14 fl.).’ [Four copperplates engraved after Breugel (36 fl.); two seascapes by Casteels (6 fl.); two pieces by Van Hal representing Susanna and the Elders and Joseph fleeing from Potiphar's Wife (6 fl.); one ditto depicting little children by Van Hal (3 fl.); a small landscape by Sibrechts (4 fl.); three small landscapes and one history painting by Baeck (6 fl.); one landscape by Meulenaer (8 fl.); one Venetian veduta, anonymous (6 fl.); one seascape by Casteels (6 fl.); one ditto by ditto (3 fl.); one landscape by Momper with figures by Velvet Breugel (25 fl.); one overmantel piece by the younger Boel (24 fl.); one Holy Trinity (3 fl.); St. Peter's, Rome, painted by Van Herrenbergh, staffage by Bijt (80 fl.); one tiger hunt by Feyt (12 fl.); one marine painting by Van Eyck (7 fl.); one Flore, the figure by Eyckens, the flowers and fruit by Verbruggen (30 fl.); one anonymous Three Magi (5 fl.); the Pont Neuf in Paris (7 fl.); one round seascape by Momper (10 fl.); one drawing by Picart depicting the Deposition (14 fl.).]

[p. 327]

Paintings in the Plantin-Moretus Museum^1.

Bellemans, Jozef (19th century)

In Christophe Plantins workshop

canvas 60″ × 67″. Gift of Miss Leclef, 1953

Beschey, Balthasar (1708-1776)

*Portrait of Balthasar I Moretus (1574-1641). Copy after portrait by Bosschaert, 1757

canvas 26″ × 20⅛″

Bosschaert, Thomas Willeboirts (1614-1654)

*Portrait of Balthasar I Moretus, 1641

canvas 26″ × 19¾″

*Balthasar I on his death-bed, 1641

canvas 26½″ × 30½″

*Portrait of Balthasar Corderius (1592-1650), 1647

canvas 25¾″ × 20¼″

*Portrait of Gaspar Gevartius (1593-1666)^2.

canvas 24″ × 20″

*Portrait of Erycius Puteanus (1574-1646)^2.

canvas 25¾″ × 19¾″

*Portrait of Godefridus Wendelinus (1580-1667)^2.

canvas 26″ × 20⅛″

1. Paintings made over to the City of Antwerp in 1876 are marked with an asterisk.

2. Attributed by Max Rooses to Bosschaert. Perhaps executed by another artist (Erasmus Quellin?).

2. Attributed by Max Rooses to Bosschaert. Perhaps executed by another artist (Erasmus Quellin?).

2. Attributed by Max Rooses to Bosschaert. Perhaps executed by another artist (Erasmus Quellin?).

[p. 328]

Bray, Salomon de (1597-1664)

Portrait of Melchior Moretus (1573-1634), 1625

panel 17¾″ × 16″; acquired between 1893 and 1897

Broers, Gaspar (1682-1716)

*Battle at Ekeren (30th June 1703)

canvas 67¾″ × 80″

See also Verdussen, Peter

Bruyn, Theodoor de (1726-1804)

*Country Pleasures, 1763 (mural decorations in the 18th-century drawing-room)

canvas (1) 121¾″ × 70″. (2) 121¾″ × 70¼″. (3) 121¾″ × 199¾″ (4) 121¾″ × 56″. (5) 121¾″ × 56″

*Garden divinity with putti, 1764 (grisaille in the 18th-century drawing-room)

canvas 55½″ × 52″

*Eagle, 1764 (mural over the 18th-century staircase)

153½″ × 74¾″

Delin, Jozef (1821-1880)

Portrait of Edward Moretus (1804-1880), 1879

panel 23¾″ × 20″. Commissioned by the City of Antwerp

Portrait of Edward Moretus, 1852

canvas 41″ × 31½″. Gift of A. de Granges de Surgères, 1953

Portrait of Albertina du Bois (1803-1891), wife of Edward Moretus, 1852

canvas 40⅛″ × 31½″. Gift of A. de Granges de Surgères, 1953

Grimmer, Abel (c. 1577-1619)

Landscape with Biblical scene

Circular; panel 10″

Gift of Mrs. E. Vanderlinden, 1937

Helmont, Jan van (born 1650)

*Portrait of Joannes Jacobus Moretus (1690-1757), 1717

canvas 32½″ × 26¼″

*Portrait of Theresia Mathilda Schilders (1696-1729), wife of J.J. Moretus, 1717

canvas 32¾″ × 26″

[p. 329]

Helmont, Jan van (continued)

*Portrait of Pope Clement XI (1649-1721), 1717

canvas 25¾″ × 17¾″

Jans, Edouard de (1855-1919)

Abraham Ortelius in his study, 1887

canvas 40⅛″ × 41¼″

Gift of E. Beuckeleers-Donche, 1939

Leyssens, Jacob (1661-1710)

*St. Joseph with the Holy Child

canvas 42¾″ × 31¾″

Lingelbach, Joannes (1622-1674)

*Still life with hare

canvas 38¼″ × 30¼″

Luyten, Henri (born 1859)

Portrait of Max Rooses (1839-1914), 1914

canvas 51⅛″ × 35¾″

Mansion

Portrait of Constantin J.H. Moretus (1797-1866), 1821?

miniature on ivory 3½″ × 2¾″

Portrait of Maria S.J.A. de Stephanis (died 1853), wife of C.J.H. Moretus, 1821

miniature on ivory 3½″ × 2¾″

Both purchased in 1901

Meurs, Balthasar van

*Portrait of Bishop Joannes Malderus (1563-1633), 1650

canvas 26″ × 20¼″

*Portrait of Jan Woverius (1576-1635), 1650

canvas 26″ × 20½″

*Portrait of Jean Jacques Chifflet (1588-1660), 1650

canvas 26¾″ × 20½″

*Portrait of Jules Chifflet (1610-1676), 1650

canvas 26¾″ × 20½″

[p. 330]

Pagani, B

Portrait of Augustin T.J. Moretus (1791-1871), 12th July 1870

oval canvas 254¾" x 20½"

Gift of Count Charles Moretus-Plantin, 1950

Quellin, Erasmus (1607-1678)

*Portrait of Balthasar I Moretus (1574-1641)

grisaille on panel 9" x 7⅛"

*Portrait of Jan II Moretus (1576-1618), 1642

canvas 25¾" x 20⅛"

*Portrait of Aubertus Miraeus (1573-1640), 1642

canvas 25¾" x 20⅛"

*Portrait of Ludovicus Nonnius (born c. 1553), 1647

canvas 25¾" x 19¾"

Christ and the Woman of Samaria

canvas 67" x 72"

See also Bosschaert.

Reesbroeck, Jacob van (1620-1704)

*Portrait of Balthasar II Moretus (1615-1674), 1659

panel 26" x 19¾"

*Portrait of Anna Goos (1627-1691), wife of Balthasar II Moretus, 1659

panel 26" x 20⅛"

*Portrait of Maria de Sweert (1588-1655), wife of Jan II Moretus, 1659

panel 23¼" x 19¾"

*Portrait of Balthasar III Moretus (1646-1696), aged fourteen, 1660

canvas 40½" x 30½"

Rubens, Sir Peter Paul (1577-1640)

*Portrait of Christophe Plantin, 1613-16

panel 26" x 19¾"

*Portrait of Jeanne Rivière (died 1596), wife of Christophe Plantin, 1630-36

panel 23¼" x 19¾"

*Portrait of Jacob Moerentorf (died 1558), father of Jan I Moretus, 1630-36

panel 25¾" x 19½"

*Portrait of Adriana Gras (1514-1592), wife of Jacob Moerentorf, 1630-36

panel 23½" x 19¾"

[p. 331]

Rubens, Sir Peter Paul (continued)

*Portrait of Jan I Moretus (1543-1610), 1613-16

panel 26" x 20⅛"

*Portrait of Martina Plantin (1550-1616), wife of Jan I Moretus, 1630-36

panel 25¾" x 19¾"

*Portrait of Justus Lipsius (1547-1606), 1613-16

panel 26" x 20"

*Portrait of Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598), 1630-36

panel 25½" x 19¼"

*Portrait of Petrus Pantin (1556-1611), 1633

panel 25" x 19½"

*Portrait ofBenedictus Arias Montanus (1527-1598), 1630-36

panel 25½" x 19½"

The dying Seneca, 1613-16

panel 25¾" x 19¾"

Repurchased by the Museum in 1923

*Title-page design for M.C. Sarbievius, Lyricorum libri IV, 1632

grisaille on panel 7¼" x 5½"

*Printer's mark of Jan van Meurs, partner of Balthasar I Moretus, 1618 to 1629

grisaille on panel 8" x 8¼"

*Portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici (1448-1492), 1613-16

panel 26" x 20¼"

*Portrait of Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), 1613-16

panel 25¾" x 20⅛"

*Portrait of Pope Leo X (1475-1521), 1613-16

panel 26" x 20¼"

*Portrait of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary (1443-1490), 1613-16

panel 26" x 20"

*Portrait of Alphonso, King of Aragon and Naples (1384-1458), 1613-16

panel 26" x 20⅛"

*Portrait of Cosimo de' Medici (1389-1464), 1613-16?

panel 25¾" x 19¾"

*Portrait of Pope Nicolas V (died 1455), 1613-16?

panel 24¾" x 19¼"

[p. 332]

Anonymous Copies After Rubens

*Portrait of Christophe Plantin

panel 32″ × 21½″

*Portrait of Jeanne Rivière, wife of Christophe Plantin

panel 31¾″ × 21½″

*Portrait of Jeanne Rivière

canvas 26″ × 20⅛″

*Portrait of Jacob Moerentorf

canvas 25¾″ × 19¾″

*Portrait of Jan I Moretus

canvas 26″ × 20⅛″

*Portrait of Martina Plantin, wife of Jan I Moretus

canvas 26″ × 20⅛″

*The Lion Hunt

(after the original, now in the Pinakothek, Munich), before 1658

canvas 52¾″ × 84¼″

*Doubting Thomas

(after the original, now in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp)

canvas 54″ × 47″

The Four Philosophers (Justus Lipsius, Jan Woverius, Philip Rubens, Peter Paul Rubens) (after the original, now in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence)

canvas 64⅛″ × 53⅛″

Purchased in 1922

Schoevaerts, Matthijs (born c. 1665)

The Antwerp Roadstead

canvas 29″ × 68¼″

Seghers, Cornelis (1814-1869)

The Invention of Printing: Gutenberg at Work

panel 32½″ × 41¾″

Gift by D. Vervoort

Sporckmans, Huibrecht (1619-1690)

The Carmelite Order confirmed by the Pope

canvas 66″ × 101¾″

Acquired between 1876 and 1893

[p. *87]

(86) Opposite: Wooden lion on ornamented pedestal, carved in 1621 by Pauwel Diericx for the foot of the stairs under the arcade of the north wing. It bears the coat-of-arms of Balthasar III Moretus and Anna-Maria de Neuf. As Balthasar III was not raised to the nobility until 1692, it may be assumed that the lion originally bore a different device: probably Plantin's compasses and Balthasar's I Moretus's star.

[p. *88]

(87) Peter Paul Rubens, Seneca Dying. Oil painting on panel, made between 1613 and 1616, commissioned by Balthasar I Moretus. The painting left the house at some unknown date, but fortunately the Trustees were able to repurchase it in 1923.

[p. 333]

Tassaert, Filips Jozef (1736-1803)

*Portrait of Franciscus Joannes Moretus (1717-1768), 1762

canvas 25¼″ × 19¾″

*Portrait of Maria-Theresia Borrekens (1728-1797), wife of Franciscus Joannes Moretus, 1762

canvas 24¾″ × 19½″

Thielen, Jan Filips van (1618-1667)

*Flower piece

canvas 53½″ × 47¼″

Thijs, Peter (1624/6-1677/9)

*Christ on the Cross

canvas 101¾″ × 73¾″

Uden, Lucas van (1595-1672)

*Winter Landscape

panel 6¼″ × 8¾″

Verdussen, Peter (1662-after 1710)

*Landscape with Bridge. Figures by Gaspar Broers

canvas 52¾″ × 81½″

Wolfert, Jan Baptist (1625-after 1656)

*Huntsmen's Rest

canvas 31¼″ × 35½″

Ykens, Frans (1601-1693)

*Madonna and Child in a Wreath of Flowers and Fruit

canvas 39¾″ × 28½″

Zegers, Gerard (1591-1651)

*Adoration of the Shepherds, 1649

canvas 82¾″ × 90½″

Christ returning from Limbo

canvas 61″ × 93″

On loan from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp. (Painted for the Chapel of the Virgin in the old Jesuit Church of St. Charles Borromeo, Antwerp.)

[p. 334]

Anonymous 16th-Century Masters

*Portrait of Justus Lipsins, aged 38, 1585

panel 25″ × 20¼″

*Portrait of Christophe Plantin, 1584^1.

panel 25″ × 19¾″

Portrait of Christophe Plantin

miniature on copper 4½″ × 3½″

Purchased in 1880

*Portrait of Egidius Beys (died 1595)^2.

panel 21¾″ × 19″

*Portrait of Magdalena Plantin (1557-1599), wife of Egidius Beys^2.

panel 21¾″ × 18½″

*Portrait of Jacob Moerentorf (died 1558)

panel 17¾″ × 13¾″

*Portrait of Adriana Gras (1514-1592), wife of Jacob Moerentorf, 1591

panel 24¾″ × 20¼″

*Portrait of Nicolaas de Sweert (1551-1598)

panel 25¼″ × 19¼″

*Portrait of Elisabeth Janssens de Bisthoven (1513-1594), wife of Nicolaas de Sweert

panel 25¾″ × 19¾″

Both refurbished by Jacob van Reesbroeck, 1659

Portrait of Alexander Grapheus (c. 1519-1585)

panel 16¼″ × 12″

Gift of J. Dillen

Portrait of Cornelius Musius (1500-1572)

panel 23¼″ × 17¾″

Purchased in 1899

Portrait of Frans Raphelengius

(Copy by A. Thijs, 1938-39, after the original in the University Library, Leiden)

canvas 19¾″ × 15½″

1. In fact dated 1554, which is an error for 1584: cf. p. 316, note 4.

2. On the two paintings are inscriptions which have been read by Bouchery ‘[157] 1 AET’ (Egidius Beys) and ‘[15]71’ (Magdalena Plantin). These dates cannot be accepted as Beys and Magdalena were then not yet married; moreover, Magdalena was then only fourteen years old.

2. On the two paintings are inscriptions which have been read by Bouchery ‘[157] 1 AET’ (Egidius Beys) and ‘[15]71’ (Magdalena Plantin). These dates cannot be accepted as Beys and Magdalena were then not yet married; moreover, Magdalena was then only fourteen years old.

[p. 335]

*Symbolic representation of the Plantinian printer's mark

canvas 48″ × 79¼″

Anonymous 17th-Century Masters

*The Proof-reader. Attributed to Adriaan van de Venne (1589-1665) and to Pieter van der Borcht (1545-1608)

panel 25¼″ × 19¼″

*Portrait of Balthasar II Moretus, aged 23, 1638. Attributed to Melchior Mierevelt and to Antonie Palamedes (1601-1673)

canvas 32″ × 25″

*Portrait of a member of the Moretus family

canvas 29¼″ × 23″

*Portrait, of Angelus Politianus (1454-1494)

canvas 24″ × 19″

*Portrait of Marsilius Ficinus (1433-1499)

canvas 24″ × 19″

*Portrait of Cardinal Bellarminus (1542-1621), 1622-23

canvas 25¼″ × 19¼″

*Portrait of Cardinal Baronius (1538-1607), 1622-23

panel 25¼″ × 19¼″

*Portrait of Leonardus Lessius (1554-1623)

panel 25¼″ × 19¼″

*Portrait of Carolus Scribanus (1561-1629)

panel 25¼″ × 19¼″

*Portrait of Mathieu de Morgues (1582-1670)

canvas 26″ × 21¾″

Portrait of a Man with Dishevelled Hair

canvas 26¾″ × 22¾″

*Three angels' heads in clouds. School of Rubens

Left-hand panel 20¼″ × 23″

*Three angels' heads in clouds. School of Rubens

Right-hand panel 20¼″ × 23¼″

[p. 336]

Anonymous 17th-Century Masters (continued)

*Woman with Brass Dish. School of Rubens

panel 23¼″ × 20″

*Male torso. School of Rubens

panel 25½ × 19¼

The Disciples at Emmaus

canvas 42¾″ × 57¾″

*The Flight into Egypt

canvas 26¾″ × 34″

*St. Paul at the house of St. Aquila and St. Priscilla

panel 23¼″ × 35″

Anonymous Masters, 17th-18th Century

*Portrait of Balthasar III Moretus (1646-1698)

canvas 25½″ × 21″

*Portrait of Anna Maria de Neuf (1654-1714), wife of Balthasar III Moretus

canvas 26″ × 20¼″

*Portrait of Anna Maria de Neuf

oval canvas 35½″ × 30″

Portrait of an unknown man

oval canvas 34¼″ × 26½″

F.H. van Hal Bequest, 1897

Portrait of an unknown woman

oval canvas 34¼″ × 26″

F.H. van Hal Bequest, 1897

Anonymous 18th-Century Masters

*Portrait of Balthasar IV Moretus (1679-1730)

oval canvas 32¼″ × 26″

*Portrait of Isabella Jacoba de Mont, otherwise de Brialmont (1682-1723), wife of Balthasar IV Moretus

oval canvas 32¼″ × 26″

*Portrait of Balthasar IV Moretus

canvas 25¼ ×19¼

[p. *89]

(88) Opposite: The great library (now Room 31) which at one time also served as the family's private chapel. The altar has disappeared but the reredos, Christ on the Cross by Peter Thijs (1616-77), is still there.

[p. *90]

(89) Opposite: Another view into the great library. On the bookcases are some fine heads of saints and popes carved in limewood (eighteenth century). The plaster heads, put there by the Moretuses, represent Greek and Roman scholars and emperors. On the small tables are eighteenth-century globes.

[p. 337]

Anonymous 18th-Century Masters, (continued)

*Portrait of Isabella Jacoba de Mont

canvas 26¼″ × 20¾″

*Portrait of Joannes Jacobus Moretus (1690-1757)

canvas 25¼″ × 19¼″

*Portrait of Theresia Mathilda Schilders (1696-1729), wife of Joannes Jacobus Moretus

canvas 26″ × 20½″

Anonymous 19th-Century Master

Portrait of Pauline della Faille (1796-1864), wife of Augustin T.J. Moretus, 1853

oval canvas 25¾″ × 20″

Gift of Count Charles Moretus-Plantin, 1950