Next year, a major monographic exhibition about Artus Quellinus I (1609-1668) will take place at the Royal Palace Amsterdam, organized jointly by the Royal Palace and the Rijksmuseum. For this project, curators Marjan Pantjes, Liesbeth Noortwijk and Bieke van der Mark are looking for two early sculptures by the artist, a terracotta model of a horse and an ivory sculpture of Venus and Amor, as their current location is unknown.

The terracotta horse from 1638 is 28,5 cm high. It is the earliest known signed and dated work by Artus Quellinus I, and was sold by Christie’s New York on 10 January 1990. Unfortunately, the buyer’s name could not be retrieved by the auction house.

The ivory sculpture of Venus and Amor is signed AQ.F. It was last published in Geneviève van Bever, Les “Tailleurs d’Yvoire” de la Renaissance au XIXe siècle, Brussel 1946, nr. XXIX. In the past, the sculpture was in the collection of Philippe d’Oultremont in Brussels, though it is unclear whether this was in 1946, at the time of Van Bever’s publication, or in the nineteenth century.

Please contact Marjan Pantjes (m.pantjes@dkh.nl, +31 63 000 0301) if you have any information about the location of these sculptures. Any clues to their whereabouts would be much appreciated.