Portrait of the Artist in His StudioMichiel van Musscher(Rotterdam 1645 – 1705 Amsterdam)1673
oil on panel
37.4 x 28.6 cm
MM-103© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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How to cite
Van Tuinen, Ilona. “Portrait of the Artist in His Studio” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd ed. Edited by
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Lara Yeager-Crasselt. New York, 2020–23. https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/(archived December 2023).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed by apermanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

The young Michiel van Musscher sits in his workshop and looks straight at the viewer

Comparative Figureswith supreme self-confidence. He is fashionably dressed in a brown velvet beret and apurplish brown, satin Japonse rok tied around his waist with a pink, patterned silk
scarf.[1] His eyebrows are slightly raised and his lips are parted, as though he ispreparing to engage in conversation with us. In his right hand he holds a palette,brushes, and a mahlstick, whereas his left hand is partially raised in a rhetoricalgesture, directing the viewer to an exquisite display of objects on a narrow stone
ledge in front of him: an open watch attached to a pink ribbon, a blue sheet of paper
partially revealing a washed drawing of a female nude, a tattered sketchbook, an open
book with geometrical drawings resting on a large, closed book, and a celestial globe.
In the background, in an opening framed by the figure on the left and a rich tapestry
hanging on the right, is an easel standing by a window and containing an unfinishedFig 1. Detail of Michiel van
Musscher, Portrait of the Artist in His
Studio, MM-103, showing the rightsleeve of the silk rok

painting with three figures.
This early painting by Van Musscher is executed with an astounding level of detail,and foreshadows the artist’s interest in depicting different fabrics, which would cometo full development in his late career. Van Musscher achieved the glistening quality ofthe satin rok, possibly the actual “paerse sautijne Japonse Rock” listed in Van
Musscher’s posthumous 1705 inventory,[2] by applying highlights along the folds ofthe garment with a thick brush (fig 1), and by offsetting the rok against the finely
painted bare floorboards behind him. He also achieved a remarkable realism in thetapestry, especially in the extraordinary detail of the slightly frayed edges, byalternating short, opaque brushstrokes with tiny dots to simulate the weave pattern (Fig 2. Detail of Michiel van
Musscher, Portrait of the Artist in His
Studio, MM-103, showing the tapestry

fig 2). The care Van Musscher took to depict his objects down to the most minutedetails is particularly evident in the open book, which has been identified as two© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of the Artist in His Studio
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pages from the 1555 Dutch edition of Sebastiano Serlio’s (1475–1554) famous
treatise Tutte l’opere d’architecttura et prospetiva. These pages explain how to draw anoctagonal shape in perspective (fig 3).[3] The globe showing a hint of the star sign
Ursa Major has been executed with such precision that it has been identified as thecelestial globe engraved by Pieter van den Keere (1571–ca. 1646) after a design by
the Dutch astronomer and cartographer Petrus Plancius (1552–1622) of around 1625
[4]

(fig 4).

Although the painting is unsigned and undated, an old and now illegible inscription on
the back of the panel once read: Pinxit 1673 [or 1683].[5] Around 1932 this work was
attributed to Van Musscher on an RKD (Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische

Fig 3. Sebastiano Serlio, Boeck van
Architecturen Sebastiani Serlij /tracterende van Perspectyven, trans.
Pieter Coecke van Aelst (Antwerp,
1555), fols. 7v and 8r (second book,third chapter “Van Perspectiven
aengaende den corporen / oft
Massijven dingen”)

Documentatie/Netherlands Institute for Art History) photo mount, an attribution thatwas generally, though not unanimously, adopted in the literature.[6] It does seemcertain, however, that Van Musscher painted this self-portrait. The figure’s facial
features, especially the prominent, straight nose and almond-shaped eyes, areconsistent with those in the artist’s signed self-portraits, as, for instance, his 1679 SelfPortrait in Rotterdam (fig 5) and his 1685 Self-Portrait in Amsterdam (fig 6).
Moreover, Serlio’s book and Plancius’s celestial globe also appear in Van Musscher’s
Rotterdam painting.[7] Finally, the execution of the painting is consistent with thatseen in Van Musscher’s other works. The handling of the shimmering silk and thealmost porcelain-like flesh tones, for example, are comparable to those in Van
Musscher’s 1687 pendant portraits of Pieter Ranst Valckenier and Eva Suzanna
Pellicorne, (see MM-102.a–b).
If, as seems probable, Van Musscher indeed executed this painting in 1673, he would
have been at that time 28 years old. He was just starting his successful career as oneof the most important portraitists in Amsterdam.[8] It has been suggested that theFig 4. Detail of Pieter van den Keereafter Petrus Plancius, Celestial Globe
with the Ursa Major, engraving, ca.
1625, published in Michiel van
Musscher (1645–1705): The Wealth of
the Golden Age, ed. Robert E.
Gerhardt, Tonko Grever, and Francis
Griep (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Museum
van Loon) (Zwolle, 2012), 15

young artist created this painting to showcase his abilities as a portraitist and as acraftsman who could realistically render the materials and textures of the world
around him.[9] In doing so, Van Musscher apparently took as his model one of Gerrit
Dou’s most famous and important self-portraits, which the Leiden master had painted
some eight years earlier in ca. 1665 (fig 7).[10] The two compositions are remarkably
similar, especially the postures of the artists, the manner in which they hold theirpalettes, and the views into the studio with its easel. In each work, moreover, atapestry is elegantly draped from the upper edge of the composition. The twopaintings are also thematically related; neither artist is dressed in a painter’s smock,but rather in an upper-class wardrobe that suggests his erudition: Dou in the fur
tabbaard worn by scholars in his day, and the younger Van Musscher in a modern,fashionable rok.[11] This theme of the intellectual artist is reinforced in both paintings

Fig 5. Michiel van Musscher, SelfPortrait, 1679 oil on panel, 56 x 46.5
cm, Het Schielandshuis, Rotterdam,
inv. no. HMR 10567

by the presence of the globe and the books. At the same time, by including an open
watch Van Musscher was also touching upon the concept of vanitas, he was perhaps© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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hinting that his art will triumph over his own mortality.[12]The fact that the book and the globe in this self-portrait are identifiable sets this work
apart from Dou’s self-representations. The Leiden master depicted books and globes
generically for their symbolic value. By specifically including Serlio’s book andPlancius’s celestial globe, Van Musscher asserted the full range of his artistic
expertise, which included a command of perspective and an ability to render abstract
concepts. The drawing directly under the book emphasizes his skills as adraughtsman. The ultimate testimony to Van Musscher’s talents is, however, provided
by the actual painting’s beautiful execution, which is every bit as impressive as theexpertise suggested by the painted objects.

Fig 6. Michiel van Musscher, SelfPortrait, 1685, oil on canvas, 20.5 x
17.8 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam,
inv. no. SK-A-4232- Ilona van Tuinen, 2017

Fig 7. Gerrit Dou, Self-Portrait, ca.
1665, oil on panel, arched top, 59 x
43.5 cm, Rose-Marie and Eijk van
Otterloo Collection, Boston© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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Endnotes
1. For the Japonse rok, see Marieke de Winkel, “Rollenspel,” in Kopstukken: Amsterdammers geportretteerd
1600–1800, ed. Norbert Middelkoop (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Amsterdam Museum) (Bussum, 2002),
96–97. This exotic and relatively costly kimono was often worn as an informal housecoat. Because of its
elegant appeal and the different possible variations, it was common for men in the late seventeenth
century to wear this garment in portraits.
2. For a partial transcription of this posthumous inventory, dated 20 July 1705 and kept at the Stadsarchief
Amsterdam, NA 4837, see Marieke de Winkel, Fashion and Fancy: Dress and Meaning in Rembrandt’s
Paintings (Amsterdam, 2006), 351, Appendix II, U. If the “purple, satin Japonse rok” mentioned here isindeed identical to the one in the painting executed some thirty years earlier, Van Musscher would have
had this valuable gown in his possession for a long time.
3. For the identification of the treatise, see Robert E. Gerhardt, “Michiel van Musscher: The Best
Amsterdam Painter of Small Portraits,” in Michiel van Musscher (1645–1705): The Wealth of the Golden
Age, ed. Robert E. Gerhardt, Tonko Grever, and Francis Griep (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Museum vanLoon) (Zwolle, 2012), 12. The Dutch edition, Boeck van Architecturen Sebastiani Serlij / tracterende van
Perspectyven, was translated by Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1502–50) and published by his widow in 1553
in Antwerp. Click here for an online edition of Coecke’s edition published by the University of Utrecht.
The pages depicted here are fol. 7v and 8r from the second book of the third chapter entitled “Van
Perspectiven aengaende den corporen / oft Massijven dingen” (On the Perspective of Bodies andSolids). For an English translation of these pages, see Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture: Volume One,Books I–V of ‘Tutte l’opere d’architecttura et prospetiva’ by Sebastiano Serlio, trans. Vaughan Hart andPeter Hicks (New Haven and London, 1996), 48–49.
4. For the identification of the globe, see Robert E. Gerhardt, “Michiel van Musscher: The Best
Amsterdam Painter of Small Portraits,” in Michiel van Musscher (1645–1705): The Wealth of the Golden
Age, ed. Robert E. Gerhardt, Tonko Grever, and Francis Griep (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Museum vanLoon) (Zwolle, 2012), 12.
5. The inscription was first mentioned on an old RKD (Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische
Documentatie/Netherlands Institute for Art History) photo mount around 1932, and repeated in theliterature. See also the Technical Summary. Annette Rupprecht was unable to detect the inscription withvisible, ultraviolet, and infrared illumination.
6. H. van Hall was the first to adopt this attribution in H. van Hall, Portretten van Nederlandse beeldende
kunstenaars (Amsterdam, 1963), 223, no. 6. Pieter van Thiel, however, felt that the attribution was notcorrect; see Pieter J. J. van Thiel, “Andermaal Michiel van Musscher: Zijn zelfportretten,” Bulletin van
het Rijksmuseum 22 (1974): 147 n. 10. Recently, Robert Jan te Rijdt attributed this painting to Gerrit
Dou’s student Dominicus van Tol (ca. 1635–76); see Robert Jan te Rijdt, “Het toeval helpt een beetje:
Tibout Regters—Jan Verkolje—Dominicus van Tol,” in Face Book: Studies on Dutch and Flemish© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of the Artist in His Studio
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Portraiture of the 16th–18th Centuries—Liber Amicorum Presented to Rudolf E. O. Ekkart on the
Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. Edwin Buijsen, Charles Dumas, and Volker Manuth (Leiden, 2012),
469–72. He based this attribution on the striking similarities between this painting and the descriptionsof a painting attributed to Van Tol in 1773 and 1774 auction catalogues (see Provenance). The
attribution to Van Tol is problematic. First, it could well have been an erroneous attribution made by theauctioneer in 1773. The high level of finish, the porcelain-like depiction of the human flesh, and thecareful, typical rendering of the fabrics appear to betray Van Musscher’s hand rather than the looser andless polished technique of Van Tol. Unfortunately, no self-portraits by Van Tol appear to have survived,
making it impossible to do a physiological comparison as one can with Van Musscher’s self-portraits.
7. Thanks to Robert E. Gerhardt, correspondence January 2013, copy on file at The Leiden Collection, forbringing this information to my attention. Gerhardt is currently completing a monograph on Michiel van
Musscher.
8. See Piet Bakker’s biography of the artist in this catalogue. See also the entry on Van Musscher’s 1687
pendant portraits of Pieter Ranst Valckenier and Eva Suzanna Pellicorne, MM-102.a–b, which the artist
painted when he was already well-established.
9. Robert E. Gerhardt, “Michiel van Musscher: The Best Amsterdam Painter of Small Portraits,” in Michielvan Musscher (1645–1705): The Wealth of the Golden Age, ed. Robert E. Gerhardt, Tonko Grever, andFrancis Griep (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Museum van Loon) (Zwolle, 2012), 12–15.
10. See Robert E. Gerhardt, “Michiel van Musscher: The Best Amsterdam Painter of Small Portraits,” inMichiel van Musscher (1645–1705): The Wealth of the Golden Age, ed. Robert E. Gerhardt, Tonko
Grever, and Francis Griep (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Museum van Loon) (Zwolle, 2012), 12–15, who also
compares Van Musscher’s self-portrait to this work by Dou.
11. For a discussion of Gerrit Dou’s Self-Portrait, see Ronni Baer, “Self-Portrait,” in Gerrit Dou,
1613–1675: Master Painter in the Age of Rembrandt, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. Washington
D.C., National Gallery of Art; London, Dulwich Picture Gallery, and The Hague, Mauritshuis) (NewHaven, 2000), 122–23. Dou wears a fur-lined scholar’s tabbaard, fashionable for intellectuals in the firsthalf of the seventeenth century. Van Musscher’s fashionable Japonse rok became increasingly popularamong the upper class from the 1660s onward, including among scholars, as testified by Van Musscher’s
own Portrait of the Mathematician and Astronomer Barend van Lin, signed and dated, bottom right,
1671, oil on canvas, 59.5 x 51.5 cm, Amsterdam Museum.
12. Van Musscher continued to refer to his mortality in his other self-portraits, culminating in his 1685
Amsterdam self-portrait (fig. 6), in which the moralistic inscription connects “Van Musscher’s hand thatdrew these outlines to remember his appearance” to the “hour glass . . . that teaches us of the brevity oflife” (“Dus heeft hier Muschers handt, deez Omtreck zelfs geg[even] / Tot een geheugenis, hoe zijn
gedaente was” / “De Tijd . . . thoond’ . . . dat zijn glas, / Al veel verloopen is en leerd ons ‘t brosze
leven”).

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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Provenance(Possibly sale, Johan van der Marck Aegidiusz, Amsterdam, 25 August 1773, no. 464, as by Dominicus
van Tol [to Fouquet for 200 guilders]).
Possibly Comte Du Barry (his sale, 21 November 1774, no. 70, as by Dominicus van Tol [to Langlierfor 656 livres]).
Unknown collection, Russia.
[Dr. Curt Benedict, Charlottenburg, Berlin, by June 1932.][Otto Naumann Ltd., New York, by 1997.]
Bert van Deun, Oberageri, Switzerland; by descent to his widow [Otto Naumann Ltd., New York, 2004].
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2004.

Exhibition History
Amsterdam, Museum van Loon, “Michiel van Musscher (1645–1705): The Wealth of the Golden Age,”
9 March–10 June 2012 [lent by the present owner].
Charlottesville, VA, University of Virginia, Fralin Museum of Art, “A Portrait of the Artist,
1525–1825,” January–June 2015 [lent by the present owner].
The Hague, Mauritshuis, “Dutch Self-Portraits: Selfies of the Golden Age,” 8 October 2015–3 January
2016 [lent by the present owner].
Beijing, National Museum of China, “Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The Leiden
Collection,” 17 June–3 September 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Shanghai, Long Museum, West Bund, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals in the Dutch Golden Age:
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection,” 23 September 2017–25 February 2018 [lent by the present
owner].
Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpiecesof The Leiden Collection,” 28 March 2018–22 July 2018 [lent by the present owner].
St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpieces of
The Leiden Collection,” 5 September 2018–13 January 2019 [lent by the present owner].
Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age. Masterpieces fromThe Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre,” 14 February–18 May 2019 [lent by the present
owner].

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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References
Van Hall, Hermine. Portretten van Nederlandse Beeldende Kunstenaars. Amsterdam, 1963, 223, no. 6.
Van Thiel, Pieter J. J. “Michiel van Musscher’s vroegste werk naar aanleiding van zijn portret van het
echtpaar Comans.” Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 17 (1969): 33 n. 21, no. 4.
Van Thiel, Pieter J. J. “Andermaal Michiel van Musscher: zijn zelfportretten.” Bulletin van het
Rijksmuseum 22 (1974): 147 n. 10, as probably not by Michiel van Musscher.
Raupp, Hans-Joachim. Untersuchungen zu Künstlerbildnis und Künstlerdarstellung in den Niederlanden im
17. Jahrhundert. Hildesheim and New York, 1984, 292.
Russell, Margarita. “The Artist in His Studio: A Self-Portrait by Michiel van Musscher.” Apollo 127(1988): 13, 15, no. 6.
Gerhardt, Robert E. “Biography: The Man and the Artist.” In Michiel van Musscher (1645–1705): The
Wealth of the Golden Age. Edited by Robert E. Gerhardt, Tonko Grever, and Francis Griep-Quint,
12–15. Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Museum van Loon. Zwolle, 2012.
Jonker, Michiel. “Tapijtenkoning.” Museumtijdschrift 2 (2012): 48–50.
Te Rijdt, Robert Jan. “Het toeval helpt een beetje: Tibout Regters—Jan Verkolje—Dominicus van Tol.”
In Face Book: Studies on Dutch and Flemish Portraiture of the 16th–18th Centuries: Liber Amicorum
Presented to Rudolf E. O. Ekkart on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday. Edited by Edwin Buijsen, Charles
Dumas, and Volker Manuth, 469–72, fig. 7, as by Dominicus van Tol. Leiden, 2012.
Van Suchtelen, Ariane, and Diane Webb. Dutch Self-Portraits of the Golden Age. Exh. cat. The Hague,
Mauritshuis. Zwolle, 2015, 104–5, cat. no. 21.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Portrait of the Artist in His Studio.” In Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces
from The Leiden Collection. Edited by Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 146; 187, no. 63. Translated by Li Ying.
Exh. cat. Beijing, National Museum of China. Beijing, 2017.
Long Museum, West Bund. Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals in the Dutch Golden Age: Masterpieces fromThe Leiden Collection. Exh. cat. Shanghai, Long Museum, West Bund. Shanghai, 2017, 152–53.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara and Alexa McCarthy. “Portrait of the Artist in His Studio.” In The Age of
Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection. Edited by Polina Lyubimova, 146–47;
239–40, no. 40. Translated by Daria Babich and Daria Kuzina. Exh. cat. Moscow, The Pushkin State
Museum of Fine Arts; St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum. Moscow, 2018.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “The Leiden Collection and the Dutch Golden Age.” In Rembrandt, Vermeer andthe Dutch Golden Age. Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre. Edited by
Blaise Ducos and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 25, 28. Exh. cat. Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi. London, 2019.
[Exhibition catalogue also published in French and Arabic.]
Blanc, Jan. “Being Modern, Being Dutch: The Seventeenth-Century Invention of the Golden Age.” In
Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age. Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Muséedu Louvre. Edited by Blaise Ducos and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 42. Exh. cat. Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of the Artist in His Studio
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Dhabi. London, 2019. [Exhibition catalogue also published in French and Arabic.]
Ducos, Blaise, and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, eds. Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age.
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre. Exh. cat. Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu
Dhabi. London, 2019, 54, 116, no. 45. [Exhibition catalogue also published in French and Arabic.]
Lores-Chavez, Isabella. “Plaster Casts in the Life and Art of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painters.” PhD
diss., Columbia University, 2022, 170; 360, fig. 3.43.

Technical Summary
The support is a single plank of vertically grained, rectangular, wedge-shaped oak with bevels along all foursides.[1] The unthinned and uncradled panel has machine toolmarks, a red wax seal, an import stamp, a label
remnant, and various handwritten inscriptions, including an illegible three-line handwritten ink inscription
previously wet out with varnish, but no stencils or panel maker’s mark.
A dark brown-colored radio-opaque ground has been thinly and evenly applied, followed by oil paintsmoothly applied with extremely fine detail that includes strokes of dots and dashes to create the illusion of
the tapestry pile and fringe and no use of impasto.
The X-radiograph reveals two significant compositional changes made during the paint stage and a numberof minor shifts in positions of objects. The two significant changes are as follows. First, originally the upperedge of the painting had been painted as a continuous arch, which formed an architectural niche; the left sideof the arch remains visible, whereas a tapestry swag added to the upper and right edges obscures the rightside of the arch. Second, the open book on perspective lying on a closed leather-bound book was added.
Originally a rolled document, oriented parallel to the lower panel edge, lay on the cover of the closed leatherbound book.
The figure drawing on blue paper was added after the sheet of white paper lying directly on the table had
been completed. The left edge of the sheet of white paper was shifted to the right, and the corner hanging
over the table edge was changed from one that formed a right angle to one with an indented notch. The
figure’s proper right hand has been raised and shifted away from the figure’s body. The angle of themahlstick in the figure’s proper left hand has been lowered. Originally, the tip of the mahlstick was closer tothe paintbrushes and the angle of the stick had been more parallel to the brushes. Lastly, the figure’s face isparticularly radio-opaque and the wisps of hair along the figure’s forehead are not visible in the X-radiographat all.
No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers. The images reveal
the rolled document was originally depicted resting on the cover of the closed leather-bound book, and thepositions of the palette and the figure’s thumb have been shifted slightly forward, away from the figure’s
body (similar to the shift of the proper right hand visible in the X-radiograph).
The painting is unsigned and undated although the illegible inscription along the reverse may include a date
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of 1673.
The painting was cleaned and restored in 1996 prior to its acquisition in 2004 and remains in an excellent
state of preservation regardless of areas of thinness through the background.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The characterization of the wood is based on visual examination only.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection