Slaughtered Pig
Attributed to Caspar Netscher(Prague or Heidelberg ca. 1639 – 1684 TheHague)ca. 1660–62
oil on panel
36.7 x 30 cm
CN-104© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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How to cite
Wieseman, Marjorie E. “Slaughtered Pig” (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/ (archivedDecember 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.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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Seventeenth-century Netherlandish images of slaughtered oxen and pigs have theirComparative Figuresroots in medieval depictions of the labors of the months, specifically November, thepeak slaughtering season. The theme was given new life in the mid-sixteenth century
through the works of the Flemish painters Pieter Aertsen (1508–75) and Joachim
Beuckelaer (ca. 1533–ca. 1574), who incorporated slaughtered and disemboweled
animals in their vivid renderings of abundantly supplied market stalls, and also
explored the theme as an independent motif.[1] The earliest instances of the motif in
the Northern Netherlands come only in the seventeenth century, possibly introduced
by immigrants from the south. During the early 1640s, the theme of the slaughteredanimal—split, splayed, and suspended from the rungs of a wooden ladder—was taken
up by (among others) Adriaen (1610–85) and Isack (1621–49) van Ostade, whotypically situated the event in the dark and cavernous interior of a barn, stable, orkitchen.[2] A number of artists in Rembrandt’s orbit—Gerbrand van den Eeckhout(1621–74), Barent Fabritius (1624–73) (fig 1), Nicolaes Maes (1634–93), and Jan
Victors (1619–after 1676)—treated the subject during the 1640s and 1650s, as, ofFig 1. Barent Fabritius, SlaughteredPig, 1665, oil on canvas, 101 x 79.5cm, Museum Boijmans vanBeuningen, Rotterdam, inv.
1214, photo: Studio Tromp,
Rotterdam

course, did Rembrandt himself, most famously in his Slaughtered Ox of 1655 in theMusée du Louvre (fig 2).[3] In 1666, even the stylish Amsterdam portrait painter
Bartolomeus van der Helst (1613–70) featured the carcass of a pig, flanked by avegetable seller and a group of children, suspended before a view of Amsterdam’s
Nieuwmarkt.[4] In 1668, Van der Helst’s painting was the inspiration for Michiel vanMusscher’s The Haarlemmerdijk with a Pig on a Stepladder;[5] interestingly, these lastpaintings return the theme to the urban market context developed by Aertsen andBeuckelaer more than a century before.
For obvious reasons, in Dutch genre paintings the motif of the slaughtered ox or pig is
usually considered as a vanitas allegory.[6] Most seventeenth-century (and earlier)depictions include one or more children, who inflate the animal’s bladder for use as atoy. This motif is a charmingly mundane manifestation of Homo bulla, which likens
the fragility of human life to a delicate soap bubble. A print in a book of emblems
published in 1712 shows children playing with an inflated pig’s bladder, accompaniedFig 2. Rembrandt van Rijn, The
Slaughtered Ox, 1655, oil on panel,
95.5 x 68.8 cm, Paris, Musée duLouvre, no. MI 169, Photo: GerardBlot, ©RMN-Grand Palais / Art
Resource, NYby a verse that begins: “How hard you blow, o child of the world! You catch nothing
but wind. The world is nothing more than a bladder filled with air” (fig 3).[7] The
slaughtered pig could also represent avarice: folk tradition equated pigs gorging
themselves with the behavior of misers; only after death was their usefulness revealed(in the form of ample food from the former or a substantial inheritance via thelatter).[8]The present painting is simply composed, with the spread and eviscerated carcass
displayed frontally at the center and its severed head resting in a shallow wooden tub
on a bench to the left. Most of the organs have been removed from the body, except© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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for the dark kidneys and the anus. Peering out from behind the carcass is a young boy
who blows air through a straw into the pig’s bladder.
Earlier literature describes The Slaughtered Pig as being signed and dated either 1660
or 1662,[9] but no inscriptions are now visible on the painting.[10] Although the rustic
subject matter aligns with Caspar Netscher’s early depictions of barn and kitchen
scenes—compare for example, Chaff Cutter with Woman and Child in thePhiladelphia Museum of Art, 1659; or Knife Grinder in Turin (fig 4), dated
1662[11]—the relatively broad and imprecise painting style is atypical for the artist.
Still, the productions of Netscher’s early career (from the mid-1650s to about 1662)
were highly variable, exploring a range of scale and technique and with evidently
sophisticated works sometimes predating those less ambitious in design orexecution.[12] Unless or until a more viable alternative can be presented, the current
attribution of the picture to Netscher can reasonably be maintained.

Fig 3. Jan Luiken, “De Blaas,” from
Des menschen begin, midden en einde(Amsterdam 1712), page 46, © 2004,
DBNL- Marjorie E. Wieseman, 2017

Fig 4. Caspar Netscher, The Knife
Grinder, 1662, oil on panel, 43 x 34cm, Galleria Sabauda, Turin, inv.
67, © 2015, photo Scala, Florence,courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att.
Culturali© 2024 The Leiden CollectionSlaughtered Pig
Page 5 of 8Endnotes
1. Joachim Beuckelaer, Slaughtered Pig, 1563, oil on panel, 114 x 83 cm, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum,Cologne, inv. no. WRM 2324.
2. Among many other examples, see: Adriaen van Ostade, Slaughtered Pig, 1643, oil on panel, 61 x 49 cm,
Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt, inv. 1153; and Isack van Ostade, Peasant
Shed with a Slaughtered Pig, ca. 1642–43, oil on panel, 48.3 x 39.8 cm, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem,inv. OS I-614. Other artists who depicted the theme include Egbert van der Poel, Hubert van Ravesteyn,and Renier Covijn.
3. Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, Slaughtered Pig, 1646, oil on panel, 47.4 x 38.3 cm, Rheinisches
Landesmuseum, Bonn, inv. 37.167; Barent Fabritius, Slaughtered Pig, 1656, oil on canvas, 79.5 x 65.1
cm, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, inv. 819B; BarentFabritius, Slaughtered Pig, 1665, oil on canvas, 101 x 79.5 cm, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen,Rotterdam, inv. 1214; Nicolaes Maes, Slaughtered Pig, ca. 1655, oil on canvas, formerly 101.6 x 78.7cm, private collection (painting has subsequently been cut, eliminating the carcass of the animal); JanVictors, Slaughtering the Ox, 1647, oil on panel, 85 x 71 cm, private collection; Jan Victors, The SwineButcher, 1648, oil on canvas, 79.5 x 99.5 cm, Amsterdam Museum, Amsterdam, inv. SA 8341; andRembrandt van Rijn, Slaughtered Ox, 1655, oil on panel, 93.5 x 68.8 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv.
M. I. 169. See also Jacques Foucart, Les peintures de Rembrandt au Louvre (Paris, 1982), 66–71.
4. Bartolomeus van der Helst, Vegetable Seller and Children with a Pig Suspended from a Ladder, 1666, oilon canvas, 201 x 220 cm, The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, inv. 867; the vegetable seller
is identfied as the artist’s wife, Anna du Pire; see Herman Colenbrander, “Het ‘groenwyff’ vanBartolomeus van der Helst: Een eerbetoon aan zijn slovende ‘Martha’ en de ‘aemulation van Michiel vanMusscher,” in Face Book: Studies on Dutch and Flemish Portraiture of the 16th–18th Centuries, ed. Edwin
Buijsen, Charles Dumas, and Volker Manuth (Leiden, 2012), 397–404.
5. Michiel van Musscher, The Haarlemmerdijk with a Pig on a Stepladder, 1668, oil on canvas, 87 x 75.5
cm, Amsterdam Museum, Amsterdam, inv. SA 38126.
6. See Eddy de Jongh, Tot lering en vermaak: betekenissen van Hollandse genrevoorstellingen uit dezeventiende eeuw (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) (Amsterdam, 1976), 117–18.
7. “Hoe sterk gy blaast, ô Waerlds Kind! / Gy vangt doch anders niet als wind. / Wat is de Waerld, die hetziet? / Een Blaas yol [sic] wind en anders niet; / Laat daar ‘t onweetende Kind meê speelen: / Maar dat
het wys en grys verstand / Geen voddery houde aan de hand / Om in het kinderspel te deelen.” JanLuiken, Des menschen begin, midden en einde (Amsterdam, 1712), 46.
8. Eddy de Jongh, Tot lering en vermaak: betekenissen van Hollandse genrevoorstellingen uit de zeventiendeeeuw (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) (Amsterdam, 1976), 118.
9. As dated 1660: Leipziger Kunstverein, Ausstellung Alte Meister aus Privatbesitz (Exh. cat. Leipzig,© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Slaughtered Pig
Page 6 of 8Leipziger Kunstverein) (Leipzig, 1929), no. 79; and Leipziger Kunstverein, Ausstellung Alte Meister aus
Mitteldeutschem Besitz (Exh. cat. Leipzig, Leipziger Kunstverein) (Leipzig, 1937), 11, no. 52. As dated
1662: Karl Lilienfeld, “Die Ausstellung Alter Meister aus Leipziger Privatbesitz,” Kunstchronik 26, no. 9(November 1914): 113; Eduard Plietzsch, “Hollandischer Bilder des 17. Jahrhunderts aus Leipziger
Privatbesitz,” Monatshefte für Kunstwissenschaft 8 (1915): 49; Eduard Plietzsch, Holländische undflämische Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1960), 60; Marjorie E. Wieseman, “Caspar Netscher andLate Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting” (PhD diss. Columbia University, 1991), 469; and Marjorie
E. Wieseman, Caspar Netscher and Late Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting. Doornspijk, 2002), 316(noting that signature and date are not visible in photographs).
10. Information from Technical Summary prepared by Annette Rupprecht.
11. Marjorie E. Wieseman, Caspar Netscher and Late Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting (Doornspijk,2002), 173–74, nos. 11 and 10, respectively.
12. See Marjorie E. Wieseman, “The Craeyvanger Portraits in Context—Shedding Light on Caspar
Netscher’s Early Career,” Oud Holland 127 (2014): 31–47.

Provenance
Iman Pauw (1715–79), The Hague (his sale, The Hague, 23 November 1779, no. 14 [to Abraham Delfosfor 65 florins]).
(Sale, Leiden, 26 August 1788, no. 106 [to Abraham Delfos for 17 florins]).
Jan Kerkhooven, Leiden (his sale, Leiden, 30 July 1798, no. 17; sale, L. Bouman et al., Leiden, 24
August 1802, no. 36 [for 15 florins]).
Rudolf Brockhaus (1856–1932), Leipzig, by at least 1914; by descent until at least 1937.
Private collection, United States, by 1960 (sale, Sotheby’s Parke-Bernet, New York, 13 January 1978,no. 122).
Private collection, Williamstown, Massachusetts, until 1996 [Otto Naumann, Ltd., New York].
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2005.

Exhibition History
Leipzig,Leipziger

Kunstverein,“Ausstellung

alter

Meister

ausLeipziger

Privatbesitz,”

November–December 1914, no. 90 [lent by the family of Rudolf Brockhaus].
Leipzig, Museum der Bildende Kunst, “Alte Meister aus Privatbesitz,” 22 September–31 October 1929,© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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no. 79 [lent by the family of Rudolf Brockhaus].
Leipzig, Leipziger Kunstverein, “Alte Meister aus Mitteldeutschem Besitz,” 13 May–15 August 1937,
no. 52 [lent by the family of Rudolf Brockhaus].
Albany, Albany Institute of History and Art, “Matters of Taste: Food and Drink in Seventeenth-Century
Dutch Art and Life,” 21 September–8 December 2002, no. 34 [lent by Otto Naumann, Ltd., New York].
Ithaca, Cornell University, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, “An Eye for Detail: Dutch Painting fromthe Leiden Collection,” 20 September 2014–21 June 2015 [lent by the present owner].

References
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of
the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith, Edited and translated by Edward G. Hawke. 8vols. London, 1907–28, 5: 301, no. 477. Originally published as Beschreibendes und kritisches
Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols.
Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28.
Leipziger Kunstverein. Ausstellung alter Meister aus Leipziger Privatbesitz. Exh. cat. Leipzig, LeipzigerKunstverein. Leipzig, 1914, 9, no. 90.
Lilienfeld, Karl. “Die Ausstellung Alter Meister aus Leipziger Privatbesitz.” Kunstchronik 26, no. 9(November 1914): 113–14.
Plietzsch, Eduard. “Hollandischer Bilder des 17. Jahrhundert aus Leipziger Privatbesitz.” Monatshefte
für Kunstwissenschaft 9 (1915): 49, fig. 5.
Leipziger Kunstverein. Alte Meister aus Privatbesitz. Exh. cat. Leipzig, Leipziger Kunstverein. Leipzig,1929, no. 79.
Leipziger Kunstverein. Alte Meister aus Mitteldeutschem Besitz. Exh. cat. Leipzig, Leipziger Kunstverein.
Leipzig, 1937, 11, no. 52.
Plietzsch, Eduard. Holländische und flämische Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts. Leipzig, 1960, 60.
Wieseman, Marjorie E. “Caspar Netscher and Late Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting.” PhD diss.
Columbia University, 1991, 469–70, no. B5.
Wieseman, Marjorie E. Caspar Netscher and Late Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting. Doornspijk,2002, 316, no. B5.
Barnes, Donna R., and Peter G. Rose. Matters of Taste: Food and Drink in Seventeenth-Century Dutch
Art and Life. Exh. cat. Albany, Albany Institute of History and Art. Albany, 2002, 96–97, no. 34.

Technical Summary© 2024 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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The support, a single plank of vertically grained, rectangular-shaped non-Baltic oak derived from a tree
felled between 1655 and 1665, with an earliest creation date of 1661, has bevels on all four sides.[1] The
panel is unthinned and uncradled and has machine tool marks, two paper labels, and handwritten numerals
but no wax collection seals, import stamps or panel maker’s marks along the reverse.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied followed by paint applied thinly and smoothly withno use of impasto. No underdrawing or compositional changes are readily apparent in infrared images
captured at 780–1000 nanometers.
The painting is unsigned and undated.
The painting has not undergone conservation treatment since its acquisition in 2005 and remains in a goodstate of preservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The characterization of the wood is based on Peter Klein’s dendrochronology report, dated 6 June 2012.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection