Allegorical scene with beggars and blacksmiths (recto); Sketch of rooftop (verso)
Born in Flanders, David Vinckboons moved to the Northern Netherlands as a child and spent his career in Amsterdam, producing paintings, autonomous drawings, and an extraordinary number of print designs. Active in the first three decades of the seventeenth century, precisely as the Dutch Republic was establishing itself as an autonomous country, this prolific and innovative artist played a foundational role in the development of Dutch genre and landscape idioms.
This sheet is one of three known drawings that bear witness to a projected series of 46 emblems that Vinckboons undertook in collaboration with the calligrapher and heraldic painter Paulus de Kempenaer. [The other two are "Adam and Eve with Their Children" in a US private collection (sold Sotheby's New York, 23 January 2001, lot 110), and "Macabre Allegory" in the Louvre (inv. RF 51936).] The present work appears to be an allegory on charity set in a busy courtyard. In the foreground, a merchant hands to--or perhaps withholds from--a crying child some sort of a toy, presumably crafted by the blacksmith in the mid-ground who continues his work, seemingly unmoved by the mother begging him for alms. Unfolding around them is a quotidien scene of labor and commerce.
A clue to the meaning of this enigmatic imagery is provided by one of the inscriptions on the drawing's verso. Identified by the scholar Daan van Heesche as Paulus de Kempenaer's handwriting and as reading "... 4 / 36. O coopman / O gulsigen iden" ("... 4 36. O merchant, o greedy people"), this may refer to the Gospel of John, chapter 4, verse 36: "And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life everlasting: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together."
The loose sketch on the verso of the sheet relates to the upper portion of the composition on the recto, where Vinckboons revised the perspective of the roofline.
This sheet is one of three known drawings that bear witness to a projected series of 46 emblems that Vinckboons undertook in collaboration with the calligrapher and heraldic painter Paulus de Kempenaer. [The other two are "Adam and Eve with Their Children" in a US private collection (sold Sotheby's New York, 23 January 2001, lot 110), and "Macabre Allegory" in the Louvre (inv. RF 51936).] The present work appears to be an allegory on charity set in a busy courtyard. In the foreground, a merchant hands to--or perhaps withholds from--a crying child some sort of a toy, presumably crafted by the blacksmith in the mid-ground who continues his work, seemingly unmoved by the mother begging him for alms. Unfolding around them is a quotidien scene of labor and commerce.
A clue to the meaning of this enigmatic imagery is provided by one of the inscriptions on the drawing's verso. Identified by the scholar Daan van Heesche as Paulus de Kempenaer's handwriting and as reading "... 4 / 36. O coopman / O gulsigen iden" ("... 4 36. O merchant, o greedy people"), this may refer to the Gospel of John, chapter 4, verse 36: "And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life everlasting: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together."
The loose sketch on the verso of the sheet relates to the upper portion of the composition on the recto, where Vinckboons revised the perspective of the roofline.
Artwork Details
- Title: Allegorical scene with beggars and blacksmiths (recto); Sketch of rooftop (verso)
- Artist: David Vinckboons (Netherlandish, Mechelen 1576–1629 Amsterdam)
- Date: ca. 1613
- Medium: Pen and brown ink, brush and brown ink, brown wash, heightened with white, on antique laid paper partially prepared with green watercolor, double framing lines in brown ink and gold leaf (recto); black chalk (verso)
- Dimensions: Sheet: 5 7/16 × 5 3/16 in. (13.8 × 13.1 cm)
- Classification: Drawings
- Credit Line: Frits and Rita Markus Fund, 2025
- Object Number: 2025.303a, b
- Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints
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