Der Käse- und Buttermarkt in Delft (Scheibenriss?)

This drawing is a design for a stained-glass roundel

showing the characteristic clear-cut contours and

broad shading that would easily translate into glass

painting. Pentimenti in the pen lines and the chalk

contours identify it as a design. With [31], it shares

the typical circular format of approximately 27–30

cm in diameter. However, the subject is fundamentally

different: rather than a biblical scene, the

sheet pictures a moment of everyday life—namely,

a market scene in the sixteenth-century Northern

Netherlands. One of the earliest representations of

its kind, the sheet probably depicts an actual setting.1

As evidenced by contemporary street names,2

markets in the Netherlands were divided according

to the products that were sold.3 Here, it is cheese

and butter, sold from open carriages or offered in

barrels of different sizes, respectively, with a vendor

using a geutboor (plunger) to check that the butter is

of uniform quality.4

There has been some debate as to the maker of

this drawing. The traditional attribution to Pieter

Aertsen (1508–1575) was rejected by Sievers (1908)

and Benesch (1928), while Schapelhouman (1979)

refuted Van Regteren Altena’s (1929–30) attribution

to Doove Barend, also known as Barend Dircksz.

(c. 1500–after 1557).5 A third option, with Aertgen

Claesz. van Leyden (1498–1564) as author, as suggested

by Benesch, merits consideration. Although

this name has become somewhat of a collective

term for various, still-unidentified artists,6 some

drawings from his circle come strikingly close to

the present sheet (figs. 1, 2) in such aspects as the

combination of red and gray washes.

Aertgen is reported to have made glass designs

by the hundreds, most untraced today.7 More than

fifty glass painters registered in Leiden between

1425 and 15508 made the city a hub of glass painting.

A direct connection to Leiden, however, seems

unlikely for the present drawing: that city’s markets

were held at the banks of the Oude and the Nieuwe

Rijn,9 whereas here no water is seen. Amsterdam

(suggested by Hoogewerff) is to be ruled out as well:

dairy products were sold on Dam Square,10 hardly

recognized in our drawing. Moreover, former owner

Cornelis Ploos van Amstel (1726–1798), a resident

of Amsterdam, must have had his reasons for not

assigning it to his hometown. He described the

drawing as showing the cheese and butter market

in Delft, a comment worth further exploration.11

Surrounded by polders and fruitful meadows, Delft

was famous for its butter, which was traded on

Boterbrug.12 A market square rather than an actual

bridge,13 with roofed and enclosed stalls housing

the cheese trade,14 the Boterbrug may indeed be the

setting of the present drawing. Delft market authorities

such as the Saint Nicholas Guild of Vendors15

may have commissioned its depiction from a painter

from neighboring Leiden. This remains a hypothesis,

since many of the windows of the Old Town Hall

and the adjoining churches were destroyed by the

Great Fire (1536), the Great Iconoclasm (1566), or the

Delft Thunderclap (1654).

 

1. First suggested by Van Regteren Altena 1929–30, 44.

2. De Jongh in De Jongh and Luijten 1997, 149.

3. See also Zweerink 2017, 128, 144.

4. See Marin 1768, 318; Hoogewerff 1939, 510.

5. See Schapelhouman 1979, 17; De Bièvre 2015, 273–74.

6. As earlier stated by Benesch O. 1928 and confirmed by more

recent authors; see Scholten 1986 and Lootsma 2011. Within a

craft known for its collaborative process, the identities of the

many glassmakers working in the Netherlands remain sparsely

understood, with Aertgen Claesz. van Leyden, Jan de Beer

(1470/80–1528), and Dirck Vellert (1480/85–1547) among the few

influential figures who receive the majority of attributions.

7. Van Mander 1994–99, 1:208.

8. De Bièvre 2015, 215.

9. See Zweerink 2017, 106.

10. See Kistemaker 1984, 54.

11. Delft city archives refer to the Vienna drawing’s “cheese

and butter market in the Boterbrug in c. 1540”; see zoeken

.stadsarchiefdelft.nl/detail.php?nav_id=1-2&id=41969316

&index=5.

12. De Bièvre 2015, 164; see also Boitet 1729, 576.

13. See Boitet 1729, 576; neither the bridge nor the canal beneath

existed prior to the Great Fire of 1536, the still-extant bridge

bearing the date 1558.

14. See Boitet 1729, 577. A painting by Jan van der Heyden

(1637–1712) showing the Boterbrug in c. 1653–59, oil on panel,

53 x 71 cm, Guildhall Art Gallery, London, 3731; Zweerink 2017,

fig. 3.21, is reminiscent of the present drawing in its angular

setting.

15. See Boitet 1729, 288–91; stadsarchiefdelft.nl/delft365/het-sint

-nicolaasgilde. The guild was located in Comanscolff on the

Oude Langendijk and had its own altar in the Oude Kerk.

 

Emily J. Peters, Laura M. Ritter (Hg.), AK Tales of the City. Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel, Cleveland Museum of Art 9.10.2022 - 8.1.2023, New Haven 2022, Kat. Nr. 16