Erasmus ‘the Younger’ Quellinus was born in Antwerp in 1607, into an artistic family. His father was the sculptor Erasmus Quellinus (1584 - 1640); his mother was Elisabeth van Uden, sister of the well-known landscape painter Lucas van Uden. The couple had no fewer than eleven children, three of which went on to become artists: besides Erasmus II, who became a painter, his brother Artus became a sculptor and his brother Hubertus an engraver. Their sister Cornelia married the sculptor Peter Verbrugghen the Elder, one of many links with other artistic families that were established by the Quellinus family. Erasmus was possibly first taught by his father, although there is no record of this. Interestingly, he seems to have enjoyed a ‘theoretical’ training before fully embarking on his artistic career: as his contemporary Jan Meyssens wrote: il a été disciple de Monsr. P.P. Rubens estant premierement devenu Maistre dedans la Philosophie [he was a disciple of Mr. P. P. Rubens, having first become a master of Philosophy]. Rubens, as court painter, had the privilege of not having to register his pupils, so Quellinus is not mentioned as his pupil in the liggeren. However, Balthasar I Moretus mentioned him as a student of Rubens in a letter dated August 5 1643; this was later confirmed by various contemporary writers, such as Cornelis de Bie, Philips Rubens and the aforementioned Jan Meyssens.

 

In 1633/34 Quellinus was registered as a member of the Antwerp guild of St Luke, although his first dated known painting, The Meeting of David and Abigail, already dates from 1626. In 1634 our painter married Catharina de Hemelaer, a niece of Jan de Hemelaer, deacon of the Cathedral of Our Lady. The couple had one child, Jan-Erasmus, who was taught by his father and became a successful painter as well. Quellinus was a so-called ‘pictor doctus’, a learned painter who read on a variety of subjects (as the contents of his library, listed his estate inventory, attest to) and who was gifted with great intellectual curiosity. Rubens enlisted him for a variety of projects, including the design for book illustrations for the Plantin-Moretus printing house in the early 1630’s and the decorations for the Joyous Entry of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in  Antwerp in 1635. Quellinus, alongside a number of other well-known Antwerp painters, also worked on the execution of Rubens' designs for the Torre de la Parada (1636). 

 

After his master’s death in 1640, Quellinus became one of Antwerp’s foremost artists, charged with designing many book illustrations for Plantin-Moretus, as well as being solicited by animal- and still-life painters such as Jan Fijt, Jan Philips van Thielen (Quellinus’ son-in-law) and Daniel Seghers for collaborative projects. In addition, he was commissioned by the city of Antwerp to execute various decorations, and was asked to produce a series of cartoons for tapestries by the German nobleman Claude Lamoral de Tassis. As if all of this wasn’t enough, Quellinus also painted large-scale altarpieces for cloisters and churches across the Southern Netherlands. 

 

Although he came from a family of sculptors, Rubens always remained Quellinus’ main source of inspiration. However, from the 1660’s onwards, the influence of Venetian painters - and especially Veronese (by whom Quellinus owned several works) - began to assert itself. Another artist whose work greatly inspired Quellinus was his own brother, Artus ‘the Elder’ Quellinus. Other than Erasmus, who never seems to have travelled much (besides a trip to Liège in 1646 and a sojourn in Amsterdam in 1656), Artus spent a lot of time abroad, staying in Rome from 1635 - 1639, in Lyon in 1639, and in Amsterdam in 1646/7 and again from 1650 until 1655, when he mostly worked on the decorations of the Amsterdam town hall. 

 

Erasmus seems to have been influenced by his brother’s work in several ways. Twice he literally copied his brother’s sculpture in a painting. There is the Flower Garland with the Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist, now in the Städtisches Reiss-Museum in Mannheim, a collaborative work by Quellinus and Jan-Philips van Thielen, where the central group clearly refers to the Virgin and Child in the States Museum for Kunst in Kopenhagen, which is attributed to Artus. A second example of Erasmus copying Artus can be found in a Kunstkammer painting by Jacob de Formentrou and Erasmus II Quellinus (Windsor Castle, The Royal Collection, inv. no. RCIN 404084), where one of the paintings in the collector’s cabinet is clearly a transposition of Artus’ Judgment of Solomon, one of the decorations he did for the Amsterdam town hall.   

The present recently rediscovered drawing seems to be a third work in which Erasmus looked to his brother for inspiration. As is the case in the Flower Garland with the Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist (cfr. supra), Quellinus often collaborated with other artists, who decorated his compositions with sumptuous displays of flowers, animals or fruits. One particular genre seems to have been particularly popular: architectural cartouches surrounded by elaborate flower bouquets. In these works, Quellinus painted a trompe-l’oeil architectural stone cartouche, which was then decorated by flower painters such as Daniel Seghers, Jan Philips van Thielen or Jan van Kessel. The center of the cartouche almost always depicts religious imagery, such as the Virgin and Child or the Holy Family. 

 

Often Quellinus painted these scenes in grisaille, the whole thus resembling a piece of sculpture in an architectural niche, surrounded by flower garlands. These painted ‘sculptures’ often bear a striking resemblance to the work and style of his brother Artus, several of whose works Erasmus owned. The present drawing  seems to be the only extant example of a preparatory sketch by Erasmus for an architectural niche surrounding a sculpture group. The beautiful cartouche is reminiscent of some of Quellinus’ designs for book illustrations, and further points to the possibility of the artist having first trained with his father, who was a sculptor. The Virgin and Child in the center is a literal copy after a Virgin and Child by Artus I Quellinus which was sold by the gallery to a private collector in 2017, and is now on display at the Boston Museum of Fine Art as a promised gift to the museum (see ill.). So not only does our sheet shed more light on Quellinus’ working practice, it is also a testament to the influence the members of this artistic family had on each other.