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. Furthermore, Quellinus also painted large-scale altarpieces for cloisters and churches across the Southern Netherlands. 

 

The present work is a beautiful example of the artist's practice of designing frontispieces for books and series of prints. The drawing is a design for a print which forms part of a series of plates, Nova Mundi Ætas Sancti, showing cartouches with Old Testament figures making up the 'Genealogy of Jesus Christ' (see ill.). The prints were engraved by the Flemish engraver Richard Collin, ca. 1660/2, as is indicated by the inscription "Richard Collin Sculpsit" and are signed "E. Quellinus delineavit", firmly establishing the authorship of the present drawing. The series is not described in Hollstein, and the British Museum is one of the only collections which holds the series of six known prints (museum nos. F,3.212, 1858,0417.1336-1339 and F,3.210-215). It is unclear for what project the prints were intended. No biblical figure called 'Salomona' is known; according to the British Museum the print depicts a bust of King Salomon as an old man, although the figure does look more like a woman. All the prints in the series bear inscriptions referring to a phase in the history of mankind; the print after our drawing depicts "The Old Age of the Lonely World".