CORNELIS SAFTLEVEN
1607-1681106 An Enchanted Cellar with
Animals
Black and red chalk, gray and brown wash, and water-
color; H: 25.7 cm (loVsin.); W: 32 cm (i2^5 /sin.)
86.GG.i7
MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS: (Recto) at bottom left, col-
lection mark of Armand Sigwalt; (verso) inscribed Ten-
iers in black chalk.
PROVENANCE: Sale, Paillet and Delaroche, Paris, April
25 , 1803, lot 236; Armand Sigwalt, Paris (sale, Hôtel
Drouot, Paris, December 8, 1911, part of lot 54[?]); Eu-
gène Rodrigues, Paris (sale, Frederik Muller, Amster-
dam, May 27-28, 1913, lot 192); private collection (sale,
Sotheby's, Amsterdam, November 15, 1983, lot 247); art
market, London.
EXHIBITIONS: None.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: W. Schulz, Cornells Saftleven (Berlin,
1978), p. 147, no. 353.
THE SCENE DEPICTED HERE DOES NOT APPEAR TO DRAW
on a specific pictorial precedent but rather represents an
original synthesis of motifs culled from world-upside-
down imagery in which animals perform human actions
and overrun human habitats. For example the mice
warming their paws resemble a similar motif found in
singeries such as Pieter van der Borcht's etching Monkey
Schoolroom,^1 while the man who watches the humorous
performance without the participants' knowledge is a
stock figure in Netherlandish satirical and moralizing
imagery of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The
bruegelesque chained ape was treated as an independent
subject by Saftleven in a drawing in the Louvre (inv.
23178) that is signed and dated 1655. Typical of the artist
are the cooking implements strewn about and the other
discards as well as the mood of enchantment evoked by
the shadowy vaulted interior and flying bats.
One of the largest and most elaborate animal drol-
leries in Safteleven's drawn oeuvre, this sheet was no
doubt made as a finished work of art. Its subject matter
compares most closely to a pair of watercolors of owl
and cat concerts in the Rijksprentenkabinet (inv. 00:348,
347), which appear to copy lost Saftleven originals. The
treatment of the architecture in the Getty drawing calls
to mind studies of farmyards by Saftleven such as those
in the Historisch Museum, Amsterdam (Collection Fo-
dor, inv. A-IO 312), and Musées des Beaux-Arts de Bel-
gique (Collection de Grez, inv. 3148), which also exhibit
softly handled chalk combined with wash applied in
dark, rather flat patches. Like them this drawing should
be dated to the i66os (Schulz 1978, p. 53).i. A. J. J. Delen, Histoire de la gravure dans les anciens Pays-Bas et
dans les provinces belges (Paris, 1935), vol. 2, pp. 103-4.248 DUTCH SCHOOL • SAFTLEVEN