Rombout Verhulst (15 January 1624 – buried 27 November 1698) was a Flemish sculptor and draughtsman who spent most of his career in the Dutch Republic. An independent assistant of the Flemish sculptor Artus Quellinus the Elder in the sculptural decoration project for the new town hall in Amsterdam, he contributed to the spread of the Baroque style in Dutch sculpture. He became the leading sculptor of marble monuments, including funerary monuments, garden figures and portraits, in the Dutch Republic.
Life
Rombout Verhulst was born in Mechelen, where he studied with the sculptors Rombout Verstappen en Frans van Loo and possibly also Lucas Faydherbe, a prominent sculptor and architect from Mechelen. It is assumed that between 1646 and 1654 he made a trip to Italy.
In 1646 he moved to Amsterdam, where he worked on the decoration of the new town hall as a member of the workshop n Amsterdam of the Flemish sculptor Artus Quellinus the Elder, the leading Flemish Baroque sculptor of his time. From 1650 onwards, Quellinus worked for fifteen years on the new city hall in Amsterdam together with the lead architect Jacob van Campen. Now called the Royal Palace on the Dam, this construction project, and in particular the marble decorations that Quellinus and his workshop produced, became an example for other buildings in Amsterdam. Quellinus invited many Flemish sculptors to assist him in the realisation of this project. Many of these collaborators such as his cousin Artus Quellinus II, Bartholomeus Eggers and Gabriël Grupello would become leading sculptors in their own right. The sculptural decorations in the Amsterdam city hall established the international reputation of Quellinus and his workshop and would lead to many more foreign commissions for the Quellinus workshop including in Germany, Denmark and England. This helped further spread the Flemish Baroque idiom in Europe. Verhulst held an independent position among Quellinus' co-workers as is apparent from the fact that he was the only one to individually sign works in this project. He also employed his own assistants such as the Flemish sculptor Nicolaes Millich. At the Amsterdam town hall, he is known to have executed the reliefs of Venus, Fidelity and Silence for the galleries and terracotta studies for the bronze doors of the Vierschaar.
In 1663, Verhulst worked in Leiden as an independent master and completed works on municipal buildings and his first funeral monuments. He then moved to The Hague around 1664 and built a network of private patrons in which the van Reygersbergh family played a pivotal role. In 1663 Verhulst completed a funeral monument for Maria van Reygersbergh in the church of Katwijk-Binnen. This was the first private commission for this type of work in the second half of the 17th century. His patronage shifted gradually from Amsterdam to The Hague.
He died, aged 74, in The Hague.
He was the teacher of Jan Blommendael and Jan Ebbelaer.
Work
Rombout Verhulst is best known for his many tomb monuments, but he made also portrait busts, garden sculptures and small-scale works in ivory.
His portrait oeuvre is rather small, which demonstrates that there was only a limited market for portrait sculptures in the Dutch Republic. One of his best-known portraits is the marble bust of Jacob van Reygersbergh dated 1671, now in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. A terracotta study for this work is in the Rijksmuseum and it differs from the marble version only in details. This portrait bust shows Verhulst's virtuosity and the naturalism of his style. He removed any tendency to idealize the sitter in this work. An important portrait bust attributed to Verhulst is that of Antonio Lopes Suasso, a leading Jewish merchant and banker in Amsterdam. This works was earlier attributed to Quellinus but is now given to Verhulst on stylistic grounds. In his terracotta portraits he was able to create a living presence through his sensitive handling of the physiognomy and a correct evocation of the sitter's personality.