BREASTS ON A WOODEN MANIKIN
Eva Wientjes | Master’s Thesis | Master Program Arts & Culture | Track: Art History University of Groningen | Supervisor: dr. Joost Keizer | 02-06-2020
THE LA
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Breasts on a wooden manikin
The lay figure and the image of woman in seventeenth-century Dutch art
practice
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 7
CHAPTER 1 The lay figure and its gender in seventeenth-century sources
1.1 The history of the (gendered) lay figure 13
1.2 The lay figure in seventeenth-century Dutch artworks 17 1.3 The lay figure in seventeenth-century Dutch written sources 22 1.4 The use of the lay figure according to seventeenth-century Dutch
sources 26
CHAPTER 2 The actual use of the lay figure
2.1 The lay figure as a source of reality 30
2.2 Symptoms of lay figures in paintings 32
2.2 The lay figure and the nude 36
CHAPTER 3 The ‘style’ of the lay figure: The image of woman
3.1 The ‘Lee wyff’ and reality 40
3.2 The image of woman in works of art 42
3.3 ‘Poeselich van Vleesch’: The image of woman in art theory 45 3.4 The female body after life and after the lay figure 51
3.5 Mannequin perfectionné: Historic continuity 55
CONCLUSION 59
IMAGES 63
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INTRODUCTION
When Crispijn van de Passe the Younger (c. 1594-1670) published a lavishly illustrated theory about the art of drawing, he included two captivating images (IMAGES 1 AND 2). Looking at these illustrations for the first time is slightly unsettling – especially if one would be unaware of what they represent. They are engravings of lay figures, one female, the other male. As if a body was dismantled and thereafter glued back together, these drawings of humanoids are not at all meant to be unsettling. On the contrary, their purpose is educational. Crispijn van de Passe wrote his art manual ‘t Light der Teken en Schilderkonst (Amsterdam, 1643-1644) in four languages – Italian, Dutch, French and German – in order to reach as many potential artists as possible.1 In the fourth part of his book, named ‘How one in the most skillful way can cover all kinds of Figures in all kinds of fabrics: Including the use of the Layman’, Van de Passe made his readers familiar with the use of the lay figure.2 Because he
had written enough about the nude body in the previous chapters, he now turned to
counterfeiting the clothed body. According to Van de Passe, we dress our bodies in clothes to cover your shame, to protect against tumultuous and cold weather, but most of all for the sake of flamboyancy.3 The lay figure was the instrument to be able to depict a variety of clothing and fabrics accurately: its stillness provided the artist to study the exact behavior of fabric and its folds without the disruption of moving models. With its moveable limbs, the lay figure simulated the human body. The elementary parts of the body - such as underarms, upper arms, thighs and lower legs - are sculpted in wood and attached to one another with screws and ball joints. Though the lay figure was advocated by Van de Passe as a means to reproduce clothing and fabric, the illustrations that accompany the chapter depict anthropomorphic
individualities. They do not solely resemble the human body in the most rudimentary way; in fact, they have nothing in common with coat racks. Instead, they are designed to mimic an esthetic concept of the human body. The female lay figure is particularly intriguing. Though
1 Remond, J., “’Draw everything that exists in the world’. ‘t Light der Teken en Schilderkonst and the shaping of
art education in early modern northern Europe,” in Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art 68 (2019), 287.
2 ‘Het IV. Deel. Van het licht van de Teecken en Schilder-konst, inde welcke Wordt verhaelt hoemen op het
alderkonstighste wijse /alderhande Beelden sal bekleden met alderhande stoffen: Mitsgaders het gebruyck van de Leeman’. Passe, C. van de, ’t Light der Teken en Schilderkonst (Amsterdam, 1643-1644), IV part. Via:
Archive.org, https://archive.org/details/laprimaquintapar00pass/page/n213/mode/2up?q=leeman, consulted at 06-02-2020.
3 ‘[…] also de mensch is sonder kleederen geschapen / ende dat de selve hem niet anders en dienen/ als om zijn
schaemte te bedecken. Niet-te-min om dat onse landen wt der natuyren kout zijn/so ist hoognoodig sich te kleeden tegens de ongestuymighz en koude/maer in plaets datse voor een nootwendigheyt worden gedragen wordense meest tot de aldergrootste pronckerye ghebruyckt/ende zy geven oock een groote vercieringe/alsmen die naer behooren yeder naer zijnen staet is dragende / en geven oock eenen grooten welstant in onse Konst.’ In: Passe, C. van de, ‘t Light, IV part.
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the lay figure was presented by theorists as something purely functional, her wooden body is envisaging soft skin and round breasts.
Not much is known about the engraving of the lay-woman in Van de Passe’s theory. It remains unknown whether this illustration is drawn after an actual lay figure that looked like this or whether it is an imaginary design. There is generally little known about lay figures in the art practice of Dutch artists. The lay figure has an anonymous position amongst utensils in the artist’s studio. There is even less known about the lay figure in a gendered context. Most research that has been done aimed to introduce the use of the lay figure to scholars. Because the lay figure was an object to be used and not merely to be looked at, scholars tended to focus on the practical side of the lay figure. The most frequently asked questions are: what are lay figures, what was their purpose and how did artists use them? Almost no research has been done that solely focuses on the visual aspects of lay figures. Therefore, it has not been examined what lay figures looked like, and why they looked a certain way.
The earliest modern publication that discussed the lay figure in Northern Europe is written by the Austrian art historian Arpad Weixlgärtner, who wrote an article in 1903 about Dürer and his use of the lay figure in the sixteenth century. Almost sixty years later, the first author who discussed the lay figure in the Netherlands was Evert Frans van der Grinten in his article from 1962. Van der Grinten studied the way the lay figure was used as a source of reality by Dutch artists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Furthermore, he discussed visual remnants of the use of lay figures in paintings. The art historian Perry Chapman wrote an eminent article about the lay figure in the Netherlands of the seventeenth-century in 2007. In this article she focused on manifestations of lay figures in Dutch artworks from the
seventeenth-century, and connected these with the way Dutch artists used the lay figure in artistic practice. She linked the use of the lay figure to a broader context of artist’s models in their search to knowledge about the human body. Moreover, the art historian Jane Munro published the exhibition catalogue Silent Partners for an exhibition about the articulated human figure in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, in 2014. Munro wrote an extensive book about the subject, and primarily focused on a context of avatars, dolls, mannequins, and the social contexts that surrounded these products. Yet, she did not focus much on the lay figure in Dutch art practice, nor on their visual characteristics. A more comprehensive publication is Die Gliederpuppe by the art historian Markus Rath from 2016, which is an almost encyclopedic work about all manifestations of European sculptural models, not only for artists, but in the fields of religion and theatre as well.
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obscure character of the lay figure has inspired some art historians to dig deeper into the unknown practices of artists and their artificial models. This correlates well with the study on the model in the studio. Because the lay figure is often seen and described as both an
instrument and a replica of a human body, and should therefore be essentially objective, researchers have neglected to see that in fact, a lay figure is also created by people with certain aesthetic ideas in mind. Even though it is not made with the same artful purpose as sculpture, the lay figure is an expression of viewpoints towards the human body as well. One of the first ways to transform a simple ‘stick-man’ to a more lifelike human construction, and thereby answering to aesthetics is to give it a gender. Whether or not this was done tells as much about the practical use of this lay figure, as well as the interpretation of gender shaped by its society. This entails the notion that the body is an unstable concept.
Perspectives on the body change with every culture and period. The perception on the female body has an even more complex cultural history than that of the male. Patriarchal ideologies often have guided the way the female body is viewed, defined, and represented in the past.4 This results in a narrow definition and image of what a woman entails. Even today it
is still apparent that the female body has had a subordinate position in many fields of science, compared to the male body. For example, as a result of this historical and patriarchal approach towards the female body, knowledge on the use of medicine in relation to the female body is still not as voluminous as it is on the male body. That the female body is reexamined due to the influence of a feminist approach towards science is visible in popular culture such as the article “Fear of the Clit: A Brief History of Medical Books Erasing Women’s Genitalia” by the online magazine Vice.5 This item demonstrates the erroneous and incomplete knowledge of women’s bodies in the past. More importantly, it stresses that the view of women as undeveloped men and child producers still haunts our textbooks.
In the history of art, the female nude has an enormous and steady reputation, with an equally enormous amount of literature on the subject. Likewise is the female body
‘overemphasized’ in museums. Nothing says ‘Art’ as much as a female nude.6 However, the
fact that the history of art is predominantly made and criticized by men, has constructed an image of woman that is tied to certain aesthetics and subjected to ruling ideologies.
4 Sliwinska, B., The Female Body in the Looking-Glass. Contemporary Art, Aesthetics and Genderland (London;
New York, I.B. Taurius, 2016), 2.
5 Weiss, S., “Fear of the Clit: A Brief History of Medical Books Erasing Women’s Genitalia”, Broadly Vice,
may 3, 2017. https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/nejny8/fear-of-the-clit-a-brief-history-of-medical-books-erasing-womens-genitalia, consulted at 28-06-2020.
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Though there is a great deal of literature about the nude in art, the spotlight in most literature is generally either on the nude as a timeless subject of regulated perfection, on the female nude in the nineteenth-century, on the female nude in Italian renaissance art, or on the nude as a phenomenon though feminist perspectives. However, there is not much literature specifically aimed to examine the way the female body is represented in Dutch art. An example of the first category is Kenneth Clark’s The Nude: A Study of Ideal Art from 1956 which was, and still is, resilient in its approach towards the nude in European art. Clark considered the form of the nude to be pure, made with the force of artistic creativity, erotic but non-pornographic, controlled and balanced.7 This study explicitly steps away from discussing the physical, anatomical characteristics of bodies of women. By making a distinction between ‘the nude’ and ‘the naked’, Clark separated the corporeal and unformed from the ideal and reformed unclothed body.8 Studies on the naked bodies of women in art
have often adhered to this same approach as was laid out by Clark. Lynda Nead’s book The
Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality from 1992 can be seen as an example of a
feminist response to Clark’s authoritative attitude towards the unclothed female body. Over the past decades, the female body in art has been re-examined and ruled-out issues have become debatable. Some ignored aspects of the female body in art are reviewed in contemporary literature. Representing Women by Linda Nochlin from 1999 serves as an example of the literature about the nude in the nineteenth century from a feminist vantage point. The Italian Renaissance Nude by Jill Burke from 2018 is a recent example of literature about the nude in Renaissance Italy. Furthermore, in “The Missing Sex: Absence and
Presence of a Female Body Part in the Visual Arts” (2009), Ann-Sophie Lehmann
investigated why visual female genitalia throughout the history of art are absent, and why most authors have ignored this obvious nonappearance. In the same spirit, Penny Howell Jolly described notions on female body hair in the Middle Ages in the chapter “Pubics and Privates: Body Hair in Late Medieval Art” (2012). These examples of literature demonstrate that there are many different approaches towards the image of woman in art. These examples also demonstrate that the female body in art is still unknown territory. Therefore, it is a logical choice not to study the image of man, but to study the image of woman in Dutch seventeenth-century art.
The goal of this thesis is to examine how the seventeenth-century Dutch lay figure related to the then prevailing image of woman in art. It is therefore necessary to investigate
7 Nead, L., The Female Nude, 13. 8 Nead, L., The Female Nude, 14.
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what the notions were around the gendered body, and the female body in particular, and how this shaped the lay figure. This thesis argues that the female lay figure was subject to existing ideas and notions about the female body and that the appearance of the lay figure was shaped by an image of woman that existed in the Netherlands of the seventeenth century. Two types of primary sources are analyzed in the research for this thesis: seventeenth-century Dutch written sources that mention lay figures and seventeenth-century Dutch visual sources that feature lay figures. The manifestations of lay figures in visual sources are examined from a visual, and not practical perspective. By focusing on primary sources, instead of secondary sources on the subject, a reliable and authentic understanding of the lay figure is
accomplished. The visual and written sources are compared to each other in order to get a full understanding of the lay figure in the seventeenth-century. Even though this thesis does not solely focus on the use of the lay figure, it is still essential to examine its use thoroughly in order to get a fuller understanding of the physical appearance of the lay figure and the cultural notions that shaped it. Moreover, this thesis focusses on the ‘unknown’ side of the use of the lay figure, which becomes apparent by reading between seventeenth-century lines and by closely examining seventeenth-century visual sources.
The choice to focus on the seventeenth century stems from the simple fact that lay figures were not used as much before this time in the Netherlands. Though it would be interesting to examine what these pre-seventeenth-century lay figures looked like, there is no visual material that portrays any lay figure whatsoever. A handful of paintings from the seventeenth-century do depict lay figures. Interestingly enough, these are all made in the Netherlands. That is also why the use of the lay figure in the Netherlands is the geographical focus in this thesis. Even though no lay figure from the Netherlands has survived, it seems that the practice of using lay figures was commonplace in the Netherlands. However, as is stated above, not enough research has been done about the lay figure in the Netherlands. In the examination of visual sources, this thesis focuses not on three-dimensional, but on only on two-dimensional media. It is much more intriguing to examine how artists used a
three-dimensional object to make two-three-dimensional art, than it is to examine sculpture made with the help of lay figures.
In the first chapter, the history of the lay figure is researched, while specifically focusing on references to the genders of lay figures. Furthermore, it concentrates on the depiction of lay figures in visual sources such as paintings and engravings, and how the lay figure is discussed in written sources such as artist inventories and art theories. How is the gender of lay figures in both kinds of sources dealt with? Additionally, what was considered
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the lay figure’s function according to seventeenth-century theorists and artists?
The second chapter focuses on the actual use of the lay figure, instead of adhering to what theorists and artists propagated the use of the lay figure to be. By ‘reading between the lines’ in written sources and through examining visual sources, an understanding of the real use of the lay figure – and not its proclaimed use - is gained. What does the actual use of the lay figure tell about the physical characteristics of lay figures?
In the last chapter, the focus is on the image of woman in Dutch seventeenth-century art. This is done by studying the bodies of women in seventeenth-century artworks, but also by studying art theories about ideas around the woman and her body. Again, the visual and written sources are compared to each other. Furthermore, the last chapter aims at defining the image of woman that constituted the design of lay figures. Then, all research is combined, and an answer is formulated to the question on how the seventeenth-century Dutch lay figure related to the then prevailing image of woman in art. A last subchapter demonstrates how the lay figure in the nineteenth-century illustrates the correlation between the image of woman and the lay figure even better. How does the nineteenth-century female lay figure relate to the then prevailing image of woman, and how does this illustrate the same phenomenon in the seventeenth-century?
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CHAPTER 1
The lay figure and its gender in seventeenth-century
sources
1.1 The history of the (gendered) lay figure
Despite the fact that half of its face is covered under a large hat, the wooden figure in the back of the studio painted by Dirck Witting immediately draws attention (IMAGE 3). Even though its figure is painted in a room filled with curiosities, artistic clutter and even a living boy, our gaze is lured towards the lifeless model. Not much is known about this particular painting, nor about the artist who made it.9 It is a rare image; not many seventeenth-century paintings display lay figures. However, this picture is even rarer because of the detailed depiction of the lay figure. The polished wooden surface shines bright and the muscles seem alive. It is
nothing like the small and generic dummies sold these days, deprived of any details and bought for a few euro’s at the next handicraft shop (IMAGE4). Witting’s lay figure is life-sized and anatomically sound representation of a human body. Though not completely visible, its face has an individual character with carved ears, a mouth and wrinkles in its cheeks. The only things it lacks are hands, feet, and genitals. The anatomy of Witting’s lay figure holds middle ground between male and female. Because this particular lay figure is elaborately and extendedly detailed, it is even more remarkable that its gender is undefined.
The way gender is, or is not represented in an object such as a lay figure explains the maker’s viewpoints on gender. Furthermore, it tells something about the practical use of the lay figure. Is gender relevant or not to artists who use a lay figure? Witting’s wooden model is not a prototype for the seventeenth-century Dutch lay figure. Through history, lay figures differed in sizes, materials, and style. Therefore, they cannot be described and defined collectively. Roughly, there are two factors that make dead material into a seventeenth-century lay figure: it should resemble the human form, and it should be able to be bent into a certain pose and be bent back again. Sculptural models have not only been used by artists; figures made out of different materials with moving limbs were also used in theatres and churches.10
The seventeenth-century lay figures that were being used in the Netherlands of the seventeenth-century were based on artist’s figures used a few centuries earlier by artists from
9 Rosen, J., “The Obscure D. Witting and the Art of Painting in Amsterdam in the 1630s,” Canadian Journal of
Netherlandic Studies 36.2 (2015), 57.
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south of the Alps. However, the first figures that were used by artists were not always articulate. The first literary source that discussed a lay figure is written by the Florentine architect, sculptor and writer Antonio di Pietro Averlino (Il Filarete, 1400-1469). He wrote a treatise on architecture, the Trattato di Architettura (around 1460), in which he criticized the draperies of the figures on the antique Trajan’s Column (107-113). He advised artists to study clothes from nature: ‘let someone be dressed in the desired way, or use a small wooden figure (‘figuretta di legniame’) with moving legs, arms, and neck. Then take a linen cloth robe and drape it until it fits your needs, as if it is alive.’11 Though Filarete’s account of the lay figure
might be the first source to our knowledge, it is imaginable that many more artist before him used models like this one, especially taking into account that lay figures had theatrical and clerical functions as well. Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494) also left at least two drapery studies that were made with lay figures.12 Even though Filarete’s advice concerning the lay
figure is the first source, for a long time Fra Bartolomeo (1472-1517) has been portrayed as ‘the inventor’ of the lay figure.13 Vasari (1511-1574) wrote that this Dominican monk was the
first painter who ever used a lay figure, and that he used to make ‘[…] all his pictures from life, with the help of waxen models and a life-sized wooden figure (un modello di legno
grande quanto il vivo), that was adjustable in every limb and that he would dress with cloth,
which we will remember as a memento of him’.14 Fra Bartolomeo is also thought to own both
a male and a female lay figure, since ‘the clerical status of Fra Bartolomeo clearly made it impossible to use nude female models and therefore the artist produced two lay figures’.15 This is the only source from the south of the Alps that mentions a gender of a lay figure. Other sources mostly discuss the use of the lay figure, or the materials and sizes.
The painter Bernardino Campi (1522-1591) wrote that it was his wish to own, besides a small wooden figurine, a life-sized wooden figure, because ‘you would surely find more things it could fit in’.16 Besides Filarete, Campi and Fra Bartolomeo, many more southern
11 He furthermore writes that with the help of liquid glue, one can hold the folds in its desired place. And if later
one wants to redesign the model, put it in hot water and you will be able to change its shape. Rath, M., Die
Gliederpuppe, 269.
12 Kwakkelstein, M.W., “Mannikins and Wax Models: Study Aids in the Artist’s Workshop,” In: Albert Ellen
and Chris Fischer (eds.). Fra Bartolommeo. The Divine Renaissance. Exhibition Catalogue Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (Rotterdam, 2016), 24.
13 Rath, M., Die Gliederpuppe, 293.
14 Vasari, Le Vite, Bd. IV., S. 101. Via: Rath, Die Gliederpuppe, 279.
15 „Lo status clericale di Fra‘ Bartolomeo rendeva evidentemente impossibile l’uso di modelli nudi femminili e
quindi l’artista si procurò due manichini.“ In: Fischer, C., Fra’ Bartolomeo Disengatore in exh. Cat. L’età di
Savonarola: Fra Bartolomeo e la Scuola di San Marco (1996), 101.
16 „Chi avesse un modello di legno piccolo, sarebbe buono, ma me piacerebbe più se ‘l fosse grande come il
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artists were known to have made or to have worked with lay figures or malleable models. Moreover, Vasari wrote about Leonardo (1452-1519), Piero della Francesca (?1420-1492) and Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455) how they used clay figures in their creation of artworks. In addition, Vasari notes that Leonardo (1452-1519), Alfonso Lombardi (1497-1537), Baccio Bandinelli (1493-1560) and Michelangelo (1475-1564) used groups of figurines to study the effects of light and shade, and which were placed inside architectural scenery.17 These figures were used as models to study lighting, contrast, and as try outs for sculptural projects.18 A different type of artist model can be identified which was used by Leonardo. Conforming to the general anatomical interest of artists and scholars in the fifteenth century, he created waxen or plaster models of dissected bodies, known as écorché models. In contrast with regular sculpture, these écorché models are sculptural replicas of flayed bodies or body parts, revealing the underlying structure of musculature.19 Thus, écorché models played a crucial
role to artists in the teaching of human anatomy.
Besides wooden figures, artists used waxen, malleable models and ‘stiff’ models of plaster or clay that were unable to bend. The figures could be either small or large and could be variously used; from the representation of realistic draperies and cloth, the design of sculpture, the studying of lighting to the studying of human anatomy. The gender of the lay figure has not often been an important issue for the early modern, Italian artist. However, the lay figure’s gender seems to have been more important in northern Europe.
Between artists and sculptors of the north and the south of Europe was a lively exchange with colleagues and patrons, humanists and merchants.20 Because Dutch and German artists visited Italy as early as the fifteenth century, where some worked in artist’s workshops, it would seem probable that artists would take along the Italian practice of the use of the lay figure. For example, Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) is known to have used lay figures after he visited Italy. He was devoted to studying the human body in terms of geometry and ideal measurements, and his use of the lay figure coincided with his interest in studying human proportions. Dürer’s use of the lay figure differs from the way most of the Italian artists used the lay figure. Where most of the Italian sources discussed lay figures to help with
17 Chapman, P., “The Wooden Body,” 196. 18 Rath, M., Die Gliederpuppe, 282.
19 Kwakkelstein, M., “New copies by Leonardo after Pollaiulo and Verrocchio and his use of an écorché model:
Some notes on his working method as an anatomist,” Apollo 503 (2004), 21. Furthermore, it was the early modern idea that flesh, instead of skin, was meant to be transferred to canvas. Skin was in sixteenth-century Europe stained with negative connotations relating to the act of flaying and its wrinkles caused by old age. Flesh was seen as the skin’s substance, it’s living matter. See: Fend, M., Fleshing out Surfaces: Skin in French Art and
Medicine, 1650-1850 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017), 20.
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drapery, composition and lighting, Dürer focused on an anatomical use of the lay figure. In his pursuit to find the elementary shapes of the male and female body, composed of circles and rectangles, Dürer made numerous drawings of the perfect human proportions. He demonstrated these in his Vier Büchen von Menschlicher Proportion, published a few days after his death in 1528. Some of the illustrations are thought to have been made with the help of lay figures.21 As he lived in Nuremberg, the city of woodcarvers and dollmakers, Dürer must have had no problems with finding a skilled craftsman to make him a lay figure. The proportions he drew of both sexes differ considerably.22 This hints at the fact that Dürer had a male as well as a female-proportioned lay figure. What supports this assumption is the fact that most actual surviving female lay figures originate from Germany, the earliest from the mid-sixteenth-century. It appears that in the decades after Dürer, not only more lay figures were made, but also more female lay figures. These female lay figures were products of skilled woodcarvers with a refined knowledge of proportion and anatomy of the human body, measurements, mechanics and mathematics.23 The female lay figure in the Bode-Museum,
Berlin is an example of such a small, female lay figure with elaborate details (IMAGE 5). Even the smallest limbs of her body are moveable. She wears a typical German headpiece and her face has an individual expression. She has two very round, perky breast and her pelvic bone is adorned with a nice dot of pubic hair.
The female lay figure in the Bode-Museum is answering to a certain aesthetical idea of woman that existed in sixteenth-century Germany. Because she is made with such details, it is clear what this idea of woman was. This uniquely preserved figure has her own visuality; her own style if you will. As is evident through early written sources, many different models existed for artists. Often these models were practical in use but not aesthetical in their design. Yet even basic lay figures acknowledge to a certain thought about the body. For example, it echoes the idea that a body can be reduced to elementary shapes. However, most often is the lay figure discussed in terms of its use, not its visual, stylistic appearance.
When discussing the several kinds of ‘bodies’ the early modern artist deployed into the studio, Perry Chapman, professor of Art History at the university of Delaware, divided this corpus of bodies into three groups. The first is the ‘classical body’, which represents ideals of proportion and beauty, illustrated by sculptures of classical nudes. These classical
21 Chapman, P., “The Wooden Body:Representing the ‘Manikin’ in the Dutch Artists’ Studio,” in Body and
Embodiment in Netherlandish Art, Netherlandish Yearbook for History of Art (2007-2008),” 196.
22 Rath, M., Die Gliederpuppe, 331. 23 Chapman, P., “The Wooden Body,” 197.
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sculptures might have been available in full-size in Italy, but Northern European artists probably only had access to fragments, miniature size sculpture, plaster casts, or through engravings.24 Besides the ‘classical body’, Chapman distinguished the ‘anatomical body’, which emerged from a growing thirst of anatomical knowledge of the human body in the sixteenth century. In this period, the internal body was studied by dissection and flaying, and the skeleton and the écorché model were the anatomical ‘bodies’ which could be found in artists’ studios.25 In Rembrandt’s inventory, it was stated that he owned 'four flayed arms and
legs anatomized by Vesalius', which may have been either plaster casts or wax models of flayed limbs or, perhaps, actual dried body parts.26 The ‘live body’ is the last of Chapman’s categories. The lay figure’s place is somewhere in between and outside of these categories.
Chapman rightly shows that the lay figure is part of a corpus of sources of bodies artists worked with, and that, at the same time, the lay figure is something unique and other than these previous categories. She confirms that the nature of the lay figure is not easily defined. Indeed, the lay figure is neither solely classical, anatomical, nor ‘live’. However, Chapman fails to identify the lay figure as a man-made object susceptible to ideas about beauty, ideals, gender and proportion. The lay figure is treated as a ‘blank slate’ which can only be transformed into a meaningful body on canvas by the artist. In Chapmans way of thinking is the lay figure a vehicle to reach the final product that is the artwork. She justly regards the lay figure as a tool, however, it is a tool with a visuality that does not only serve its functional purpose; or does it?
1.2 The lay figure in seventeenth-century Dutch artworks
What exactly is the visuality of the seventeenth-century Dutch lay figure? The German female lay figure in the Bode-Museum is already mentioned to exemplify a body type that was
propagated in Dürer’s time. The proportions of her body, her face, her breasts, belly, hips, genitals, buttocks and even her hat are reflecting a sixteenth-century German understanding of the female body. Unfortunately, no Dutch lay figure from the seventeenth-century has
survived that can be studied today. Nonetheless, there are a few manifestations of lay figures in visual artworks of the period that give the opportunity to examine the visual characteristics of Dutch lay figures.
24 Chapman, P., “The Wooden Body,” 191. 25 Ibid.
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For such a fine piece of craftsmanship that is the lay figure, the lay figure is relatively little featured in artworks or in books. The manufacturing of a wooden lay figure such as the one in Witting’s studio scene was a time consuming process (IMAGE 3). It was often done by craftsmen or sculptors. A lay figure could be costly, heavy and relatively durable and
therefore they were often passed on from one artist to the other.27 Yet the lay figure is missing in most studio scenes or illustrations of artistic practices in the early modern Netherlands. For example, it is excluded from humanist illustrations of art academies, such as those by
Stradanus or Alberti.28 However, artists did often display other objects or properties they were
proud of. Studio interiors of Dutch artists were a means for self-promotion. The studio scene was often a showcase for the artist’s own luxuries, rarities and collectable items; they would enhance the artist’s status and prove his worldliness and resourcefulness.29 But lay figures
were not seen as objects that lifted their status as masterful painters. Artists and critics in the seventeenth-century valued lifelikeness and the ability of the artist to draw and paint true to life.
But the lay figure was an instrument that debunked naturalism and lifelikeness. The lay figure did not exactly show an artist’s creativity and talent for invention. Critics and painters regarded the lay figure as a crutch for those artists who lacked a ‘compass of the eye’.30 Besides that, the lack of representations of lay figures might suggest that artists did not
want to reveal their technical process too much, in fear of theft. Workshops in the Middle Ages and Renaissance offer innumerable examples of painters who refused to reveal their working methods.31
Because the lay figure was an unpopular object in the studio, it is even more
fascinating that some artists did choose to depict their wooden studio companions. The first visual manifestation of a Dutch lay figure is on a painting from Werner van den Valckert (1585-1627). Portrait of a man with a lay figure is depicting a woodcarver with a lay figure as his masterpiece, or guild test, of the Utrecht St. Luke’s Guild (IMAGE 6).32 Chapman rightly speculates that maybe Valckert made this painting as a payment for this very lay figure.33 The
27 Rath, M., Die Gliederpuppe, 272. 28 Chapman, P., “The Wooden Body,” 195.
29 Davis, L., “Renaissance Inventions: Van Eyck’s Workshop as a Site of Discovery and Transformation in Jan
van der Straet’s Nova Reperta,” Envisioning the Artist in the Early Modern Netherlands, Netherlands Yearbook
for History of Art 59 (Zwolle: Waanders Publishers, 2009), 243.
30 Chapman, P., “The Wooden Body,” 195.
31 Gotlieb, M., “The Painter’s Secret: Invention and Rivalry from Vasari to Balzac,” The Art Bulletin 84.3
(2002), 469.
32 Chapman, P., “The Wooden Body,” 197. 33 Chapman, P., “The Wooden Body,” 199.
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woodcarver proudly shows his creation. In the right corner of the painting lie the tools with which he has carved his lay figure. The relatively small, wooden figure is painted in an animate and dynamic pose; it is as though he is responding to his maker. The lay figure is highly detailed. The skillful handling of the wood simulates a definition of strong bones and muscles, but also soft skin, for example around his stomach. In a precise manner, Valckert has painted the areas where the different limbs can be bent. The ball joints are secured by shiny screws. These ball joints are giving the figure the opportunity to be bent in order to mimic as closely as possible the different postures a human body can take. Right next to his right ankle is a small part of the stand visible. Because of this stand the lay figure is able to stand
independently and at the same time keep a certain posture.
Even though the figure has nipples, a navel and an expressive face with a pointy nose, a mustache and a beard, it lacks genitals. There is not even a small hint of a sexual organ, nor a modest leaf. The figure’s pelvic bone is completely smooth. It is not a practical
consideration to omit genitals. An early sixteenth-century German lay figure demonstrates that even with explicit genitals, the figure is still able to move freely (IMAGE 5). When every part of this body is elaborately detailed yet the genitals are omitted, does this demonstrate an attitude towards nudity? Or is it also telling about the way the lay figure was used by artists? The lay figure in Young artist drawing in his studio also lacks genitals (IMAGE 3). Valckert’s lay figure and the one painted by Witting twenty years later are quite similar in the way their bodies are designed; the expression of the bones of the ribcage, the muscles in the arms, shoulders, legs and the more smoothly carved belly and pelvic bone are overall quite similar. However, Witting’s lay figure is life-sized. It is able to carry the weight of adult human costumes, such as the one that hangs on the right of the lay figure. Nonetheless, the lay figure is not clothed, it is portrayed naked and passive in the back of the studio. The face of
Witting’s lay figure is less expressive and more generic than the one painted by Valckert. The other striking difference between the two is the expression of gender. Though the gender of Valckert’s lay figure is without doubt male, Witting’s lay figure holds middle ground between both sexes. The musculature gives a masculine look to this body, but the waistline, hips and smooth pelvis are feminine to the eye. One could even argue that this lay figure has breasts: there are two unmistakable round bumps on its chest. This figure is not female, but it is neither entirely male. It is important to realize that this lay figure is also not lacking any suggestion towards gender; it is not a unisex, gender-neutral stick figure. Perhaps the lay figure is flexible in gender. Its gender-fluidity permits the artist to choose and work with the sex he wants.
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The two illustrations made by engraver and publisher of prints Crispijn van de Passe depict lay figures, but not gender-fluid ones, as is demonstrated before. The illustrations are included in his book ‘Van ‘t Light der Teken en Schilderkonst’ from 1643 and represent a male (‘lee man’) and a female (‘lee wyff’) lay figure (IMAGES 1 AND 2). They are both in seated positions; a clear hint of their sizes is absent. However, it can be assumed that they are probably small in size because they are seated and because the folds in the draperies are substantial.34 Their arms are positioned into active postures and they are facing the viewer
with empty eyes. The ball joints of the male lay figure are magnified. It does not seem as though this is truly a ‘working’ lay figure. There is a great distance between the limbs because they are interrupted by ball joints. Especially the hollow segment in his waist is prominent. This type of ball joint is different from the types of ball joints seen in previous lay figures. Where the former ball joints are made in a way that tries to retain a natural flow of the body, these ball joints are separate from the limbs. Still, the male lay figure is precise in expression of muscles and underlying bones. It has a detailed face and this figure, as well as the ones discussed before, has nipples and a navel. Unfortunately, it is not possible to study his pelvic area and possible genitalia because the figure’s lap is covered in cloth.
Though the foundations of the mannequins are the same, they have some profound differences. The female lay figure is not drawn by Van de Passe himself, but by a certain ‘A. Blom’.35 She is seated on blocks, and her lap is covered in draperies even more than the male
version. The female’s face is somewhat softer and perhaps a bit younger in contrast to her male counterpart, she does have a suggestion of hair. The bones and musculature of her torso are almost not defined. The biggest difference is the addition of two, symmetrical, round breasts on the female lay figure. Unfortunately, it is again not possible to figure out how her hips and belly are formed and if they differ from the male hips. The fact that Van de Passe included an illustration of a female lay figure indicates that the gendered lay figure did exist in the seventeenth-century Netherlands, and specifically, the female lay figure.
A few years after Van de Passe published his book, the artist Simon Kick (1603-1652) painted Painter in his studio (IMAGE 9). It is not directly visible, but a lay figure is emerging from a shadowy corner of the artist’s studio. On the foreground is the artist painted while he is painting a portrait of a man with a glass of wine. In some way the lay figure echoes the
posture of the artist; they stand in contrapposto and they are facing our way. The lifeless figure is an eerie sight to behold. The lay figure is made out of wood, and the ball joints are
34 Only with very thick cloth would this be possible on a life-sized lay figure with life-sized drapery. 35 Possibly Abraham Bloemaert (1566-1651).
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smooth and do not interrupt the flow of the body. It does not have hands or lower legs; it floats in the air with the help of a stand. It is not as muscular as Valckert’s or Witting’s lay figures, but it does have a strong chest and shoulders. Perhaps Kick implemented the lay figure in order to assert his connection with the magician who brings his art to life.36 The artist Wallerant Vaillant (1623-1677) painted A young boy copying a painting (IMAGE 10). In a corner, right next to a boy who is drawing after a landscape, a wooden lay figure drooping inactively against the wall can be seen. Its frequent use is indicated by the crack in the lay figure’s shoulder. It seems probable that Vaillant included the lay figure in order to enhance the suggestion that this is a student, working with student materials. The lay figure does have a navel and ears, but there is no expression of muscles, facial features, hair, nor is there an indication of gender. Witting’s lay figure has not one defined gender, but it is still possible to be gendered. This simplified lay figure, on the other hand, is genderless.
The last visual manifestation of a Dutch, seventeenth-century lay figure is painted in a studio scene by Adriaen van Ostade (1610-1685). It is a smaller sized figure and the only one that is actually used by an artist (IMAGE 11): the lay figure is at least put in an active pose and it is implied that the artist is looking in its direction. The lay figure is relatively basic, but it does have facial features. Ostade’s messy studio is not exactly a showcase for his learned and successful status as an artist. The lay figure is position in a way as if it is running, and its stand is well-visible. It is an honest depiction of the lay figure. Where other artists were reluctant in showing their inferior ‘crutches’, or merely showed them as tokens of their ability to create life from the lifeless, Ostade meant neither. His lay figure is a natural occupant of his studio, and a useful model.
Some conclusions can be drawn on the basis of representations of lay figures in seventeenth-century Dutch images. First of all, they are all made of wood and their sizes have remained consistently diverse. Secondly, they are almost consistently depicted naked. Thirdly, they are rarely depicted whilst being used. Some have active postures, others have passive postures, but only Van de Passe and Ostade portray them in a practical context. Their
functions in the other paintings range from showing off craftsmanship, suggesting a talent to create life from dead material, and to depict them as student’s materials. Furthermore, the visuality of the lay figures has changed through the century. Where the first lay figures looked similar to the detailed and refined sixteenth-century German figures, the later lay figures are more stylized and basic. The early lay figures such as Valckert’s and Witting’s are closer to
36 Kisters, S., “Introduction,” in:Esner, R., Kisters, S., Lehmann, A.S., (eds.), Hiding Making: Showing
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artful objects made with aesthetics in mind than the later lay figures. This is also reflected in their inferred gender. The first lay figures of the century were explicitly gendered, or fluid in gender. By gaining gender, the figures also gained some sort of individuality. Later lay figures were more or less gender-fluid, or without gender. What does this say about the perception on the gendered body during this period? And what does this say about the use of the lay figure when they are not gendered? Paintings and illustrations provide perceptible information about the visuality of lay figures. But how is the lay figure described by Dutch seventeenth-century artists and theorists? Are they aware of the differences of visual characteristics of lay figures?
1.3 The lay figure in seventeenth-century Dutch written sources
On the third of July 1635, the father of the artist Gerard ter Borch (1617-1681) wrote in a letter addressed to his son that he had sent him a lay figure. He encouraged him to study with it intensively, and to ‘not let it stand still as it did here, but draw a lot: large and dynamic compositions […].’ However ‘without a stand, because it is too big and heavy to put in the suitcase. For a small amount, you can have one made on site.’37 This letter is a wonderful piece of information about Ter Borch and his education. It is also the only letter describing a practicing artist that uses a lay figure. However, it does not mention what this particular lay figure looked like. Was it similar to Valckert’s detailed yet small lay figure? Or was it a bigger sized, generic figure such as Vaillant’s lay figure? Other sources about the lay figure and the different types artists used are studio inventories and art theories.
Cornelis van der Voort (1567-1624), a portraitist who worked in Amsterdam, is the first Dutch artist of whom we can read in his inventory that he owned a lay figure. In his inventory of 1625, it says that he owned ‘1 houte lee wyff […], 1 houte lee man’.38 A ‘lee
wyff’ was a female lay figure and a ‘lee man’ a male lay figure. The words ‘lay figure’ and ‘mannequin’ both have their origins in the fifteenth-century Netherlands. In Dutch, a lay figure was most often called a ‘leeman’, or ‘ledeman’, for the Middle Dutch word ‘lede’ meant ‘limb’, thus ‘ledeman’ means ‘limbman’, as referring to the limbs of which a lay figure consisted.39 The Dutch word ‘leeman’ became ‘lay figure’ in English. Other variants were
37 „Lieve kint ick seijnde u den Leeman. doch sonder block: omdat hij te groot en te swaer is int coffer te legg:
en om een kleijn gellt koent ghij daer een block doen maeken, gebruickt den leeman en laet hem niet stille staen als hij hijr gedaen heeft, doch teijckent veel: grotte and woelende ordonantien, […]“. Via: Rath, M. Die
Gliederpuppe, 360.
38 Rath, M., Die Gliederpuppe, 347. 39 Chapman, P., “The Wooden Body,” 197.
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‘ledepop’ (lay doll), ‘houte man’ (wooden man), ‘houte knaep’ (wooden boy), or, the
frequently used word ‘manikin’. This word derived from the Middle Dutch word ‘manneken’, which meant ‘little man’. From ‘manikin’ derived the French word ‘mannequin’. Interestingly so, ‘mannequin’ is now only used to describe a female model. Its female meaning derived from the fact that the lay figure was predominantly female in the nineteenth century. It is striking that the first written documentation of the use of a lay figure in the Netherlands is both a male and a female version. It demonstrates that from quite early on the female lay figure was used in the Netherlands.
The list of artists in whose inventories a wooden lay man is listed, is long. For example, the inventory of Nicolaes de Bruyn of 1632 reads: ‘een houtte man’ (a wooden man), of Jan Basse of 1637: ‘een lee-mannetje van palmenhout’ (a small lay figure of palm wood), of Crijn Hendricksz Volmarijn of 1648: ‘een leeman’, of Abraham de Pape of 1656: ‘1 leeman, 2 vrijffcen’(one lay figure, two worry stones).40 The list with wooden dolls goes on
and on; however they are all called by the name of ‘lay man’, which seems to indicate that these mannequins are male, or that the words ‘leeman’ and ‘ledepop’ were gender neutral words. Other Dutch artists known to have possessed lay figures are: Pieter Codde (1599-1678), Johannes de Vos (1615-1693), Cornelis Dusart (1660-1704), Karel Dujardin (1626-1678), and Simon Luttichuys (1610-1662).41 Notably, the inventory of Michiel van Musscher (1645-1705), a portrait painter like Cornelis van der Voort, states that he had ‘Twee
leemannen’. This made Chapman aptly wonder whether this may hint at a pair of a male and a female lay figure.42 It is notable that ‘levensgroote’, or life-sized figures appeared more frequently over time. For example, the inventory of Johan Hendrik Beringh of 1704 states: ‘Nogh een houte Ledeman levensgroote’, and the inventory of Dirk Valkenburg of 1721: ‘een houte Leeman, levensgroote’.43 Models of straw or linen are also documented in inventories,
but the wooden lay figure is stated most frequently.
Besides inventories, art theories provide an understanding of to what extent artists used lay figures and how these figures relate to gender and their visual characteristics. A wonderful source of information is a small tract published in 1636, written by Cornelis Pietersz. Biens (1590/95-1645). Biens is a painter nor a draftsman; he was a writer.
40 For an elaborate record of the inventories of Dutch artists of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
centuries, see: Abraham Bredius, Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländischen Kunst des
16ten, 17ten und 18ten Jahrhunderts (1905). Via: Rath, M., Die Gliederpuppe, 347.
41 Chapman, P., “The Wooden Body,” 200. 42 Ibid.
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Nevertheless, his tract functioned as a guide for young artists, in which several subjects such as perspective, proportion and positioning, landscape and history painting, and also drawing materials and paints were discussed.44 In chapter eight, ‘Hoe men een Lede-Beeldt sal konnen maecken’, Biens gives an elaborate explanation on the manufacturing of the lay figure. Thus, this account of the lay figure is not a manual on how to use these lay figures in the studio, but it is a manual on how to build or repair one with already existing parts. The fact that
instructions on how to use a lay figure are absent is presumably because he thinks it is a habitual studio practice.45 From the naturalness of Biens’ words and the fact that he did not introduce the lay figure or its use, it becomes apparent that lay figures were common attributes in the artist’s studio.46 It is a curious chapter, and the only existing source in that covers the construction of lay figures. Since he was no artist himself, it is likely that he knew lay figures manufacturers of whom he gained the information, especially taking into
consideration that he could not have found information about it in other books – this is the first of its kind.47 His instructions are extremely extensive and skilled. Still, it is rather
difficult to create a lay figure based on Biens’ instruction.
According to Biens, you could make a lay figure the size you wish, but the best size was around thirty to sixty centimeters long (‘een voet of twee lanck’), and that it should consist of fifteen individual parts.48 These parts should be connected by means of fourteen ball joints and five lute strings. Each part should be carved in such a way that the members can rotate and move without scraping against the other limbs. The result is that these lay figures have gaps between the movable members. The jointed space in the waist is a good example; it typifies the character of lay figures. After this, each member should be pierced and ‘channeled’ and square holes need to be carved (visible in IMAGE 2). Then strings can be run through the whole model, with the result that with a key placed in a keyhole in the back, the limbs can be stretched or loosened. Though Biens wrote a chapter on assembling a lay figure, it does not mean that artists used to make these mannequins themselves; they probably only made wax or straw models themselves.49 Biens did not mention a difference between
44 De Klerk, E., “’De Teecken-Const,’ een 17de eeuws Nederlands Traktaatje,” in Oud Holland 96.1 (1982), 16. 45 Chapman, P., “The Wooden Body,” 201.
46 De Klerk, E., “’De Teecken-Const,’” 35. 47 De Klerk, E., “’De Teecken-Const,’” 32.
48 ‘Sulcken beeldt maeckt van goet/vast hout soo groot ghij begeert, ’t zij een voet ofte twee lanck, ende maeckt
hetselve aen vijfthien verscheyden stucken […]’ in De Klerk, E., “’De Teecken-Const,’” 53.
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male or female lay figures - he just noted that the figures should be constructed with the right proportions; a subject to which another part of the book is devoted.50
Though Biens made no distinction between male and female lay figures, a treatise which was published a few years later does confirm the use of female mannequins. The engraving Crispijn van de Passe included in his book of a ‘lee wyff’, a female lay figure, has already been covered (IMAGE 1). However, Passe did not mention anything about female lay figures in his accompanying chapter about the lay figure. However, he did write about the use of the lay figure. There are only two other theorists that have mentioned and discussed lay figures, namely Samuel van Hoogstraten in ‘Inleyding tot de Hooge Schoole der Schilderkonst’ of 1678 and Gerard de Lairesse in ‘Grondlegginge ter tekenkonst’ of 1701 and ‘Het groot schilderboek’ of 1707. However, these theorists did not describe the lay figure’s visual appearance, nor whether or not gendered or female lay figures existed. Van Hoogstraten only mentioned the lay figure when he told an anecdote about an artist who welcomed a beggar into his home, as a model for his painting of Saint Peter. However, when the beggar - not knowing why he was invited – arrived in the painter’s studio and saw some skulls and a headless lay figure, he began to shiver and tremble.51 This story only confirms that the lay figure was an often-used object, and that it closely imitates the human form.
In written sources of the seventeenth-century, the female lay figure is barely
mentioned. As mentioned earlier, only in the inventory of the portrait painter Cornelis van der Voort we explicitly read that he owned a female lay figure besides a male one. In the
inventory of another portraitist Michiel van Musscher (1645-1705), the existence of a female lay figure is hinted at. Still it is not clear-cut. It is interesting to notice that lay figures were useful to portraitists, which explains something about the practical use of lay figures.
Furthermore, the fact that a portraitist used a female lay figure demonstrates an apparent need of a lay figure with female characteristics in the art practice of a portraitist. Though the female lay figure is almost non-existent in written sources, the use of the lay figure itself is
omnipresent. A sixth of the artist’s inventories published by the art historian Abraham Bredius mentions a lay figure, even though the artist’s backgrounds, reputations, and genres differ enormously.52 Therefore, it may be concluded that the use of the lay figure is not tied to one particular group of artists, one region, or one genre. It seems as though it took the Dutch
50 De Klerk, A., “’De Teecken-Const,’” 53.
51 Hoogstraten, van S., Inleyding tot de Hooge Schoole der Schilderkonst (Rotterdam, 1678), 114. Via:
https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/hoog006inle01_01/colofon.php, consulted at 28-02-2020.
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some time to implement the originally Italian practice in their own studios, because only from the seventeenth-century onwards traces of lay figures can be found in literary or visual
sources in the Netherlands. The gathered information from images of lay figures is reflected in the inventories of seventeenth-century artists. Most lay figures that are covered in both visual and written sources are made out of wood, and either small-sized or life-sized.
Occasionally, specific female lay figures are mentioned, yet mostly male or gender-fluid lay figures are disclosed. Why was a ‘lay man’ so frequently used, but not a ‘lay woman’? Because the male or gender-fluid examples are so predominant, it is even more striking to know that sometimes, female lay figures were used. What was the reason that sometimes a lay figure was explicitly female of gender? According to theorists, the way the lay figure was used should provide some clarification.
1.4 The use of the lay figure according to seventeenth-century Dutch
written sources
If we have to believe the visual sources of lay figures, the lay figure was a passive object meant for admiration. The paintings of Valckert, Witting, Vaillant and Kick all depict the lay figure either as silent studio presences or as an artful object worthy of praise. Only Ostade hints at how an artist could work with a lay figure: the lay figure would be positioned in a certain posture and this posture would be drawn after. However, according to Van de Passe, the one reason why artists should use a lay figure is for drawing after draperies: ‘Because live models tend to get tired and start to move for the same reason, the brilliant Italian masters have come up with a tool; a wooden lay figure that man could adorn with draperies, that would hold in place the folds in the draperies, and whose limbs could bend as if it were a living human being.’53 A breathing model will be moving during her sitting, and the next time
she or he would visit the studio, the draperies will be impossible to look exactly the same as the time before. By stating that drawing after draperies is the sole reason to deploy a lay figure, its use is also tied to the teaching of artists. In his illustrations of lay figures it is
visualized how a lay figure could be draped with cloth (IMAGES 1 AND 2). Notably, in the same chapter Van de Passe included an illustration of a male lay figure clothed in robes (IMAGE 8). Here, the lay figure is shown in action; one can imagine how an artist would sit down and draw after its draperies. This lay figure is depicted in a classical way; it is as though Van de
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Passe wanted to lift the lesser status of the lay figure to that of classical sculpture.
Practically, this worked as follows according to Van de Passe: ‘with the assembly of limbs and screws can the figure be bent and laid as though it is a living human being.’ In order to adjust the lay figure’s pose one should use a ‘certain iron key’. Furthermore, he advised to place the lay figure in northern light to maintain constant lighting. On how to adjust and draw draperies he urged that ‘they should not look like intestines or cords, but they should resemble the branches of trees, or the waves of the sea. Their movement is in- and outwards […].’ According to Van de Passe, one should keep in mind that the folds of the draperies will meet on the main joints like hands, arms, and ‘on the round places, as the belly, the breasts and buttocks, one must keep the fabric as plain and smooth as seems natural.’ Reading Van de Passe about round places clarifies why female lay figures could be practical: they could mimic the round parts of female bodies. However, all information in Van de Passe’s chapter is concerned with clothing the lay figure. The chapter does not explain the function of a female lay figure in relation to the male lay figure, or why the female lay figure was even used.
In the book Grondlegginge Ter Teekenkonst, Gerard de Lairesse called the lay figure a tool to learn how to draw: ‘Instead of spending money on traveling, you could spend this money much wiser on your training.’54 He mentioned that a lay figure is one of these tools
that is needed in order to become a skilled draughtman and painter. But what exactly could be taught from a lay figure? In Groot Schilderboek, a book that he wrote a decade later, he stated: ‘draw everything that is naked from life, and the clothed from the lay figure.’55 This implies that also De Lairesse advised artists to merely draw clothing from the lay figure, but not posture and anatomy; this should be done from a living model. However, this is
contradicted later, when he discussed the lining up of figures in history paintings. He described a method for an easy way to depict movements and emotions as natural as is possible: ‘Mimic with your own body, in front of a mirror, these actions and movements, as you wish your images would have, imagine the passions and emotions they should possess
54 ‘En wat het Ryzen aangaat, die kosten zoud gy veel nutter in uw Oeffening kunnen besteeden, zo aan fraaye
Boeken. Schoone Printen van de voornaamste Meesters. Playster beelden. Een Leeman; en diergelyke noodzaakelykheeden meer: en brengen daar noch eeninge tyd in ’t leeren mede door.’ In: De Lairesse, G.,
Grondlegginge Ter Teekenkonst (Amsterdam, 1701), 42. Via: Heidelberg historic literature, digitized.
https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/lairesse1701bd1/0078, constulted at 28-02-2020.
55 ‘[..,] teekend dan al wat naakt is na het leeven, en het gekleede na de Leeman, beeld voor beeld […]’ in: De
Lairesse, G., Groot Schilderboek (Amsterdam: Henri Desbordes, 1712), 49. Via: dbnl,
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[…]’.56 After this, he wrote that you should draw this image of yourself in the mirror on paper
without paying too much attention to proportions, just the emotions and movements of the body.57 Then, he advised to key your lay figure in the same position as your sketch, whilst looking for the best position of the figure and the fairest side. ‘If it should be a clothed figure’, he added, ‘look for the right folds on your lay figure, and leave out the limbs which should be drawn after life’.58 Even though he added that you should draw the bare body parts after real
bodies, the transition from reflection in the mirror, to lay figure, to sketch is rather smooth. The body of the artist and the body of the lay figure now function in the same way; they are both used to create poses and to embody emotion without the use of any other model. Or, as De Lairesse describes it: ‘you have hatched your own eggs’.59 The method De Lairesse
described establishes a bond between the body of the artist and the body of the lay figure. Now, it is not solely used for draperies, but for physical information about postures as well. Compared to using drawings or paintings as sources, the lay figure allows the artist to depict three-dimensionality in figures.
De Lairesse also used his lay figure to paint (‘be it male, or female’) figures sitting high in the air or flying through the air. When depicting the clothing of these figures, he would place his lay figure on a high tripod. He would sit on the floor with his back against it and with a mirror between his legs, drawing after what he saw in the mirror.60 He seems fond of his lay figure: ‘People will hardly believe how advantageous the use of lay figures is. Yes, I believe no one will disagree when I say that it is just as necessary to draw after the clothed lay figure as the naked model; I can find between those two no other distinction than that the one goes first, and the other follows.’61
56 Maak met uw eigen lichchaam, voor een spiegel staande, zulke actien en beweegingen, als gy uw beelden wild
doen hebben; verbeeld u de driften en hertstogten welke zy moeten vertoonen, nadat uwe geschiedenis vereist […]’. Ibid.
57 ‘Teekend of schetst het zodanig na, met al zyne waarneemingen zoveel ’t u mogelyk is, zonder op de proportie
te letten, doch alleen op de beweeging der leeden acht geevende. Steld dan uw Leeman na dezelve schets, die zodanig schikkende, als gy het in uw Ordinantie nodig hebt, zoekende de schoonste zyde, de beste daaging, en voordeeligste schaduw en na de zaak vereist.’ Ibid.
58 ‘Indien ’t een gekleed beeld moet weezen, zoek het beloop der plooijen, naar de eigenschap van 't beeld, zo
fraay te schikken als ’t u mogelyk is.’ Ibid.
59 ‘[…] dus doende zult gy moogen zeggen, dat het uwe eigen eyren zyn die gy gebroeyd hebt […]’, De Lariesse,
G., Groot Schilderboek, 51.
60 ‘Ik stelde dan den Leeman, dus geschikt, op een hoogen driestal, gelyk de geene zyn die de Turfdraagers
gebruiken, en ging daar tegenaan zitten, op die wyze als hier voor gezegt is, tekenen de de kleeding alzo uit. Was het een vliegend of leggend beeld, dan behielp ik my met touwetjes, draaden, of andere middelen, zo ik best kon, zonder moeite te ontzien, nadat de lust my dreef om wat fraays, na myn en zin, te maaken, en dat'er aan gelegen was.’, De Lariesse, G., Groot Schilderboek, 144.
61 ‘Men zal naulyks geloven hoe voordeelig het gebruik der Leeman is, voor al eer men het bezogt heeft. Ja ik
denk niet dat my iemand ongelyk zal geeven, wanneer ik zeg, dat het alzo noodzakelijk is naar de gekleede Leeman te teikenen, als naar een menschelyk naakt; ik kan tusschen die twee, geen ander onderscheid vinden, als dat het een voor gaat, en het ander volgd.’ In: De Lairesse, Grondlegginge ter Teekenkonst, 97.
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While Van de Passe only advised artists to use the lay figure for the studying of draperies and the depiction of clothing, De Lairesse did include alternatives on how to adopt the lay figure in the process of making art. By advising that the manikin can be used as an intermediate step between imagining poses of the body to transferring it on canvas, suggests that, in a way, the lay figure functions as a sketch. Instead of making a preparatory study on paper from the imagination or memory, the pose of the body can be tested first by means of the lay figure. Creating a certain posture and composition with the help of a lay figure can indicate whether it works on canvas as well. Thus, this second use of the lay figure is also calling on the physical nature of the lay figure and the information it possesses about the human body.
If the lay figure would merely exist for the depiction of clothing or composition of postures, why would one bother making a wooden figure so ‘true to life’ – as is visible in some illustrations? They were often more than just clothes hangers for fine draperies. But does this imply that they were also used for drawing their bodies, or parts of their bodies, when they were unclothed? The information gathered from visual and literary sources is contradicting. While Van de Passe and De Lairesse stress that the lay figure is there for the depiction of draperies, this is not reflected in paintings with lay figures. Except from Van de Passe’s illustrations, every lay figure is painted without clothes or draperies. Again, the question arises: why would there be gendered lay figures if clothing them were their only use?
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CHAPTER 2
The actual use of the lay figure
2.1 The lay figure as a source of reality
In the painting The paternal admonition (IMAGE 12) made by Gerard ter Borch, the satin dress of the young girl is exquisitely rendered. The small crinkles and folds with soft patches of light and reflecting colors of the surroundings are a result of lengthy examination. It is no exaggeration to claim that Ter Borch’s method to paint satin has never been surpassed.62 Even if it was unknown that Ter Borch received a lay figure from his father, it is evident that he used one in the making of the dress in this picture. All movements of a model, even small, would have been disastrous for the completion of this piece of clothing, not to speak of the changes in between painting sessions, after which the dress could never be arranged in the exact same way as before. The fact that the young woman’s front is invisible to us, enhances an association with the lay figure. The way the fabric of this skirt is forged and shaped into a perfect waterfall of folds is mesmerizing, but is does not seem as though this young girl had just gotten up from her chair and walked up to her parents. Instead, it looks as though she has been standing there for days.
Ter Borch used his lay figure in the way as was instructed by Van de Passe: to be able to depict clothing. However, according to Biens, the best lay figure is small in size. Moreover, many inventories of artists stated that their lay figures were small. The smaller lay figure is useful to study folds in pieces of cloth, but is it highly unpractical to represent a complete, adult-sized attire. It is unlikely that artists sewed their own miniature items of clothing to dress their miniature lay figures. Therefore, it is only logical to assume that portrait painters, but also artists of other genres who paint figures, would use life-sized lay figures. This gave them the opportunity to paint someone’s face after life, and their clothing after the lay figure. Looking again at The paternal admonition, it is now quite clear that also Ter Borch owned a life-sized lay figure.
Besides the precise way Ter Borch painted satin on the girl’s dress, it is unclear if he used lay figures for the other figures in this painting. However, not all artists could hide the employment of their lay figure well. Vasari wrote about the Italian artist Niccolò Soggi (1480-1552) that ‘his manner was brittle’, because he used to work with figures made from earth and wax.63 According to Vasari, Soggi internalized the ‘brittleness’ of his stiff figures into his way
62 Chapman, P., “The Wooden Body,” 204.
63 „perché quella sua maniera dura lo conduceva, con le fatiche di que’ suoi modelli di terra e di cera.”, Vasari,
