Rombout Verhulst

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.

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.

[7] 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.

[9] An important portrait bust attributed to Verhulst is that of Antonio Lopes Suasso, a leading Jewish merchant and banker in Amsterdam.

[9] His chief work in this area (though possibly not his most successful creation) is the decorated tomb of the Dutch naval hero Michiel de Ruyter in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam.

A statue of the second husband of the widow made by Bartholomeus Eggers was later added to the tomb replacing two putti holding memento mori symbols.

[12] In addition to the monumental commissions he completed, Verhulst made small-scale ivory carvings, a specialty for which his home town Mechelen was particularly known.

Verhulst's work is warmer in conception and executed with greater refinement and therein resembles more that of the Antwerp sculptors from the circle of Peter Paul Rubens, including Johannes van Mildert and Lucas Faydherbe.