Fantastic Forgeries
Authourship & Authenticity Project: Museum Of Fantastic Forgeries
OTTO'S HAMMER
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In the introduction assignment Make from the Museum we did some scouting in the Boijmans. In that introduction my eye fell on a work from Ferdinand Bol.
The underscript was: This painting shows a boy in Polish costume holding a war hammer. On the floor are a shield, a drum, a 'cuirass' or armoured breastplate and a bow and quiver of arrows. In the background are two cannons with accompanying ramrods and wiper. The boy is Otto van der Waeyen, the son of an Amsterdam based weapons trader who had contacts with Poland.
At first I only saw the letters and the words, just like all the other descriptions of all the work in the Boijmans. But then it came to me. In the year 1600, a Dutch weapon trader earned enough from the war in poland with russia to let his son get painted by a master painter with his merchandise.
