Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 104. (Budapest, 2006)
ZOLTÁN KOVÁCS: "The Witty Pieter Quast": The Works of an Amsterdam Master in Hungary Then and Now
(De Witte Sterre), and the unfinished repairs.' Quast died in this house in May of 1647, and his corpse was laid to rest on 29 May in the Nieuwe Kerk. From the contemporaneous documents, it appears that Quast was not a man of means. His sole source of livelihood was painting, and thus, he left substantial debts behind to Annetje following his death. An inventory of estate was made of his personal effects on 6 June 1647, in which we find, alongside the furniture, tableware and other objects and furnishings, a few paintings —some completed and framed, and a few others unfinished. 6 Shortly after Quast's death, in 1649, his widow was married to the Leiden painter, Jacob van Spreeuwen. In the course of his brief life, Quast tried his talents not only as a painter, but also as a sculptor, 7 draughtsman and engraver. He was one of the rare Dutch artists who worked with graphite or chalk on vellum. The Louvre in Paris preserves fifty-six drawings made with this technique, for the most part landscapes and cityscapes, while the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg can call six signed Quast drawings their own. 8 These are, in fact, copies after a few pieces in Roelandt Savery's series, Naer het leven, from the 1630s. 9 Quast's engraving series also attest to his utterly exquisite draughtsmanship, among which the most significant one portrays beggars. According to the inscription of the title page of the second edition, from the 1640s, of the sheets entitled "T is al verwaert-gaeren (All confused half-wits), he personally drew and engraved them. 10 More recent research unequivocally repudiates the belief held previously in the art historical literature, according to which Quast had been the drawing master of the young Prince William II. 11 The Old Masters' Gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest holds two works of Quast. The painting signed with a ligatured PQ monogram and bearing the date 1639 portrays an elderly, bearded man in a hat (fig. 1). This small-size panel entered the collection in 1924, as a bequest of Márton Porkay. 12 The figure appears in half-profile, turned slightly to the right, against the neutral background often employed by Quast. His long, sharp-featured face is encompassed by his slightly unkempt, greying beard, which is bordered by his thick moustache and wavy, grey locks that cover his ears. He w r ears a beret-like cap rakishly over his high, slightly balding forehead. He wears a mantle adorned with gilded braiding and clasped with a chain over a floral patterned shirt. The seventeenth-century Dutch inventories and painting registers call this sort of picture "tronie" (face). 13 This expression in today's Holland is rare and —similar to the French "trogne" or the English "mug" —is only used in a pejorative sense; however, in the seventeenth century it meant head, face or facial expression, and it referred to a particular image type, known first and foremost in the circle of Rembrandt and his pupils. The tronie was generally made from a live model, which could have been even the artist himself, 14 or one of his colleagues; never-
