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All our images can be downloaded in high resolution from our website for non-commercial use (research/study, educational purposes, personal blogs and social media).
Would you like to use our images in a publication? Please mention our credit line: "Mauritshuis, The Hague."
Commercial use
Would you like to use our images for commercial purposes? We would be happy to discuss this with you. Please contact our marketing department at images@mauritshuis.nl.
All our images can be downloaded in high resolution from our website for non-commercial use (research/study, educational purposes, personal blogs and social media).
Would you like to use our images in a publication? Please mention our credit line: "Mauritshuis, The Hague."
Commercial use
Would you like to use our images for commercial purposes? We would be happy to discuss this with you. Please contact our marketing department at images@mauritshuis.nl.
One of the artists in Johan Maurits’s entourage was Albert Eckhout. Eckhout recorded the Brazilian people, flora and fauna in drawings and paintings. Like these two red-footed tortoises with their scaly heads, shells with geometric patterns and mouths full of sharp teeth. Eckhout painted them on paper.
The animals are grunting threateningly at each other, as the males do during the breeding season. But Eckhout made the animals more exciting than they actually are – tortoises do not in fact have teeth.
Albert Eckhout (Groningen c. 1610 - 1666 Groningen)
Title
Study of Two Brazilian Tortoises
Object name
painting
Inventory number
957
On view in
Room 8
Material and technical details
Technique
tempera, gouache
Material
paper on panel
Dimensions
30.5 x 51 cm
Provenance
Probably Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen; Jacques Goudstikker Gallery, Amsterdam (purchase and supposed sale in 1936; cat. 1936-1937, no. 42, as by Anonymous Master; Goudstikker number 3036, inventory of 1936); J.C.H. Heldring, Oosterbeek, 1942-1963 (probably purchased before 10 May 1940; cat. 1955, pp. 32-33, no. 18, as by Anonymous; sale London, Sotheby’s, 27 March 1963, lot 1); Edward Speelman Gallery, London, 1963 (bought at auction for S. Nijstad who worked in commission of the Mauritshuis); purchased by the Friends of the Mauritshuis Foundation, 1963; on long-term loan from the Friends of the Mauritshuis Foundation, since 1963
