Pendant with the Adoration of the Shepherds

In early 1668 Prince Cosimo III de’ Medici travelled through the Netherlands, taking in the Republic’s finest art, culture, and technology. On 3 January he had a meeting which would drastically alter the course of the life of one young man from Amsterdam: Johannes van Achelom. Johannes had a spectacular talent for cutting paper, an art which was exceedingly popular in the Netherlands at the time. He did not disappoint: he dazzled the prince with his scissor work, cutting unbelievable silhouettes of figures, landscapes, and a variety of animals. Keen to introduce paper cutting to the Florentine court, the future Grand Duke took the young paper cutter to Florence, where he spent the rest of his life as a court artist and chamberlain to Cosimo. The sole surviving paper cutting that records Johannes van Achelom’s extraordinary path and his relationship with the Florentine nobleman is that encased in the present pendant. When it was published in 2015, its whereabouts unknown, this Adoration of the Shepherds was used as the benchmark for every attribution in Van Achelom’s rare oeuvre, which currently encompasses a mere eight works.

Gallery (1 images) Johannes van Achelom (circa 1632-1711)
Pendant with the Adoration of the Shepherds
Paper, glass, gilt copper
10.8 by 7.5 cm. Sold to the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam