VERHULST, Rombout
Flemish sculptor, active mainly in Holland. A native of Mechelen, this aristocrat of Flemish sculpture settled in Holland where he busied himself above all with monuments to the glory of the pioneers of the young Batavian Republic. In the 1650s he was the most important assistant to Artus Quellin. in the sculptural decoration of the Town Hall in Amsterdam. He produced for the Town Hall exceptionally successful works such as the statues of Silence and of Fidelity.
In 1663 he settled in The Hague, where he became a leading sculptor of busts and tombs. In his portraits he allied the sober realism typical of Holland to a supremely skilful rendering of details such as hair and clothing, and he modelled flesh with a sensitivity which seems to make hard materials malleable and expressive. The noble and sensitively cut monument to Admiral Michiel de Ruyter (1681) in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam is perhaps his masterpiece.
