Dutch and Flemish Furniture
born in 1579. In 1619, the Guild of St. Luke ordered
a clavecin from him. The Museum of the Brussels
Conservatory owns one dated 1613, with one keyboard
and four octaves. The Musee Archeologique of Bruges
owns a bent side one, dated 1624, °f 5 octaves and 3
stops, and the Musee du Steen, Antwerp has a bent side
one, undated, with 3 stops and two keyboards, the lower
one 4 octaves and the upper 3| octaves. In the South
Kensington Museum there is another by Andries Ruckers,
said to have been Handel's. This is dated 1651, and
inscribed Sic transit Gloria Mundi and Acta Virum
Probant. On the belly of the instrument, of the bent
side shape, a concert of monkeys is represented.
One monkey is conducting.
Andries Ruckers the younger, born in 1617, married
a daughter of Dirck de Vries, also a clavecin-maker. The
Chateau de Perceau, near Cosne, owned a bent side clave-
cin by Andries the younger, dated 1655. Its case was
painted in blue camaieu in the rococo style. This passed
to a private collector.
Christofel Ruckers was the last important member of
this family of clavecin-makers.
A beautifully decorated clavecin occurs in the picture
of The Young Scholar and His Sister, by Cocx (Coques) in
the Cassel Gallery. The room is decorated with hangings
of blue leather, ornamented with gold, above which hang
pictures in ebony frames. The young man is seated at
a table beneath the window and his sister is at the clavecin
opposite. The latter is exquisitely painted, the top
showing the story of Apollo and Marsyas.
In the latter part of the sixteenth and throughout the
128