Bilderdijk’s right hand

Bilderdijk's right hand, with which he had written all his verses, was immortalized in plaster after his death by Antonio Boggia, the Amsterdam image caster who also made his death mask. Several worshipers wanted to get hold of a copy of this hand. A few copies have been preserved in the collection. They are special artefacts, because they are expressions of the international romantic cult of relics around poets in the first half of the nineteenth century.

On one of the copies, we can read a fragment of the Bible verse Ecclesiastes 10:2: ‘Cor sapientis in dextera ejus’ (‘The heart of the wise is in his right hand’). When he was staying in the Netherlands in 1854, the Flemish poet Prudens van Duyse was also shown a copy of a 'plaster cast' of Bilderdijk’s right hand.

Afterwards, he wrote:

That Hand, rendered in bronze or plaster, Commands reverence to everyone who thinks highly of art and Dutch: It casts sparks of eternal soul life, And seizes from the grave whatever night it wants to float, Still Holland in the heart, amazed at the master's art.