in his milieu
amsterdam university press
Golahny - Milieu_omsl_WT2.indd 1
www.aup.nl
isbn-10: 90 5356 933 2 isbn-13: 978 90 5356 933 7
a. golahny m.m. mochizuki l. vergara
Born in Paris, the economist John Michael Montias (1928-2005) lived most of his life in the United States, where he first made his name during the 1960s and 1970s as a specialist in the economic systems of the Soviet bloc. Professor of Economics at Yale University from 1958 until his retirement in 1995, Montias meanwhile went on to become one of the foremost scholars on Johannes Vermeer and a pioneer in the study of the socio-economic dimensions of art, reinvigorating research on the art market and the use of archival sources. Thanks to his work we now know many new facts about Vermeer’s life, including that he had the support of a faithful patron, Pieter Claesz. van Ruijven. In short, Montias put a human face on this enigmatic painter. Michael Montias was a beloved figure to scholars working in the area of Netherlandish art. This volume of essays in his honor, planned as an album amicorum, has to our great sorrow been concluded in memoriam.
in his milieu Essays on Netherlandish Art in Memory of
john michael montias
a. golahny m.m. mochizuki l. vergara amsterdam university press
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In His Milieu
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In His Milieu Essays on Netherlandish Art in Memory of John Michael Montias
Edited by A. Golahny, M.M. Mochizuki and L. Vergara
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This publication was made possible by the generous support of the Department of the History of Art, Yale University; the Frick Art Reference Library; the Frick Collection; Jack Kilgore & Co., Inc.; The Montias family; The Netherland-America Foundation; Otto Naumann, Ltd.; Stichting Charema Fonds voor Geschiedenis en Kunst; the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University; and the Yale University Art Gallery.
Cover design Cover design conception Cover illustration Lay-out
Studio Jan de Boer, Amsterdam Renée Joosten, New York
ISBN-13
978 90 5356 933 7 90 5356 933 2 654
ISBN-10 NUR
© Chris de Jongh/NRC Handelsblad PROgrafici, Goes
© Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2006 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.
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Contents
Acknowledgments
9
In Memoriam John Michael Montias (1928–2005)
10
Four Remembrances EGBERT HAVERKAMP-BEGEMANN OTTO NAUMANN HERBERT E. SCARF ALEXANDER M. SCHENKER
13 13 15 19 20
Art-Historical Publications by John Michael Montias
23
ANN JENSEN ADAMS Two Forms of Knowledge: Invention and Production in Thomas de Keyser’s Portrait of a Young Silversmith, Sijmon Valckenaer
29
ALBERT BLANKERT The Case of Han van Meegeren’s Fake Vermeer Supper at Emmaus Reconsidered
47
MARION BOERS-GOOSENS Prices of Northern Netherlandish Paintings in the Seventeenth Century 59 MARTEN JAN BOK and SEBASTIEN DUDOK VAN HEEL The Mysterious Landscape Painter Govert Janszn called Mijnheer (1577-c.1619) ALAN CHONG Jacob Ochtervelt’s Rotterdam Patron
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PAUL CRENSHAW Did Rembrandt Travel to England?
123
NEIL DE MARCHI and HANS J. VAN MIEGROET The Antwerp-Mechelen Production and Export Complex
133
STEPHANIE S. DICKEY Thoughts on the Market for Rembrandt’s Portrait Etchings
149
WAYNE FRANITS If the Shoe Fits: Courtship, Sex, and Society in an Unusual Painting by Gonzales Coques
165
AMY GOLAHNY A Sophonisba by Pieter Lastman?
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ANNE GOLDGAR Poelenburch’s Garden: Art, Flowers, Networks, and Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century Holland
183
ETHAN MATT KAVALER Tournai’s Renaissance Jubé: Art as Instrument of Empowerment
193
YORIKO KOBAYASHI-SATO Vermeer and His Thematic Use of Perspective
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SUSAN DONAHUE KURETSKY The Face in the Landscape: A Puzzling Print by Matthäus Merian the Elder
219
WALTER LIEDTKE with archival research by PIET BAKKER Murant and His Milieu: A Biography of Emanuel Murant, the “Rustic Forerunner” of Jan van der Heyden
233
ANNE-MARIE LOGAN Rubens as a Teacher: “He may teach his art to his students and others to his liking”
247
JOHN LOUGHMAN Abraham van Dijck (1635?–1680), a Dordrecht Painter in the Shadow of Rembrandt
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ANNE W. LOWENTHAL Joachim/Peter Wtewael, Father/Son, Master/Pupil
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MIA M. MOCHIZUKI At Home with the Ten Commandments: Domestic Text Paintings in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam
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MICHAEL NORTH The Transfer and Reception of Dutch Art in the Baltic Area during the Eighteenth Century: The Case of the Hamburg Dealer Gerhard Morrell
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NADINE M. ORENSTEIN Sleeping Caps, City Views, and State Funerals: Privileges for Prints in the Dutch Republic, 1593–1650
313
NATASJA PEETERS and MAXIMILIAAN P. J. MARTENS Piety and Splendor: The Art Collection of Antwerp Burgomaster Adriaan Hertsen
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MICHIEL C. PLOMP Pictorial Archives: “Jordaans” in Delft
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HERMAN ROODENBURG Visiting Vermeer: Performing Civility
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LOUISA WOOD RUBY The Montias Database: Inventories of Amsterdam Art Collections
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GARY SCHWARTZ Some Questions Concerning Inventory Research
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LARRY SILVER Marketing the Dutch Past: The Lucas van Leyden Revival around 1600
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ERIC JAN SLUIJTER “Les regards dards”: Werner van den Valckert’s Venus and Cupid
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NICOLETTE C. SLUIJTER-SEIJFFERT The School of Cornelis van Poelenburch
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MICKAËL SZANTO From Art to Politics: The Paintings of Jean de Warignies, Lord of Blainville (c. 1581–1628)
455
CHRISTOPHER S. WOOD Van Eyck Out of Focus
467
MICHAEL ZELL Landscape’s Pleasures: The Gifted Drawing in the Seventeenth Century
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Acknowledgments
Producing a book of this kind relies completely upon a supportive community and in this respect we have been most fortunate. All the contributors have our heartfelt gratitude for believing in this project from its inception. Without their quick responses to our invitation and their contagious enthusiasm at every step in the process, this volume in honor of Michael Montias could not have been realized. Many assisted by generously donating their time, expertise and advice beyond anything we might ever have expected. Deserving of special mention are: Liz Allen, Kristin Belkin, Albert Blankert, Marten Jan Bok, Matthew de Clercq, Ned Cooke, Stephanie Dickey, Wayne Franits, Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, Magdalena Hernas, Renée Joosten, Jack Kilgore, Joan Kuyper, Randy Lemaire, Walter Liedtke, Anne-Marie Logan, Susan Matheson, Anniek Meinders, Maria Menocal, John-Luke Montias, Marie Montias, Sam Tsao Montias, Otto Naumann, Francien Olthof, Nadine Orenstein, Inge Reist, Jock Reynolds, Louisa Wood Ruby, Herb Scarf, Alex Schenker, Marike Schipper, Gary Schwartz, Eric Jan Sluijter, Nicolette Sluijter-Seijffert, Frans Spruijt, Martin Voigt, Christine Waslander, Mariët Westermann, Thijs Weststeijn, and Chris Wood. We would also like to express our deep appreciation for the encouragement and generous financial assistance extended by our lead sponsor, Otto Naumann, Ltd., and to our donors on both sides of the Atlantic: the Department of the History of Art, Yale University; the Frick Art Reference Library; the Frick Collection; Jack Kilgore & Co., Inc.; The Montias family; The Netherland-America Foundation; Stichting Charema Fonds voor Geschiedenis en Kunst; the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University; and the Yale University Art Gallery.
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In Memoriam John Michael Montias (1928–2005)
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Four Remembrances
Michael Montias was a very special person. All of us who knew him will miss him, for many reasons. He was good company, and he was well informed about the matters of the day. It was always a pleasure to talk with him about the events in the world. He had his own views, and presented these with conviction. He supported his opinions with quotes from literature, especially French literature. He laced his discourse with a sense of humor that tended both to bolster and to lighten his arguments. He was also a good listener, and gave his interlocutors the opportunity to formulate their own thoughts. Discussions with him were always a memorable pleasure. At this moment and in this place, however, I should like to say a few words especially about Mike’s contribution to the discipline that he chose in midlife, namely, the history of art. Trained as an economist and serving on the Yale faculty, with his specialty the economic systems of Eastern Europe, Mike developed an interest in the history of the art of the Netherlands. This was, I believe, in the late 1960s. I remember that he borrowed books on art from me, like the basic two-volume handbook by Wilhelm Martin, which he obviously perused. At the same time, he became intrigued by the enormous quantity of archival material in Holland that had been published only partially by an earlier generation of art historians, in particular Abraham Bredius. Mike realized that much material lay fallow in the Dutch archives. He selected Delft for further research because the town was an active artistic center in the seventeenth century, yet its archives were not subject to the same intense traffic as those in Amsterdam. He learned the seventeenth-century Dutch archival language and script. The result was the book Artists and Artisans in Delft (Princeton University Press, 1982). Mike’s approach to the archival data was distinctly innovative. His predecessors had been interested largely in the biographical information on artists
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and in the facts about works of art. Their efforts were still part of a historicist and taxonomic approach. In contrast, Mike wished to define the socioeconomic climate of the world of artists in a given location. The traditional study of the art of the past had been based almost exclusively on works of art that still exist. Again in contrast, Mike provided the art historian with a view of the artistic situation in a given place and time, through the kaleidoscopic facets of the lives and activities of artists and artisans. Mike took into account fluctuations of the market, the values of paintings of different subject themes, the ratio of art works made in Delft as compared with those imported from other centers, the cost of an art education, the cost of traveling to Italy as a capstone to artistic training, institutional and private patronage, and the role of the guilds. Mike commented on all these and other topics in his book. His approach was certainly an eye-opener to historians of Dutch art. Mike changed the image of art in Holland in the seventeenth century by placing the artist and his work in the context of economics and social history. Many younger colleagues have followed his approach. Mike went on with his archival research in Delft. Although originally he had not planned to investigate documents about the greatest Delft painter, Johannes Vermeer, he realized there was much work to be done. He researched the family, including greatgrandparents, nephews, nieces, and cousins; he discovered large quantities of data concerning these and other individuals who had dealings with Vermeer. With endless patience, he reconstructed the vitae of the family and its associates. The book that resulted is well titled Vermeer and His Milieu: A Web of Social History (Princeton University Press, 1998). It paints the background of the artist and his family, which included counterfeiters, architects, a scheming mother-in-law, and a Catholic wife. The book established the name and personality of one patron of Vermeer who acquired about twenty of the sixty paintings made by the artist. This is a very significant addition to our understanding of the artist and how he worked. It must be noted that Mike was reluctant to conclude that the support of a patron made it possible for Vermeer to paint slowly, resulting in smooth, enamellike surfaces, and that the patron therefore influenced the concepts of the artist. Mike was reluctant to do so in spite of two parallel instances of such supportive patronage in the cases of Gerard Dou and Frans van Mieris. In such matters of relating circ*mstance to artistic style, he was very cautious. Two observations should be added to this brief description of Mike’s work. He published one more book, on Amsterdam collections, and a number of articles. And he provided a database of no fewer than 52,000 paintings in Amsterdam collections for use in the Frick Art Reference Library, New York, in cooperation with the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie in The Hague. One might ask, however, what was behind Mike’s interest in the topics he
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treated so well? I believe that he was guided decisively by two instincts, by two inclinations. One was his urge to collect. He was naturally inclined to collect objects, ceramics, paintings, kitchenware, and antique tools. In this endeavor, he was joined by his wife, Manya. But for Mike, the urge to collect went much further and included the collecting of data. Those endless days and months, and ultimately years, were possible and pleasurable for him because of his passion for collecting data. The second guiding trait was Mike’s interest in people. He had great interest in his fellow human beings, both in the broad social sense and in his individual friends. I believe that his search for data of the members of the Vermeer family was exciting for him because all those names – those difficult first names and patronymics reflecting complicated family relationships – were not merely names for him, they represented living men and women with distinct personalities and activities. All of us who knew Mike have benefited from his warmth, and we will always remember him for the uniquely generous qualities of his friendship. Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann ••• Michael Montias, as he preferred to be known, lost his battle with cancer in late July 2005, after a prolonged and courageous struggle. He was one of the greatest innovators in the field of Dutch art history, although he was trained as an economist and only came to art history in the middle of an already distinguished career. To hear Michael tell it, his interest in Dutch art was piqued as a teenager, when he came across a copy of Wilhelm von Bode’s multi-volume study of Rembrandt, now long outdated, but then the catalyst for his initial curiosity about Dutch painters. This seed did not germinate until twenty years later, when he met Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann at Yale, where they were both professors. A polymath, Michael had explored a career in chemistry after reading a book on the periodic table, and considered writing a dissertation at Columbia on the prices of Dutch paintings at auction. However, he soon turned his attention to the discipline of economics and specifically comparative economic systems in the Soviet Bloc. It was in this field that he defended his dissertation and published extensively (for example, Central Planning in Poland, 1962; Economic Development in Communist Romania, 1967). But his interest in Dutch art stayed with him. In 1975, Michael received a summer grant to study the guild system in seventeenth-century Holland. Like Hans Floerke before him, he intended to survey the material, but he brought to the equation his own expertise in statistical analysis and comparative economic sys-
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tems. Michael so loved the project that soon he became totally absorbed in the wealth of material he discovered in the comparatively small archive of Delft, where he began his research. The results appeared in 1982 in a book that permanently altered the course of the study of Dutch art history, combining that discipline with the field of economics in a way that was unprecedented, yet became intelligible to all (Artists and Artisans in Delft: A SocioEconomic Study of the Seventeenth Century). From this pioneering work arose a new subfield, one that combined statistical study with a deep understanding of cultural history, a road later followed by several distinguished economists and historians. Vermeer had always attracted Michael, and his archival pursuits began with this artist. Even in his first week in the archives in Delft, before he had fully mastered the Dutch language (let alone the cryptic script of the time), he found an unpublished document that mentioned Vermeer. That Friday evening, I remember, he invited me to his third-floor walk-up in Delft to see what he had unearthed, and already he had written out three pages in longhand analyzing his relatively minor discovery. It was exhilarating to listen to him read this essay with an excited curiosity and infectious enthusiasm that never faltered, a characteristic that would later endear him to his readers and continue to inspire others through his published works. This material, along with hundreds of other documents that were studied in detail, led to his magisterial Vermeer and His Milieu: A Web of Social History (1989). The operative word in this title was “web,” because the material was more complicated than a spider’s web. Only Michael had the consummate patience to delight in the intricacies and follow all the strands of the fragmented remains, resurrecting an extended family that lived more than three centuries ago and endowing its members with an importance as pressing as our own. I once asked Michael how he came to realize that Pieter Claesz. van Ruijven was Vermeer’s principal patron. As he excitedly recalled, it had occurred to him on an airplane, when he was returning from the Netherlands. The idea struck him like a thunderbolt, but he had to get back to his note cards in New Haven to see whether Van Ruijven and Jacob Dissius, whose estate inventory of 1696 contained twenty-one paintings by Vermeer, were indeed related. Michael was already aware that Vermeer and the enormously wealthy Van Ruijven (who purchased the domain of Spalant for sixteen thousand guilders in 1669) knew each other, for in 1657 the collector lent the painter two hundred guilders. But he made the more important connection when he realized that Van Ruijven’s collection passed to his daughter, Magdalena, who married a certain Jacob Dissius in 1680. Although Michael was cautious about his discovery in print, he was personally convinced that Van Ruijven was Vermeer’s Maecenas. Nevertheless, critics took him to task on this point, saying this was mere speculation on Michael’s part. I wish he
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could have lived to see that another document had been found linking Van Ruijven to Vermeer. The discovery belongs to Friso Lammertse, who included it in his recent book with Jaap van der Veen, Uylenburgh & Son. Art and Commerce from Rembrandt to De Lairesse 1625-1675 (Amsterdam: Museum Het Rembrandthuis, 2006, p. 87). In 1672, Vermeer and Johannes Jordaens testified in The Hague that a group of Italian paintings was in their opinion rubbish (“vodden”). Michael knew of this document, but uncharacteristically he cited only secondary sources and never checked the original. Lammertse found that the original document was witnessed by none other than “Pieter van Ruijven, heer van Spalant.” Michael, who often found precious nuggets by rereading published documents in the original, would have found it ironic and amusing that this important bit of information was unearthed using his own tried and proven methods of research. Michael’s interest extended beyond the archives to enliven these old papers with his extensive knowledge of history, languages (he was fluent in at least eight), and paintings. He loved the objects as much as the documents. When I met him in Dordrecht, where he stayed for awhile in the mid-1970s, he showed me a shovel he had bought in the local hardware store. As a weekend hobby, he used this tool to excavate vacant lots, unearthing everything from shards of pottery to clay pipes. This too he relished beyond measure, perhaps because the whole exercise was not so different from his digging in the archives during the week. Michael’s urge to possess objects from the past was realized in his collection of Dutch seventeenth-century paintings. He could afford little on his professor’s salary and all the major purchases were a struggle, but he never strayed from his devotion to his acquisitions. It was only after protracted payments and serious fiscal hardship that in 1968 he managed to secure Goltzius’ wonderful Magdalen (now on long term loan at the Metropolitan Museum of Art). In 1979, when he stumbled across an anonymous painting, Allegory of the Love of Virtue, at Christie’s in New York, he froze in place, mumbling to me that the painting (or one exactly like it) was fully described in a document in the Delft Municipal Archives, where it was considered the work of Giovanni del Campo. Michael simply had to acquire the painting, no matter what. Happily, he did buy it and it now hangs on permanent loan in the Princeton University Art Gallery. The painting was subsequently attributed to Valentin de Boulogne by Pierre Rosenberg, and it was included as such in the comprehensive exhibition, Seventeenth-Century French Paintings in American Collections. Always uncomfortable with the attribution to Valentin, Michael published the Del Campo document and his painting in 1982 (in a Festschrift honoring Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann). I only wish he could have lived to see the final outcome of this debate, which might very well be resolved in accordance with Michael’s initial attribution to Del Campo. He also bought
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a beautiful Magdalen by Jan de Bray, which after a light cleaning turned out to be fully signed and dated. Had the inscription been known, he would never have been able to afford the painting. For an economist, Michael had a surprising disregard for money on a personal level. He loved what money could buy in the field of art, but never sought personal financial gain, or creature comforts for himself. He once bought a painting attributed to Frans van Mieris, knowing I was already preparing my dissertation on the artist. When I convinced him his new acquisition was a later copy, he handed it over to me, saying: “Here, it’s better in your hands.” After exhausting the Delft archives, Michael moved on to the mother lode – the massive archives of Amsterdam. Undaunted by the enormous challenge, he began a thorough investigation of seventeenth-century auctions, returning to the subject he had first envisioned while a graduate student at Columbia. The result was his last book, Art at Auction in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (2002), wherein he addressed the various roles of auction sales, collectors, and dealers in the art market with his usual eye for critical detail. But so rich were the archival materials that even after the book, he continued to publish on aspects of this subject. Although by the end he was quite ill, he managed to write one last article devoted to attributions in Amsterdam inventories that appeared in Simiolus last year (2004-2005). One insight that stands out from his various articles is his discovery that prices were linked to style. For example, by compiling valuations from seventeenth-century inventories, he demonstrated that a broadly painted landscape was less expensive than a minutely rendered genre scene, simply because the former was more quickly executed. He quantified beyond a shadow of a doubt the fact that even in Holland, that burgeoning birthplace of modern capitalism, “time is money.” As one reads back through Michael’s art-historical writing, it is remarkable to see so many points of inquiry – statistical, aesthetic, cultural, historical, sociological, to name only the most frequent – that he used to interrogate his subjects. He had an amazing memory, and his ability to recall anything he ever heard, or read informed all his writings. He was unfailingly generous with his finds and always eager to discuss any obscure genealogical connection. He will be much missed in the many communities where his boundless curiosity found him active. Art History stole Michael away from Economics, but death robbed Art History of a beautiful mind. Otto Naumann •••
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My wife, Maggie, and our three daughters came to Yale in 1963, and our first memory of the Montias family is a lovely picnic on the beach, watching the sun set as our children frolicked nearby. Michael and Manya were an extremely handsome couple, whom we got to know very well during the next several years. Michael’s charm, intelligence, and range of intellectual interests were remarkable. He was fluent in, what shall I say, some eight languages, knowledgeable about the economies of many countries, and very well read, with an amazing ability to recall everything that he had been exposed to. At that time, Michael’s major field was comparative economics of Eastern European countries. He was not a mathematical economist, as I am, but he was entranced by the field. However, mathematics was not his strongest suit. In this regard, he was like a little kid looking at marvelous cookies through the window of a bakery shop. But he did have remarkable analytical skills. I had played chess a little bit as a kid and Michael reintroduced me to the game. We played chess frequently and I invariably lost. I remember Michael admonishing me at one point by saying, “You are thinking too hard. Let your moves be simple and graceful.” And of course, Michael was lucid and graceful. Michael was very close to the great economist Tjalling Koopmans as well, and the two of them collaborated on several papers in which mathematical techniques were applied to comparative economic systems. Tjalling and I also played chess, and in his eagerness to unite the three of us, Tjalling invented a three-person chess game that we played every now and then. As you might imagine, the game wasn’t very good. Michael’s interest in art began very early in his life. When we met, he had already begun to purchase unusual and ultimately valuable works of art. And then slowly he began to apply the techniques that he had developed in the study of Eastern European economic systems to his new love: the works of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Dutch masters. He knew very well how to search through the cellars and hidden library files for obscure though important economic information, and he transferred this skill to the study of the purchases and sales of Dutch painting. He became the world’s expert in the history of these painters, with an enormous circle of acquaintances in this field. He wrote books of great significance. This became his passionate second career. Michael began to spend more and more time in European libraries, and we lost touch with each other. But we came together again several years ago. Michael became ill with a lengthy and ultimately terminal disease; but he maintained a remarkable composure and temperament during this lengthy and difficult time. Sometimes my wife and I would visit him together; sometimes I would visit him alone, or go to see him with other friends at home, in the hospital, or for lunch. His interests never flagged. All of us were astonished by the evenness of his mood and his lack of distress. I remember one lunch
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that Michael and I had at Clark’s during which we ranged over many subjects: What was happening in mathematical economics? What did I think of Game Theory? What was Michael up to? A third person passed our table and asked Michael casually how he was. Michael gave the expected answer: “Fine,” and after the friend passed us he looked at me, laughed, and said, “What would he have done if I had said that I was dying?” And we immediately went back to our previous discussion. A graceful, vivid, handsome, passionate, and intelligent man. It was a great gift to know him. Herbert E. Scarf ••• The news of Michael’s death startled me even though I should have been ready for it. About two years ago, Michael told my wife and me that his doctors had given him no more than six months to live. What perturbed him most in this prognosis was the realization that there was still so much to do and so little time to do it in. He tended to think of his body as a sort of public conveyance, an aged bus, if you will, which rattles, breaks down now and then, and hardly ever runs on schedule. He may have glanced at his watch, squirmed in his seat, winced when the bus hit a pothole, but in the end he trusted that it would take him to where he wanted to go. But not this time. Michael, in general, tended to treat the material universe around him as an unavoidable nuisance with which one had to come to terms in order to achieve what one was called upon to do. And so, as his vital organs kept being carved out of his body, his spirit remained whole and carried the outer shell on and on. Seeing this indomitable will, I convinced myself that Michael, despite the doctors’ predictions, would keep going on indefinitely for there was always something that just had to be done. A year, or so ago, several days after an especially drastic surgery, I called John-Luke to find out how his Dad was doing and heard to my astonishment that he was on a plane to Paris to attend to some research that was preoccupying him at that time. Such powers do not show up on MRI images. I met Michael half a century ago when he was still in New York, but getting ready to accept a position at Yale. A mutual friend brought us together, feeling that Michael and I had so many interests in common that we might just hit it off when he and Manya settled down in New Haven. How right he was! Michael, Manya, and I have been fast friends ever since. Michael and I saw each other in countless social and university settings and worked together in the Yale program initially called Russian and East European Studies and renamed, over Michael’s prophetic opposition, The Soviet and East European Studies. 20 | in his milieu
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What drew me to Michael was not merely the commonality of our interests, but my admiration and, I’ll be honest, envy of Michael’s intellectual powers and of the ways in which he used them. He was childlike in the innocence and variety of his pursuits, in his curiosity about the inner springs of phenomena, and in his impatience to satisfy his inquisitiveness. Michael was an economist, but in his other persona in scholarship he was a historian of art, specifically of Dutch painting of the seventeenth century. This interest may have derived from his work in economic history, but with time it became the great love of his life, a passion that left little room for other pursuits. It also earned him the recognition, which he never craved, but which he accepted with enjoyment for it allowed him to build up a fine collection of Dutch paintings. He knew that no visit to a museum and no reproduction can replace the thrill of actually living with a work of art. And he kept collecting almost to the end. Several months ago, he asked my wife and me to come over to look at his latest acquisition, a striking painting of a freshly killed parrot by a seventeenth-century artist from the Dutch West Indies. During our last meeting, Michael pointed out the window to Long Island Sound and confessed that what he loved most about his days of semi-confinement was coming downstairs early in the morning to inhale the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, to drink it with a roll smeared with butter and jam, and to look out at the day breaking over the bay, a scene that was so much like the many Dutch seascapes that had inscribed themselves in his memory. I link arms with Manya, Michael’s loving wife, his son, John-Luke, who did all he could to lighten his Dad’s sufferings, and Giselle of Paris, Michael’s mother, in a remembrance of a life well spent, a life devoted to a search for order in a seemingly disjointed world. Alexander M. Schenker
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Art-Historical Publications by John Michael Montias1
Books Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the Seventeenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. Vermeer (with Gilles Aillaud and Albert Blankert and contributions by Rob Ruurs, Willem L. van de Watering, and Philippe Resche-Rigon). Paris: Hazan, 1986. French edition. Vermeer (with Albert Blankert and Gilles Aillaud and contributions by Rob Ruurs, Willem L. van de Watering, and Philippe Resche-Rigon). Translated by Bab Westerveld. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1987. Dutch edition. Vermeer (with Albert Blankert and Gilles Aillaud and contributions by Rob Ruurs, Willem L. van de Watering and Philippe Resche-Rigon). Translated by Jane Benton and Henk Boersema. New York: Rizzoli, 1988. English edition. Vermeer and His Milieu: A Web of Social History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Vermeer, une biographie, le peintre et son milieu. Paris: A. Biro, 1990. Vermeer en zijn milieu (with corrections and additions by Hans Bronkhorst and H.W. van Leeuwen). Translated by Hans Bronkhorst. Baarn: De Prom, 1993.2 L’ABCdaire de Vermeer (in collaboration with Guillaume Cassegrain, Catherine Guégan, Patrick Le Chanu, and Olivier Zeder). Paris: Flammarion, 1996. French edition. art-historical publications by john michael montias | 23
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Le Marché de l’art aux Pays-Bas. XVe-XVIIe siècles. Paris: Flammarion, 1996. Public and Private Spaces: Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Houses (with John Loughman). Zwolle: Waanders, 2000. The Little Book of Vermeer (in collaboration with Guillaume Cassegrain, Catherine Guégan, Patrick Le Chanu, and Olivier Zeder). Translated by Stacy Doris. Paris: Flammarion, 2001. English edition. Art at Auction in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2002. Essays in Books “Are Museums Betraying the Public’s Trust?” The Economics of the Arts. Edited by Mark Blaug. Boulder: Westview, 1976. 205-17. Reprint from Museum News 51 (1972-73): 25-31. “A Bramer Document about Jean Ducamps, Alias Giovanni del Campo.” Essays in Northern European Art Presented to Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann on His Sixtieth Birthday. Edited by Anne-Marie Logan. Doornspijk: Davaco, 1983. 178-82. “Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam: An Analysis of Subjects and Attributions.” Art in History / History in Art: Studies in SeventeenthCentury Dutch Culture. Edited by David Freedberg and Jan de Vries. Santa Monica: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1991. 331-72. “Le choix et le hazard: Les carrières artistiques au XVIIe siècle dans les PaysBas.” L’art de la recherché: Essais en l’honneur de Raymonde Moulin. Edited by Pierre-Michel Menger and Jean-Claude Passeron. Paris: Documentation Française, 1994. 239-55. “The Sovereign Consumer: The Adaptation of Works of Art to Demand in the Netherlands in the Early Modern Period.” Artists-Dealers-Consumers. On the Social World of Art. Edited by Ton Bevers. Hilversum: Verloren, 1994. 57-76. “Quantitative Methods in the Analysis of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Inventories.” Economics of the Arts. Edited by Victor Ginzburgh and Pierre-Michel Menger. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1996. 1-26.
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“Works of Art in a Random Sample of Amsterdam Inventories.” Economic History and the Arts. Edited by Michael North. Cologne: Böhlau, 1996. 6788. “Trois ventes de tableaux aux enchères à Amsterdam en 1620.” Curiosité: Études d’histoire de l’art en l’honneur d’Antoine Schnapper. Edited by Olivier Bonfait, Véronique Gerard Powell, and Philippe Sénéchal. Paris: Flammarion, 1998. 285-95. “Recent Archival Research on Vermeer.” Vermeer Studies. Edited by Ivan Gaskell and Michiel Jonker. Studies in the History of Art 55. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. 92-109. “Commentary: Fine-Tuning Interpretations.” Early Netherlandish Painting at the Crossroads: A Critical Look at Current Methodologies. Edited by Maryan W. Ainsworth. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. 62-65. “Notes on Economic Development and the Market for Paintings in Amsterdam.” Economia e Arte, Secc. XIII-XVIII. Edited by Simonetta Cavaciocchi. Atti delle “Settimane di Studi” e altri Convegni 33. Prato: Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica “F. Datini,” 2002. 115-30.3 “Works of Art Competing with Other Goods in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Inventories.” Mapping Markets for Paintings in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Neil De Marchi and Hans J. Van Miegroet. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. 57-69. Exhibition Catalogues “‘Perspectives’ in Seventeenth-Century Inventories.” Perspectives: Saenredam and the Architectural Painters of the Seventeenth Century. Edited by Jeroen Giltaij and Guido Jansen. Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 1991. 19-28. English edition. “‘Perspectiven’ in zeventiende-eeuwse boedelbeschrijvingen.” Perspectiven: Saenredam en de architectuurschilders van de 17e eeuw. Edited by Jeroen Giltaij and Guido Jansen. Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 1991. 19-29. Dutch edition. “Bramer’s Patrons and Clients in Delft.” Leonaert Bramer, 1596-1674. Ingenious Painter and Draughtsman in Rome and Delft. Jane ten Brink Goldsmith, et. al. Translated by Nicoline Gatehouse. Delft: Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof, 1994. 35-45. art-historical publications by john michael montias | 25
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Articles “Are Museums Betraying the Public’s Trust?” Museum News 51 (1972-73): 2531. “New Documents on Vermeer and His Family.” Oud Holland 91 (1977): 26787. “The Guild of St. Luke in Seventeenth-Century Delft and the Economic Status of Artists and Artisans.” Simiolus 9 (1977): 93-105. “Painters in Delft, 1613-1680.” Simiolus 10 (1978-79): 84-114. “Vermeer and His Milieu: Conclusion of an Archival Study. Oud Holland 94 (1980): 44-62. “A Note on Isaack Versteech.” The Hoogsteder-Naumann Mercury 2 (1985): 36. “Vermeer’s Clients and Patrons.” Art Bulletin 69 (1987): 68-76. “Cost and Value in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art.” Art History 10 (1987): 455-66. “On Art and Economic Reasoning.” Art in America 76 (1988): 23-27. “Art Dealers in the Seventeenth-Century Netherlands.” Simiolus 18 (1988): 244-56. “Estimates of the Number of Dutch Master-Painters, Their Earnings, and Their Output in 1650.” Leidschrift 6 (1990): 59-74. “Socio-Economic Aspects of Netherlandish Art from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century: A Survey.” Art Bulletin 72 (1990): 358-73. “The Influence of Economic Factors on Style.” De Zeventiende Eeuw 6 (1990): 49-57. “A Postscript on ‘Vermeer and His Milieu.’” The Hoogsteder Mercury 12 (1991): 42-52. “Le marché de l’art aux Pays-Bas: XVe et XVIe siècles.” Annales, Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 48 (1993): 1541-1563.
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“The Estimated Annual Output Debate.” Tableau 15 (1993): 89-90.4 “A Secret Transaction in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam.” Simiolus 24 (1996): 5-18. “Auction Sales of Works of Art in Amsterdam, 1597-1638.” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 50 (1999): 144-93.5 “Veilingen in Amsterdam, 1597-1638.” Jaarboek van het Genootschap Amstelodamum 91 (1999): 108-25. “A Group of Related Buyers at the Art Auctions of the Amsterdam Orphan Chamber; met bijlage: M.J. Bok en W. Spies: Van Merlen, Van Solt, Van Rijssen.” Liber amicorum W.A. Wijburg. Edited by M.J. Bok, M.R. Doortmont, C.A. van Burik, C. van Schaik and J.G. Smit. De Nederlandsche Leeuw. Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Genootschap voor Geslacht- en Wapenkunde 118 (2001): 173-88. “What Happened to Rubens’ Promise to Deliver a Painting to Hans Thijsz.?” Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (2001): 94-103. “How Notaries and Other Scribes Recorded Works of Art in SeventeenthCentury Sales and Inventories.” Simiolus 30 (2003): 217-35. “Artists Named in Amsterdam Inventories, 1607-80.” Simiolus 31 (2004-2005): 322-47. Reviews Svetlana Alpers, Rembrandt’s Enterprise: The Studio and the Market. Reviewed in The Journal of Economic History 48 (1988): 949-51. De wereld binnen handbereik: Nederlandse kunst- en rariteitenverzamelingen, 15851735. Edited by Elinoor Bergvelt and Renée Kistemaker. Reviewed in Simiolus 22 (1993-94): 99-105. A.Th. van Deursen, Plain Lives in a Golden Age: Popular Culture, Religion, and Society in Seventeenth-Century Holland. Reviewed in The Journal of Modern History 66 (1994): 418-21. Dutch Society in the Age of Vermeer [De Hollandse samenleving in de tijd van Vermeer]. Edited by Donald Haks and Marie Christine van der Sman. Reviewed in Oud Holland 111 (1997): 196-200. Art-Historical Publications by John Michael Montias | 27
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Adriaan van der Willigen and Fred G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-Life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725. Reviewed with Marten Jan Bok in Historians of Netherlandish Art Newsletter 21, no. 2 (2004): 3031. Database The J.M. Montias Database of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Inventories of Dutch Art Collections from the Gemeentearchief Amsterdam. Access available at the Frick Art Reference Library, New York.
1 2
3 4 5
The editors appreciate the generous help of Marten Jan Bok in compiling this bibliography. This updated edition contains all the documents in the original seventeenth-century Dutch, as well as a number of extra documents not in the original edition and a more extensive index. This volume includes several transcripts with Montias’ contributions to the discussions elsewhere in the volume. With a reply by Saam Nystad in the same issue: Tableau 15 (1993): 90–91. For a related article, see P. Knevel, “De kunstmarkt volgens Montias: een reactie op J.M. Montias,” Jaarboek Amstelodamum 91 (1999): 126–30.
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Two Forms of Knowledge: Invention and Production in Thomas de Keyser’s Portrait of a Young Silversmith, Sijmon Valckenaer ann jensen adams University of California at Santa Barbara
In 1630, the Amsterdam portrait painter and architect Thomas de Keyser created one of his most finely crafted paintings: the Portrait of a Young Silversmith (Fig. 1).1 Although at first glance it appears to be a monochrome composition showing a young man in dark garments surrounded by drawings and silver objects, upon closer inspection the painting broadcasts color. The youth wears a rich olive-brown jacket lined in purple satin, the brilliant Persian rug adorning the table is patterned in deep blue, and there are yellow and blue highlights glinting on the silver surfaces of the elaborate covered beaker on the table and the saltcellar in the youth’s extended right hand. The drawings – one held in his left hand, the others rolled up on, piled up on, and even spilling off the table – are depicted as being done in brown chalk on white and prepared papers of eggshell blue and a sumptuous red. De Keyser crafted the reflections and highlights with care: for example, the red paper is reflected in delicate rose tints on the underside of the paper above it. The artist labored over the surface of the panel as he sought out a compositional solution and fixed on the strange, rubbery pose of the sitter, who seems to be slipping off his seat. De Keyser moved the youth’s right foot several times before he was satisfied, and the cloak that is now sliding off the chair appears to have once lain completely on the floor. Among the related questions raised by the painting are the youth’s identity, the contemporary understanding of the unusual pose and of the inclusion of the drawings and silver objects, and the circ*mstances of the commission. This essay argues that the portrait was created to celebrate the entrance into the Amsterdam Gold- and Silversmiths’ Guild of the artist’s brother-in-law Sijmon Valckenaer, and that Valckenaer’s pose and attributes announce him as a producer both of inventive ideas as well as objects of high craftsmanship. Investigating these questions sheds light on the training and practice of silversmiths and the relative cultural values of invention and craft in seventeenth-century Holland. two forms of knowledge | 29
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Fig. 1. Thomas de Keyser, Portrait of Sijmon Valckenaer, 1630, oil on panel. Photo: Courtesy of Richard Green, London.
The painting belongs to a group of small-scale, full-length portraits in interiors, occasionally with items referring to the sitter’s profession, executed by De Keyser in the late 1620s. These include the artist’s well-known portrait of Constantijn Huygens and an Apprentice Diplomat (1627; National Gallery, London), the painter David Bailly (c. 1627; location unknown), and a Portrait of a Man, whose unidentified subject sits before a cabinet filled with rolls of white fabric, possibly linen, suggesting that he may represent a textile merchant (1629; private collection).2 Likewise, the silver saltcellar and elaborate beaker in the portrait under discussion suggest that the young man depicted here is a silversmith. The Amsterdam tax records of 1631 indicate that there were no more than one hundred and fifty master silversmiths working in the city at the time, so if he numbers among them, this youth would have belonged to a small, elite group.3 The objects represented in the 1630 painting – saltcellar, beaker, drawings, and carpet – appear to be among the rarest, most skillfully made, and monetarily valuable of their kind. Since salt was a precious commodity, it was often presented in saltcellars that were large, elaborate, and highly precious objects themselves.4 This particular hexagonal, spool-form saltcellar features a small concave bowl on its top to hold the salt, while its sides are covered
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in designs cast, chased, and engraved into the silver. In 1958, J.W. Frederiks noted that its design is very close to that of a hexagonal saltcellar at that time with the London dealer S.J. Phillips (Fig. 2).5 Three lions presently support the London saltcellar, but Frederiks pointed out that these lions were later additions and that, like the one shown in De Keyser’s painting, it too was once supported by six small balls. Frederiks added that the quality of the London saltcellar reveals the master to have been “an artist of extraordinary taste; his ornamental design, and his technique are beyond praise,” and, moreover, that he followed the style of the De Bry family and of the Amsterdam silversmith Abraham van der Hecken (active 1608-after 1634).6 The maker’s mark of the London saltcellar shows two heraldic shields bearing the letters “A” and “V,” indicating a silversmith whose identity is at present unknown.7 In the painting, the saltcellar contrasts markedly in both technique and style with the pronk, or ornamental covered beaker, on the table. Unlike the chasing and etching techniques of the saltcellar, the technique used to craft the beaker involved pounding designs into two sheets of silver. The beaker reflects the Auricular style derived from Italian mannerist designs created by such sixteenth-century Italian artists as Giulio Romano, and adopted by a number of northern artists. These included the painter’s father, Hendrick de Keyser, for the base of some of his sculpted busts, such as his Portrait of Vincent Coster (1608; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam),8 and later the Amsterdam silversmith Johannes Lutma I (c. 1584-1669). From about 1610, this style was brought to its most full-bodied, irregular, and at times anthropomorphic incarnation by the Utrecht silversmith Adam van Vianen (1568/69-1627) and his brother, Paulus (c. 1570-1613).9 Adam van Vianen’s designs were later disseminated widely through the publication around 1650 of Constighe modellen, van Verscheyden silvere vaten, en andere sinnighe wercken, geteeckent door den vermaerden E. Adam van Vianen, written by his son, Christiaen van Vianen (1600/05-1667).10 Elaborate silver objects such as the beaker shown in De Keyser’s painting were made for display rather than use, and were often commissioned by cities, guilds, or corporations. Examples of this type include the beaker commissioned by the Amsterdam Silversmiths’ Guild from Christiaen van Vianen (1614; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) and the beaker commissioned by the Brewers’ Guild of Haarlem from Jacob van Alckemade (1604-05; Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem). For the latter, Thomas de Keyser’s father designed the figure ornamenting the cover, and Goltzius designed four relief scenes around the circumference (executed by Ernst van Vianen). Another example is the gilt glass holder commissioned by the city of Amsterdam from Leendert Claesz. van Emden (1609; Amsterdam, Historical Museum).11 The base of the beaker in the De Keyser painting consists of three ignudi, each with one raised bent knee, and closely resembles that of an elaborate urn-shaped beaker designed
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Fig. 2. Unknown craftsman, Saltcellar, silver. Photo: From Johan Willem Frederiks, Dutch Silver (The Hague: Nijhoff), 1952-61, vol. 2, pl. 53.
by Adam van Vianen around 1620 and published in Constighe modellen (plate 44; see here Fig. 3).12 On the cover surmounting the base stands a man leaning on a stick, similar to the central figure in a drawing of three shepherds by Jacques de Gheyn II in the Rijksprentenkabinet.13 The value of the silver alone for this piece would have been somewhere between 430 and 675 Dutch guilders.14 Also prominently featured in the present painting is a richly colored Persian carpet covering the table. By the early 1620s, the Dutch East India Company was importing such rugs in considerable quantity. While used as floor coverings in Persia, these were costly for seventeenth-century Dutch households, and thus were most frequently used to adorn tables; when the table was used for writing, or eating, the rugs were protected with damask, or pushed aside. Onno Ydema has observed that Persian rugs of very similar design appear, with slight variations, in a number of other works by De Keyser, so that one cannot be certain if the sitter owned the carpet, or if the artist reused it as a sumptuous prop.15 From her studies of Leiden household inventories, C. Willemijn Fock has kindly informed me that such carpets were apparently not as abundant as one would assume from their appearance in the Dutch genre paintings and portraits that Ydema has collected, and that their values ranged from as little as 8 to around 75 Dutch guilders.16 Michael
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Fig. 3. Constighe modellen, van Verscheyden silvere vaten, en andere sinnighe wercken, geteeckent door den vermaerden E. Adam van Vianen..., engraved by Theodor van Kessel, published by Christiaen van Vianen (Utrecht, c. 1650). Photo: From Modelles artificiels de divers vaisseaux d’argent, et autres oeuvres capricieuzes (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1892), pl. 44.
Franses has noted that, from what we know of the dyes employed in surviving rugs of this type, the artist slightly modified some of its hues.17 Finally, the portrait displays several sheets of drawings, one partly unrolled, done on light blue paper and held by the young man, and others stacked and rolled on the table. Drawings of this size and done on colored prepared paper were expensive to produce and labor intensive. The sheet on the top – which bears De Keyser’s monogram and the date of 1630 – appears to be a black (and red?) chalk drawing on white paper, and seems to represent a head; that scrolling off the table represents a study in brown wash on blue-prepared paper and shows the bottom half of a standing draped figure next to an ornamental support. The most unusual drawings represented are those apparently done on red-prepared paper; while artists sometimes covered the verso of a sheet with red chalk to facilitate transfer of a design, no extant drawings on such a red ground are known to me.18 In noting the similarity of the salt in the youth’s hand to the hexagonal salt with the London dealer S.J. Philipps in 1958, Frederiks mused about the identity of the youth. He suggested that, since the portrait was painted by the Amsterdam artist De Keyser, the sitter might also have lived and worked in Amsterdam. However, he also wondered, based on the style of the silver
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beaker, if he might be a follower of the Utrecht silversmith Adam van Vianen. Frederiks concluded that the young man might either be one of “a number of partly anonymous Amsterdam masters,” or perhaps Adam van Vianen’s own son, the Utrecht silversmith Christiaen van Vianen, although he noted that Christiaen is not known to have worked in the earlier style of the saltcellar shown in the portrait.19 De Keyser’s painting has been discussed primarily with respect to the elaborate beaker in the Auricular style as practiced by Christiaen van Vianen, and other scholars have followed Frederiks’ tentative proposal that the sitter might be this master silversmith from Utrecht. Theresia M. Duyvené de WitKlinkhamer published Theodoor H. Lunsingh Scheurleer’s verbal suggestion that the beaker represents the young silversmith’s masterpiece – Christiaen had joined the Utrecht guild in 1628 – and that he may be holding an earlier work by his father, Adam; this idea was repeated by Johannes ter Molen in his dissertation on the Van Vianen family.20 Circ*mstantial evidence does not completely rule out this suggestion. Thomas de Keyser had connections to Utrecht through his father’s family. His father, Hendrick Cornelisz. de Keyser (1565-1621), who moved to Amsterdam in 1591, was born in Utrecht, and a number of family members remained in that city. The date of the painting, 1630, was an important year in the life of Christiaen van Vianen: by 25 March 1630, he had entered the service of Charles I of England and was apparently back in Utrecht by 1631.21 The year of Christiaen’s birth remains unknown. Ter Molen has put it between 1600 and 1605, making him between twenty-five and thirty years of age in 1630, the year inscribed on the painting.22 While estimating the age of a sitter in a portrait is, of course, notoriously difficult, the youth in De Keyser’s painting appears to be considerably younger, no more than about twenty. A more likely candidate for the subject of the portrait, given his age and geographical proximity to De Keyser, is the artist’s new brother-in-law, the Amsterdam silversmith Sijmon Valckenaer (1609-1672).23 In 1626, Thomas de Keyser had married Machtelt Andries, a member of a prominent Amsterdam family of gold and silversmiths:24 his new father-in-law, Andries Frederiksz. (1566-1627), was a goldsmith, as was his father-in-law’s younger halfbrother, Loef Vrederiksz. (1590-1668). Between 1626 and 1627, De Keyser portrayed Loef twice: once alone as an ensign of an Amsterdam shooting company, in the year in which he was named to the post (1626; Mauritshuis, The Hague); and a second time with three other gold- and silversmiths (1627; Toledo Museum of Art).25 At about the same time, De Keyser painted three other group portraits depicting gold- and silversmiths: Three Gold- and Silversmiths (n.d.; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam); Three Gold- and Silversmiths (1635; location unknown); and Six Gold- and Silversmiths (1627; formerly Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg, destroyed 1947). De Keyser portrayed other in-laws
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as well: in 1634, he executed a pair of portraits of his father-in-law’s two halfsisters, Margriet and Efgon Frederiksz. – sisters of Loef Vrederiksz – and a portrait of unknown date of his father-in-law on a panel with Willem and Hendrick de Keyser.27 Sijmon Valckenaer was close enough to Thomas to serve as a guarantor of a house and land purchased by De Keyser in 1640, and in 1646 was named in Thomas’ will as co-guardian of the painter’s son Hendrick.28 In 1630, Sijmon was nineteen years old, living and working in Amsterdam.29 Moreover, in that same year, he became a member of the Amsterdam Silversmiths’ Guild, where he was soon to be so esteemed by his colleagues that he was elected to guild office fifteen times between 1638 and 1670. It would be appropriate for Sijmon to commission a portrait from his brotherin-law to commemorate his admission to the guild.30 The only argument that has been made against this identification is that the extant examples by Sijmon – silver beakers and funeral shields – are chased and engraved, rather than done in the Auricular style.31 However, so much seventeenth-century silver has been lost to us that this argument cannot be the basis for rejecting this identification; as such work was made from bullion, silver coin, or even earlier works of silver, it could easily be used as a medium of exchange and was even melted down again.32 One additional piece of evidence – ironically provided by Duyvené de WitKlinkhamer, who believed the sitter to be Christiaen van Vianen – supports the identification of the youth as Sijmon Valckenaer. Duyvené de WitKlinkhamer suggested that a portrait of the same young man in the painting here discussed was added to De Keyser’s Strasbourg Portrait of the Regents of the Silversmith’s Guild in 1638, nine years after it was finished.33 However, an inscription on the group portrait identifies the sitter as twenty-nine years of age in 1638. Christiaen was between thirty-three and thirty-eight in that year, while Sijmon was indeed twenty-nine.34 If we accept the identification of the youth as Sijmon Valckenaer, what are we to make of the objects surrounding him? At his father’s death in 1627, Sijmon inherited all of his father’s tools, silver bouillon, and patronen (patterns for silver).35 It is possible that the “AV” on the saltcellar in London that closely resembles the one held by the youth in the painting could stand for Sijmon’s father, Andries Vrederiks, although his mark has been thought to be a falcon on a branch within a shield (the identity of this mark, however, appears to have been made on the basis of Sijmon’s own, known mark, of a falcon without a branch).36 On the other hand, in asserting that the beaker on the table represents Christiaen van Vianen’s guild masterpiece, Ter Molen argued that the hexagonal saltcellar in London was made by his father, Adam van Vianen (whose mark was, however, an interlaced “AV”).37 While these depicted objects may have indeed represented the silversmith’s own drawings
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and perhaps even his guild masterwork, we cannot be certain; nor can we be certain that he was their owner. I would like to suggest that in this portrait, together with the youth’s pose, these drawings celebrate the silversmith’s superior ability of imaginative design; the silver represents, if not actually depicts, the variety of silver styles in which he had been trained to work and the high craftsmanship of which he was capable. In the Middle Ages, the masterpiece required for guild entrance was determined by the wardens of the guild who selected the models and designs, but by the end of the eighteenth century, the prospective entrant chose his own piece to submit.38 Thus, while individual styles were certainly recognized in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, it makes sense that a youth embarking upon a career as a silversmith would wish to promote himself as capable of working both in a traditional style, as represented by the saltcellar, and in the newer, Auricular style, as represented by the ornamental beaker. In contrast to the silver vessels, which may be said to symbolize craft, the drawings on the table most certainly symbolize the imaginative aspect of the silversmith’s work: design as opposed to execution. While the theme of artist as designer has a long tradition in art history, it is a relatively unusual one for portraiture.39 Perhaps the most widely known prototype is Titian’s portrait of Giulio Romano, in which Giulio displays his plan for a circular church (c. 1536; Mark Oliver Collection, London).40 Titian’s painting was circulated through a woodcut published in the second edition of Giorgio Vasari’s Lives (1568),41 and was probably the inspiration for Paulus Moreelse’s Self Portrait of about 1630 (Mauritshuis, The Hague), which shows the same composition in reverse.42 Moreelse, however, displays an empty piece of paper, which has been suggested to characterize him as a Renaissance “uomo universale,” with the ability to design any type of object required.43 It is notable that while drawings had rarely appeared in earlier portraits of artists, there is yet a third portrait of an artist dating from precisely this period that does show them: a Self-Portrait by Cornelis Saftleven dated by Wolfgang Schulz to about 1629 (Fondation Custodia, Paris).44 The drawings and silver that surround the young silversmith in our painting, then, appear to allude to the knowledge embedded in two aspects of art: the knowledge embedded in “idea and invention” and the knowledge embedded in “craft,” or, in Aristotelian terms, epistêmê and technê. The drawings remind us how little is known about the training of silversmiths, as well as their practice of designing for other media.45 Notarial documents concerning the training of painters, architects, and silversmiths are beginning to be compiled and examined,46 but it is as yet unclear where aspiring silversmiths learned the practice of design, whether from silversmith masters, engravers, painters, or any of these three. I would like to propose that the pose of the silversmith in De Keyser’s
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painting also underscores the creative aspect of his work. Valckenaer’s peculiar posture was carefully contrived to express a particular state of mind. It is doubtful that this young silversmith, or for that matter, Cornelis Saftleven, who likewise depicted himself slumped over in a chair in the Self-Portrait mentioned above, had a congenitally deformed spine. This disconcerting pose is only partly due to De Keyser’s treatment of perspective, whereby interior rooms are created in single point perspective, but the figures themselves are sometimes drawn according to another system, so that the viewer looks down on the lower half of the body and up toward the upper half. More importantly, this type of relaxed pose actually signified the height of fashion. Artists employed it in a number of works from the 1620s as, for example, the SelfPortrait of Sir Nathaniel Bacon (before 1627; Earl of Verulam Collection, Gorhambury, Herts), and a drawing of a Cavalier by Dirck Hals (Fondation Custodia, Paris).47 The pose resulted partly from the style of dress and the contemporary ideal of deportment. Sitting with legs so splayed may have been necessitated by the cut of men’s breeches. Fashionable knickers were at the time built up with padding (and possibly also with wire?) to hold their full shape.48 It appears, then, that the sitter could not comfortably put his legs together and keep his lower back against a chair. Moreover, such a nonchalant pose also reflected contemporary notions of grace. According to Castiglione, nonchalance was an important element of polite behavior in the gentleman, as it conveyed naturalness through relaxed movements and gestures.49 Our young silversmith was fashionable not only because his highly exaggerated relaxed and thoughtful pose conveyed a contemporary sense of grace, but, with his oversized hat casting a shadow over his features and his cloak slipping unnoticed to the floor, he could also be associated with the gentleman melancholic. Originating in Italy, by the 1580s melancholia had become a fashionable psychological state as far north as England.50 Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) may be said to summarize the ideal as understood in the north. The title pages of the 1628 and 1638 editions contain illustrations of individuals afflicted with melancholia (Fig. 4). The most prominent of these are a brooding figure slumped over in his chair, head in his hand, and a figure whose eyes are hidden behind a floppy hat. Contemporary descriptions of melancholics wearing oversized hats include those of the poet Sir John Davies: See yonder melancholy gentleman, Which, hood-wink’d with his hat, alone doth sit! Thinke what he thinks, and tell me if you can. What great affaires troubles his little wit.51
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and Shakespeare (“Love’s Labour Lost,” description of the Spanish gentleman, Don Adriano de Armado): With your hat penthouse-like o’er the shop of your eyes.52 In his Melancholie Knight of 1615, Samuel Rowlands emphasized the gentleman’s blatant disregard for his attire, due to his preoccupation with melancholy thoughts: His face being masked with his hat pull’d downe, And in French doublet without gowne, or cloake, His hose the largest ever came to towne,... His head hung downe... His melancholy argued some great losse, He stood so like the picture of ill-lucke.53 Inspired by the Aristotelian notion that melancholy is favorable to the imaginative and intellectual powers, scholars, humanists, and artists affected such an attitude. Aristotle wrote, “All these who have become eminent in philosophy, or politics, or poetry, or the arts are clearly of an atrabilious temperament,”54 a sentiment echoed by Robert Burton: “Melancholy men of all others are most witty, causeth many times divine ravishment, and a kind of enthusiasmus...which stirreth them up to be excellent Philosophers, Poets, Prophets, &c.”55 This ideal of the melancholic pervaded the visual arts. Roy Strong has demonstrated its expression in English Elizabethan and Jacobean painted portraits, and it is conveyed in sculpted portraits as well.56 The portrait of Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) that surmounts his tomb at St. Michaels, St. Albans, Herts, shows him in a thoughtful state. The inscription under the monument written by Constantijn Huygens’ friend Sir Henry Wotton reads: “Sic sedebat,” or, “Thus he used to sit.”57 Not incidentally, Thomas de Keyser’s brother-in-law, Nicholas Stone, probably designed the tomb.58 In her discussion of Rembrandt’s self-portraits from just this period, H. Perry Chapman describes the presence of the melancholic ideal among artists in the Netherlands.59 Our silversmith is shown in the same relaxed pose, with his head tipped to one side. Unlike the English examples cited here, however, his head does not rest in his hand. His pose is nearly identical to an image closer at hand, the relief of St. Luke, attributed to the De Keyser workshop that surmounts the door to the guildhall of the Amsterdam painter’s guild (1617; Waag, Amsterdam; Fig. 5). I would suggest that St. Luke’s uncomfortable pose also refers to the melancholic in reverie, an ideal associated with the poet, the scholar, and creativity. Like St. Luke, De Keyser’s young silversmith invokes these associations. 38 | in his milieu
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Fig. 4. Robert Burton, Title Page, 1621, engraving. From Anatomy of Melancholy, printed by Robert Young, Edinburgh, 1635 (?), by Miles Flesher, London, 1638, and by Leonard Lichfield and William Turner, Oxford, for Henry Cripps, 1638. Reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California; RB 102534.
Melancholics must have seemed – as they often were – idle fops. Roy Strong observed that “Malcontents were often gentlemen of good birth who had suffered frustration in their careers, or who were out of tune with the prevailing political, or religious attitudes of the day.”60 The line between creative genius and idle dreamer could be thin; as Burton wrote, “A most incomparable delight it is so to melancholize, and build castles in the air.”61 In Holland, though, men seemed sensitive to the distinction. While Protestantism, and Calvinism in particular, encouraged contemplation, self-examination, and self-knowledge, men were also encouraged to contemplate the vanity of life. Thus the melancholic youth, with his head in his hand, is both in genre painting and in portraiture most frequently associated with vanitas imagery, as, for example, in paintings by Jan Davidsz. de Heem (1628; Ashmolean Museum,
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Fig. 5. Hendrick de Keyser, St. Luke, 1617, stone bas-relief over entry door to Guild of St. Luke, Waag, Amsterdam. Photo: From Elisabeth Neurdenburg, Hendrick de Keyser: Beeldhouwer en bouwmeester van Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Scheltema & Holkema, 1930 [?]), detail of pl. XIX.
Oxford), Jacob Duck (location unknown), after William Duyster (Arenberg Collection, Brussels), Pieter Potter (formerly Novak Collection, Prague), and Pieter Codde (1625-35; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille).62 By picturing his melancholic silversmith without his head in his hand, in contrast to those melancholics contemplating the vanity of life, and like instead the contemporary image of St. Luke, De Keyser may have consciously wished to emphasize the positive, creative aspect of the affliction.63 Given the emphasis on imagination in the art-theoretical literature of the early modern period, the twenty-first century viewer might be tempted to read the portrait as a comment on the superiority of design over craftsmanship. However, since painters and engravers often designed works in silver, or gold for silversmiths to produce, with Paul and Adam van Vianen being rare exceptions, the personal style by which we identify silversmiths today was to them less important than the virtuoso craftsmanship that their work represented.64 Indeed, the objects on the table are to the heraldic left of the youth in the painting, suggesting that it is they, above the sitter himself, which are to be celebrated. Thomas de Keyser’s Portrait of a Silversmith, Sijmon Valckenaer, thus appears to combine specific biographic detail with widely understood emblems of creative melancholy to celebrate the sitter’s profession, his
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imagination, and particularly his craftsmanship. It would have been a fitting commission for a youth about to embark upon his career as an independent silversmith.
1
2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9
10
11
12 13
Ann Jensen Adams, The Paintings of Thomas de Keyser: A Study of Portraiture in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam, 4 vols., Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1985, no. 26 (University Microfilms International, no. 8520159). I am grateful to Gail Feigenbaum in whose Getty Research Institute Seminar, “The Persistence of Technê: Nature, Design and Early Modern Practice of the Arts” (March 2006) some of the ideas presented here were developed. Adams 1985, nos. 13, 14, 25. On the format originality, and potential inspiration from full-length court portraiture, see Adams 1985, pp. 95-109. Karel A. Citroen, Amsterdam Silversmiths and Their Marks (Amsterdam and New York: American Elsevier, 1975), p. vii. Perhaps the best-known preciously crafted early modern saltcellar is that by Benvenuto Cellini of 1540-44 made of gold, enamel, and ebony (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). Writing at the end of the seventeenth century, Baron de Montesquieu claimed that the Northern Netherlands’ successful blockade of Spanish saltworks at the end of the sixteenth century was a key economic factor in the success of their revolt against Philip II. For a history of the saltcellar in the Netherlands, from modest pottery to elaborate silver containers, see Johannes Rein ter Molen, Zout op tafel: De geschiedenis van het zoutvat, exh. cat., Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1976. The similarity was first noted by Johan Willem Frederiks, Dutch Silver, 4 vols. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1952-61), vol. 2, 1958, p. 62, no. 176, pl. 53. For Abraham van den Hecken, see Frederiks, vol. 2, 1958, pp. 42-51. Apparently not listed in Karel A. Citroen, Dutch Goldsmiths’ and Silversmiths’ Marks and Names Prior to 1812: A Descriptive and Critical Repertory (Leiden: Primavera Pers, 1993). See Elisabeth Neurdenburg, Hendrick de Keyser: Beeldhouwer en bouwmeester van Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Scheltema & Holkema, 1930 [?]), pl. XXV; Frits Scholten, Gebeeldhouwde portretten: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum; Zwolle: Waanders, 1995), p. 24, no. 9, repr. in color. On Adam van Vianen, see Johannes Rein ter Molen, Van Vianen, een Utrechtse familie van Zilversmeden met een internationale faam, 2 vols., Ph.D. diss., Leiden University, (Leiderdorp: J.R ter Molen, 1984), esp. vol. 1, pp. 29-34. For a history of the Auricular style, see R. W. Lightbown, “Christian van Vianen at the Court of Charles I,” Apollo 87 (1968): 426-39. Engraved by Theodor van Kessel, published by Christiaen van Vianen (Utrecht, c. 1650), pl. 44; on this publication and its date, see Ter Molen 1984, vol. 2, nos. 672719; reprinted as Modelles artificiels de divers vaisseaux d’argent, et autres oeuvres capricieuzes (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1892). Ter Molen 1984, vol. 2, no. 409, repr. in vol. 1, p. 137. A.L. den Blaauwen, ed. Nederlands zilver / Dutch Silver 1580-1830, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1979, nos. 11, 14. Ter Molen 1984, vol. 2, no. 715. Karel G. Boon, Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2 vols. (The Hague: Government Printing Office, 1978), vol. 1, pp. 76-77, no. 216, vol. 2, repr. See also I.Q. van Regteren Altena, Jacques de Gheyn, Three Generations (The Hague and Boston: Nijhoff, 1982), vol. 2, no. 30, and vol. 1,
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14
15
16
17
18
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21 22
23 24
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pl. 245, who noted that this study of three shepherds was probably for an Adoration of the Shepherds, and that the figure at left was also used in a drawing of a Dutch farm (no. 950, dated 1603). This is not to claim that De Gheyn was the source of the design, or that the figure is a shepherd: only that the figure is similar to De Gheyn’s, and that this object may have been based on designs by more than one artist would not be inconsistent with others of its type (see the Brewers’ Guild beaker mentioned above). Estimating the weight of this piece to be about 1,500 grams, based upon the 580 gram weight of the less substantial saltcellar illustrated as plate 39 of Adam van Vianen, Constighe modellen (see Ter Molen 1984, vol. 2, no. 437), and the value of silver between 8.1 and 12.7 guilders per ounce (see Ter Molen 1984, vol. 2, nos. 441, 442), such a piece would have been comprised of silver valued between 429.3 and 673.1 Dutch guilders. Onno Ydema, Carpets and their Datings in Netherlandish Paintings, 1540-1700 (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1991), fig. 4 (incorrectly as by Willem de Keyser), and nos. 496-501; see also pp. 59-75. Email correspondence of 20 February 2006, citing Th.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer, C. Willemijn Fock, A.J. van Dissel, Het Rapenburg: geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht (Leiden: Afdeling Geschiedenis van de Kunstnijverheid Rijksuniversiteit, 1989-90), vol. IV, p. 573 (inventory of 1630), vol. V, p. 570 (inventory of 1650), and R. Meischke et al., Huizen in Nederland (Zwolle: Waanders and Amsterdam: Vereniging Hendrick de Keyser, 1993-), vol. 2, 1995, pp. 255-9 (inventory of 1664). Michael Franses of the Textile Gallery, London, has suggested that this carpet would have been of a wool pile on a silk foundation, made in Esfahan in Central Persia, and originally so expensive that it would have been ordered and paid for in advance. See Hali. Carpet, Textile, and Islamic Art 128 (May-June 2003): 19, repr. in color, and entry for painting now with dealer Richard Green (http://www.richard-green.com/; accessed 9 February 2006). Neither Lee Hendrix, Curator of Drawings at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Peter Schatborn, Curator Emeritus of the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam; nor Julius Bryant, Curator of Drawings at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, has come across such drawings (email and verbal exchanges, January 2006). Frederiks, vol. 2, 1958, p. 62, no. 176. Its mark is not that of Adam van Vianen, which was a linked AV, or AVV in monogram. Christiaen van Vianen also used his father’s mark, and apparently his own name on those works executed in England. See Lightbown 1968, p. 430; and Amsterdam 1979, no. 36 (as in note 11). H. van Hall, Portretten van Nederlandse beeldende Kunstenaars (Amsterdam: Swets en Zeitlinger, 1963), p. 350, no. 1, 2290; Th.M. Duyvené de Wit-Klinkhamer, “Een Vermaarde Zilveren Beker,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 17 (1966): 79-103, esp. 9798; Ter Molen 1984, vol. 1, p. 38; Pictures and Watercolours from Longleat, sales catalogue, Christie’s, London, 14 June 2002, pp. 127-29. Lightbown 1968, pp. 430-31; Ter Molen 1984, vol. 1, pp. 35-40. Ter Molen 1984, vol. 1, p. 35, placed Christiaen’s birth between 1600 – on the basis of his parents’ marriage in 1598 – and 1605; the latter date is concluded from his registration in 1616 as an apprentice in the records of the Utrecht silversmiths’ guild (Gemeentearchief Utrecht: gildearchief. I, no. 131, leerjongensboek goudsmedengilde, 1616), and from the fact that apprentices usually ranged in age from eleven to fourteen. For guidance on this and the subsequent data on Sijmon Valckenaer, I am indebted to the late Karel A. Citroen. For basic data on Sijmon, see Citroen 1975, p. 194, no. 999. The marriage contract was dated 1 June 1626, GAA (Gemeentearchief Amsterdam), not. P. Matthysz., NAA 440, fols. 94v.-97); the couple was married on 5 July 1626 (GAA, DTB registers, 431, fol. 239); see also Adams 1985, pp. 494-95.
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25 Adams 1985, nos. 8, 17. 26 Adams 1985, nos. 15, 16, 18. No. 16 was sold at Christie’s, London, 11 December 2002, lot 49. 27 Listed in the inventory taken at the bankruptcy of De Keyser’s brother Willem: GAA not. J. de Winter, NA m2786, fols. 83-83v. See Adams 1985, p. 525. 28 For the land purchase, see Adams 1985, p. 514 (16 April 1640; archive location unknown). For De Keyser’s will, see GAA, not. Quyrijs, NA 1747, pp. 78-81; and Adams 1985, pp. 520-51. In his capacity as co-guardian, Sijmon also co-signed an agreement with Emanuel de Geer for Hendrick’s training; see GAA, not. Lock, NA no. 2193, fols. 22122; and Adams 1985, p. 524). 29 Sijmon was born on 18 October 1609, son of Andries Frederiks and Maria van Leyenbergen (GAA, OK baptismal register, DTB 4, fol. 296). 30 Christiaen van Vianen joined the Utrecht guild in 1628; see Duyvené de Wit-Klinkhamer 1966, p. 83, n. 4; Ter Molen 1984, vol. 1, p. 35. Sijmon joined the Amsterdam guild in 1630; see Citroen 1975, p. 194; and GAA, Silversmiths’ Guild, PA 366, no. 339. 31 Citroen 1975, p. 194. 32 Citroen 1975, p. ix. 33 Duyvené de Wit-Klinkhamer 1966, pp. 96-98. 34 At the time Duyvené de Wit-Klinkhamer wrote her article, the birthdate of Van Vianen was unknown. She apparently incorrectly deduced Van Vianen’s birthdate from the inscription on the Strasbourg painting. For further discussion of the identification of the figure in the Strasbourg picture, see Ann Jensen Adams, “Thomas de Keyser’s Portrait of Six Gold- and Silversmiths of 1627: Friendship Portrait and Posthumous Tribute to Andries Frederiks,” in Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive: Presented on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday, eds. Cynthia P. Schneider, William W. Robinson, Alice I. Davies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, 1995), pp. 28-32; also Adams 1985, no. 18. 35 This is according to the will made by Sijmon’s mother, Maryke Bruynen. The will is dated 14.VI.1627, not. P. Matthysz. (details provided by Karel Citroen). 36 Sijmon’s mark is known from the only copper plate surviving from the Amsterdam guild, now in the Amsterdam Historical Museum. It records marks entered between 1627 and 1648 (and on the verso between 1725 and 1731); see Citroen 1975, nos. 992 (Andries Frederiks) and 999 (Sijmon Valckenaer). 37 Ter Molen 1984, p. 38. 38 Citroen 1975, p. ix. 39 For a summary of the theme in the Netherlands, see J.A. Emmens, “A SeventeenthCentury Theory of Art: Nature and Practice,” [1963] in Wayne Franits, ed. Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art: Realism Reconsidered (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 15-20. For the importance of idea to art, and of the fundamental role of drawing, see Karel van Mander, Den grondt der edel vry schilder-const (Haarlem, 1604), ed. Hessel Miedema (Utrecht: Haentjens Dekker & Gumbert, 1973), 2 vols., pp. 42527 (following Vasari), and J.G. van Gelder, De Schilderkunst van Jan Vermeer, annotated by J.A. Emmens (Utrecht: Kunsthistorisch Instituut, 1958), p. 12, and citing Erwin Panofsky, Idea, a Concept in Art Theory (Florence, 1952), trans. Joseph J.S. Peake (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1968). 40 Harold E. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian (London: Phaidon, 1969-75), vol. 2, no. 86, fig. 82; John Shearman, “Titian’s Portrait of Giulio Romano,” Burlington Magazine 107 (1965): 172-77. 41 Noted by Shearman 1965, p. 172, who added that the painting was purchased for Charles I in 1627. 42 To my knowledge, this iconographic source for Moreelse’s portrait has not previously been noted. Eric Nicolai Domela Nieuwenhuis Nyegaard, Paulus Moreelse (1571-1638),
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44
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48
49 50
51 52 53 54 55
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Ph.D. diss. (Universiteit Leiden, 2001), vol. 2, pp. 503-05; Ben Broos et al., Portraits in the Mauritshuis, 1430-1790 (The Hague: Mauritshuis; Zwolle: Waanders, 2004), no. 41, pp. 180-83. Lisa Vergara has convincingly argued that Anthony van Dyck used Titian’s prototype in his later portrait of Hendrik van Steenwyck the Younger in a lost drawing of about 1617, known through the engraving by Paulus Pontius. See Lisa Vergara, “Steenwyck, De Momper, and Snellinx: Three Painters’ Portraits by Van Dyck,” in Essays in Northern European Art Presented to Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann on his Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Anne-Marie Logan (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1983), pp. 283-90, fig. 1. Like Moreelse, Van Steenwyck points to a blank sheet of paper. Broos 2004, p. 182, citing Marten Jan Bok in Nieuw licht op de Gouden Eeuw: Hendrick ter Brugghen en tijdgenoten, exh. cat., Centraal Museum, Utrecht, and Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig, 1986, p. 323. Wolfgang Schulz, Cornelis Saftleven, 1607-1681: Leben und Werke (Berlin and New York: Mouton De Gruyter, 1978), pp. 14, 225, repr.; Saskia Nihom-Nijstad, Reflets du siècle d’or: Tableaux hollandais du dix-septième siècle: Collection Frits Lugt, Fondation Custodia, exh. cat., Institut Néerlandais, Paris, 1983, no. 73, pl. 58a. Later English examples of an artist holding a drawing include William Dobson, William Dobson (Holding a Drawing), Sir Charles Cottrell, and Sir Balthasar Gerbier (1642-46; Alnwick Castle, Duke of Northumberland Collection), and Isaac Fuller, Self-Portrait (third quarter of 17th century, Bodleian Library, Oxford; repr. in Ellis Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, 15301790 [London and Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1953], pls. 48, 52b). Many masters of different media designed for other media, from engraving to architecture; see S. Muller, “Getuigenverhoor te Antwerpen. Over het maken van ontwerpen van gebouwen in de 16e eeuw door schilders, goudsmeden, timmerleiden en metselaars,” in Archief voor Nederlandsche Kunstgeschiedenis, ed. Fr. D. O. Obreen, reprint (Soest: Davaco, 1976), vol. 4 (1881-82), pp. 227-45; Koen Ottenheym, “The Painters cum Architects of Dutch Classicism,” in Dutch Classicism in Seventeenth-Century Painting exh. cat., Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, 1999, pp. 34-53. Ronald de Jager, “Meester, leerjongen, leertijd. Een analyse van zeventiende-eeuwse Noord-Nederlandse leerlingcontracten van kunstschilders, goud- en zilversmeden,” Oud Holland 104, 2 (1990): 69-111. Carlos van Hasselt, Rembrandt and his Century: Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century from the Collection of Frits Lugt, exh. cat., Institut Néerlandais, Paris, and Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, 1977-78, no. 57. See reference in the sumptuary laws of Zurich of 1610 to “great built-up breeches,” cited by John Martin Vincent, Costume and Conduct in the Laws of Basel, Bern, and Zurich, 1370-1800 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1935), p. 53. See M. Jenkins, The State Portrait (New York: College Art Association of America, 1947), p. 32. On melancholy in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century society, see Lawrence Babb, The Elizabethan Malady: A Study of Melancholia in English Literature from 1580 to 1642 (East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1951). See also Z.S. Fink, “Jacques and the Malcontent Type,” Philological Quarterly 14 (1935): 237-62, and Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, Fritz Saxl, Saturn and melancholy, studies in the history of natural philosophy, religion and art (London: Nelson, 1964). The Complete Poems of Sir John Davies, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (London: Chatto and Windus, 1876), vol. 2, p. 42. William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost (London, 1598), Act 3, Scene 1, lines 786-87. Samuel Rowlands, The Melancholie Knight (London, 1615), pp. 4-6. Problemata, XXX, 1; The Works of Aristotle, ed. W.D. Ross (1927), vol. 7, p. 953a. Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy (Oxford, 1621), ed. A.R. Shilleto (London, 1926), vol. 1, p. 461.
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56 Roy Strong, “The Elizabethan Malady, Melancholy in Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture,” Apollo 79 (1964): 264-69. The ideal persisted in England until late in the century, and was employed by Anthony van Dyck for his portraits of Thomas Killigrew (?) and Lord Crofts, 1638 (The Royal Collection), see Susan Barnes et al., Van Dyck. A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 542-43, no. IV.146, repr. 57 Philipp P. Fehl, “Poetry and the Entry of the Fine Arts into England: ut pictura poesis,” The Age of Milton, eds. C.A. Patrides and Raymond B. Wadington (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980), p. 285, repr. 58 Stone designed all of the other known tombs for the Bacon family, see Adams 1985. 59 H. Perry Chapman, Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 25-33; see also H. Perry Chapman, “Expression, Temperament, and Imagination in Rembrandt’s Earliest Self-Portraits,” Art History 12.2 (1989): 158-75. 60 Roy Strong, The English Icon: Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969), p. 352. 61 Burton 1926, vol. 1, p. 452. 62 For the De Heem picture, see Christopher Brown, Art in Seventeenth-Century Holland, exh. cat., The National Gallery, London, 1976, no. 53; for Duck, Duyster, and Potter, see C.B. Playter, Willem Duyster and Pieter Codde: The “Duystere werelt” of Dutch Genre Painting, Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1972, figs. 141, 142, 143; Pieter Codde, see Hollandse schilderijen uit Franse musea, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1971, no. 16. The figures by Codde, Duyster, and Potter all hold pipes. Smoking has been convincingly associated with the melancholic temperament and the insubstantiality of life. A book by Pieter Scriverius entitled Saturnalia...het gebruyk ende misbruyk vanden Tabak that appeared in Haarlem in 1630 indicates the close association of the melancholic temperament with the smoker. Kurt Bauch pointed out the similarity of Codde’s painting, in particular, with an emblem by Jacob Cats published in 1618, bearing the motto: “Fumo Pasc*ntur Amantes,” in Emblemata; Ofte, Minnelyche, zedelycke, ende Stichtelycke sinnebeelden (Middelburgh, 1618), p. 12; see Der Frühe Rembrandt und seine Zeit. Studien zur geschichtlichen Bedeutung seines Frühstils (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1960), pp. 245-46, fig. 216. For additional discussion on smokers and melancholy, see Ivan Gaskell, “Tobacco, Social Deviance, and Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century,” [1984], in Franits 1997, pp. 68-77; and Roland Augustin, Der Geschmak des Neuen: Das Motiv des Tabakrauchens und seine Modernität in de niederländischen Kunst (Frankfurt and New York: P. Lang, 1998). Later in the century, in 1648, Carel Fabritius depicted a melancholic at a table covered with a vanitas still life. The painting has been destroyed, but it is preserved in a written description, a drawing, and a watercolor; see Christopher Brown, Carel Fabritius (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), p. 31, figs. 30, 31; and Frits Duparc, Carel Fabritius, exh. cat., Mauritshuis, The Hague, 2004, pp. 45-47, illus. p. 46. 63 This is in contrast to the negative associations connected with the pose. In explicating the De Heem as representing melancholy, for example, Christopher Brown wrote: “The contemplative life with its consequent boredom and disillusion is compared unfavorably to the active life as exemplified by Christian of Brunswick, the Protestant General, whose engraved portrait hangs on the back wall. This moral is reinforced by the unused swords in the background,” in Art in Seventeenth-Century Holland, exh. cat., The Tate Gallery, London, 1976, no. 53. Such a moralizing interpretation of the painting is supported by its similarity to an emblem in Gabriel Rollenhagen’s Nucleus Emblematum (Cologne, 1611), which shows a figure similarly seated at a table, with his head in his hand, and holding open a book. The emblem reads, “Vita Mortalium Vigilia” (Life (is) the wakefulness of mortals); the book on the table reads “Disce Mori” (Learn of
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death); and the text under it, “Vana velut nil sunt, VIGILATAE insomnia NOCTIS,/ Sicspatium est, quod in hoc viuimus orbe, NIHIL” (Empty as if nothing are the dreams of a sleepless night,/ so thus the space which we occupy in this orb is nothing). I thank warmly Anne Weis of the University of Pittsburgh for the translation of these lines. The theme persisted in genre painting as well, as, for example, in Godfried Schalcken’s Youth Fishing (c. 1670-75; Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin); see Thierry Beherman, Godfried Schalcken (Paris: Maeght, 1988), no. 157. 64 See Pamela Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
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The Case of Han van Meegeren’s Fake Vermeer Supper at Emmaus Reconsidered albert blankert The Hague
In June 1938, the Boijmans Museum in Rotterdam bought the painting Supper at Emmaus, for what was at that time the very high price of 520,000 Dutch guilders, on the assumption that it was a newly discovered masterpiece by Johannes Vermeer (Fig. 1). Seven years later, in July 1945, the Dutch painter Han van Meegeren, when arrested for collaboration with the just-departed German occupiers of the Netherlands, claimed that he had painted the picture in 1936-37. It soon became evident that his claim was justified. The case has been viewed ever since as “perhaps the most famous forgery of modern times.”1 Countless articles and many books have appeared on the affair. In 1996, however, when I became involved in putting together a small book to accompany an exhibition on Van Meegeren, browsing the literature soon revealed that much of what had been written was contradictory, based on hearsay, or refutable, compared to documentary evidence. Our principal authors, Diederik Kraaijpoel and Harry van Wijnen, did a better job of reconstructing the evidence in their Han van Meegeren (1889-1947) en zijn meesterwerk van Vermeer, to which my wife, Alice Blankert-Roessingh, and I contributed additional research.2 When that publication was at the printer’s, my young colleague, Jim van der Meer Mohr, discovered some very remarkable correspondence concerning the affair. We managed to include its most remarkable letter in a “Postscriptum” to the book.3 Later Jim published and discussed the other letters in the magazine Tableau.4 The material that came to light in 1996 allows for some added observations. New data we have since traced in the archives of the art dealer Joseph Duveen of New York shed even more light on the case. In previous accounts it has always been emphasized that “the whole art world was completely fooled” at the time, having been carried away by the overwhelming authority of the Nestor of Dutch connoisseurs, Dr. Abraham Bredius, who made the mistake of his career in 1937 when he reported in the Burlington Magazine
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Fig. 1. Han van Meegeren, The Supper at Emmaus, 1936-37, oil on canvas. Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.
the “wonderful moment” in his life as an art lover, when he was “suddenly confronted with a hitherto unknown painting by a great master…the masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer of Delft.”5 The true course of events was different. The first time the picture was shown to experts, none of them, Bredius included, believed it to be a Vermeer. Moreover, Bredius’ authority on Vermeer matters had already sunk to zero in those years. And the other key figure in instilling the notion that the Supper at Emmaus was a masterpiece by Vermeer, both in the art world and among the wider public, was a most unreliable “authority” with regard to Vermeer pictures. So a new account of what happened follows. When Van Meegeren had completed the Supper at Emmaus, he entrusted the painting to his go-between Gerard A. Boon (1882-1962), a solicitor and ex-member of the Dutch parliament for the respectable party, the “Liberale Vrijheidsbond.” In the summer of 1937, Boon came to see the eighty-two-
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year old Dr. Abraham Bredius (1855-1946) in his Villa Evelyne in Monaco to show him the picture. In sharp contrast with the usual descriptions of this encounter, at first Bredius trusted neither Boon nor the painting at all. Bredius asked his protégé of thirty years and “foster son,” Joseph Kronig (1887-1984),6 who was Bredius’ junior by thirty-two years, to inquire about Boon’s trustworthiness and integrity. We learn from a letter Kronig wrote on 1 July 1937 to a notary in The Hague: The reason is the distrust of the painting and its provenance that Mr. Boon has offered for judgement to Dr. Bredius for the sake of selling it…. The picture represents Christ in Emmaus, breaking bread sitting at a table, Christ in the company of two disciples and a maid. Dr. A. Bredius, in view of the situation, keeps doubting that this picture should be attributed to Vermeer. For making quite sure [he desires] further research on the painting in the Netherlands. Dr. Bredius refused to allow the picture to stay any longer in his house Villa Evelyne. The discussion between Dr. A. Bredius and myself did not produce a solution to this affair.7 The letter reveals that the moment when Bredius was “suddenly confronted with… the masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer” was not so “wonderful,” to say the least. After Bredius’ death in 1946, Joseph Kronig became the sole heir to Bredius’ huge family fortune and other possessions. After Kronig’s death in 1984, the bequest fell to a relative, Dr. Otto J.G. Kronig (1915-1998) in Aerdenhout, who provided Van der Meer Mohr with the carbon of the above letter in 1996. Otto Kronig also gave Van der Meer Mohr further correspondence between Bredius and Boon from 1937-38, after Bredius had changed his mind about the painting and developed a friendly relationship with Boon. Now Boon did Bredius the service of sending a letter to the editor of the newspaper Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant in response to an article that had alleged that Bredius’ identification of Vermeer as the author of the Supper at Emmaus had been easy because of the conspicuous signature on the painting. Bredius wrote Boon that this account annoyed him, so Boon wrote a letter to the editor (which ran on 2 March 1938) claiming that Bredius had immediately identified the piece as a Vermeer, even before noticing the signature. Both men knew, of course, that this portrayal of the events was far from true.8 The next experts to see the Supper at Emmaus were the Paris agent of Duveen, and his assistant. After being shown the picture on 4 October 1937 in a bank vault of the Crédit Lyonnais, they reported by telegram to Duveen’s New York headquarters, calling the piece outright a “rotten fake.” This telegram has been mentioned in earlier literature on the case, but only as a rumor. It can, however, be documented by a photostat copy in the Duveen
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Fig. 2. Telegram of 4 October 1937 from Paris to the Duveen brothers in New York. Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute, Duveen archives. The handwritten notation explains that VILLA=Vermeer; BRUIN=Bredius; BUSBY=Burlington Magazine; SOUTH=English pounds; PETER=picture.
archives in the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, which were transferred in 1998 from their previous repository in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Fig. 2).9 In the telegram, codes were used and the sender’s name at the bottom was “Almar.” The same archives contain letters from Duveen’s lieutenant (and later successor), Edward Fowles, in which he related the event with satisfaction. The letters reveal that it had been Fowles himself and his assistant, Armand Lowengard, who made the astute judgment in Paris. Fowles wrote that the painting had looked to him in 1937 like “a poor piece of painted up linoleum.”10 The code words in Fowles’ telegram – “certified by Bruin who writing article Busby beginning November” – indicate that Bredius was going to publish the picture as a Vermeer in the November 1937 issue of the Burlington Magazine, as indeed happened. So, after Boon showed him the picture at the beginning of July, Bredius had completely changed his stance. The reversal must have taken place before the beginning of September when he wrote to Hannema about the new Vermeer (see below). Whether Bredius’ change of mind was due to further discussions with Joseph Kronig, or to other reasons we do not know. We also learn from the correspondence between Bredius and Boon that Boon did not (or could not) hide the negative judgment of the Duveen peo-
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Fig. 3. Attributed to Han van Meegeren, published by Bredius in 1932 as Vermeer, A Lady and a Gentleman at the Harpsichord, oil on canvas. The Hague, Instituut Collectie Nederland.
ple from Bredius. Boon referred to it to Bredius, suggesting that it might be a clever ruse by Duveen to obtain the picture at a low price. Boon added: “but I would really like to know one day whether it was ignorance, or cunning on their part?”11 When Bredius heard about the Duveen opinion, it was too late anyway for him to change his stance again without completely losing face. Earlier authors on the Van Meegeren case never realized that Bredius’ publications of “newly discovered masterpieces” were not taken at all seriously in specialized art-historical circles in these years. The old man used to “discover” and publish “new Rembrandts” at an alarming pace, so much so that his assistant, Dr. Hans Schneider (1888-1953), needed to exercise considerable tact to exclude the worst misattributions from Bredius’ 1935 book of all Rembrandt’s paintings, of which Schneider was the editor.12 Bredius likewise “discovered” a new Vermeer now and then, such as the Lady and a Gentleman at the Harpsichord, which he published in 1932 in the same Burlington Magazine with comparable superlatives (Fig. 3). Bredius complained in this article about the “dozens of fake” Vermeers he had been confronted with. He alleged that the fakes were sometimes so cleverly made that his colleagues Bode and Hofstede de Groot were deceived: “but I prefer to rejoice the hearts of my readers by the production of a very beautiful authentic Vermeer.”13 The first serious monographs on Vermeer to appear after Bredius’ 1932
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article were those by the old Eduard Plietzsch and the young Arie B. de Vries, both published in 1939. In both, Bredius’ new attribution of the “very beautiful authentic” Lady and a Gentleman is not even contradicted, but completely ignored, as if it were fully irrelevant in these authors’ eyes. Connoisseurs of painting must have quickly realized that the picture was not kosher. We get inside information from a memorandum of Duveen’s Edward Fowles, dated 19 October 1932: “it is common talk in Berlin that the picture [here Fig. 3] is wrong.” The great art dealers had consulted with one another on how to react to Bredius’ publication: “Old Wildenstein considers the matter very serious as he foresees an attempt of Bredius to force himself into the Dutch picture market by raising controversies…he considers it practically inexcusable that a so-called expert should pass such an obvious fake.”14 This was written five years before Bredius’ publication of the Supper at Emmaus. Fowles and Lowengard must have had this 1932 case in the back of their minds when, in 1937, they disregarded and dismissed Bredius’ opinion and the Supper at Emmaus out of hand. Probably these art dealers learned most from their own past mistakes. In the 1920s, Duveen bought and sold several then “newly discovered Vermeers” that today are regarded as certifiable fakes, among them a Lacemaker and a Smiling Girl that were on display as Vermeers in the National Gallery in Washington from 1937 up to the mid-1970s. Ironically, the first to publicly express doubts on the Smiling Girl was Abraham Bredius in 1932, in the same article in the Burlington in which he published the Lady and a Gentleman at the Harpsichord!15 So the art dealers’ indignation about Bredius’ insolence also was tit for tat and a case of the pot calling the kettle black. For reasons that are difficult to fathom today, both Plietzsch and De Vries did, however, include the Supper at Emmaus in their 1939 books on Vermeer as an authentic work, giving the piece considerable attention and praise.16 Without proof, but I think with good reason, the Lady and Gentleman at the Harpsichord has long been considered another work by Van Meegeren. If rightly so, he managed to pass off a fake Vermeer on Bredius long before the “discovery” of the Supper at Emmaus.17 Perhaps Lady and Gentleman at the Harpsichord was recognized in 1932 being a fake on stylistic grounds, but I rather suspect that an examination of its paint-layer by a highly respected restorer, or perhaps by a scientific laboratory revealed that it was not old, while in Emmaus Van Meegeren succeeded in outwitting the technical expertise of the day by way of his novel paint-baking technique. At the beginning of September 1937, Bredius approached Dirk Hannema (1895-1984) about the Supper at Emmaus. Hannema was the dynamic director of the Boijmans Museum in Rotterdam and had shown himself to be a wizard at obtaining support for his museum from Rotterdam’s business tycoons.
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Hannema was immediately keenly interested in acquiring the new masterpiece for Rotterdam. He was a little upset, fearing that Bredius’ planned publication in the Burlington might bring strong competitors into the field. “I suspect that the chance to purchase the piece for Holland is thus diminished,” he wrote to Bredius on 21 September.18 In June 1938, Hannema succeeded in acquiring the picture, thanks largely to the financial support of the wealthy businessman Willem van der Vorm. In 1941, another devoted admirer of Hannema, the magnate and art collector D.G. van Beuningen (whose name was added to that of the Boijmans museum in 1958, when his private collection was acquired), bought another fake Vermeer by Van Meegeren, a huge Last Supper. Until his death in 1955, Van Beuningen continued to believe in and to fight for the authenticity of these “masterpieces by Vermeer.” In 1937, Dirk Hannema was no novice at discovering “new Vermeers.” In 1935, he had organized in his museum a ground-breaking exhibition, Vermeer, oorsprong en invloed (“Vermeer origin and influence”), which was the first to compare Vermeer’s art (represented by seven authentic paintings) to that of his predecessors and contemporaries. This well-conceived show, however, also included a most peculiar painting of Mary Magdalen Under the Cross, presented as catalogue no. 79a, “here for the first time attributed to Vermeer,” which meant it had been ascribed to the artist by Hannema, or on his authority (Fig. 4). This was another attribution that apparently was never taken seriously, as it was ignored (like Bredius’ attribution of the Lady and a Gentleman) by both Plietzsch and De Vries in their Vermeer monographs of 1939. The Dutch art-historian Dr. R. Juynboll proposed an attribution for the Mary Magdalen to the French Caravaggist painter Nicolas Tournier (1590-1639), which at least makes sense.19 Only the Belgian painter, sculptor, and critic Jean Decoen (1890-1979) discussed this Mary Magdalen as “a new example of Vermeer’s Italianate period,” including it as the only illustration in his review of Hannema’s exhibition in the 1935 Burlington Magazine.20 After Van Meegeren’s exposure in 1945, the same Decoen supported Van Beuningen in aggressively maintaining and “proving” that Van Meegeren’s fakes were in fact authentic Vermeers. In 1951, Decoen published his scholarly-looking, lavishly illustrated book Back to the Truth to this effect,21 while Van Beuningen sued the Belgian scientist Paul Coremans in court.22 Coremans’ research had provided scientific evidence at Van Meegeren’s trial demonstrating that the paint layer of the Supper at Emmaus contained modern ingredients. Van Beuningen died in 1955, but Decoen continued rallying support for the authenticity of the paintings up to the 1970s, recruiting one scientist after another.23 In 1945, after the war, Hannema was removed from the directorship of the Boijmans Museum because of his dubious dealings with the German occupiers. He later started his still existing museum, the Hannema-de Stuers Fun-
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Fig. 4. Attributed to Vermeer by Hannema and Decoen in 1935, tentatively attributed to Nicolas Tournier by Juynboll, Mary Magdalen Under the Cross, oil on canvas. Present whereabouts unknown.
datie in his castle, “Het Nijenhuis,” near Heino in the eastern part of the country. Over the years, he succeeded in assembling a large and beautiful collection of art works in a great variety of styles and techniques from many periods and regions.24 At the same time, he made himself the laughing stock of the art world by “discovering” and acquiring ever more “unknown Vermeers” for his museum. In the end, he possessed and proudly presented no fewer than seven.25 It seems to me that Hannema had an excellent eye for quality in art, but that his good judgment deserted him when the idea of True Genius entered his mind. He made similar “discoveries” of dubious paintings that he attributed to Goya, Rembrandt, and (another favorite of his) Carel Fabritius. In one case, he said and wrote that he found it impossible to decide whether a Still Life of a Fish was by Goya, Rembrandt, Vermeer, or Carel Fabritius.26 We may conclude that he conceived some strange ideas about Vermeer (and other geniuses) over a span of forty years, until the end in tandem with Decoen, as we shall see. The Supper at Emmaus was only one episode in this saga. Hannema must have been aware that his thoughts ran along two different tracks. In the early 1980s, I visited him in his castle in the company of an art dealer friend. Hannema courteously showed us around, leaning on his walking stick, and encouraged us to climb the stairs to the attic gallery on our own, because his old legs would not carry him there. Upstairs we found a room devoted to the “donation Jean Decoen” – and could not keep our-
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selves from bursting into laughter. We found six more “Vermeers” and such items as the “self-portrait by Rembrandt (described by Houbraken), on which the paint is so thick that it can be lifted by the nose.” The piece most resembled a papier maché relief by Jean Dubuffet. Hannema understood the situation, as we understood to our embarrassment when we heard him call from below: “Gentlemen, please do have a good look at the nice Barent Fabritius.” Indeed, an interesting painting of The Prophet Elisha and the Widow of Zarephath by this minor master (the brother of Carel) was one of the few passable pieces in this Decoen gallery of luminaries.27 Apparently Hannema was perfectly able to switch instantly from his own and Decoen’s idiosyncratic “Vermeer world” to the world of the ordinary well-informed connoisseur. The Supper at Emmaus had its triumphal public unveiling in 1938 after being launched by the lifelong Vermeer “inventor” Hannema, supported by Bredius, who first had grave doubts, then lied about them, and in any event had lost his authority. The piece had been rejected as “a rotten fake” by the most important art dealers of the time. However, after its launching at the Boijmans Museum, the most respected experts as well as the wider public in the Netherlands and elsewhere not only swallowed the new Vermeer, but sang dithyrambs on it. It can be shown that the only dissenter was The Hague painter Louis Meijs (1903-1995), who demanded at a meeting of his artists’ society Haagsche kunstkring in September 1938 that a brochure be issued on the Supper at Emmaus “because he thinks the picture is a fake.” Initially Meijs got support from a few colleagues, but the case soon petered out.28 Meijs had just returned from a stay in Paris, where “whispers” (chuchotements) about the picture being a fake are documented in 1938.29 The rumors may well have stemmed from Edward Fowles’ correct perception. Hannema and his adherents carried the day, albeit not for long. It has often been speculated that Van Meegeren’s success was due to his thorough understanding of the “Zeitgeist,” enabling him to create an ideal Vermeer for the 1930s that could never have passed muster in any other period.30 It can equally well be maintained that the successful launching of the Supper at Emmaus was only possible due to the unwitting but perfect coordination of a three-stage rocket, composed of the craftiness of the crook Van Meegeren, the unsteadiness masked by bravura of the old Bredius, and the partial lunacy of Hannema, most of it financed by Van der Vorm. This company was believed and followed by a credulous and enthusiastic world.31 We have to be thankful that it involved only a painting. In other respects, a comparison could well be made with the simultaneous situation in Germany, where the public was similarly fooled into believing that it had the most wonderful government, while only a few people knew better.
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Jane Turner, ed., The Dictionary of Art (London: Macmillan, 1996), vol. 21, pp. 38-39. Diederik Kraaijpoel and Harry van Wijnen, Han van Meegeren (1889-1947) en zijn meesterwerk van Vermeer (Zwolle: Waanders, 1996), published on the occasion of two exhibitions on Van Meegeren, one in De Kunsthal, Rotterdam, the other in the Museum Bredius, The Hague. See additional interesting information in Harry van Wijnen, Grootvorst aan de Maas D.G. van Beuningen, 1877-1955 (2004), passim. Kraaijpoel and Van Wijnen 1996, p. 22. Jim van der Meer Mohr, “Eerherstel voor Abraham Bredius?” in Tableau Fine Arts Magazine, Tijdschrift voor beeldende kunst en antiek 18, no. 5 (April 1996): 39-45. Abraham Bredius, “A New Vermeer,” Burlington Magazine 71 (1937): 211. On Joseph Kronig, see Louise Barnouw-de Ranitz, “Abraham Bredius, een biografie,” in Albert Blankert, Museum Bredius, catalogus van de schilderijen en tekeningen, 3d ed. (The Hague and Zwolle: Museum Bredius and Waanders, 1991), p. 24. Letter in Dutch first published in Kraaijpoel and Van Wijnen 1996, p. 22. See also Van der Meer Mohr 1996. It still is unclear if Boon knew, or suspected the picture to be a fake, or if he was the first to be fooled by Van Meegeren. See Van der Meer Mohr 1996. In Kraaijpoel and Van Wijnen 1996, p. 71, we published and illustrated the telegram without a reference to its location, which at that time was the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and now is the Getty Research Institute. The entire Duveen archives are now at the latter. A complete copy on microfilm is in the Watson Library of the Metropolitan Museum, where we studied them in 2003. The exemplary catalogue of the contents can be consulted at http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/ kt3n39n6jd. Photostats of the telegram can be found in box 300, reel 155, folder 9 of the microfilms. Letters in the Duveen archives of E. Fowles to Brockwell of 31 August, 14 September, and 3 October 1951; to David E. Finley on 1 May 1952 (same folder 9). Letter in Dutch of 3 March 1938 of Boon to Bredius in the Kronig papers. See Van der Meer Mohr 1996, p. 44. See Adolph Staring, “Hans Schneider, levensbericht,” Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandsche Letterkunde te Leiden (1951-53): 137-44 (also accessible on the internet). Abraham Bredius, “An Unpublished Vermeer,” Burlington Magazine 61 (1932): 145. Duveen Archives (see note 10), box 296, reel 151, folder 31. See Arthur K. Wheelock, “The Story of Two Vermeer Forgeries,” in Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, 1995), pp. 271-75. Wheelock plausibly attributed the Lacemaker and the Smiling Girl, that were published and acclaimed as new Vermeers since the mid-1920s, to Theodorus van Wijngaarden (1874-1952), Van Meegeren’s friend and likely “mentor.” Duveen sold these paintings to Andrew W. Mellon, who presented them to the National Gallery in Washington in 1937. In 1941, the firm of Duveen borrowed them for its New York exhibition of Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America, cataloguing and illustrating them as Vermeers (nos. 213-216). Ben Broos reasonably concluded that at that time the Duveen people must have been aware that they were fakes; see Ben Broos, “Vermeer: Malice and Misconception,” in Ivan Gaskell, ed., Vermeer Studies, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2001, p. 27. Eduard Plietzsch, Vermeer van Delft (Munich: F. Brückmann, 1939), p. 57, no. 2, pls. 22-24; Arie B. de Vries, Jan Vermeer van Delft (Amsterdam: J.M. Meulenhoff, 1939), p. 86, no. 22, pl. 2. Like A Gentleman and a Lady at the Harpsichord (here Fig. 3), the Duveen Lacemaker and Smiling Girl are not even mentioned in either book. The picture is erroneously included in the list of “documented works by Han van Meegeren” in M. van den Brandhof, Een vroege Vermeer uit 1937 (Utrecht and Antwerp: Het Spectrum, 1979), no. 226, fig. 104. Edward Fowles, probably the best expert on
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28 29
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both paintings, felt sure that it was by another maker than that of the Supper at Emmaus (e.g., in his letter of 31 August 1951, see note 10). Van der Meer Mohr 1996, p. 41. Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, 10 March 1936. Jean Decoen, “Shorter Notices: The New Museum at Rotterdam,” Burlington Magazine 67 (July/December 1935): 131-32. Jean Decoen, Retour à la Vérité (Rotterdam: Ad Donker, 1951); English edition, Vermeer-Van Meegeren, Back to the Truth, Two Genuine Vermeers (Rotterdam: Ad Donker, 1951). Harry van Wijnen thinks that Van Beuningen acted as somehow bewitched by Decoen (Van Wijnen 2004, pp. 410 ff.). See Th. Doehaerd, “Jean Decoen et l’affaire Vemeer-Van Meegeren,” in Edmond Radar et al., Jean Decoen (Mechelen: H. Dessain, 1972), pp. 159-269. See also Decoen’s statements as reported in “Controverse sur l’affaire Vermeer,” Connaissance des Arts 240 (February 1972): 7-9. See Dirk Hannema, Beschrijvende catalogus van de schilderijen, beeldhouwwerken…van de Hannema-de Stuers Fundatie... (Rotterdam: Ad Donker, 1967). On Hannema, see the interesting book by Mireille Mosler, Dirk Hannema, de geboren verzamelaar (Rotterdam, 1995). Excellent is Max Pam, De armen van de inktvis, Een keuze uit het journalistieke werk (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2005), pp. 69-110 (“De tragiek van het onfeilbare oog. Over Dirk Hannema”). See Albert Blankert et al., Vermeer (New York: Rizzoli, 1988), pp. 163-64, n. 5. Hannema 1967, pp. 26-27, no. 108, fig. 56. See Dirk Hannema, Donatie Jean Decoen, Verzameling Stichting Hannema-de Stuers Fundatie (Heino: Uitgave Stichting Hannema-de-Stuers Fundatie, 1976), p. 12, fig. 5, p. 29, fig. 18, pp. 42-55, figs. 24-37. Later most of the Decoen donation had to be returned to his heirs. On Louis Meijs’ actions, see Harry van Wijnen in Kraaijpoel and Van Wijnen 1996, p. 79, and references on p. 92, nn. 21-24. See George Isarlo, “Événements artistiques en Hollande, Les achats sensationnels du Musée de Rotterdam,” Beaux-Arts, Chronique des arts et de la curiosité, 20 May 1938, pp. 1, 3. See Albert Blankert, Vermeer of Delft, Complete Edition of the Paintings (Oxford, 1978), pp. 70-74, and especially the essay cited there by Harry van de Waal, “Forgery as a Stylistic Problem,” in “Aspects of Forgery,” Strafrechterlijke en Criminologische Onderzoekingen, no. 6 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1962), pp. 1-14. However, in this case like in many others, the power of the “Zeitgeist” is easily overrated; see Ernst H. Gombrich, In Search of Cultural History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969). An extenuating circ*mstance was that in August 1939, soon after its acquisition in 1938, the Boijmans Museum had to store the Supper at Emmaus in an air-raid shelter (with the rest of the collections) because of the war. Here it remained until after Van Meegeren’s confession in 1945. During this whole period, travel to study art was virtually impossible, so hardly anyone could see the painting in the original and judge it otherwise than from reproductions.
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Prices of Northern Netherlandish Paintings in the Seventeenth Century marion boers-goosens University of Leiden
John Michael Montias’ Artists and Artisans in Delft (1982) inspired numerous studies on the art market in the Netherlands during the seventeenth century. A number of these are wholly, or partially devoted to the prices of paintings, using data from assessments found in probate inventories, auction results, and lottery lists. However, the data from these sources are ambiguous. First, prices for work by certain masters vary widely, even within one source. Second, the descriptions of paintings in these sources are often so vague that no definite explanation can be given for the reasons for those discrepancies, such as differences in size, quality of workmanship, or even of the exact subject. Third, the brevity of these descriptions makes it difficult to connect the listed works with known paintings. Moreover, the sums we encounter in property assessments and auction books do not directly relate to the prices that buyers would pay artists for their work. We should therefore only use these data to ascertain the value of a painting at a certain moment in time and under specific conditions. The amounts mentioned in these sources are no indication for the price of a painting paid by its first owner, with the exception of the lottery lists, which may well indicate what private buyers were accustomed to paying. Seventeenth-century sources that do mention the prices for known paintings include contracts, receipts, account books, or other notarial deeds. Since a considerable amount of these paintings is extant, we are able to form an opinion about their sizes and quality. Moreover, those contracts are noteworthy, because they often reveal factors that could influence the price. To my knowledge, this category of extant paintings has never been analyzed systematically. Bob Haak noted in his Hollandse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw (1984) that examples of well-documented paintings are few and far between. However, during the past twenty years, a great deal of new data has become available – in particular due to the growing interest in history painting. So far, I
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have assembled a corpus of over one hundred known paintings whose prices are mentioned in a source. For this article, I have selected some representative examples. Another reason to refrain from a systematic investigation of these data is the supposed impossibility of comparing the prices paid by the authorities, the court, and well-to-do private citizens with the amount a painting fetched on “the market.” Everyone will agree that relatively large sums of money were involved in the monumental commissioned pieces because of their size; more, in fact, than had to be paid for the much smaller cabinet pieces for anonymous private citizens. However, quite often the impression has been that public authorities, or wealthy commissioners were overcharged. Haak concluded that this should be considered a sign of appreciation that signified an honorary sum that bore no relation to the real market value of a painting.1 In his article, “The Market for Landscape Painting in Seventeenth-Century Holland,” Alan Chong argued that those enormously pushed up prices (my emphasis) for such commissions should in fact be seen as remuneration, or compensation for long-term employment.2 More recently, Peter Sutton put it thus: “Dutch painters often received higher sums for commissions from a city council than they did for their work for the free market.”3 But is it really possible to demonstrate by means of seventeenth-century sources that painters charged the aristocracy substantially higher prices than they did (anonymous) private people?, or can it be argued that the prices of such monumental works of art actually do give an indication of the prices of paintings made for the free market?
Calculating the Price of a Painting Public authorities, or private persons wanting to commission a painting had two ways of reaching a price agreement. First, the painter himself could quote a price. However, in the case of large commissions for several pictures, where each master was responsible for a separate part of the project, the commissioner usually determined the price of the individual parts. The price primarily depended on the size of the work and the artist had to go along with the remuneration offered. A good example is the project for decorating the Amsterdam Town Hall with paintings. The large (485 x 350 cm) chimneypieces were set at a price of fl. 1500:0, while the half-round paintings in the galleries were to cost fl. 600:0.4 In practice, when calculating a price in the Northern Netherlands, one would take into account: first, the cost of materials; second, the time needed to execute the painting; and third, the artist’s reputation. Of these three factors determining the price level, only one was a fixed element irrespective of the painter’s notoriety: the cost of the materials. Time
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was the most important factor, but also the most variable. The number of hours, or days needed to execute a painting depended on its size and on the technique used by the master. Most importantly, the degree of originality determined the amount of time spent on a work of art. The artist would invest a good deal less time making a copy, or a work after a fixed pattern destined for the market than he would making an original invention, which required preparatory sketches, studies, and presentation models. Finally, a work by a famous painter would be more expensive than one by a lesserknown master for two reasons: first, his hourly rate would be higher, and second, he could claim a sort of surcharge, as we shall see, in recognition of his reputation. Commissioners occasionally enlisted the help of professional appraisers to judge whether the finished work was indeed worth its price. In the business transaction between a painter and the commissioner, then, certain guarantees could be built in to secure a balance between price and quality. In practice, appraisers often arrived at a lower price than had been quoted by the painter. If the commissioners were content, it was usual for them to pay a bonus. This could take the form of a precious gem, or something else of value, but it was frequently a sum of money.5
The Battle of Gibraltar by Cornelis Claesz. Van Wieringen At times a painter attempted to demand a very high price based on his reputation but encountered resistance on the part of his client. A good example of such price-consciousness among the authorities is the case of a commission by the Amsterdam admiralty in 1621. In that year, the Amsterdam admiralty intended to present a painting of the Battle of Gibraltar to stadholder Prince Maurits (Fig. 1).6 The procedure that was followed shows that guarantees were sought that would satisfy both the commissioners and the recipient with the final work. Initially, an appeal was made to the marine painter Hendrick Cornelisz. Vroom, who earlier had carried out commissions from the court and government authorities.7 On 3 June 1621, Vroom was asked to submit a quote to be presented to the admiralty a week later. The painter probably spent that week making sketches.8 During the meeting, Vroom quoted a fee of fl. 6000:0, an excessively high sum at the time, even considering the great size of the intended gift.9 Vroom must have outraged the admiralty, and it certainly did not help his case when the painter made crude remarks responding to the commissioners’ astonishment. However, Vroom would not take less than fl. 6000:0, so on July 3 the admiralty decided to send a delegation to Haarlem to find other skilled masters who might carry out such an important commission. Six days later, the
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Fig. 1. Cornelis Claeszn van Wieringen, The Battle of Gibraltar, oil on canvas, signed and dated CCVWieringen 1622, 180 x 490 cm. Amsterdam, Scheepvaartmuseum.
delegation sent word that it had decided to ask Cornelis Claesz. van Wieringen to make a sample composition depicting two ships.10 Some four weeks later, on 14 August, this composition was given to Prince Maurits to see. Its great size of 137 by 188 centimeters raises doubts about whether Van Wieringen could have made it in four weeks. It is possible that an existing rough copy was finished off, or “done up.” This is all the more likely since at this time Van Wieringen could not be sure whether, or not he would receive the commission. On 23 August 1621, the admiralty informed Van Wieringen of the stadholder’s positive reaction, and the painter was invited to make a second, sample composition.11 On 3 May 1622, some nine months later, the members of the delegation reported that they had been to Haarlem where Van Wieringen was still working on the model. On that occasion, they asked the artist for the first time what kind of remuneration he had envisaged for the commission. Van Wieringen mentioned a price of fl. 3000:0, but added that he would be content with the final work being appraised by four independent appraisers. This second composition – a panel measuring 49 by 115 centimeters – is considerably smaller than the first. It is not clear if Van Wieringen spent all nine months working on this painting. It surely required more time than the first sample, since an original invention had to be drafted as preparation for the final version. This was the most important stage of the commission, and a relatively great amount of time had to be invested in it. Following Prince Maurits’ approval of the second model, the artist executed the painting on a 180 by 490 centimeter canvas in seven months.12 Given its size, we can assume that Van Wieringen could not have worked on other paintings during those months. On 11 January 1623, the final painting was assessed by the appraisers, who set a price of fl. 2400:0, in other words, fl. 600:0 less than the sum Van Wieringen had mentioned. The costs of transport from Haarlem to The Hague amounted to fl. 50:7:0, and were paid separately and apart from the fee. That sum was quite substantial and this procedure appears to have been more, or less customary.13 62 | in his milieu
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From these proceedings, we may conclude that the project took over eighteen months to complete, the greater part of which was spent on making the second model. Van Wieringen was paid the considerable amount of fl. 2400:0 for the final painting and for his two samples. It was the independent appraisers who set the price rather than the painter himself. This appears to have been a widely used practice. A good example of a public body paying rather more than it had estimated yet much less than the artist had suggested is the case of the painting of Justice by Jacob Jordaens in 1663 for the sheriffs’ courtroom in Hulst. Initially, the board meant to spend “around one hundred ‘ducatons’” (“omtrent hondert ducatons”), or about fl. 315:0. Jordaens made four sample paintings for the magistrates to choose from. When these paintings were finished, the painter quoted a price of fl. 800:0. Here too, the commissioner got the best of it. A final offer was made of fl. 500:0 and if Jordaens would not accept it, he could keep the pictures for all they cared. The painter did eventually accept the offer.14
A Conflict over Price for a Family Portrait by Bartholomeus van der Helst It was not unusual for the commissioner and a painter to fall out when doubts arose as to the reasonableness of the remuneration agreed upon earlier. Such a clash occurred between Bartholomeus van der Helst and Pieter van de Venne Lucasz.15 On 2 July 1664, Van de Venne entered into an agreement with Van der Helst to the effect that the latter would paint a family portrait for fl. 1000:0. This painting no longer exists, but it probably compares to the 1652 family portrait in The Hermitage depicting a man, woman, child, and two greyhounds.16 On 30 September 1665, it was registered with a solicitor in Beverwijk that, at the request of Pieter van de Venne, two appraisers – the painters Dirck Bleecker and Jacob Coolen – had examined the final work and valued it at fl. 400:0. What is noteworthy here is how the appraisers justified their assessment. They were of the opinion that the portrait was worth fl. 300:0 but that considering the good name and reputation of the painter, fl. 100:0 could be added. Reputation, then, could be honored with a surcharge of a fixed sum. The dispute was brought before the court in Amsterdam, and in May 1667 the matter was settled at the amount of fl. 460:0. Again, we see that a painter might well ask for an exorbitant fee but that an assertive customer calling in appraisers could eventually stipulate a much lower price. Van der Helst thought he could charge fl. 1000:0 for this family group. But what was his price based on? We have a record of the payment for his family portrait of Ryckloff van Goens with his wife and children. In 1656, as much as fl. 2000:0 was paid for this relatively large painting.17 What did the
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appraisers base their price of fl. 300:0 on? One comparison might be with a similar family group, sized 182 by 214 centimeters, and with a great many additional figures, that Caesar van Everdingen painted on behalf of Willebrandt Geleyens de Jongh for the Alkmaar orphanage. For this, the painter was paid fl. 300:0.18 We can thus tentatively conclude that some painters did try to charge the authorities and private citizens high prices, but that clients were often sufficiently price-conscious to set their own terms when it came to such valuable projects. They could engage independent appraisers, or act on their own discretion and pay a price they found acceptable.19 Some commissioners may have been overcharged, but we cannot conclude that this was common practice as is suggested by Sutton and others.
The Organ Doors for the St. Lawrence Church in Alkmaar by Caesar van Everdingen To ascertain whether painters asked reasonable prices, we also need to consider the expenses they incurred. The receipt that has survived for the model of the organ doors for the St. Lawrence Church in Alkmaar, showing scenes from the life of King David, is a unique source that allows us to do just that. The model measured 225 by 225 centimeters and the doors were reportedly placed on a miniature organ that could actually produce sound.20 After the magistrates of Alkmaar had approved the model, they subsequently commissioned the project on 16 August 1643. This contract mentions the sum of fl. 2000:0 as the remuneration for both the model and the paintings on the 900 by 900 centimeter doors; Van Everdingen made the paintings on canvas, which were subsequently put on panels (Fig. 2). Striking here is that a sum of fl. 2000:0 was also paid for the organ doors of the St. Lawrence Church in Rotterdam, which had been decorated by the marine painter De Vlieger.21 On 22 March 1644, seven months after the definitive commission had been conferred, the magistrate paid out a bonus at the completion of the work.22 The bill that Van Everdingen submitted in 1643 covered only the expenses he had incurred for the model.23 This document provides insight into the factors that went into making up a price and shows how the various elements were interrelated. The first payment for the project, dating from 17 August 1641, reimbursed Van Everdingen for the canvas, which had amounted to fl. 233:10. This item does not recur on the later bill, suggesting that it had been settled separately with the commissioner. On 22 March 1644, Van Everdingen submitted his final bill for the model. It shows that the artist had worked for a total of 547 days but that he had deducted twenty-eight days he had spent doing other things. The painter’s daily rate was fl. 3:0. He charged fl. 34:8 for the preliminary studies he had
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Fig. 2. Caesar van Everdingen, Organ Wings with the Story of King David, oil on canvas glued on panels, 1643, 900 x 900 cm. Alkmaar, St. Laurence Church.
made. Noteworthy here is the relatively small sum of fl. 20:0 spent on brushes, paint, and the grinding of pigments.24 The invoice also includes an entry for traveling expenses, given as fl. 12:0, and another for carriage costs, at fl. 8:10, between Alkmaar, Amsterdam, and Amersfoort. Likewise remarkable are two items for a “contribution to the verger of Amersfoort” in the amount of fl. 2:10 and the sum of fl. 7:0, which, as an outsider, the artist had had to pay to the Amersfoort guild of St. Luke to work there. Altogether, Van Everdingen had incurred fl. 1641:8 of expenses before he could begin to execute the final design.25 Thus, a little more than fl. 350:0 remained out of the agreed-upon total of fl. 2000:0 meant to cover materials and labor. These sources demonstrate that Van Everdingen – like Cornelis Claesz. van Wieringen – spent much more time preparing to paint than actually painting: 519 days as opposed to some seven months. In addition, we may conclude that Van Everdingen’s investment in canvas was relatively high, but that more than likely the commissioner paid for this.26
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From this settlement with Van Everdingen, it is apparent, moreover, that the costs of brushes and pigments were negligible in relation to the total amount charged (fl. 20:0 to fl. 1600:0). It is therefore hard to imagine that it was the rise in prices of pigments during the economic depression of the 1630s that occasioned the use of a monochrome palette with relatively cheap pigments, as Jonathan Israel has argued.27 The savings that would have resulted from this would have been very small indeed. The labor costs – amounting to fl. 1557:0 out of a total of approximately fl. 1600:0 – constituted the largest item of expenditure. Van Everdingen’s rate of fl. 3:0 per working day was, incidentally, not very high. Bartholomeus van der Helst received fl. 330:0, or almost fl. 8:0 a day, for the six weeks that he required to make the portraits of Willem Vincent van Wyttenhorst and Wilhelmina van Bronckhorst. Justus van Huisum, a pupil of Nicolaes Berchem, told Houbraken that his master had been in the employment of a gentleman for whom he worked from early in the morning until four o’clock in the afternoon for fl. 10:0 a day. Joachim von Sandrart claimed that Gerard Dou charged an hourly rate of as much as fl. 6:0.28 When compared to these rates, Van Everdingen’s labor charges were quite modest.
Officially Commissioned Paintings Compared with Paintings Made for the Market The costs Van Everdingen incurred for executing the organ doors and the remuneration he received from the commissioner prove to be closely interrelated; the price of the final work was not inflated in any way. Thus, the question remains whether the remuneration for such a monumental commission can indicate the price of a painting fetched on the free market. For this purpose, I would like to compare the price of the View of The Hague that Jan van Goyen completed in 1651 for the magistrate of The Hague with the prices his works fetched on the open market (Fig. 3). The magistrate paid fl. 650:0 for this painting, which measured 170 by 438 centimeters. It is executed in a more refined and detailed style than the majority of Van Goyen’s surviving cabinet pictures. A large landscape made for the market measuring 50 by 60 centimeters would be approximately twenty-five times smaller than the View of The Hague. A relatively large number of seventeenthcentury sources state prices paid for works by Van Goyen. Based on seven paintings from valuated property in Amsterdam, Montias calculated an average value of fl. 12:3.29 In an article on the painter’s position in the art market, Eric Jan Sluijter argued that the prices on which Montias based his judgment are only seldom representative of the prices that were paid upon immediate purchase. Sluijter proposed that the prices included in the lottery lists are nearer the “replacement value” of paintings. Those sums could vary wide-
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Fig. 3. Jan van Goyen, View of The Hague, oil on canvas, 170 x 438 cm, signed and dated VG 1651. The Hague, Haags Historisch Museum.
ly, from fl. 15:0 for (probably small) ovals to fl. 85:0. The average price for the Van Goyens in a lottery of 1650 was fl. 34:5, that is, slightly more than fl. 26:0:, or one twenty-fifth part of fl. 650:0.30 The price the magistrate from The Hague paid for the townscape thus turns out not to differ all that much, comparatively speaking, from the average price for cabinet pieces by Jan van Goyen on lottery lists, here equated with the price paid upon an immediate purchase on the open market. This is all the more remarkable since one would assume that the paintings put up for raffle were executed in a smart manner of painting using a quick production method, while for a work such as the View of The Hague, a more refined and detailed, and thus more time-consuming, technique was used. There are, however, other examples to bear out this pattern.31
Conclusion From the foregoing evidence, we may come to two conclusions. First, that while some painters in the Northern Netherlands may have had the intention of inflating their prices in their dealings with influential commissioners, such commissioners were, in turn, often quite price-conscious. By engaging independent appraisers to determine the final price, the commissioner could ascertain that fees would remain within reasonable limits. Second, the case of Caesar van Everdingen and his organ doors of St. Lawrence Church in Alkmaar indicates that an artist’s price was largely determined by the amount of time spent on the project and that preparing for such commissions required much more time than their actual execution. The fl. 2000:0 that Van Everdingen received appears not to have been an inflated price, but rather accurately reflects the costs incurred by the painter. Both conclusions give us little reason to believe that the authorities, the court, or well-to-do private citizens would have paid highly inflated prices for
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large commissions requiring a longer term of employment. Moreover, the analysis of the View of The Hague by Jan van Goyen demonstrates that it is indeed worthwhile to compare the prices of commissioned paintings with those of paintings produced for the open market. An ongoing, systematic investigation of prices of documented paintings should take us a step closer to determining the earnings of seventeenth-century Northern Netherlandish painters.
1 2
3 4
5
6
7
8
9
Bob Haak, Hollandse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw (Amsterdam: Meulenhof, 1984), p. 35. Alan Chong, “The Market for Landscape Painting in Seventeenth-Century Holland,” in Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Landscape Painting, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1987, p. 104. Chong cited Rubens’ statement to the effect that as a rule artists charged the aristocracy higher prices than they did ordinary citizens. For Rubens’ letter, see Ruth S. Magurn, ed., The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 55. Peter C. Sutton, “Introduction,” in Hollands Classicisme in de zeventiende-eeuwse schilderkunst, exh. cat., Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2000, p. 123. A price was also agreed upon in advance with the painters for the work in the orange Room but the sums for the various standard sizes vary slightly. For Caesar van Everdingen, this contract proved most favorable. The Four Muses and Pegasus on Parnassus measured one-tenth of the size of the organ doors. However, he received a remuneration for the organ doors that was slightly more than three times higher, even though it had involved far more work. Several examples may be mentioned here. Schrevelius recounted that Albert and Isabella rewarded Hendrick Cornelisz. Vroom for his work with a gold chain. Ludolf Backhuysen received fl. 1300:0 (400 gold ducats) for his View of the City of Amsterdam commissioned by the magistrate for Hugues de Lionne, as well as the bonus of an extra gold ducat for his wife. Jacob Jordaens was awarded a gold medal commemorating the Peace Treaty of Münster after completing three paintings for the Amsterdam Town Hall. See Eduard van Biema, “Nalezing van de stadsrekeningen van Amsterdam van af het jaar 1531,” Oud Holland 24 (1906): 181, Resolutiën van de Thesorieren, 28 April 1662, fol. 97v. Ferdinand Bol got a bonus of fl. 150:0 having successfully finished the Allegory on the Leiden City Council, for which a price of fl. 750:0 had originally been agreed upon. The relevant documents were published by Abraham Bredius in the early 1900s in his Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der Holländischen Kunst des XVIten. XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts (’s-Gravenhage, 1915-22), pp. 671-79. Commissions to Vroom from various authorities included: designs for tapestries for the States of Zeeland (1593); prints of the Battle of Nieuwpoort (1601); designs for glasses for the Leiden Gemeenlandshuis for the Haarlem magistrate (1603); a painting of the Battle of Gibraltar commissioned by the States of Holland for the English prince Henry (1610); and a painting of the Battle of Damiate for the Haarlem magistrate (1611). In 1629, he received another commission from the Haarlem magistrate for a painting depicting the Battle of Haarlemmermeer, now lost. In January 1623, the matter with Vroom was settled when he was reimbursed fl. 70:0 for costs he had incurred. These might have included traveling expenses and possibly costs for sketches. See Bredius 1915-22, p. 679. As far as I know, there is only one other occasion in the Republic during the seventeenth century when a painter charged fl. 6000:0 for a commission from the authori-
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11 12 13
14
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16 17
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ties. The work concerned is the Peace Treaty of Münster, executed by Gerard Terborch and measuring 45.5 x 58.5 cm. (National Gallery, London). It is striking that the magistrate refused to pay this price. Terborch subsequently kept the painting himself. See Sturla J. Gudlaugsson, Geraert Ter Borch (The Hague, 1959-60), pp. 63-68. The painting is now thought to be that in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. A 2163). See Jeroen Giltaij, ed., Lof der Zeevaart: De Hollandse zeeschilders van de 17e eeuw, exh. cat., Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and Staatliche Museen Gemäldegalerie im Bodemuseum, Berlin, 1996-97, no. 9. It is now thought that this second sample is the painting of The Battle of Gibraltar in a private collection, signed, Ro. FCW. See Giltaij 1996-97, no. 10. Amsterdam, Scheepvaartmuseum, signed on the side gallery of the Zeeland ship, De Rode Leeuw (“The Red Lion”), inv. no. A 724. See Giltaij 1996-97, no. 11. Some other examples can be mentioned here. While working in Antwerp, Jan Lievens completed a painting for the Leiden Town Hall, Scipio and his Wife before Carthage. He received fl. 1500 for the painting, which measured 188 x 237 cm. with the carriage costs of fl. 150:0 being paid separately. See Rudolf Ekkart, “De prooi van de vlammen. Bij de stadhuisbrand van 1929 verloren gegane schilderijen,” Leids Jaarboekje 71 (1979): 116-19. The painter Gerrit van Santen, now no longer well known, made a series of five paintings, each measuring 55 x 139.5 cm, of the Siege of the Schenkerschans for the stadholder. His remuneration amounted to fl. 180:0, while the costs of the crates and the transport came to fl. 60:0. See Carel Vosmaer, “De ordonnantie-boeken van prijs Frederik Hendrik over de jaren 1637-1650,” Kunstkronijke, n.s. 2 (1861): 39; and Pieter Arend Leupe, “De ordonnantieboeken van prins Frederik Hendrik over de jaren 16371650,” De Nederlandsche Spectator (1875): 255. Jacob Jordaens was paid fl. 31:0 for carriage costs, besides the fl. 700:0 that was his remuneration for David and Goliath made for the Amsterdam Town Hall. See Willem F.H. Oldewelt, “Eenige posten uit de thesauriers-memorialen van Amsterdam van 1664 tot 1764,” Oud Holland 51 (1934): 70. For a detailed analysis of this commission, see Nora de Poorter, “Seriewerk en recyclage: Doorgedreven efficiëntie in het geroutineerde atelier van Jacob Jordaens,” in Hans Vlieghe, ed., Concept, Design, and Execution in Flemish Painting, 1550-1700 (Antwerp: Brepols, 2000), p. 215ff., and for the transcript of the commission, pp. 229-30. The dispute was initially brought before a solicitor but later before the magistrate of Amsterdam. See Jan Jacob de Gelder, Bartholomeus van der Helst, Ph.D. diss, Leiden University, 1921, pp. 144-45, doc. nos. 84, 87, 88, 90, 91, and 95. St. Petersburg, The Hermitage, inv. no. 860. Oil on canvas; 187.5 x 226.5 cm. The painting was lost in a fire in 1864. A copy by Johan Philip Koelman survives. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Oil on canvas; 169 x 232 cm. The original was signed B.van.der.Helst.f.1656. In the 1862 catalogue of the Boijmans Collection, the painting is described as measuring 1 yard 69 inches high, and 2 yards 32 inches wide. My current research into prices of portraits indicates that the price rates show a demonstrably high correlation to size, the amount of figures, and the fame of the artist. Stadholder Frederik Hendrik commissioned Rembrandt to paint a series of seven paintings of The Passion of Christ. Rembrandt asked fl. 1000:0 for the first and later fl. 1200:0 because of his growing reputation. However, he left it to the courtesy of the stadholder to decide upon a price. In the end, Frederik Hendrik paid fl. 5400:0 for the seven paintings, a large amount of money, but considerably less than Rembrandt had hoped for. See Walter L. Strauss, ed. The Rembrandt Documents (New York, 1979), second letter to Constantijn Huygens, p. 133; fourth letter, p. 165; sixth, p. 171; and seventh, p. 173; Pieter van Thiel in Rembrandt: De meester en zijn werkplaats, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and National Gallery, London, 1991-92, no. 13, pp. 156-60, esp. p.
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157; and Dirk F. Slothouwer, De paleizen van Frederik Hendrik (Leiden, 1945), p. 335. 20 This model was kept in the Alkmaar Town Hall until the beginning of the nineteenth century, but is now lost. See Friso Lammertse, “Boekbespreking van P. Huys Janssen, Caesar van Everdingen,” Oud Holland 117 (2004): 262-63. Houbraken mentioned that Van Everdingen had made the model at the home of Jacob van Campen in Amersfoort. 21 For the organ in St. Lawrence Church in Rotterdam, see Pieter Haverkorn van Rijsewijk, “Simon Jacobsz. de Vlieger,” Oud Holland 9 (1891): 223. The organ paintings were replaced during the eighteenth century. 22 The bill mentions an earlier intention to pay out a bonus of fl. 200:0, but adds that eventually the sum was set at fl. 150:0. 23 See Paul Huys Janssen, Caesar van Everdingen, 1616/17-1678 (Doornspijk: Davaco, 2002), doc. 16 August 1643, p. 160. At the time, Van Everdingen had already received fl. 250:0 in advance to cover costs for material. The contract also mentions a model that he made for the burgomasters. RAA (Regionaal Archief Alkmaar), SA (Stads Archief), no. 1847, documents the repairs, maintenance, and renovation of the organs in the Great Church (Grote Kerk) and the Chapel (de Kapel) from 1625 to 1809. 24 This is supported by the 1615 contract between Adriaen van Delen and Johannis Porcellis, who at that time had not yet been registered as a master painter with the guild. Porcellis agreed to paint for Van Delen for twenty weeks and to deliver every week two paintings depicting “various ships and waterways” (“diversche schepen ende wateren”). He was to be paid fl. 15 a week for his efforts, in other words, fl. 7.50 for each painting. From that sum, the cost of materials would be deducted: sc. fl. 160 for the 40 panels, and fl. 40 for the pigments. A simple calculation shows that, for every painting, fl. 5:0 was deducted for the cost of materials and fl. 2:50 remained for wages. The contract also stated that Porcellis was to have an assistant. We may conclude from this that the cost of materials, in particular those for the (prepared) panels, was higher than the cost of labor, whereas the cost of pigments was relatively low. Abraham Bredius, “Johannes Porcellis, zijn leven, zijn werk,” Oud Holland 23 (1905): 69-74. 25 RAA SA, no. 1847. Likewise, see Huys Janssen 2002, pp. 158, 161. 26 We have several sources that indicate that commissioners paid for canvas. The Last Judgment, executed by Adriaen Backer for the sheriffs’ courtroom in the Amsterdam Town Hall, required a total of 1,280 square feet of canvas at the rate of 3 stuivers per foot: fl. 240:0 out of a total of fl. 1000:0 for the cost of the painting; see Oldewelt 1934, p. 140. In 1651, one Aeltje Dirckx paid fl. 110:0 toward the canvas for two paintings measuring 338 x 343.5 and 325 x 345 cm, respectively; see B.J.A. Renckens, “De Hoornse Portretschilder Jan Albertsz. Rotius,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek (1948-49): 195. Jacob Oliviers supplied a total of 30 canvases and wooden frames for the orange Room for fl. 1218:0, the largest canvas being 24 feet in height and over 23 inches in width, which cost as much as fl. 160:0; see Jan G. van Gelder, “De oranjezaal,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek (1948-49), Appendix II, p. 155. The amounts per yard differ widely. Many of these bills state explicitly that the canvas was obtained in Haarlem. During the seventeenth century, a specialized industry developed there for “primed” canvases. That the prices of canvas could differ so much can partly be explained by the fluctuation of prices over the years. However, it is also probable that there were differences as to quality between the various suppliers. 27 Another example is the payment for materials made to A. van der Planck for his contribution to the painting depicting The Justice of William the Good for the Hasselt Town Hall (Overijssel). The cost of pigments for this painting (192 x 213 cm.) was fl. 2:0. See Albert Blankert in Rotterdam 2000, p. 316. For Israel’s opinion on the impact of the recession on the prices of pigments, see Jonathan I. Israel, “Adjusting to Hard Times: Dutch Art during its Period of Crisis and Restructuring (c.1612-c.1645),” Art History 20 (1997): 449-76, esp. p. 465.
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28 Marion E.W. Boers, “De Schilderijenverzameling van Willem Vincent van Wyttenhorst,” Oud Holland 117 (2004): 208; Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen (Amsterdam, 1718-21), vol. 2, pp. 112-13. D.O. Obreen, ed., Archief voor de Nederlandsche Kunstgeschiedenis…, Rotterdam 1877-90, vol. 1, p. 151; Joachim von Sandrart, Teutsche Akademie der Edlen Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste… (Nuremburg, 1675-79), p. 196. 29 John Michael Montias, “Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam: An Analysis of Subjects and Attributions,” in Art in History / History in Art: Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Culture, eds. David Freedberg and Jan de Vries (Santa Monica, Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1991), p. 366. If one analyzes all known prices fetched at auctions and the valuations of probate inventories from before 1660, the average price turns out to be somewhere between fl. 18:0 and fl. 19:0. 30 See Eric J. Sluijter, “Jan van Goyen als marktleider, virtuoos en vernieuwer,” in Jan van Goyen, exh. cat., Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden, 1996-97, pp. 42-45. Also compare the painting by Pieter de Mulier that Baron Willem Vincent van Wyttenhorst bought in 1647 for fl. 40:0, thinking it was a Pieter de Molijn, size: 28.5 x 55 cm. Boers 2004, pp. 204-06. 31 Among the items on a list of a lottery held by Frans Pietersz. de Grebber in 1636 there is a painting by Pieter de Grebber depicting The Contrite King David Choosing from Three Plagues and priced at fl. 60:0. Peter Sutton is of the opinion that this is the 94 x 84 cm. canvas that is now in the Catharijnenconvent Museum in Utrecht. In 1648, Pieter de Grebber was paid fl. 500:0 for the Triumphal Procession with Standard-Bearers and Spoils of War measuring 376 x 203 cm. for the orange Room in the royal villa, Huis Ten Bosch. The painting that was 9.6 times as large, but cost comparatively 8.3 times as much as the painting executed for the market. Again, it turns out these sums are not too much apart while the price works out as being slightly lower – and not higher as many authors have presumed – for the monumental commission.
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The Mysterious Landscape Painter Govert Janszn called Mijnheer (1577-c.1619) marten jan bok and sebastien dudok van heel 1 University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam and Amsterdam
In his last book Art at Auction in 17th Century Amsterdam, published in 2002, Michael Montias observed that during the first half of the 17th century the works of the painter Govert Janszn frequently crossed the Amsterdam art market. With eleven occurrences between 1597 and 1638 Govert Jansz ranked eighth among the artists most frequently mentioned in auction sales, preceded by Karel van Mander, Pieter Aertsen, and Gillis van Conincxloo, but ahead of Cornelis van Haarlem, Roelant Saverij, and Hendrick Avercamp.2 After the publication of Art at Auction, Montias continued adding to his Database of Amsterdam inventories and shortly before his death he completed his posthumously published article, “Artists named in Amsterdam inventories, 1607–1680,” in which he established again that the works of Govert Janszn featured prominently in the Amsterdam art market.3 By then, he had found a total number of 47 mentions in 22 inventories and a few dealers’ stocks.4 Thus, the artist still ranked twelfth among the thirty-one artists with the greatest number of paintings by lots, having been overtaken only by a few masters of the younger generation, such as Rembrandt van Rijn and Jan van Goyen. The frequency at with which works by Govert Janszn were mentioned in 17th-century auctions and inventories had been noted earlier by art historians such as Abraham Bredius.5 However, just as to his predecessors, to Michael Montias it remained an open question what his artistic persona was. In this contribution, we have set out to shed new light on the identity of Govert Janszn and on the character of his work. At the end of his life Michael knew that we were working on this subject in his honor, but by that time he no longer had the strength to contribute. He would have been happy to know that thanks to the generous help of Dr. Louisa Wood Ruby of The Frick Art Reference Library, we were able to incorporate all the relevant material from his Database after all.
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The reader will find a genealogy of the painter and his children in Appendix 1, as well as a complete list of all the works attributed to Govert Janszn in 17th-century sources in Appendix 2.
Reputation One of the most notable aspects of Govert Janszn’s “fortuna critica” is that his name is all but forgotten after 1680 and is completely absent in 18th-century sources. Apparently his work ran out of fashion soon after the middle of the century. Nevertheless, in his own days he must have been regarded as a prominent artist, as witnessed by the fact that the founder of the Amsterdam school of history painting, Pieter Lastman, owned “een landschap van Tobias,”6 as did his mother Barbara Jacobsdr., who had a “lantschap,”7 and Rembrandt, who owned “een landschappie” and “een dorpie” (village) by Govert Janszn.8 What is it that awakened the interest of Rembrandt in the work of Govert Janszn, resulting in him acquiring at an auction in 1637 a “landschap” by this artist for fl. 30?9 At that same auction, another bidder went as far as fl. 106 for a “ditto” landscape. In 1625, at the sale of Cornelis van der Voort’s paintings, a landscape by Govert Janszn had been sold for fl. 67.10 And in addition to that, we know of an attestation from 1637 about a prominent dealer in paintings, Johannes de Renialme (c. 1600–1657), who declined to exchange a painting by Govert Janszn for a number of other paintings, because, as he said, “he first had to have his pleasure for a while longer from the painting” (“sijn plaisir nog wat moste hebben”).11 Three years later, a landscape by “Mijn Heer” valued at fl. 42 was found in De Renialme’s stock.12 And after he died in 1657, he turned out to still own two landscapes by Govert Janszn, which were assessed at fl. 150 and fl. 50.13 In no way could these paintings have been inferior works. The prices realized at auction and the valuations cited are a good indication of the high esteem in which the work of Govert Janszn was held in the 17th-century Amsterdam art market. Montias in his last article included a table with “Prices and valuations of paintings by frequently cited artists.”14 In this list Govert Janszn ranked forty-first, with an average price (valuation) of fl. 31,50 (median fl. 25) (Table 2). In total Montias found 34 mentions with a price, or valuation. In the course of our research we could add 9 new cases to this list, bringing the total to an aggregate of 43 (Table 1). We calculated a price level (average fl. 33; median fl. 30) slightly higher than that which had been established by Montias. In addition, we concluded that on average, Govert Janszn’s paintings were about a third more expensive after 1650 than they had been in the first half of the century.
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Table 1. Prices and valuations for paintings by Govert Janszn 1612-1698
1612-1698 1612-1650 1651-1698
Number of prices
Average
Median
Lowest price
Highest price
Date of highest price
43 29 14
33.0 30.2 38.9
30 25 35
2.25 2.25 4.0
150 106 150
1657 1637 1657
Source: Appendix 2. Note: The reference to the painting in the collection of Samuel van Pietsen ([3]-31646) has been ignored because it was a collaborative work and because the (high) asking price was not realized. Table 2. Prices valuations for paintings by Govert Janszn 1607-1680, as found by Montias
1607-1680
Number of prices
Average
Median
Lowest price
Highest price
Date of highest price
34
31.5
25
5.5
106
1637
Source: Montias, “Artists named in Amsterdam inventories,” p. 330.
Yet another indication for the significance of Govert Janszn is found in the names of the master painters which surround him in Montias’ ranking: Simon de Vlieger, Adriaen van Nieuland, David Vinckboons, Francois Badens, Hendrick Vroom and Gillis d’Hondecoeter. In most cases these are painters whose works still hold a good reputation today. As it turns out, the figure painter Badens at one point collaborated with Govert Janszn. In 1641, a now lost “Ganymede” by Francois Badens, of which the landscape was painted by Govert Janszn, together with a painting by Hendrick Goltzius, were estimated to be worth fl. 2500 to fl. 3000.15 These are prices asked from princely collectors. The contemporary reputation of Badens and Goltzius is sufficiently known. It is therefore significant that Govert Janszn and Badens worked together. Their fame is being underlined by a letter from March 1646, in which the Amsterdam landscape painter Marten de Cocq, on behalf of an Amsterdam owner, tried to convince the connoisseur Constantijn Huygens to acquire the “Ganymede” for the stadholder’s collection: “assuring you again that the large piece of Ganymede is the original made by the hands of Franciscus Badens, who was an eminent, yes outstanding painter, having long been in Italy. He was excelling in female ‘tronies,’ horses and the like, grand compositions, etc. The landscape was made by Gouivert Jansen, who used to be called Mijn Heer, also the most prominent landscape painter. I can prove with [help of
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the testimony] of many painters here in Amsterdam that the said large piece is an original and not a copy, made by the hand [of the masters], and those who have seen it being painted will be able to testify to that.”16 Whenever an artist is praised in such terms by a contemporary, nowadays art historians become curious. In modern museums, one will search for his works in vain, as, apart from two attributed drawings, no oeuvre has been firmly established.17 We will get back to this further on, but now we will first turn to the contemporary sources, in order to find out what extra information we can extract from them.
Biography In his biography of the Amsterdam painter Gerrit Pieterszn (1566–after 1608), Karel van Mander mentions two of his pupils: “Govert” (“who makes very lively landscapes and little figures”) and the six years younger Pieter Lastman (1583–1633), who, at the time of publication of the Schilder-boeck in 1604, was in Italy and from whom Van Mander was expecting a lot in the future.18 From 1604 onwards, no art historical publication mentions Govert Janszn until Abraham Bredius in volume 3 of his Künstler-Inventare (1917) published his finds about the artist.19 These were limited and did not contain enough building blocks to construct an extensive biography. Bredius knew the 1603 registration of the marriage banns of Govert Janszn and Griet Willems, from which it became apparent that he was a brother-in-law of the painter Cornelis van der Voort (1576–1624).20 The document also allowed him to infer from the declared age of twenty-five that Govert had been born in about 1578, a date which we can now put at 1577 on the basis of yet another document.21 Bredius did not find a death registration, but it became clear that he had died not long after January 1619.22 One of the mysteries surrounding Govert Janszn is whether, or not he had a family name. The name Mijnheer, by which Bredius had encountered Govert Janszn’s paintings in inventories from 1640 onwards, did not occur in any document from the time of the artist’s life, or relating to him as a person.23 As will become clear from Table 3, the name Mijnheer appears only long after his death. In order to be able to find the reason for this phenomenon, we will have to take a fresh look at the biographical data. The last document in which Govert Janszn was mentioned, is the registration of three guardians for his children by the Amsterdam Orphan Chamber (Weeskamer) from January 1619.24 The children were registered by their first name and their age. However, they all turn out to have been called by the family name Poelenburgh by the time they married (Appendix 1). This so far unknown fact provided us with a fresh starting point from which to look for the artist himself. It allowed us to better understand an already prob-
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Table 3. Names by which paintings are attributed to Govert Janszn in seventeenth-century documents Govert
1611-1620 1621-1630 1631-1640 1641-1650 1651-1660 1661-1670 1671-1680 1681-1690 1691-1700 Total
2 2
1 5
Govert Janszn
3 7 6 7 4 3
30
Govert Govert (Janszn) (Janszn) Poelenburgh Mijnheer
Mijnheer
1 1
1
1 2 5 3 1
2
12
1
2
Total
3 8 9 10 7 9 3 1 1 51
Source: Appendix 2. Note: Some documents contain more than one attribution to Govert Janszn. Such cases have been counted as one, incorporating only the most complete name in the table.
lematic reference to a painter Poelenburg in the prologue to Theodoor Rodenburg’s play Melibea of 1618.25 The Utrecht painter Cornelis van Poelenburg (1594–1667), with whom he had been identified previously, would have been too young at the time to have been able to make a name for himself in Amsterdam:26 Ghy Amsterdamme doet Apelles fame buyghen, ’t Moet zwichten voor U al ’t geen was in voor’ghe tijdt, Want Ghy de Paragonne van de wereldt zijt. Veel eerder zoud’ mijn tonghe azems galmt ghebreken, Eer ik u lof volkomen uyt zoud’ kunnen spreken. Italien Ghy trotst’, al wat zy hadd’ of heeft In Amstelse tryumph nu wezentlijcke leeft; Roemt van uw Langhe Pier, roemt van uw waerde Ketel, Uw Dieryck Barents lof, men achtent noyt vermetel Dat ghy uw heldens faem op uw baeckx-tope viert, En uw verleden tijdt met gloryen lauriert. En die ghy hebt als noch, Pinas, uw Lasmans wercken, Vw Pieter Ysacx, die u roofden Denemercken, Tengnagel, Badens, Vinck vercieren ’t Amstellandt. Vw Poelenburg, Nieu-land, Moeyert en Van Nant, Vw Zav’ry, Vinckeboons, uw waerden vander Voorden. ’t Levanten ghy verciert door uw konst’rijcke Noorden. the mysterious landscape painter govert janszn called mijnheer | 77
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The internationally oriented Amsterdam merchant and playwright Theodoor Rodenburg was one of the key figures in the cultural life in the Republic in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. He was active as a diplomat and tried to make his fortune in the trade in luxury goods and paintings.27 In the fall of 1619, not long after his panegyric of Amsterdam painters had been published, Rodenburg appeared at court in Copenhagen. In a number of long “memoriën,” he unveiled to the King Christian IV his plans to move Dutch artists and artisans to Denmark in order to stimulate Danish industry.28 In the spring of 1621 Rodenburg returned before the King, whom he knew to be an art lover. He had brought with him from the Netherlands a cargo of about 350 paintings, “among which are many by the most illustrious and famous masters” (“waeronder zijn veelen van de treffelijckste, vermaerste meesters”), with an estimated total value of 20,000 Rixdollars.29 The list of artists’ names – unfortunately no subjects are given – contains a survey of major Dutch and Flemish masters from the 16th and early 17th centuries. From Amsterdam we encounter, among others, “Louys Vinson, Den ouden Koningsloo, Fransisco Badens, Warnar van den Valckert, David Vinckeboons, Lasman, Van Someren, Hercules Pietersen [Seghers],” as well as our painter “Govert Janssen Poelenburch.” In this light, the 1618 poem seems to become and advertisem*nt for the paintings on offer to Christian IV in 1619, just as, for example, Joost van den Vondel and Joannes Antonides van der Goes in 1673 would write poems to announce a sale of paintings from the stock of the art dealer Gerrit Uylenburgh.30 Thanks to Rodenburg we now know that the young landscape painter Govert whom Van Mander mentions in 1604, had since matured into one of Amsterdam’s most renowned artists. This confirms what we had already inferred from the high prices at which his paintings crossed the art market.
Three different names The fact that around 1620 Govert Janszn Poelenburg was known by a family name in Amsterdam’s cultivated “milieu,” yet is only referred to by a patronymic, or the name Mijnheer afterwards, should be relevant to us. How can we explain this? In order to get to an answer to this question, we will again have to look at the biographical data. At the time of his marriage Govert Janszn Poelenburg lived on Warmoesstraat in “De blauwe Schaar” (no. 154). His father, who was a cloth dresser, had already been renting this house in 1578 and in 1590 the house was bought by Govert’s brother Willem Janszn.31 Govert Janszn thus lived on the most prominent street of the city. After his marriage, he probably stayed there, as in August 1612 his wife was buried in the Oude Kerk from Warmoesstraat.32
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Fig. 1. Claes Janszn Visscher, The Amsteldijk at Kostverloren, c. 1607, etching (Hollst. 141).
From then onwards, Govert Janszn must have run into financial difficulties. His sister Giert Jansdr, who had been living in his house as a “servant (“dienstmaagd”), in December 1613 asked a notary to draw up an inventory of the goods in the house, in order to lay down which property belonged to her and which to her brother.33 The latter’s property was so meagre that we may assume the artist had already left the home. This is confirmed by Govert Janszn himself in a statement from two years later, in which he said that he had had his late wife’s clothes sold after her death and that from that moment on he had still been living in Amsterdam for about a year.34 In the summer of 1617 he was living outside the city, on “Kostverloren” manor (Fig. 1). By that time his creditors had been pursuing him to such an extent that he was forced to ask the High Council of Holland and Zeeland to grant him “cessio bonorum,” just as Rembrandt would do in 1656.35 We may therefore assume that he had left the city in order to escape his creditors and because he had to cut down on his cost of living. In 1632, the rent of the dilapidated manor on the banks of the river Amstel mounted to no more than fl. 25 per annum, while at the same time his parental home on Warmoesstraat was taxed at a rent of fl. 850 a year.36 The artist must have died a poor man shortly after January 1619. After his death the name Poelenburgh ran into oblivion with the general public. Yet his former neighbors did still remembered the painter Poelenburgh half a century later. When in 1670 an inventory was drawn up from the Catholic book dealer Cornelis Dirckszn Cool (1593–1669), the notary wrote down: “a burning barn by Govert Poelenburgh” (“brandende schuur
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van Govert Poelenburgh fl. 48”), together with a painting by his former master Gerrit Pieterszn (“Een geselingh van Gerridt Pietersz fl. 100”) and one by his admirer Rembrandt (“Een tronij van [Rembrandt] int groot fl. 60”).37 Cool lived opposite the former home of Govert Janszn on Warmoesstraat (no. 154), in the “Vergulde Passer” (Warmoesstraat no. 151),38 which had previously been the publishing house of the family of the famous engraver Jan Harmenszn Muller (1571-1628).39 It is only twenty years after the death of the artist that we first encounter the name Mijnheer in attributions. How can we explain this? Was it a nickname which he owed to having lived as a “grand seigneur”? Did he stop using the family name Poelenburgh out of the disgrace caused by his bankruptcy, hiding behind the patronymic Govert Janszn at first and then being called Mijnheer by others? What is notable is the fact that the name Mijnheer, from 1640 onwards, is encountered first and foremost in the mostly large inventories of professional art dealers and of others engaged in the art trade (Appendix 2). This makes it plausible that the name had been in use in the Amsterdam art world before. Yet it is also possible that Mijnheer was not a nickname but a family name which had already been in use among Govert Janszn’s ancestors, most likely in the maternal line. We encountered the name in several 16th-century documents, not only in Amsterdam, but also in Rotterdam and elsewhere in Holland. However, we failed to establish a family relationship, although the appearance of a “Govert Cornelisz. Mijnheer” in Rotterdam around 1600 makes it plausible that such a relationship may have existed indeed.40 Earlier, in 1542, a “Cornelis Mijneer” lived in Amsterdam, who owned two houses on “de Vesten,” not far from the Haarlemmerpoort, where currently the Ronde Lutherse Kerk is to be found.41 In 1558 this man was called “Cornelis Jacobszn alias Mijnheer.”42 Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the name of Govert Janszn vanishes from the sources. The art broker Jan Pietersz. Zomer, who became the foremost art expert in Amsterdam in this same period, seems not to have known him. Because Zomer derived his knowledge mainly from his phenomenal collection of drawings, it seems likely that hardly any drawings ever crossed the market under the name of Govert Janszn.
Attributions Govert Janszn’s reputation in his own day makes the question pressing as to in what style he was working. In the following, we will try to say something about this matter on the basis of the material at hand. The primary source for such an evaluation should of course be the preserved works, but unfortunately, this takes us into a minefield of problems of attribution. The first published attribution dates from 1921, when Abraham Bredius
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Fig. 2. (attributed to) Govert Janszn, Landscape with ruins, drawing. Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet.
published a landscape drawing from the Amsterdam Rijksprentenkabinet (Fig. 2).43 He immediately put on record that the inscription “Govert Janse, alias mijn heer fe.” could not be contemporary, but must date from the end of the seventeenth century, or from the eighteenth. The signature (lower left) did not match those of the artist which Bredius had found in archival documents. 44 Yet he assumed that the inscription might go back to “einer guten Tradition.” A second drawing was discovered by J.Q. van Regteren Altena in the collection P. and N. de Boer in Amsterdam (Fig. 3) and was subsequently published by J.G. van Gelder.45 The partly cut inscription (upper left) on this drawing is no more of an autograph than the one on the drawing in the Rijksprentenkabinet and probably dates from the same period.46 What makes matters worse is the fact that this second drawing cannot be by the same hand.47 This makes both drawings, notwithstanding the old tradition, an unsteady basis for further attributions. The unreliable attributions of both drawings did not withhold art historians from making more attributions, resulting in the construction of a genuine oeuvre. In 1926 Hans Schneider for the first time attributed a painting to Govert Janszn, drawing on – in our eyes – only formal similarities with the motif of the ruin in the drawing from the Rijksprentenkabinet.48 Consequently, several paintings appeared in the art trade carrying attributions to Govert Janszn.49 In 1968 Van Gelder added several drawings.50 As a result,
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Fig. 3. (attributed to) Govert Janszn, Mountainous landscape, drawing. Amsterdam, coll. P. and N. de Boer.
Govert Janszn’s folder with photographs in the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) does not make a consistent oeuvre in any possible way. The only conclusion that we can safely draw is that around 1700 two drawings in a style which Van Gelder characterized as forming a link between the Flemish landscapes of Joos de Momper and the work of Hercules Seghers, were considered by collectors to be by Govert Janszn.51
Information from inventories In 51 documents we found a total of 78 mentions of paintings, be it that in some instances the same painting reappears in more than one document.52 In all but a few cases the subject is described plainly as a “landscape.” In ten cases the subject is further specified as, for example, a mine (“berchwerck”), a fire, a ruin, a daybreak, a burning barn, or a night piece.53 These specifications hardly give us a clue as to the style in which they were painted. However, we do find some indication about the style of Govert Janszn in a correction made by the well-known art dealer Gerrit Uylenburgh to the inventory of Egbert Schut from February 15th, 1666, which he was asked to appraise: “Een lantschap van [crossed out: Govert Janszn alias Mijnheer, and replaced by] Pieter van Santvoort f. 40:--:--”54 Apparently, to lay people, the
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Fig. 4. Pieter Dirckszn Santvoort (1605-1635), Landscape in Threatening Weather, 1625, oil on panel. Berlin, Gemäldegalerie.
works of Pieter Dirckszn Santvoort (1603-1635) were difficult to distinguish from those of Govert Janszn. Pieter Santvoort, a brother of the portrait painter Dirck Santvoort, happens to have been an important pioneer of Dutch landscape painting. His Landscape in Threatening Weather from 1625 has been described by Wolfgang Stechow as a “...somewhat crude but magnificently daring painting [which] occupies a decisive place in the evolution of Dutch landscape painting” (Fig. 4).55 He considered it to be “directly anticipat[ing]” Pieter de Molijn and Salomon van Ruysdael. We may safely assume that the works of Pieter Santvoort, who happened to be Govert Janszn’s junior by a quarter of a century, did contain characteristic elements taken from his predecessor. Unfortunately, the oeuvre of Santvoort too is waiting to be charted. The files of photographs of his drawings and paintings in the RKD provide us with just as inconsistent a reconstruction of his artistic achievements as do those of Govert Janszn. And some of the attributed drawings could easily be shifted from one box to another without altering the image of the other’s artistic persona. Fortunately, Santvoort did leave us a small number of firmly signed and dated works, which should form the basis of a reliable reconstruction of his oeuvre. There is yet another, be it cautious, approach by which we may deduce
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information about Govert Janszn’s style from the documents. As has been stated before, Rembrandt bought a landscape painting by Govert Janszn at auction in 1637. This painting, we assume, reappears in Rembrandt’s inventory of 1656, accompanied by a second painting. We can ask ourselves in which context these paintings hung in Rembrandt’s house and what can be derived from this about Rembrandt’s interest in landscape painting. In other words: which landscapes did he own and in what style were they painted? The inventory contains a total of eleven landscapes (twelve including one seascape) by Rembrandt himself (of which four were after nature [“naar het leven”]),56 eight by Seghers, three by Lievens, two by Govert Janszn, two by Porcellis, one by Grimmer and one by an unknown master57. What is important to us here is that Rembrandt in his own collection obviously preferred works by masters who usually depicted landscape in a dramatic fashion and with a loose hand. It would be no more than natural if his interest in the works of Govert Janszn was fostered by the latter working in a fashion similar to that of Seghers, Lievens, or Porcellis. Cynthia Schneider has argued that Rembrandt and Flinck both took up painting landscapes around 1637.58 Against this backdrop it may be relevant to note that Rembrandt bought a painting by Govert Janszn in that same year.59 By that time Govert Janzn had been dead for almost twenty years, but we know that Rembrandt in his work often looked back at earlier examples and this is what he may have had on his mind when he bought the painting. It would also strengthen Van Gelder’s proposition that Govert Janszn should be regarded as a link between Flemish masters such as Joos de Momper and the Dutch landscape painters Hercules Seghers, Jan Lievens, Philips Koninck, and Rembrandt. All of these artists treated landscape not with a cold realism but aimed at theatrical effects, which in landscape could be evoked with magnificent panoramas, monumental trees, stormy weather and dramatic lighting. It is here that the work of Govert Janszn may have been significant to other artists. Having conducted as thorough an investigation of the contemporary sources relating to the art of Govert Janszn as we could, we remain unable to draw firm conclusions. Our knowledge of the early history of Dutch landscape painting is too limited to allow us to speculate. We do hope, however, that we have shown other scholars the direction in which to continue this research. When one day a painting can be firmly attributed to Govert Janszn, a longstanding wish of both Abraham Bredius and Michael Montias will be fulfilled.
1
2
We want to thank Charles Dumas, Michael Hoyle, George Keyes, Huigen Leeflang, Marijn Schapelhouman, Louisa Wood Ruby, and Thera Wijsenbeek-Olthuis for their help in the preparation of this article. J.M. Montias, Art at Auction in 17th Century Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2002), p. 98.
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J.M. Montias, “Artists named in Amsterdam inventories, 1607-1680,” in Simiolus 31 (2004-2005), pp. 322-47. Montias, “Artists named in Amsterdam inventories, 1607-1680,” p. 326. A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der Holländischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts, 7 vols. and Index, (Quellenstudien zur holländischen Kunstgeschichte, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1915-1922), vol. 3, p. 831. Bredius’ finds were later summarized in: S. Nystad, Een landschap toegeschreven aan Govert Janszn alias Mijnheer (The Hague: S. Nystad Oude Kunst B.V., 1975). See: Appendix 2, Doc. 7-7-1632. For his data and a full transcript of his inventory, see: S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, De jonge Rembrandt onder tijdgenoten. Godsdienst en schilderkunst in Leiden en Amsterdam (Ph.D. diss. Nijmegen, Radboud Universiteit, 2006), pp. 100-02. Appendix 2, Doc. 19-4-1625. For her, see: Dudok van Heel, De jonge Rembrandt onder tijdgenoten, p. 99. Appendix 2, Doc. 26-7-1656. Appendix 2, Doc. 10-9-1637. Shortly before, the same painting had been appraised at five guilders less (Appendix 2, Doc. 11-7-1637). Appendix 2, Doc.13/16-5-1625. Appendix 2, Doc. 21-11-1637; Translation quoted from: Montias, Art at Auction, p. 130. Appendix 2, Doc. 25-4-1640; Montias, Art at Auction, p. 141, no. 36. Appendix 2, Doc. 27-6-1657. Montias, “Artists named in Amsterdam inventories, 1607-1680,” pp.329-30. M.J. Bok, “Een Ganymedes van Francois Badens en de werkplaats voor schilderijen in Italiaanse stijl aan de Oude Turfmarkt,” in Amstelodamum. Maandblad voor de kennis van Amsterdam 92 (2005, vol. 4), pp. 3-14, esp. p. 9. J. Worp, De briefwisseling van Constantijn Huygens, 6 vols. (Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatiën, vols. 15, 19, 21, 24, 28, 32, The Hague 1911-1917), vol. 4 (1915), pp. 284-85, no. 4283. See Appendix 2, Doc. [3]-3-1646. Transcription quoted from: J.G.C.A. Briels, De Zuidnederlandse immigratie in Amsterdam en Haarlem omstreeks 1572-1630. Met een keuze van archivalische gegevens betreffende de kunstschilders (Ph.D. diss. Utrecht, 1976), p. 216. J.G. van Gelder, “Enkele tekeningen van Govert Janszn, alias Mijnheer,” in idem, Miscellanea Jozef Duverger: bijdragen tot de kunstgeschiedenis der Nederlanden, 2 vols. (Gent: Vereniging voor de Geschiedenis der Textielkunsten, 1968), vol. 2, pp. 519-29. “[...] eenen Govert ghenaemt, seer cluchtigh van Landtschap en beeldekens.” Quoted from: K. van Mander (H. Miedema, ed.), The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, from the first edition of the “Schilder-boeck” (1603-1604), 6 vols. (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1994-1999), vol. 1 (1994), pp. 432-33 (fol. 293v); vol. 6 (1999), p. 37. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, vol. 3, pp. 831-39. Bredius’ summarized the biographical data in: U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols. (Leipzig, 1908-1950, reprint, München 1992), vol. 18 (1925), p. 415. Appendix 1, Doc. 30-7-1588. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, vol. 7 (Nachtrag), p. 122. Govert Janszn is explicitly referred to as deceased (“za[liger]”) in a document dated 27-3-1625 (Appendix 2). The name is first mentioned in: Appendix 2, Doc. 25-4-1640. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, vol. 7 (Nachtrag), p. 122. Th. Rodenburg, Melibea (Amsterdam 1618), prologue (voorspel). Quoted from: Dudok van Heel, De jonge Rembrandt onder tijdgenoten, p.53. Another early edition of this poem is reproduced in: N.C. Sluijter-Seijffert, Cornelis van Poelenburch (c. 1593-1667) (Ph.D. diss. Leiden, 1984), p. 249. Sluijter-Seijffert, Cornelis van Poelenburch, correctly put into question whether or not Rodenburg alluded to the Utrecht painter (pp. 26-27, pp. 153-54). the mysterious landscape painter govert janszn called mijnheer | 85
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27 O. Schutte, Repertorium der Nederlandse vertegenwoordigers residerende in het buitenland, 1584-1810 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), pp. 405-06. 28 G.W. Kernkamp, “Memoriën van ridder Theodorus Rodenburg betreffende het verplaatsen van verschillende industrieën uit Nederland naar Denemarken, met daarop genomen resolutiën van koning Christiaan IV (1621),” in Bijdragen en Mededeelingen van het Historisch Genootschap 23 (1902), pp. 189-258. 29 Kernkamp, “Memoriën van ridder Theodorus Rodenburg,” p. 227. 30 A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols. (Amsterdam, 1718-1721), vol. 2, pp. 295-97. See also: F. Lammertse and J. van der Veen, Uylenburgh en zoon. Kunst en commercie van Rembrandt tot De Lairesse 1625-1675 (Zwolle: Waanders, 2006), pp. 90-91. 31 J.G. Kam, Waar was dat huis in de Warmoesstraat? (Amsterdam, 1968), pp. 156-58. The artist’s father Jan Gerritszn (?-c. 1604) was referred to as Jan Gerritszn Blauscheer at the time of his second marriage in 1593 (GAA, arch. no. 5001 (Doop-, trouw- en begraafboeken), 406, fol. 308, 19-3-1593). 32 A few days after the burial of the painter’s wife, a certain Govert Janszn “int Ossenhooft” bought eleven lots of paintings, drawings and prints at the sale of Claes Rauwert “in de Sevenstarre” on Warmoesstraat (no. 91), for a total amount of over one hundred guilders (Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, vol. 5, pp. 1734-48). Unfortunately, without additional documentation, we are unable to identify the buyer as the artist. It seems to be a remarkable coincidence, although several Amsterdam houses were named “het Ossenhooft.” 33 Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, vol. 3, pp. 830-32. 34 Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, vol. 3, pp. 833-34. 35 Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, vol. 3, pp. 834-35. 36 I.H. van Eeghen, “Rembrandt aan de Amstel,” in Rembrandt aan de Amstel (Amsterdam: Genootschap Amstelodamum, 1969), unpaginated; Kam, Warmoesstraat, p. 156. 37 Appendix 2, Doc. 24-7-1670. This document was first published by A. Bredius, “Rembrandtiana,” in Oud-Holland 28 (1910), pp. 1-18, p. 9. Bredius put two question marks behind the name of Govert Poelenburgh. 38 Kam, Warmoesstraat, pp. 372-73. 39 Thieme and Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler, vol. 25 (1931), p.233; Hollstein, vol. 14 (1968), pp. 105-15; J.P. Filedt Kok, E. Hinterding and J. van der Waals, “Jan Harmensz. Muller as Printmaker – II,” in Print Quarterly 11 (1994) pp. 351-78, esp. pp. 351-54. 40 A skipper named Govert Cornelisz. Mijnheer was buried in Rotterdam on 13-2-1610. For the will of his widow Stijntgen Willemsdr, see GA Rotterdam, notarial archives Rotterdam, 59 (notary W. Jacobszn), act 50, fol. 160, 16-9-1622. 41 GAA, Fotokopie Kohier 1542, fol. 108, no. 25. 42 GAA, arch. no. 5073 (Weeskamer), 777, Inbrengregister no. 6, fol. 246, 8-6-1558. Lysbeth Henricxdr. and her then husband Dirck Frans, stonecutter, as guardian, declares 200 guilders for the paternal estate of her children: Henrick (aged 12), Cunera (7), Lysbeth (6) and Thonis (1 1/2), which she had with Thonis Corneliszn. She pledges her house and premises on St. Nicolaasstraat as security. Cornelis Jacobszn alias Mijnheer and Griet Claesdr, grandfather and grandmother of the children, give their consent. 43 Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, vol. 7 (Nachtrag), p. 121. 44 As illustrated in Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, vol. 3, pp. 833-34. 45 Van Gelder, “Enkele tekeningen van Govert Janszn, alias Mijnheer,” pp. 520-21. 46 Amsterdam, coll. P. and N. de Boer. 47 We want to thank Charles Dumas (RKD) for his critical examination of the photographs of the drawings attributed to Govert Janszn. 48 H. Schneider, “Een toeschrijving aan Govert Jansz alias Mijnheer,” in Oud Holland 43 (1926), pp. 269-71. 86 | in his milieu
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49 Going by the notes in the Hofstede de Groot archive (RKD), in the 1920’s and 1930’s, works were attributed to Govert Janszn by: A. Bredius, W. Vogelsang, H. Schneider and W.R. Valentiner. 50 Van Gelder, “Enkele tekeningen van Govert Janszn, alias Mijnheer.” 51 Van Gelder, “Enkele tekeningen van Govert Janszn, alias Mijnheer,” pp. 522-25. 52 One of the paintings included was partly by the hand of Govert Janszn and partly by Francois Badens (Appendix 2, Doc. [3]-3-1646). We excluded one painting, because its attribution was later changed into Pieter van Santvoort (Appendix 2, Doc. 15-2-1666). 53 Appendix 2, Docs. 23-6-1617, 25-1-1629, 7-7-1632, 22-11-1647, 29-1-1653, 26-7-1656, 1-1-1668, 24-7-1670, 6-5-1698. 54 Appendix 2, Doc. 15-2-1666. For an illustration of the original document, see: Lammertse and Van der Veen, Uylenburgh en zoon, p. 254. 55 W. Stechow, Dutch Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth Century (3rd ed., Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1981), p. 24. Sutton, however, states: “...the legitimacy of Santvoort’s claim to a pioneering role may be questioned.” (P. Sutton (ed.), Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Painting (Exhib. cat. Amsterdam / Boston / Philadelphia, 1987-1988), p. 481). 56 Today, the Rembrandt Research Project recognizes only five landscape paintings by Rembrandt. 57 Taken from: W. Strauss and M. van der Meulen, The Rembrandt Documents (New York, 1979), pp. 348-88 (Doc. 1656/12): In ’t Voorhuijs: [In the Entrance Hall:] [10] een cleijn lantschappie van Rembrant. [11] noch een lantschap van den selven [Rembrant]. [17] een cleijn lantschappie van Hercules Segers. [18] een lantschap van Jan Lievenszn. [19] noch een dito van den selven [Jan Lievenszn]. [20] een lantschappie van Rembrant. [22] een manen schijntie van Jan Lievenszn. In de Sijdelcaemer [In the Antechamber:] [40] een bossie van Hercules Segherszn. [43] een berchachtich lantschappie van Rembrant. [44] een lantschappie van Govert Janszn. [50] een duijn gesicht van Percellus. [51] een dito kleijnder van den selven [Percellus]. [65] een lantschappie van Rembrant. [68] eenige huijsen, nae ’t leven van Rembrant. [69] een lantschappie naer ’t leven van den selven [Rembrant]. [70] eenige huijsiens van Herculus Segerszn. In de Camer achter de Sijdelcaemer [In the room behind the Antechamber:] [93] twee cleijne lantschappies van Hercules Segers. In de Agtercaemer offte Sael [In the room behind the main room] [102] een bossie van een onbekent meester. [104] een groot lantschap van Hercules Segers. [107] een dorpie van Govert Janszn. [116] een wintertie van Grimmer. [124] een lantschap in ’t graeuw van Hercules Segers. [125] een avontstont van Rembrant. ’t voorvertreck voor de kunstcaemer [In the antechamber of the art room] [291] een lantschappie nae ’t leven van Rembrant. [292] een lantschappie van Hercules Segers. [301] een maneschijntie van Rembrant overschildert. 58 C. Schneider, Rembrandt’s Landscapes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 27,171-75. 59 Appendix 2, Doc. 10-9-1637. the mysterious landscape painter govert janszn called mijnheer | 87
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Appendix 1. Genealogy1 Govert Janszn Poelenburgh2 alias Govert Janszn, born Amsterdam 1577, pupil of Gerrit Pieterszn, painter 1603, granted cessio bonorum 1617, lived on Warmoesstraat (no. 154) 1603, left Amsterdam 1 year after the death of his wife3 and lived in Kostverloren manor 1617, died [Nieuwer-Amstel] shortly after 18-1-1619 ...., married Amsterdam Oude Kerk 15-5-1603 Griet Willems, baptized Amsterdam Oude Kerk 18-1-1582, buried Amsterdam Oude Kerk 25-8-1612 (from Warmoesstraat), daughter of Willem Janszn, courier, lived on Niezel in “de Bode op Hamburg” (no. 20) 1585,4 and Clara Tijssen. 30-7-1588 Lysbet Willemsdr widow of Geurt Gerritszn, cloth dyer, aunt of Willem (aged 22), Giert (20), Dirck (17), Geryt (15), Govert (11), Jannegen (8) and Jannegen (3), children of Trijn Willemsdr, her late sister, and Jan Gerritszn, cloth dresser. She approves that the father may retain the estate, in accordance with the testament from 1-3-1588, drawn up by the notary Frans Volckertszn Coornhert.5 NB. Trijn Willems, buried Oude Kerk 13-6-1588 (from “de Blauwe Schaer”). From this marriage: 1. Trijntje Goverts Poelenburgh, baptized Amsterdam Oude Kerk 25-4-1604 (godmother: Griet Jansdr [stepmother]), lived on Nieuwendijk 1652, died ….; married Amsterdam Nieuwe Kerk 29-6-1652 Jacob Teuniszn, born Enkhuizen .…, carpenter in Amsterdam 1636, died .…, son of N.N. and widower of Mary Jans. 2. Geertruyt (Truytje) Goverts Poelenburgh, baptized Amsterdam Nieuwe Kerk 1-8-1610 (godfather: Willem Janszn), lived in Schagen 1636 with her cousin Ds. Lodewijk Hondius (1598-1659), minister, died …., married Schagen (registered Amsterdam 29 Sept.) …. 1636 Hendrick Claeszn Vogelsanck. 3. Jan Poelenburgh, baptized Amsterdam Nieuwe Kerk 14-8-1612 (godmother: Teuntje Bouwens), lived on Nieuwendijk 1640, died …., married Amsterdam Nieuwe Kerk 4-91640 Trijntgen (Catharina) de Bondt, born Amsterdam 1603, died …., daughter of Hendrick Sybrantszn de Bondt, master surgeon (portrayed on the Anatomy lesson of Dr. Sebastiaen Egbertszn de Vrij, by Aert Pieterszn in 1603),6 lived on Warmoesstraat (no. 154) (owner 1605-1627),7 and Giertje Willems (ex Willem Janszn, courier, and Clara Tijssen). 30-7-1614 Giertje Willemsdr, mother of Lijntgen (aged 15) and Trijntgen (11), children of her and Hendrick Sybrantszn de Bonte, produces proof of the children’s fatherly goods, amounting to 4,000 Carolus guilders, for which she pledges her house and premises on Oudezijds Voorburgwal near the Varkenssluis next to “de Fortuyne.”8 NB. Lijntgen, married 1623 Lodewijk Hondius. From this marriage: a. Govert Poelenburgh, baptized Amsterdam Nieuwe Kerk 23-12-1642 (godmother: Geertje Willems), shopkeeper, granted burghership 16-6-1678, lived on Prinsengracht 1678, buried Amsterdam St. Antoniskerkhof 27-5-1688, married Amsterdam Nieuwe Kerk 5-61678, Trijntje Willems, born 1652, died …., daughter of Willem Janszn, traveler (“varendman”), and N.N.
1
Unless otherwise stated, this genealogy has been compiled on the basis of the baptismal, marriage and death registers in the Amsterdam Municipal Archives.
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He was the son of Jan Gerritszn (Blauscheer 1593), cloth dresser (“lakenbereider”), who lived on Warmoesstraat in “de Blauwe Schaar” (no. 154), and his first wife Trijn Willemsdochter. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, vol. 3 (1917), pp. 833-34, 5-1-1616. GAA, arch. no. 5062, Kwijtscheldingen, 8 (prev. nr. 15), fol. 153-54, 24-7-1591; GAA, arch. no. 5073 (Weeskamer), 925, Huisverkopingen 7, fol. 55, 2-1-1631. GAA, arch. no. 5073 (Weeskamer), 782, Inbrengregister no. 11, fol. 112. Amsterdams Historisch Museum. He is portrayed as no. 20 (A. Blankert and R. Ruurs, Amsterdams Historisch Museum, schilderijen daterend van voor 1800, voorlopige catalogus (Amsterdam 1975-1979), p. 244). Kam, Warmoesstraat, pp. 156-58. GAA, arch. no. 5073 (Weeskamer), 787, Inbrengregister no. 16, fol. 197v.
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Appendix 2. Paintings by Govert Janszn Mijnheer found in seventeenth-century documents This list has been compiled on the basis of references in A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, and has been augmented with data from the Getty Provenance Index, the Montias Database, the files “Oud-hollandsche kunstinventarissen” in the Bredius archives (The Hague, RKD), and the files (“fiches”) of C. Hofstede de Groot (RKD).1 As much as possible, we have tried to consult all known documents in the original, in order to provide exact references to current locations. Each individual person has been given his, or her personal dates.2 Unless otherwise stated, the persons in this list lived in Amsterdam. Frequently cited literature: – A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der Holländischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts, 7 vols. and index, (Quellenstudien zur holländischen Kunstgeschichte, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1915-1922). – C.M. Dozy, “Veilingen van schilderijen in het begin van de zeventiende eeuw,” in D.O. Obreen (ed.), Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis 6 (1884-1887), pp. 29-61. – GPI = The Getty Provenance Index. – C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Urkunden über Rembrandt (1575-1721) (Quellenstudien zur holländischen Kunstgeschichte, vol. 3, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1906). – New York, The Frick Art Reference Library, The J.M. Montias Database of Sixteenthand Seventeenth-Century Inventories of Dutch Art Collections (Montias Database). – W.L. Strauss and M. van der Meulen, The Rembrandt Documents (New York: Abaris, 1979). 14/15/19-12-1612 Inventory of the estate of Margarieta Boschmans (Antwerp ….-1612) widow of Jean Nicquet (Antwerp 1539-1608), merchant at Haarlem and Amsterdam. The inventory lists 64 paintings, of which 60 have been appraised by the painters Jan Bassee and Cornelis van der Voort, at fl. 1807:--:--. Een stuck van Govert Janssen wesende een lantschap No. 3, op dertich gulden fl. 30:--:--. Noch een van ditto Govert Janssen No. vier wesende een lantschap, op twaelff gulden fl. 12:--:-Een landtschap van Govert Janszn No. 12 op thien guldens, fl. 10:--:--. Noch een lantschapken van Govert Janszn No. 14, op acht gulden fl. 8:--:--. No. 22. Een lantschap van Govert Janszn, op twaelff gulden fl. 12:--:--. No. 28. Een lantschap van Govert Janszn, op thien gulden fl. 10:--:--. No. 30. Een lantschap van Govert Janszn, op dertich gulden fl. 30:--:--. No. 31. Een lantschap van ditto Govert Janszn, op veertich gulden fl. 40:--:--.3 7/10-4-1614 Public sale by the auctioneer Gerrit Jacobszn Haringh, living “op het Water” in “de 4 Heemskinderen,” at the request of the painter Cornelis van der Voort (Antwerp 1576-1624), which took place on 10-5-1614: No. 100. Lantschap per Govert Janszn, fl. 20:--:-- (buyer: Cornelis Huybertsz., op “t Water, in “de Pauw”). No. 123. Lantschap per Govert Janszn, fl. 16:10:--:-- (buyer: Philips Pelt).4 23-6-1617 Inventory of the estate of Jacob Huych Thomaszn (c. 1560-1617), concierge of the Amsterdam town hall 1587-1617, and his second wife Trijntje Molenijsers ([The Hague] .... – 1632), living in the Stadskeuken on Vogelsteeg. The inventory lists about 50 paintings: Boven op de grote kamer: Een berchwerck van Govert Janszn (fol. 870).5 NB. Jacob Huych Thomaszn was the founder of the Haringh family of auctioneers.
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NB. A sale of their movable goods, containing a number of paintings, took place on 108-1617.6 No “berchwerck” was listed among the many unattributed landscapes in this sale. Another painting from their collection was sold on 11-2-1618.7 1621. List of about 350 paintings, with an appraised total value of 20.000 rixdollars, offered for sale to King Christian IV of Denmark by Theodorus Rodenburg (1578-Antwerp 1644), merchant, in Kopenhagen: Govert Jansen Poelenburch.8 3-12-1624 Public sale by the auctioneer Jan Dirckszn van Beuningen, “on the Dam at the corner of Vogelsteeg,” of 24 paintings, yielding total proceeds of fl. 260:--:-- from the estate of Cathelijn Biscops (1593-….) widow of Pieter Janszn Heseman (1593-1624), painter, on Sint Anthonisbreestraat by the Salamandersteeg: No. 7 Een lantschapgen van Govert Janszn, fl. 2:5:-- (buyer: Barent van Someren, [painter]).9 27-3-1625 Three witnesses attest that mr. Cornelis Plaetman (...-...), surgeon, lithotomist and herniotomist, round about 19-3-1625 sold to Pieter van Perssen (1593-1643), notary: Seecker stuck schilderij sijnde een landtschap van Govert Janszn za[liger], for the agreed sum of fl. 46,– (the seller did not deliver the painting).10 19-4-1625 Public sale by the auctioneer Gerrit Jacobzn Haringh of the estate of Barbara Jacobsdr. (1549-1624), second-hand clothes dealer, on Sint Anthonisbreestraat opposite the Zuiderkerk (no. 59): 1 Lantschap van Govert Janszn, fl. 10:10:-- (buyer: “Lazarus”).11 NB. Barbara Jacobsdr was the mother of the painters Pieter Lastman and Claes Lastman. 13/16-5-1625 Public sale by the auctioneer Gerrit Jacobzn Haringh of 236 paintings and prints from the estate of Cornelis van der Voort (Antwerp 1576-1624), painter, on Sint Anthonisbreestraat by the sluice (=Jodenbreestraat no. 2), yielding total proceeds of fl. 2617:1:--. No. 117 Een lantschap van Govert Janszn, fl. 67:--:-- (buyer: the widow [Cornelia Brouwers]).12 26-3-1627. Joan van den Wouwer (Hoorn ….-….) stands surety for 500 Frankfurt florins on behalf of Hendrick Ulenburch (Uylenburgh) ([Cracow] c. 1585-1661), merchant, because of paintings acquired by Ulenburch from Marten van Heuvel. Settled 20-8-1628: Noch een lantschap van Govert Janszn (fol. 131v).13 15-1-1628: Public sale by the auctioneer Gerrit Jacobzn Haringh, by order of Mr. Jan Engels (Ingels) (1585/90-na 1654), lawyer (1617), on the Dam, of 10 paintings yielding total proceeds of fl. 129:--:-No. 33 Een lantschap met een heij van Govert Janszn, fl. 24:--:-- (buyer: Mr. Jan Engels). No. 34 Een lantschap met een stenen brugh van Govert Janszn, fl. 30:--:-- (buyer: Pieter de Bitter, op’t Rokin).14 25-1-1629 Inventory of the estate of Marijtge Teunis (….-1629), widow of Barent Teuniszn Drent (1577-1629), landscape painter, living on the eastern bank of the Amstel at the “Vreenburgh” farmstead: Een brantje van Govert Janszn.15 7-7-1632 Inventory of the goods of Pieter Lastman (1583-1633), painter, on Sint Anthonisbreestraat (no. 59), containing 98 paintings:
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In de binnenkamer: Een lantschap van Tobias van Govert.16 11-7-1637 Inventory of the estate of Immetje Vinck (Alkmaar ….-1637) widow of Claes Bas (1607-1636), merchant, on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal opposite the Melkmarkt, containing 27 paintings, appraised at a total value of fl. 433:10:--. In de binnenhaard: Een lantschap van Govert Janszn fl. 25:--:--. Noch een lantschapge van Govert Janszn fl. 8:--:--. Boven op de voorkamer: Een lantschap van Govert Janss. fl. 24:--:--. Boven op de achterkamer: Een lantschap van Govert Janss. fl. 10:--:--.17 NB. He was a brother of Claesgen Bas, see: 16-3-1646, 6-10-1658, ..-12-1666. 10-9-1637 Public sale by the auctioneer Daniel Janszn van Beuningen, on the Dam, of 28 paintings from Nicolaes Bas (1607-1636), yielding total proceeds of fl. 235:5:--: No. 4. Een lantschap van Govert Jansz fl. 32:--:-- (buyer: Lucas Luce, painter, on Hartenstraat). No. 14. Een lantschap van Gover Janszn fl. 30:--:-- (buyer: Rembrandt van Rijn). No. 3. Een ditto [lantschap van Govert Janszn] fl. 106:--:-- (buyer: Daniel Janszn van Beuningen). No. 5 Een ditto [lantschap van Govert Janszn] fl. 53:--:-- (buyer: the “secretaris” Joris Joriszn).18 21-11-1637 Johannes de Renialme (Middelburg c. 1600-1657), merchant, declines an offer to exchange with Govert van den Heuvel, living in Haarlem, a painting assumed to be “geschildert te wesen bij Govert Janszn,” which at present is at the home of the [painter] Pieter Molijn, against a number of small paintings owned by Van den Heuvel, because De Renialme “first had to have his pleasure for a while longer from the painting[s]” (‘’t selve heeft gerefuseert ende gesecht dat hij van de voors. stucken sijn plaisier eerst wat moste hebben”): [een schilderij] geschildert te wesen bij Govert Janszn.19 18-11-1638 Inventory of Giert Jans (1580-1638) widow of Dirck Gerritszn (c. 1570-1638), boatswain (“equipagemeester”) of the East India Company (VOC), living on Rapenburg: een lantschap schildery van Govert (fol. 471).20 NB. In 1631 they lived on Rapenburg, next to the VOC’s shipbuilder Jan Rijcken and his wife, who in 1632 were portrayed by Rembrandt.21 15-7-1639 Inventory of the estate of Claes Louriszn van Egmont (Haarlem before 15751639), painter working in Leiden (1620-1639), containing 55 paintings. The inventory was drawn up at the request of the two children from his first marriage with Elisabeth Walewijns (….-1623): Een lantschap van Govert Janszn.22 21-12-1639. Inventory of the estate of Anthoni Gaillard (1555/60-1639), merchant, at the corner of the Exchange (beurs), containing 165 paintings: In de kamer achter de winkel: 32, 33, 34, 35. Vier landschapjens van Govert Jansz. (fol. 61v). 69. Een landschap van Cuyper en Govert Jansz. (fol. 63). 165. Een landschap van Govert Jansz. (fol. 67v).23
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25-4-1640 List of 101 paintings with a total value of fl. 2809:--:-- belonging to Johannes de Renialme (Middelburg c. 1600-1657), merchant, which are at the house of Lambert Massa, in Amsterdam. The list was drawn up at the request of Lucretia Coymans (16011684), widow of Pieter Cruypenninck (Hamburg 1593-1639): 36. Een lantschap van Mijn Heer fl. 42:--:--.24 16-8-1640 Inventory of Dirck Harmanszn (1595-1640), “linnenpakker,” and his widow Lijntgen Spieringh. The notary listed in total 411 paintings, 55 parcels of drawings and prints, as well as 12 copper plates: Een lantschap van Govert Janszn met een vergulde lijst No. 3. Een dito [lantschap] van Govert Janszn No. 21.25 4-8-1642 Inventary of 85 paintings in the estate of Martin des H.R. Rijksridder Snouckaert van Schauburg (Prague 1602-London 1641), chamberlain of the English King Charles I, poet and playwright, as found at the home of the “heer” Mandemaecker, on Lange Voorhout (no. 24) at The Hague. The inventory was drawn up at the request of [Snouckaert’s cousin] Maurits Huygens, secretary of the Council of State (“Raad van State”), and Johan Serwouters, controller (“controleur”) of the Prince of Orange, as guardians of the underage child of the deceased: 83. Een landtschap van Govert met gelijcke [vergulde] lijste.26 28-11-1644 Inventary of the 130 paintings in the estate of Dirckje Jansdr (1572-1644) widow of Andries Jacobszn Nitter (1567-1624), servant of the hospital (“knecht van het Gasthuis”), living on the southern corner of the Oudemanhuispoort: In de zijkamer: Een groot lantschap [crossed out: conterfeijtsel] van Govert Janszn. In het kleine kamertje: Een lantschap van Govert Janszn.27 1644 Valuation of paintings owned by Pieter Hendrickszn Schoonman (1610/15-1651), on Fluwelenburgwal: Een lantschap van Govert Jansz., fl. 40:--:--.28 1645 Hillegart Borkst brings into her marriage: Een lantschapschildery van Govert Jansz.29 [3]-3-1646 Samuel van Pitsen (Pitsen), lord of Straten, living in Amsterdam, has sent two paintings on offer to Constantijn Huygens, at The Hague, with the intent to sell these to the stadtholder Prince Frederik Hendrik. On behalf of Van Pitsen (Van der Straten), the Amsterdams landscape painter Marten de Cocq writes to Huygens: “[...] doet U. E. andermael weten en verseekeren, dat het groot steuck van Gannimedes is het oorrigeneel vuijt de vuijst gemaect bij Franciscus Badens, wesende een voornaem, jaa treffelijck schilder, hebbende in Italien lang tijt geweest; was vuijtmuntende in vrouwetroijnien, parden ende diergelijcke, groote actien, etc., ende ’t lantschap is gemaect van Gouivert Jansen, die men placht mijn Heer te noemen, oek den voornaemsten lantschapschilder, sodat ick met veel schilders hier binnen Amsterdam sal bewijsen, dat ’t voornoemde groote steuck is oorig[i]neel ende geen coppie, maer vuijt de vuijst gemaect, ende die hetselve steuck hebben sien schilderen, sullen dat getuijgen.”30 16-3-1646 Inventary of the 41 paintings, with a total estimated value of fl. 663:--:-- which Claesgen Bas (Amsterdam 1599-Utrecht 1658), then living in Alkmaar, has brought into her marriage with Nicolaes de Meyer(e) (Wijk bij Duurstede ….-Utrecht 1667) in 1645:
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fl. 5:--:-- Een schildery gedaen by Govert Janszn in een vergulde lijst.31 NB. See also: 6-10-1658, ..-12-1666. NB. She was a sister of Claes Bas, see 11-7-1637. 22-11-1647 Division of the paintings from the estate of Isaack van Gherwen (’s-Hertogenbosch 1580-1647), wine merchant on Fluwelenburgwal: Ruïne [van] Govert Janszn, fl. 72:--:-- (fol. 322) (alloted to Pieter van Buren (1612– Delft 1682), son-in-law). Daagraad [van] Govert Janszn, fl. 60:--:-- (fol. 323) (alloted to the son, Matthijs van Gherwen [1619-1652]).32 6-8-1648 Inventory of Annetgen Gerrits (1571-1648), widow of Hendrick Beuckelaer (15781608/09), tailor: In het voorhuis: Een schilderij, sijnde een groot landschap van Govert Janszn met een platte geverffde lijst (fol. 997).33 1649 Inventary of the widow of ... Horst: Een schilderytge van Govert. Een lantschap van Govert. Noch een stuckje schilderij van Govert.34 14-9-1649 Inventory of the estate of Leonora Mijtens (Napels 1580/85-1649) widow of Barent van Someren (Antwerp 1572-1632), painter and art dealer, on the Dam at the corner of Vogelsteeg: noch een lantschap schilderij gedaen bij Govert Janszn (fol. 148).35 28-8-1652 Division of the 106 paintings from the estate of Mr. Georgius (Joris) van de Velde (Delft ….-Haarlem 1652), lawyer (1626), and Elisabeth van Crabbenmorsch (Haarlem 1595-Haarlem 1652), at Haarlem, between Aeffie van de Velde and Machtelt van Beest, in two portions with an equal value of fl. 1256:10:--, as appraised by Pieter Molijn: ’t Stuck van Govert Janszn Men heer, fl. 60:--:-- (alotted to Aeffie van de Velde) (fol. 152). 36
29-1-1653 Estimation by sworn appraisers (“schatsters”) of the estate of Mr. Matthias van Gherwen (1619-1652): Een landschap dageraat van Govert Janszn tsestigh gulden fl. 60:--:--. (fol. 27).37 NB. He was a son of Isaack van Gherwen, see 22-11-1647. 26-7-1656 Inventary of the goods of Rembrandt Harmenszn van Rijn (Leiden 1606-1669), painter, on Sint Anthonisbreestraat (Jodenbreestraat no. 4-6), drawn up after his application for “cessio bonorum”: In de zijkamer: Een lantschappie van Govert Janszn. In de achterkamer of zaal: Een dorpie van Govert Janszn.38 9-2-1657 Estimation by the painter [Gerrit] Uylenburgh, of the 47 paintings in the estate of Aaltje Gerrits (1578-1656) widow of Barent Janszn van Kippen (1573-1652), goldsmith (1594), broker (1600), on Keizersgracht, with an appraised total value of fl. 560:10:-- (fol. 679-80): In de keukenkelder:
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Twee lantschapjes van Myn heer, fl. 11:--:-- (alotted to Alida Soestiers).39 27-6-1657 Estimation of about 550 paintings in the estate of Johannes de Renialme (Middelburg c. 1600-1657), merchant on Fluwelenburgwal, and his widow Catharina d’Overdaghe (Delft ….-….), carried out at the request of the heirs under benefit of inventary (d.d 145-1657) by the painter Adam Camerarius and the merchant Marten Kretzer, with an appraised total value of fl. 36,512:10:--. In het voorhuis: No. 110 een lantschap van Govert Janssn, fl. 150:--:-- (fol. 679). In het salet: No. 537 een lantschap van Govert, fl. 50:--:-- (fol. 682).40 18-10-1657. Inventory of the estate of Adriaen Oliviers (1615/20-Weesp 1656), brewer in “’t Ancker” at Weesp, and Wijntje Lamberts Schouten, drawn up on behalf of their children, at the occasion of her remarriage with Coenraet Marsenier. The estate contains 45 paintings, drawings, and prints, as well as three maps: Op het voorkamertje: Een lantschap van Govert Menheer.41 6-10-1658. Inventory of the paintings in the estate of Claesgen Bas (Amsterdam 1599Utrecht 1658) and her widower Nicolaes de Meyer(e) (Wijk bij Duurstede ….-Utrecht 1667), canon of the chapter of Oudmunster in Utrecht. With an estimation of the 96 paintings, done on 19-9-1664 by the painters Cornelis van Poelenburch and Jan van Bijlert at the request of the heirs of Claesgen Bas, with a total appraised value of fl. 1,172:12:--: In het salet: Een lantschap gedaen by Govert Jansen met een vergulde lijst fl. 18:--:--.42 NB. See also16-3-1646, ..-12-1666. NB. She was a sister of Claes Bas, see 11-7-1637. 27-8-1661 Inventary of the insolvent estate of Anthony Rinck: Een lantschap van [name crossed out: Govert Jansz. alias Mijnheer].43 10/12-10-1661 Inventary of the estate of Willem van Campen (1611-1661), excise-duty collector (“impostmeester”), on Spinhuissteeg, containing 158 paintings: Een landschap van Govert Janszn Mynheer (fol. 312).44 Een landschap van Govert Mynheer (fol. 314). NB. The unmarried Willem van Campen was a son of Anna Cornelisdr. Ruyl and a cousin of the father of Philippus Ruyl (Weesp 1638/39-Hoorn 1678) (see 6-5-1698). 25-9/5-10-1665 Estimation by Jan Blom and Gerard Uylenborch of the paintings in the insolvent estate of Gerbrandt Warnaerszn Brandhout (1619-1669), broker: Een lantschap van Govert Janszn, fl. 40:--:--.45 15-2-1666 Inventary of the insolvent estate of Egbert Schutt(e) (Utrecht 1618-1679), (Mennonite) merchant (1650), courier between Amsterdam and Zeeland (1676), widower of Sara van Lennep (1628-1655): Een lantschap van [crossed out: Govert Janszn alias Mijnheer, and replaced by] Pieter van Santvoort fl. 40:--:--.46 NB. Sara van Lennep was a sister of the art collectors Jan van Lennep and Abraham van Lennep.47 ..-12-1666. Inventory of the paintings in the estate of Claesgen Bas (Amsterdam 1599-
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Utrecht 1658) and her widower Nicolaes de Meyer(e) (Wijk bij Duurstede ….-Utrecht 1667), canon of the chapter of Oudmunster in Utrecht, as redressed (“geredresseerd”) at the order of the Provincial Court of Utrecht. The appraisal was done on 19-9-1664, on the basis of the inventory of 6-10-1658: Paintings die door Claesgen Bas in 1645 in het huwelijk zijn ingebracht: Een schilderij gedaen by Govert Janszn in een vergulde lijst fl. 18:--:--.48 NB. See also 16-3-1646, 6-10-1658. NB. She was a sister of Claes Bas, seee 11-7-1637. 1-1-1668 Inventory of the estate of Marritge Martens (1596-1667) widow of Willem Adriaen Ockersznszn (1587-1650), bookbinder 1609, containing 43 paintings: Op de bovenkamer: Een nagtstuck van Govert Jansen (fol. 6).49 12-10-1669 Inventory of the estate of Jacob de Hennin (1629-na 1688), painter, at The Hague, drawn up on behalf of the children of De Hennin and his deceased wife Maria Macharis. The 78 paintings, with a total value of fl. 538:--:-- were appraised by Symon de Putter, art dealer, and Nicolaes Lissant, master painter: Op de achterkamer: Een stuk van Govert Mijn heer, fl. 15:--:-- (fol. 346v).50 24-7-1670 Estimation of the estate of Cornelis Dircksz. Cool (1593-1669), book dealer, in “de Vergulde Passer” on Warmoesstraat (no. 151): brandende schuer van Govert Poelenburgh fl. 48:--:--.51 4-11-1670 Inventary of the estate of Abraham Fabritius (1629-1692), merchant in hides (1648) and broker (1670), living in “de Karsseboom” on Kalverstraat (no. 23), containing 65 paintings: Op de beste kamer: Een stukje van Govert Janszn men heer (fol. 292).52 16-11-1678 Estimation by Barent Graet and Jan Rosa of the 98 paintings (fol. 71-81) in the property of Barbara Carel (1611-1678) widow of Jeronimus Ranst (1607-1660), in “de twee Tygers” on Oude Schans: Op de zaal: No. 30. Van Govert Janszn Mijn Heer een lantschapie fl. 30:--:-- (fol. 73).53 19-10-1678. Inventary of the 98 paintings (fol. 283v-287v [new fol. 351-359]) in the property of Herman Becker (c. 1617-1678): In de binnen– of middelste kamer: een lantschap van Govert Jansz. Mijnher (fol. 286v [357]).54 16-5-1680 Estimation by Joannes van Hughtenburgh and Joannes Weenix, of 41 paintings from Alida Greffet (….-1678), wife of Ludolff Bakhuizen (Emden 1631-1708), painter: In de winkelkamer: lantschapje van Govert Janszn Mijnheer, fl. 4:--:--.55 23-11-1686 Inventory of the estate of Catharina Deijl (1643-1686), widow of Nicolaes Rosendael (Enkhuizen 1636-1686), painter: 64. Een lantschapje van Govert Janszn Men Heer.56 6-5-1698 Inventory of Ds. Philippus Ruyl (Weesp 1638/39-Hoorn 1678), minister, at Hoorn: Een hooghlangwerpigh stuckje uytbeeldende een boschaedje van Mr. Govert.57 96 | in his milieu
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The references in Bredius were previously summarized in Nystad, Een landschap toegeschreven aan Govert Jansz. As far as these could be found in the documents, or could be gathered from the baptismal, marriage and death registers in the Amsterdam Municipal Archives. Amsterdam Municipal Archives (GAA), arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), Amsterdam notarial archives (NAA) 197 (film 108) (notary J.F. Bruyningh), fol. 436-53 (paintings at fol. 450v-52). Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, pp. 394-95, 836; S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, “Jean Nicquet ten onrechte op een Franse postzegel,” in Maandblad Amstelodamum 66 (1979) pp. 2-7; New York, The Frick Art Reference Library, The J.M. Montias Database of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Inventories of Dutch Art Collections (Montias Database), inv. no. 539. GAA, arch. no. 5073 (Weeskamer), 946 (prev. no. 1063), verkopingen door de afslager. Lit.: Dozy, “Veilingen van schilderijen,” p. 43; N. de Roever, “Drie Amsterdamsche schilders (Pieter Isaaksz., Abraham Vinck, Cornelis van der Voort,” in Oud-Holland 3 (1885), pp. 187-204, p. 194; Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 1177; Montias Database, inv. no. 687. GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 361 (film 180) (notary W. Cluyt), fol. 869-77. Lit.: The Hague, Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD), arch. C. Hofstede de Groot, fiches Hofstede de Groot, i.v. Govert Jansz. (“Mededeeling A. Bredius”); Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 836; Montias, Art at Auction, pp. 59-60. GAA, arch. no. 5073 (Weeskamer), 954 (prev. no. 1071), verkopingen door de afslager Jan Dirkszn van Beuningen; Montias Database. GAA, arch. no. 5073 (Weeskamer), 955 (prev. no. 1072), verkopingen door de afslager Jan Dirkszn van Beuningen; Montias Database. Lit.: G.W. Kernkamp, “Memoriën van ridder Theodorus Rodenburg betreffende het verplaatsen van verschillende industrieën uit Nederland naar Denemarken, met daarop genomen resolutiën van koning Christiaan IV (1621),” in Bijdragen en Mededeelingen van het Historisch Genootschap 23 (1902), pp. 189-258, p. 229. GAA, arch. no. 5073 (Weeskamer), 957 (prev. no. 1074), verkopingen door de afslager. Lit.: Dozy, “Veilingen van schilderijen,” p. 43; Montias Database, inv. no. 577. GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 351, omslag 14 (film 6396) (notary W. Cluyt), fol. 121. Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, pp. 835-836. The agreed purchase sum consisted of a bond of fl. 40:--:-- and a ticket of fl. 6:--:-- in a forthcoming raffle of paintings. GAA, arch. no. 5073 (Weeskamer), 951 (prev. no. 1068), verkopingen door de afslager. Lit.: Dozy, “Veilingen van schilderijen,” p. 43; A. Bredius and N. de Roever, “Pieter Lastman en Francois Venant,” in Oud-Holland 4 (1886), pp. 1-13, p. 10; K. Freise, Pieter Lastman. Sein Leben und seine Kunst (Leipzig, 1911), p. 26; S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, “De familie van de schilder Pieter Lastman (1583-1633). Een vermaard leermeester van Rembrandt van Rijn,” in Jaarboek van het Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie 45 (1991), pp. 110-32, p. 116; Montias Database, inv. no. 821. GAA, arch. no. 5073 (Weeskamer), 951 (prev. no. 1068), verkopingen door de afslager. Lit.: Dozy, “Veilingen van schilderijen,” p. 43; De Roever, “Drie Amsterdamsche schilders,” p. 201; Montias Database, inv. no. 825. GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 661 (film 354) (notary J. Warnaerts), fol. 131v-32. Lit.: Montias Database, inv. no. 1180. GAA, arch. no. 5073 (Weeskamer), 953 (prev. no. 1070), verkopingen door de afslager. Lit.: Dozy, “Veilingen van schilderijen,” p. 43; Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 836; The Getty Provenance Index (GPI), N-2313; Montias Database, inv. no. 290. GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 713 (film 5147) (notary P. Carelsz.). Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 288; Montias Database, inv. no. 995. GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 568 (film 6548) (notary L. Lamberti),
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fol. 511-18. Lit.: Freise, Pieter Lastman, p. 20; Dudok van Heel, “De familie van de schilder Pieter Lastman,” p. 117. GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 1266 (film 1345) (notary P. Barcman), omslag A, doc. no. 6. Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 836; W. Strauss and M. van der Meulen, Rembrandt Documents, p. 143 (Doc. 1637/3); GPI, N-2197; Montias Database, inv. no. 150. GAA, arch. no. 5073 (Weeskamer), 962 (prev. no. 1079), verkopingen door de afslager. Lit.: Dozy, “Veilingen van schilderijen,” p. 44; C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Urkunden über Rembrandt (1575-1721) (Quellenstudien zur holländischen Kunstgeschichte, vol. 3, Haag 1906), p. 53 (Doc. 52); Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 836; Strauss and Van der Meulen, The Rembrandt Documents, p. 143 (Doc. 1637/3); GPI, N-2246; Montias Database, inv. no. 1500. Haarlem, Archiefdienst voor Kennemerland, arch. no. 1617 (notarial archives), ONAH 168 (notary J. van Bosvelt), fol. 23-23v. Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 11; Montias, Art at Auction, p. 130. GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 569 (film 6548) (notary L. Lamberti), fol. 459-73. Lit.: Montias Database, inv. no. 276. J.G. Frederiks and P.J. Frederiks, Kohier van den tweehonderdsten penning voor Amsterdam en onderhoorige plaatsen over 1631 (Amsterdam 1890), p. 38 (fol. 163). Leiden, Regionaal Archief Leiden, ONA (Leiden notarial archives) 393 (notary H.M. Brasser), act 150. Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, pp. 773, 836. GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 1598 (film 1691) (notary W. Hasen), fol. 31-69v (paintings, fol. 60-68). Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 836; Strauss and Van der Meulen, Rembrandt Documents, p. 185 (Doc. 1640/1); GPI, N-2212; Montias Database, inv. no. 163. GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 421 (film 6438) (notary J. Jacobszn), fol. 356-57v. Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 13, p. 229, p. 836; Montias, Art at Auction, p. 141; Montias Database, inv. no. 1040. GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 1679 (film 1788) (notary P. de Bary). Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, pp. 305-306, p. 837. Bredius incorrectly identifies Dirck Harmansz as a painter. The Hague, Haags Gemeentearchief, arch. no. 372-01 (notarial archives), ONA 133 (notary D. van Schoonderwoert), fol. 129-58 (paintings at fol. 130-31v). Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 837; Th. Wijsenbeek-Olthuis (ed.), Het Lange Voorhout: monumenten, mensen en macht (Zwolle 1998) pp. 75-77, p. 92, p. 284, nn. 134, 136. GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 1267 (film 1347) (notary P. Barcman). Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 837; GPI, N-2051; Montias Database, inv. no. 181. The Hague, RKD, arch. C. Hofstede de Groot, fiches Hofstede de Groot, i.v. Govert Jansz. (“Mededeeling A. Bredius”). According to Bredius the original document was drawn up by the Amsterdam notary P. Barcman. However, we were unable to trace it in: GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 1267 (film 1347) (notary P. Barcman). Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 837. We were unable to locate the original document. Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 837. We were unable to locate the original document. Lit.: J. Worp, De briefwisseling van Constantijn Huygens, 6 vols. (Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatiën, vols. 15, 19, 21, 24, 28, 32, The Hague” 1911-1917), vol. 4 (1915), pp. 284-85, no. 4283 (now available on line at: http://www.inghist.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/Huygens). Our transcription is quoted from: J.G.C.A. Briels, De Zuidnederlandse immigratie in Amsterdam en Haarlem omstreeks 1572-1630. Met een keuze van archivalische gegevens betreffende de kunstschilders (Ph.D. diss. Utrecht, 1976), p. 216. See also: M.J. Bok, “Een Ganymedes van Francois Badens en de werkplaats voor schilderijen in Italiaanse stijl aan de Oude Turfmarkt,” in Amstelo-
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damum. Maandblad voor de kennis van Amsterdam 92 (2005, vol. 4), pp. 3-14., p. 10 (with older literature and further data on the history of the paintings). NB. The paintings came from the collection of Pieter Martensz. Hoeffijser, receiver-general of the duties on import and export (“convooien en licenten”) of the Admiralty of Amsterdam. Bok (2005) did not yet realise that the next owner Samuel van Pitsen was the same person as “de heer Van der Straten” (Worp, vol. 2, p. 204, no. 1477, n.1). Drawing on this information three additional letters containing information on these paintings could be found in the Huygens correspondence, as published by Worp (Worp, nrs. 4308, 4313, 4921). Het Utrechts Archief (HUA), arch. no. 239-1 (Hof van Utrecht), 252-173, “civiele processtukken” (councilor W. de Gruijter, dossier D 93). GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 570 (film 4921) (notary L. Lamberti), fol. 275-324 (paintings at fol. 321-24). Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 837; GPI, N-2278; Montias Database, inv. no. 237. GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 1004 (film 1234) (notary G. Coren), omslag C, fol. 997-1005. Lit.: GPI, N-2286; Montias Database, inv. no. 250. We were unable to locate the original document. According to Bredius the document was “halb verbrannt,” suggesting that it belongs to a notary whose protocols were damaged by fire. Today, these can not be consulted because of their poor state of preservation. Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 837. GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 2261 (film 2469) (notary A. Lock), fol. 142-61. Lit.: A. Bredius and E.W. Moes, “De schildersfamilie Mytens,” in Oud-Holland 24 (1906), pp. 1-8, esp. 7-8; Montias Database, inv. no. 1183. Haarlem, Archiefdienst voor Kennemerland, arch. no. 1617 (notarial archives), ONAH 182 (notary C. van Kittesteyn) (paintings at fol. 152-52v). Lit.: Bredius, KünstlerInventare, p. 837, p. 1613. GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 2408 (film 2550) (notary J. de Winter), fol. 1-30 (paintings at fol. 26-27). Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 837; Montias Database, inv. no. 427. GAA, arch. no. 5072 (Desolate Boedelskamer), 364, fol. 29r-38v. Lit.: Hofstede de Groot, Urkunden, p. 193, p. 196 (Doc. 169); R.H. Fuchs, Rembrandt en Amsterdam (Rotterdam, 1968), pp. 76-77; Strauss and Van der Meulen, Rembrandt Documents, p. 353 (Doc. 1656/12, no. 44), p. 359 (Doc. 1656/12, no. 107); GPI, N-1848; Montias Database, inv. no. 1262. GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 2605 (film 2646) (notary C. de Grijp), fol. 679-690, d.d. 6-3-1657. Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 838, p. 1236; Montias Database, inv. no. 417. GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 191 5 (film 2129) (notary F. Wtenbogaert), fol. 663-692 (paintings at fol. 670-685), d.d. 21 6 1657. Lit.: Bredius, Künstler Inventare, pp. 235, 237, 838; GPI, N-2213; Montias Database, inv. no. 180. Haarlem, Rijksarchief in Noord-Holland, arch. no. 185 (notarial archives), 5194 (film 710) (notary M. Louff, Weesp). Lit.: The Hague, RKD, arch. A. Bredius, Oud Hollandsche kunstinventarissen; Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 838. HUA, arch. no. 239-1 (Hof van Utrecht), 252-173, “civiele processtukken” (councilor W. de Gruijter, dossier D 93). Lit.: GPI, N-1697. We were unable to trace Bredius’ reference in Rinck’s inventory in: GAA, arch. no. 5072 (Desolate Boedelskamer), 589, fol. 176-89. Lit.: The Hague, RKD, arch. C. Hofstede de Groot, fiches Hofstede de Groot, i.v. Govert Jansz.; Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 838. GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 1716 (film 1947) (notary P. de Bary), fol. 312-22 (paintings at fol. 312-15). Lit.: Bredius, Künstler Inventare, pp. 1119, 1121; Montias Database, inv. no. 1153.
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45 We were unable to locate Bredius”s reference in: GAA, arch. no. 5072 (Desolate Boedelskamer), 592. Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, pp. 838, 848. Not in: Lammertse and Van der Veen, Uylenburgh en zoon. 46 GAA, arch. no. 5072 (Desolate Boedelskamer), 594, fol. 22-29v. Lit.: Bredius, KünstlerInventare, p. 838, p. 1248; Lammertse and Van der Veen, Uylenburgh en zoon, pp. 25455, 294. NB. We were unable to trace another version of this document, referred to by Bredius as being dated 1666, or 1668. He read: Een lantschap van [crossed out: Govert Janszn alias Mijnheer, and replaced by a monogram] GJ (?). 47 S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, “De kunstverzamelingen Van Lennep met de Arundel-tekeningen,” in Jaarboek Amstelodamum 67 (1975), pp. 137-48). 48 HUA, arch. no. 239-1 (Hof van Utrecht), 252-173, “civiele processtukken” (councilor W. de Gruijter, dossier D 93). Lit.: GPI, N-1697. 49 GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 2784 (film 2862) (notary P. van Buytene), fol. 1-9. Lit.: The Hague, RKD, arch. A. Bredius, Oud Hollandsche kunstinventarissen. 50 The Hague, Haags Gemeentearchief, arch. no. 372-01 (notarial archives), ONA 581 (notary P. van Roon), fol. 340-47 (paintings at fol. 345v-47). Lit.: Bredius, KünstlerInventare, pp. 838, 1013. 51 GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 2299 (film 2485) (notary J. de Winter), omslag 99, f. 69. Lit.: A. Bredius, “Rembrandtiana,” in Oud Holland 28 (1910), pp. 118, esp. p. 9. 52 GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 4063 (film 4122) (notary A. Voskuyl), act 156 (fol. 287-302). Lit.: Hofstede de Groot, Urkunden, 388 (Doc. 321); Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, pp. 838-39, 1238. 53 GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 2645 (film 2669) (notary N.G. Steeman), fol. 37-115, d.d. 3-3-1687. Part of the inventory, relating to the inheritance of the children, was drawn up by notary N. van Loosdrecht, NAA 5701-A, and continued by notary Steeman. Lit.: Bredius, Künstler Inventare, p. 839; GPI, N-99. 54 GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 4767 (film 6174) (notary S. Pelgrom), fol. 270-297. Lit.: A. Bredius, “Rembrandtiana,” in Oud Holland 28 (1910) pp. 193-204, p. 195; H.J. Postma, “De Amsterdamse verzamelaar Herman Becker (ca.1617-1678); nieuwe gegevens over een geldschieter van Rembrandt,” in Oud Holland 102 (1988), pp. 1-21, esp. pp. 14-15; GPI, N-2288. 55 GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 2507 (film 2615) (notary J. Hellerus), fol. 267-352, d.d. 3-5-1680 (paintings at fol. 270-271). Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, pp. 101, 839. 56 GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 2414 (film 2553) (notary J. de Winter). Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, pp. 543, 839. 57 GAA, arch. no. 5075 (notarial archives), NAA 5668 (notary G.E. ten Bergh). Lit.: Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, p. 839; GPI, N-208.
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Jacob Ochtervelt’s Rotterdam Patron alan chong Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
One of Michael Montias’ most significant discoveries was that Johannes Vermeer had in all likelihood a major patron, Pieter Claesz. van Ruijven, who purchased about half of the artist’s entire output – twenty-one paintings, including the View of Delft, the Milkmaid, the Goldweigher, the Lacemaker, and the Girl Asleep at a Table.1 Created to be seen together in a collector’s residence, Vermeer’s subtly varied genre scenes (mingled with city views) might be understood as an extended narrative set in familiar surroundings. Surprisingly, Montias’ finding met with resistance from Arthur Wheelock, who believed that the paintings may have been purchased later by relatives of Van Ruijven. Montias supported his theory through a careful analysis of the circ*mstances of the collector’s family, and most scholars have accepted Montias’ view.2 That Vermeer’s precise and careful art was facilitated by a regular patron who would buy most of the artist’s work comes as no surprise. The similarly painstaking genre painters Gerrit Dou and Frans van Mieris also relied on a few supportive clients. In 1642, Philips Angel wrote that Pieter Spiering paid 500 guilders for the first choice of Dou’s output. This is undoubtedly rhetorical exaggeration since Angel used Dou to conclude a list of ancient and Renaissance painters who commanded not only respect but also high prices for their work.3 However, Dou certainly flourished under a strong patron, since another collector, Johan de Bye, exhibited twenty-seven works by Dou in 1665 and François de la Boe Sylvius owned eleven paintings by Dou and seven by Frans van Mieris.4 Montias summarized these relationships: “It is remarkable that Dou, Van Mieris, and Vermeer all sold the bulk of their paintings to patrons (normally to a single patron at a time). The obvious explanation for this dependence is that ‘fine painting’ was enormously time-consuming and thus expensive to produce, so that the clientele for such works was limited to a small elite… it was also advantageous to the rich con-
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sumer who could be sure that he would have the first pick of a fashionable artist’s works.”5 A further painter-patron relationship of this type is that of the artist Jacob Ochtervelt and the wine dealer Hartlief van Cattenburgh of Rotterdam, who owned ten paintings by the artist, apparently all pendants. An inventory of the goods of Van Cattenburgh (who died in 1669), “wijnkoper” and widower of Magdalena Rijckewaert, was drawn up in 1672 for the Weeskamer, since three young children had been left orphaned. The family house named “Doesburgh” was on the Nieuwe Haven.6 Van No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
Cattenburgh’s Paintings: “Schilderijen van verscheyde meesters” 1. Zijnde een stuck van schaeck geschildert 2 vanden selven 3 van battum [“van” inserted] 4 van vileers 5 van den selven 6 Een Italiaensch lantschap 7 sijnde een stuck van uchtervelt geschildert 8 een stuck vanden selven 9 van frans floris 10 van Berchem 11 van vileers 12 een brabants ballet 13 van uchtervelt 14 vanden selven 15 vander hulst 16 van uchtervelt 17 van den selfden 18 van willem vander velde 19 van verwilt 20 van dalans 21 van naanan 22 van meulenaer 23 van den selven 24 van virulij 25 Een bloemstuck 26 Een boeren stuck 27 van lemans 28 van westervelt 29 Een Italiaensch lantschap 30 Een ditto 31 van van dueren 32 Een fleuijter
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No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46
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van van assche Een kaert van uchtervelt vande selve van poolaert van uchtervelt van de selve Een vrouw Een man Een joncker Een juffer Een gedigt Eenige beelden Een Courduguarde
At first glance, the inventory seems disappointing since none of the attributed paintings is further described, making them impossible to connect with surviving works, and because none of the entries is valued. However, the presence of ten works by Jacob Ochtervelt arranged in pairs suggests that the owners were significant patrons of the artist. In addition, the probable dates of purchase can be isolated with some precision. Hartlief van Cattenburgh and Magdalena Rijckewaert married in February 1664 and both unfortunately died five years later in 1669.7 Therefore, the paintings were not inherited from relatives and it is not difficult to imagine that the couple purchased a pair of works from Ochtervelt annually. The death of these important clients may have been a factor in Ochtervelt’s decision to move to Amsterdam sometime between 1672 and 1674. There survive six pendant pairs of Ochtervelt’s genre paintings dated between 1664 and 1669, or assigned to that period by Susan Kuretsky in her exemplary monograph of 1979. Some if not most of these belonged to Hartlief van Cattenburgh and Magdalena Rijckewaert. From this crucial first period of Ochtervelt’s maturity are amorous scenes influenced by Frans van Mieris, like the Gallant Drinker (private collection) and the Doctor’s Visit (Manchester Art Gallery), which illustrate the before and after stages of flirtation.8 Similar in concept are the Embracing Cavalier and the Sleeping Soldier (Fig. 1), which depict the same maid and soldier.9 In the second episode of this pair, the soldier, asleep with drink, is about to be awakened by the blast of a trumpet and a tickle. Typically, Ochtervelt emphasized the light-hearted humor of the situation rather than a moralizing message. Some of Ochtervelt’s elegant merry companies from the late 1660s, such as The Tric-Trac Players and The Toast (Fig. 2), also seem to have been conceived as pendants, although they do not show an obvious passage of time.10
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Fig. 1. Jacob Ochtervelt, The Embracing Cavalier and The Sleeping Soldier, c. 1664-69, both oil on canvas. Manchester, Manchester Art Gallery.
In the 1660s, Ochtervelt developed one of his familiar themes – the threshold of a well-to-do household, where beggars, or produce sellers interact with the sumptuously attired owners of the residence. This exchange between classes appears in a pair of paintings showing a fruit seller and a fishmonger (Fig. 3).11 The two compositions are carefully varied: the views are perpendicular to one another, and an arch replaces a simpler doorway. The master of the household (fancifully dressed in velvet and gold brocade) supervises the purchase of fish, while in the other painting a richly attired woman watches her daughter feed a grape to the maid. The same spaniel gazes at each transaction. A similarly contrasted pair depicts a poulterer (private collection) and a cherry seller (Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp).12 Ochtervelt briefly explored other genre formats in pendants. A painting of a singing woman leaning out of a window is paired with an image of a man lost in thought as he listens to the song (Fig. 4)13 – two vignettes of an apparently continuous wall. Such figures set in grand stone windows derive from Dou’s favorite compositions, which framed anything from self-portraits to multi-figured kitchen scenes. Perhaps most similar to Ochtervelt’s example is Dou’s painting of a maid holding a pitcher as she leans out a window (Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown). Ochtervelt painted only a few window-ledge pictures, and the format may have been taken up expressly to give the Van Cattenburgh collection a variety of genre paintings. Moreover, the thoughtful man in the painting shown in Figure 4, which is dated 1668, possesses an individuality of features suggesting a portrait. Could this be an image of Hartlief van Cattenburgh, Ochtervelt’s patron during his Rotterdam period? 104 | in his milieu
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Fig. 2. Jacob Ochtervelt, The Tric-Trac Players and The Toast, 1668?, both oil on canvas. Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum; and a private collection.
Fig. 3. Jacob Ochtervelt, The Grape Seller and The Fishmonger, 1669, both oil on canvas. St. Petersburg, The Hermitage.
The collection of Hartlief van Cattenburgh and Magdalena Rijckewaert has added significance because so few of Ochtervelt’s paintings appear in seventeenth-century inventories, with nothing previously recorded while the artist was alive. In Amsterdam, where the artist lived from about 1673 until his death in 1682, only six works appear in seventeenth-century inventories.14 Pendant portraits of a merchant and his wife are mentioned in Rotterdam in
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Fig. 4. Jacob Ochtervelt, A Man at a Window, 1668, oil on wood. Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut.
1691.15 In addition to the ten paintings owned by Van Cattenburgh and Rijckewaert, one additional painting is recorded in Rotterdam while Ochtervelt was still living there. The possessions of Eeuwout Doeleman were inventoried in 1679, shortly after the death of his wife, Pietronella Verschuyren; among the goods brought into the 1670 marriage by her is a painting by Ochtervelt.16 This too must be a painting from the 1660s, almost certainly bought directly from the artist. The extensive but little studied records of the Rotterdam Weeskamer may reveal other works by Ochtervelt, but the scarcity of Ochtervelt’s paintings in contemporary inventories is also the result of his restricted clientele – his works remained in a few elite collections during the seventeenth century. This restricted circulation may also explain Ochtervelt’s curiously muted reputation, especially in comparison to the extravagant praise heaped on other fine genre painters. Ochtervelt is not mentioned in any art text published in the seventeenth century. In 1719, Arnold Houbraken briefly characterized his genre paintings in the biography of Pieter de Hooch (who also was from Rotterdam and studied with Claes Berchem).17 Jan Sysmus simply labeled Ochtervelt a portraitist in his manuscript list of painters.18 More surprisingly, Ochtervelt is missing from the very extensive list of local painters provided by Ger-
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rit van Spaan in his 1698 history of Rotterdam.19 This is due less to Ochtervelt’s departure for Amsterdam (other artists moved from Rotterdam) than to his obscurity. An addition can be made to Susan Kuretsky’s list of documents concerning Ochtervelt in Rotterdam: In February 1662, the children of Lucas Hendricksz. Ochtervelt and Trijntge Jansdr. (Jacob Ochtervelt included) were named as heirs by a distant relative.20
A Collection of Rotterdam Painters Of the forty-six paintings in the Van Cattenburgh-Rijckewaert inventory, thirty-one are attributed and most of these are by painters active in Rotterdam in the 1650s and 1660s, which demonstrates the up-to-date local character of the collection. Except for Ochtervelt, none of Rotterdam’s famous names of the period can be found, for example, Abraham Hondius, Pieter de Hooch, Ludolf de Jongh, Eglon van der Neer, Cornelis Saftleven, or Hendrik Martensz Sorgh (or earlier figures such as Willem Buytewech, Jan Porcellis, and Simon de Vlieger). Works by contemporary Rotterdam painters include three landscapes by Jacob de Vileers (1616-1667), who was born in Leiden but married and settled in Rotterdam, and two pictures by “van Schaeck,” probably the painter of peasant genre scenes, Andries Schaeck (doc. Rotterdam, 1651, guild 1665, d. before 1682). “Battum” refers to the landscapist Gerrit Battem (c. 16361684), who often worked in gouache. Pieter van Deuren was a still-life painter active around 1648-50. “Poolaert” may be Egbert van der Poel, who moved to Rotterdam from Delft after 1654. Abraham van Westervelt (doc. 1647, d. 1692) was a prominent local portraitist. Dirck Dalens (1600-1676) was a follower of Moyses van Wtenbrouck who worked in Rotterdam in 1662 and 1663.21 The Italianate landscapist Willem Viruly (1605-1677) and Francois Verwilt (c. 1623-1691), a painter of genre and history scenes, were related to Magdalena Rijckewaert, as will be discussed below. Artists from other towns include Claes Berchem, the popular Italianate landscape painter who was also Ochtervelt’s teacher, according to Houbraken. The three anonymous Italian landscapes indicate a taste for foreign views. The work by “vander Hulst” might refer to the follower of Jan van Goyen, Maerten Fransz van der Hulst (active 1630-45), or to Pieter van der Hulst of Dordrecht (c. 1583-c. 1628). The painting by “van Assche” may be by the Delft landscapist Pieter Jansz. van Asch. A map is listed among the paintings along with a seascape by the elder, or younger Willem van de Velde. There may also have been a trompe-l’oeil still life by Johannes, or Anthonius Leeman, and a flower still life is also listed. There were several other genre scenes besides the works by Ochtervelt, including two paintings presumably by Jan Miense Molenaer, as well as anonymous works depicting a Brabant dance, a
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peasant scene, a flute player, and a guard room. The only “old master” is a work by Frans Floris, a name that sometimes appears in important seventeenth-century collections.
The Van Cattenburgh and Rijckewaert Families Born between 1629 and 1635, Hartlief van Cattenburgh inherited a successful wine dealership from his father, Adriaen (1602-shortly before 1653) originally from Tiel.22 Rotterdam handled the bulk of the Dutch trade in French wine, and city leaders consistently opposed restrictions on foreign commerce. Indications of the commodity’s importance include Rotterdam’s Wijnhaven, constructed 1610-13, and the fifty-five traders and dealers in wine active in the city at mid-century.23 Not surprisingly, Adriaen and Hartlief van Cattenburgh had extensive dealings with France and Amsterdam.24 As Adriaen van Cattenburgh prospered, he was drawn into a wide variety of financial transactions involving real estate and paintings.25 He also rose into the lower levels of the Rotterdam regency when in 1648 and 1649 he served as a meester of the Oude Vrouwenhuis.26 His son Hartlief van Cattenburgh assumed a slightly higher position in the hierarchy of civic charities: he was a Gasthuismeester from 1665 until his death in 1669.27 In 1664, Hartlief van Cattenburgh married Magdalena Rijckewaert, the daughter of the apothecary Jan Huybert Rijckewaert and Willemijna vande Swaluwe (d. 1671). Hartlief and Magdalena had three children, Adriaen (b. 1664), Willemina (b. 1667) and Catharina Magdalena (b. 1669).28 Although the 1672 inventory does not provide a complete picture of the couple’s worth, their household was well stocked with luxury items. For example, the currency on hand in the house totaled more than 1,700 guilders. Both the Van Cattenburgh and Rijckewaert families had connections with the Rotterdam art world. In 1638, Adriaen van Cattenburgh bought seven paintings for the considerable price of 600 guilders from Maergrieta Rutters of Gorinchem (the widow of Cornelis de Bruyn). They were “a fallen and a standing still life, a Spanish sea piece, a trirage [?], a sea piece with clippers, a landscape, a fruit still life.”29 The sale was connected with a loan, so the agreed-upon price may not have been an accurate reflection of the fair market value of the paintings.30 At the same time, Maergrieta Rutters sold five more paintings to a wine dealer in The Hague; these included a perspectijf of a church by Bartholomeus van Bassen, two flower still lifes by Hans Bollongier, a genre scene by Pieter Codde, and a painting by Adriaen van de Venne.31 This sale was also related to a loan, and it appears that Rutters was selling paintings to meet financial obligations. In addition, the Rotterdam painter Joris Ariensz. owed Van Cattenburgh 14 guilders in 1641.32 In 1667, Magdalena Rijckewaert’s uncle Justus Rijckewaert died and an
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inventory was made of his estate. A prominent and erudite physician, Justus had married Hartlief van Cattenburgh’s half-sister Jacobmina van Ackerlaecken in 1661, which is undoubtedly how Hartlief and Magdalena themselves met.33 The two couples owned paintings by many of the same Rotterdam artists. Among the paintings that Justus Rijckewaert contributed to the estate were a work by Molenaer, a fruit piece by Van Deuren, plus several portraits, seascapes, and landscapes. He also owned a portrait of his father by Hendrik Martensz Sorgh, which is very likely the portrait of Theophilus Rijckewaert reproduced in a print by Hendrik Bary (see below).34 Jacobmina van Ackerlaecken had a more extensive collection of thirty-eight paintings, including portraits by Michiel van Mierevelt and Van der Elst (presumably Bartholomeus van der Helst), landscapes by Reus, Viruly (two), and Vileers, a seascape by Willem van de Velde, a doctor by Bloot, and undescribed works by Brouwer, Castelijn (two), and Verwilt, as well as an embroidered painting and three small paintings with doors.35 Moreover, Magdalena Rijckewaert was related to the local landscape painter Willem Viruly (1605-1677), and through him to Francois Verwilt. This explains the presence of works by both artists in the two family collections. Hartlief van Cattenburgh’s estate also recorded the tiny debt of 1 guilder, 15 stuivers owed by Viruly.36 Magdalena’s aunt Aeltge Rijckewaert (d. 1657) married Willem Viruly in 1631. Four generations of painters were named Willem Viruly, who at various times employed the suffixes “de oude,” or “de jonge,” which makes distinguishing them difficult; at a baptism in 1667, no fewer than four Willem Virulys were present.37 The painting by Viruly in the inventory described above probably came through Magdalena Rijckewaert. Of the few works attributed to the Viruly family, an Italianate landscape of the 1650s, initialed “W.V.” is perhaps by Willem Viruly, the uncle of Magdalena.38
The Remonstrants The Van Cattenburgh and Rijckewaert families were also bound together by their strong Remonstrant beliefs. Magdalena Rijckewaert’s grandfather, Theophilus (1578-1658), a preacher in Brielle, had been one of the central leaders of the Remonstrants, a close colleague of Johan Wtenbogaert, Simon Episcopius, and Eduard Poppius. He signed the Remonstrance of 1610 and attended the Dordrecht Synod of 1618-19 as one of the “defendants” led by Episcopius.39 The Synod removed Arminian preachers from their positions, after which the States General expelled the group’s leaders from the Netherlands. Theophilus Rijckewaert and other prominent Remonstrant preachers are depicted in Claes Jansz. Visscher’s etching D’Arminiansche uytvaert (Hollstein 34) departing for Antwerp in July 1619. Rijckewaert left his family in Holland and participated in the Remonstrant exile conferences in Antwerp.
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After the death of Prince Maurits in 1625, he returned to Brielle as Remonstrant preacher, although his children settled in Rotterdam, which had long been sympathetic to the Remonstrants. For example, Hugo Grotius had been the pensionaris during the crisis, and a faction of Remonstrant sympathizers gained control of the Rotterdam vroedschap in 1625. This later phase of “political Arminianism” was more practical and conciliatory in favoring religious tolerance and opposing foreign wars damaging to trade.40 The children of Theophilus Rijckewaert continued to support the cause. His son-in-law, Willem Viruly, wrote to the artist Jan van de Velde in 1628 advocating their beliefs, and his son Justus published a Remonstrant pamphlet in 1635.41 His daughter Anna married the bookseller Johannes Naeranus whose father, Izaak, and uncle, Samuel, had been preachers exiled with Theophilus. On the other side of family, Hartlief van Cattenburgh’s sister Lucretia married Engelbertus van Engelen, Remonstrant preacher in Gorinchem, whose father had also been a prominent leader.42 Hartlief van Cattenburgh and Magdalena Rijckewaerts baptized their three children in Rotterdam’s Remonstrant church and their son Adriaen (1664-1743) became a Remonstrant preacher and historian.43
The Library The library of Hartlief van Cattenburgh and Magdalena Rijckewaert directly reflected the family’s long commitment to the Remonstrant movement. One hundred and two books are catalogued in unusual detail, with the volumes listed by size (see Appendix). Most works are cited by author and title, and some even with date and place of publication. The couple had a connection with the Rotterdam publishing world since Magdalena Rijckewaert’s aunt Anna was married to Johannes Naeranus (1607-1670), who published Remonstrant texts by Episcopius, Grotius, and Poppius, biographies of Wtenbogaert and Oldenbarnevelt, as well as editions of ancients texts by Diogenes Laertius and Terence.44 The library contained numerous books published by Naeranus, who may also have helped the couple acquire other volumes. Naeranus also published a print by Hendrick Bary after Sorgh’s portrait of Theophilus Rijckewaert, which seems to have been paired with a portrait of Episcopius.45 Naeranus’ religious and political background fueled a nasty rivalry with another Rotterdam publisher, Pieter van Waesberghe, ostensibly over the copyright of a Dutch-French dictionary.46 Van Cattenburgh and Rijckewaert owned several works in ancient languages that would have been regarded as essential to a sophisticated collection, including several Bibles in Greek (including that annotated by Arias Montanus), as well as Greek and Latin dictionaries and thesauri. There is a scattered assortment of classical texts, beginning with a folio edition of Titus
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Livius printed in Antwerp in 1641, and including Cicero’s orations and the life of Alexander by Curtius Rufus. Many of the ancient texts were in Dutch versions, like the two editions of Terence and Vondel’s translation of Virgil. While the library is not a comprehensive humanist collection, there are many popular histories of Holland, biographies of Dutch leaders, as well as a collection of Vondel’s plays and a hofdicht by Jacob Westerbaen.47 Of more practical value for a trader was a copy of the Concise Tables of Interest Rates. On the other hand, the catalogue does not list any emblem books, household manuals, or texts on art. Instead, the books reveal strong specialist interests in travel and the Remonstrant movement. As might be expected of the books belonging to a merchant specializing in overseas trade, many works described exotic lands, or narrate daring voyages. No less than five folio volumes were devoted to the West Indies, including works by Johannes de Laet and Antonio de Herrera. Other maps could be found in Mercator’s Atlas Minor and Emanuel van Meteren’s history of the Netherlands. Eleven more books covered Scandinavia, Candia (Crete), Turkey, Persia, the Indies, and China, and one volume was devoted to Tamil religious practices that the Dutch preacher Abraham Rogerius had observed in India. This interest in foreign cultures was echoed in the five Italian landscape paintings in the collection. Most strikingly, the library constituted a comprehensive history of the Remonstrant movement, especially after the Synod of Dordrecht, with numerous works by Episcopius, Grotius, Wtenbogaert, and Poppius. There were no less than three copies of Grotius’ Apologeticus, a refutation of the legal proceedings against the Remonstrants and its leaders. Many texts argued for religious tolerance and diversity. The library also contained controversial biographies of Wtenbogaert and Oldenbarnevelt, the latter printed secretly by Naeranus.48 There were also two works by Geeraert Brandt, the Remonstrant historian, who wrote a history of Dutch religion and provided the encomium for a portrait of Theophilus Rijckewaert. Several volumes treated predestination, the central issue of the Arminian debate. Sebastien Castellion’s sixteenth-century texts (represented in Dutch translations) were early sources for Remonstrant positions; these include his Dialogue attacking Calvin’s position on predestination and Concerning Heretics, one of the earliest arguments against religious persecution. Several works were by authors outside the orthodox Reformed Church, including the English Puritans Jeremy Dyke and Lewis Bayly. The broader political brand of Arminianism, which mutated into support for the republican rule of the De Witt brothers, was also reflected in the library’s holdings, which included books about the succession crisis of 1650 and the absolutist tendencies of the Princes of Orange. Johan de la Court’s Politieke Discoursen (1662) argued against monarchy and a strong church, while Hollands Op-komst specifically criticized the stadholder system
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and advocated True Freedom (Ware Vrijheid). The collection also contained a history of the Netherlands by Petrus Scriverius, a committed Remonstrant who may have been an early patron of Rembrandt.49 The library may have inspired the couple’s oldest child, Adriaen, who became a preacher and a notable historian of Remonstrant literature.50 The selection of poetry and fiction may also have been influenced by Remonstrantism and an outsider perspective on orthodox power structures. The library contained a copy of Ockenburgh, a hofdicht by Jacob Westerbaen, who had served as a secretary to the Arminians at the National Synod, where he worked closely with Theophilus Rijckewaert.51 Written decades afterward in 1654, the country house poem discusses the Arminian dispute as an urban controversy from which Westerbaen fled. Finally, there are several notable political satires by foreign writers such as Thomas Murner, Francisco de Quevedo, and John Barclay. In Argenis, written in Latin in 1621 and translated into Dutch in 1643, the Scottish writer Barclay pointedly criticized the abuse of political power and the mistreatment of religious minorities. Such liberal pleas for tolerance and justice must have resonated strongly for Remonstrant readers. Does the Remonstrantism so evident in the library have anything to do with the art collection assembled by Magdalena Rijckewaert and Hartlief van Cattenburgh? Some artists represented in the collection, namely Abraham Westervelt, Dirck Dalens, and the couple’s relatives Willem Viruly and Francois Verwilt, were Remonstrants.52 Jacob Ochtervelt, however, had no known connection with the denomination, or related factions, as his family had usually been baptized in the Reform Church. Could the treatises advocating tolerance and the satires on religious hypocrisy be related to the collectors’ enthusiasm for Jacob Ochtervelt’s paintings? Perhaps Ochtervelt’s light-hearted scenes of everyday life, which, unlike some contemporary paintings, lack any sense of moral hectoring, had a special appeal to his tolerant patrons. Author’s Note: I had the privilege of discussing the inventory published here with Michael Montias. John Loughman transcribed several passages and provided much helpful advice. I am also grateful to the staff of the Gemeentearchief Rotterdam, the source of the cited documents.
1 2
Vermeer and His Milieu: A Web of Social History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 246-57. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Vermeer and the Art of Painting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 5. Response by John Michael Montias in “Recent Archival Research in Vermeer,” Studies in the History of Art 55 (1998): 93-99. On the other hand, Wheelock in Johannes Vermeer, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1995, p. 172, used sketchy evidence to support the traditional notion that Vermeer was friendly with
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Van Leeuwenhoek; also refuted by Montias 1998, pp. 101-02. Ben Broos in Washington 1995, p. 22, and Walter Liedtke in Vermeer and the Delft School, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2001, p. 151, support Montias’ theory on Pieter van Ruijven. Philips Angel, Lof der Schilder-Konst (Leiden, 1642) (Utrecht: Davaco, 1969), p. 23. In his consideration of Angel, Eric Jan Sluijter (Seductress of Sight: Studies in Dutch Art of the Golden Age [Zwolle: Waanders, 2000], p. 216) is more trusting of Angel’s testimony as fact. The document listing the works in De Bye’s exhibition appears in Willem Martin, Het leven en de werken van Gerrit Dou (Leiden: Van Doesburgh, 1901), pp. 171-73. John Michael Montias, “Cost and Value in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art,” Art History 10 (1987): 462. GAR (Gemeentearchief Rotterdam), Weeskamer 460, pp. 669-719: “Inventaris van alle de goederen, in ende uijtschulden, die Hartlieff van Kattenburg, wijnkoper, in sijn leven weduwenaer van Magdalena Rijckewaert beseten heeft, zulcx deselve bij den voorn: Hartlieff van Kattenburg op den 3e Decemb: 1669 met der doot ontruijmt ende naergelaten sijn. / Overgelevert ter weeskamer deser stede Rotterdam bij Jan Huijbert Rijckewaert, apothecarus, ende Jacobus van Sundert, suijckerbacker, als geordonneerde voogden over de naergelatene weeskindern van de voorn: Hartlieff van Kattenburg ende Magdalena Rijckewaert, Actum voor Mr. E. Blanckert ende J. van Harsel weesmeesteren op den 10e Septemb: 1672.” The paintings are listed on pp. 682-83. The numbering is original. The guardians were Jan Huybert Rijckewaert, Magdalena’s father, and Jacobus van Sundert, whose exact relationship is not known, but Janneken van Cattenburgh, probably Hartlief’s aunt, was married to Willem van Sundert, the schout of Cralingen. I was alerted to the inventory by a brief, incomplete note among the Bredius fiches in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague. GAR, DTB (Doop-, Trouw- en Begraafboeken), inv. 15 Stadstrouw, index no. 38. Banns were published on 10 February 1664 for “Hartlief van Cattenburgh Jongman wonende op de nieuhaven” and “Joffrou Magdalena Ryckewaet Jonge dochter wonende op de hoochstraet.” The marriage took place on February 27. Magdalena was buried on 27 September 1669, Hartlief on December 7 of the same year, from the house “Doesburg” (DTB, inv. 44 Begraven). Susan Donahue Kuretsky, The Paintings of Jacob Ochtervelt, 1634-1682 (Montclair: Allanheld & Schram, 1979), nos. 26, 27, as c. 1665. Cornelia Moiso-Diekamp, Das Pendant in der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt: Lang, 1987), pp. 403-09, repeats Kuretsky’s identification of pendants. Kuretsky 1979, nos. 14, 15, as c. 1660-63. Kuretsky 1979, nos. 44, 45, as 1668, but not described as pendants. Formerly in the Labia collection, The Toast was auctioned at Sotheby’s, London, 6 December 1989, lot 3. Kuretsky 1979, nos. 54, 55. The Grape Seller is dated 1669. Kuretsky 1979, nos. 50, 51, as c. 1668-69. Kuretsky 1979, nos. 47, 48. A Man at a Window is dated 1668. The Getty Provenance Index (piweb.getty.edu) compilation of Amsterdam inventory lists only four paintings from the seventeenth century, all from after Ochtervelt’s death: 1684, 1687, 1690, and 1694. Two more works are listed in Abraham Bredius, KünstlerInventare (The Hague: Nijhoff: 1915-22), vol. 4, p. 1195 (Amsterdam: belonging to a relative of Jan van Huysum, 1701) and p. 1238 (Amsterdam, 1695). None of the Rotterdam inventories published by Bredius lists a painting by Ochtervelt. Kuretsky 1979, p. 230. GAR, Weeskamer 467, p. 387: “Een uts [stuckie schilderij] van Ochtervelt.” Also among the goods brought into the marriage by Pietronella Verschuyren were: “Een stuckie
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schilderij vande Hont [Hondius]” and “Een uts. van van Geel.” Eeuwout Doeleman is referred to as “kamerbewaerder vande vredenmaeckers kamer deser stadt” (Weeskamer 459, p. 102: 1671); reference from John Loughman. Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen (2nd ed., The Hague, 1753) (Amsterdam, 1976), vol. 2, p. 35. Abraham Bredius, “Het schildersregister van Jan Sysmus, stads-dochter van Amsterdam, I,” Oud Holland 8 (1890): 15: “conterfeiter.” Gerrit van Spaan, Beschrijvinge der stad Rotterdam, en eenige omleggende dorpen (Rotterdam: H. Goddaeus, 1698), pp. 421-24. Also 2nd ed., Rotterdam: P. de Vries, 1713. GAR, ONA (Oud Notarieel Archief) 235, no. 14, p. 24: 20 February 1662 (notary Jacob Duyfhuysen): Willem Verwissel, husband of Hendrickge Lucasdr (Jacob Ochtervelt’s sister), on behalf of his wife and her brothers and sisters. See the summary of other documents in Kuretsky 1979, pp. 219-30. His daughter Anna was baptized in Rotterdam in January 1663 (ONA inv. 29). See also W. Soechting, “Dirck Dalens I, een vergeten landschapschilder,” Holland: Regionaal-historisch tijdschrift 9 (1977): 32-36. In 1626, Adriaen van Cattenburgh (who most often signed documents “Adrijaen van Cattenborch”) married Caterina van Heel (c. 1600-1656), Hartlief’s mother, the daughter and heir of Gaudens Hertlieffs van Heel (d. 1617), also a wine dealer (ONA 138, no. 313, p. 498: 1638). Caterina was the widow of Jacob van Akerlaken, by whom she had two children: Gaudens (1621-1667) and Jacomina (ONA 44, no. 64, p. 106: 1635). Arie van der Schoor, Stad in aanwas: Geschiedenis van Rotterdam tot 1813 (Zwolle: Waanders, 1999), pp. 204-06; Jonathan I. Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585-1740 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), pp. 289-90. For an anecdotal account, see W.G.D. Murray, “De Rotterdamsche wijnkoopers,” Rotterdamsch Jaarboekje (1941): 41-90; and (1942): 60-120. For the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see Jan Craeybeckx, Un grand commerce d’importation: Les vins de France aux ancient Pays-Bas (Paris: SEVPEN, 1958). In 1632, Adriaen van Cattenburgh had dealings with merchants in Amsterdam and Paris (ONA 165, no. 29). One Antony Cattenburch, perhaps a relative, reported that he had spent several years living in Nantes (ONA 150, no. 97). Adriaen and Hartlief van Cattenburgh appear in notarial records in Rotterdam on numerous occasions. In 1633, he sold a shipyard for 1,200 guilders (ONA 132, no. 283, p. 637). J.H.W. Unger, De regeering van Rotterdam, 1328-1892 (Rotterdam: Van Waesberge, 1892) [Bronnen voor de geschiedenis van Rotterdam, vol. 1], pp. 120, 121. Unger 1892, pp. 143, 145-46, 148-49. Magdalena’s baptismal record cannot be located, but her parents can be identified by the Hoogstraat location given both on her marriage banns and the burial record of her mother Willemijna vander Swaluwe (“Hoechstraet b.d. Lamstech”). Moreover, Aeltien Ariens van der Zwaluwe, presumably an aunt, was a witness at the baptism of Magdalena’s first child. Since her parents married in 1644 (DTB inv. 15 Stadstrouw, index no. 67), Magdalena was perhaps nineteen when she married Hartlief van Cattenburgh. It is less likely that Magdalena was the daughter of Justus Rijckewaert and Cornelia de Lange, who were married in 1643. For the baptisms, see DTB inv. 29 Doop remonstrants. For the Rijckewaert family, see ONA 246, no. 131. ONA 86, no. 103, p. 188: 4 June 1638: “een omgevallen [inserted: “ende een staende”?] bancket, een Spaense zee, een Trirage, een zee met clippen, een Lantschap ende een fruytagie.” The notary spelled the seller’s name “Margareta Rutgers.” Transcribed by John Loughman. The same paintings seem to be recorded the day before the sale in a commission to Isaac Susio to deliver them to Jan de Raedt (ONA 94, no. 290, p. 360: 3 June 1638). On the same day, using the same notary, Adriaen van Cattenburgh and Willem de Bruyn (a relative of Cornelis de Bruyn) negotiated collateral for a loan (ONA 86, no. 106, p. 187).
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31 ONA 86, no. 105, p. 191: 9 June 1638; sold to Philips Romerse for 202 guilders: “een perspectijf ofte Kerck gebouw geschildert bij Basse sa[liger] staende tegenwoordich inde banck van leeninge binnen deser stede, twee blompotten geschildert bij Bollongier sa:, een geselschap geschildert bij Pieter Coddens mede sa: ged. ende een schilderij vande Venne, alle staende inde banck van leeninge tot Gorinchem.” The notary unknowingly called the artists deceased. 32 Bredius 1915-22, vol. 4, p. 1470; a debt to Willem Viruly of 4 guilders is also recorded. 33 In 1635, Justus Rijckewaert (b. c. 1607) traveled to France where he met Hugo Grotius, who had received glowing commendations about him; Briefwisseling van Hugo Grotius (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1928-2001), vol. 6, pp. 59, 94, 104, 114, 302 (vol. 5, p. 479: Justus is said to be 28). Justus Rijckwaert’s first marriage was in 1643 to Cornelia de Lange, who died in 1656 (DTB inv. 15 Stadstrouw, index no. 999); a son, Wilhelmus, was born in 1653, another, Theophilus, in 1656 (DTB 29). See also ONA 246, no. 131. The biography in Briefwisseling van Hugo Grotius, vol. 14 (1993), p. 262, can be corrected by these references and note 41. 34 Weeskamer 455, p. 652: “Een contrefeijtsel van van sorge vader….” 35 Weeskamer 455, pp. 643, 663-64. The guardians were Hartlief van Cattenburgh and his father-in-law, Jan Huybert Rijckewaert. 36 Weeskamer 460, p. 697. Other family members owed much more: Willem van Sundert: 244 guilders; Engelbert van Engelen: 742 guilders. 37 DTB inv. 29 Doop remonstrants: 18 March 1667. The mother was Jannetge Hermans, whom Willem Viruly married shortly after the death of Aeltgen Rijckewaert. Biographies of the several painters named Willem Viruly are given by Jan Briels, Vlaamse schilders en de dageraad van Hollands Gouden Eeuw, 1585-1630, met biogragieën (Antwerp: Mercator, 1997), pp. 401-02; see also H.H. van Dam in Nederland’s Patriciaat 21 (193334): 415-19 (without sources). These accounts are preferable to the biographies in Rotterdamse meesters uit de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat., Historisch Museum, Rotterdam, 1994, pp. 305-06, 312. For Adriaen and Francois Verwilt, see Briels 1997, p. 398; Bredius 1915-22, pp. 1618-23. 38 Christie’s, London, 5 December 1997, lot 137. Another signed work in a different style (Rotterdam 1994, no. 64) may be by the artist’s father (1584-1667), but these assignments are highly tentative. 39 See Joannes Tideman, De stichting der Remonstrantsche Broederschap, 1619-1634, vol. 1 (Amsterdam: Rogge, 1871), pp. 13, 66-67, 69, 98-99; Joannes Tideman and H.C. Rogge, De Remonstrantsche Broederschap: Biographische naamlijst, 2nd ed. (Amsterdam: Rogge, 1905), pp. 246-48; Acta of Handelingen der Nationale Synode, eds. H. Donner and S.A. van den Hoorn (Leiden: D. Donner, 1885) (Houten: Den Hertog, 1987), pp. 15-16, 69 (on 15 November 1618, Theophilus was listed as a Remonstrant representative). Theophilus Rijckewaert was married to Magdalena van Dam and had five adult children; a 1648 document describes his family (ONA 246, no. 131, p. 192: 21 April 1648). 40 On “political Arminianism,” see Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), pp. 487-94. On the situation in Rotterdam, see also Tideman and Rogge 1905, pp. 41-49; J.G. de Bijll Nachenius-Sterkenburg, Schuilen in waterstad: De Remonstrantse kerken aan de Vissersdijk te Rotterdam (Rotterdam: Roterodamum, 1997). 41 J.G. van Gelder, Jan van de Velde, 1593-1641, teekenaar-schilder (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1933), p. 11. The pamphlet is Copye van seker brief van Justus Rijckewaert, geschreven aen Anthony Nys, coopman int Engels laken tot Rotterdam…gestelt door een Lief-hebber der waerheyt ende des vader-landts (n.p., 1635) (copies in University of Amsterdam; GAR; Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague). 42 They married in 1658 (DTB inv. 15 Stadstrouw, index 20). He had been a preacher in
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Gorinchem since 1653; in 1669, he moved to Utrecht, where he died in 1684. See Tideman and Rogge 1905, pp. 261, 311, 329-30; ONA 225, no. 3, p. 166: 1667. His father, Engelbertus Egidius van Engelen (c. 1584-1642), preacher in Arnhem, wrote Klare ende duydelijcke wederlegginge van verscheyden aenteyckeningen, ofte annotatien, tot bevestiging van de Contraremonstrantsche leere der predestinatie (Rotterdam: B. Wagens, 1649). Tideman and Rogge 1905, pp. 16-17. He became a preacher in Rotterdam in 1687, died in Utrecht in 1743, and left 20,000 guilders to the Remonstrantsche Broederschap. He married Maria Slegt in Rotterdam, 1696 (DTB 15 Stadstrouw, index no. 38); with children: Magdaleena Catharina, baptized in 1699, Lijdia in 1701, Jan in 1704, Cornelis in 1710 (d. 1729). See A. van Mameren in Rotterdam bibliopolis: Een rondgang langs boekverkopers uit de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw, ed. H. Bots et al. (Rotterdam: Gemeentelijke Archiefdienst, 1997), pp. 34-59. Van Mameren corrected the long-standing confusion with the printer’s cousin of the same name and about the same age (1608-1679) who was a preacher in Oude Wetering. The printer’s birthdate can be further clarified through a document of 1640 in which the “bouckebinder” declared that he was 33 years old (ONA 95, no. 49, p. 78); see also ONA 246, no. 131. Anna Rijckewaert and Johannes Izaaksz Naeranus married in 1633. Hollstein (Bary) 68. Also published by Naeranus is a print of Episcopius by Theodoor Matham (Hollstein 84), after Sorgh and of the same size and format. Van Mameren 1997, pp. 23-62. The library can be compared with that of Herman Becker, a Lutheran merchant in Amsterdam. Hugo Postma, “De Amsterdamse verzamelaar Herman Becker (ca. 16171678),” Oud Holland 102 (1988): 1-21. For later Remonstrant positions on tolerance, see Israel 1995, pp. 499-505. Two large paintings by Rembrandt (“twee braave groote stukken van Rembrandt”) are recorded in Scriverius’ collection in 1663. These were identified by M. Wurfbain and Gary Schwartz as the Stoning of St. Stephen dated 1625 (Lyon) and the mystery history painting of the same size of 1626 (Leiden); see Gary Schwartz, Rembrandt, His Life, His Paintings (Harmondsworth, 1985), pp. 35-38. Others have been skeptical about the connection with Scriverius; R. van Staten, “Rembrandts ‘Leidse historiestuk,’” Leids Jaarboekje 83 (1991): 97; B. van den Boogert in The Mystery of the Young Rembrandt, exh. cat., Staatliche Museen Kassel, and elsewhere, 2002, p. 147. Rembrandt’s two paintings certainly appear to be a pair since their size is unusual in Rembrandt’s work and they contrast religious and historical subjects; the Remonstrant advocacy of religious tolerance fits the subject of the Stoning of St. Stephen. He wrote a history of Remonstrant texts, Bibliotheca scriptorum remonstrantium (Amsterdam: Lakeman, 1728), and with Caspar Brandt a biography of Grotius, Historie van het leven des heeren Huig de Groot (Dordrecht: Braam, 1727), as well as the more predictable XXI predikatien (Leiden, 1737). Secretary to Carpar Barlaeus, in 1625 he married the widow of Oldenbarnevelt’s son. On Westerbaen’s hofdicht, see Willemien de Vries, Wandeling en verhandeling: De ontwikkeling van het Nederlandse hofdicht in de zeventiende eeuw (Hilversum: Verloren, 1998), pp. 174-205, esp. pp. 176, 197-98, 201, 204, for his Remonstrant background and related issues in the poem. Abraham Westervelt’s children were baptized in the Remonstrant church in 1652, 1653, 1655, 1658, and 1660 (DTB inv. 29); see also Bredius 1915-22, pp. 1773-77. Dirck Dalens, who was in Rotterdam only in 1662 and 1663, and his wife, Adriana de Liefde, baptized a daughter, Anna, in the city’s Remonstrant church in January 1663 (DTB inv. 29); the two witnesses were relatives of Adriana; see also Bredius 1915-22, pp. 1411-21.
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Appendix The Library of Hartlief van Cattenburgh and Magdalena Rijckewaert Boecken1 In folio 1 Titus Livius, gedruckt t’ antwerpen, 1641 2 historie ofte verhael vande westindische compagnie door Johannes de laet tot leijden, Elsevier 16442 3 Nieuwe werelt ofte beschrijvinge van westindien tot leijden door den selven Elsevier 16303 4 Nederlantsche historie door Emanuel van met[eren]4 5 Nieuwe werelt ofte west indien door Ant. de guerrera tot amsterdam bij Michiel Colijn 16225 6 Een bijbel en testament In quarto 1 oude en nieuwe beschrijvinge van hollan[t], zeelant, ende westvrieslant, mitsgaders selver graven etc: door Petrus Scriver[ius] bij Pr. Brugman, hage 16676 2 Joost van vondel Comedien ende ander […] in drie delen 3 de christelijcke zedekunst door Johannes v[isser]us7 4 het leven ende sterven vanden vermaerde heer J. v: Oldenbarnevelt8 5 Episcopij antwoort opde proeve van Abraham heijdanus9 6 J: uijttenbogaerts leven10 7 dictionarium historicum Steph:11 8 Opendeure tot het verborgen heydendom door Ab: Rogerius Lugd: hack12 9 de haegsche conferentie13 10 bijbel der natuere door mornaeij14 11 Candijs voyagie 12 Willem litgoij voijagie15 13 vrijmoedig ondersoeck der placcaten16 14 gereduceerde tafel van interest17 15 grotij, inleijding tot de hollansche regtsgel:18 16 Atlas minor van mercator19 17 grotij apologie 18 Eenige voiage van herbert delavalla van Bartama di pinto in 4 deelen.20 19 nog een apologie van h: grotij:21 20 poppij enge poorte22 21 westerbaens achenburg23 22 Cicerones orationes, 2 voll: 23 d’aenteijckeninge douning, ende memorie ende antwoort vande heren Staten daer op 2 voll:24 29 het leven van constants.25 25 [D]acet in quarto van comedien 26 hooff tapijt, door Mr. w. vanden velde26 27 Eenige voiagen ende beschrijvingen van landen 28 wettelijcken Regering van hollant27 29 de historie van Indien28 In octavo 1 historie vande reformatie, g: Brant29
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Treur tonneel L: v: bos. 2 voll:30 Tonneel der wereltsche veranderingen [Sta…] door J: H: Glasemaecker31 de goddelijcke vierschaer door A: van Corput, 2 stucken32 Politike discoursen in 6 ondersch: boecken door d: c:33 Bloemekrans van verscheijde gedigten34 Practijck Pietatis, Belgice35 quintus curtius, duijts36 Aldegonde ’s biecorff37 coninclijcke Apologie van Jac: Coning grafelijcke regering van hollaent38 novum testamentum grec: ex interpretatione bende: Ariae Montanij39 sijnonuma rulandi40 hunnei dialectica dictionarium tetraglottum idem Terentius donati41 Terentius swaerdecronij42 prosodij smetij43 sijntaxio graeca Posselij44 het best aengaende de predestina: Adam olearius persiaensche reijse45 tonneel der noortsche landen46 den sweetschen oorlog overgeset door And[…] vander Wielen47 De regte outheijt, vande seven propositien door Simon Episcopius48 dictionarium teuton: latinum idem biblia latina tijt snipperinge van simon Beaum.t49 klagtige historien testament ’t samenspraecken vande predestinatien50 ondersoeck van g: Brant51 hollants opkomst52 d’onvergelijckelijke ariane53
In duodecimo 1 den herstelde leeuw54 2 opkomst der nederlantsche bewaerten 3 het leven ende bedrijff van de prince willem en Maurits55 4 testamentum latinum Beze56 5 Virgilius vertaelt door J: v: vondel57 6 schola salernitana58 7 manuala pasorio59 8 testamentum grecum 9 Virgilius cum notis farnabij60 10 barclaij argenis61 11 eiusdem satiricon62 12 lucius ann: florus63 13 thesaurus poeticus64 14 diogenes laertius van het leven der oude philosophen65 15 spaansche dromen66 16 conincklijck voorbeelt
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17 werck, meer werck67 18 sallustius crispus68 19 beschrijving van china 20 het gevoelen van verscheijde schrijvers aengaende de ketters69 21 persiaensche rosengaert70 22 Conincklijcke verdeding 23 hooft henricke de groot71 24 Den keijserlijcken gesand aen den groot soliman72 25 den hollebolligen buscon73 26 den welbereijden dischgenoot74 [27]verscheijde voijages 28 toetsteen der waersche75 29 nebulo nebulonum76 30 nieuwe testament 31 christelijcke hantboeck 32 ’t vermaerde leven van fredrick hendrick
1 2
3 4 5 6
7 8
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10 11 12
13
GAR, Weeskamer 460, pp. 687-91. The numbering is original; duodecimo no. 27 is misnumbered 26. Some ends of lines cannot be made out due to the binding. Johannes de Laet, Historie ofte iaerlijck verhael van de verrichtinghen der geoctroyeerde WestIndische Compagnie (Leiden: Elsevier, 1644). Specifically cited editions are in the University of Amsterdam library, except as noted. Johannes de Laet, Beschrijvinge van West-Indien, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Elsevier, 1630); 1st ed. 1625: Nieuwe Wereldt ofte beschryvinghe van West-Indien. Emanuel van Meteren, Belgische ofte Nederlantsche historie, van onsen tijden (Delft: J. Vennecool, 1599), with numerous maps (also ed. 1605). Antonio de Herrera, Nieuwe werelt, anders ghenaempt West-Indien (Amsterdam: Michiel Colijn, 1622), 3 vols. Petrus Scriverius, Oude en nieuwe beschryvinge van Holland, Zeeland en Vriesland, midsgaders de opkomste, geslachte, regeeringe en daden der selver Graven (The Hague: L. van Dijck, 1667). Translated from the Latin ed. Batavia illustrata (Leiden, 1609). Johannes Visscherus, Christelicke zede-kunst (Amsterdam: A. van Blancken, 1664; 1669). Historie van het leven en sterven van heer Johan van Oldenbarnevelt ([Rotterdam: Joannes Naeranus] 1648), signed “Liefhebber der Waarheydt,” probably Roeland de Carpentier. An edition of 1658 bears the false publication place of Loevesteijn [University of Leiden]. See Rotterdam bibliopolis, pp. 128-29. Simon Episcopius, Antwoort op de Proeve van Abrahamus Heydanus, tegen de Onderwysinge in de christelijcke religie, na de belijdenisse der Remonstranten (Rotterdam: Naeranus, 1643; 2nd ed. 1644). Johannis Wtenbogaerts Leven, kerckelycke bedieninghe ende zedige verantwoordingh (n. p., 1645); also eds. 1646 and 1647. An edition of Charles Estienne’s popular history, reprinted often in the 1600s, mainly in Geneva. Abrahamus Rogerius, De open-deure tot het verborgen heydendom, ofte waerachtigh vertoogh van het leven ende zeden (Leiden: Francoys Hackes, 1651). The preacher lived in Pulicat, India, from 1630 to 1647; this is an extensive description of Tamil religious practices. A publication related to the conference between Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants held in The Hague in 1612, for example, Schriftelicke conferentie, gehouden in s’Gravenhaghe (The Hague: H. van Wouw, 1612); or Johannes Wtenbogaert, Remon-
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15
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17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25
26 27 28
29
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strantie by de zes colloquenten vander Remonstranten weghen in de Haegsche Conferentie bekent (Rotterdam, 1618). Philippe de Mornay, Bybel der nature: dat is, van de waerheydt der christelijcke religie tegen de atheisten, epicureen, heydenen, Joden, mahumedisten (Amsterdam: H. Buck, 1602; J. Schipper, 1646). William Lithgow, 19 Jaarige Lant-reyse uyt Schotlant naer Europa, Asia ende Africa, voltrocken in drie Voyagien (Amsterdam: J. Benjamijn, 1652). Translated from the English ed. (London, 1632) [Harvard]. Johannes Wtenbogaert, Vrymoedigh ondersoeck van verscheyden placcaten, inde Gheunieerde Provincien, binnen twee iaeren herwaerts, gepubliceert teghen de christenen... diemen Remonstranten noemt, dienende mede tot justificatie vande selve Remonstranten (“Vryburch: A. Waermont,” but probably Antwerp, 1620). Pieter Andries Duyrcantius, Gereduceerde tafelen van interest (Rotterdam: A. Migoen, 1617; ed. 1638). Hugo Grotius, In-leydingh tot de hollandtsche rechtsgeleertheyt (Rotterdam: P. Corssen, 1631; also The Hague and Haarlem and later eds.). This volume of 146 maps first appeared in Amsterdam, 1608; 2nd ed. 1628; Dutch ed. 1630. Uncertain, but this may be a collected edition of the travel accounts of Thomas Herbert (1606-1682), Pietro della Valle, and Fernão Mendez Pinto. Grotius, Apologeticvs eorvm qvi Hollandiae Westfrisiaeqve et vicinis quibusdam nationibus ex legibus praeferunt ante mutationem quae evenit anno MDCXVIII (Paris: Buon, 1622); many eds. Also in Dutch: Verantwoordingh van de wettelijcke regieringh van Hollandt ende WestVrieslant (Hoorn: Van der Beeck, 1622). Attacked the legal actions against the Remonstrants in 1618, and advocated religious tolerance and the sovereignty of the provinces. Eduard Poppius, De enge poorte, ofte Predicatien over eenighe voortreffelijcke Texten (Gouda: J. Tournay, 1616); eds. Rotterdam, 1630, and Rotterdam: Naeranus, 1649. Jacob Westerbaen, Arctoa Tempe: Ockenburgh, woonstede van den Heere van Brandwyck (Delft: A. Bon, 1654). George Downing was the British envoy to the States General; between 1661 and 1667 numerous reports and replies were published. Probably: Mattheus Tengnagel, Het leven van Konstance, waer af volgt het tooneelspel De Spaensche heiden (Amsterdam: N. van Ravesteijn, 1643; later eds.), with prints by Pieter Nolpe after Simon de Vleiger, Pieter Quast, and Isaac Isaacsz. Hof-tapiit, tot cieraed vande niewe gewelfde Staet-Zael: Van’t vriie Batavia, door Mr. Willem van Velden, advccaet [sic] voor de Hoven van Justitie (The Hague: J. Veely, 1659). See Grotius, Apologeticus, above note 21. Willem Lodewijcksz, Historie van Indien, waerinne verhaelt is de avontuere die de Hollantsche schepen bejegent zijn (Amsterdam: C. Claesz, 1609; and ed. 1617), with 49 plates and maps. Geeraert Brandt, Historie der reformatie in Nederlandt [title plate]; Verhaal van de reformatie in en ontrent de Nederlanden (Amsterdam: Jan Rieuwertsz, 1663). Ed. 1657: Kort verhael van de Reformatie, en van den oorlogh tegen Spanje, in, en ontrent de Nederlanden. Lambert van den Bos, Het treur-toonneel der doorluchtige mannen onser eeuwe (Amsterdam: Nicolaes van Ravesteyn, 1650; ed. 1653). J.H. Glazemaker, Toonneel der werreltsche veranderingen…uit verscheide schrijvers, door I. H. Glazemaker vertaalt (Amsterdam: J. van Hilten, 1651). Abraham van de Corput, De goddelicke vierschare, dat is, ontdeckinge der hemelsche oordeelen, 4 vols. (Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Dordrecht, 1659-69). [Johan de La Court], Politike discoursen handelende in ses onderscheide boeken (Leiden: Hackius, 1662; also Amsterdam). A treatise against monarchy as well as excessive power of the church and factions.
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34 Bloemkrans van verscheiden gedichten (Amsterdam: L. Spillebout, 1659). 35 Probably a version of the Practice of Piety (1611) by the Puritan writer Lewis Bayly [Harvard]. It appeared in German as Praxis pietatis [www.vd17.de] and in Dutch as De practycke, ofte oeffeninge der godtsaligheydt (Amsterdam, 1645; later eds.). 36 Hans von Lehsten’s German translation of Curtius Rufus’ life of Alexander, first published in 1653, Von den Tahten Alexanders des Grossen (Rostok, 1653; eds. 1658, 1666) [Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin; www.vd17.de]. 37 One of the numerous editions of Philips van Marnix van Sint Aldegonde, De byencorf der H. roomsche kercke (1st ed. 1574: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague). 38 [Pieter de La Court], Historie der gravelike regering in Holland (Amsterdam: Vinckel, 1662). Critique of the stadhouder system. 39 Benidictus Arias Montanus, ed., Novum Testamentum graece (Antwerp, 1572) [Harvard]; many later eds. 40 Martin Ruland, Synonymia Latino Graeca (1618; later eds.). 41 An edition of the Comedies with commentary by Donatius. 42 Terence’s Comedies translated by Henricus Zwaerdecroon were published in Rotterdam by Joannes Naeranus in 1648, in three printings [Rotterdam Bibliopolis, pp. 104-5]. 43 Henricus Smetius, Prosodia promtissima (1614; revised ed. Amsterdam, 1648). 44 An edition of Johannes Posselius, Syntaxis graeca (1565, many later eds.). 45 Adam Olearius, Persiaensche reyse uyt Holsteyn, door Lijflandt, Moscovien, Tartarien in Persien (Amsterdam: J. Benjamyn; and J. Jansz, 1651). 46 Olaus Magnus, Toonnel der noordische landen (Amsterdam: N. van Ravesteyn, 1652; ed. 1662; first published 1596). 47 Galeazzo Gualdo Priorato, trans. Andries vande Wiele, Der Sweeden oorlogh in Duytslandt (Haarlem: V. Casteleyn, 1651). 48 Simon Episcopius, De rechte outheyt van seven propositien of Articulen (Rotterdam: Naeranus, 1644). 49 Simon van Beaumont, Horae succisivae: Tyt-snipperingen, vande jonckheyt, tot in dem ouderdom (Rotterdam: Naeranus, 1640). 50 Probably: Sebastien Castellion, Tsamenspeechinghen vande predestinatie (Gouda: Tournay, 1613), trans. from Latin ed. of 1553. An attack on Calvin’s views on Predestination. However, there are other works with similar titles. 51 Geeraet Brandt, Verlaet uw eigen vergaederinge niet: dat is, Onderzoek, of een remonstrant zijne vergaederinge uit eenige inzichten mach verlaeten (Amsterdam: J. Rieuwertsz, 1657). 52 Pieter de la Court, ed., Hollands Op-komst, oft bedenkingen op de schaadelijke schriften, genaemt graafelijke regeeringe en interest van Holland (Leiden: J. Princen, 1662). 53 Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, trans. Jan Schipper, De onvergelykelyke Ariane (Amsterdam, 1641; eds. 1646, 1656, 1661). 54 Lieuwe van Aitzema, Herstelde leeuw, of discours over ’t gepasseerde in de Vereenighde Nederlanden, in ’t iaer 1650, ende 1651 (The Hague: J. Veely, 1652; and other eds.). 55 Isaac Commelin, Wilhelmus en Maurits van Nassouw, prince van oranjen, haer leven en bedrijf (Amsterdam: Zwol, 1662). 56 The Bible edited by Theodorus Beza (1519-1605), of which numerous editions appeared in Holland. 57 Publius Virgilius Maroos Wercken, vertaelt door I.V. Vondel (Amsterdam: A. de Wees, 1646). 58 René Moreau, Schola Salernitana of behoudenis der gesontheyt (Amsterdam: C. Jansz, 1658); 1st ed. Paris, 1625. 59 Georgius Pasor, Manuale graecarum vocum N. testamenti (Leiden: Elsevier, 1634); several later eds. 60 An edition of Virgil annotated by Thomas Farnaby (Amsterdam: J. Blaeu, 1650). 61 A narrative poem in Latin by the Scottish writer John Barclay, Argenis (1621; London, 1625). It was published in Holland in Latin (Leiden, 1627, etc.) and translated into Dutch by J.H. Glazemaker (Amsterdam, 1643). jacob ochtervelt’s rotterdam patron | 121
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62 John Barclay, Euphormionis Lusinini Satyricon (Paris, 1607); published in Leiden: Elsevier, 1655. 63 The Roman writer Lucius Annaeus Florus, probably an edition of his Epitome of Roman history. 64 Johann Buchler, Thesaurus phrasium poeticarum (Antwerp, 1620; Amsterdam, 1627, and many later eds.); some editions have the running title “Thesaurus poeticus.” 65 An edition of Diogenes Laertius’ biographies of Greek philosophers, Kort begrijp van Diogenes Laertius, zijnde het leven… der oude philosophen (Rotterdam: Naeranus, 1655). 66 An edition of Quevedo’s Los sueños (Dreams). The translation by Haring van Harinxma had a title print reading Spaensche dromen, oft seven wonderlijcke ghesichten (Leeuwarden: C. Fonteyne, 1641). 67 Alexander Cooke, Werck meer werck en noch wat meer wercks voor een mis-priester (Amsterdam: P. Matthijsz, ca. 1650). An anti-Catholic book translated from English, Worke, more worke, and a little more worke for a masse-priest (London: W. Iones, 1630) [Harvard]. 68 One of the many Dutch seventeenth-century editions of the works of the Roman writer Caius Sallustius Crispus. 69 Sébastien Castellion, Het gevoelen van verscheyden zo oude als nieuwe schrijvers, aengaende de ketters (Amsterdam: T. Jansz, 1663); originally published in French and Latin in 1555. 70 Sa‘di, trans. Jan van Duisberg, Perssiaansche roosengaard beplant met vermaaklijke historiën, scharp-zinnige redenen, nutte regelen, en leerrijke sin-spreuken (Amsterdam: J. Rieuwertsz, 1654) [a translation of Gulistan, written in Persian in 1258]. 71 P.C. Hooft, Henrik de Grote, zyn leven en bedryf (Amsterdam: W. Blaeu, 1626; later eds.). 72 Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq (a Fleming who was imperial ambassador in Istanbul, 155462), trans. Adiaen van Nispen, Den kaizarlikken gezant, Aug. Gisleen Busbeeq, aan den grooten Soliman (Dordrecht: J. Braat, 1652); first published in Latin: Antwerp, 1581. 73 An edition of Quevedo’s picaresque novel La vida del Buscón translated by Jacob de Lange: De holbollige Buskon (Amsterdam: H. de Vries, 1642); eds. 1656, 1659. 74 Jeremiah (Jeremy) Dyke, Een welbereidt dis-genoodt, aan de tafel des Heeren (Amsterdam: J. van Someren, 1659). Translation of A Worthy Communicant (London, 1636) [Harvard]. 75 Perhaps: Diederich Hamer, Toetsteen der waerheyt, de nieuwigheyt des pausdoms (Amsterdam: Saeghman, 1661-66). 76 Thomas Murner, ed. Johann Flitner, Nebulo nebulonum (Frankfurt: J. de Zetter, 1620; and later eds.) [Harvard; www.vd17.de]. This is a Latin version of Murner’s satirical work Die Schelmenzunft (1512), which attacked a broad range of people and institutions, including government corruption and Martin Luther.
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Did Rembrandt Travel to England? paul crenshaw Washington University in St. Louis
Michael Montias, having exhausted the Delft archives and become fully ensconced in a study of seventeenth-century Amsterdam auctions and patronage, once commented that the chance of finding a new document with Rembrandt’s name on it in the Amsterdam archive was staggeringly small. This amounted to a sobering assessment for me, as I had just embarked on a doctoral thesis investigating Rembrandt’s bankruptcy. Montias’ advice, and his practice, was to approach an archive in an expansive manner, rather than searching for specific items. This had worked well for him in his sweeping economic analysis of artists and artisans in Delft, and it allowed him to find unexpected new material related to Johannes Vermeer. The broad assessment allowed him to understand the new and previously known Vermeer material in fresh ways, illuminating his “milieu.” It is fair to say that this approach revitalized Vermeer studies. With respect to Rembrandt, Montias remarked to me a few years ago, “It is more likely that one will find a new document somewhere other than Amsterdam.” After this introduction, I should say straightaway that I do not present a new Rembrandt document in this paper. But prompted by Montias’ advice and example I return to a question that was raised – and roundly dismissed – in the early twentieth century: Did Rembrandt travel to England? Cornelis Hofstede de Groot proposed the hypothesis in 1897 on the basis of an eighteenth-century English diary entry that claimed Rembrandt had spent the better part of a year and half in Yorkshire around 1662.1 Hofstede de Groot found corroboration in several drawings of London by Rembrandt, and his argument was supported by a number of scholars prior to the Second World War.2 Otto Benesch did not support the idea, dating the drawings to circa 1640 and suggesting that they could easily have been copied from other representations.3 Indeed, Rembrandt’s friend and colleague Jan Lievens returned to Leiden briefly in 1640 after spending nearly a decade in London and
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Antwerp, and he later took up residence in Amsterdam. When the visual evidence supporting the idea of Rembrandt’s English sojourn was discredited, the idea lost all favor in the modern literature. In fact, one now reads in virtually every monograph that Rembrandt never left the Dutch Republic. Lacking both visual evidence and firm documentation, some would consider it foolhardy to resuscitate the idea. However, the circ*mstantial evidence is not insignificant, and the coincidences among disparate and distinct strands of evidence in the documentary record are difficult to deny. By looking closely at Rembrandt’s commission for the Amsterdam Town Hall in 1661-62, seeing the lacunae in the otherwise copious documentation, and perhaps most tellingly, by considering Rembrandt’s financial strain and public disgrace in the wake of his bankruptcy in relation to the actions of other artists who found themselves in similar predicaments, the idea that Rembrandt might have left Amsterdam for a time presents itself not as a far-fetched notion, but as a viable explanation to many questions. In brief, Rembrandt’s financial dilemma, and particularly his declaration of bankruptcy in 1656, largely resulted from an unresolved debt on his house.4 Direct contributing factors were his proclivity for collecting art in large quantity and at tremendous expense, even when saddled with debt, and his contentious relations with patrons, especially among the Amsterdam political elite. Other issues that added to his problems included an apparent decline in his production in the 1640s, some questionable marketing strategies, and economic strains brought about by the first Anglo-Dutch War of 1652-54. Moreover, chaos in Rembrandt’s personal life, especially the illegitimate pregnancy of his paramour Hendrickje Stoffels, affected his standing in the eyes of his community. The generally underhanded manner in which he handled his insolvency surely caused another “black eye” for him. He tried to keep his house out of the hands of his creditors by assigning the deed to his son, Titus, ostensibly in fulfillment of his wife Saskia’s legacy. This was a borderline legal action, and caused a court battle between the Orphanage Chamber, which was looking out for Titus’ interests, and the Chamber of Insolvent Estates, which of course wanted to satisfy Rembrandt’s creditors. By declaring bankruptcy, Rembrandt avoided the difficult but socially responsible compromises that other artists made under such strain. In severe cases, some artists resorted to indentured service, or at least worked out contractual arrangements to hand over part of their production in order to satisfy their creditors. Rembrandt did make amends with some of his creditors by offering gifts of his work in exchange for patience, or outright absolution of obligations. He also signed several agreements with the dealer and collector Lodewijck van Ludick, but he largely reneged upon these. Rembrandt made little, or no effort to satisfy most of his creditors. In the end, only the politically powerful burgomaster Cornelis Witsen was able to fully recover what he was owed. 124 | in his milieu
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A survey of the actions of other artists who went bankrupt, or otherwise suffered severe fiscal problems reveals that one common recourse was simply to leave town. This was done presumably in order to escape stigma and gain a fresh start, or to seek out more promising prospects elsewhere. Some, like Jan Baptist Weenix and Roelandt Saverij, had already declined to such an extent that they died shortly after moving out of their respective towns. Others, including Jan Porcellis, moved several times under pressure but recovered to find critical acclaim and wealth. The predicament of Christiaen van Couwenberg sheds light on this ordinary result of financial difficulty. A history and portrait painter, Van Couwenberg enjoyed prominent commissions from the Dutch court between 1638 and 1653.5 He gained a hefty inheritance of fl. 6,500 from his wife Elisabeth van der Dussen in 1653, but for some reason was still heavily indebted when he moved to Cologne the following year.6 A letter of 16 January 1656 from several magistrates on behalf of the sheriff, burgomasters, and councilmen of The Hague gave Van Couwenberg a positive recommendation, calling him a good painter and virtuous father who had done his best to pay off all of his debts before he left.7 It is clear that Van Couwenberg had to protect himself from a bad reputation brought about by his indebtedness. Returning to the case for Rembrandt’s sojourn, in a manuscript titled Vertue’s Diaries, written in 1713, the author George Vertue relates a claim that Rembrandt was in England.8 The entry consists of two parts. The left column states: “Reported by old Laroon who in his youth knew Rembrandt at York.” The right column continues: Rembrant van Rhine was in England, liv’d at Hull in Yorkshire about sixteen, or eighteen months where he painted several Gentlemen and seafaring mens pictures, one of them is in the possession of Mr. Dahl, a sea captain with the name, Rembrandts name and the year 1662/1. (Christian) Marcellus Laroon the Elder, a painter and engraver, was born in The Hague in 1653 and died in London around 1702. The parenthetical note at the end of the entry means that the information came from a man named Christian Reisen.9 The exact time of Laroon’s move to London is not documented. The Mr. Dahl who owned the painting was Michael Dahl the Elder, a Swedish portrait painter who lived in England after 1689. The subject would have appealed to him, although his fashionable style of a later generation was sufficiently removed from Rembrandt to probably rule out any notion of a fake, or ruse. Needless to say, there is no known Rembrandt painting that fits these criteria. The unusual manner of writing the date, with the 2 over the 1, indicates the disjunction between the Dutch and English calendars. In other words,
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the painting was purportedly made in the first quarter of 1662 by today’s common calendar. The entry strikes one at first glance as nothing more than gossip, but then again, what would be the motivation to formulate a tale like that? Deliberately false eighteenth-century anecdotes were generally more pointed and rarely bothered with such specificity. And if it was a fabrication, then the author got extremely lucky, because as it turns out, 1661-62 proves to be one of the few periods when Rembrandt is not documented in Amsterdam. To be specific, he is not reliably placed in Amsterdam between 25 October 1661, the date of a funeral ticket on which he drew a sketch for his painting Oath of the Batavians in the Town Hall, and 28 August 1662, when he made a contract to repay Van Ludick, the terms of which related to the payment Rembrandt was supposed to receive for the same painting. Granted, this is not quite a period of sixteen to eighteen months, as the diary indicated, but at ten months it is the largest lacuna in the documentation of Rembrandt’s late career. There is one other supporting and independent piece of hearsay. The eighteenth-century art dealer Edmé-François Gersaint, author of the first published catalogue raisonné of Rembrandt’s prints in 1751, claimed that Rembrandt’s wife was skilled in finding buyers for his works at very high prices.10 While Gersaint may have meant Saskia, it is more likely the anecdote referred to Hendrickje. She and Titus did in fact formulate an art-dealing business in 1658, though it was largely a ploy to shelter Rembrandt from further claims by his creditors once his protection from the bankruptcy chamber had concluded. Gersaint also mentioned Titus as a dealer. Gersaint’s passage reads: There is a singular anecdote about this. She persuaded her husband to leave Amsterdam secretly and remain away for some time; she then started rumors to the effect that he was dead, and wore mourning for him. The purpose of this stratagem was to encourage art lovers to come to her and beg her to sell them some of Rembrandt’s work; with which requests she complied, pointing out to them that he would never paint again. Some time afterward, Rembrandt reappeared. This story may be a clever fable, based on his wife’s reputed cleverness at selling her husband’s work. It would be folly indeed to place too much emphasis on a legend that even Gersaint himself doubted, but the semblance of the story seems to corroborate the idea that Rembrandt left Amsterdam late in his life. It is worth exploring at some length the machinations surrounding the Town Hall commission.11 In 1659, Rembrandt’s former pupil Govaert Flinck received the crowning commission of his life, to paint the lunettes and arcades in the central galley of the Town Hall. Certainly the major factor in his selec-
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tion was his intimate contact with Andries and Cornelis De Graeff. 12 Flinck died, however, on 2 February 1660. This was just after the new burgomaster elections, and Rembrandt apparently did not have enough supporters in high places when it was decided that the project would be divided. Jan Lievens and Jacob Jordaens were given a commission for one painting each, on, or before 13 January 1661.13
Fig. 1. Rembrandt, Oath of the Batavians (Claudius Civilis), c.1661-1663, oil on canvas. Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, © Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York.
The choices are hardly surprising. Jordaens provided the most viable link to the international acclaim and artistic legacy of Rubens. Lievens had worked at courts in London, Antwerp, and The Hague, a factor that would have allowed the leaders of Amsterdam to boast that they had secured the services of one of the best painters in Europe. Furthermore, he had already painted a Quintus Fabius Maximus in the Burgomeesters-kamer in 1656, and he had painted the portraits of Andries de Graeff and his wife, Agneta Bicker. Lievens and Jordaens worked expediently, were paid well for their efforts, and Jordaens in particular was honored by the city of Amsterdam in a spectacular fashion: on 28 April 1662, he was awarded a gold medal.14 Turning to Rembrandt, no contract exists to affirm the beginning date of his commission for the Oath of the Batavians (Fig. 1). We know little about how the Amsterdam governing body arrived at its decisions regarding municipal commissions. Possibly an artistic adviser or project coordinator was involved. It is an interesting correspondence that the dealer Hendrick Uylenburgh died in 1661. His position in the Amsterdam art world may have been
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powerful enough to prevent Rembrandt from gaining municipal commissions. Even though the two had once been partners and were related by marriage, there was intermittent strife between them in later years. Almost certainly the artist’s affairs with Geertje Dircx and Hendrickje Stoffels, and the illegitimate birth of Cornelia, would have revolted the Mennonite Uylenburgh. Ultimately, however, the decision on the commission must have belonged to the burgomaster quartet. The burgomasters themselves approved the payments to Jordaens and Lievens in 1661. In February 1661, the makeup of the quartet saw Cornelis van Vlooswijck presiding, and he was joined by Jan van der Poll and Gerard Simonsz. Schaep. Van Vlooswijck and Van der Poll were both ardent Remonstrants.15 Rembrandt had many connections with Remonstrants from the earliest point in his career to the latest, and they may have been inclined to help him. Schaep was a Calvinist, allied with Nicolaes Tulp, an early patron of Rembrandt and more recently the father-in-law of Jan Six. Schaep’s nephew, Gerard Pietersz. Schaep (1595-1655), had once lauded Rembrandt in his Zabynaja, of vermomde loosheid (“Cunning in Disguise”), which was translated into verse by Jan Zoet and published in 1648.16 The fourth member was Cornelis de Graeff, who was not particularly disposed to help Rembrandt, but who does not seem to have hindered him either. Rembrandt must have been working on the project by, or around 25 October 1661, since this is the date of the funeral ticket on the back of which he sketched a composition now in Munich.17 The Munich drawing likely represents an intermediate phase of the project, as Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann proposed, rather than the beginning.18 Rembrandt must have started the painting a significant amount of time before, perhaps the summer of 1661. Determining when Rembrandt completed the Civilis is another problem. Melchior Fokkens, in his Beschrijvinge der wijdt-vermaarde koop-stadt Amstelredam of 1662, stated that four paintings out of eight that were to tell the story of the war of the Batavians and the Romans had been completed.19 He dated the preface of his book 21 July 1662. A different confirmation of Rembrandt finishing the project comes from a contract between him and the art dealer and collector Lodewijk van Ludick that was signed five weeks later, on 28 August 1662.20 In this agreement, Rembrandt was to pay Van Ludick one-fourth of his profit “from the painting he delivered to City Hall when he presents his bill and whatever he might earn from retouching it, or any other benefits that may accrue in other respects.” The mentions of “retouching” and “other benefits” can be explained in a number of ways. Most art historians have assumed that the burgomasters demanded changes, and that this was related to the painting’s eventual removal. Albert Blankert has demonstrated that Ferdinand Bol made at least five preliminary sketches
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for his 1656 painting Pyrrhus and Fabritius in the Burgomasters’ Chamber, altering his style significantly, presumably in an effort to meet the demands of the city leaders.21 Van de Waal proposed that Rembrandt’s picture could have been considered indecorous because Rembrandt showed the wounded eye of Civilis, and because of the barbarous sword ritual that the artist displayed.22 Many scholars have also looked at the style of the painting and concluded that Rembrandt was out of touch with the current taste.23 If Rembrandt were indeed asked to make changes, then it is probable, especially given the wording of the Van Ludick contract, that he expected supplementary remuneration for the extra commitment. The burgomasters undoubtedly felt differently, to judge from the conditions imposed on Lievens and Jordaens. The clerk’s note of 13 January 1660 that announced the commissions to these two other artists expressly stated that nothing more was to be given above the 1,200 guilders, even if alterations were required.24 In addition, the terms of the contract with Van Ludick included “any other sort of benefit which the artist was to gain in relation to the picture.” This leads one to wonder whether Rembrandt also hoped –, or even expected – to be granted some sort of honor such as the medal given to Jordaens. While the possible objections to a breach of decorum are not unlikely, the suppositions about style are less convincing, particularly the assumption that Rembrandt’s painting failed to match some classicizing expectation on the part of the burgomasters. Really, it is striking how caliginous all of the works of the Town Hall are, contrary to classicizing norms. This darkness is partly due to the inevitable sinking of oil pigments, exacerbated by an obscuring layer of varnish that currently smothers each of the paintings, but it is also in large part a matter of the style employed by the painters. In addition, the works are quite painterly in execution, contrary to the smooth surfaces usually associated with Dutch classicism of the latter part of the century. These paintings were made to be seen from a good distance, and therefore were broadly painted. Lievens’ Brinio Raised on a Shield is especially roughly executed, its brushwork and coloring indebted to Titian via Van Dyck, but taken to extremes of turbid scumbling. Even Jordaens’ paintings fail to earn a classicizing label, especially in comparison to the nearby sculptural elements by Artus Quellijn. Rembrandt’s piece is also extremely rough, even in comparison to his other late work, but he too was aware that the illusionistic effects would have to carry over a long distance. His Oath of the Batavians would certainly not have been out of place stylistically, but again the matter of decorum is another issue. Whatever the situation, it is likely that Rembrandt did not proceed quickly enough for the town leaders. Lievens and Jordaens had completed their paintings for the Hall in only a few months, and Rembrandt had not completed the project, or submitted a bill in over a year. He was notorious for
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working slowly on his portraits, but there must have been other reasons for him taking so long to bring this painting to fruition. Was he simply not in Amsterdam for most of the year 1662? In the end, time was not on Rembrandt’s side. A visit from Maximilian Heinrich of Bavaria, Archbishop and Elector of Cologne, was expected at the end of September 1662, and it soon became clear that the burgomasters and Rembrandt were not going to settle, though whether the issue was decorum, cost, or timeliness, we cannot be sure. Rembrandt’s painting was removed, and Jurriaen Ovens, a former student of Rembrandt and assistant to Flinck, quickly completed another version of the Oath of the Batavians that was installed in time for the festivity and still occupies the lunette today. Ovens was said to have made his painting in only four days, using the original sketch that Flinck had prepared in 1659, and he was compensated only 48 guilders.25 Rembrandt was paid nothing by the Treasury of Amsterdam. Rembrandt had little latitude with the Amsterdam burgomasters elected in early 1662. The favorable, or at least neutral, gentlemen of the previous year who had awarded him the Oath of the Batavians commission had given way as Cornelis De Graeff once again held the magnificaat as the returning member. He was joined by Hendrik Hooft and Cornelis de Vlaming van Outshoorn, both probably impartial toward Rembrandt, although Hooft was quite familiar with the seedier side of Rembrandt’s life, having heard Geertje Dircx’s allegations in 1649.26 It was the last member of the quartet, however, who might have provoked the controversy over the Oath and caused its removal. This was Cornelis Witsen, the man who had loaned Rembrandt over fl. 4,000 the first time he was made burgomaster in 1653. But later, on his second election to that post in 1658, he had been first in line to collect his money from the Bankruptcy Chamber after forcing Rembrandt to sell his house.27 The third time Witsen was elected, in 1662, bad fortune again hit the artist with the Civilis and its eventual rejection. Why would Rembrandt have gone to England in late 1661, or early 1662? Did his most public painting since the Nightwatch not earn the acclaim he felt he deserved? Did it make his already public personal affairs even more notorious? When Witsen was re-elected, Rembrandt may have anticipated further animosity. Hull, one of the closest ports of entry to England from Amsterdam, maintained many trading contacts with the continent and would have provided a natural destination. Rembrandt certainly could have found patrons there with connections to Holland. The diary entry says that he painted a ship’s captain, and this would be consistent with the type of clientele Rembrandt would have encountered there. But he may have set his sights higher. The summer of 1661 saw the coronation of Charles II, and it is possible that Rembrandt went to England in the hope of gaining access to the new court: a fresh start, an escape from stigma, a new appreciation.
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An absence of evidence should not be confused with evidence of absence. Nonetheless, there is some reason to believe the anonymous diary entry of the eighteenth century that indicated Rembrandt spent time in England. While the known documents and the extant paintings cannot confirm such a trip, reading between the lines and piecing the disparate strands of evidence together make this the most logical explanation to a number of questions, especially regarding the Amsterdam Town Hall commission. Leaving town was a common remedy for artists who encountered the stigma of personal turmoil, and Rembrandt certainly had his share. Moreover, he possessed the stature and international fame to seek out a better opportunity abroad. Still, the case is circ*mstantial, and unless a new document is found, or a portrait turns up that is signed in the manner indicated by the diary, the question posed here will likely remain a side note in the Rembrandt biography. It is the type of mystery that Michael Montias surely would have enjoyed.
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Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, “Heeft Rembrandt in Engeland vertoefd?” Oud Holland 15 (1897): 193-98. Arthur M. Hind, “Rembrandt’s Supposed Drawings of Old St. Paul’s,” Burlington Magazine 7 (1910): 334; Ursula Hoff, “Rembrandt und England,” Ph.D. diss., Hamburg, 1935; G. Wimmer, “Das Problem der Reise Rembrandts nach England,” Die Graphische Künste n.s.1 (1936): 144ff. The drawings are nos. 785-788 in Otto Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt. A Critical and Chronological Catalogue (London, 1954-57) (hereafter as Benesch). Otto Benesch, Rembrandt: Werk und Forschung (Vienna, 1935), and repeated in Benesch, no. 786. Christopher White, “Did Rembrandt Ever Visit England?” Apollo n.s. 76 (1962): 177-184, gives further consideration to the drawings. On the subject of a possible 1662 visit, White referred to it as a “stark improbability.” Michiel Roscam Abbing, The Treasures of Rembrandt (London: Carlton Publishing Group, 2006), p. 53, also referred to the Hull anecdote as not true, but in subsequent communication supports the hypothesis presented here. For my full study of Rembrandt’s bankruptcy, see Paul Crenshaw, Rembrandt’s Bankruptcy: The Artist, His Patrons, and the Art Market in Seventeenth-Century Netherlands (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). The question of this paper is raised in the book, but is not as fully examined as here. Edwin Buijsen, Charles Dumas, Rudolf E.O. Ekkart, et al., Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw: Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag 1600-1700 (Zwolle: Waanders, 1998), p. 296. W.C. Maier-Preusker, “Christiaen van Couwenbergh, 1604-1667. Oeuvre und Wandlungen eines holländischen Caravaggisten,” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 52 (1991): 172. Maier-Preusker 1991, pp. 172-73. This entry was first published correctly by Hofstede de Groot 1897, although it was earlier known to scholars from a mention by Walpole in 1763. It is also transcribed in Cornelis Hofstede de Groot and M.C. Visser, Die Urkunden über Rembrandt, 1575-1721 (The Hague, 1906), no. 394. Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, “Varia Omtrent Rembrandt,” Oud Holland 19 (1901): 91, n. 2.
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10 Edmé François Gersaint, Catalogue raisonné de toutes les pièces qui forment l’oeuvre de Rembrandt (Paris, 1751), p. xxviii. 11 A fuller version of these political considerations can be found in Paul Crenshaw, Rembrandt’s Bankruptcy, Ph.D. diss., New York University, 2000, pp. 174-186. 12 Flinck was contracted on 28 November 1659 to paint twelve pieces for the gallery of the Town Hall, two per year, for 1,000 guilders each. 13 GAA (Gemeentearchief Amsterdam), Ms. Res. Thes. Ord., no. 2, f. 66. 14 GAA, Ms. Res. Thes. Ord., no. 2, f. 97v. For more on the payments to these artists, and the municipal support for Jordaens’ delivery of his painting, see Crenshaw 2000, esp. p. 176. 15 Johann E. Elias, De Vroedschap van Amsterdam 1578-1795 (Haarlem, 1903-05), vol. 1, p. cxiv, n. 1. 16 Jan Zoet, Zabynaja, of vermomde loosheid (Amsterdam, 1648), fol. C2. See Walter L. Strauss et al., The Rembrandt Documents (New York, 1979) [hereafter as Documents], 1648/9, for a reproduction of the page on which Rembrandt is mentioned. 17 Benesch, no. 1274; Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, inv. no. 1451. For transcription and bibliography, see Documents, 1661/3. 18 Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, “Eine unbekannte Vorzeichnung zum Claudius Civilis,” in Otto von Simson and Jan Kelch, eds., Neue Beiträge zur Rembrandt-Forschung (Berlin, 1973), pp. 31-41. 19 Melchior Fokkens, Beschrijvinge der wijdt-vermaarde koop-stadt Amstelredam (Amsterdam, 1662), pp. 159ff. 20 Documents, 1662/6, although the English translation given there wrongly indicates that Rembrandt had not yet finished the painting. 21 Albert Blankert, Kunst als regeringszaak in Amsterdam in de 17e eeuw: Rondom schilderijen van Ferdinand Bol (Lochem, 1975). 22 Henri van de Waal, “The Iconological Background of Rembrandt’s Civilis,” Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 25, nos. 1-2 (1956): 11-24. 23 Henri van de Waal, Drie eeuwen vaderlandsche geschied-uitbeelding, 1500-1800: Een iconologische studie (The Hague, 1952), vol. 1, pp. 224ff.; Carl Adam Johan Nordenfalk, The “Batavians’ Oath of Allegiance”: Rembrandt’s Only Monumental Painting (Stockholm, 1982), p. 37. 24 Nordenfalk 1982, pp. 23ff. 25 B.J. Buchbinder-Green, The Painted Decorations of the Town Hall of Amsterdam, Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1974, p. 201. 26 Documents, 1649/6. 27 For more on the relationship between Rembrandt and Witsen, see Crenshaw 2006.
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The Antwerp-Mechelen Production and Export Complex neil de marchi and hans j. van miegroet Duke University, Durham
Introduction In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Antwerp and its near-neighbor Mechelen comprised a formidable complex for the production and export of paintings. Antwerp’s production capability has begun to receive renewed scholarly attention,1 and the activity of such leading Antwerp traders in paintings as the Van Immerseel-Fourmestraux, Forchondt, and Musson-Fourmenois firms has been known about for some time. Mechelen, however, has never commanded the same interest. Several archival-based studies on aspects of the painters’ guild have appeared over the years.2 However, the city has often been marginalized as a center of artistic production. Our aim here is to provide a quantitative basis for appreciating Mechelen as a production center of paintings and to suggest that Antwerp and Mechelen were part of a single artistic-economic complex. The two cities complemented each other in three ways. First, they avoided overlapping specialization by product type. Mechelen’s artists for the most part made “watercolor” (waterverf) paintings on thin linen, whereas Antwerp artists mostly painted in oil on panel and on canvas. This specialization allowed the painters in each city separately to take advantage of economies of scale and to hone specific applications of their respective methods. Second, Mechelen painters depended heavily on Antwerp dealers to market their work. Many artists/dealers handled paintings in Mechelen, but the record points to Antwerp merchants as the principal controllers of the export of paintings and their sale in foreign markets. This arrangement was almost inevitable; Antwerp was four to five times as large as Mechelen. More importantly, for much of the sixteenth century, Antwerp had a resident population of foreign merchants, and its fairs were internationally known. Mechelen had neither of those trading advantages. Finally, whereas both oil paintings from Antwerp and watercolors from Mechelen were available at a range of prices, there was little over-
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lap in the two ranges. Using seventeenth-century data, the bulk of Mechelen paintings sold for between 8 and 60 stuivers (0.4 to 3.0 guilders), while relatively few Antwerp oil paintings were priced at, or under 3 guilders.3 It is not misleading to think of Mechelen’s watercolorists as catering to a market whose demand curve – more accurately, price-sensitivity curve – was more elastic, flatter than, and mostly below the one facing Antwerp painters. The two cities together therefore could cover the full range of prices and tap into buyers both high and low on the wealth pyramid. Figure 1 portrays this schematically.4
Antwerp oil paintings
Mechelen watercolors
Fig. 1. Price sensitivity curves for the high and low ends of the market.
There was precedent in Mechelen’s history as a textile producer for occupying the lower reaches of a market. The city was repeatedly forced to adapt its textiles to what would sell in the face of changing pressures imposed by international competition.5 In large part this meant cutting costs and prices, though ultimately also compromising on quality. Despite these moves, over the extended period 1322-1550, the volume of traditional luxury textiles produced in Mechelen fell by a full nine-tenths.6 Perhaps sensing that the authorities might be more open to facilitating alternative low-cost exports once even quality-compromised textiles could no longer compete, the painters, in the 1530s, sought permission to reorganize. By the early 1540s, from having been a “company” (gezelschap), they had become a guild proper. Within a very few years new masters were being added at a surprising rate and, with a short lag, apprentices in even more startling numbers (see Fig. 2).7 This early growth was interrupted by iconoclastic riots in the 1560s and by political conflict between Spain and the orangist faction in the 1580s. Each time the guild recovered, though a period of stagnation followed in the 1630s and 1640s, presaging long-term decline. 134 | in his milieu
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Fig. 2. New apprentices in the Mechelen painters’ guild, 1540-1700. Source: Mechelen, Stadsarchief, DD Notices S1 no. 32. Also published by H. Coninckx, “Memorien wegens de Mechelse Schilders ende Beeldsnyders uyt den ambachts boeck. De Leerjonghens boeck,” Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren en Kunst van Mechelen 13 (1903): 177-204.
Just why the painters succeeded so well in the mid-sixteenth century is unclear.8 We confine ourselves therefore to delineating the scope of Mechelen’s success after 1540 and the mechanisms involved. We will try first to quantify the production of paintings, then begin to explore marketing mechanisms. Not enough is known as yet to generalize about the channels of selling, but we draw attention to a fifteenth-century connection between the painters and the Franciscans that may have resulted in sales through a dedicated venue similar to the early panden (cloister-like structures) of Antwerp. And we illustrate the energy and creativity involved in the Mechelen primary (first-sale) market through two episodes, from the boom periods of 1555 to 1564 and 1596 to 1619. Rules were bent in both instances, in the first by dealers, and in the second by apprentices, each seeking competitive advantage through price in crowded markets, one for paintings and the other for painters’ services.
How large was the output of paintings in Mechelen? To answer this question we need a representative price for paintings at the upper and lower ends of the market. If the daily wage of an established artist,
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or artists is also known, the prices can be divided by the daily wage to determine the number of days required to produce an upper-level painting and one at the lower level. Output per artist per week and per year can then be inferred. We assume a six-day workweek and, as is commonly done for this period, a working year of 270 days (38.5 weeks). Finally, if we know the number of masters at a point in time, total production at that moment follows as the simple product of this number and of annual output per artist. Strong assumptions are involved here but the resulting numbers give us a sense of the potential for producing paintings in Mechelen during this era. As so often happens, we have in fact not an array but a single instance of prices and a single instance also of day rates. In 1654, the Mechelen painter Michiel Verhuyck, responding to an order placed with him by Willem Forchondt, stated that his “large” paintings would be priced at 36 stuivers and his “small” ones at 25.9 No subjects (or actual sizes) were given.10 However, the weighted average of Mechelen paintings purchased by the Forchondts from 1625 to 1669 was 35.5 stuivers (range 20-60) and for those purchased by Musson and Fourmenois from 1654 to 1674, 29 stuivers (range 8-46). These weighted averages incorporate all size variants and the whole range of subjects, and are thus representative. Since Verhuyck’s two prices are close to the weighted averages, his prices can serve as proxies for works at the upper and lower ends of the market, respectively. Turning to day rates, our one observation comes from a contract dated 5 March 1634, between the artist and dealer Gillis Nyns and the established (and much copied) painter of sea battles Baptist van Ophem. The terms required Van Ophem to work for Nyns for a period of two years, in the summer from 6 a.m. until dusk and in the winter from dawn until 8 p.m., for 16 stuivers per day.11 Combining the information in these two contracts, and assuming that the relationship between prices and day rates held also for the sixteenth century, we can generalize for the period 1540-1650: at the upper end a waterverf painting would have taken 2.25 days and at the lower end, 1.56 days.12 An artist in Mechelen, then, could have made in one week either 2.67, or 3.85 paintings, and in a year of 38.5 six-day weeks, either 103 paintings of the more costly sort, or 148 of the less expensive variety.
How many painters were at work in Mechelen? Here we know of three relevant pieces of information. First, in 1566 and again in 1568, the chronicler Marcus van Vaernewijck stated that Mechelen had upwards of 150 workshops of masters in the guild of painters (schilders), sculptors (beeldsnyders) and sculptors of small alabaster figures and altarpieces (kleynstekers).13 However, in the first boom period for new apprentices, from
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1555 to 1564 (Fig. 2), 86 percent of the guild masters whose workshops they joined and for whom a profession is known with some certainty were painters. Accepting the 150 figure, but adjusting for the proportion of painters among guild masters, we reach the number 129 for painters’ workshops. The 150 number itself is not improbable as an estimate for all masters.14 It is a total, moreover, that roughly accords with two other observations, one for the terminal year of the second boom, 1596-1619, and one for 1632, when accessions of apprentices were slowing (Fig. 2). The numbers contained in the information from 1619 and 1632 are in fact lower – by about a third – than the 150 estimate from the late 1560s, but they also come from a period when the guild had suffered losses as the population of the city slumped. The drop was sharp in the years 1585-94, following the reassertion of Spanish control over Antwerp and its neighbors: from a high of perhaps 30,000 in 1544 to 11,000.15 Mechelen’s population recovered somewhat but hovered around 20,000 in the seventeenth century.16 Setting aside the slump of 158594 as abnormal, the number of masters might be expected to have adjusted to the longer term decline in population from 30,000 to 20,000, a decrease of one-third. The second and third observations that contribute to our question concerning the number of painters in Mechelen are the following: a guild protest of 1619 was signed by 96 masters (not only painters);17 and in 1632, a guild account book (now lost) claimed 100 masters (not only painters), plus 8 widows and 27 journeymen (knechten) – qualified craftsmen who had not acquired the status of master.18 Martens has shown that in fifteenth-century Bruges, more than 70 percent of apprentice painters did not become masters.19 Many no doubt died, or dropped out during training, and for those who finished, the cost of mastership must have led many to practice as assistants, or journeymen rather than as free masters. We will treat the 1632 observation for Mechelen – 100 masters plus 27 journeymen – as the average relation prevailing there between the two, for painters. Our two seventeenth-century numbers for masters still need to be adjusted for the fact that in the 1596-1619 boom period, just 60 percent of the masters whose profession is known with some certainty were painters. Applying this reduces the number of master painters to 58 in 1619 and to 60 in 1632, an average of 59. Thus we are left with two adjusted numbers of painters: 159 (129 masters plus 30 journeymen) for the 1560s, and 69 (59 masters plus 10 journeymen) for 1619 and 1632.20 Using those figures, Mechelen’s total yearly output of paintings in the 1560s could have been between 16,377 and 23,532, and in the early decades of the seventeenth century between 7,107 and 10,212.
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How did Mechelen’s production capability compare with Amsterdam’s? Three comments on these results are in order. First, those for the early and mid-seventeenth century are comparable to Montias’ estimates for Amsterdam c. 1630.21 His estimated productivity is lower for paintings in the upper reaches (paintings costing fl. 10 and up): 1.6 versus our 2.7 paintings per week. The difference is less, though still present, for paintings at the low end (fl. 5-9): 3-4 versus 3.85. These differences, however, are consistent with the fact that Montias was dealing with oil paintings. The waterverf technique is faster for all but the most “monochromatic,” wet-in-wet, and single-layered of oil paintings – those of Jan van Goyen, for example. Montias takes 100 as the number of artists in Amsterdam in 1630, yielding between 9,000 and 15-18,000 paintings per year. At its peak, 1555-64, Mechelen’s production capacity was in fact closer to that of Amsterdam at its height (1650, with 175 artists), though with a population one-sixth as large.22 Second, whereas Amsterdam c. 1630 had a ratio of artists to population (’000) of only 0.8, and at its peak c. 1650 of just 1.0, Mechelen’s was perhaps 5.3 in the mid-sixteenth century and still 3.5 in 1632. Since Montias has argued persuasively that Amsterdam was at all times a net importer of paintings,23 it is likely that Mechelen was a net exporter, on a grand scale. Third, although the number of masters in Antwerp is difficult to estimate because we possess only the records of new masters added each year, employing conservative assumptions about net immigration and length of career, Antwerp probably had no fewer than 100 artists in 1630, a number also accepted by Montias.24 The actual number probably was much higher in the midsixteenth century, Antwerp’s apogee. Nevertheless, using the figure of 100 throughout for Antwerp, and applying Montias’ own assumptions about productivity in oil paintings, we infer an annual output for the AntwerpMechelen complex in the range of 9,000 to 15-18,000 for Antwerp (as for Amsterdam) plus either 16,000-23,500, or 7,000-10,200 for Mechelen in the mid-sixteenth and early seventeenth century, respectively. All told, then, and conservatively reckoned, the Brabantine complex had a production capability of between 25,000 and 40,000 paintings a year (mid-sixteenth century), or between 16,000 and 27,000 (c. 1630).
How were all the paintings made in Mechelen marketed? A Franciscan pand for Mechelen? The painters of Mechelen seem to have had close links to the Franciscans dating back to the mid-fifteenth century.25 On 16 October 1443, a contract was drawn up between the order and the painters concerning a yearly service in their Chapel of the Magdalene, located in the church of the Francis-
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Fig. 3. Anonymous, Franciscan Church and Cloister in Mechelen, ca. 1690-1710, engraving. Mechelen, Diocesan Museum.
cans.26 There is also some evidence that the Franciscans held exhibitions – and perhaps sales? – of paintings in their compound (Fig. 3).27 Such an arrangement would not have been unusual: the first pand in Antwerp was situated in the cloister of the Dominicans.28 But from the perspective of location, being able to use the cloister of the Franciscans in this way would have served the painters of Mechelen particularly well. Throughout the sixteenth century, a number of artists and dealers resided close to the Franciscan church and compound on the Katelijnestraat. This street ran from the administrative and commercial center of the city – the Town Hall and Grote Markt – past the Cathedral church of St. Rombouts (directly opposite the Franciscan church) and became the road to Antwerp (Fig. 4). Among prominent workshops on this road were those of the Bessenmeers and Verhulst families and dealers such as Claude Dorizzi (Dorisy) and Daniel Snellinck.29 The relation between the Franciscans and the painters must have ended soon after the religious riots of 1572, for in 1580 the church was sold to Adriaan Gootens, and many of the related buildings destroyed.30 There may be a connection between these events and what appears to have been a shift toward greater dependence on Antwerp dealers and traders for the marketing of Mechelen paintings.
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Fig. 4. Lodovico Guicciardini, Descrittione di tutti I Paesi Bassi: Plan of Mechelen, 1567. Reprint, Nicolaas Visscher, Amsterdam, 1680.
Dealers in various guises There is scattered evidence of paintings from Mechelen being exported to many points in Europe in the second half of the sixteenth century. Sometimes the connection was with an Antwerp dealer, as in the case of the artist/dealer Jan van Kessel, who rented a larger than usual space at the Exchange (beurs) pand in Antwerp and obtained some of his stock from Mechelen.31 Mechelen artists were also employed by Antwerp artists/dealers. It is not known whether Van Kessel had Mechelen artists in his employ, though that was the case with the artist/dealer Abraham Liesaert, who exported paintings made in Mechelen to Cologne.32 Another Antwerp master, the Italian transplant Anthonis di Palermo (master 1545), seems to have moved back and forth between Antwerp and Mechelen and worked with artists such as Jacob de Backer.33 Van Mander noted that Di Palermo profited handsomely from sales of paintings by De Backer, especially in France. 34 A second Italian, Claude Dorizzi, who held a large lottery of costly paintings, marble statues and alabaster reliefs on his premises in the Katelijnestraat in 1559, is also known to have exported paintings to Dordrecht.35 Finally, some Mechelen artists appear to have branched out and exported paintings made in the city. 140 | in his milieu
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One such was Cornelis Inghelrams (first apprentice taken in 1556), who sent paintings to Hamburg.36 Despite such indications that dealers based in Mechelen might have had direct relations with foreign clients, supplying Antwerp dealers was always important, and the balance seems to have tilted more in that direction over time. There are many instances in seventeenth-century Mechelen of artists employing other artists and sending their paintings to Antwerp dealers. Gillis Nyns fits this model; recall his 1634 contract with Van Ophem. The previous year he made a similar contract with the painter Cornelis Steenbanck.37 Earlier Nyns had supplied paintings to Chrisostomo van Immerseel, and he is recorded as having sold to Willem Forchondt in the late 1630s and early 1640s.38 The Nyns model – intermediary between Mechelen artists and Antwerp dealers/traders – likely applies to many others. This model seems to have gained currency. In a complaint lodged with the magistrates in 1619, Mechelen painters claimed that “foreign” merchants – thus including Antwerpenaren – had taken to stopping off to pick up paintings, then leaving immediately. This was in contrast to the earlier custom of merchants, who would spend up to two weeks in Mechelen, visiting artists and selecting paintings.39 Mechelen’s own dealers, it is implied, had taken to assembling stock for pick-up, either by “foreign” merchants, or more likely, their agents. Mechelen dealers in pursuit of competitive paintings Returning to Nyns and others like him, why would an artist/dealer in Mechelen employ another artist rather than purchase stock from artists’ shops? Two reasons suggest themselves. First, the strategy would make sense for a dealer who received regular orders from an Antwerp trader in paintings and who therefore could be reasonably sure of being able to sell large numbers of particular sorts and sizes. Second, there would also have been a security advantage to an artist under contract; in a crowded market for painters’ services, part of that advantage could be extracted by the employing dealer, who would also thereby save on costs. Not only was there, as noted, a tradition of vigorously pursuing cost advantages in the textile industry, but dealers in paintings behaved at times in ways that were unmistakably driven by that motive. An instance of such behavior is signaled by a guild complaint of 1562. Unnamed dealers were accused of undermining the accepted order by seeking out apprentices and drawing them away from their masters and into their own employ by offering loans with which apprentices could pay their mastership fee in advance. The advantage was that such apprentices could be used to paint selected subjects more cheaply than if they were fully trained and had become masters in the normal way.40
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Apprentices becoming entrepreneurs Nor was this sort of initiative limited to rogue dealers. In 1619, in the guild complaint already mentioned, masters alleged that apprentices were engaging in illicit competition by setting up clandestine workshops, outside the control of their masters and of course beyond the purview of the guild.41 Predictably, these illegal workshops were said to be selling cut-rate paintings. This complaint, like that of 1562, was made toward the end of a period of rapid expansion in the annual enrollment of apprentices (see Fig. 2 and Table 1). Such enrollment booms resulted from a perception by youngsters that painters faced a bright future. Initially, therefore, painters’ services must have been in strong demand. This was particularly so in the first few years of a twelve-year truce between the Spanish occupiers and the orangist faction from 1609 to 1621. This truce meant that both warring parties could trade without restriction, and the export market for paintings from Mechelen could reasonably have been expected to expand along with trade in general. But the truce caused a one-time boost, and after some time the increasing numbers of new apprentices would have begun to crowd the market. This upward surge, followed by a decline, is shown clearly in Table 1, column 1. The table also shows that in the early growth phase, painting was preferred above alternatives such as sculpture. The sculptors (column 2), for example, took in just 20 new apprentices in the first eleven years between 1600 and 1619, but 30 in the next eleven. So great was the demand for apprentices in the early years of this boom, and at the start of the truce, that in 1611 the Deans of the Guild asked permission of the magistrates to take in orphans from the city orphanage as additional “pupils,” even in cases where they already had apprentices.42 But when overcrowding began to be felt, both new master painters and trainees must have felt pressured to find market space for themselves. Apprentices caught in this situation could hardly be blamed for trying to establish a low-cost niche for themselves before being thrown onto the open market, nor could those who accepted early offers of guaranteed employment by dealers in the similarly crowded market of the early 1560s. Both were responding creatively to a rosy prospect turning gloomy.
Conclusions We have quantified the production of Mechelen, making possible a comparison with that of Amsterdam and creating a basis for a new assessment of the scope of the Mechelen-Antwerp complex. The numbers show very substantial production in a town far too small to absorb much of it. Exports therefore were essential. How was the exporting managed? Dealers filled various roles, some oper-
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Table 1. Apprentices accepted in the guild between 1600 and 1621, by category. Schilders (Painters)
BeeldKleyn snyders stekers (Sculptors) (MicroSculptors)
Stoffeer ders (Polychromers)
Other
TOTAL
1600 1601 1602 1603 1604 1605 1606 1607 1608 1609 1610 1611 1612 1613 1614 1615 1616 1617 1618 1619 1620 1621
9 7 12 6 5 5 6 2 6 13 9 13 16 14 13 14 8 5 9 8 3 1
5 2 0 2 0 3 3 1 3 0 1 8 2 2 3 3 3 1 4 1 3 0
0 0 3 1 1 3 1 1 2 5 3 2 4 0 1 2 1 1 4 2 5 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 1 1 0 0 2 0 0 2 0 2 1 3 0
1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 0 0
15 9 15 9 6 11 11 4 13 19 14 23 23 18 17 20 14 7 21 12 14 0
TOTAL %
184 62.3%
50 16%
42 14.2%
15 5%
5 1.5%
295 100%
Source: Mechelen, Stadsarchief, DD Notices S1 no. 32. Published by H. Coninckx, “Memorien wegens de Mechelse Schilders ende Beeldsnyders uyt den ambachts boeck. De Leerjonghens boeck,” Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren en Kunst van Mechelen 13 (1903): 177-204.
ating as international traders in Mechelen, though, by the seventeenth century, the prevailing model seems to have been that of intermediary feeding Antwerp merchants. Mechelen painters may have organized a pand in collaboration with the Franciscans, though more research is needed to determine this. When the Franciscans were forced out of the city, the Antwerp dealers became more central. But whereas once they had visited for extended periods, by the early 1600s they, or their agents could quickly pick up painting stocks from local intermediaries and illegal ateliers – to the chagrin of the established masters. We have also observed short economic cycles in the paintings market, and
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moves by dealers and apprentices to compete by price as markets became crowded in the later phase of a boom. Our next steps will be: (1) to create estimates for output in Antwerp in a way comparable to those we have arrived at for Mechelen; (2) to study closely the relations between painters in Mechelen and dealers in Antwerp in the seventeenth century; and (3) to verify whether there was indeed the shift in those relations that we suspect occurred. Authors’ Note: We were fortunate to have had Michael Montias on the team for our Mapping Markets project. He brought an extraordinary combination of skills and personal qualities to this, as to all his work: modesty, precision, expertise in statistical methods, to enlarge his intellectual resources as an economic historian. These resources enabled him to chart new directions in the study of art in context and to set new standards for interdisciplinary scholarship. Michael always put first the common goal of getting at the truth; in this, and in his great generosity toward younger scholars, he stood as a model to us all.
1
2
3
On both production and exports, see Filip Vermeylen, Painting for the Market: Commercialization of Art in Antwerp’s Golden Age (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003). See also his “Exporting Art across the Globe: The Antwerp Art Market in the Sixteenth Century,” in Reindert Falkenburg, Jan de Jong, Dulcia Meijers, Bart Ramakers, and Mariët Westermann, eds., Kunst voor de markt, 1500-1700, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 50 (1999): 13-25; and his “The Commercialization of Art: Painting and Sculpture in Sixteenth-Century Antwerp,” in Maryan W. Ainsworth ed., Early Netherlandish Painting at the Crossroads: A Critical Look at Current Methodologies (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 46-61, with “Commentary” by John Michael Montias (pp. 62-65). On the numbers of painters, see the last-mentioned, but also M.P.J. Martens and N. Peeters, “Artists by Numbers: Quantifying Artists’ Trades in Sixteenth-Century Antwerp,” in Molly Faries, ed., Making and Marketing: Studies of the Painting Process in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Netherlandish Workshops (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006). See, in particular, Eugeen van Autenboer, “Nota’s over de Mechelse Waterverfschilders,” Mechelse Bijdragen 11 (1949): 33-45; and Autenboer, “Mechelen in de 16de eeuw: Schade wordt toegebracht en hersteld,” Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren en Kunst van Mechelen 89 (1985): 197-242. See also Adolf Monballieu, “Documenten van het Mechels schilders- en beeld snijdersambacht. I. De Rolle van 1564,” Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren en Kunst van Mechelen 73 (1969): 88-106; and his “Documenten…II. Het rekwest van 1562 en het probleem van de 51 of 150 ateliers,” Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren en Kunst van Mechelen 75 (1971): 71-82. Among the still valuable older sources, see Emmanuel Neeffs, Histoire de la peinture et la sculpture à Malines, 3 vols. (Ghent: Vanderhagen, 1876). We are greatly indebted to Adolf Monballieu, Raphael De Smedt, and Joost Vander Auwera for directing us to materials in the Mechelen city archives. The numbers are derived from purchases of Mechelen paintings by the Forchondts and
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5
6
7
8
9 10 11 12
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Musson. See J. Denucé, Kunstuitvoer in de 17e eeuw te Antwerpen. De Firma Forchoudt (Antwerp: De Sikkel, 1931); and Erik Duverger, Nieuwe gegevens betreffende de kunsthandel van Matthijs Musson en Maria Fourmenois te Antwerpen tussen 1633 en 1681, reprint of Gentse Bijdragen tot de Kunstgeschiedenis en de Oudheidkunde 21 (1969). It is not quite accurate to speak of demand curves, since more was involved than the quantities purchased at different prices of the same good. Even cheaper paintings were differentiated by author and treatment. Figure 1 therefore conveys only the notion that buyers were not insensitive to price, and captures the fact that the market was segmented. The upper ranges belonged pretty much to oil paintings, the lower reaches to watercolors. Upper and lower here refer only to price, not to quality. This history of adaptation and compromise has been traced in detail by John H. Munro in “Spanish Merino Wools and the Nouvelles Draperies: An Industrial Transformation in the Late Medieval Low Countries,” Economic History Review 58 (2005): 431-84. See also Jean-Paul Peeters, “Het verval van de lakennijverheid te Mechelen in de 16de eeuw en het experiment met de volmolen,” Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring voor Outheidekunde, Letteren en Kunst van Mechelen 89 (1985): 143-95. Walter Prevenier and Wim Blockmans, De Bourgondische Nederlanden (Antwerp: Mercator Publishers, 1986), p. 95. These authors note various ways in which Mechelen sought to diversify beyond textiles; textiles, however, bore the brunt of competitive challenges. Records pertaining to masters have vanished, but in the case of apprentices the numbers, names, and the name of the master involved are preserved and have been published. See H. Coninckx, “Memorien wegens de Mechelse Schilders ende Beeldsnyders uyt den ambachts boeck. De Leerjonghens boeck,” Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren en Kunst van Mechelen 13 (1903): 177-204. Recent research can be applied to the question, but unfortunately space limitations preclude our examining it here. See, however, the argument of Jay Bloom that, from about 1470, linen paintings came to be used as a cheap substitute for tapestry: Jay Bloom, “Why Painting?” in Neil De Marchi and Hans J. Van Miegroet eds., Mapping Markets for Paintings in Europe, 1450-1750 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 1-17. One body of evidence that can be read as confirmatory of the Bloom thesis is the decorations of the principal Medici villa at Careggi: see Paula Nuttall, From Flanders to Florence: The Impact of Netherlandish Painting, 1400-1500 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004). See Denucé, Kunstuitvoer (1931), p. 289. There are indications as to how price varied by size and subject but the variations are such that at this stage we prefer to work with weighted averages. The contract is spelled out in Autenboer, “Nota’s” (1949), p. 38. Combining the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may stretch credulity. Montias, for example, found a “statistical anchor” for the 1540s in the day rate for master carpenters in Antwerp of 7.5 stuivers, which is much less than our 16 stuivers for a mid-seventeenth-century painter in Mechelen. However, the significant inflation of prices in Antwerp in the second half of the sixteenth century was almost matched by wage increases, leaving the relation between the two roughly the same. Both were stable in the seventeenth century. Moreover, the Antwerp experience was mirrored in Mechelen. See Jan A. van Houtte and Léon van Buyten in Charles Wilson and Geoffrey Parker eds., An Introduction to the Sources of European Economic History, 1500-1800 (London: Methuen, 1980), vol. 1, p. 105, fig. 4.15; Montias, “Commentary” in Ainsworth, Early Netherlandish Painting (2001), p. 63. Monballieu, “Documenten. II,” (1971), p. 74, citing Marcus van Vaernewijck, Den Spiegel der nederlantscher audheyt (Ghent, 1568), fols. 135v-136r. Monballieu noted that Karel van Mander later also used the number 150, though whether this was his own inde-
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16 17 18 19
20 21
22 23
24 25
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pendent count at that time, or a repetition of Van Vaernewijk’s observation is difficult to say. Eventually the guild would include masons, goldbeaters, glaziers, and jewelers. See Neeffs, Histoire, vol. 1 (1876), pp. 10-11. The painters, in a complaint submitted to the magistrates in 1562, noted that 51 new masters had joined the guild in just three years, a claim verified by Monballieu, “Documenten. II,” (1971), who has reconstructed the accessions for 1560, 1561, and 1562. This large number of new masters plus the fact that there were 134 new apprentices added in the period 1555-64, 115 of whom (134 x .86) might have been aspiring painters, makes 150 workshops a plausible overall estimate. See J. Verbeemen, “De demografische evolutie van Mechelen, 1370-1800,” Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren en Kunst van Mechelen 57 (1953): 63-97. Raymond van Uytven, De geschiedenis van Mechelen: Van Heerlijkheid tot Stadsgewest (Tielt: Lanno, 1991), pp. 149-50. The complete list of signatories is given in Neeffs, Histoire, vol. 1 (1876), pp. 28-29. Monballieu, “Documenten. II,” (1971), p. 75. See Maximiliaan P.J. Martens, “The Position of the Artist in the Fifteenth Century: Salaries and Social Mobility,” in Wim Blockmans and Antheun Janse, eds., Showing Status: Representation of Social Positions in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), pp. 387-414. Similar numbers are reported by Lorne Campbell for Doornik (Tournai): “The Art Market in the Southern Netherlands in the Fifteenth Century,” Burlington Magazine 118 (1976): 188-98. As a check on the latter number, there were 75 masters who took apprentices in the period 1595-1619, suggesting that the figure of 69 may be on the low side. John Michael Montias, “Notes on Economic Development and the Market for Paintings in Amsterdam,” in Economia e Arte, Secc. XIII-XVIII (Atti della “Trentatreesima Settimana di Studi,” Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica ‘F. Datini’, Prato, AprilMay 2001, C. Cavacciochi, ed.) (Florence: Le Monnier, 2002), pp. 115-30. It bears stressing that our estimates are only as good as the assumptions underlying them. See Montias, “Notes,” in Cavacciochi ed. Economia e Arte (2002), p. 127. The original source is John Michael Montias, “Flemish and Dutch Trade in Works of Art in the Seventeenth Century,” unpublished MS (1985), though see also his “Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam: An Analysis of Subjects and Attributions,” in Art in History / History in Art: Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Culture, eds. David Freedberg and Jan de Vries (Santa Monica: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1991), pp. 331-72, table 8. Montias, “Notes,” in Cavacciochi ed. Economia e Arte (2002), p. 120. Josef Baetens, “Minderbroederskloosters in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden: Kloosterlexikon,” Franciscana: Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis van de Minderbroeders in de Nederlanden. St. Truiden, België 39 (1984): 97-124; Thomas Coomans, “L’Architecture Médiévale des ordres Mendicants (Franciscains, Dominicains, Carmes et Augustines) en Belgique et aux Pays-Bas,” Révue Belge d’Archéologie de Belgique 70 (2001): 3-81. We would like to thank Robert Mayhew for sharing these references with us. The original text of the 1443 document reads: “jaerlycx een mysse te synghene metten orghelen, op Sint Lucas dach, int convent voerscreven, in Sinte Maryen Magdelenen capelle tot salicheyen ons voirscreven vryents Jans van Battele ende te weerdicheyen des eerbaren ambacht der schylders met haren medegesellen.…” Neeffs, Histoire, vol. 1 (1876), pp. 6-7. This idea was first introduced by Neeffs, who noted that there is much information in the Mechelen archives on “exhibitions of paintings” and that paintings were put on display in the cloister of the monastery: “Le local habituel ou s’ouvraient ces galleries était
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30 31 32
33 34
35
36 37
38 39 40 41 42
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le cloitre du préau, au monastère des Frères-Mineurs, dits Rècollets.” Neeffs, Histoire, vol. 1 (1876), p. 18. Dan Ewing, “Marketing Art in Antwerp, 1460-1560: Our Lady’s Pand,” Art Bulletin 72 (1990): 558-84; Vermeylen, Painting for the Market (2003). The Verhulst enterprise comprised Peter Verhulst and his sons Peter, Floris, and Maerten. His daughters married into other prominent artist families: Maria with Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Barbel with the painter/dealer Daniel Snellinck, and Margaret with Michiel Coecke. See Adolf Monballieu, “De kunstenaarsfamilie Verhulst Bessemeers,” Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren en Kunst van Mechelen 78 (1974): 108-09. Autenboer, “Mechelen in de 16de eeuw,” (1985), p. 234, quoting E. Gouverneur, De Minderbroeders in Mechelen, 1231-1981 (Brussels: Licap, 1981). Vermeylen, Painting for the Market (2003), pp. 70-72. Jan van Roey, “Een Antwerpse schildersdynastie: de Liesaerts (XVIe-XVIIe eeuw),” in Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerp (1967): 102-03. We are grateful to Filip Vermeylen for this reference. His son Scipio Palermo had three stalls at the Saint Germain fair, taken over from his uncle Pieter II Goetkint. See Vermeylen, Painting for the Market (2003), p. 116, n. 34. Karel van Mander, Schilder-boeck (Haarlem, 1604), fols. 231v-232r. See also Karel van Mander, The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, vol. 4, trans. and ed. by Hessel Miedema (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1994), pp. 204-05. Di Palermo’s daughter Catharina married the Antwerp painter Victor Wolfvoet and a second daughter, Lucretia, married Pieter Goetkint, who, with his brother Antoon, dominated selling at the pre-Lent fair of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the early decades of the seventeenth century. Adolf Monballieu, “Claude Dorisy,” Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek (Brussels, 1966), vol. 2, pp. 182-83. For the printed description of the lots and their estimated values, see Henry H. Cordemans, “Une loterie de tableaux at d’objets d’art,” Bulletin du Cercle Archéologique, Littéraire et Artistique de Malines. Mémories, Rapports et Documents. Tome II (1891): 343-63, and 346, n. 1, for a shipment to Dordrecht. Neeffs, Histoire, vol. 1 (1876), p. 216. Autenboer, “Nota’s,” (1949), p. 37. Steenbanck later became a master in Antwerp, another not uncommon phenomenon: see Philippe Rombouts and Théodore Lerius, eds., De liggeren en ander historisch archieven der Antwerpse Sint Lucasgilde (Antwerp and The Hague, 1864-76), vol. 2, pp. 346, 353. J. Denucé, Brieven en documenten betreffende Jan Breughel I en II (Antwerp: De Sikkel, 1934), p. 75. See also Denucé, Kunstuitvoer (1931), pp. 28-29. Autenboer, “Nota’s,” (1949), p. 30. Monballieu, “Documenten. II,” p. 75. Neeffs, Histoire, vol. 1 (1876), pp. 28-30. Neeffs, Histoire, vol. 1 (1876), pp. 24-25.
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Thoughts on the Market for Rembrandt’s Portrait Etchings stephanie s. dickey Queen’s University, Kingston
Michael Montias’ pioneering statistical studies of the seventeenth-century market for Dutch paintings would be impossible to duplicate for prints. Although produced and traded in much greater numbers than paintings, prints were often sold in sets, or bulk lots at relatively low prices, and documents seldom record information about specific titles, or impressions. Nevertheless, sources such as auction records, inventories, early treatises, inscriptions, and collectors’ annotations offer evidence for a lively trade in graphic art.1 A case in point is Rembrandt’s purchase at auction in 1638 of nine sets of Dürer’s Life of the Virgin for around two guilders per set. The document provides just enough information to provoke speculation: apart from the impact of Dürer on Rembrandt’s own work, the acquisition of so many duplicates suggests that Rembrandt was actively trading in prints, or that he distributed such prototypes among his apprentices for study.2 Meanwhile, the circulation of his own etchings contributed substantially to the development of his international reputation as a gifted artist. This paper offers some reflections on Rembrandt’s place in the market for graphic art, with particular attention to the significant role played by portraits in the collecting and appreciation of his etchings among seventeenth- and eighteenth-century connoisseurs.
Rembrandt and the Print Market The entrepreneurial spirit now widely attributed to Rembrandt the painter is less often mentioned in analyzing his prints. According to Arnold Houbraken in De Groote Schouburgh (1718–21), while Rembrandt managed a busy studio full of pupils eager to learn his painting techniques, he refused to share with them his innovative printmaking methods. In the 1680s, these methods were described by Filippo Baldinucci as “bizzarrissima” and by André Félibien as “toute singulière.”3 Such comments contribute to the perception that
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etching was a relatively solitary and individualistic aspect of Rembrandt’s output. An exception acknowledged today is his collaboration with Jan Gillisz. van Vliet in the early 1630s, during a brief period of interest in reproductive printmaking.4 Van Vliet on his own degenerates quickly into mediocrity, and the anemic and derivative products of those few associates who established themselves as independent printmakers, the best being Ferdinand Bol, do suggest that Rembrandt’s impact as a teacher of etching was both overwhelming and sporadic, more a matter of awestruck emulation than considered training. Yet, given the laborious and traditionally collaborative nature of the medium, it seems unwise to apply the romantic notion of the isolated genius to Rembrandt’s printmaking, however unique. This aspect of his studio practice needs investigation (a “Rembrandt Research Project” for prints?); even among impressions that can reliably be assumed to have come from his studio, there are varying levels of quality, and the status of his prints in the market is complicated by the activities of copyists and imitators. Rembrandt’s etchings circulated internationally almost from the time he began to make them. From Basel to Genoa, they served as models for other works of art, were collected by connoisseurs and by other artists, and were praised by writers on printmaking. As early as 1641, Thomas Garzoni (Piazza universale, published by Matthäus Merian in Frankfurt) included Rembrandt in a select group of etchers whose works “now cause amazement,” along with Jacques Callot and Abraham Bosse.5 German, Dutch, French, and Italian publishers copied, or adapted Rembrandt’s etchings for book illustrations and print series, apparently disregarding the value of his personal touch and, in some cases, ignoring the intended content of the image.6 Although Rembrandt’s etchings are often considered luxury objects, distinguished by their fragile, expressive synthesis of techniques, these casual and widespread borrowings suggest that at least some of his prints were in mainstream circulation. In addition, the proliferation of etched and engraved copies positions “Rembrandt” prints as a graphic commodity aimed at modest buyers for whom the appealing content of the image, or perhaps simply the association with a prominent name at a reasonable price, took precedence over scarcity, or finesse.7 Who and what were the conduits by which Rembrandt, in Leiden and later in Amsterdam, offered his prints to a diverse, international market? One person of central importance must have been his Leiden colleague, Jan Lievens, who worked in London and Antwerp in the mid-1630s and was in close contact with Paul Pontius and several other printmakers who produced reproductive prints for Peter Paul Rubens and collaborated on Anthony van Dyck’s Iconography. The sequence of “Oriental Heads” etched by Rembrandt in 1635 after models by Lievens is one of several threads linking the two artists long after they had both left Leiden.8 In 1654 (within a few years of its comple-
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Fig. 1. Rembrandt, Self-Portrait Leaning on a Stone Sill, 1639, etching, second state, with inscription in pen and ink by Pierre Mariette. Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, Gift of R. Horace Gallatin. Image © Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
tion), an impression of Rembrandt’s Christ Healing the Sick (The Hundred Guilder Print) was in the hands of the Antwerp publisher Jan Meyssens, who wrote to a prospective buyer that this rare etching had sold in Holland for a hundred guilders, or more.9 This is the earliest recorded notice of the exceptional market value for which this etching has become known. Another intriguing figure is the French publisher and dealer François Langlois, called “Ciartres,” portrayed by Van Dyck and patronized by the Earl of Arundel and King Charles I. A letter of November 1641 sent by Claude Vignon in Paris to Langlois in London asks “if you pass through Holland...in Amsterdam give my greetings to Mr. Rembrandt and bring back something by him.”10 Back in Paris in 1642, Langlois sold four Rembrandt etchings to Stefano della Bella.11 The inventory of Langlois’ widow, dated 22 April 1655, includes prints by Rembrandt and Van Vliet. A week later she married fellow-publisher Pierre Mariette II, bringing with her the substantial stock of her first husband’s firm. Presumably this included the plates for his portraits of illustrious men, some of them cribbed from tronies by Van Vliet after Rembrandt.12 Mariette was one of the first important collectors of Rembrandt’s etchings. Beginning as early as 1652, he documented his acquisitions by inscrib-
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ing each sheet, usually on the verso, with his name and the year. One unusually bold inscription on an impression of the Self-Portrait Leaning on a Stone Sill nearly usurps the identity of the artist (Fig. 1).13 Such continuing links between printmakers, publishers, and collectors in the Dutch Republic and their counterparts in Antwerp, Paris, and Rome deserve further study. The circulation of Rembrandt’s etchings in this broad context might help to explain, among other things, the diversity of his religious imagery, which included not only narrative Old Testament scenes likely to be favored by Protestant and Mennonite collectors, but also Catholic devotional subjects such as The Virgin with the Instruments of the Passion.14 The activities of Dutch print publishers and dealers such as Cornelis Danckerts and Clement de Jonghe suggest that in the local market, too, “Rembrandt” prints were available at varying levels of price and quality. The substantial number of his copperplates listed in De Jonghe’s inventory of 1679 may have come from Rembrandt’s estate (1669), or even earlier from his bankruptcy sales of 1656, and there is increasing evidence that some of his plates were acquired, and presumably reprinted, by other publishers even within his own lifetime. The best-known case is the Dismissal of Hagar of 1637, sold to Samuel d’Orta within a year of its completion, with the proviso – evidently violated by the artist—that Rembrandt would not continue to sell impressions himself, but would keep only a few examples “for his own use and curiosity.”15 The third state of the 1633 Descent from the Cross bears the publisher’s signature of Rembrandt’s business partner, Hendrick Uylenburgh, and the fourth that of Justus Danckerts. The plate was in the possession of the Danckerts firm by 1667, along with others including a St. Jerome, probably the St. Jerome Reading in an Italian Landscape. Both of these plates were later owned by Clement de Jonghe. According to custom, the plates for Rembrandt’s book illustrations and portraits would also have become the property of those who commissioned them.16 It seems unlikely that well-equipped publishers like Danckerts who acquired Rembrandt’s plates brought them back to the artist’s workshop for reprinting when they ran out of stock and needed more. Thus, for some prints at least, the definition of “lifetime impression” – the standard hallmark of fine quality in print collecting – may need to be qualified by examination of watermarks, inking methods, and other elements that might distinguish a commercially produced impression from one printed in Rembrandt’s studio, or even by his own hand. Certain of Rembrandt’s habits, such as selectively wiping a plate to leave an expressive film of plate tone, created individualized impressions in a manner unprecedented for a medium whose essential purpose was, as William Ivins succinctly put it, the mass production of “exactly repeatable visual statements.”17 Yet, such a busy artist must have left some of the work of inking and printing to assistants. Early sources do not single out impres-
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sions printed by Rembrandt himself, but, as the comments of Baldinucci and Félibien show, the idiosyncrasy of his methods was widely known. Thus, it is logical to wonder whether Rembrandt, or his clients made these distinctions when evaluating quality and price. Watermark analysis suggests that Rembrandt reprinted some plates years after he etched them, most likely to refresh the supply of impressions available for sale.18 Some of the minor corrections that distinguish later states may have been made on these occasions. Houbraken noted that Rembrandt would make small changes to his etchings and then reoffer them. While this remark has been interpreted as an accusation of greed, it reads more like admiration of a shrewd business maneuver, one that brought Rembrandt “great fame and no small profit.” Houbraken must have been referring to Rembrandt’s lifetime when he observed that “at that time the passion was so great that some people were not considered real connoisseurs (liefhebbers) unless they had the little Juno with and without the crown, the little Joseph with the white, or brown face, and so forth.”19 The “little Juno” is Rembrandt’s Medea, or the Marriage of Jason and Creusa, produced in 1646 as a frontispiece to the published text of the play, Medea, by Jan Six, whose portrait Rembrandt etched the following year (Fig. 2). Juno, who presides over the marriage ceremony, acquired a crown in the third state. The fourth state was used for the book, with a caption inscribed in the lower margin by a professional calligrapher. Six, or the publisher of the play, Jacob Lescaille, must have received the copperplate from Rembrandt and arranged for the inscription. However, the fact that preliminary states became collectibles, as described by Houbraken, suggests that Rembrandt retained enough of these early impressions to create a market for the print beyond its function as a book illustration.20 The catalogue compiled by Valerius Röver in 1731, documenting a collection acquired over the course of thirty years, is the earliest record of a connoisseur’s attention to such distinctions between states. Some of his Rembrandt etchings, which include touched-up impressions and counterproofs, must have come from the artist’s estate; some may have been acquired from the family of Jan Six.21 Twenty years later, E.-F. Gersaint produced the first published catalogue of Rembrandt’s etchings and, indeed, of the works of any European artist; as stated in the title to the English edition (1752), this volume was intended “for the use of those who would make a select collection of his works.” Gersaint’s arrangement by subject, later adopted by Barsch and still a standard of classification, is anticipated by Röver and may even go back to the organization of albums in the Six collection.22 The descriptive details compiled in his entries are clearly intended to help the collector distinguish between states and, equally important, between original impressions and copies. The catalogue raisonné, now a standard tool of scholarship, thus owes its inception to Rembrandt’s uniquely sophisticated approach to producing
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and marketing individualized impressions and sequential states of his prints. As for copies, connoisseurs may dismiss them as inferior objects, but they can offer intriguing clues to Rembrandt’s relationships with publishers and with the commercial market.
The Market for Rembrandt’s Portrait Etchings Certain features distinguished the production and reception of portraiture from other components of the market for graphic art. In addition to the usual motivating factors of connoisseurship and documentation, a portrait might be acquired simply out of love, or admiration for the sitter, and thus treasured as a keepsake rather than for its aesthetic, or market value. An original portrait required the cooperation of the sitter to pose, at least for a preliminary drawing. It is usually assumed that such prints were commissioned rather than produced on speculation. The bulk of the market, however, consisted of prints after existing painted portraits and other prototypes, often issued by commercial publishers to serve a broad market for celebrity likenesses. Within this context, Rembrandt’s etched portraits are distinctively independent works of art.23 Two etchings of preachers, the renowned Remonstrant leader Rev. Johannes Wtenbogaert (1635) and the Reformed pastor Rev. Jan Cornelis Sylvius (1646) are his most conventional contributions to the market for likenesses of prominent individuals. The Sylvius is relatively scarce, but the Wtenbogaert is not. Daniel Daulby (1796) already owned “a very fine impression of this portrait and one, as a contrast, not worth a shilling, so much has the plate been worn.”24 The plate is still in existence, and many extant impressions must postdate Rembrandt’s lifetime, but even when new, the fame of the sitter would have appealed to a wide market.25 Apart from these admired theologians, the people Rembrandt etched were not celebrities in the conventional sense. Many were connoisseurs, a few were colleagues in the business of art, and most were men with whom Rembrandt had other dealings.26 It is likely that some of these portraits should be considered tokens of appreciation, friendship, or thanks rather than straight commissions. While still open to debate, this possibility was already advanced by Gersaint in his remarks on the celebrated portrait of Jan Six (1647; Fig. 2): “The Burgomaster was a particular friend of Rembrandt, and so it is not surprising that this Master took pleasure in etching this Piece with all the art of which he was capable. The Burgomaster was the owner of the copperplate, whether he commissioned it himself from Rembrandt, or the artist presented it to him as a gift.”27 It is now generally assumed that the patron, or sitter for a portrait print took possession of the plate.28 In addition to the Jan Six (still in the Six Collection), the plates for Rembrandt’s etchings The Goldweigher (Portrait of the Tax Collector Jan Wtenbogaert) and Pieter Haaringh are recorded in the sitter’s
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Fig. 2. Rembrandt, Jan Six, 1647, etching, fourth state. London, The British Museum. Photograph © The British Museum.
family.29 The implications of this practice deserve further consideration. As with the commercial transactions mentioned above, once a plate had left the artist’s hands, the new owner was presumably free to turn to someone else for reprinting. Furthermore, the owner of the plate, not the artist, would control the number and distribution of impressions. Yet, remembering Rembrandt’s dealings with Samuel d’Orta, it is likely that he did not miss out entirely on the opportunity for profit. The highly refined and conceptually inventive Jan Six was one of only two prints by Rembrandt that we know to have been appreciated within his lifetime as a paradigm of quality. (The other, of course, is the famous Hundred Guilder Print.) In a well-known document of 1655, the merchant Dirck van Cattenburch made a bargain with Rembrandt that included a commission for a portrait of his brother Otto “equal in quality to the portrait of Mr. Jan Six.” The new plate, apparently never executed, was valued at 400 guilders, roughly equivalent to a three-quarterlength painted portrait.30 As far as I know, Van Cattenburch was not a close associate of Six. That he was familiar with Six’s portrait and valued it so highly suggests that it had already become renowned, with, or without Rembrandt’s
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agency, outside the sitter’s immediate circle. Intriguing, too, is the existence of at least ten known impressions of the first state of The Goldweigher in which the face of the sitter is left blank. (While unique in Rembrandt’s practice, this method was quite common among commercial portrait engravers.31) Did Rembrandt give these impressions to Jan Wtenbogaert, perhaps to circulate among friends as an amusing pendant to the finished product?, or did he market them himself to collectors eager for complete sets of his works? For The Goldweigher, Jan Six, and other portrait plates handed over to the patron, did he bargain to retain a number of impressions for sale outside the circle of the sitter’s acquaintances? And how long did those acquaintances hold onto their keepsakes before turning a profit themselves? In 1731, Valerius Röver observed that the Portrait of Jan Six was “one of the rarest of all Rembrandt’s prints, because the family held on to the plate and impressions and bought up the prints at any price.”32 As recounted by Daniel Daulby: M. Gersaint relates that on one of his journeys to Holland he happened to be at Amsterdam when Six’s cabinet was selling.... He purchased several prints, and, among others, three, or four portraits of the owner, for as there were twenty-five of them, they sold for no more than from 15 to 18 florins each. In 1750, [the Jan Six] was purchased in Holland for an English amateur, for 150 florins.33 Despite the implication here that the sale was that of Jan Six himself (1702), Gersaint was born in 1696, and he must be alluding to the estate sale of Jan Six’s nephew, Willem, in 1734.34 The stack of impressions available that day might have been printed any time between 1647 and 1734. Still, these comments provide glimpses of how even a privately held portrait might circulate in the market. One senses that a family might control access not only out of filial pride, but also in order to benefit financially. Consistently high esteem for Rembrandt’s portraiture is reflected in the records of early print collections. Valerius Röver (1731) owned several portraits in multiple states; he took special pride in those that were “zeer raar,” such as his impression of the Jan Six on “East Indian” paper.35 References to Rembrandt’s etchings by French connoisseurs including Michel de Marolles, André Félibien, Roger de Piles, and Florent LeComte all single out his portraits for special appreciation. Félibien (1685) noted that Rembrandt’s works include “among other things, some very beautiful portraits, albeit very different from ordinary engravings.” LeComte (1699) even provided a list of portraits recommended for the collector. Several of these authors associated Rembrandt’s richly worked portraits with the new medium of mezzotint. This connection opposes the refined finish of plates like the Jan Six to the uneven-
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Fig. 3. Rembrandt, Jan Lutma, 1656, etching, second state. London, The British Museum. Photograph © The British Museum.
ness and sketchy non-finito displayed in some of Rembrandt’s religious subjects and landscapes, admired today but considered by eighteenth-century connoisseurs to be the least appealing feature of his graphic style.36 Arnold Houbraken’s son, Jacobus, acquired many prints by Rembrandt at the Willem Six sale in 1734. As a portrait engraver himself, the younger Houbraken was well-prepared to appreciate some of the rarities in the Six collection, such as a counterproof of the first state of the portrait of the silversmith Jan Lutma, with extensive corrections by hand, that must have come from Rembrandt’s own estate.37 The Portrait of Jan Lutma (Fig. 3) was also on Florent LeComte’s recommended list, and Arnold Houbraken described it as a canonical example of Rembrandt’s etching methods, including his lightly sketched layout of the initial composition and his habit of producing sequential states.38 Yet the calligraphic Latin inscription added to the second state is of a type not found elsewhere in Rembrandt’s oeuvre. It is certainly the work of another hand, possibly arranged by a subsequent owner of the plate. This may well be the silversmith’s son, Jan Lutma the Younger, who produced his own portrait of his father shortly thereafter.39
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Fig. 4. Rembrandt, Arnout Tholinx, 1656, etching and drypoint, first state. New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library.
While Rembrandt’s portraits were clearly appreciated for their refined technique, the scarcity created by limited distribution certainly contributed to the desirability of etchings such as the Jan Six. An especially rare desideratum was the Portrait of Dr. Arnout Tholinx (Fig. 4). The physician poses at his desk surrounded by books and beakers, attributes that allude to both the scientific and the intellectual aspects of his profession. A stern gaze and a pair of eyeglasses absently held in one hand cast the moment of portrayal as a brief interruption from study. Son-in-law and colleague of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp and brother-in-law of Jan Six, Tholinx must have met Rembrandt through common acquaintances. The portrait he received, however, is quite different from the manière noire of the Jan Six. A marvel of bare paper and angular linework, liberally augmented with drypoint, it belongs to the bold, mature style of the 1650s, along with masterworks such as the Sacrifice of Isaac (1655). In contrast, the almost illegibly inky drypoint portraits of Thomas Haringh and Pieter Haringh from the same period demonstrate that Rembrandt had not lost interest in the chiaroscuro effect.40 Thus, the more economical style of the Tholinx constitutes a considered choice.
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Although this print was highly valued in the eighteenth century, the identity of the sitter had been lost; he was identified by Gersaint and others as a lawyer named Tolling, or Van Thol.41 This seems to indicate that the appeal of the portrait lay in its rarity and aesthetic quality, not the status of the man portrayed, but there is no trace of appreciation for it among seventeenth-century collectors. The fact that it is extremely rare may even indicate that the sitter (who presumably gained possession of the copperplate) chose not to distribute it.42 Would he have preferred something more elaborate, like the famous etching of his brother-in-law Six? Ironically, what may have begun as lack of enthusiasm resulted within a few decades in the elevation of this etching to the height of value and desirability. Described by Röver and Gersaint as very fine and rare, it was still a coveted object among knowledgeable nineteenth-century collectors, as vividly demonstrated in an anecdote recorded by Charles Blanc and repeated by Dmitri Rovinski (presented here in an abridged translation from the French, although Michael Montias, of all people, would have appreciated the nuances of the original). The story takes place at the sale of the collection of Sir Reginald Pole Carew in London, held at Wheatley’s auction house in Piccadilly on 13 May 1835, and concerns the Chevalier Ignace Joseph de Claussin (1766–1844), author of a revised edition of Gersaint’s catalogue.43 Note that three of the four lots mentioned are portraits. This sale was attended by the most illustrious connoisseurs in England: Lord Aylesford, Lord Spencer, Sir [Edward] Astley, William Esdaile,...our compatriot, the great collector of autographs, drawings and prints, the chevalier de Claussin, author of one of the catalogues of Rembrandt, and...the richest merchants in London.... Rarely does one see such a magnificent collection of prints.... The portrait of Asselijn with the easel, that is to say the first state [B. 277i], was sold for 39 livres 18 shillings (nearly 1000 francs); the portrait of the anabaptist minister Anslo [B. 271] was pushed to 74 livres 11 shillings (1800 francs); the Hundred Guilder Print [B. 74] rose to 163 livres (4075 francs). At last, the [Portrait of] Tholinx was placed on the table. It was an admirable impression, nearly unique, rich in burr, with rough edges, less worked than the impression in Amsterdam. It had been purchased by Mr. Pole Carew for only 56 livres at the Hibbert sale in 1809. As the bidding rose to its height, faces were transformed. M. de Claussin was breathing with difficulty. When the print passed in front of him, it had already risen to 150 livres! He took it in a trembling hand, examined it for some time with his magnifying glass, and raised the bid by 5 livres; but with one circuit of the table, the bidding had risen to 200 livres (5000 francs); poor Claussin was pale; a cold sweat ran down his temples. Being unable to stand any more... “Messieurs” [he
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said in English], “you know me, I am the chevalier de Claussin; I have consecrated the better part of my existence to preparing a new Catalogue of the oeuvre of Rembrandt, and to copying in etching the rarest prints of that master. I have been searching for the Tholinx for twenty-five years, and I have scarcely ever seen this piece except in the national collections of Paris and Amsterdam, and, in the portfolio of the late Barnard, the impression before us now. If this impression escapes me, at my age, there remains to me no hope of ever seeing it again. I beg my competitors to consider the services my book has provided to amateurs, my status as a foreigner, the sacrifices I have made my whole life in order to form a collection that will permit me to make some new observations on this remarkable work of Rembrandt....” ... Already he had tears in his eyes. This unexpected speech could not help but produce a sensation. Many were touched by it; a few smiled, and whispered that this same M. de Claussin, who was capable of bidding a print up to four, or five thousand francs, could often be found in the morning in the streets of London, going to buy two sous worth of milk in a little pot.... But after a moment of silence, a sign was made to the auctioneer, a bid was announced...and the hammer fell on the price of 220 livres!... Eventually, it was learned that the happy purchaser was Mr. Verstolk de Soelen, Minister of State in Holland.44 Through its distinguished provenance, the impression coveted by Claussin can now be identified as the first state now in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (Fig. 4).45 It is one of only four impressions of the first state known today. Conceivably there were a few more; Röver owned a counterproof,46 and by time the Morgan impression was printed, the distinctive burr had nearly worn away. We are left to wonder whether these proofs entered the market through Tholinx, through Rembrandt’s estate, or through the shrewd marketing of the artist himself. The Pole Carew sale belongs to an established tradition of English appreciation for Rembrandt’s prints, perhaps initiated in the 1630s by Jan Lievens’ presence in London, as well as by Wenzel Hollar, who copied some of Rembrandt’s etchings shortly before joining the service of the Earl of Arundel in 1636. John Evelyn, one of the first authors to mention Rembrandt in a treatise on the art of printmaking (1662), described him as “the incomparable Reimbrand, whose etchings and gravings are of a particular spirit,” again demonstrating the importance of etchings in building Rembrandt’s international reputation.47 Continuing research will clarify the circ*mstances through which impressions inked and printed in the master’s studio, states produced by other publishers, and copies after Rembrandt’s etchings became valuable commodities in Holland and in the lively international market for graphic art.
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1
See, for example, Jan van der Waals, De Prentschat van Michiel Hinloopen. Een reconstructie van de eerste openbaare papierkunstverzameling in Nederland (’s-Gravenhage and Amsterdam, 1988); Nadine M. Orenstein, Hendrick Hondius and the Business of Prints (Rotterdam, 1996); Erik Hinterding, “The History of Rembrandt’s Copperplates, with a Catalogue of Those that Survive,” Simiolus 22 (1993-94): 253-315 (reprint, Zwolle, 1995); Gerdien E. Wuestman, De hollandse schilderschool in prent: Studies naar reproduktiegrafiek in de tweede helft van de zeventiende eeuw, Ph.D. diss., University of Utrecht, 1998. For more on etchings discussed here, with extensive bibliography, see especially Christopher White, Rembrandt as an Etcher, 2nd ed. (New Haven and London, 1999); Rembrandt the Printmaker, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2000; Stephanie S. Dickey, Rembrandt: Portraits in Print (Amsterdam, 2004); Erik Hinterding, Rembrandt as an Etcher (Amsterdam, 2006 not yet available as of this writing). Bartsch citations (B.) refer to Christopher White and Karel G. Boon, Rembrandt’s Etchings: An Illustrated Critical Catalogue, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1969). Fundamental for early references to Rembrandt’s etchings are Seymour Slive, Rembrandt and his Critics (The Hague, 1953); Walter Strauss et al., The Rembrandt Documents (New York, 1979), soon to be supplemented by Michiel Roscam Abbing, ed., New Rembrandt Documents (Leiden, 2006, forthcoming). 2 Gommer Spranger sale, Amsterdam, 9-10 February 1638; Strauss 1979, no. 1638/2. Along with other purchases, Rembrandt bought one Life of the Virgin for fl. 1.18, seven sets as one lot at fl.1.6 each, and one for fl. 2.7. For prints in Rembrandt’s inventory, see Strauss 1979, no. 1656/12; Bob van den Boogert ed., Rembrandt’s Treasures (Zwolle, 1999). It has long been recognized that Dürer’s Life of the Virgin had a direct impact on Rembrandt’s painting of The Visitation (1640; Detroit Institute of Arts) and other works. 3 Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 2nd ed. (’s-Gravenhage, 1753) (Doornspijk, 1976), vol. 1, p. 271; Filippo Baldinucci, Cominciamento, e progresso dell’arte dell’intagliare in rame... (Florence, 1686), p. 80; André Félibien, Entretiens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages des plus excellens peintres... (Paris, 1685); C. Hofstede de Groot, Urkunden über Rembrandt (The Hague, 1906), nos. 358, 360; Slive 1953, pp. 105-06, 189. 4 See recently, Rembrandt and Van Vliet: A Collaboration on Copper, exh. cat., Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam, 1996. 5 Thomas Garzoni, Piazza Universale... (Frankfurt, 1641), pp. 365-66; Slive 1953, pp. 3233; Strauss 1979, no. 1641/10. 6 See Slive 1953, pp. 30-33; and recently Peter van der Coelen, “Rembrandt in Duitsland: Iconografie en verspreiding van zijn etsen in de zeventiende eeuw,” Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis (2004): 3-16; Jacob Rutgers, “Stefano della Bella en Rembrandt: De Franse connectie,” Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis (2004): 17-28. 7 For copies after Rembrandt’s etchings, see Slive 1953, pp. 29-31; White and Boon 1969; Hinterding 1993-94, p. 266. 8 B. 286-289; Amsterdam 2000, no. 27; Stephanie S. Dickey, “Van Dyck in Holland: The Iconography and its Impact on Rembrandt and Lievens,” in Hans Vlieghe, ed., Van Dyck 1599-1999: Conjectures and Refutations (Antwerp, 2001), pp. 289-304; Dickey 2004, pp. 132-35. 9 B. 74, mentioned by Meyssens in a letter from Antwerp, dated 9 July 1654, to the Bishop of Bruges; Amsterdam 2000, no. 61, pp. 255, 258, n. 3; Roscam Abbing 2006, forthcoming. Another associate of Van Dyck, the Flemish painter Cornelis de Wael, owned a substantial collection of Rembrandt etchings at the time of his death in Rome in 1667; Slive 1953, p. 105. 10 The letter, now lost, was published in 1764; Slive 1953, pp. 31-34; Strauss 1979, no. 1641/6. The remark occurs in the context of a discussion of paintings, but the “something” could equally well have been prints. thoughts on the market for rembrandt’s portrait etchings | 161
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11 With thanks to Michiel Roscam Abbing; see Roscam Abbing 2006, forthcoming. 12 Slive 1953, pp. 31-32; see entries on Mariette (1634-1716) and Langlois in Frits Lugt, Les Marques de collections de dessins et d’estampes (Amsterdam, 1921) and Grove Dictionary of Art, www.groveart.com (accessed 2 December 2005), with further references. For Van Dyck’s portrait of Langlois (National Gallery, London), see Susan J. Barnes et al., Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (New Haven and London, 2004), no. IV.152; Anthony van Dyck as a Printmaker, exh. cat., Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp, 1999, pp. 348-51, no. 49. 13 B. 21ii. Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art. The date reads 1664, 1667, or 1669 (unclear). Lugt 1921, no. 1787, pp. 321-22, mentioned an impression of the Girl with a Basket (B. 356, c. 1642) inscribed by Mariette and dated 1652 (whereabouts not cited). Pierre would then have been eighteen years old; while Lugt speculated that such early notations may be the work of his father, Pierre Mariette I, this small and uncomplicated sheet might be just the kind of purchase for a budding teenage collector. 14 B. 85, c. 1652; see also Virgin and Child in the Clouds, 1641 (B. 61), Virgin and Child with the Cat and Snake, 1654 (B. 63), etc. 15 B. 30; Strauss 1979, no. 1637/7; Hinterding 1993-94, pp. 257-58. 16 B. 81; B. 104; Strauss 1979, nos. 1633/4, 1634/10, p. 114; Hinterding 1993-94, pp. 258-60, 308-15, also citing seventeenth-century owners for several other plates. 17 William Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication (New York, 1969), passim. 18 See Theo Laurentius, H.M.M. van Hugten, Erik Hinterding, and J.P. Filedt Kok, “Het Amsterdamse onderzoek naar Rembrandts papier: Radiografie van watermerken in de etsen van Rembrandt,” Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 40 (1992): 353-84; Nancy Ash and Shelley Fletcher, Watermarks in Rembrandt’s Prints (Washington, DC, 1998); Hinterding 2006. 19 Houbraken 1753, vol. 1, p. 271. Slive 1953, p. 190, identified the “Josephje” as Joseph Telling his Dreams, B. 37, now known in three states. 20 B. 112; White and Boon (1969) listed over a dozen impressions of the first state, in which Juno wears a cap, one of the second, and six of the third, in which the cap is replaced in drypoint by the crown. In the fifth state, the inscription is cut away, surely not by Rembrandt. Hinterding 1993-94, p. 258, suggested that this was one of several plates in Jan Six’s estate. On the Medea, see also Amy Golahny, Rembrandt’s Reading: The Artist’s Bookshelf of Ancient Poetry and History (Amsterdam, 2003), pp. 39-42; Dickey 2004, pp. 112-13. 21 J.G. van Gelder and N.F. van Gelder-Schrijver, “De Memorie van Rembrandt’s prenten in het bezit van Valerius Röver,” Oud Holland 55 (1938): 1-16. 22 E.F. Gersaint, Catalogue raisonné de toutes les estampes qui forment l’oeuvre de Rembrandt, et des principales pièces de ses élèves... (Paris, 1751); English edition, A Catalogue and Description of the Etchings of Rembrandt van Rijn, with some account of his life, to which is added, a list of the best pieces of this master for the use of those who would make a select collection of his works (London, 1752). Van Gelder and Van Gelder-Schrijver 1938, pp. 4-5; Karel G. Boon, “De herkomst van Rembrandts prenten in het Rijksprentenkabinet,” Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 4 (1956): 42-54. 23 R.E.O. Ekkart in Oog in oog met de modellen van Rembrandts portret-etsen, exh. cat., Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam, 1986, pp. 12-19; Ger Luijten in Amsterdam 2000, pp. 16-17; Dickey 2004. 24 Daniel Daulby, Descriptive Catalogue of the Works of Rembrandt... (Liverpool, 1796), manuscript notation recorded on p. 167, under no. 259, of interleaved and annotated copy with the bookplate of E.M. Cartwright, Birmingham, annotations datable to c. 1840 (collection of the author). 25 B. 279; Hinterding 1993-94, pp. 301, 312; Amsterdam 2000, no. 26; Dickey 2004, pp. 35-42. Sylvius, B. 280; Amsterdam 2000, no. 54; Dickey 2004, pp. 63-65.
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26 On the context of Rembrandt’s portrait etchings, see recently Dickey 2004. Jan Antonides van der Linden (1665, B. 264) was Rembrandt’s only reproductive print, based on a painting by Abraham van den Tempel; see Dickey 2004, pp. 159-62. 27 Gersaint 1751, no. 265, pp. 215-16; Dickey 2004, p. 112. See also Michael Zell, “The Gift among Friends: Rembrandt’s Art in the Network of his Patronal and Social Relations,” in Alan Chong and Michael Zell, eds., Rethinking Rembrandt (Zwolle, 2002), pp. 173-94. For a dissenting view, see Peter van der Coelen’s “Rembrandt” (review article) in Print Quarterly 22 (2005): 80. 28 Already posited by Hofstede de Groot 1906, no. 346, p. 410; see also Van Gelder and Van Gelder-Schrijver 1938, p. 4; R.E.O. Ekkart in Amsterdam 1986, p. 13; Ger Luijten in Amsterdam 2000, p. 17. 29 The copperplate for the Jan Six (B. 285) is still in the Six Collection in Amsterdam, while those for The Goldweigher (B. 281) and Pieter Haaringh (B. 275) were listed in family collections in the eighteenth century; Van Gelder and Van Gelder-Schrijver 1938, p. 4; Hinterding 1993-94, pp. 253, n. 2, pp. 257, 260-62, 308-14. 30 Strauss 1979, no. 1655/8; Slive 1953, pp. 138-39. Jan Six, B. 285, Amsterdam 2000, no. 57; Dickey 2004, pp. 107-19. 31 B. 381, 1639. The face was added in drypoint in the second state. An impression bearing a preliminary sketch in black chalk is in the Baltimore Museum of Art. Amsterdam 2000, no. 35. On The Goldweigher, see Dickey 2004, pp. 66-88. 32 Van Gelder and Van Gelder-Schrijver 1938, pp. 4, 11. 33 Daulby 1796, p. 177. 34 Boon 1956, p. 50. Several authors, for example, Van Gelder and Van Gelder-Schrijver 1938, p. 4, and Dickey 2004, p. 145, incorrectly connect this anecdote with the Jan Six sale. 35 Van Gelder and Van Gelder-Schrijver 1938, pp. 4, 11. 36 Hofstede de Groot 1906, nos. 358, 379, 380; Slive 1953, pp. 56-59, 135-39, 182; Strauss 1979, no. 1666/7; Florent LeComte, Cabinet des Singularitez d’Architecture, Peinture, Sculpture et Graveur (Paris, 1699; reprint, Geneva, 1972), pp. 77, 370, 338-39; Dickey 2004, pp. 18-21. See also Catherine Scallen, “Rembrandt’s Etching Saint Jerome Reading in a Italian Landscape: The Question of Finish Reconsidered,” Delineavit et sculpsit 8 (1992): 1-11; Hinterding 1993-94, p. 268; Ger Luijten in Amsterdam 2000, p. 328; Wuestman 1998. On the related appreciation of portraits from Van Dyck’s Iconography, see Ger Luijten and Saskia Sombogaart, “‘...with the hand’: The Collecting of Van Dyck Prints,” in Antwerp 1999, pp. 9-18. 37 Boon 1956, fig. 6; Amsterdam 2000, no. 83, p. 334; Dickey 2004, fig. 137. 38 LeComte 1699, p. 370; Houbraken 1753, vol. 1, p. 271; Dickey 2004, p. 19. 39 B. 276; Houbraken 1753, vol. 1, p. 271; Amsterdam 2000, no. 83; Dickey 2004, pp. 130-31. The third state is now considered to have been reworked by another hand. The second state illustrated here, from the British Museum (inv. no. Slade 1868-8-22696), bears the collector’s mark of Sir Edward Astley, many of whose Rembrandt impressions can be traced back through Arthur Pond and Jacob Houbraken to Willem Six (1734); Lugt 1921, no. 2774. 40 B. 282, 274, B. 275; Amsterdam 2000, nos. 81, 82; Dickey 2004, pp. 138-42. Sacrifice of Isaac: B. 35; Amsterdam 2000, no. 77. 41 Gersaint 1751, pp. 213-14, no. 264. Described by Röver as “het zeer raare portret van Van Thol;” Van Gelder and Van Gelder-Schrijver 1938, p. 11. See also Sophie de Bussierre, Rembrandt eaux-fortes, exh. cat., Musée de Petit Palais, Paris, 1986, no. 103; Dickey 2004, pp. 141-42. 42 Ger Luijten in Amsterdam 2000, p. 329. 43 Catalogue raisonné de toutes les estampes qui forment l’oeuvre de Rembrandt, et des principales pièces de ses élèves... (Paris, 1824); Supplément (Paris, 1828).
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44 D. Rovinski, L’Oeuvre gravé de Rembrandt (St. Petersburg, 1890), cols. 145-147. See Catalogue of... Etchings by Rembrandt, the property of the late Right Hon. Reginald Pole Carew...including The Hundred Guilder Print; Raising of Lazarus; Christ before Pilate; Advocate Tolling; Burgomaster Six; and other celebrated works...sold by auction, by Mr. Wheatley...Wednesday, May 13, 1835, and two following days... The Verstolk collection was sold in Amsterdam in 1847, including two first states of the Tholinx; see Catalogue du célèbre cabinet de dessins, laissé par feu son excellence Monsieur Jean Gisbert Baron Verstolke de Soelen, Ministre d’Etat...dont la vente aura lieu le lundi 22 mars 1847 et les jours suivants, à Amsterdam... par Jérome de Vries, Albertus Brondgeest et Corneille François Roos..., lots 656 and 657; Lugt 1929, no. 2490. Lot 657 is the impression discussed here; for lot 656, see Rembrandt, Gravures et dessins de la Collection Edmond de Rothschild et du Cabinet des Dessins Département des Arts graphiques du musée du Louvre, exh. cat., Louvre, Paris, 2000, no. 85. 45 B. 284; White and Boon (1969) listed the impressions in London (Cracherode 1973.U.1109; Amsterdam 2000, no. 82), Paris (see previous note), New York, and one in an American private collection (Karel G. Boon, Rembrandt: The Complete Etchings [New York, 1963], no. 271; current whereabouts unknown to me). A manuscript note by E.M. Cartwright in his annotated copy of Daulby 1796 (see note 24 above), under no. 264, p. 175, traced the Pole Carew impression back to the collections of Grose (1770), Barnard (1798), and Hibbert (1809). This accords with the provenance of the Morgan Library impression listed in Rembrandt’s Journey: Painter, Draughtsman, Etcher, exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2003, no. 208, p. 332. Ger Luijten in Amsterdam 2000, p. 329, stated that the Strasbourg Lily watermark found on the British Museum impression also occurs on the Morgan impression, but nowhere else. 46 His Memorie lists an impression of the first state and a counterproof, current whereabouts unknown; Van Gelder and Van Gelder-Schrijver 1938, p. 11; Ger Luijten in Amsterdam 2000, p. 332, n. 1. 47 John Evelyn, Sculptura, or the Art of Engraving on Copper (London, 1662), p. 81; Strauss 1979, no. 1662/16. Wenceslaus Hollar, A Bohemian Artist in England, exh. cat, Yale University, New Haven, 1994, pp. 6-7, no. 9-10. For the eighteenth century, see Ellen d’Oench, “A Madness to have his Prints: Rembrandt and Georgian Taste, 1720-1800,” in Rembrandt in Eighteenth-Century England, exh. cat., Yale University, New Haven, 1983, pp. 63-81; Antony Griffiths, ed., Landmarks in Print Collecting: Collectors and Donors at the British Museum since 1753 (London and Houston, 1996).
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If the Shoe Fits: Courtship, Sex, and Society in an Unusual Painting by Gonzales Coques wayne franits Syracuse University, Syracuse
This contribution to our memorial festschrift for Michael Montias might strike some readers as odd because it lies so far beyond the parameters of his own research interests. Nevertheless it seemed highly suitable to me for the following reasons. It is based upon materials that I had collected during the mid1980s while living in the Netherlands where I was conducting research for my doctoral dissertation. Michael was also there frequently during this time, diligently engaged in work on his various book projects, including his nowclassic study Vermeer and His Milieu. In fact, during the winter of 1985-86, he generously provided much needed support and guidance as I dauntingly faced my first experience of working in Amsterdam’s municipal archives. Michael and I wound up spending much time together and at one point I shared with him some of the material that comprises the short essay that you are about to read. So I could not think of a more fitting tribute to Michael both as a colleague and friend than to offer some observations about an unusual painting by Gonzales Coques. In a fascinating article published in the catalogue of the 1993-94 exhibition The Age of Rubens, Marjorie E. Wieseman discussed the phenomenon of the genre portrait in seventeenth-century Flemish art.1 Anticipating the popular conversation pieces of the eighteenth century, these intimate, diminutive works constitute an eponymous fusion of genre painting and portraiture in which the artist devotes equal attention to the setting and to the affluent sitters, the latter engaged in activities drawn from quotidian life but fully reflective of an assortment of prevailing social aspirations and values. Genre portraits appeared rather abruptly as a distinct type around 1640. But given the general cohesion of societal mores in seventeenth-century Flanders and given the thoroughly conventional nature of art during this period, it is hardly surprising to learn that these works of art exhibit a somewhat limited visual repertoire.2 Still, one can invariably find exceptions to the subject matter cus-
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Fig. 1. Gonzales Coques, Family in an Interior, painting. Present location unknown.
tomarily encountered in genre portraits, particularly in works by the immensely talented and influential Antwerp painter, Gonzales Coques (1614, or 16181684), who played a seminal role in the introduction and development of this sophisticated imagery. A case in point is Coques’ unusual genre portrait whose present location is, unfortunately, unknown (Fig. 1).3 In a well-appointed chamber, three fashionably dressed men sit at a table drinking wine beside a standing maid poised with her shears and swatch of material. One of the men looks at the viewer while pointing to a remarkable scene unfolding at the opposite end of the room, by its entrance door: an equally well-dressed woman likewise engages the viewer while refusing the approach of a kneeling man who appears to be attempting to measure her foot. Clearly, the combination of this motif with that of the maid and her basket of scissors and textile swatches indicates that the man with the measuring device is a clothier, presumably employed by the well-to-do husband and wife. This is indeed a peculiar picture yet it provides a classic example of a genre portrait as Wieseman defines it, owing to its clever equipoise of posh interior and sartorially splendid figures and to its unabashedly intimate presentation of an event in the private lives of the sitters, whom we can identify at the very least as the two with highly individualized physiognomies who address us directly.
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Fig. 2. Matthäus Merian the Elder, “Il ne faut juger de l’extérieur,” from the series, La femme d’honneur, c. 1615, engraving. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France.
So great was the power of ingrained pictorial conventions in the seventeenth century that precedents can often be identified for even the most unusual motifs and themes, such as the one that we have just discussed in this painting. For certain engraved images that focus primarily on women and footwear offer approximate but nonetheless striking parallels to the motif in Coques’ picture. Among the earliest is an engraving by the eminent Swiss printmaker, Matthäus Merian the Elder (1593-1650), from the series Emblemata Amatoria, also known as La femme d’honneur, published in Paris around 1615 (Fig. 2).4 Nearly every print in this series extols the virtues of honorable women whose manifold activities are repeatedly described in chaste and virtuous terms. Number 8, entitled, “Il ne faut juger de l’extérieur,” depicts a man assisting a woman with her shoes. He secures one to his foot as she points to several more scattered on the floor below them. The accompanying poem warns the
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Fig. 3. Illustration from Incogniti Scriptoris Nova Poemata (Leiden, 1624). The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek.
reader not to judge the woman purely by exterior appearances. We may gaze upon this woman to see if she is well shod, but ultimately, her true virtue is a question of character as opposed to frivolous fashion. Merian’s engravings were adopted from a slightly earlier set by the nowobscure Flemish printmaker, Jan van Haelbeck (active c. 1600-c. 1635), who was working in Paris by about 1600.5 Van Haelbeck’s series carries the intriguing title, “Énigme joyeuse pour les bon esprits.” Here, all of the images are furnished with verses rich in double-entendres of a scatological sort, thereby demonstrating the fundamental multivalency of this visual material. Needless to say, in light of the proclivities of human nature, it is hardly surprising to learn that Van Haelbeck’s series enjoyed a flourishing afterlife – while Merian’s did not – in the form of book illustrations for publications of an indelicate sort that were principally marketed among Europe’s university students. Versions of several of the engravings from the series appear, for example, in a number of duodecimo tomes by Peter Rollos, published in Germany between 1619 and the late 1630s.6 There was also a market for such risqué work in the Netherlands, as exemplified by the oft-cited Incogniti Scriptoris Nova Poemata, first published in Leiden in 1618.7 The anonymous author of this highly successful riddle book not only replicated Van Haelbeck’s engravings but also mimicked the playfully veiled obscenities of the accompanying poems, which are wholly
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Fig. 4. Jakob van der Heyden, “Ich weiss am besten wo mich der Schuch drückt,” 1636, engraving. Nuremburg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum.
absent in the books by Rollos, only now printed in French, Latin, and Dutch. The depiction of the man helping the woman put on her shoe is combined with highly provocative verses, rich with double-entendres equating the trying on of footwear with attempted coitus (Fig. 3).8 Naturally, readers of this volume hardly need to be reminded that the illustration and verses conform to longstanding tropes in Western European art and culture that associate feet and footwear with genitalia and intercourse.9 Van Haelbeck’s illustration of the couple with the shoes also provided a model for an independent engraving by the Strasbourg printmaker Jakob van der Heyden (1573-1645). This engraving (Fig. 4), signed and dated 1636, closely imitates its visual source, but its trilingual inscriptions articulate a saying popular in several European languages, both in the seventeenth century and today: “Everyone knows best where the shoe pinches them.” In Dutch and in German the principal connotation of this adage is that the “wearer of the shoe” knows best what his, or her troubles, or concerns are.10 With this meaning in mind, Het Woordenboek der Nederlandsche taal cites one of Gerbrand Bredero’s farces where a troubled housewife exclaims that “Ic weet selfs best waer me de schoe wringt: Hy (mijn man) verteert alle daech sulcken gelt,
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en hy brengt niet in.”11 Thus, this woman “knows where her shoe pinches” because she is aggrieved by her husband’s habit of squandering the couple’s money. In Van der Heyden’s engraving, the German inscription, “Ich weiss am besten wo mich der Schuch drückt,” is spoken by the young woman, who like her pictorial predecessors in earlier versions of this representation, points at the footwear on the floor while simultaneously resting her hand on the dashing man’s shoulder. Two illustrations on the wall behind the couple amplify the significance of the saying within this particular context. Both show hunting scenes, which is certainly no mere coincidence owing to the context in which they appear. The depiction of hunting in art and literature was long associated with courtship and love.12 For example, in Dutch and German literature of the seventeenth century, hunting (and especially birding) adopted a metaphorical dimension that was distinctly amorous – and at times, unabashedly erotic – just as words like “hunt,” “chase,” and “catch” can be used to describe love and romance in many languages today. It is therefore safe to assume that the illustration and inscription to Van der Heyden’s engraving allude to courtship and love. Perhaps the lady’s knowledge of the shoe pinching her in this context refers to the travail of courtship, or her feelings for her suitor. A secondary connotation of the saying is to know what drives, or motivates a person to do something.13 So we might conjecture that this comely maiden is aware of the true intentions that lie behind the young man’s ministrations. Though it is difficult to proffer a conclusive interpretation of this print, seventeenth-century audiences undoubtedly understood it in less vague terms than we do today.14 Let us return now to Coques’ painting in light of our brief survey of the pictorial precedents for the motif of the woman rejecting the man who wants to measure her foot. I believe this motif can be loosely linked to the visual and proverbial antecedents that we have just surveyed. Therefore, in keeping with the spirit of the engraving by Merian, are we to avoid judging the lady by external appearances, that is, by her seeming preoccupation with fashion? Or perhaps we should regard the motif in more erotic terms. Here, additional sayings come into play, namely, to “measure a shoe” – “Schuhe anmessen” in German and “schoen aanmeten” in Dutch –, or related to this, whether “a shoe fits.”15 In these contexts, the shoe refers to the vulva and the foot to the phallus.16 Hence Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft’s quip that, “Uw slete schoen myn voet niet passen,” is sexually charged.17 One of the pictures on the wall in Coques’ painting provides general clues that the significance of the man’s attempted action possibly connotes similar ideas. The subjects of two of the three pictures-within-the-painting are difficult, if not impossible, to identify owing to the poor quality of the only photo known of this now-lost work of art. Fortunately the little picture on the far right, strategically placed direct-
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ly above the motif in question, indisputably illuminates the scene below. Unlike the pictures hanging on the walls in other genre portraits, which Wieseman describes as “generic indicators of cultural refinement,”18 this one represents the Old Testament tale of the Jewish patriarch Joseph who refused the sexual advances of his master’s wife (Genesis 39: 6-15), and thus appears to echo, mutatis mutandis, the female sitter’s gesture of rejection. And although clothed in the garments of gentility – no pun intended – one wonders in light of all our earlier examples whether the man’s attempt to measure her foot implied for contemporary viewers that he was soliciting sex. Yet as the woman’s gesture makes clear, there can be no doubt as to the overall meritorious demeanor of this picture; after all, people generally do not pay to have themselves portrayed in morally compromising situations.19 Let’s just hope that in the case of the sitters depicted in Coques’ genre portrait, reality was fully consonant with artifice. Although it is well nigh impossible to arrive at a definitive interpretation of this painting, it nonetheless speaks volumes about the vitality of pictorial conventions, the mutability of symbols, and the complex cultural conditions under which they arise.
1
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See Marjorie E. Wieseman, “The Art of ‘Conversatie’: Genre Portraiture in the Southern Netherlands in the Seventeenth Century,” in The Age of Rubens, exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1993-94, pp. 182-93. For conventionality in seventeenth-century Dutch art, see, most recently, Wayne Franits, Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution (London and New Haven, 2004), passim, with references to earlier literature. The painting was in a Hungarian private collection around the time of the Second World War. For this series, see Lucas Heinrich Wüthrich, Das druckgraphische Werk von Matthaeus Merian d. Ae., 2 vols. (Basel: Im Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1966), vol. 1, pp. 20-21, nos. 5364. Both artists in turn owe much to a still earlier print series by Crispijn de Passe the Elder; see Wüthrich 1966, pp. 22-23. See also Jochen Becker, “‘De duystere sin van de geschilderde figueren’: zum Doppelsinn in Rätsel, Emblem und Genrestück,” in Herman Vekeman and Justus Müller Hofstede, eds., Wort und Bild in der niederländischen Kunst und Literatur des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Erftstadt: Lukassen Verlag, 1984), pp. 17-29, who examines the rather complicated interrelationships of these prints, the book illustrations that they engendered, and the double-entendres inherent to both. For example, Peter Rollos, Philotheca Corneliana (Frankfurt, 1619); Peter Rollos, Euterpae suboles (Berlin: 163?). Unfortunately, this specific image does not appear in either of Rollos’ little books. Anonymous, Incogniti Scriptoris Nova Poemata, 3d ed. (Leiden, 1624) (Soest: Davaco Publishers, 1972), pp. 66-69. For this text, see Jochen Becker’s introduction in the same volume. See also Becker 1984, pp. 23-24; John F. Moffitt, “The Fifteen Emblematic ‘Genre Scenes’ in the Nova Poemata (1624),” Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 58 (1989): 157-65. For an English translation of the French verses, see Moffitt 1989, p. 163. As Becker
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1984, p. 3, points out, these verses (and those accompanying Van Haelbeck’s prints discussed above) are heavily indebted to a mid-sixteenth-century French translation of Giovanni Francesco Straparola’s I piacevoli notti. See Eddy de Jongh, “A Bird’s-Eye of Erotica. Double-Entendre in a Series of Seventeenth-Century Genre Scenes,” in Michael Hoyle, trans. and ed., Questions of Meaning: Theme and Motif in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Painting (1968-69) (Leiden: Primavera Pers, 2000), pp. 33-34, with references to further literature. Het Woordenboek der Nederlandsche taal, CD-ROM edition, under “schoen.” For the German version of this saying, see Lutz Röhrich, Lexikon der sprichwörtlichen Redensarten, 2 vols., 5th ed. (Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 1978), vol. 2, pp. 893-94, who notes that it originated in antiquity in the writings of Plutarch. Incidentally, both the wording of this proverb and the illustrations that sometimes accompany it (for example, Jacob Cats, Spiegel vanden ouden ende nieuwen tijdt, 3 pts. (The Hague: Isaac Burchoorn, 1632), pt. 3, pp. 55-57), led me to conclude that the woman in the various images discussed in this essay is actually putting on shoes, not taking them off, as has been asserted (see, for example, note 14 below). Further references to this proverb in seventeenth-century Dutch literature can be found in F.A. Stoett, Nederlandse spreekwoorden, spreekwijzen, uitdrukkingen en gezegden (1901), available online at: http://www.dbnl.org/titels/titel.php?id=stoe002nede01. For the following observations, see Wayne Franits, “The Pursuit of Love: The Theme of the Hunting Party at Rest in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art,” Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 61 (1992): 106-15, with references to further literature. Het Woordenboek der Nederlandsche taal, CD-ROM edition, under “schoen.” De Jongh 2000, p. 34, believes that the suitor is taking off the lady’s shoes, in preparation for even greater intimacy. See Röhrich 1978, vol. 2, pp. 892-93; Het Woordenboek der Nederlandsche taal, CD-ROM edition, under “schoen.” See C.W.M. Verhoeven, Symboliek van de voet (Assen, 1957), pp. 94-99; William A. Rossi, The Sex Life of the Foot and Shoe: An Occasionally Indecent Exploration of the Sexual History of Feet and Footwear, 2nd ed. (Ware, 1989), pp. 13-14, passim; Eddy De Jongh, Tot lering en vermaak: Begekenissen van Hollandse genrevoorstellingen uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1976, nos. 64, 68. See Het Woordenboek der Nederlandsche taal, CD-ROM edition, under “schoen”; De Jongh 2000, p. 34. Wieseman 1993-94, p. 189. However, there are always exceptions, particularly when one is dealing with seventeenth-century Dutch art; see the portrait, attributed to Arie de Vois, of the scholar and notorious collector of erotica, Adriaan van Beverland, and a prostitute, reproduced and discussed in The Dutch World of Painting, exh. cat., Vancouver Art Gallery, 1986, no. 74.
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A Sophonisba by Pieter Lastman? amy golahny Lycoming College, Williamsport
This essay brings an overlooked design into the Lastman discourse: Sophonisba Receiving the Poison. It is known from a drawing lost in World War II, and a rare etching (Figs. 1 and 2). Gustav Pauli published the drawing as by Pieter Lastman.1 In 1986, Christian Tümpel attributed the drawing to Venant after Lastman, and discussed it in the context of representations of Sophonisba in the seventeenth century.2 The authorship of the drawing may not be
Fig. 1. After Pieter Lastman, Sophonisba Receiving the Poison, drawing. Present location unknown.
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Fig. 2. Pieter Lastman, Sophonisba Receiving the Poison, etching. Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum.
resolved easily, although an attribution to Venant is possible.3 The uncredited etching, in the same direction and size as the drawing, has been variously published as after Lastman, Eeckhout, or Berchem.4 Representing an historical event portrayed at a pivotal moment, the design, regardless of who made these works on paper, conforms most closely to Lastman’s approach. Formally, too, the design relates to Lastman’s work in general as a grouping of three main characters in a stage-like setting, and, in particular, as single figures have counterparts in his extant paintings. Represented is the moment when Sophonisba realizes she must drink the poison, sent by her lover and protector, to commit suicide in order to avoid capture by the Romans. A kneeling youth lifts the cover of the goblet containing the poison, a standing old woman reacts in dismay, and the seated, bare-breasted Sophonisba twists away from the proffered drink. A large bed at the right and an archway at the left delimit the open palace and establish the stage-like space of the foreground. A table, a candelabra, and a dog are in the foreground area; soldiers, a domed structure, and city buildings fill the background. Details specific to Sophonisba’s story include the palace setting with soldiers, a servant bringing the drink, and the bed. The narrative, presented most fully by Livy, may be summarized here. It concerns a love triangle between the charming young Sophonisba, her older and lusty husband, Syphax, and the young and intelligent Masinissa, during
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the Second Punic war (203 B.C.).5 Alliances between the two North African kings – Syphax with the Carthaginians under Hasdrubal and Hannibal, and Masinissa with the Romans under Scipio’s command – are central to the story. Sophonisba, a Carthaginian princess, was married to the Numidian king Syphax by her father Hasdrubal, who hoped to make an alliance that would be in his favor in fighting the Romans. The other Numidian king, Masinissa, allied with the Romans against Syphax. After Syphax lost a major battle to Masinissa, he was taken prisoner by the Romans. Sophonisba, realizing that she too would soon be captured by the Romans, took refuge with Masinissa and begged him for mercy. He offered to protect her as long as he could, and married her immediately. Scipio decided that Syphax and his queen Sophonisba should be both sent to Rome as prisoners. Masinissa, anxious to preserve his alliance with the Romans and unable to shelter Sophonisba any longer, sent a servant bearing poison and instructions to drink it. Sophonisba accepted the drink as a wedding present, and, after lamenting that her marriage and funeral would fall on the same day, she fearlessly drank the poison to avoid Roman captivity. Livy’s text and its vernacular translations include elements in common with the design of the drawing and etching: the palace setting with soldiers, the messenger, and the marriage bed. Livy also gave rich descriptions of the characters and their motivations.6 Appianus of Alexandria added a few details to Livy’s account. He reported that Masinissa and Sophonisba had been betrothed in Carthage by Hasdrubal, who sent Masinissa to Spain; that Hasdrubal then married Sophonisba to Syphax to benefit his fight against the Romans; that Sophonisba later explained to Masinissa that her marriage to Syphax was forced on her; and that a nurse was present to sympathize with Sophonisba.7 The popularity of Sophonisba’s story is evident by the twenty plays, poems, or prose versions written between 1500 and 1730, in Italian, French, German, English, and Dutch. Authors’ embellishments include: a son to Sophonisba and Masinissa (G.G. Trissino, 1515); Masinissa’s appearance just after Sophonisba dies (Mellin de Sainct Gelays, 1560); and one, or more confidantes, or nurses to Sophonisba (Trissino, 1515, and Antoine de Montchrestien, 1596 and all subsequent versions). Three English playwrights took liberties with the historical accounts of Livy and Appianus, and emphasized the amorous passion Sophonisba felt for her two husbands, and they for her. The English plays’ variations involve three encounters between Syphax and Sophonisba, and two encounters between Masinissa and Sophonisba (James Marston, 1606); three meetings between Sophonisba and Masinissa, and one meeting that includes Scipio; Sophonisba and Masinissa finally drinking poison together (Nathaniel Lee, 1686); the captured Syphax meeting the victorious Masinissa; Sophonisba learning of Syphax’s capture from Masinissa and interceding with Masinissa on Syphax’s behalf; and Masinissa stabbing himself to die along-
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side Sophonisba (James Thompson, 1729).8 These English versions may be responsible for the appearance at auction of several works apocryphally attributed to Lastman, which will be discussed below. During, or just after Lastman’s lifetime, three Dutch versions of Sophonisba’s story, emphasizing its moral aspects, were published. In 1621, G. vander Eembd’s play was published, following an Amsterdam performance in 1620.9 Vander Eembd explained in his introduction that he deviated from the history writers by including the ghost of Sophonisba, in order to show remorse. He also added two servants each for Sophonisba and Masinissa, and an exchange of letters in which Masinissa and Sophonisba declare their love for one another. In the Rederijker tradition, Vander Eembd included a silent personification of Rumor and a chorus’ conclusion: “Trust not in slippery Fortune.” In the play, Fortune dispenses the scepter to Masinissa and the grave to Sophonisba. Willem van Nieuwelandt’s play, published in 1635 but possibly performed earlier in Amsterdam, emphasized Scipio’s judicious leadership, Sophonisba’s love for Syphax, and her subsequent faithlessness to him when she begs Masinissa for protection. Seventeen personifications of misfortunes and virtues enliven several scenes, and reinforce the conflict between Roman valor (Scipio and Masinissa) and Numidian and Carthaginian inconstancy and untrustworthiness (Syphax and Sophonisba).10 In Trou-ringh, his catalogue of various lovers’ situations that appeared in 1637, Jacob Cats used the affair between Sophonisba and Masinissa to emphasize the vicissitudes of fortune and pitfalls of carnal lust.11 Cats followed Livy in his account, with moral asides. Perhaps Cats recognized the irony of Scipio being the arbiter here; in Spain, Masinissa had served under Scipio, who there behaved honorably with respect to taking women prisoners and to returning the Spanish bride to her betrothed, without accepting ransom from her parents. These three Dutch versions indicate the currency of Sophonisba’s story in Holland, and might have contributed to the interest in a published design by Lastman of the theme in the mid-seventeenth century. But the Lastman design has little in common with these contemporary literary variations apart from theme. The presence of a companion to Sophonisba does not necessarily rely upon any of the versions that feature companions. Old and young women are often paired in Lastman’s paintings, and an older companion is appropriate for a confidante, or procuress. The visual tradition of Sophonisba’s story is established by 1575 with woodcuts to Livy by Joost Amman and Tobias Stimmer; these illustrations include young women as attendants.12 However, beyond a general resemblance in the cast of characters and palace setting with soldiers, Lastman’s invention seems to proceed from his own knowledge of Livy and his storehouse of figural motifs. Lastman apparently considered the narrative as it unfolded quickly toward the end of Sophonisba’s life. The prominent bed and loose robes worn by
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Sophonisba allude to the very recent past, her hasty marriage to Masinissa. Very little time elapsed between her marriage to Masinissa and his sending the poison draught. The bed and Sophonisba’s loose clothing are key elements that depart from the visual tradition. As the Amman and Stimmer woodcuts portray the scene, Sophonisba is fully clothed in a palace, and nowhere near a bed. In the sixteenth-century woodcuts, as in the Lastman design, soldiers appropriately guard the palace, as the events are of wartime and Sophonisba is a prisoner of war. Each of the three main figures in the Sophonisba is a variant of another in Lastman’s paintings. Among the shared motifs between the Sophonisba and other Lastman compositions are the following. The kneeling servant has a counterpart in the boy holding a candelabra in the 1614 Paul and Barnabas at Lystra (present location unknown), and the kneeling youth holding a peaco*ck in the 1630 Dido’s Sacrifice to Juno (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm).13 The old woman appears in the 1614 Ruth and Naomi (Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Hannover) and the 1619 Bathsheba (The Hermitage, St. Petersburg).14 Sophonisba’s pose resembles the kneeling contrapposto of the sister of Lazarus in the 1629 Raising of Lazarus (Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte der Stadt Goch, Goch).15 Some furnishings, figures, and settings have similarities to those in other Lastman designs. The table and its covering, and the patterned armor of the soldier just behind it resemble the table and Uriah’s armor in the 1611 David and Uriah (The Detroit Institute of Arts).16 The distant dome resembles St. Peter’s, and appears with some variation in Lastman’s 1611 drawing Cyrus Returning the Temple Vessels (SMPK, Kupferstichkabinet, Berlin) and elsewhere in his oeuvre.17 The canopied bed, essential to the narrative, is a variation of the rectangular version in the 1611 Wedding Night of Tobias and Sarah (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).18 The main figures in the Sophonisba have a convincing dramatic unity that argues against a pastiche. Therefore, this is not a case of simply fabricating a composite design from other inventions. The correspondences between the figures in the Sophonisba design and others in Lastman’s paintings prompt consideration of the role of drawings in Lastman’s studio. The three main figures in the Sophonisba would seem to be based on similar figure studies that served for other paintings. Such practice would be in keeping with the evidence of Lastman’s working method. In a number of cases, chalk sketches on prepared paper done from life were incorporated into multi-figural compositions. These include: the Reclining Woman as Rachel (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) for the 1622 painting (Musée Chateau, Boulogne-sur-Mer);19 Pleading Woman and Boy (Kunsthalle, Hamburg) for the 1625 Coriolanus and the Roman Women (Trinity College, Dublin);20 and Man Carrying a Chest (private collection) for the 1625 Ulysses and Athena (Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst, The Hague).21 In the first two cases mentioned here, the correspondences between
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the drawn figures and their appearance in the finished painting are very close. In the third, the painted figure alters the pose and attribute of the drawing. The various goats and sheep that appear in Lastman’s paintings proceed from several models, as if there were a sketchbook of animals available for use in larger compositions as needed. We may also speculate that Lastman had a significant number of lost sketches after models that could be adapted for paintings. The inventory made near the time of his death includes many more drawing books than have survived.22 Lastman’s working methods involved stages in developing his compositions, from overall inventive sketch, to single figure drawings, to finished painting that adapted individual figure drawings into the final design.23 The dates on the paintings with motifs related to the Sophonisba range from 1611 to 1630. This suggests that Lastman’s figural vocabulary and methods were established a few years after his 1607 return to Amsterdam from Italy, and remained fairly constant. The nearly identical sizes of the drawing and etching of Sophonisba might indicate a close relationship between them. It is tempting to suppose that the drawing was the prototype for the etching, but in fact, it could not have been the model. The etching, in a sketchy linear style, is more precise in telling details than the drawing: the tassels on the canopy, the sash, legging and foot of the messenger, the dog’s paws, and Sophonisba’s feet. Thus, it is likely that the drawing was made after the etching, or after an unknown yet similar model. Significantly, in the etching, the old woman has sharp features and leans forward, and Sophonisba’s eye squints in a reaction to the messenger. In the etching, the bedpost supports the lifted curtain; in the drawing, this aspect is confused, with the curtain held back without support, and a candelabra placed in front, somewhat similar to the Wedding Night of Tobias and Sarah. As if to compensate for vagueness in some details, the drawing shows specificity in the distant city buildings and flourishes in the three central column capitals. The etching could not have been made under Lastman’s direction, or it would carry an inscription crediting him, but indicates the marketability of his designs in print. It may have been published some years after Lastman’s death (1633), when a looser etching style was prevalent. A date for the design around 1620 is plausible, by comparison with Lastman’s three-figure paintings of around that year (for example, the 1619 David and Uriah). Lastman’s paintings were copied frequently in the seventeenth century, and their motifs may be traced in the work of Rembrandt and artists associated with him. Relevant here is the grand 1664 painting Sophonisba by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig).24 While Eeckhout adapted the dog and messenger from the Lastman design, he departed from it by portraying Sophonisba as a queen, in jewels and ermine, and accompanied by three companions. Eeckhout emphasized the feminine sorrow of the impending death, through the subdued grief of the companions,
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Sophonisba’s sad expression, and the handkerchief clutched in her right hand. By including paper, pen and ink upon the table, Eeckhout indicated the epistolary potential of the narrative, and perhaps familiarity with Vander Eembd’s play. We may acknowledge how documentation may help recover traces of Lastman and his reputation. Sophonisba is an uncommon subject in Dutch art, and rarely mentioned in inventories and auctions. One anonymous painting, now untraced, might be mentioned here, as a speculative link to Lastman’s design. Among the paintings in the Amsterdam inventory of Catharina Grebert, 1715, is “Een Sophonisba.”25 Without further description, no artist may be credibly suggested, except that the nature of the collection reflects Dutch art of the earlier seventeenth century. Ten of the twenty-five paintings in this inventory are “anonymous,” and the thirteen artists associated with the other fifteen paintings flourished before mid-century, notably Bloemaert, Brouwer, and Vroom. Significantly, the small collection contained one painting by Lievens and three by Rembrandt – the only artist with more than one work. A work by Lastman would fit in well with the named artists. Lastman’s name occurs regularly in the London auctions in the nineteenth century. Interestingly, five sales of paintings of Sophonisba by Lastman appeared at auction in London, or Dublin between 1801 and 1831.26 These are: 1. Sophonisba, historical; panel (2 h x 3 w); sold, £25.14; auction house Coxe; London. 22 May 1801; seller Baron Hendrik fa*gel III. 2. Sophonisba; unknown; auction house anonymous; Edinburgh, 1802; seller John Hickman. 3. The Parting of Syphax and Sophonisba; bought in, £12.12; auction house Coxe; London, 16 June 1813. 4. Massanissa Informing Sophonisba of the Capture of Her Husband, Syphax, by the Romans; unknown; auction house Hickman; Dublin, 1825. 5. The Last Interview of Massanissa and Sophonisba; unknown; £31.10; auction house Stanley; London, 16 June 1831. The first two paintings may well represent Sophonisba drinking the poison, as that is the most obvious action associated with her, and might even be the same painting. The other three paintings are likely to be apocryphal attributions. Their specific titles evoke the repeated encounters between Sophonisba and her two husbands in the three English plays of Marston, Lee, and Thompson, rather than the Dutch versions, or the ancient histories. This is particularly apparent in the picture titled Parting of Syphax and Sophonisba, a scene that appears only in the Marston version. In conclusion, Lastman’s religious and secular subjects ranged from the commonly represented to the relatively obscure. But in general, he chose, or
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was commissioned to paint historical themes that belonged to the vernacular humanist culture. He seems to have favored scenes of distressed and impassioned women: Dido sacrificing in vain to Juno, Nausicaa’s companions startled by Ulysses, and the Roman women pleading before Coriolanus. The narrative of Sophonisba accords well with the range of his secular work. The value of these two works on paper is that they reflect Lastman’s design, an original rendering of an episode in Livy. They also illuminate the reception of Lastman, both as an inventor whose designs were usefully appropriated and whose name lent luster to paintings at auction two centuries after his death. Author’s Note: Over the past five years, I enjoyed the company of Michael Montias in New York, where he graciously demonstrated the Frick Database to me, and in New Haven, where his house was, for me, a cozy break from the overly scheduled undergraduate life of my daughter. Our lively discussions focused on the Rembrandt circle, and especially on Lievens documents and Lastman paintings. I gratefully acknowledge Thomas Döring, Anne RöverKann, Michiel Roscam Abbing, and Gerhard Strasser for assistance with research and photographs; Christian Tico Seifert for auction references; and Lycoming College for funding.
1 2
3
4
5 6 7
G. Pauli, Zeichnungen alter Meister in der Kunsthalle zu Bremen (Frankfurt: Verlag der Prestel-Gesellschaft, 1914-15), vol. 2, p. 21. Christian Tümpel, “Bild und Text: Zur Rezeption antiker Autoren in der europäischen Kunst der Neuzeit (Livius, Valerius Maximus),” in W. Schlink and M. Sperlich, eds., Forma et subtilitas. Festschrift für Wolfgang Schöne zum 75. Geburtstag (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1986), pp. 199-218, esp. p. 208. See Astrid and Christian Tümpel, The Pre-Rembrandtists, exh. cat., E.B. Crocker Art Gallery, Sacramento, 1974, p. 41, fig. 69, for Venant, Gideon’s Offering (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig), with its fluid even pen strokes, sausage fingers, and poses derived from other Lastman compositions. It would be unsound to make conclusions about authorship from a drawing that no longer exists; the illustration published in 1915 is of high quality to make tentative observations. For additional analysis of Venant as a draftsman, see J. Bruyn, “François Venant: Enige aanvullingen,” Oud Holland 111, no. 3 (1997): 163-76. F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts (Amsterdam: Menno Hertzberger, 1949), vol. 1, p. 268, no. 61, as after Berchem and representing Artemisia; and vol. 10, p. 37, no. 23, as unknown after Lastman, and formerly as after G. van den Eeckhout. Livy, From the Founding of the City, ed. and trans. F.G. Moore, vol. 8 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), Book XXX, pp. 366-539. Livy was translated into Dutch in 1541, and again in 1614. For Appian’s additions and other slight variations of antiquity, see Albert José Axelrad, Le thème de Sophonisbe dans les principales tragédies de la littérature occidentale (France,
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11 12
13
14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23
24 25 26
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Angleterre, Allemagne) (Lille: Bibliothèque universitaire, 1956), series Travaux et mémoires de l’Université de Lille, n.s. Droit et lettres, no. 28, chapter 1. See also Appianus of Alexandria, Appian’s Roman History with an English translation by Horace White, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), pp. 439-43. For these versions and bibliography, see Axelrad 1956, passim. G. vander Eembd, Treur-spel Sophonisba (The Hague: 1621). Play performed in the Oude Kamerbinnen, Amsterdam, on 21 September 1620. G. van Nieuwelandt, Treur-Spel van Sophonisba Aphricana (Amsterdam, 1639). The play was performed in Antwerp in 1625 and first published in 1626 (no copy extant); see further W.M.H. Hummelen, Amsterdams toneel in het begin van de Gouden Eeuw. Studies over Het Wit Lavendel en de Nederduytsche Academie (The Hague, 1982), pp. 218, 235. Jacob Cats, ’s Werelts begin, midden, eynde, besloen in den trou-ringh met den proef-steen van den selven (Dordrecht, 1637). The woodcuts by Amman and Stimmer were published in illustrated editions of Livy in 1568 and 1575, respectively; see Walter Strauss, The Illustrated Bartsch (New York: Abaris, 1978-), for Amman, vol. 20, part 1, nos. 3.84(367), 3.85(367), and 3.86(367); and for Stimmer, nos. 64.79(348), 64.80(348), 64.81(348), and 64.82(348). See, respectively, Astrid Tümpel and Peter Schatborn, Pieter Lastman, The Man who Taught Rembrandt, exh. cat., Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam, 1991, p. 21; Amy Golahny, “Lastman: ‘Dido’s Sacrifice to Juno’ Identified,” Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis (1998), no. 1-2: 38-48. See, respectively, Astrid Tümpel in Tümpel and Schatborn, 1991, no. 6; Amy Golahny, “Rembrandt’s Early Bathsheba: The Raphael Connection,” Art Bulletin 65 (1983): 672. A. Tümpel in Tümpel and Schatborn 1991, p. 29. See also the maid viewed from the back in the 1619 Ulysses and Nausicaa (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig). A. Tümpel in Tümpel and Schatborn 1991, no. 12. Schatborn in Tümpel and Schatborn 1991, no. 29. C. Tümpel in A. and C. Tümpel 1974, no. 1. Schatborn in Tümpel and Schatborn 1991, nos. 30. Schatborn in Tümpel and Schatborn 1991, no. 31. Schatborn in Tümpel and Schatborn 1991, no. 34. Lastman’s inventory of 1632 contained at least ten books of drawings, some of which are described as by Lastman; see S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, “Pieter Lastman (1583-1633). Een schilder in de Sint Anthonisbreestraat,” Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis (1991), no. 2: 2-15. Schatborn in Tümpel and Schatborn 1991, pp. 132ff., discussed aspects of Lastman’s drawings, and acknowledged that few are extant; see nos. 23 and 37, for examples of compositional drawings. See also Werner Sumowski, “Zeichnungen von Lastman und aus dem Lastman-Kreis,” Giessener Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 3 (1975): 149-86. R. Klessmann, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum Braunschweig. Die holländische Gemälde (Braunschweig, 1983), no. 260. Getty Provenance Index, http://piweb.getty.edu/cgi-bin/starfinder/7888/collab.txt (accessed 1 October 2005). Tico Seifert kindly called my attention to this reference. Getty Provenance Index, http://piweb.getty.edu/cgi-bin/starfinder/1408/collab.txt (accessed 16 July 2003).
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Poelenburch’s Garden: Art, Flowers, Networks, and Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century Holland anne goldgar King’s College London
The Kleine Bank van Justitie in Haarlem – the small claims court – met twice a week in the 1630s, dealing mostly with the failure of Haarlemmers to pay for food, beer, or other items that had been sold to them on account, or, conversely, for the non-delivery of such items. In the autumn of 1636, however, the court was flooded with cases about something rather more exotic: tulip bulbs. This was the period of Tulipmania, and since in this period prices were still rising, the problem was almost always failure to deliver rather than failure to pay. Possessors of bulbs, having promised to sell them, cursed themselves for making sales one week when the next week they could have got a better price. Often they simply reneged on the original deal. This was the case for the lawyer Jan Verwer, whose profession seems not to have reminded him of the need to honor contracts. Already in August, he had been sued by the merchant Bartholomeus van Rijn for failing to deliver a Lack van Rijn tulip. In November, Pieter and Abraham Ampe, members of a wealthy Mennonite Haarlem family in the potash trade, found themselves in the same position as Van Rijn. They had bought a Petter tulip bulb, weighing 450 asen, from Verwer, but Verwer had failed to produce the goods. The situation was particularly problematic because the Ampes themselves were being sued by a further buyer, Evert Claesz. van der Gom, to whom they had in turn sold the Petter.1 There are any number of fruitful lines of analysis one could draw from these cases, not least, ideas about trust and contract in the seventeenth century.2 But what interests me here are a mere two words in one of the cases. The court clerk in the Kleine Bank van Justitie, Michiel van Limmen, who was himself involved in the tulip trade, noted when Van der Gom’s case against Pieter Ampe came up that the Petter in question was standing in “poelenburchs tuijn” – “Poelenburch’s garden” – in Amsterdam. When Pieter Ampe sued Verwer on December 2, the same Petter was still described as “staen[de] inden tuijn van poelenburch tot Amsterdam.” poelenburch’s garden | 183
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Who was Poelenburch? He seems (disappointingly) not to have been related to the painter Cornelis van Poelenburch, but he was himself, or had been, an artist. Simon van Poelenburch was an engraver, one with a very small known output; he is noted chiefly for having done engravings after Esaias van de Velde. He came, however, from a distinguished circle of artists in Haarlem. Poelenburch’s grandfather and father had been schoolmasters; his father, indeed, had been deputy headmaster of the Latin School in Haarlem and, along with Hendrick Goltzius’, one of the judges of the big rhetorical competition associated with the Haarlem lottery of 1606. The connection with Goltzius went further. Simon’s sister Marijtgen married the engraver Jacob Matham, Goltzius’ foster son, and the few documents that survive suggest considerable contact both with Matham and with another of Simon’s brothers-in-law, the surgeon Gerrit Nannincx Deyman, who was also involved in the tulip trade. Simon’s brother Dirck Poelenburch was also an artist, as were a number of his Matham nephews.3 It seems that Poelenburch, who by the 1630s had evidently turned from art to trade, had long been interested in tulips. He spent a number of years in Paris, and – very early for this kind of transaction – we find him selling large quantities of tulips in 1617 to the important Parisian professional florist René Morin.4 He was still in Paris in 1624, or at least expressed his intention to return in front of a Haarlem notary that March.5 In the 1630s, we find him in Amsterdam, living outside the Regulierspoort, a center of gardens and site of a known cluster of tulip traders, and clearly involved in tulipgrowing circles.6 Several watercolors in tulip books show tulips bearing his name, such as “the Poelenburg,” the “Columbijn van Poelenburg,” and the “Columbijn met root en wit van Poelenburg”; these demonstrate either that he was himself a breeder, or a friend and patron of breeders.7 In 1636, Poelenburch became involved in a quarrel with Jan Hendricxsz. Admirael, also a buyer of art at auction, who had sold Poelenburch three tulips planted in the garden of another important figure in the tulip trade, Cornelis van Breugel.8 In 1636 and 1637, along with several other prominent bloemisten, he acted as arbiter in a quarrel over flowers between Admirael and the rector of the Latin school in Alkmaar, Wilhelmus Tiberius. And in July of 1637, Poelenburch joined the hosts of sellers hearing the excuse “I shall do as another does” (that is, renege on a promise to pay) from the buyer of some of his flowers, the apothecary Cornelis Swaech in Enkhuizen.10 Although he died in 1643, a public sale of his flowers must have been held some years later, given that a quarrel over some tulips bought there was still raging in 1649.11 Even after his death, then, Poelenburch’s tulips lived on. Poelenburch’s involvement in the tulip trade raises several issues for anyone interested in how Tulipmania fits into the wider social, economic, and cultural history of the Netherlands in the period. One of the first things we
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notice is that Poelenburch, despite living in Amsterdam, was involved in transactions in other towns. Although the pamphlet literature after the crash in early February 1637 portrayed the tulip trade as an irrational trade, occurring drunkenly and haphazardly in inns, a closer examination suggests more rationality and forethought. Trade frequently took place between buyers and sellers in different towns, and we can find examples of buyers deliberately traveling in order to take part in a sale. For example, Weeskamer auctions, such as those for the heirs of David de Milt in Haarlem, or Wouter Bartholomeusz. Winckel in Alkmaar, were advertised through posters distributed in towns throughout the province.12 We know from later arguments about tulips sold in these sales that tulip traders traveled to attend them; Jan Quakel of Haarlem, for example, was at the Winckel sale in Alkmaar.13 We know, also, that those interested in tulips made the journey to other towns to buy from known tulip traders. The professional florist Anthonij van Flory, who went bankrupt before the tulip crash, was evidently visited in his garden in Wassenaar in 1635 and 1636 by a variety of potential buyers, who generally judged his tulips to be ugly and worthless. The prominent political figure Arent Fabritius, for example, went in 1635 “to view, and also to buy” Flory’s tulips, but found that they were “worth neither the trouble nor the cost of having traveled so far.”14 An Enkhuizen dyer, Dirck Maes, had more success in 1634 when he sent the pastry-baker Jan van Broeckenhuysen to buy Slechte Juriae bulbs from the Amsterdam collector Abraham Casteleyn. Even so, he had other reasons to complain. The tulips were fine, but he later learned to his irritation from another Enkhuizen buyer who dealt with Casteleyn that Van Broeckenhuysen had quietly added on a 400 percent markup.15 There are many examples of intercity selling in the archives. Several Haarlem merchants, such as Hans Baert and Willem Schoneus, seemed almost to specialize in selling in Amsterdam, and, on the other hand, we hear of Haarlemmers buying at sales in Amsterdam inns such as the Menniste Bruyloft, or the Witte Wambeys. Sellers as distant as Leeuwarden attempted to bring legal action after the crash for transactions in Haarlem and Alkmaar, although this was unusual, and such action usually entailed the consultation of local experts for confirmation of normal practice. We must consider, however, that trade in the early modern period, especially when it involved relations of credit, was almost by necessity a matter of operating within known networks in which buyers and sellers were tied in other ways than merely by profit.16 Unless we are to revert to the view that the tulip trade was in essence haphazard, a view that, as I have said, my research seems not to bear out, we have to assume that the intercity trade in tulips took place within contours relatively familiar to its participants. This would suggest that the networks of tulip trading were, or became, regularized over the several years of enthusiastic commerce in the flowers. Although this might have related simply to
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the trade itself, it is more likely that these networks followed patterns already established through knowledge and prior relationships. One good example of this is the Mennonites participating in the tulip trade. If we examine the relationships between a variety of Mennonite traders in Amsterdam, Haarlem, Utrecht, Rotterdam, and other places within relatively easy reach of each other, we find that nearly all were in some way related, some in multiple ways. This could hardly be accidental, nor was such interconnection restricted to necessarily exclusive groups such as the Mennonites.17 These conclusions naturally resonate strongly with the work of Michael Montias on buyers of art. In 1999, Michael and I first discussed my suspicions that tulip buyers and sellers were also collectors; when he saw my list of participants in the trade, he characteristically pulled out his laptop to check them on his Database, to our mutual benefit. Many, we found, were buyers of art at auction.18 For Michael, this helped to indicate yet another “cluster” of connections among art collectors, a group which, as he pointed out, emphatically did not include everyone. His work on the Amsterdam Weeskamer auctions indicates that art collectors were linked by family, by geographical origins (particularly in the south), by business ties, and other bonds. Although not all the same people were involved in both art and flowers, the same kinds of groupings can be made about the bloemisten, who formed clear networks based on both established links and pathways of information. As I have indicated elsewhere, the implications of the crossover between tulips and arts are in part aesthetic. From this, we can discover something about the conception of the relationship between naturalia and artificialia, both as objects in collections and as objects for aesthetic appreciation. But as will already be apparent, the crossover also gives us a better understanding of the practices of collecting, both in terms of methods of acquisition of objects and also methods of acquisition of knowledge. In other words, from tulips we can learn something about the social construction of a knowledge base. This question of knowledge is, indeed, implicit if not always explicit in Michael Montias’ work on art collecting. By establishing “clusters” of buyers, not to mention discussing the intermediary role of buyers, Montias gave prominence to the social aspect of collecting. He remarked on “the conviviality of buying art at auction,” stressing the smallness and selectness of the group who regularly turned up at Weeskamer auctions, a group that must have become familiar to each other and to the bode, whose scribe frequently did not have to ask the identity of those bidding on paintings. “One gets the impression,” he wrote, “that buying at auction was a highly social activity that helped to knit together the society, or, perhaps one should say, the various societies in which the better-off burghers of Amsterdam – representing perhaps 15 percent of the population – intermingled.”19 The members of such
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a close-knit group, one must assume, conversed, and that conversation would have helped to shape the operations of the market. While Michael Montias stressed the conviviality of buyers, Marten Jan Bok has made the same point about painters, emphasizing the “lively ‘art scene’” of Amsterdam in which painters met in particular inns, or the St. Lucas guild room to exchange ideas.20 The recent work of Clé Lesger has helped us to identify the crucial role such sociability played in the period, not only for the art market, but indeed for the market in general. His account of the rise of Amsterdam in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries turns away from the stress on the port as a staple market – he rejects for the most part the existence of a major entrepôt trade – but instead highlights Amsterdam’s importance within a regional economy. Lesger proposes the model of a “gateway system,” in which Amsterdam and other towns interacted in a series of changing relationships, depending on conditions and the goods concerned.21 But besides substituting the gateway system for the staple market, Lesger is eager to stress another kind of staple: information. Amsterdam’s success was founded, he convincingly argues, on its central place in a network of news. Merchants there had at their disposal better information than elsewhere, which not only helped them to make the best decisions in trade, but also attracted foreign merchants to the port to take advantage of this fund of knowledge. Although some of this news circulated in print through price courants, or in manuscript through nouvelles à la main, or private letters from factors, much of it was available chiefly simply by word of mouth. As Lesger points out, Amsterdam was not physically large in the first part of the seventeenth century, and if one knew where other merchants were to be found – on the Oude Brug, for example – this would help both to bolster one’s financial decisions and to cement trading relationships with others.22 Although this model is specifically about the operations of domestic and international trade, it surely fits in well with what we know about both the art and tulip markets. For example, in the course of long auctions such as the Jan Basse, or Gommer Spranger sale, the conviviality of attendees at Weeskamer art auctions must have increased their familiarity with fellow-buyers, especially in relation to prevailing knowledge about the art being sold. The makers of art would have been in a similar position, and, as Michael Montias pointed out, the product innovation that helped form niche production in art developed through the flow of information, sometimes from some distance away. Artists in Delft, he wrote, were not influenced only by other artists in Delft.23 The kind of networks stressed by Lesger can be seen in the tulip market as well. In the first place, as we have seen, intercity trade was an integral feature of the market in flowers. Although Haarlem – and specific traders –
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formed a central node in a series of floral networks, it was certainly not the only such node. Depending on the location of flowers, of gardens, of experts, and of important sales (such as the Winckel sale in Alkmaar on 5 February 1637), the shape of the trade would vary. But it is also clear from the very existence of intercity trade, not to mention the multiple relationships among those in the trade, that information was crucial here too. As we survey the various records of transactions and quarrels about transactions in tulips, we can see the degree to which knowledge about the flowers was central to the market. Such knowledge, for a start, helped to determine the market price. This is of course true of every product, but for a product as unusual and rare as a tulip, especially one that was not sold at any central market and was not regulated by any guild, knowing the current views on the value of tulips was crucial for traders. As with art, this involved aesthetic considerations. Tulips rapidly went in and out of fashion, and to collect what was currently considered beautiful and thus make a potential profit, one had to be aware of what kinds of stripes, or markings were at the moment in good odor. This was what prompted those who went to view Anthonij Flory’s tulips in Wassenaar to judge their value so low. When these came to be planted in Haarlem – the cause of the legal action prompting all this testimony – those who planted them, Barent Cardoes and Leendert Dirxsz. Bodsaert, stressed that none was worth even four stuivers because even the best of them had the appearance of “nothing better than an early double color.”24 Fashion strikes again. Cardoes and Bodsaert were, it is true, professional gardeners, and they emphasized their expertise in terms of their profession; Cardoes pointed out that he had worked for years for the merchant and market gardener Pieter Bol “and therefore has a very good knowledge of the planting and cultivation of flowers.”25 But others who, like collectors of art, were only liefhebbers, or who were growers in the minor fashion of an apothecary, brewer, or linen merchant who thought to practice tulip cultivation on the side, also claimed a similar expertise. They, too, gathered in gardens to discuss the details of the trade, what was in fashion, who owned what, and who had the best tulips. A plethora of notarial documents provides examples of such discussions. Indeed, given the overlap of liefhebbers of art and flowers, perhaps the details of both fashions and both trades were discussed in the gardens outside the Regulierspoort and on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam, and outside the Kleine Houtpoort in Haarlem. Simon van Poelenburch had his place in this world. As we have seen, he was born in Haarlem, where he was connected with the artistic as well as the merchant elite. He was well-traveled and, as we can see from his contacts with the renowned gardener René Morin, had an early interest both in tulips and in the tulip trade. In Amsterdam he moved within circles central to both
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the art and the tulip market; his dealings with Jan Hendricxsz. Admirael, among others, make that clear. Moreover, he was part of an intercity trade in tulips. He traded with Cornelis Swaech in Enkhuizen, and someone, possibly Jan Verwer, had evidently bought from him the tulip in question in the Kleine Bank van Justitie in November of 1635. That tulip was, after all, planted in his garden. But what is important for us here is not that the tulip was there, but that people knew it was there. When the clerk of the Kleine Bank, Michiel van Limmen, wrote down the location of the Petter bulb, he did not say that it was in the garden of “one Simon van Poelenburch,” but simply that it was “in poelenburchs tuijn.” Poelenburch was well enough known to those involved in the tulip trade that his full name was not necessary. Michiel van Limmen was himself trading in tulips (he later is to be found pleading cessio bonorum, although not necessarily for this reason). And naturally Pieter Ampe, who must have mentioned the location of the bulb, also knew that Simon van Poelenburch was someone to be conjured with in the tulip trade. Finally, in case we are tempted to attribute this knowledge to Simon van Poelenburch’s impeccable Haarlem connections – his relationship, for example, to the wealthy Matham and Deyman families – we should note that he is not the only bloemist whose name was familiar in Haarlem. In 1637, we hear of Volckert Dircksz. Coornhart, a very longstanding member of the tulip community in Amsterdam, being referred to in a court case simply as “corennaert tot amsterdam.”26 Many a Haarlemmer had a Coornhart tulip in his garden, and some (as the court case quoted shows) had traded with him directly before his death in the summer of 1636. Like art, then, this was a trade that operated around networks, and these were networks not just of capital, but of knowledge. Although the tulip trade operated between cities, the relationships of those involved – again, like those in the art market – helped to shape the conventions determining the aesthetic and economic value of particular flowers. The sociability of the tulip trade, including its intercity nature, thus indeed created knowledge, which then in turn influenced the market. Much of this particular conviviality took place outdoors, with viewings of flowers, discussions of their qualities, and transactions of bulbs happening in gardens from Alkmaar to Rotterdam and Gouda to Enkhuizen. Knowledge about gardens was itself produced in gardens – maybe, even, in “poelenburchs tuijn.”
1
Verwer is mentioned as a prominent lawyer in Samuel Ampzing, Beschrijvinge ende Lof der Stad Haerlem in Holland (Haarlem: Adriaen Roman, 1628), p. 146. The case involving Van Rijn is Haarlem, NHA (Noord-Hollands Archief) ORA 116/18/196v and 198v, KBJ (Kleine Bank van Justitie) 18 and 22 August 1636. The cases concerning the Ampes
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are NHA ORA 116/19/24v, KBJ, 21 November 1636 (Van der Gom sues Pieter Ampe) and ) ORA 116/19/30v, 2 December 1636, KBJ, 2 December 1636. For some of these ideas, see Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2006). On Poelenburch, see Ludwig Burchard, Die Holländischen Radierer vor Rembrandt (Berlin: Paul Cassirer, 1917), p. 45. On Poelenburch’s father, see Hans van de Venne, Cornelius Schonaeus, 1540-1611. Leven en Werk van de Christelijke Terentius (Ph.D. diss., Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), vol. 1, pp. 244-45, 423-26, 462. Paris, Archives nationales, Minutier central ET/CV/329, 5 October 1617 and 25 May 1618. I am very grateful to Beth Hyde for alerting me to these documents and sending me copies of them. Haarlem, NHA ONA 95/77, not. Willem van Triere, 21 March 1624. Poelenburch’s residence outside the Regulierspoort is evident from his will of 1637: GAA (Gemeentearchief Amsterdam) NA 580/711-12, not. Laurens Lamberti, 22 October 1637. He still lived there at his death in 1643: GAA DTB 1046/22v, burial 29 August 1643. List of names of tulips from notes taken by Sam Segal on 24 tulip books. I am most grateful to Dr. Segal for letting me use his private dossiers on the tulip trade. GAA NA 889, no folio, not. Jacob van Swieten, 24 April 1636. On Admirael, see also John Michael Montias, Art at Auction in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2002), esp. pp. 74-76. Among the documents on this case mentioning Poelenburch are GAA NA 918/519v, not. Barent Jansen Verbeeck, 8 December 1636 and GAA NA 919/64-64v, not. Verbeeck, 13 February 1637. Hoorn, AWG (Archief voor de Westfriese Gemeenten), Enkhuizen, ONA 933/act 116, not. Cornelis Antonisz. Stant, 1 July 1637. Swaech’s actual words were “wat dat een ander doet, dan toe ben ick overbodich omme tselve meede te doen.” Variations on this were often given as answers to insinuaties by notaries threatening buyers with legal action over tulips. GAA NA 933B/pak 22/15, not. Jan Bosch, 26 April 1649. See, for example, NHA WK 179/13, Weeskamer accounts for the estate of David de Milt, which included costs of printing and posting bills concerning the sale. On Quakel’s attendance, see Haarlem, NHA ONA 149/219, not. Jacob Schoudt. Haarlem, NHA 149/95, not. Jacob Schoudt, 18 May 1637, also printed incompletely and inaccurately in N.W. Posthumus, “De Speculatie in Tulpen in de Jaren 1636 en 1637 (II),” Economisch-Historisch Jaarboek 13 (1927): 63. The document reads that Fabritius found the flowers “soo geconditioneert te wesen dattse de moeijte nochte costen nijet waerdech en waeren, om soo verre daeromme te reysen....” Enkhuizen, AWG ONA 970/act 154, not. J.J. Coppen, 6 December 1635. Leos Müller, “The Role of the Merchant Network: A Case History of Two Swedish Trading Houses, 1650-1800,” in Clé Lesger and Leo Noordegraaf, eds., Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship in Early Modern Times: Merchants and Industrialists within the Orbit of the Dutch Staple Market (The Hague: Stichting Hollandse Historische Reeks, 1995), p. 149. On networks and the trade, including specifics of the involvement of Mennonites, see Goldgar 2006, forthcoming, chap. 3. For Michael Montias’ account of this, see Montias 2002, pp. 70-76; for mine, see Anne Goldgar, “Nature as Art: The Case of the Tulip,” in Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen, eds., Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 324-46, esp. pp. 336-37, and Goldgar 2006, forthcoming, chap. 2. Montias 2002, pp. 245, 108.
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20 Marten Jan Bok, “The Rise of Amsterdam as a Cultural Centre: The Market for Paintings, 1580-1680,” in Patrick O’Brien et al., eds., Urban Achievement in Early Modern Europe: Golden Ages in Antwerp, Amsterdam and London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 192-93. 21 Clé Lesger, Handel in Amsterdam ten tijde van de Opstand: Kooplieden, commerciële expansie en verandering in de ruimtelijke economie van de Nederlanden ca. 1550-ca. 1630 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2001), pp. 183-207. 22 Lesger 2001, chap. 6, esp. pp. 220-39. 23 John Michael Montias, “Cost and Value in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art,” Art History 10 (1987): 457-58. 24 Haarlem, NHA 147/97, not. Jacob Schoudt, 17 May 1637, also inaccurately and incompletely printed in Posthumus 1927, pp. 61-62. The witnesses stated that “de beste die sy daer onder sagen uuijterlijck nijet meer als een vroege dubbelde coleur en mochte passeren.” 25 Haarlem, NHA 147/97, not. Jacob Schoudt, 17 May 1637, also inaccurately and incompletely printed in Posthumus 1927, pp. 61-62: “ende sulcxs vande plantinge, ende voortteellinge van bloemen een seer goede kennisse hebbende....” 26 Haarlem, NHA ORA 116/19, no folio, KBJ, 3 February 1637.
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Tournai’s Renaissance Jubé: Art as Instrument of Empowerment ethan matt kavaler University of Toronto, Toronto
In the early modern Netherlands, architecture and monumental sculpture were particularly effective in asserting the political claims of society’s privileged sectors. Opulent town halls and imposing cloth halls announced the power of the cities and their commercial interests to the ruling elite.1 In the communal space of parish churches, elaborate tombs for the high nobility forcefully affirmed their public authority and their proximity to the emperor.2 And during the years of Protestant rebellion, sumptuous church furnishing could trumpet the victory of Catholicism and its institutions over heresy. Recently, Charles Avery and Mariët Westermann have discussed the jubé made for the Church of St. John in ’s-Hertogenbosch as a compelling declaration of Counterreformatory triumph in this northernmost outpost of the Roman religion.3 The earlier jubé in the Cathedral of Tournai, grandfather to the monument in ’s-Hertogenbosch, has perhaps even more interesting political connotations. Built after suppression of the local Calvinist uprising, this magnificent choir screen purported to proclaim the rightful ascendancy of the true faith in this ancient cathedral city. Tournai, however, had suffered more from the reparative measures of the Council of Trent than from Protestant upheaval, and it sought the capacity of the arts to enhance its status within the bastions of orthodoxy. Its intended audience, consequently, was as likely the religious and secular administration in Mechelen and Brussels as its own divided congregation. In 1570, the venerable chapter of the Cathedral of Tournai commissioned a new jubé to replace the one that Calvinists had destroyed in the iconoclastic riots four years earlier.4 The canons approached one of the foremost artists in the Netherlands, Cornelis Floris, a man well known both for church furnishing and for prestigious secular projects that he had undertaken during the previous two decades. Floris was sought after for tabernacles and altarpieces in his distinctly Italianate, or “antique” style, and his numerous tombs and epitaphs for the aristocracy greatly enhanced his reputation, at home and
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Fig. 1. Cornelis Floris, Jubé, 1570-1574, marble, alabaster, touchstone, and stucco. Tournai, Cathedral (Photo: author).
abroad.5 But Cornelis Floris was not only a sculptor. Praised as “prince among architects” by Petrus Opmeer, Floris received most of the credit for planning Antwerp’s magnificent Town Hall, the most prominent manifestation of the new classicizing mode in Netherlandish design.6 Completed in 1565, it powerfully broadcast Antwerp’s newly found status as commercial capital of Northern Europe and its independence from the government of Philip II.7 The canons of the Cathedral of Tournai no doubt hoped for a similar result, a Renaissance “Bilbao effect,” for Cornelis Floris and his shop amounted to one of the few artistic concerns in the Low Countries that could empower patrons and their venues the way architect Frank Gehry does today.8 Indeed, the imposing jubé in the Cathedral of Tournai (Fig. 1) has long been considered a landmark of Netherlandish architectural design; even in its own time it was judged exemplary, serving as a paradigm for choir screens for more than half a century. Its essential features were preserved on the jubés once decorating the cathedrals of Antwerp and ‘s-Hertogenbosch, as well as on those for churches in Arras, St. Omer, Valenciennes, Cambrai, Soignies, and other cities.9 The view of the Tournai screen as a manifestation of resurgent Catholic power is, however, unhelpfully reductive.10 Conflicts with both the Catholic hierarchy and the central government at Brussels were at least as important as interdenominational concerns. And these political issues help explain why such a prestigious work should be in Tournai, which was not one of the more important cities in the Low Countries during the later sixteenth century.
The Politics of Religion The immediate occasion for the commission was indeed the need to replace
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the old jubé that had been savaged by the Calvinists during their effective control of the city. Calvinism had made strong inroads into Tournai and its environs in the later 1550s and 1560s. Close to the border with France and predominately francophone, the city was besieged by proselytizing ministers even as it played host to Protestant day-workers from the outlying villages.11 Although the iconoclasm of August 1566 moved Philip II to action, a limited Calvinist opposition reappeared in Tournai during the early years of the following decade. By 1570, however, the Cathedral of Tournai was less concerned with the Calvinist threat than with the erosion of its own stature within the Catholic Church and the administrative organs of government. The program to restore the Church was at best a mixed blessing for Tournai’s Catholics, for the bishopric was severely diminished by measures promulgated at the Council of Trent. Until 1561, the bishop of Tournai had been one of the principal churchmen in the Netherlands, which fell largely under the jurisdiction of only four cathedral cities. The bishopric of Tournai controlled not only the Tournaisis, a territory in itself, but much of the county of Flanders, including the far wealthier and more powerful towns of Bruges and Ghent. Cambrai was responsible for the major cities in Brabant: Antwerp, Brussels, Mechelen, and Louvain. Utrecht governed most of Holland and the North, while Liège, an independent principality, administered much of the remaining area that now belongs to Belgium.12 All of this changed beginning in 1559. Eighteen bishoprics were created in the Netherlands in order to give the Catholic Church a greater presence in combating heresy and to reflect demographic and political changes since the previous establishment of episcopal sees. Bruges and Ghent received their own bishops, while Tournai’s authority was restricted to a narrow area about the city. Further, Cambrai was made an archbishopric with authority over Tournai, whereas both had previously deferred on equal footing to Rheims. The diocese of Tournai was extended to a few towns and neighboring parishes, but this was little consolation for the loss of Ghent, Bruges, the county of Flanders, and its former status within the Netherlandish church.13 And there were other sources of tension, particularly regarding the city’s cultural institutions. Pieter Titelmans, the zealous director of the Inquisition, was stationed in Tournai, where he soon alienated even loyal Catholics. Brussels had closed Tournai’s budding university in order to protect the competing universities at Douai and Louvain. Now Tournai’s excellent schools were under attack by Titelmans. The École de Puy de Rhétorique, a center of humanist activity, was promptly closed on suspicion of Calvinist and Lutheran sympathies.14 The late 1560s were a terrible time for Tournai, even after the initial suppression of Calvinist insurrection. The reapportionment of dioceses contin-
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ued throughout the decade, first under the leadership of the powerful Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, then under the Duke of Alva.15 By 1565, Tournai had lost Bruges; by 1570, it had lost Ghent. And the city suffered further indignities. After the iconoclastic riots, Alva had assumed both military and administrative control of the Netherlands. He imposed severe measures on Tournai, a response that surprised most inhabitants, since city officials had generally remained loyal to Philip II and his policies. And in 1568, only two years before the commission of the new jubé, Alva abolished Tournai’s special status as an independent territory; the city and its surrounding lands were subsequently absorbed by the county of Flanders. The bishopric was thus deprived of the legal privileges that had marked Tournai’s independence from the central government at Brussels. Within Tournai itself, the bishop lost much of his influence over the municipal councils that decided local policy and adjudicated financial disputes.16
The Jubé The celebrated jubé for the cathedral thus arrived at a moment of institutional readjustment and conflicting interests that it addressed in subtle but effective ways. Between 1572 and 1574, Cornelis Floris delivered to Tournai a substantial block of three large vaults, supported by pairs of columns on each side and linked by a continuous architrave that further emphasizes the horizontal orientation of this unusually wide choir screen and the breadth of the crossing that it spans. The pulpit at the center of the tribune was intended for preaching; at Tournai, each new bishop delivered an inaugural sermon from the jubé in addition to other orations. Other aspects were likewise proper to the common requirements of such screens, which sealed the choir, marking the most sacred space within the church. The jubé stood behind the altar at the crossing. It therefore commonly included representations of sacred stories relevant to liturgical and devotional practices, much as would the grand altarpiece that stood behind the high altar in the choir. On Tournai’s new jubé, reliefs illustrating the passion of Christ were located in square frames above, while typological scenes from the Old Testament were portrayed in roundels beneath. One of these circular alabaster reliefs, for instance, depicts Jonah cast into the whale. The scene is presented as a pre-figuration of the moment in which Christ will be laid into the tomb, which we see represented in the square field above it (Fig. 2). The Old Testament roundels, in turn, are bracketed by reclining figures of apostles. The iconological program was hardly innovative and, as Steppe suggests, may have been inspired by a source like the old Biblia pauperum, which likewise situated prophets and narratives from the Old and New Testaments within an architectural framework.17 A statue of the Virgin and Child
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Fig. 2. Cornelis Floris, Jubé, detail, 1570-1574, marble, alabaster, touchstone, and stucco. Tournai, Cathedral (Photo: author).
occupies the niche in the front of the pulpit in this cathedral, dedicated to our Lady, while the side niches hold statues of Saints Piat and Eleutherius, of particular importance to the city. The jubé at Tournai is striking for its use of luxurious materials, which must have captivated its initial viewers. Prestigious black Tournai touchstone forms the architrave and frames the individual figural reliefs, niches, and decorative friezes. Reddish Rance marble is used for the supporting marble columns, mirrored above by the engaged colonnettes that bracket the square alabaster reliefs in the tribune. Stucco is used for the apostles that surround the alabaster roundels. Stucco had not earlier appeared on choir screens, but it had become quite fashionable in palace decoration – at Fontainebleau, of course, but also at Netherlandish châteaux such as Binches – and seems to have come to church furnishing along this route.18 Floris’ gift for design and skillful manipulation of different materials permits a surprisingly clear reading of the lush and variegated façade. Black string courses and frames isolate the various fields of narrative relief and ornamental carving. Darker columns and colonnettes divide horizontal ranges and establish an easily legible rhythm. This jubé, like the best of Floris’ compositions, has a decidedly graphic quality, and its principal elements register from afar. tournai’s renaissance jubé: art as instrument of empowerment | 197
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The Tournai jubé immediately signaled its inventive integration of the latest Italianate conventions. The three large barrel arches recalled any number of ancient and Renaissance monuments and refer at some remove to the earlier jubé in the collegiate church of St. Waudru at Mons, the first Netherlandish choir screen to employ exclusively Italianate elements.19 Several authors have proposed Sansovino’s Loggetta in Venice as a partial model for Floris’ jubé, although Steppe rejects this all too obvious comparison in favor of a relationship with certain galleries in Lombardy.20 Other sources were more important, however, both formally and symbolically. Floris’ lower story at Tournai is quite distinctive. The long, continuous band of architrave and archivolt – a Serliana of sorts – is supported by widely spaced Doric columns that house niches between them. A compelling association is found with one of Sebastiano Serlio’s Doric patterns in his Fourth Book of Architecture.21 Although Floris used the Doric order only rarely, he frequently relied on Pieter Coecke’s editions of Serlio’s architectural books, which enjoyed particular authority in the Netherlands.22 Floris, however, seems to have imported the motif of the continuous architrave and arch from late antique models with an eye to the imperial connotations they conveyed. This “arcuated lintel” was shown framing Roman emperors on a variety of reliefs, ivories, and plates that were known to the Renaissance (Fig. 3).23 Shortly before Floris came to Italy, Giulio Romano had used the continuous architrave and archivolt on the Palazzo del Te in Mantua, where it was also coupled with pairs of Doric columns. It appeared on the East, or Garden façade as it was originally conceived and shown in Jacopo Strada’s surviving drawing.24 As at Tournai, the slight upper story was basically an attic, a continuous band bearing various types of decoration. At Mantua, Giulio decorated the East façade with painted motifs taken from the Arch of Constantine and other Roman monuments, turning the whole expanse into a massive triumphal arch. Giulio was motivated by a desire to celebrate Emperor Charles V, who visited the palazzo in 1530, and, by extension, his patron Federigo Gonzaga, who had just been elevated to the rank of duke for services rendered to the emperor.25 Giulio used the motif again inside the palazzo, in one of the painted medallions in the Sala dei Venti, where it characterized a “regal building” fit for trusted government officials. And the Italian designer employed the continuous architrave and archivolt one other time, in the Sala de Costantino at the Vatican Palace, where painted representations of the motif decorate the window casem*nts.26 Here the royal connotations are applied to the pope. Cornelis Floris seems to have adopted the Doric order and the extended Serliana, fully aware of its imperial associations in Antiquity. Giulio’s enterprises may have partly inspired him in this endeavor, both at Mantua, where
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Fig. 3. Presentation of David to Saul, plate from Nicosia. Silver, cast, hammered, engraved, and chased; 7th century. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan (Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art).
the forms welcomed an actual emperor, and at the Vatican, where they transferred authority from secular to ecclesiastical rulers. On the jubé at Tournai, Floris reverted to his more usual Ionic order in the attic story above. The colonnettes that divide the narrative and decorative friezes are supported by protruding triglyphs acting as consoles, another idiosyncratic touch that, in this case, denies any connection between the upper and lower orders. Floris creatively adapted his varied sources, synthesizing a largely original conception that addressed the needs of Tournai Cathedral on several levels. A side view of the structure in Tournai allows us to appreciate its massive, monumental nature. It emerges block-like from the lateral piers, protruding into the space of the crossing. This relatively solid barrier, with its triple vaults and obvious dependence on ancient and Italian models has prompted comparison with Roman triumphal arches.27 Jan Steppe largely dismissed this parallel on the basis of structural distinctions.28 The open ground story at Tournai, with columns supporting the trib-
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une, clearly departs from the solid impregnable structure of ancient triumphal monuments. Indeed, this jubé differs precisely in this way from contemporary French screens that unmistakably imitate Roman imperial arches. The screen at Arcques-la-Bataille may stand for a series of similar monuments no longer extant, such as those of St. Germain l’Auxerois at Paris and St. Nicolas at Troyes.29 There is here no open colonnade but rather a solid face of stone: substantial piers house niches for statues and support the attic story, while paired columns emerge only slightly from this plane. Perhaps an association between Calvinism and French territory discouraged the adoption of this model in the Netherlandish provinces, where it is rarely found. But to dismiss the relationship between the Tournai jubé and Roman triumphal arches seems far too literal. The horizontal pairing of Old Testament roundels and rectangular Passion reliefs specifically recalls the carving on the Arch of Constantine, known to all visitors to Rome and to many armchair travelers through reproductions. Pieter Coecke’s edition of Serlio had included a schematic rendering of the arch that preserves the vertical pairing of circular and square fields among its few details – suggesting that this particular ornamental idiosyncrasy was closely associated with the structure (Fig. 4).30 Because Constantine was the first Roman emperor to embrace Christianity, references to his commemorative arch were especially suitable to a monument celebrating the triumph of the true religion. The jubé at Tournai refers to ancient works without imitating them precisely. A conspicuously classicizing vocabulary of forms had become expected, even in church furnishing, since at least the early 1560s, when a contract for a tabernacle specifies that the elements and proportions “accord with the book of Vitruvius.”31 And explicit reference to ancient architecture was still obligatory at this time. Lambert van Noort, one of the unsuccessful candidates for the commission to design Antwerp’s Town Hall, boasted that he had endowed his submission with “measure and beauty just as the ancients had equipped their edifices.”32 At Tournai, where appreciable humanist interest had been denied a forum, a jubé “à l’antique” – especially one that exemplified the most sophisticated synthesis of ancient conventions with contemporary practice – must have been especially welcome. We find a similar process in Floris’ work on the Antwerp Town Hall. Here, the architect also relied heavily on Coecke’s editions of Serlio, not only for his definition of the classical orders, but also for his general elevation of the Town Hall, which reflects Serlio’s illustrations of Venetian palaces.33 Yet, again, Floris managed to fashion a novel solution with its rising central section that recalls both ephemeral triumphal arches and frontispieces to French châteaux. Floris proved to be one of the chief arbiters of Italianate taste in the Low Countries at this time. His project for the Antwerp Town Hall was victorious over the submissions of at least ten other competitors, and even though 200 | in his milieu
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Fig. 4. Sebastiano Serlio, Die aldervermaertste antique edificien va[n] temple[n]…, edited by Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Antwerp, 1546. Fol. 56-recto, the Arch of Constantine (Photo: Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University).
Floris was likely required to incorporate certain features of the other designs into his plan, his classicizing vision was ultimately chosen to represent the Scheldt city. The Town Hall soon became a model for other structures; by 1564, a year before its completion, it had already influenced the design of the town hall in The Hague.34 And this was not Floris’ first important commission for civil architecture. A few years earlier, in 1557, he had submitted two projects for the porch to the town hall of Cologne, again in competition with other Netherlanders. This contest, too, amounted to a referendum on classicizing design. Although Willem Vernukken, a local mason from the Lower Rhine, was eventually chosen to construct the porch, he remained surprisingly faithful to Floris’ intentions.35
Art as Empowerment Floris’ prestigious Italianate manner and his allusions to antiquity glorified the cathedral of Tournai and spoke to the image of the city, so recently
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reduced. Tournai had lost ground to its young competitors, but none of these could match its glorious history. This was the card it played. The cathedral of Tournai had frequently resorted to major artistic commissions in order to buttress its claims to privilege and authority. In 1402, a magnificent cycle of tapestries covering the choir walls extolled the lives of Saints Piat and Eleutherius, whose presence was pointedly required on Floris’ jubé. The tapestries were also purchased at a time of factional conflict and dispute over the sanctity and legitimacy of the election of Tournai’s bishop. The papal schism had resulted in the assignment of two different bishops to the diocese. Louis de la Trémoille (1388-1410) was supported by the pope in Avignon, the King of France and francophone parishes, while William de Coudenberghe had been appointed bishop by Urban VI and was recognized by many Flemish cities within the episcopal see. The cathedral’s commission of 1402 emphasized the historical role of St. Piat, the city’s first apostle and patron saint, and of St. Eleutherius, the first bishop and patron saint of the cathedral. The tapestries thus told a story of foundation and continuous lineage, supporting Louis de la Trémoille’s claim as sole legitimate bishop.36 A century later, the cathedral turned once more to established artists in an attempt to validate its municipal privileges. Around 1500, the ambulatory was fitted with a spectacular series of stained glass windows that likewise insisted on Tournai’s illustrious heritage. This was a prestigious commission: the stained glass was designed and partly executed by the renowned glass painter Aert van Nijmegen. The windows told two sets of stories. One group represented scenes from the ninth-century founding of Tournai by vassals of Clovis, king of the Francs. Seven of these windows portray the early legendary history of the diocese and its prominent role in dynastic affairs. These fields display scenes from the life of Chilperic, king of Neustria, who fought a deadly battle against his brother and rival, Sigesbert. One window shows King Chilperic being received by the bishop of Tournai, who offers him asylum. Another, significantly, depicts a thankful Chilperic in the act of bestowing legal privileges on the bishop of Tournai. These privileges comprised the subject for the second cycle of windows, in which Aert van Nijmegen and his assistants represented specific financial and juridical rights that had accrued to the bishop and clergy of Tournai Cathedral. Thus, in one window, a local cleric is shown exercising the authority of the bishopric over the weighing of incoming goods (Fig. 5). In another, representatives of the cathedral collect duty on wares sold at market, while other windows show taxes collected on wine, beer, and further commercial traffic.37 Cornelis Floris’ jubé situated statues of the cathedral’s two venerated founders within its double series of typological narrative scenes. In fact, the statues of Saints Piat and Eleutherius – here shown holding a model of the church – were explicitly added to the original program. The canons again
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Fig. 5. Aert van Nijmegen, The Right of Weighing, c.1500, stained glass. Tournai, Cathedral (Photo: author).
altered the contract, stipulating that the two saints were to be carved from alabaster and not fashioned from wood, or plaster, thus endowing them with greater value in the overall design.38 They stand on their console supports providing a local reference to the structure of divine history and find their place in this spatial mapping of all time. The metaphysical stance nicely links past and present as stages in a continuum, eternally valid. Tournai’s glorious past must have seemed all the more relevant and current after it had endured painful reversals. The grand jubé in the Cathedral of Tournai illustrates ways in which art at this time might advance political interests and promote a favorable corporate identity among different audiences – all the while meeting the diverse liturgical and devotional needs required of such a structure. Like the earlier tapestry and stained glass nearby, it reminded citizens of their history. It situated the local within the eternal, imputing a stability to the community that could not be effaced by the ephemeral acts of an imprudent ruler. And, of course, it affirmed the central place of the cathedral and the episcopate in this notion. The wealth of the diocese was profitably spent on Cornelis Floris, for this artistic celebrity treated the cathedral’s wound with a golden bandage, a sign of Tournai’s enduring greatness.39 The cathedral demonstrated that
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it still had extraordinary financial resources in keeping with its tradition and should remain an important voice in the region despite administrative changes. The new boundary to the choir engaged the public on many levels. This massive material object reasserted the triumph of the Catholic Church, as has been said. But it did so in a way that supported the bishopric, which was then being broadly challenged. Certain elements were clearly due to the patron’s requirements, while others were left to Floris’ judgment. What emerged from this variegated generative process was a striking monument that successfully raised the cathedral’s profile among its own population and within the religious bureaucracy of the Netherlands for years to come. Author’s Note: It is an honor to contribute to this volume. I offer this essay in gratitude for Michael Montias’ friendship and guidance and his inspiring example when I was in graduate school. I want to thank Krista De Jonge for her helpful comments, particularly regarding the iconographic significance of certain architectural motifs employed by Floris.
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There are no general discussions of the political efficacy of art in the Netherlands of the sixteenth century, but for Italy during this period, see Charles M. Rosenberg, ed., Art and Politics in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy, 1250-1500 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990); Randolph Starn and Loren Partridge, Arts of Power: Three Halls of State in Italy, 1300-1600 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992). See, for instance, Ethan Matt Kavaler, “Being the Count of Nassau: Refiguring Identity in Space, Time, and Stone,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 46 (1995): 13-51. Charles Avery, “The Rood-Loft from Hertogenbosch,” Victoria and Albert Museum Yearbook 1 (1969): 4-7; Mariët Westermann, “A Monument for Roma Belgica: Functions of the Oxaal at ‘s-Hertogenbosch,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 45 (1994): 385-96. Antoinette Huysmans et al., Cornelis Floris, 1514-1575: Beeldhouwer, architect, ontwerper (Brussels: Gemeentekrediet, 1996), pp. 111-12; Jan Steppe, Het Koordoksaal in de Nederlanden (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1952), pp. 260-74; Paul Rolland, “La famille Floris à Tournai,” Jaarboek van de Vereniging van de Oudheidkundige en Geschiedkundige Kringen van België (1950): 294-317; Jean Mogin, Les Jubés de la Renaissance (Brussels: Éditions du Cercle d’Art, 1946), pp. 12-16; D. Roggen and J. Withof, “Cornelis Floris,” Gentse bijdragen tot de Kunstgeschiedenis 8 (1942): 126-29; Joseph Warichez, La cathédrale de Tournai et son chapitre (Wetteren: De Meester, 1934), pp. 261-67 (hereafter as Warichez 1934a); Joseph Warichez, La cathédrale de Tournai (Brussels: Nouvelle société d’éditions, 1934), vol. 2, pp. 19-21 (hereafter as Warichez 1934b). The jubé was entirely destroyed by iconoclasts on 23 August 1566. Still extant are Floris’ tabernacles for Zoutleeuw (1550-52) and Zuurbembde (c. 1555), while documents attest to his designing similar sacrament houses for the Abbey of Tongerloo (1554), the hospital of Oudenaarde, and probably the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk of Antwerp. Floris also carved a wooden lectern for Antwerp’s Onze-LieveVrouwekerk (1546) and designed altarpieces for Antwerp’s Vierschaar (1559) and for the Church of St. Gudule in Brussels (1558), now the cathedral. More than sixteen
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tombs and epitaphs survive, and designs for others were disseminated through engravings. The so-called Spencer Album, a manuscript principally of tomb design in the Spencer Collection of the New York Public Library, attests to the fame of Floris’ patterns. See Roggen and Withof 1942, pp. 100-29; Huysmans 1996, pp. 62-66, 71-113. Floris is referred to as “distinguished architect and sculptor” (“ad querendum egregium architectum et sculptorum nominee Floris”) in the Acta Capitularia of the cathedral. See Rolland 1950, p. 312. For Floris’ contribution to the Antwerp Town Hall, see Jozef Duverger, “Cornelis Floris II en het stadhuis te Antwerpen,” Gentse Bijdragen tot de Kunstgeschiedenis 7 (1941): 37-50; Holm Bevers, Das Rathaus von Antwerpen, 1561-1565: Architektur und Figurenprogramm (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1985), pp. 12-13; Huysmans 1996, pp. 116-18. Floris ultimately directed the building of the town hall, although he was most likely required to adopt elements from his competitors’ designs. Karel van Mander (1604) named Cornelis Floris, alone, as the architect of the building. Bevers 1985, p. 93. See, for instance, Martin Bailey, “The Bilbao Effect,” The Art Newspaper 2002, http://www.forbes.com/2002/02/20/0220conn.html (accessed 8 June 2005); Witold Rybczynski, “The Bilbao Effect: Public Competitions for Architectural Commissions Don’t Necessarily Produce the Best Buildings,” The Atlantic Monthly 290 (September 2002), http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200209/rybczynski (accessed 8 June 2005). Steppe 1952, pp. 278, 280-83, 286-87, 295, 315-19. On the jubé of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, see Avery 1969, pp. 110-36; Westermann 1994, pp. 383-446. Rolland 1950, p. 294; Steppe 1952, p. 261. Gérard Moreau, Histoire du protestantisme à Tournai jusqu’à la veille de la revolution des Pays-Bas (Paris: Société d’édition “Les belles letters,” 1962). Charlie R. Steen, A Chronicle of Conflict: Tournai, 1559-1567 (Utrecht: H&S, 1985), pp. 17-18. There were also a few small pockets that fell within the sees of Térouanne, Arras, and Munster, but these were not significant. Tournai’s situation was actually a bit more complicated. Until 1561, the bishop of Cambrai controlled three of the city’s twelve parishes and had its own episcopal court. There had been earlier attempts to modify the situation by creating additional bishoprics – in 1525 under Margaret of Austria, and in 1551-52 – but these had come to naught. See Michel Dierickx, L’érection des nouveaux diocèses aux Pays-Bas 1559-1570 (Brussels: La Renaissance du Livre, 1967), p. 10. Steen 1985, p. 18. For a detailed account of the reorganization of the Netherlandish dioceses, see Michel Dierickx, De Oprichting der nieuwe bisdommen in de Nederlanden onder Filips II 1559-1570 (Antwerp: Standaard-Boekhandel, and Utrecht: Het Spectrum, 1950), pp. 50-51, 62-63, 144-46, 248. The episcopal reorganization was first proposed in 1558-59 at the Council of Trent. In May of 1559, Pope Paul IV issued a bull establishing the new dioceses. Yet the bishoprics took some time to fill, due to opposition from the existing ecclesiastical church structure and from the nobility; the final bishop was not appointed until 1570. The bishop of Tournai, the eminent Charles de Croy, protested his loss of territory, but Margaret of Parma was firm in promoting the new order. After Charles de Croy died in 1564, it took a year for Pope Pius IV to appoint the new bishop, Gilbert d’Oignies, to Tournai, at the same time that he appointed Cornelius Jansenius to the see at Ghent. Steen 1985, pp. 18-20. Dierickx 1950, pp. 112, 255-64, 299. Granvelle was made archbishop of Mechelen with authority over the entire Netherlandish church. As a sign of his power, he arrogated the bishoprics of Ghent and Bruges, among others, to his province in the years 1561-63. Steen 1985, pp. 9-13, 142-45; Michel Dierickx, Documents inédits sur l’érection des nouveaux diocèses aux Pays-Bas, 1521-1570 (Brussels: Palais des Académies, 1962), vol. 3, pp. tournai’s renaissance jubé: art as instrument of empowerment | 205
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361-82, 406. The independent province consisted of both the city of Tournai and the Tournaisis. Within the baillage of the Tournaisis, clerics, the local nobility and city officials all vied with each other to preserve their interests. The city was run by two councils normally composed of thirty magistrates. There arose competition between the bishop of Tournai and the governor of the Tournaisis, a representative of Brussels, over the election of magistrates and respective influence on policy. Steppe 1952, p. 271. See Avril Henry, Biblia Pauperum: A Facsimile and Edition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987). Within a vaguely Romanesque frame, prophets appear with a typological pairing of scenes from the Old and New Testaments. Steppe 1952, p. 266. Ethan Matt Kavaler, “The Jubé of Mons and the Renaissance in the Netherlands,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 45 (1994): 349-81. Rolland 1950, p. 299; Roggen and Withof 1942, p. 85; Warichez 1934b, vol. 2, pl. 49; Mogin 1946, p. 15; Steppe 1952, pp. 268-70. Sebastiano Serlio, The Five Books of Architecture. An Unabridged Reprint of the English Edition of 1611 (New York: Dover, 1982), Book 4, fol. 27v. I cite the English edition of Serlio from 1611, which was translated from Pieter Coecke’s Dutch edition of sixty years earlier. The illustrations were likewise borrowed from Coecke’s publication. I thank Krista De Jonge for the reference to Serlio and to further references to Serlian motifs in the following notes. Krista De Jonge, “‘Anticse Wercken’: La découverte de l’architecture antique dans la pratique architecturale des anciens Pays-Bas. Livres de modèles et traits (1517-1599),” in Théorie des arts et création artistique dans l’Europe du Nord du XVIe au début du XVIIIe siècle, eds. Michèle-Caroline Heck, Frédérique Lemerle, and Yves Pauwels (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Université Charles-de-Gaulle, Lille, 2002), pp. 59-65. See Donald F. Brown, “The Arcuated Lintel and its Symbolic Interpretation in Late Antique Art,” American Journal of Archaeology 46 (1942): 389-99. Most of the monumental manifestations of this architectural motif were located in Asia Minor, although there was one closer at hand: in Diocletian’s palace at Split. For a discussion of the Serliana in Antiquity and its adoption in the Renaissance, see Krista De Jonge, La travée alternée dans l’architecture de la Renaissance. Origines et dévelopement, Ph.D. diss., Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 1987, pp. 246-48; 254-57. Egon Verheyen, The Palazzo del Te in Mantua (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), pp. 46-48, 80, fig. 20. Kurt W. Forster and Richard J. Tuttle, “The Palazzo del Te,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 30 (1971): 275-80. E.H. Gombrich, “The Sala dei Venti in the Palazzo del Te,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13 (1950): 193, pl. 51c; Rolf Quednau, Die Sala di Costantino im Vatikanischen Palast: Zur Dekoration der beiden Medici-Päpste Leo X. und Clemens VII (Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms, 1979), pp. 494-99, figs. 26-29. Warichez 1934a, pp. 265-66; Rolland 1950, p. 305. Warichez discerned a resemblance to both the Arch of Titus and the Arch of Constantine, while Rolland believed that the latter suggested to Floris the “medallions” on the Tournai jubé. Steppe 1952, p. 270. Kavaler 1994, pp. 257-59, fig. 10. Sebastiano Serlio, Die aldervermaertste antique edificien va[n] temple[n], theatre[n], amphiteatre[n], paleisen, therme[n], obelisce[n], brugge[n], arche[n] triu[m]phal, & c. bescreve[n] en[de] gefigureert met haren gronde[n] en[de] mate[n] oock de paletsen daerse staen, en[de] wiese dede make[n]…, ed. and trans. Pieter Coecke van Aelst (Antwerp: Pieter Coecke van Aelst, 1546), fol. 56r. Jan Crab, Het Brabants Beeldsnijcentrum Leuven (Louvain: Stedelijk Museum, 1977), p. 312. In 1564, the Church of St. Gertrude in Louvain commissioned the sculptor Lam-
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brecht van den Leliebloeme to carve a tabernacle. The contract stipulates that the work “...ende sullen moetten geproporchioneert zyn nae huere lingde ende huere ordinancie ende mate vanden boeck vitr[uv]ius.” Bevers 1985, pp. 94, 161: “D’welck ick met groote industrie ende aerbeyt gedaen hebbe, met den maten ende schoonheyt gelyck de Antycken plaghen haer edificien te maken….” Bevers 1985, pp. 16-18, 22-34; Wouter Kuyper, The Triumphant Entry of Renaissance Architecture into the Netherlands. The Joyeuse Entrée of Philip of Spain into Antwerp in 1549. Renaissance and Mannerist Architecture in the Low Countries from 1530 to 1630 (Alphen aan den Rijn: Canaletto, 1994), vol. 1, pp. 151-73. The editions of Serlio were issued by Pieter Coecke van Aelst and his widow at Antwerp between 1539 and the early 1550s. E.H. ter Kuile, “Architecture,” in Jacob Rosenberg et al., Dutch Art and Architecture 1600-1800 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986 [1966]), pp. 378-79; Kuyper 1994, vol. 1, pp. 175-80.The Antwerp Town Hall was also a model for the town halls of Emden and Bocholt (in the Lower Rhine). Michael Kiene, “Zur Planungsgeschichte der Kölner Rathausvorhalle,” Wallraf-RichartzJahrbuch 52 (1991): 127-50; Michael Kiene, “Die Kölner Rathauslaube und die Rezeption der italienischen Renaissancearchitektur am Niederrhein,” Annali di architettura. Rivista del Centro Internazionale di Studi di architettura Andrea Palladio 12 (2000): 14358. Laura Weigert, “Performing the Past: The Tapestry of the City and its Saints in Tournai Cathedral,” Gesta 38, no. 2 (1999): 154-65. I thank James Bugslag for first proposing to me the relevance of the Tournai tapestries. Jean Helbig, Les Vitraux médiévaux conservés en Belgique, 1200-1500 (Brussels: Weissenbruch, 1961), pp. 204-81. The stained glass has been remounted in the windows of the transepts. Rolland 1950, p. 297; Steppe 1952, p. 262. Floris was paid somewhat over seven thousand pounds for the jubé. See Steppe 1952, p. 262.
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Vermeer and His Thematic Use of Perspective yoriko kobayashi-sato Mejiro University, Tokyo
The paintings by Johannes Vermeer always surprise us with their realistic appearance: the expressions and gestures of the figures; the texture and form of the various depicted objects; and the well-composed interior space.1 The meticulous observations of reflected light, the seemingly out-of-focus renderings using paint to resemble beads of light, and the well-calculated differences in size among his motifs remind us of an image seen through the viewfinder of a camera. As a result, from as early as the end of the nineteenth century, the argument has been advanced that Vermeer must have used a mirror, or a camera obscura, the forerunner of the modern camera, to produce his works.2 In honor of Michael Montias, I would like to add several observations to the debate about Vermeer’s use of the camera obscura. The suggestion of a camera obscura, in particular, has captured the interest of many Vermeer scholars and enthusiasts, and has given rise to more than a few studies, including some involving experimental attempts. One of these was recently presented by Philip Steadman. From his reconstruction of the room represented in The Music Lesson (Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II), he deduced that the room would have been 6.6 meters in depth and must have had three sets of four rectangular-shaped windows. Based on this premise, he surmised that Vermeer had constructed a stationary camera obscura – that is, a sort of darkroom – in the corner of the room by the third set of windows, and that the painter traced the image projected onto the back wall of the room. Furthermore, the projected images that Steadman obtained based on his deductions show a remarkable correspondence in size with five other paintings in which Vermeer, he is convinced, depicted the same room as in The Music Lesson.3 The image of Vermeer that emerges from such an argument is that of an artist who was satisfied to look at the world around him just as one looks through the lens of a camera at the scene before it. However, Vermeer’s
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remarkable arrangement of light and shadow, his exquisite positioning of each motif, and his choice of position for the vanishing point in his works are all quite different from what we would expect from tracing a projected image. The effects that Vermeer achieved are manifestly the result of the judgment of an artist who carefully composed an image on a two-dimensional surface. In this essay, I will examine several paintings by Vermeer and, by focusing on his compositions, confirm what I believe guided his judgment in the execution of his paintings.
The Milkmaid and A Woman Holding a Balance Let us begin with one of Vermeer’s masterpieces, The Milkmaid (Fig. 1). A maid stands in a corner of a room, wearing a white cap and garment of yellow, blue, and red. Milk flows from the jug in her hands into an unglazed ceramic container. On the table, beside the container, are a dark blue water jug, a basket with some large loaves of bread, and some smaller broken pieces beside it; dots of white paint simulate highlights on the bread. Objects rendered in deep colors with thickly applied pigments contrast with the brightly lit wall behind them. If one looks very closely, one can also see a tiny area of missing paint around the vanishing point of the composition, located slightly above and behind the woman’s right hand, in the grayish area of the wall. It was made, according to Jørgen Wadum, when Vermeer stuck a pin there, to which he attached a piece of powdered string in order to draw exact orthogonals.4 In fact, all the orthogonals in The Milkmaid converge toward this vanishing point. The lines of the panes in the latticed window at the left, for example, slope down and to the right, converging at that one point (Fig. 1). What, then, about the right contour of the tabletop? Because the near edge of the table looks horizontal, it should extend straight toward the vanishing point, if the tabletop was meant to be rectangular.5 In fact, however, it runs in a gentle diagonal toward the upper right. Might the tabletop have been intended to be five-sided, with one of its long sides (the right edge of the table) angled outward at about the midpoint? That Vermeer was looking at a unique, five-sided table seems highly unlikely.6 I surmise that, instead, Vermeer wanted to fix the vanishing point where the woman turns her attention – that is, around her hands. Our eyes are drawn toward the vanishing point by the orthogonals and thus unobtrusively to the act of pouring milk. There we find both the thematic and compositional focus of the picture, and the overlapping of these two foci generates a tension that captures and holds our attention. If Vermeer had painted the rectangular table and all the depicted objects accurately according to linear perspective using this vanishing point, the table would have been too big, the part of it closest to the picture plane far too
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Fig. 1. Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid, with some perspectival lines and a horizontal line running trough the vanishing point, c. 1658-59, oil on canvas. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum.
Fig. 2. Manipulated image of Figure 1, with the horizontal frames of the window turning to a possible vanishing point on the far right side. Digital manipulation courtesy of Takeru Kishi.
empty and, moreover, it would have obstructed the view, so that our sense of the woman’s presence in the painting would be diminished. Alternatively, the table would be too small to hold the ceramic container for milk and the
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chunks of bread beside it, which are so important in the scene.7 Vermeer could have easily avoided these perspectival problems by shifting the vanishing point to the right, toward which the right edge of the table would lead (Fig. 1). Then, however, the convergence of the compositional and thematic foci would clearly be lost, as a manipulated image of The Milkmaid shows (Fig. 2). The vanishing point far beyond the right edge of the picture plane would have served to create an acceptable perspectival arrangement, but would not have established a particular theme. By distorting the shape of the table, Vermeer seems to have consciously chosen to deviate from the laws of perspective. This demonstration, then, shows that Vermeer painted with an acute awareness of the effect his placement of the vanishing point would have on his thematic conception. Similarly, Arthur K. Wheelock pointed out that Vermeer produced a strong psychological effect by locating the vanishing point between the gazes of the two figures in the Officer and Laughing Girl (Frick Collection, New York).8 In The Milkmaid, painted around the same time, the artist set his vanishing point above and behind the right hand, where the viewer’s gaze meets that of the maid. This device makes us subtly identify with the protagonist of the picture, again producing a strong psychological effect. Evidently, Vermeer was willing to distort individual objects to achieve such effects, even if this led to irregularities in perspective. Another painting that reflects Vermeer’s intense awareness of how the vanishing point could be used to provide thematic focus is A Woman Holding a Balance (Fig. 3). In this painting, the left and lower lines of the frame of The Last Judgment hanging on the wall and the rays of light pouring in from the upper left seem directed toward the balance, which, by reference to The Last Judgment, can be interpreted as a symbol of God’s will.9 So too, the orthogonals lead to the vanishing point, located very near the woman’s raised hand holding the scales. Vermeer laid down visible and invisible directional axes in multiple layers in order to lead the viewer’s gaze toward the balance. What is more, this also corresponds to the intersection of the two diagonals connecting the four corners of the canvas, in other words, the physical center of the canvas. The intimate connection between the pictorial organization and the theme in Woman Holding a Balance is immediately apparent when we compare it to Woman with a Pearl Necklace (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin), another painting in which the vanishing point corresponds to the physical center of the canvas. Vermeer used almost the same compositional framework in these two works, but the effects are completely different. Suppose, for example, that the figure in Woman Holding a Balance was made to inhabit the space of Woman with a Pearl Necklace. The contemplative atmosphere with multiple meanings that governs the former painting would be com-
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Fig. 3. Johannes Vermeer, A Woman Holding a Balance, c. 1662-65, oil on canvas. Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art. Widener Collection.
pletely lost. In Woman with a Pearl Necklace, Vermeer placed the upper part of the figure before an empty wall, so that what might be called her “state of abstraction” is clearer. In other words, the composition of Woman with a Pearl Necklace suggests an altogether different theme. These two works convey the impression that the painter took great care composing his works in accordance with an artistic outlook that moved far beyond the simple tracing of an image produced by a camera obscura. In The Astronomer (Musée du Louvre, Paris) Vermeer also created a composition in which the vanishing point overlaps the physical center of the canvas. As Eddy de Jongh has pointed out, if the celestial globe before the scholar indicates the heavenly teachings that humanity needs, the astronomer’s hand, which connects with the heavens, is the most important motif in the picture.10 In that sense, the placement of the vanishing point and the physical center around the midpoint of the astronomer’s arm, which he extends toward the globe, is truly effective. Interestingly, The Astronomer and Woman with a Pearl Necklace are almost the same size. Perhaps when Vermeer found a compositional type he liked, he experimented with it a number of times to explore a range of pictorial possibilities.
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The Love Letter In the case of The Love Letter (Fig. 4), as well, the position of the vanishing point seems to have substantial significance beyond its role as a compositional point of reference. From the dark room in the foreground, the viewer sees a brightly lit room through an open door. A letter is being passed between two women, who are seen against a wall with a fireplace and two landscape paintings. It appears that the maid standing on the left has just delivered a letter to her seated mistress, who places the lute on her lap and looks up at her companion. One can deduce that it is a love letter, since she has aban-
Fig. 4. Johannes Vermeer, The Love Letter, with some perspectival lines, c. 1669-71, oil on canvas. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum.
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doned her needlework and has instead been engrossed in playing a musical instrument, as well as from the inclusion of a seascape in the background.11 Perhaps the maid is aware of her mistress’ restless heart, for a knowing smile has spread across her face. The two women seem to be conversing about an absent man not with words, but with their eyes. As in the other works by Vermeer just analyzed, the direction of the figure’s gaze is closely connected with the vanishing point. In The Love Letter, the exchange of glances between the maid and the woman receiving the letter takes place precisely along a line that leads to the vanishing point. The spatial organization of the picture thus draws the viewer’s attention naturally to the psychological interaction between the two female figures. Pieter de Hooch depicts a similar scene in Man and Woman with a Parrot (WallrafRichartz-Museum, Cologne), which shares the broad compositional framework and several motifs with The Love Letter. However, De Hooch suggests no particular interaction between the two people portrayed and the space inhabited by them. The space he depicted is not organically involved with the figures who inhabit it and so differs in essence from Vermeer’s. Also deserving of our attention in The Love Letter is the shape of the doorway that opens to the space inhabited by the two women. It seems exceptionally long and narrow; as visible in the painting it has a length-to-width ratio of approximately 2.7 to 1. If the chair at the right has its back against the wall, the bottom edge of the doorway should be positioned at about the same level as where the chair legs come in contact with the floor (Fig. 4). Moreover, since the upper part of the doorway is cut off by the edge of the canvas, the proportion would actually be closer to about 3.5 to 1.12 Additionally, according to Steadman’s calculations, its actual width would have been an impossibly narrow 62 centimeters.13 Let us imagine what would happen if the doorway of The Love Letter were given normal dimensions. In that case, the floor of the nearer room would occupy the lower part of the picture, as in De Hooch’s painting. The two women would appear extremely close to the doorway, and the chair on the right would need to be painted much smaller. However, such adjustments would totally destroy the feeling of depth, which owes much to the line of tiles receding back to the two figures and to the differences in size between the near and distant motifs. Another way to make the doorway take on normal dimensions would have been to leave the bottom part of the picture as is, but to paint in the upper doorframe. Then, however, the top of the standing woman’s head would touch the upper edge of her space, and even the lower picture-within-the-picture, which adds meaning to the painting, would hardly be visible. Thus, as with the table in The Milkmaid, Vermeer must have deliberately distorted the shape of the doorway, making it long and narrow. In this way, he once again pro-
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duced a fitting composition for the two protagonists with regard to both space and meaning. The room has other curious features. On either side of the doorway, Vermeer painted a strip of light surrounded by two dark strips, creating a vertical trio of dark, light, and dark. This detail is not found in De Hooch’s Man and Woman with a Parrot, but is seen in a work of Vermeer’s early period, A Girl Sleeping (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and in Samuel van Hoogstraten’s The Slippers (Musée du Louvre, Paris). In both these paintings, two doorframes are set across from each other on either side of a corridor. This suggests the presence of a corridor between the distant room and the foreground room in The Love Letter as well, although it is invisible.14 The door handle visible at the center right edge of The Slippers by Van Hoogstraten implies that there is still another room on the near side of the foreground room, from which the entire scene is being viewed.15 The wit with which Van Hoogstraten performed clever tricks in the depicted space is evident as well in Vermeer’s The Love Letter.
Constructing the Composition The conservator Jørgen Wadum proposed that Vermeer used the traditional pin-and-string method to plot the orthogonals and diagonals in many of his paintings.16 In this process, the artist inserts a pin at the vanishing point. A piece of powdered string, attached to the pin, could be arranged to create the orthogonals leading to the vanishing point. If, however, as Wadum claimed, Vermeer applied the laws of perspective freely and chose his distance points at will, the question still remains why the distance from the viewer’s vantage point, as calculated from the actual painting, to the wall in the background is more, or less consistent in many of Vermeer’s works. Nor can Wadum’s hypothesis explain Steadman’s discovery that in six of Vermeer’s works, the size of the projected image obtained by a camera obscura under certain fixed conditions corresponds to that of the actual painting. One should also note that there is basically no difference between the interior image composed by geometric perspective and that obtained with a camera obscura. In order to make the perspective of a painted image accurate, an artist may use a drawing frame, or window frame, as seen in the famous illustration by Dürer. Walter Liedtke has suggested that Gerard Houckgeest, an architectural painter who was active in Delft in the mid-seventeenth century, may have employed this type of device.17 If Vermeer also used such a device in his studio to determine the spatial structure of the room he wished to paint, this might explain the size correspondences in six of his works, as demonstrated by Steadman. In June 1669, Pieter Teding van Berkhout, a young man from a distin-
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guished family in The Hague, wrote in his journal that while visiting Vermeer in Delft, he had been shown “quelques eschantillons de son art dont la partie la plus extraordinaire et la plus curieuse consiste dans la perspective.”18 It is usually assumed that he saw works like The Music Lesson, produced through the skillful application of perspective. If this were the case, however, the words “la plus extraordinaire” become somewhat puzzling, because Van Berkhout typically limited himself to phrases such as “excellent Peijntre pour la perspective” even when he visited the studio of Cornelis Bisschop, whose enthusiasm for illusionistic effects is quite striking.19 It is thus possible that Van Berkhout witnessed Vermeer at work in his studio using some perspective device like a window frame. Perhaps the marks left at the vanishing point, which Wadum pointed out, reflect the steps Vermeer took to confirm the compositions he had already arranged in this way. Vermeer probably learned much from the images he saw through the camera obscura, which had begun to attract interest at the time. Surely, however, he used those images for reference, rather than for tracing lines and contours for his paintings. This view is also supported by the intense awareness of composition that is apparent in Vermeer’s works. As Liedtke has discussed carefully and persuasively in the catalogue of the exhibition Vermeer and the Delft School (2001), Vermeer was a refined painter who was inspired by the various optical devices that were attracting notice among artists in Delft around the mid-seventeenth century. He studied the illusionistic effects that could be achieved by using linear perspective, adopted a technique for capturing the phenomenon of light, and developed all of these as part of his personal pictorial vocabulary.20 The image projected by the camera obscura should be considered only one of the many devices used by so multi-faceted an artist as Vermeer.
1
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For a more detailed discussion of the topic of Vermeer and his thematic use of perspective, see Yoriko Kobayashi-Sato, “Between Realism and Photographic Reality: Observations Upon Some of Vermeer’s Paintings,” Journal of the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences (Mejiro University) 2 (2002): 177-92. The contention that Vermeer literally traced the projected images of the camera obscura is notable in the following: Charles Seymour, “Dark Chamber and Light-Filled Room: Vermeer and the Camera Obscura,” Art Bulletin 46 (1964): 323-32; Heinrich Schwartz, “Vermeer and the Camera Obscura,” Pantheon 24 (1966): 170-80; Daniel A. Fink, “Vermeer’s Use of the Camera Obscura: A Comparative Study,” Art Bulletin 53 (1971): 493505. Studies suggesting that Vermeer used the camera obscura in a more flexible manner include: Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., Perspective, Optics, and Delft Artists around 1650 (New York and London: Garland, 1977); Arthur K. Wheelock, “Vermeer of Delft: His Life and His Artistry,” in Arthur K. Wheelock, ed., Johannes Vermeer, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1995, pp. 26-27.
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Philip Steadman, Vermeer’s Camera: Uncovering the Truth Behind the Masterpieces (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Jørgen Wadum, “Vermeer in Perspective,” in Wheelock 1995, pp. 67-79. In P.T.A. Swillens, Johannes Vermeer: Painter of Delft 1632-1675 (Utrecht and Brussels, 1950), the author claimed that the artist positioned it diagonal to the picture plane (pl. 52). Since the front edge of the table, which is not at eye level, is painted horizontally, however, the table must be parallel to the picture plane. A table with a hexagonal tabletop appears in a number of paintings by Pieter de Hooch; see, for example, Woman by a Box Bed, of c. 1658-60 (Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe). Judging from such tabletops depicted by de Hooch, however, the table painted by Vermeer is of a very different kind. How the tabletop would appear based on this reasoning is illustrated in KobayashiSato 2002, p. 192, figs. 9-10. Arthur K. Wheelock, Vermeer (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988), p. 64. See Arthur K. Wheelock in Wheelock 1995, pp. 140-43; and Walter Liedtke in Walter Liedtke, ed., Vermeer and the Delft School, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2001, pp. 383-86. Eddy de Jongh, Zinne- en Minnebeelden in de schilderkunst van de seventiende eeuw (Amsterdam, 1967), pp. 65-68. For a discussion of the connection between the love letter and the seascape in the background, see De Jongh 1967, pp. 52-55. In Samuel van Hoogstraten’s View of an Entrance (Dyrham Park, Gloucestershire), which depicts a continuous space leading from doorway to doorway, the average ratio of length to width for a doorway is about 2.2 to 1. Steadman 2001, p. 193. Swillens 1950, pl. 44, shows the two rooms as adjoining. In Interior, with a Woman Refusing a Glass of Wine Offered by a Man in the National Gallery, London, by an anonymous artist working in Delft around the same time as Vermeer, a door handle is also seen around the center left edge. Here too the viewer is looking at the scene from a vantage point located outside the space of the figures, that is, from the near side of an invisible doorway. Wadum 1995, pp. 67-69. Walter Liedtke, “Delft Painting ‘in perspective’: Carel Fabritius, Leonaert Bramer, and the Architectural and Townscape Painters from about 1650 Onward,” in Liedtke 2001, pp. 106, 578, no. 25. Cornelis Schmidt, Om de eer van de familie. Het geslacht Teding van Berkhout 1500-1950 (Amsterdam: Bataafsche Leeuw, 1986), p. 211. Bisschop’s deep interest in the illusionistic effects made possible by perspective is seen, for example, in his The Apple Peeler (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). Walter Liedtke, “Genre Painting in Delft after 1650: De Hooch and Vermeer,” in Liedtke 2001, pp. 131-69, esp. p. 156.
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The Face in the Landscape: A Puzzling Print by Matthäus Merian the Elder susan donahue kuretsky Vassar College, Poughkeepsie
During the night of 2-3 May 2003, the celebrated Old Man of the Mountains, a natural wonder that had long been a revered symbol of the “granite state” of New Hampshire, vanished from sight as a portion of its rocky hillside collapsed into rubble. A popular tourist attraction since its discovery in 1805, this forty-foot stone profile high above Franconia Notch was elevated to even greater heights in a comment attributed to Daniel Webster (1782-1852), describing it as a manifestation of divine blessing on the Old Man’s native state: “Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoe makers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.”1 Such phenomena, found in landscapes throughout the world, offer an experience that bears on the central mystery of artistic illusionism: how an image can appear to materialize from something other than itself when the entities involved are utterly unlike one another in scale, in substance and in kind – a face from a mountain, for example, or the same mountain face as re-presented in paintings, snapshots, tourist memorabilia, or even postage stamps (Fig. 1). While anthropomorphism is the practice of finding human characteristics in things that are not human, anamorphosis, from the Greek roots ana (to go back, or return toward) and morphoun (form), is a process that involves a paradoxical fusion of incongruous visual information that cannot be discerned simultaneously. Thus, an anamorphic image is an ambiguous, or distorted form, or combination of forms that become recognizable only when viewed from a certain point of view, or through the intervention of lenses, or mirrors that restore legibility.2 In nature, anthropomorphic images that behave anamorphically are those marvels – often faces, or figures made by chance – that appear, or disappear according to the observer’s vantage point (and anticipation of finding them). A sense of unexpected discovery, loss, and recovery
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Fig. 1. The Old Man of the Mountains / Live Free, or Die. 3-cent U.S. postage stamp, issued in 1955 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the discovery of the monument in New Hampshire. Washington, DC, National Postal Museum, Smithsonian Institution © 1955 United States Postal Service. Used with permission. All rights reserved.
gives them their magic. Old Man of the Mountains’ craggy profile, formed by five ledges, became visible from only two points on interstate highway I-93 in Franconia Notch State Park. In art, distortion and correction, and shifts between abstraction and representation, may be deliberately manipulated to create the illusion on twodimensional surfaces of solids in space, as in perspectival projections, or they may teasingly challenge the viewer’s capacity to perceive and make sense of drawn, or painted images, as in anamorphically misshapen examples whose identity is initially masked, or even in precisely rendered motifs that have been cleverly combined like puzzle pieces to form larger composite figures, or landscapes. It is not surprising that such visual trickery became popular during the Renaissance and Baroque periods when artists were attempting to create convincing illusions of the material world while investigating how visual perception works. Among these examples is a signed etching with engraving (Fig. 2) by the Swiss printmaker Matthäus Merian the Elder (1593-1650) to which L.H. Wüthrich has assigned a date of about 1620-23.3 This curious scene consists of a rocky hillside rising from a body of water. The buildings, foliage, and figures on the hill have been positioned with such care that the image can be interpreted alternatively as a gigantic reclining head in profile, horizontally oriented. As a witty evocation of colossal human physiognomy, it can be regarded, in a sense, as a kind of representational earthwork. Yet, as in Old Man of the Mountains, seeing the face in the landscape depends upon our vantage point. In both cases, it must be sufficiently distanced to allow larger shapes to supplant smaller details and surface textures. Moreover, in the print the face becomes dominant only when the sheet is rotated 90 degrees to the right. At the same time, the tension between disparate yet superimposed repre-
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Fig. 2. Matthäus Merian the Elder, The Face in the Landscape, before 1646, etching with engraving. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. Professor and Mrs. Meyer Abrams Purchase Fund.
sentational schemes, which the observer translates from landscape to human visage, is enhanced by the conversion of printed lines on paper into the appearance of forms in space, illusionistically modeled by hatchings and cross-hatchings that evoke light and shadow. The very process of examining this scene, which calls for more than the usual amount of viewer-collaboration, prompts reflection on connections between art and nature and between people and landscape. This relationship had shifted by the beginning of the seventeenth century from Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s (c. 1525-69) Large Landscapes, with their vast panoramic vistas and tiny figures, to the more intimate Pleasant Places by Claes Jansz. Visscher (1587-1652) and others representing more local scenery and closer views of everyday rural activities. Merian’s landscape, although cultivated by man, has also been shaped and re-formed to the extent of actually becoming man. Born in Basel in 1593, Merian was trained as a glass engraver in his native city, then studied etching in Zurich and, after travels to Strasbourg and Nancy, began his highly productive career as a printmaker active in Basel, Stuttgart, and Oppenheim. Through his marriage to Maria Magdalena de Bry, he became director of the large Oppenheim/Frankfurt publishing house, which grew to become one of the most important in Europe. His own prolific output of etchings and engravings ranged over a multitude of subjects, including topographical landscapes and hunting scenes, maps and city plans, emblems, scenes from the courts of Marie de’ Medici and Louis XIII, and illustrations for biblical, historical, and geographical chronicles.4 the face in the landscape | 221
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The inspiration for this etching of a landscape-face, his only known print of this type, may have come from South Netherlandish anthropomorphic landscape paintings of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, as Anna Bentkowska has plausibly suggested, and indeed a painting with a very similar composition, once in the collection of Alfred Barr, has been attributed to Merian himself.5 Or, the print may have been inspired by one of the wellknown designs by, or after the Italian Renaissance court artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593), whose celebrated composite heads representing such allegorical concepts as the Seasons and the Elements, entertained and edified the Habsburg courts in Vienna and Prague. Arcimboldo’s Earth (c. 1570, private collection), for example, depicts an erect, profiled head of a man made up of a tightly overlapping mass of domestic and exotic animals (a head composed of heads, a creature of creatures, so to speak). Merian’s landscape print, on the other hand, explores analogy and contrast through more incongruous substitutions.6 At the right foreground of the print, Merian establishes a point of reference by means of a narrow area of pure landscape: a hillock with tall trees, and a seated fisherman whose scale is larger than that of the figures on the hillside beyond. Yet his diminutive profile, silhouetted against a brick retaining wall, makes the massive hill-head appear even more gigantic, dwarfing the lightly etched clouds above it. The peninsula that forms the head extends into a lake at left, anchored by a wall that becomes the contour of the neck, while a semi-circular projection containing a landing stage, or viewing platform mimics an enormous ear. One small figure leans out of this area as another poles a boat along the water below it. Seen against lake and sky, the outline of the head materializes from a combination of rocky outcroppings and foliage whose shapes map out indications of hair, eyebrow, moustache, and beard. A square castle stands in for a nose and a smaller peaked-roof cottage for an upper lip. Within its silhouette, the mass of the head has been artfully modeled by curving pathways, fields and fences that divide the landscape into separate but related zones of rustic activity. A tiny farmer and his team of horses plow the field of the forehead, a hunter aims his gun at a round target (alternatively the eye) while the pasture of the neck contains a scything, a raking, and a sleeping man, along with a dog chasing a hare. Examining this scene is amusing because of the artist’s clever, unexpected insertions and substitutions and because the superimposed themes are so different in effect: one so passively immobile, the other so filled with purposeful activity. Yet this double image is also oddly disquieting in its tensions of space and scale, even in the presentation of such a colossus on such a small sheet (111.2 x 168.4 mm). Overall, Merian’s visual language repeatedly conveys meaning while simultaneously subverting, or redirecting it. Foliage on a hillside, for
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example, may be analogous to the hairy growth on a man’s chin, but the two are still utterly incongruous in substance and size, as is the house-nose, the target-eye, and the platform-ear.7 The most independent details in the landscape belong to its diminutive staffa*ge of figures and animals, all of which cast shadows that connect them closely to the terrain they occupy. Yet upon the huge recumbent face their tiny presences seem almost invasive. Such incongruities, or disjunctions remind the viewer that this tidy, cultivated landscape – so thoroughly ordered by the efforts of the people within it – has its parallel in the anthropomorphic profile the artist has shaped and, as it were, unearthed from it. Even if Merian was not the inventor of this design, his print seems to have given the scene a long afterlife. A number of copies exist, including an undated engraving by Merian’s student Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677), two seventeenth-century book illustrations discussed below, and a somewhat expanded version of the composition made in the late eighteenth century.8 In 1646, the same hill-head appeared in a print of conspicuously lesser quality (Fig. 3) within a treatise on “the great art of light and shadow” by the prolific Jesuit scholar/scientist Athanasius Kircher: Ars magna lucis et umbrae, published in Rome and reissued in Amsterdam in 1671. Kircher’s interest in perspective, sight, and mechanical devices relating to optical perception is well illustrated in the page of his book on the formation of images in nature. Here he presents the anthropomorphic scene between a display of pictures found in natural wood, or stone (top) and a room-sized camera obscura within a landscape (bottom).9 Kircher’s version of the hill-head animates the landscape by framing it with birds in flight, but his cruder rendering of foliage, buildings, and figures (the reclining man has become a small mound of earth) results in a far less convincing illusion of landscape and face, individually and in combination. Nonetheless, the three-part division of his page is instructive, allowing the author to suggest that a hierarchy of images exists, with those created by nature at the top, those mechanically replicated through human invention at the bottom and, between the two, an example demonstrating collaboration between man and nature. As Yasuto Ota has observed, this page illuminates the spiritual tenor of a period in which people were attempting to rule the world through technical skill, while remaining enthralled with its wonders.10 An interest in anthropomorphic phenomena in nature also led Kircher to refer to the legend (recounted earlier in the introduction to Vitruvius’ Second Book of Architecture, and even earlier by Plutarch) that described what was thought to be the greatest example from antiquity of a colossal human image in a landscape.11 This was a project by the third-century Macedonian architect Dinocrates who (unsuccessfully) proposed to Alexander the Great that he transform Mount Athos into a colossal statue of the ruler, holding in his left
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Fig. 3. Images Formed by Nature and by Man, engraving from Athanasius Kircher, Ars magna lucis et umbrae, Amsterdam, 1671, p. 709, fig. XVIII. Hanover, NH, Dartmouth College Library. Rauner Special Collections, Acc. No. Rare Book Q/155/K56/1671.
hand a town of 10,000 people and in his right hand a cup of rivers. Although others illustrated the Dinocrates story during this period, Kircher preferred to demonstrate natural metamorphoses with this non-narrative rustic scene, which he captioned simply a campus anthromorphus. In 1657, a greatly simplified print of the same composition appeared (in reverse) in Magia universalis naturae et artis by Kircher’s student and close follower, Gaspar Schott, who repeated many of his teacher’s descriptions and experiments. Schott discussed the scene in relation to a picture, or plaque (“depictum in tabula”) in Rome in the collection of Cardinal Montalto (Felice Peretti who became Pope Sixtus V between 1585-90).12 While a number of recent writers have assumed that depictions of this hill-head record an actual anthropomorphic garden at the Villa Montalto, Anna Bentkowska has convincingly argued that there is absolutely no evidence that such a garden ever existed there, or that these images depict a real place.13 It seems likely, therefore, that Merian’s print was meant to be enjoyed for its own sake, as an artis-
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tic invention that refers to natural phenomena while demonstrating how visual perception works. That the scene exists in so many variants indicates that its eye-catching composition encouraged others, both during and after the seventeenth century, to go on looking for faces in hillsides.
Fig. 4. Herman Saftleven, Rocky Landscape with Ruins Forming the Profile of a Man’s Face, c. 1650, black chalk and brown wash on paper. Utrecht, Centraal Museum, inv. no. 10072.
An undated drawing (Fig. 4) of c. 1650, by the seventeenth-century Rotterdam artist Herman Saftleven (1609-1685), now in the Centraal Museum, Utrecht, is one of the most striking of these examples.14 Saftleven, who made numerous topographical landscape drawings, traveled in the Rhine district of Germany during the early 1650s where he may have encountered Merian’s print, although, as noted above, the composition was also in wide circulation by this time. Like a number of his contemporaries, Saftleven was greatly interested in ruins, as brilliantly displayed in his complex panoramic drawing of Delft in which he meticulously recorded the devastating aftermath of the great gunpowder explosion of 12 October 1654 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), or in his drawings of the Utrecht houses and churches that had been demolished during a violent storm of 22 July 1674 (Archiefdienst, Utrecht, and other locations). In comparison to these depictions of specific sites whose
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destruction was caused by known events, Saftleven’s variant of Merian’s image remains a fantastic anomaly. Rendered in black chalk with brown and gray washes, this small drawing (180 x 233 mm) does not represent a carefully cultivated landscape like Merian’s but rather a hillside with ruins in the shape of a monumental male profile, again horizontally oriented. The colossal face, seen against the lightly sketched contours of distant mountains, rises from a steep cliff at the far right that can also be read as the shadowed area below a massive chin. Yet the hill itself, or at least its upper half, is also a blend of natural and man-made construction, for it consists of brick rubble – clearly the remains of an edifice fashioned by human hands – whose contours have been worn away by wind, weather, or time to form the U-shaped indentation of an open mouth and the irregular protrusion of a nose. At the left is an “eye” formed by a doorway framed in brick that opens into a narrow tunnel through the hillside. Within this aperture and silhouetted against the light is a standing figure that can be interpreted as the pupil of the eye. Yet when the scene is viewed as a landscape, this detail turns into a visitor exploring the site: a figure whose small size makes the face appear all the more immense. Traces of converging pathways shape the cheek, while soft masses of foliage form suggestions of hair, an eyebrow, a moustache, and a narrow beard, as well as an ear at the center foreground. Unlike Merian, Saftleven has cropped his hill-head sharply, creating the impression that it could belong to some gigantic reclining figure (at rest, unconscious, or dead) whose body remains outside the picture space. The manifestation in these ruins of a face, which in this context gives the impression of being a monumental sculpture, is an illusion created by subtraction (erosion) rather than addition (construction): an anthromorph that has seemingly materialized slowly and inadvertently over time – by chance rather than intention.15 It is improbable that Saftleven ever witnessed such a scene. But his extensive experience with actual ruins (sharpened, perhaps, by an encounter with Merian’s print) allowed him to produce an unconventional variant on the kind of vanitas imagery that became popular in the Dutch provinces during the seventeenth century. Either as sites to be visited, or as artistic representations of them, ruins were often interpreted as reminders of the inevitable alteration and evanescence of all aspects of the physical world, including human beings and their works.16 Like vanitas motifs such as flickering candles and human skulls, they reminded people to use their time well. Saftleven’s drawing makes this point in an especially memorable way because the human profile remains dominant when viewed either horizontally, or vertically. Eroded and inert, this face materializes from ruins while becoming a ruin itself. Interest in anthropomorphic colossi and their artistic representation would not reach its height until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
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in the taste for what Barbara Stafford has termed the “rude sublime.” Frequently illustrated in the travel literature of this period, fantastically shaped mountains and rock formations, often displaying images of human faces and bodies, encouraged expanded redefinition of sculpture. Sculpture, that is, came to be seen as an art that could encompass natural formations as well as manmade replications of nature, both of which were understood to share a common origin in sentient matter and to pass through the same transformative cycles of growth and decay.17 Accordingly, additional examples of recumbent profiled heads in landscapes can be found in a number of landscape prints of the early nineteenth century, such as a lithograph of c. 1810-20 from a print series by C. Fortier in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.18 A roughly hewn, rocky landscape crowned by a castle, this scene is filled with lush foliage and steep hills occupied by a few small hikers and sightseers who experience the outdoors not as inhabitants, but as visitors drawn to the power and mystery of the natural world. Yet here, too, they remain oblivious to the gigantic face in the landscape that only the viewer can see. Less cultivated and anecdotal than Merian’s print, this scene functions anamorphically as well as anthropomorphically since the bearded profile is not evident until the sheet is turned 90 degrees to the left. As Jurgis Baltrusaitis observed, it bears an inscribed reminder of the vanity of existence and the constant transmutation of things: “Time which destroys all gives life to all. From the ruins that you see was I born.”19 Like a face, a landscape may be thought of as the external countenance of nature whose varied topography, alive in its capacity to express mood, covers a deeper underlying core that remains hidden.20 Moreover, as Susan Stewart has discussed, the terminology used to describe landscape has often projected notions of an enormous human body upon nature, as when one speaks of the mouth of a river, foothills, or finger lakes, or when stories in folklore attribute landscape formations to the acts of giants in the earth.21 As discussed above, images of colossal faces in (or as) landscapes have commonly featured profile views that allow an artist to manipulate protrusion and indentation in order to make hillside and human features merge. Such topographical overlays that depict horizontal reclining heads produce a somewhat immobile, passive effect, as if the human face were embedded in and fused with the landscape. In other examples, however, colossal faces have been rendered in frontal, or three-quarter views that allow them to emerge more actively and dynamically from the surrounding terrain. Dominating the countryside and articulated with artfully added motifs, these Oz-like visages intensify the human connection with nature, for they seem, in Martin Warnke’s words, “… to hint at subterranean processes of parturition that have been pushed upwards and halted on the surface.”22 An early seventeenth-century woodcut (250 x 173 mm) attributed to Hans
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Fig. 5. Hans Meyer, Anthropomorphic Landscape, early seventeenth century, woodcut. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum.
Meyer (Fig. 5) recalls the Dinocrates legend, for it consists of a mountain, or towering rock formation in the shape of a giant head that rises high above a distant panorama of mountains and towns bordering a lake. A blend of natural forms planted, or inset with man-made constructions, the head is crowned with trees and houses, while its nose and eye are replaced by buildings (one of which emits a plume of smoke that forms the left eyebrow), and its open mouth by an arched bridge with toothy voussoirs. The swiftly flowing river passing beneath the bridge turns into a waterfall that drops down into a pool of tumbling eddies in the foreground, making the mouth of the colossus appear to speak the words written below: “Mi formò in monte e mi ritrasse in Carte, / Natura a caso l’Arcimboldo ad arte” (Me into mountain didst form and onto paper didst impart, / Nature by accident Arcimboldo by art).23 A second inscription on a foreground rock (“Inventio Arcimboldo”) underlines the artist’s role in designing the image. Thus, as in Merian’s print, the woodcut ingeniously conveys the idea that this landscape with its colossal anthropomorphic marvel is a combination of two kinds of creation. If nature made
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it by chance, it was artistic invention that shaped and interpreted it. Today the human relationship to the natural world and its wonders, expressed so vividly in these seventeenth-century landscapes, has changed in ways that these earlier artists could never have imagined, for we have become more separated from nature yet more globally interconnected than ever before. A twenty-first century version of the face in the landscape appeared on a recent postage stamp, issued in 2004 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Buckminster Fuller’s invention of the geodesic dome (Fig. 6).24 Architect, mathematician, and philosopher, Fuller (wearing his famous black-framed glasses) appears, propped up on pylons, as a colossal disembodied head whose rounded contours and smoothly bald surfaces are overlaid and fused with the triangular grid of his dome. On the ground, surrounding the head and dwarfed by its great bulk, are more of his models, machines, and constructions. At the left foreground, two tiny figures gesture in wonder at the monumental personage before them who has seemingly conquered the world with his intellect. The setting, now flat and featureless, is no longer a tangible physical environment with its own independent functions, formations, and character. It has become an abstract cerebral realm, a stage for the technological marvels brought forth by human ingenuity. Having once belonged to nature, the face in this landscape has finally supplanted it. Author’s Note: Like many others, I have been the grateful recipient of Michael Montias’ boundless scholarly generosity. This piece, written after his death, is the product of much Montias-like consultation with various colleagues on a subject that would surely have amused him.
Fig. 6. Buckminster Fuller as his Geodesic Dome (after Boris Artzybasheff). 37-cent U.S. postage stamp, issued in 2004 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the dome’s invention. Washington, DC, National Postal Museum, Smithsonian Institution © 2004 United States Postal Service. Used with permission. All rights reserved.
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The quotation has been commonly attributed to Daniel Webster, but when, or where he said it has never been specified and it does not appear in standard publications of his writings. See Joe McQuaid, “The Old Man Will Live on through Annual Profile Award,” The Union Leader, 3 May 2004. http://newhampshire.com/aboutnh/oldman.cfm?id=37025 (accessed 28 September 2005). My thanks to Gillian Suss for this reference. The definition of anamorphoses (the earliest of which can be traced to drawings by Leonardo) has been debated. Jurgis Baltrusaitis (Anamorphic Art [New York, 1977]), among others, would place in this category a range of vexierbilder, including composite and double images. Anna Bentkowska, who noted that Gaspar Schott was the first to use the term in 1657 (see note 12 below), prefers its original definition: initially unreadable images that have been perspectivally distorted and require corrective viewing from an acute angle, or through a special optical instrument. I am grateful to Dr. Bentkowska for sending me the text of her unpublished paper, presented at a conference of the Association of Art Historians at Southampton University, 9-11 April 1999 (“A Campus Anthromorphus, or an Anamorphosis? The Mystery of Cardinal Montalto’s Garden”), for drawing my attention to her excellent article (“Anthropomorphic Landscapes in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Western Art: A Question of Attribution and Interpretation,” Biuletyn historii sztuki 59 (1997): 69-91), and for offering helpful comments on my essay. Lucas Heinrich Wüthrich, Das Druckgraphische Werk von Matthäus Merian d. Ae., Basel, 1966-96, vol. 1, p. 154, no. 576. My introduction to Merian’s etching (and awareness of its connection to the Saftleven drawing discussed below) came about thanks to Franklin Robinson, Director of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, which owns the fine impression of the print illustrated here. On Merian’s biography, see the essay by Lucas Heinrich Wüthrich in Jane Turner, ed., Dictionary of Art (London: MacMillan, 1996), vol. 21, pp. 151-52. Bentkowska 1997, pp. 73-79. The painting in the Barr collection was first attributed to Merian in Karl Gunnar Pontus Hulten, ed., The Arcimboldo Effect: Transformations of the Face from the 16th to the 20th Century, exh. cat., Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 1987, p. 197, color repr. I see no reason for this attribution, however, since the painting, squarer in format and different in many details, is quite crude in quality. Bentkowska has suggested that the Barr painting derives from an unknown South Netherlandish painting of the late sixteenth century – other examples of this type being two pairs of man/woman companion pieces: one in the Musées Royaux, Brussels (see Bentokowska 1997, p. 75, figs. 8-9, and p. 88, n. 9) and the other in the collection of F.C.E. Wintle in Durban, South Africa in 1954 (Benno Geiger, I Dipinti Ghiribizzosi di Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Florence, 1954, pls. 20, 21). Earth is reproduced in Venice 1987, p. 9. A landscape-head attributed to Giuseppe Arcimboldo (similar to Merian’s print in reverse) was at the Arcade Gallery, London, in 1954 (reproduced in Die Weltkunst 25 (1955): 9, no. 6). A more simplified painting (oriented like Merian’s), in a private collection in Basel, has been attributed to Joos de Momper (1564-1635): for a reproduction, see Martin Warnke, Political Landscape. The Art History of Nature (Cambridge, MA, 1995), pp. 89, 100, fig 73. Bentkowska (1997, p. 88, n. 10), who mentioned yet another variant at the Gallery G. Giroux, Brussels 12 March 1957, no. 270, questioned the traditional Arcimboldo connection on the grounds that the Italian artist did not pursue spatial extension into depth and that the anthropomorphic landscapes ascribed to him are all inferior in quality to his genuine works (Bentkowska 1997, pp. 71-72). Roland Barthes has used terms such as “friction” and “malaise” to capture the jarring effect of what he calls “double articulations” in Arcimboldo’s composite heads in which disparate motifs substitute for and disguise one another. Roland Barthes, “Rhetor and Magician,” in Arcimboldo (Paris and Milan, 1978), pp. 15-68.
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Two impressions of the undated Hollar copy are in the New York Public Library (P12411 and 2). Except for a narrow marine vista at left it follows Merian’s design closely (Richard Pennington, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Work of Wenceslaus Hollar, 1607-1677 [Cambridge, 1982], p. 213, no. 1241), as does a later variant by Johann Martin Will (active in Augsburg c. 1780), which reverses the head and includes the same staffa*ge but adds more setting on both sides (Disguised Vision, exh. cat., Museum of Art, Tokyo, and elsewhere, 1994, p. 54, pl. I-29). A tondo-shaped ivory miniature with the same basic composition, made in Augsburg in 1632 for the curiosity cabinet of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, is now in the University of Uppsala Art Collection (Bentkowska 1997, p. 73, fig. 6). Predating Merian’s print is a head-landscape, acquired by an Augsburg merchant in 1610 that was mentioned in a letter written by Philipp Hainofer cited in John Böttinger, Philipp Hainofer and der Kunstschrank Gustav Adolfs (Stockholm, 1909), vol. 1, p. 33 (see Baltrusaitis 1977, pp. 84-85, p. 176, n. 16). Athanasius Kircher, Ars magna lucis et umbrae (Amsterdam, 1671), p. 709, fig. XVIII. This page is discussed among depictions of natural wonders in the baroque period in Joy Kenseth et al., The Age of the Marvelous (Hanover, 1991), esp. pp. 438-39. Yasuto Ota in Tokyo 1994, p. 32. Kircher 1671, p. 712. For later illustrations of the Dinocrates story, see Werner Oechslin, “Dinocrates and the Myth of the Megalomaniacal Institute of Architecture,” Daidalis, Berlin Architectural Journal 4 (June 1982): 7-26, esp. 11-16. My thanks to Brian Lukacher for this reference. Gaspar Schott, Magia universalis naturae et artis (Würzburg, 1657), vol. 1, part I, book IV, pp. 193-94, repr. opp. p. 193; Tokyo 1994, p. 50, pl. I-25). See Bentkowska 1997, pp. 85-86, p. 90, n. 69; and the more extensive argument in Bentkowska 1999. Michiel Plomp has suggested a date of c. 1650 in his thorough analysis of Saftleven’s drawing in Michiel C. Plomp and Eric Domela Nieuwenhuis, De Verzamelingen van het Centraal Museum Utrecht, Werken op papier tot 1850 (Utrecht, 2004), pp. 99-102. My thanks to Erik Löffler for sending me this reference and to Michiel Plomp for discussing the Saftleven drawing with me. The fundamental discussion of images made by chance in nature is H.W. Janson’s “The ‘Image Made by Chance’ in Renaissance Thought,” in De Artibus Opuscula XL. Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky, ed. Millard Meiss, 2 vols., pp. 256-58. On the varied depiction and meaning of ruins in this period, see Susan Donahue Kuretsky et al., Time and Transformation in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art, exh. cat., Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, 2005. Barbara Stafford, “Rude Sublime: The Taste for Natural Colossi during the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries,” Gazette des Beaux Arts 87 (April 1976): 11326. For further examples, see J. Gray Sweeney, “The Nude of Landscape Painting. Emblematic Personification in the Art of the Hudson River School,” Smithsonian Studies in American Art 3, no. 4 (Fall 1989): 43-61. My thanks to Brian Lukacher for these references. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Hennin Collection, no. 13785. Baltrusaitis 1977, p. 124, fig. 87, noted that some of the prints in this series bear the inscription “C. Fortier.” Anonymous early nineteenth-century prints of landscapes with reclining anthropomorphic heads in profile are reproduced in Tokyo 1994, p. 55, pls. I-32 and I-33, and Venice 1987, p. 209. Even twentieth-century surrealists were drawn to such double images as in Salvador Dalí’s Paranoiac Figure of c. 1935 (private collection), which was inspired by a picture postcard of African natives in front of a tent and depicts the gigantic severed head of a woman resting on the ground in the blazing sunlight of a vast desert landscape. For discussion and illustration, see Peter C. Sutton in Dawn Ades, ed., Dali’s Optical Illusions (New Haven and London, 2000), pp. 30-31, fig. 25; Venice 1987, pp. 286-89, color repr.; and Bentkowska 1997, pp. 69-70. the face in the landscape | 231
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19 Baltrusaitis 1977, p. 125. 20 For discussion of faces as signifiers of subjectivity, the notion of a face as a map, and correlations between faces and landscapes as what the authors call “deterritorialized worlds,” see Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis, 1987), esp. chap. 7, “Year Zero: Faciality,” pp. 167-91. My thanks to Marni Kessler for introducing me to this source. 21 Susan Stewart, “The Gigantic” in On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham and London, 1993), chap. 3, pp. 70-103, esp. pp. 71-74. 22 See Warnke 1995, p. 89, who cited as his source, Horst Bredekamp, “Die Erde als Lebeswesen,” Kritische Berichte 4/5 (1981): 5-37. 23 On the woodcut’s attribution and inscription, see Venice 1987, p. 188, which also reproduces (p. 193) an etched variant in reverse inscribed: “Diversi umori tengono le genti/Quanto i mostazzi sono deferenti.” A simplified version of the latter is inscribed “hom*o Omnis Creatura” (Art Resource Image Reference, no. ART180492). The origin of this composition is unclear but it also appears in a painting in a private collection that has been called Joos de Momper (repr. in Venice 1987, p. 191), an artist to whom several anthropomorphic landscape-heads have been tentatively attributed. 24 The stamp was based on a painting of Buckminster Fuller by Boris Artzybasheff (18991965) used for a cover of Time Magazine for 10 January 1964. www.usps.com/communications/ news/stamps/2004/sr04_043.htm (accessed 7 October 2005).
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Murant and his Milieu: A Biography of Emanuel Murant, the “Rustic Forerunner” of Jan van der Heyden walter liedtke The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York With archival research by piet bakker University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam / Fries Museum, Leeuwarden One imagines a collector like Michael Montias describing the Amsterdam painter Emanuel Murant (1622-1700) as a poor man’s Jan van der Heyden. This would not have diminished Murant’s interest for Montias the historian, in which capacity he would have turned up every scrap of evidence available on the artist in publications and archives. The author of Vermeer and his Milieu was not the sort of scholar who introduces unfamiliar figures to the reader by observing that “very little is known” about them, or words to that effect, which are invariably followed by one, or two sentences demonstrating that the first statement was unnecessary. In the case of Murant, it would also be inaccurate. The Detroit Institute of Arts has a minor example of Murant’s work, The Farm Well, which was acquired by the donors in 1895 as a painting by Job Berckheyde. The panel depicts a farmhouse, barn, and trough (not a well) with minute attention to brickwork, in a landscape receding to a village. In the museum’s new catalogue of Dutch paintings, George Keyes’ biography of Murant repeats the information we have from Houbraken: that the artist was born in Amsterdam on 22 December 1622, and that he was a pupil of Philips Wouwermans.1 Houbraken also reported that Murant traveled in France and elsewhere, moved to Friesland, and died in Leeuwarden in 1700. In the remainder of Keyes’ text, which offers a cornucopia of comment compared with the usual account, the most memorable remark is that “Murant was Van der Heyden’s predecessor, and not his student [meaning follower], as was often proposed, much to the detriment of Murant’s reputation.” This opinion, and the description of Murant as a painter inspired by Paulus Potter (1625-1654) and the Haarlem artists Cornelis Decker (before 16251678) and Roelof van Vries (1630/31-after 1681), are adopted (with acknowledgement) from a few pages in Laurens Bol’s survey of Dutch painters “near the great masters,” meaning in this case, Jacob van Ruisdael. Much of Bol’s
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Fig. 1. Emanuel Murant, A Farmhouse by a Small Village, 1652 (?), oil on canvas. Art market, 1913 (Photo: Collection Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague).
discussion of Murant is devoted to the delightfully Potter-like Farmyard with Dovecote in Rotterdam. But the main argument, illustrated by two undated village scenes, is that as a painter of townscapes, “Murant is the rustic forerunner of Jan van der Heyden.” Unnamed scholars are scolded for assuming otherwise, and two other works by Murant, each said to be dated 1652, are cited as evidence (see Fig. 1). They depict rural structures with thatched roofs, and enough bricks between them to build a house on the Herengracht in Amsterdam. In 1652, Bol reminds us, Van der Heyden (1637-1712) “was still a boy fifteen years old.”2 According to Bol (whose book was first published in 1969), “not only priority in this form of expression but also paintings by Murant have occasionally been ‘conferred upon’ Van der Heyden.” (A picture like the one in Winterthur, here Fig. 2, makes this easy to imagine.) Nonetheless, the standard monograph on Van der Heyden (1971) never mentions Murant, and virtually the only reference to him in literature on the younger artist is the dismissal of an “unpersuasive attribution to Emanuel Murant” of a painting claimed to be one of “the first true city views in Van der Heyden’s oeuvre.”3 Perhaps an early date explains why the work is so atypical.4 To pursue these questions further requires firsthand study of paintings by
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Fig. 2. Emanuel Murant, Houses on the Edge of a Small Town, probably 1670s, oil on wood. Winterthur, Jakob Briner Foundation.
Murant (a list of works in public collections is appended below), consideration of their chronology,5 and comparison with pictures by Van der Heyden. The purpose of this article is to facilitate these tasks by discussing Murant for his own sake, with particular attention to archival information. In 2004, when the present writer asked Montias what he knew about Murant, or Meurant (as the name is often given in documents), he found in his Database the bookseller Salomon Meurant (d. 1652; probably Emanuel’s uncle), and the mirror salesman Vincent Meurant (who was Emanuel’s brother).6 Montias was not familiar with Abraham Bredius’ brief publication of documents concerning Emanuel Murant in a 1937 issue of Oud Holland, which is not surprising, since the article was evidently never cited in the literature until 2005.7 Before Bredius, the main source of information was Houbraken’s passage of 1719. A literal translation reads: Herewith EMANUEL MURANT, born at Amsterdam in the same Year [1622], on the 22 of December, takes the Stage. His disposition led him to the depiction of Dutch Village and Landscape views, and in particular to the depiction of dilapidated peasant sheds and cottages, which he depicted in such a detailed way that one could count the bricks in the masonry; from which it certainly may be estimated that he did not bring a large number of Paintings into the world; considering that such a manner of
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painting takes a lot of time. His Brother David Murant, in Amsterdam, owns the greater part of his artworks that are in the country, for he [the painter] traveled for many years in France and elsewhere. His art is desired especially in Friesland: where he took himself to live. He died at Leeuwarden in the year 1700. He was a pupil of Philip Wouwerman.8 In his biography of 1729, Weyerman repeated much of this information, and added that in 1670, Murant “set sail for the Elysian low District.”9 Later authors appear to have conflated these accounts, so that Murant is said to have lived in Friesland from 1670 onward, or to have settled in Leeuwarden about 1670. One of the documents cited by Bredius reveals that in 1665 Murant was living in Naarden, just to the east of Amsterdam. However, Bredius also mentioned among “less important documents” the last will of the artist’s sister, Catharina, which is dated October 12, 1680, and refers to “Emanuel Meurant” as a “Painter, living in Friesland.”10 He is now (thanks to Piet Bakker) documented in Leeuwarden between July 1670 and 1680, and he was still a resident there in 1696.11 His burial is not recorded, but Houbraken’s reference to the very day of Murant’s birth suggests that his report of the painter’s death in 1700 is probably correct. As for the date of birth, Houbraken must have had it right, because Emanuel Murant was baptized in the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, three days later, on 25 December 1622.12 The witnesses were “Jakes Moleman,” namely, Jacques Meulemans, Emanuel’s maternal grandfather, and “Lucretia Helmonts,” whose surname was more likely Hellemans (as discussed below). Emanuel’s mother, Margaritha Meulemans (c. 1593-1665, or later), “of Antwerp,” married Esaias Davidsz. Meurant (1588-1664) on 7 March 1622. Margaritha’s parents, Jacques and Catharina Meulemans (her maiden name is unknown), lived on the Oude Zijds Achterburgwal at the time.13 The same address was given for their daughter (Margaritha’s sister), Elisabeth Meulemans, and her husband Frederick Schoonsteen, on 10 April 1647, when an inventory of their estate was made (they had both died by this date). They owned 103 paintings, including works by well-known still-life and genre painters, numerous landscapes (by Van Goyen, Molijn, and so on), two pictures by their nephew, Emanuel Murant, and three by Philips Wouwermans.14 This lends support to Houbraken’s statement that Murant was a pupil of the slightly older Wouwermans (1619-1668), whose entry into the Haarlem painters’ guild on 4 September 1640 would have allowed him to take on the Amsterdam student when the latter was about eighteen years old. The only known record of Murant’s whereabouts in the 1640s is dated 8 October 1649, when, as noted by Bredius, he acted as a witness for his father in Amsterdam. Bredius also recorded that, five years later, on 4 September 1654, “Emani-
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wel Meurant of Amsterdam, age 32 years, Painter, asst. by his Father Esaias Meurant, [who] lives in the Koestraat,” married Elisabeth Aswerus [also Assuerus; c. 1623-before 1670], age 31 years, no parents, also Koestraat.” (The Koestraat is one block long, and is located a minute’s walk south of the Waag, and about three minutes east of the Dam.) In a will made by Murant’s parents on 27 October 1660, his brother David is left two portraits, one of his father and one of the “Great Prince of Moscovy.” The couple’s “eldest son,” Emanuel, will receive “the best mirror and a birdcage,” but he must add to the estate two paintings that had been lent to him.15 This remark and his marriage six years earlier suggest that Murant was not “in France and elsewhere” (Houbraken) between 1654 and 1660, and evidence cited below indicates that he was employed by the Amsterdam admiralty in about 1652. Thus, Murant’s Wanderjahre may be dated tentatively somewhere in the period about 1642-48, right after his training (as was the norm). From the known documents it is clear that our painter came from a middle-class family of some means, with an interest in art and literature, and a house on the Koestraat, where the wealthy painter Jan van de Cappelle lived from about 1663 until his death in 1679, and where Jan van der Heyden built an imposing house and workshop in 1680-81.16 Murant lived on the Koestraat from the age of six. His father rented a house there from 1 November 1628 until 18 January 1630, when he bought it for 2,660 guilders. The house was one of four built about 1600 by the city of Amsterdam next to the Old Side Latin School (part of a former convent), where Esaias Meurant started teaching in 1622.17 Esaias was the author of several poetry collections, one of which (De verzen van Morandt, now lost) was condemned in about 1626 by Joost van den Vondel for its sympathy with the orthodox Calvinist Franciscus Gomarus.18 Bakker’s recent discovery that Meurant enrolled at the University of Geneva (Calvin’s city) on 9 September 1614 adds some background to our picture of the poet as polemicist.19 And Montias brought to our attention a document dated 21 January 1630, in which “Esaias Davidts Meurant, meester in de Latijnsche schoole tot Amsterdam aen de Oude Zyde,” testified about a tussle with Arminians on the first day of that year.20 In 1650 and 1654 (?), Esaias penned some Latin verses in the album amicorum of his much younger colleague, Jacob Heyblocq (1623-1690), who in 1648 became a master in the New Side Latin School. Meurant himself was transferred to that institution in 1634.21 The standard curriculum consisted of reading and writing Latin, studying the classical authors, learning some Greek, and absorbing a good deal of religious instruction. Around the time that Emanuel went to study with Wouwermans, his contemporary Heyblocq entered Leiden University (February 1641), from which he graduated in 1646 as Candidate in Holy Ministry. However, he became (like Esaias Meurant) a
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teacher, a poet in Dutch and Latin, and a family man. Esaias went to his memorable wedding celebration in Heemstede on 1 November 1650.21 The album page by Esaias, dated 25 June 1650, is a Latin poem on friendship, quoting Plutarch and the Proverbs, punning, and otherwise showing off. The poem, probably written in 1654, is given the date of its historical subject, 8 August 1653, when Admiral Tromp engaged the English fleet off Katwijk. Esaias’ twenty lines of Latin describe Tromp’s death (August 10) and an exploding ship, which is shown in the background of Emanuel’s colored drawing of the battle on the facing page (signed “E.M.fecit.1654”). On the previous opening, Emanuel made a fine colored drawing of a mackerel, which hangs from a cartouche above a view of Dutch ships near their own coast. The accompanying “joke in verse for Jacob Heyblocq” consists of four lines in Latin by Emanuel, who cleverly rhymes on the subject of fishing, the “Batavian fleet,” and turning back the English. The poem is signed, “Your Emanuel Meurant, artist, and one-time writer for [secretary of] the fleet under the command of Sipke Fockes and Simon Dootkes.” Fockes commanded an Amsterdam ship of twenty-eight guns, the St. Maria, and was killed at the Battle of Portland in early 1653. This suggests that Emanuel was employed by the Amsterdam admiralty about 1652, when he was also active as a painter.23 Five siblings of Emanuel are known: Vincent (1625-after 1665), a merchant;24 Beatrix (1628-1680), who married a bookkeeper in 1658;25 Catharina (?-1680?);26 Elisabeth (1630-1656), who married an apprentice silversmith in 1655;27 David (1636/37-1718/19, or later), a merchant.28 All the surviving children of Esaias Meurant and Margaritha Meulemans are mentioned in a codicil dated 17 October 1663, which modified the will made in 1660. It is clarified that the two paintings cited earlier (which are now identified as a picture by Jan Lievens in a gilded frame, and a painting of an old doctor with a bottle of urine) may remain in Emanuel’s possession until the end of his life, at which time either the paintings, or 400 guilders should go to the surviving heirs. (In the inventory of Esaias Meurant’s property, dated 5 June 1665, the Lievens – then in Naarden with Emanuel – is identified as a landscape).29 As for Emanuel’s brother Vincent, he will not be given the “Herbarium” by Dodonaeus, but some other books.30 Sister Catharina will receive various items, including the silver saltcellar engraved with the name of the late Leonora Hellemans. The herbal will go to Catharina’s brother, David, and Vincent’s daughter, Margaretha, will inherit a piece of silver worth thirty guilders.31 It seems likely that Emanuel’s residence in Naarden during 1665 is con-
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nected with the fact that his father’s sister, “Annetje,” lived there with her husband. On 24 May 1642, Anna Meurant, aged fifty, living on the Bloemgracht, parents deceased, married the coppersmith Jan Marcus in Amsterdam.32 In a will made in Naarden (date unknown), she left 400 guilders to Emanuel’s siblings, Beatrix and David.33 A second connection to Naarden, or rather to neighboring Muiden, is the Murant family’s relationship with Leonora Hellemans (1594-1661), who in 1627 became the second wife of the famous Dutch poet, Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft (1581-1647), Sheriff (Drost) of Muiden. Leonora’s sister, Lucretia (d. 1658), must be the “Lucretia Helmonts” who witnessed Emanuel’s baptism in 1622. She and Leonora were the daughters of an Antwerp dealer in precious stones, Arnout Hellemans (d. 1599), who fled to Hamburg in 1589. His wealthy widow, Susanna van Surck (d. 1628), moved to Amsterdam with her five children about 1608. In 1612, Leonora married Jan Baptist Bartolotti (1590-1624) in Amsterdam.34 Bakker has observed that no family connection between the Hellemans family and the Meulemans, or Meurant families can be found, and that Hooft’s extensive correspondence includes no reference to Esaias Meurant, or his wife. A plausible hypothesis, advanced by Bakker, is that Margaritha Meulemans was in service to the Hellemans family, and that the silver saltcellar was left to her as a token of longstanding appreciation.35 Emanuel was living on the Koestraat when he married in 1654. He and his wife, Elisabeth, had at least two children, Esaias (b. 1656), and Catharina (b. 1658), one of whom died in 1658.36 Elizabeth herself evidently died between 1665 and 1670.37 With his wife gone, the family home sold (in 1665), and, most likely, the art market unpromising, Murant moved to Leeuwarden. He was described as residing there when he and Berberke Willems (b. 1629?) posted their marriage banns on 23 July 1670. They married on 16 October 1670. Daughters were born to the couple in 1671, 1673, and 1676.38 Bakker has suggested that Emanuel may have been attracted to Leeuwarden by in-laws who were well established there. His wife’s father, Aswerus Fransen, was described as a silversmith from Bolsward, near Leeuwarden, when he married a Haarlem woman in Amsterdam in 1616.39 In addition, Catrina Valckenier, Vincent Meurant’s aunt by marriage, had a brother Daniel who since 1659 had been mintmaster of the States of Friesland, in Leeuwarden.40 There are other family connections that Bakker plans to detail in a future publication.41 It is also possible that Murant’s move to Friesland had something to do with the innkeeper, art dealer, and painter Casparus Hoomis (1630-1677), who is recorded in Leeuwarden from 1665 until his violent death in 1677.42 Hoomis was the son of an Amsterdam art dealer and painter, Elias Hoomis (1600-1636), who lived with his family on the Koestraat.43 In 1640, when he was nine, Casparus’ mother married the accomplished landscape painter,
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Fig. 3. Emanuel Murant, The Old Castle, about 1665-80, oil on wood. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
topographical draftsman and etcher, Anthonie Waterloo (1609-1690). Between 1650 and 1652, Hoomis’ traveled to Louvain, Antwerp, and Cologne, partly in the company of another young painter, Pieter Nijs. At present, nothing further is known of Hoomis’ whereabouts until we find him in Leeuwarden (where Waterloo may have been in 1653).44 When Hoomis died, Murant owed him a small amount of money.45 Murant would have taken an interest in Waterloo, who made large, detailed topographical views of Amsterdam sites between 1650 and 1653.46 And Van der Heyden must have admired some of Waterloo’s more finished drawings (which were made for sale), but the younger artist’s turn to the genre of cityscapes during the 1660s had other sources.47 It appears that between the mid-1650s and about 1665, Van der Heyden essentially trained himself as a landscapist, based on an eclectic survey of readily available models. His early works bring to mind pictures by Cornelis Decker, Jan Looten, Ruisdael, Potter, and others.48 Some of his village views of the 1660s are quite reminiscent of works by Murant, in composition and motifs as well as in their preoccupation with brickwork.49 If Van der Heyden knew Murant it would have been through the painters’ guild and other art-world connections, rather than the Koestraat. However, it is intriguing that both artists had brothers who worked in the mirror business and lived in the center of Amsterdam. When Van der Heyden’s father
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Fig. 4. Detail of Figure 3. The tall window at top, including the surrounding stonework, is one inch (2.54 cm) high.
died in 1651, leaving behind his wife and eight children, the future painter’s oldest brother, Goris, became the family’s main provider by making and selling mirrors. In March 1662, Murant’s brother Vincent, “age 24 years,” was described by his wife as an Amsterdam merchant who went to Moscow in July 1661, where he offered for sale a substantial shipment of “French mirrors” and dozens of “book mirrors,” on behalf of Jacobus Vrijberger, who manufactured mirrors in Amsterdam.50 Whether, or not Murant was important for Van der Heyden is a question that deserves closer consideration. Of course, their mutual interest in picturesque passages of masonry was shared with other artists, including Decker, Claes Molenaer, Jan Wijnants, Daniel Vosmaer, and Pieter de Hooch (who moved to Amsterdam in 1660-61). Murant appears to have adopted an idea that was current in the art market and developed it somewhat further. Van der Heyden did the same, probably with Murant’s example as one of his points of departure. Only a few known paintings by Murant, including The Old Castle (Figs. 3 and 4), render brickwork with a minuteness that approaches Van der Heyden’s own. It may be that Murant was not only a “rustic forerunner” of Van der Heyden but, in some works, his follower, too. In any event, we know from Montias that artists’ lives were more complicated than they usually appear in art-historical texts.
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Paintings by Emanuel Murant in Public Collections Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum (2; inv. no. A281 is based on a drawing by Ruisdael) Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum (1) Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst (2; one dated 1676) Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts (1) Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut (1) Groningen, Groninger Museum (1) Leeuwarden, Fries Museum (possibly 6) Leipzig, Museum der bildenden Künste (1) Lille, Musée des Beaux-Arts (1) Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (1?) New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art (1; here Fig. 3) Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Johnson Collection (1?) Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (1) Sacramento, Crocker Art Museum (1?) Salzburg, Residenzgalerie (1; see Haak, Golden Age, fig. 1029) Warwickshire, Upton House, Bearsted Collection (1) Winterthur, Jakob Briner Foundation (1; here Fig. 2) Zurich, Kunsthaus, Ruzicka Foundation (1; dated 1671) Dozens of other paintings by Murant, in private collections, or formerly on the art market, are recorded in the photographic files of the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague.
1
2
George S. Keyes, Susan Donahue Kuretsky, Axel Rüger and Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., Masters of Dutch Painting: The Detroit Institute of Arts (London: D. Giles, 2004), p. 138, citing Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen... (Amsterdam, 1718-21), vol. 2, p. 102. Houbraken probably obtained his information from David Murant (see text following). Laurens Bol, Holländische Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts nahe den grossen Meistern: Landschaften und Stilleben (Braunschweig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1982), pp. 220-24 (quotes from p. 224), figs. 212-13, and pl. XVII, opp. p. 244 (the Rotterdam picture). The paintings said to be dated 1652 are reproduced in W. Bernt, Die Niederländischen Maler und Zeichner des 17. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Bruckmann, 1980), vol. 2, nos. 871-72. Although not pendants, they are both recorded as signed and dated 1652. Perhaps the 1940 sale catalogue, or Bernt, mistakenly repeated information pertaining to only one of the pictures. Bernt 1980, no. 871, is evidently identical with a canvas sold as by Murant, but bearing a Teniers signature and the date 1675, at Neumeister, Munich, 23 September 1998, lot 373 (also at Sotheby’s, Amsterdam, 9 November 1999, lot 49, with no reference to a date). Bernt 1980, no. 872 (here Fig.1), was sold at F. Muller, Amsterdam, 6 May 1913, lot 70 (repr.), as monogrammed “EM” and dated 1652. The date (on the inn to the left, but probably the date of the painting) is legible in the catalogue’s reproduction, as 165(?), with the last digit almost certainly a “2” (kind communication of E. Buijsen, October 2005).
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Peter Sutton, Dutch and Flemish Seventeenth-Century Paintings: The Harold Samuel Collection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 82, under no. 26, deferring to Helga Wagner, Jan van der Heyden 1637-1712 (Amsterdam and Haarlem: Scheltema & Holkema, 1971), p. 57. See the discussion of another supposedly early work in Keyes et al. 2004, no. 40. A reliable list of dated pictures (1652, 1658, 1671, and later) is provided in Leon Krempel, Holländische Gemälde im Städel 1550-1800, vol. 2. Künstler Geboren 1615 bis 1630 (Frankfurt am Main and Petersberg: Michael Imhof, 2005), p. 196, n. 2. Personal communication, 9 June 2004. “Salomon Meurandt” is listed among Amsterdam printers, bookbinders, and booksellers in John Michael Montias, Art at Auction in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2002), p. 267, n. 118. Abraham Bredius, “Archiefsprokkelingen: Bijdragen tot de biographie van Emanuel Meurant,” Oud Holland 54 (1937): pp. 135-36. Cited in Krempel 2005, p. 196. Houbraken 1718-21, vol. 2 (1719), p. 102. This passage is compared with Houbraken’s similar praise of Van der Heyden’s work in Hendrik Horn, The Golden Age Revisited; Arnold Houbraken’s Great Theatre of Netherlandish Painters and Paintresses (Doornspijk: Davaco, 2000), vol. 1, pp. 549-50. In about 1700, David Murant owned two houses on the Spuistraat in Amsterdam (kindly noted by Josephine Moonen, Stadsarchief Naarden, citing an internet search). Jacob Campo Weyerman, De Levens-beschrijvingen der Nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen (The Hague, 1729), vol. 2, p. 186 (“ging scheep na de Eliseesche laage Landstreek”). Bredius’ 1937, p. 136. Catharina, “sick in bed,” left Emanuel fifty guilders per annum for five years, and their brother David was charged with administrating this part of the bequest. “He will receive nothing else and must be satisfied with that,” according to Bredius’ paraphrase. In checking this document (Gemeentearchief Amsterdam [GAA] NAA 4877, film no. 7945, pp. 268ff., 332ff.), Piet Bakker found that Bredius wrongly referred to Catharina’s “five other brothers and sisters.” The other heirs were David, his sister Beatrix, and three of their brother Vincent’s children. A document dated 11 March 1696, records “Emanuel Murant, konstschilder, [living] op de Grachtswal buyten deser stede [Leeuwarden], olt 74 jaren,” as discovering the suicide of an acquaintance. Klaas Zandberg, of the Historisch Centrum Leeuwarden (HCL), kindly brought this document to my attention, and noted that burial records in Leeuwarden are not completely preserved (personal communication, June 2004). Piet Bakker transcribed the document: HCL, Informatieboeken, C 6, fols. 16-17, 11 March 1696. Documents of 1670-77 are cited below. OK (Oude Kerk) 6/36. Piet Bakker combed the archives of Amsterdam on my behalf, and checked details recorded in Leeuwarden. Unless otherwise acknowledged, all documents cited in the notes following are recorded in the “Murant dossier” that Bakker compiled from November 2004 onward. I am extremely grateful for Marten Jan Bok’s several important contributions to this research, and for requesting Bakker’s collaboration. GAA DTB 427/45. Esaias Meurant was baptized in the Nieuwe Kerk (NK), Amsterdam, on 28 July 1588 (GAA DTB 38/63 NK). GAA NA, not. W. Hasen, 1598 (film no. 1691), 10 April 1647, fols. 209-33. GAA NA, not. J.H. Leuven, 2729 (film no. 2709), 5 June 1665, pp. 511-13. J.C. Breen, “De Woning van Jan van der Heyden in de Koestraat met eenige bijzonderheden uit de geschiedenis dezer straat,” Jaarboek van het Genootschap Amstelodamum, vol. 11 (1913): pp. 109-18. Breen 1913, p. 110. Esaias Meurant worked previously in Amersfoort, where he joined the Reformed Church on 8 July 1620, and where he was praeceptor in the Latin school in 1620-21 (Bakker, citing specialized publications). murant and his milieu | 243
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18 J.F.M. Sterck, “Over een paar Hekeldichten van Vondel,” Vereening Het VondelMuseum, vol. 8 (1916-17): pp. 14-20. 19 Piet Bakker, personal communication, October 2005, citing Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde (1865), vol. 2, p. 254, listing “Esaias Davidis Meurant, Amstelo-Batavus,” as enrolling in the University of Geneva on 9 September 1614. 20 Published in G.J. van Dillen, “Documenten betreffende de politieke en kerkelijke twisten te Amsterdam (1614-1630),” Bijdragen en mededelingen van het genootschap Utrecht, vol. 59 (1938): pp. 249, n.1. 21 Sterck 1916-17, p. 15. 22 For these details, see K. Thomassen and J.A. Gruys, eds., The Album Amicorum of Jacob Heyblocq (Zwolle: Waanders, 1998), pp. 11-12, 15-16, 119. 23 For the contributions of both Murants, see Thomassen and Gruys 1998, pp. 30, 11719, 122-24. 24 Vincent was baptized on 6 July 1625 (GAA DTB 6/117 OK), and married Catrina van Friesem on 19 December 1658 (GAA DTB 479/286). The latter’s aunt, Catrina Valckenier, and her husband, the lawyer Abraham van Friesem, left fifty-three paintings in their estate (1697), including “twee huysjens of landschapjens van Emanuel Murant, 36-” (GAA NA not. Michiel Servaes, 5055 [film no. 8448], acte 39, 30 November 1697). 25 Beatrix was baptized on 25 April 1628 (GAA DTB 40/448 NK). She married Johannes Staets of The Hague on 28 March 1658 (GAA DTB 478/268). He was two years younger than his bride but according to her he was two years older (she gave her age as 26). On 15 June 1661, the 33-year-old widow wed a 30-year-old merchant, Francois Ardinois (GAA DTB 482/136). Beatrix was buried on 8 November 1680 (GAA DTB 1069/19 NZK). She had a son from her first marriage and five children from her second. 26 For Catharina, see note 10. 27 Elisabeth was baptized on 5 December 1630 (GAA DTB 6/290 OK), and married Johannes Hop on 12 June 1655 (GAA DTB 473/253). She was buried on 1 June 1656 (GAA DTB 1062/121 OZK). 28 When David married Margaretha Claribus on 7 March 1669, he gave his age as 32 (GAA DTB 493/167). Houbraken refers to David as living (he would have been about 82 at the time). 29 GAA NA not. J.H. Leuven, 2739 (film no. 2837), 5 June 1665, pp. 463-93. 30 Cruydt-boeck van Rembertus Dodonaeus, probably the edition of 1608, 1618, or 1644. 31 GAA DTB not. D. Ypelaer, 2663F (film no. 2680), 17 October 1663. 32 GAA DTB 458/37. 33 Kind communication of Josephine Moonen, Stads- en Streekarchief Naarden, dated 17 June 2004. One of the witnesses was the Amsterdam notary, Hendrick Rosa. According to Bakker, a will made by both Jan Marcus and Anna Meurant, dated 1 October 1670, leaves 100 guilders to Emanuel, and 100 guilders to each of Vincent’s children. At the time, Marcus and his wife lived in the Provenierhuis, Naarden. GAA NA not. Hendrick Rosa, 3128 (film no. 3117), 1 October 1670, fols. 856-59. 34 H.W. van Tricht, ed., De briefwisseling van Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft (Culemborg: Tjeenk Willink/Noorduijn, 1976-79), vol. 3, pp. 882-83, under addendum 294b. 35 Piet Bakker, personal communication, October 2004. One would not expect Esaias Meurant to have been well connected with the Muiderkring, Hooft’s literary and intellectual circle, which gathered at Muiden Castle from 1621 onward. However, Meurant’s immediate neighbor on the Koestraat, the composer and organist Dirck Sweelinck (1591-1652), was a member of the group. See Breen 1913, pp. 110-11, on the house occupied by the famous Jan Pietersz. Sweelinck and his heirs, which was purchased by Jan van de Cappelle in 1661. 36 Esaias was baptized on 26 September 1656 (GAA DTB 43/337 NK). Catharine was
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baptized on 5 July 1658 (GAA DTB 9/209 OK), and it was probably she who was buried on August 28 of the same year (GAA DTB 1091/63 ZK). HCL DTB 337/153, 23 July/16 October 1670. Catharina (HCL DTB, 14 July 1671); Anna Margaretha (HCL DTB, 21 September 1673); and another Catharina (HCL DTB, 23 April 1676), indicating that the first Catharina died between 1673 and 1676. GAA DTB 421/37, dated 26 November 1616. The bride was Maeyken van der Burcht, of Haarlem. Bakker notes that Bolsward was famous for its silversmiths. For Catrina Valckeniers, see note 24. Her husband was the brother of Herman van Friesem, Vincent’s father-in-law. The Murants were related by marriage to a number of silver- and goldsmiths. The father and two brothers (Hendrick and Frans) of Emanuel’s wife were silversmiths, and his sister Elisabeth married one. Vincent’s son, Esaias, became a goldsmith, and his daughter, Anna Catrina, married one. Catrina Valckenier’s father, Pieter (1585-1635), was a goldsmith from Cologne. His widow, Anna Hambach (1588-1662), died in Leeuwarden. His stabbing by a drunk is recounted in Harm Nijboer, “Casparus Hoomis: Een onbekende Leeuwarder schilder uit de zeventiende eeuw,” Fryslan vol. 4, no. 4 (1998): pp. 10-12. The author wrongly suggests that Hoomis was a native of Leeuwarden, and probably Catholic. No works by him are known. Casparus was baptized on 25 August 1630, in the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (GAA DTB 6/280 OK). His mother, Catalina Stevens van den Dorpe, and her five children lived on the Koestraat at the time of her husband’s death (September 1636), and when she remarried in April 1640. See Ben Broos in Jane Turner, ed., Dictionary of Art (London: Macmillan, 1996), vol. 32, p. 907. HCL Aestimatieboeken z29, fols. 155-69. Murant’s small debt to another Leeuwarden innkeeper was recorded on 31 July 1679 (HCL, Inventarisatieboeken, y 59, fol. 14). See Ben Broos and Marijn Schapelhouman, Oude tekeningen in het bezit van het Amsterdams Historisch Museum waaronder de collectie Fodor 4: Nederlandse Tekenaars geboren tussen 1600 en 1660 (Amsterdam and Zwolle: Waanders, 1993), no. 171. See Wagner 1971, pp. 21-37; Lenore Stapel, Perspective van de stad: Over bronnen, populariteit en functie van het zeventiende-eeuwse stadsgezicht (Hilversum: Verloren, 2000), pp. 30-35; and the catalogue of Peter Sutton’s exhibition of works by Van der Heyden, Jan van der Heyden (1637-1712) (Greenwich: Bruce Museum, 2006 and Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 2007). On the chronology of Van der Heyden’s early work, see Wagner 1971, pp. 47-49, 51, 54-59, and especially the review of Wagner by Eric Jan Sluijter, in Oud Holland 87 (1973): 248. See Wagner 1971, nos. 66, 107, 110, 114, 115. D S. van Zuiden, “Nieuwe bijdragen tot de kennis van de Hollandsch-Russische relaties in de 16e-18e eeuw. Bronnen-publicatie uit de Amsterdamsche notaris-protocollen,” Economisch-Historisch Jaarboek: Bijdragen tot de Economische Geschiedenis van Nederland, vol. 2 (1916): pp. 282-83 (kindly brought to my attention by Michael Montias). Perhaps an earlier trip to Russia, or trade with that country accounts for the portrait of the Great Prince of Moscovy that was owned by Vincent’s parents in October 1660.
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Rubens as a Teacher: “He may teach his art to his students and others to his liking” anne-marie logan Easton
A New Studio in Antwerp and a Private Student On 4 January 1611, Rubens officially became the owner of De Wapper, a property in Antwerp that included a house and bleaching fields. By 1618, the artist had developed De Wapper into a large estate on which he spent “some thousands of florins.”1 Most prominent was the studio building that resem-
Fig. 1. Jacobus Harrewijn after J. van Croes, View of Rubens’ House, 1684, engraving. Private Collection.
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bled an Italian palazzo.2 This was connected to the existing house with a portico, as we know from a 1684 engraving by Jacobus Harrewijn after J. van Croes (Fig. 1). The original contract between the then owner, Amsterdam merchant and jeweler Hans Thijsz. I (1566-1611) and Nicolaes Coop, who acted on behalf of Rubens in Antwerp, had been signed the previous November 1, when Rubens made a down payment on the property.3 To sweeten the purchase, Rubens promised a painting, which has been tentatively identified with his Judith with the Head of Holofernes in Braunschweig.4 This shows that Rubens liked to barter with his own paintings, since, as he once wrote, “they cost him nothing.”5 The contract concerning De Wapper and the parties involved has become better known thanks to one of the last articles that John Michael Montias published, in 2001.6 Most unusually, Rubens agreed in the contract to give free private painting lessons to Thijsz.’s son – the youth’s first name is not provided in the document – and promised not to “withhold any secrets.” Although the son paid for his own room and board, he was to be allowed “access,” presumably to the studio, to observe the apprentices at work and to receive his lessons.7 Rubens’ acceptance of a special pupil is astonishing since, in this very year, Rubens lamented to an acquaintance that he was so overwhelmed with students wanting to join his studio that he had had to turn away more than one hundred young men, even sons of relatives.8 Moreover, to study with Rubens was known to be expensive;9 indeed, in October of that year, the artist was praised as the “Apelles of our century,” which added to his prestige as a teacher.10 Here, apparently for the first and only time, he sacrificed his extremely precious time to teach a student gratis. This is an indication of his determination to acquire De Wapper. Montias reasoned that the Thijsz. son Rubens most likely agreed to teach was Hans II (c. 1587/90-1619).11 First, Hans II was interested in art. He bought three paintings from his father’s estate (sold in 1614), including a Vase of Flowers and a Sacrifice of Abraham, which were added to four others purchased from the sale of Claes Rauwart in 1613.12 Second, in the Thijs Archive in the library of Leiden University, there is a document of 25 May 1613 indicating Hans’ possession of a canvas “to paint on,” perhaps in preparation for Rubens’ instructions?13 There was no official impediment to Rubens’ giving free painting lessons. As court painter to Archduke Albert and Archduch*ess Isabella in Brussels, Rubens was exempt from guild rules and thus permitted to accept any student; he was also allowed to teach whatever he deemed suitable, as stated clearly in a document of 23 September 1609: “avecq pouvoir qu’il pourra enseigner à ses serviteurs et aultres qu’il voudra sondict art, sans estre assubjecti à ceulx du mestier, tant qu’il nous plaira.”14 This intriguing information about Rubens’ private pupil raises the question: What more do we know about Rubens as a teacher? 248 | in his milieu
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Working from Life, or from Memory Very few of Rubens’ many students, or “disciples” are known by name.15 In his vast, extant correspondence, Rubens rarely referred to pupils, or associates and he never mentioned his teaching. Nor do we have recollections from any pupils, or assistants about their experiences in his studio. This contrasts with the case of Rubens’ somewhat younger contemporary, Rembrandt. A well-known Rembrandt School drawing in Darmstadt, for example, depicts an artist, possibly the master himself, surrounded by students sketching from a reclining female model.16 If not an actual record of the Rembrandt studio, the sheet nevertheless reflects the practice of holding such drawing lessons in an artist’s studio. Further visual evidence of Rembrandt’s teaching practice is found in three drawings, attributed to different artists of the Rembrandt School, all of which show the same male nude in the same pose, thus providing us with another glimpse into the studio. Moreover, the same model appears in Rembrandt’s 1646 etching of Two Male Nudes and a Mother and Child, suggesting that Rembrandt was seated among his students that day, drawing directly with the etching needle on the copper plate.17 We have no evidence of such drawing lessons having taken place in Rubens’ studio. Although Rubens himself occasionally drew from the live model to study poses of figures for his paintings, especially between 1610 and 1620, we do not know if he instructed his students to draw from life. The numerous copies after Rubens’ original studies by his student Willem Panneels (see below) do not include any drawings from the posed model. Moreover, an informal genre study like Rembrandt’s pen-and-wash drawing of a half-dressed woman seated on a chair in his studio (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) would have been entirely out of the question for an artist working in the Southern Netherlands.18 Indeed, Rubens apparently disliked sketching from the model. According to Edward Norgate, who was in contact with the artist in 1618, Rubens felt that drawing from the human figure as taught in the academy – and as pictured in the Darmstadt drawing – was to “little, or noe purpose.”19 Rubens’ goal instead was to learn the art of the past to such a degree that it became part of his own store of ideas when imitating nature.20 He may have instilled this admiration for classical works of the past in his students, since at least one of them, the same Willem Panneels, assiduously copied Rubens’ drawings after the Antique.21 Rubens’ unparalleled ability to train his memory to recall visual details was reported by Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678), a Rembrandt pupil. Hoogstraten recounted in 1678 that a fellow artist in Rome criticized Rubens for wandering about and quietly observing his surroundings, rather than copying directly after the examples of Italian art. Rubens replied in response, “I am most busy when you see me idle…I believe that I have better retained
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what I have looked at, than you who have drawn it.” 22 When he was challenged to prove this, Rubens indeed surpassed his doubter by relying on “the treasure of his imagination.” From this Hoogstraten concluded that “copying everything is too slavish, even impossible; to entrust everything to one’s imagination really requires a Rubens.”23 In another passage, Hoogstraten related that Rubens actually paid artists in Italy to make him sketches of “all that was beautiful.”24 Indeed, on such a drawn, anonymous, copy in the Louvre, representing the scene of the Creation of Eve from Michelangelo’s fresco in the Sistine Chapel, Rubens clearly reworked the composition. Later, his student Panneels chose this very sheet and, ignoring the master’s changes and additions, copied out the figures of Adam and Eve.25 Years later, Rubens apparently still worked in the manner that Hoogstraten recounted, clearly visualizing entire compositions in his head. The historian Sir William Sanderson (c. 1586-1676), who observed Rubens at work in London in 1629-30, recorded that the artist “as usually would (with his Arms a cross) sit musing upon his work for some time; and in an instant in the livelinesse of spirit, with a nimble hand would force out, his over-charged brain into description, as not to be contained in the Compass of ordinary practice, but by a violent driving on of the passion.”26
A Visit to the Rubens Studio and a Recollection While none of his pupils wrote of their training with Rubens, we do have two important recollections of Rubens and his studio. The first was a young medical student, Otto Sperling (1602-1673), later physician to the Danish court, who visited Rubens in Antwerp in 1621. The second was the artist and historian Joachim von Sandrart (1606-1688), who in 1627 accompanied Rubens to Amsterdam from Utrecht, where Sandrart was then an apprentice in the studio of Gerrit van Honthorst (1590-1656). Sperling recorded his meeting with Rubens many years afterward in his autobiography. Along with several others, he visited Rubens soon after the painter had signed the contract on 20 March 1621 for the commission to decorate the Jesuit Church in Antwerp. The studio therefore must have been busy working from Rubens’ thirty-nine oil sketches for the ceiling paintings, not to mention the two altarpieces. According to Sperling’s description, Rubens was “at work painting, in the course of which he was read to from Tacitus and moreover dictated a letter.”27 Sperling and his entourage were further impressed with Rubens’ multi-tasking when he “initiated a dialogue, answering many of their questions without interrupting his work.”28 Rubens apparently painted in a room of his own while the studio hummed with activity elsewhere. The visitors were brought by a servant to a “big room that had no windows but was lit from a big opening in the middle of the
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ceiling. In this room many young painters sat, all painting different pieces that had been sketched out by Mr. Rubens with chalk and a touch of paint here and there. The young fellows had to work up these pictures fully in oils, until finally Mr. Rubens himself would finish them off with lines and colors. All this is considered as Rubens’ work; thus he has gained a large fortune, and kings and princes have heaped gifts and jewels on him.”29 Recent infrared reflectography has indeed confirmed that Rubens did draw the contours of figures in black paint, perhaps over chalk directly on the prepared panel. One example of such a procedure can be seen in the Antwerp Cathedral altarpiece depicting the Elevation of the Cross (c. 1610). Below the paint layers, in the right foreground, the soldier bearing the cross is clearly indicated in black outlines on the panel support. Further evidence of Rubens’ practice is the large sheet of a Man Crouching, drawn from a model placed in the pose of this straining figure.30 The artist prepared this life study as a last step for the finished work. Each time he represented this figure, from the preliminary oil sketch now in the Louvre, Paris, to the large drawing, to the final altarpiece,31 Rubens introduced small changes, mostly to increase the sense of the immense power needed to lift the Cross bearing the lifeless body of Christ. Sperling’s description also reveals that Rubens worked on several commissions at once. This meant he had to pay close attention to scheduling the work, making sure panels would arrive on time and that plenty of paint and brushes were on hand. We don’t know how many assistants helped to prepare panels, or care for the brushes in the studio; only one, “Franchois, the grinder [of pigments],” is listed in the account of Rubens’ estate.32 Unfortunately, the hierarchy of the pupils and their organization within the studio will probably never be established. The room that served as the workshop for Rubens’ assistants was on the upper floor of the studio. This space is rendered at the lower right of another engraving by Jacobus Harrewijn, done in 1692 (Fig. 2).33 It is difficult to guess how many students would have worked in the studio, but an engraving by Hans Collaert, after a drawing by Stradanus, shows a Painter’s Studio of about 1600, which represents some seven, or eight students in a room working at different tasks (Fig. 3).34 Rubens’ own studio was in a larger space on the ground floor, as indicated in the plan that François Mols drew from memory after a visit to the studio in the eighteenth century.35 The other contemporary familiar with Rubens’ studio was Joachim von Sandrart, who, like Sperling, wrote his account long after meeting the artist. Some fifty years later, in his Teutsche Academie of 1675, he provided the following description: “Rubens used many young people to speed up the production of his large paintings. He instructed each one carefully in accordance with his inclination and ability, who would then paint after him. This was a
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Fig. 2. Jacobus Harrewijn after J. van Croes, Interior View of Rubens’ House, 1692, engraving. Detail showing domed room on upper floor of house. Private Collection.
great help since these assistants added all the birds, fish, landscapes, trees, rivers, grounds, air, water, and woods.” Sandrart further stressed that “every composition always originated with Rubens. He alone would prepare the preliminary design on a small scale, which his best disciples would then transfer to the large canvas. This he then retouched, or even painted the most important parts himself. This procedure was most advantageous for him. It also was most useful to the youths in his studio since they become well versed in all parts of the art.”36 Sandrart finished by stating that, thanks to Rubens, Antwerp had become a great city in which to study art. As Sandrart remarked, Rubens supervised his pupils carefully and turned them into highly accomplished artists. He rarely cited them by name, but rather referred to one, or another as “my best pupil,” or “one of my pupils.”37 Only when the collaborator was an independent artist did Rubens give a name; for example, he specified that Frans Snyders added the eagle in Prometheus Bound.38 Only a few of these collaborators are known and their styles may have differed while working under Rubens’ direct supervision. Separating out the different hands responsible for the landscapes, animals, birds, and other details has been notoriously difficult; indeed, this problem was compounded by Rubens himself through his descriptions of the works produced in his studio as well as by his habit of extensive retouching. For example, in a letter to Dudley Carleton in 1618, while he stated clearly that one painting was “original, entirely by my hand,” the authorship of a landscape is uncertain as it “was done by the hand of a master skillful in that department.” Yet
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Fig. 3. Hans Collaert after Jan van der Straet, called Stradanus, The Invention of Oil Painting (The Painter’s Studio), 1600, engraving. Published by Philip Galle (from the Nova Reperta series). Private Collection.
another work was “begun by one of my pupils, after one which I did in a much larger size… [and] would be entirely retouched by my own hand, and by this means would pass as original.” Still another was “done by the best of my pupils,” but in the end, “the whole [was] retouched by my hand.” From this letter, it is evident that the pupils began many paintings and finished them to the point where Rubens could rework them thoroughly so that they could pass for originals. When it came to pricing his works, Rubens showed the same kind of laxity concerning modern notions of originality. At times he charged the same amount –, or so he stated in letters – for works entirely by his hand and those he merely retouched, or were mostly by other artists in his studio.39 Rubens well knew the abilities and limitations of his pupils. In his letter of 11 October 1619 to Duke Wolfgang Wilhelm of Pfalz-Neuburg about the altarpiece the latter had commissioned, Fall of the Rebel Angels,40 the painter pointed out that “the subject…is a very beautiful but very difficult one, and I doubt that I can find among my pupils one capable of doing the work, even after my design; in any case it will be necessary for me to retouch it well with my own hand.”41 Judging from the original, today in Munich, Rubens painted most of it himself.42 Rubens’ delegation of tasks according to the abil-
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ities of his students and his control of the final product derive from the model of medieval workshop, where apprenticeships generally lasted three years and were strictly controlled by the guilds.43 In the sixteenth century, this workshop practice could be found in the studio of Raphael in Rome, and in that of Frans Floris (1519/20-1570) in Antwerp. Rubens was free to run his studio in this manner – in contrast to Rembrandt, for example, who allowed freedom of individual expression among his pupils – since he did not have to register students with the guild and had the court’s permission to operate outside its rules. From Sandrart’s account, however, it appears that he was a very diligent teacher.44
Important Collaborators Not all of the artists associated with Rubens’ studio were trained by him; several joined after having been apprenticed elsewhere, sometimes while waiting for a space in the master’s studio. These more experienced painters were welcomed, as Rubens needed artists capable of working largely on their own. In 1676, Rubens’ nephew Philip mentioned the names of several such collaborators to Rubens’ early biographer, the art critic Roger de Piles: Peter Soutman (c. 1580-1657), Justus van Egmont (1601-1674), Erasmus Quellinus II (1607-1678), Jan Boekhorst (1604-1668), Johannes van den Hoecke (16111651), and Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641).45 While the majority of the students and disciples basically followed Rubens’ instructions, one pupil stood out. Anthony van Dyck, who worked on and off in the studio from about 1616 until 1620, is generally identified as Rubens’ best “discepolo.” The younger artist impressed Rubens to the point that the master asked him to prepare head studies to be used in the workshop, as prototypes alongside his own.46 Van Dyck, indeed, was Rubens’ most gifted assistant and collaborator, although his exact association with the Rubens studio is not entirely clear. Both Sandrart and Sperling emphasized Rubens’ responsibility for the invention of the compositions coming from his studio. Close supervision of his assistants and at times extensive retouching of their work enabled the final canvases to pass as originals; indeed, despite a collaborative approach, the paintings were sold under Rubens’ name. But while Rubens was the guiding force behind every work, initiating its composition and making sure it was carried out to his satisfaction, he would never have been able to produce such a large body of works without expert assistance.
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Willem Panneels and Rubens’ Cantoor Two other known pupils, both of whom Rubens identified as students in letters of recommendation, were Deodaat del Monte and Willem Panneels. Del Monte (1582-1644) had accompanied Rubens to Italy in 1600 and returned with him to Antwerp in late 1608.47 Earlier that year, Del Monte witnessed the signing of Rubens’ contract with the oratorians in Rome for the Nativity in Fermo.48 Willem Panneels (c. 1600/05-1634) joined the studio about 1624, as on 1 June 1630, Rubens testified that Panneels had been with him “for five-anda-half years learning his art. He was a good and honest apprentice who has dedicated his time to his art, in which he has made considerable progress.”49 Today, Panneels is best remembered for his copies of Rubens’ drawings and for watching over the house and studio while Rubens was abroad on diplomatic missions from 1628 to 1630. Panneels also copied from Rubens’ or Van Dyck’s paintings found on the premises. This gives us an idea of what works of art pupils might have seen on Rubens’ estate. Panneels’ drawn copies, today in Copenhagen, are referred to as the Rubens Cantoor Drawings, as they were mostly selected from the master’s cantoor, or private study.50 These comprise roughly five hundred sheets and are usually copies of single figures, or parts of the figure, rarely entire compositions. Some are after Rubens’ anatomical drawings51 while others are after his drawings done in Rome from the Antique. It appears that Panneels wanted to compile for himself a visual encyclopedia, very much the way a younger Rubens had done before him. It may be that Rubens’ anatomical drawings and his studies after the Antique were available for other students to copy as well. On a number of his copies, Panneels wrote in a secret script noting whether his work was successful, or needed improvement.52 (Unfortunately, he made no comments on theory, such as Rubens expressed in his essay, De Imitatione Statuarum.53) Often he praised himself for having drawn such a fine contour (omtreck); this emphasis on the contour may reflect Rubens’ teaching. Sometimes Panneels began a copy in black, or red chalk, or both and then went over it partly in pen and ink to further delineate the contours. This recalls Rubens’ practice of redrawing the contours of a painted figure begun by a student. The clear outline of a figure was important in a studio like Rubens’, where numerous hands collaborated on the same work.54 It is curious that Panneels did not copy any of Rubens’ several masterful preparatory drawings for the Elevation of the Cross altarpiece in Antwerp, or other striking figure studies, such as the Kneeling Male Nude Seen from Behind, now in Rotterdam.55 Maybe these were understood to represent important documents for Rubens and were therefore off-limits for study purposes. Nor are there copies from Rubens’ Pocket-Book, now lost, or the Costume-Book. On the other hand, Panneels did make a copy (Fig. 4) of the figure of Christ out
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Fig. 4. Willem Panneels after Rubens’ figure of Christ in his Baptism of Christ, c. 162829, drawing in black chalk, pen and brown ink. Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst.
of one of Rubens’ most impressive drawings, the very large, highly finished Baptism of Christ, today in the Louvre.56 This was Rubens’ preliminary drawing for an altarpiece painted around 1604-05 for the Jesuit Church in Mantua. Later, Panneels adapted his copy after Rubens57 for an etching of the same subject, which he proudly signed and dated 1630, crediting Rubens with its invention (Fig. 5).
Copying from the Drawing-Book and from Paintings in the Studio Several of the drawings Panneels copied are also represented in the so-called Rubens Drawing-Book, which consists of twenty loose engravings and a title page by Paulus Pontius (1603-1658). The title page to this series of prints, published after Rubens’ death by Alexander Voet, credits Rubens with the preparatory drawings. There is no accompanying text, similar to drawing manuals of the day used in the instruction of students. Paul Huvenne made the interesting suggestion that Pontius, who may well have had Rubens’ original drawings in his possession at the time, compiled the Drawing-Book to preserve and continue the artist’s studio tradition.58 If this was the case, Rubens
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Fig. 5. Willem Panneels, The Baptism of Christ, 1630, etching. Private Collection.
would have had novices in his studio learn to draw the different parts of the human body by copying from drawn examples such as those represented in the engravings in this Drawing-Book; it includes studies of faces seen from various angles, eyes, hands, and feet, all details also found in contemporary drawing manuals.59 We have no record that Rubens shared his ideas about teaching drawing with his students. However, he seems to have discussed the topic with the Dutch artist Crispijn de Passe II (c. 1597-1670). Shortly after Rubens’ death,
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De Passe published a manual on drawing and painting, Van ’t Light der teken en schilderkonst (Amsterdam, 1643), which translates as “The Radiance of Drawing and Painting.” In his introductory note, De Passe mentioned that he discussed the teaching of drawing with such artists as Peter Paul Rubens and Abraham Bloemaert. This would support the notion that Rubens instructed his students in the art of drawing. In the process, he most likely used his own drawings and some he had collected. As far as we can tell, Rubens did not correct drawings of his students, as Rembrandt did.60 In addition to copying from drawings, students learned from close observation of the master’s paintings. Rubens’ estate inventory of 1640 lists numerous student copies of his paintings.61 The same document also itemizes a large number of Rubens’ own copies after his original paintings, a practice that he therefore continued in the studio. That Rubens’ apprentices copied earlier compositions at his request is evident from correspondence between the artist and Duke Wolfgang Wilhelm. On 8 September 1620, the duke inquired about an Assumption of the Virgin scene and specifically asked for two drawings of this subject based on altarpieces the artist had already painted for two Brussels churches. The duke’s request did not involve a new composition and moreover was for work to be executed by other artists, in this case, Italian stuccatori. Thus Rubens simply delegated the task to the studio, careful not to waste his talent on work that could be left to an assistant.62 The large paintings by then had left the Rubens studio, but the artist’s preliminary oil sketches, or small copies must still have been in the studio to allow assistants to prepare drawn copies after them (now lost).63 ••• In 1610, when Rubens offered free lessons to the son of Hans Thijsz., his new student would have been slightly over twenty, an age when most pupils were on their own and no longer apprentices. Therefore, it would have been understood that he was to teach an amateur, who was unlikely to become a productive member of the studio. Rubens probably would have instructed him to begin by copying drawings, paintings, or oil sketches that were retained in the studio for this purpose. Although the young man had to pay his own room and board, financially this would have been a losing proposition for the master, given his valuable time. There are no records of payments from other students to Rubens for his teaching, whereas we know that pupils of Rembrandt, for example, paid him 100 guilders a year. Nor do we have documents regarding compensation for the more productive assistants. Since, according to Sandrart, the artist was careful with his money, he may again have bartered, possibly with free room
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and board. Indeed, it has recently been established that Rubens allowed some students to stay in properties of his for free, which may have counted as compensation for work in the studio.64 As Montias pointed out, it seems that neither the younger Hans Thijsz. (nor any of his brothers) resided in Antwerp long enough to have taken advantage of the private lessons Rubens promised when he bought De Wapper in November 1610. In the end, as usual, Rubens got the best deal.
1
Letter to Sir Dudley Carleton of 12 May 1618. Ruth S. Magurn, The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 62. 2 A.J.J. Delen, “De Geschiedenis van het Huis van Rubens,” Periodisch Bulletin 1 (July 1938): 7-21; Rutger J. Tijs, P.P. Rubens en J. Jordaens. Barok in eigen huis (Antwerp: Stichting Mercator-Plantijn, 1983), pp. 89-99. We do not know the location of Rubens’ original studio. After his marriage to Isabella Brant in October 1609, he moved in with her parents, who lived in the Sint-Michielstraat, today’s Kloosterstraat. Rubens and his family probably did not move to De Wapper until about 1618, after the costly remodeling on the house was finished (Tijs 1983, pp. 96-99). 3 John Michael Montias, “What Happened to Rubens’ Promise to Deliver a Painting to Hans Thijsz.?” Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (2001): 94103. The text, with few changes, was also published in John Michael Montias, Art at Auction in 17th Century Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2002), pp. 153-63 with an appendix of the purchases by principal buyers of the art at the sale of Hans Thijsz. I on April 22, 1614. Rubens made a down payment of fl. 1360 and paid off the remaining fl. 7600 over a number of years (Antwerp, Stadsarchief, S.R. 494, 4 January 1611, sub. Neesen and Gavarelle, vol. III, fol. 1-5); Tijs 1983, p. 110. Nicolaes Coop became an Amsterdam citizen in 1603, where he resided from 15671621. Hans Thijsz. I, a Protestant, was originally from Antwerp but was then living in Amsterdam. The Twelve Years Truce, signed in 1609 between the United Provinces and the Southern Netherlands, facilitated such transactions. 4 Michael Jaffé, Rubens. Catalogo completo (Milan: Rizzoli, 1989), no. 453. This suggestion was first made by Marten Jan Bok (Montias 2001, p. 102). The painting was not delivered until late in 1619, or nine years after the contract was signed (Montias 2001, p. 101). For the Braunschweig Judith, see Nils Büttner, in Peter Paul Rubens. Barocke Leidenschaften, exh. cat., Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig, 2004, p. 121, no. 1. 5 Letter of 12 May 1618 to Sir Dudley Carleton. Magurn 1971, p. 62. 6 Montias 2001, p. 96. The document was first published by Abraham Bredius, “Een onbekend Rubens-document,” Oud Holland 30 (1912): 214-18; and, with more details, by I. van Eeghen, “Rubens en Rembrandt kopen van de familie Thijs,” Maandblad Amstelodamum 64 (1977): 59-62. Tijs 1983, pp. 89-93. 7 Bredius 1912, pp. 216-17. 8 Letter to Jacob de Bie of 11 May 1611. Magurn 1971, p. 55. 9 A. Monballieu. “P.P. Rubens en het ‘Nachtmael’ voor St. Winoksbergen (1611), een niet uitgevoerd schilderij van de meester,” Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor schone Kunsten, Antwerpen (1965): 195, doc. 2 of 12 March 1611. 10 Letter of 4 October 1611 from Dominique Baudier (Baudius; d. 1613) to Rubens; M. Rooses and C. Ruelens, Correspondance de Rubens et documents epistolaires concernant sa vie et ses oeuvres (Antwerp, 1887-1909) (Soest: Davaco, n.d.), vol. 2, pp. 43-48.
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11 Montias 2001, p. 95, n. 4. Neither Van Eeghen (1977) nor J. Schaeps (“Prenten uit de Bibliotheca Thysiana,” in Het Leidse Prentenkabinet: de Geschiedenis van de Verzameling [Baarn, 1994], pp. 247-310) mentioned him in their articles on the Thijs family. 12 Montias 2001, p. 98. 13 Montias 2001, p. 99. 14 “With our permission he may teach his art to his students and others to his liking, without being subjected to the rules of the guild, as long as we are satisfied.” Marcel de Maeyer, Albrecht en Isabella en de schilderkonst (Verhandelingen van den Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, 9), (Brussels: Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, 1959), pp. 293-94. Rubens received 500 florins a year and was allowed to live in Antwerp. 15 See Arnout Balis, “‘Fatto da un mio discepolo’: Rubens’ Studio Practices Reviewed,” in Rubens and his Workshop. The Flight of Lot and his Family from Sodom, exh. cat., The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 1994, pp. 97-127; Hans Vlieghe, “Rubens’ Studio and his First Assistants,” in Flemish Art and Architecture 1585-1700 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 32-34. 16 Darmstadt, Hessischses Landesmuseum. Josua Bruyn, “Rembrandt’s Werkstatt: Funktion und Produktion,” in Rembrandt: Der Meister und seine Werkstatt. Gemälde, exh. cat., Gemäldegalerie, SMPK, Berlin, 1991, p. 81, fig. 99 (hereafter as Rembrandt. Gemälde, 1991). 17 The drawings are now in the Louvre, Paris (possibly by Samuel van Hoogstraten), the British Museum, London, and the Albertina, Vienna. For the etching, see Rembrandt. The Master and his Workshop. Drawings and Etchings, exh. cat., Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, 1991, p. 224, no. 21 (hereafter as Rembrandt. Drawings and Etchings 1991). All four examples are illustrated in Bruyn in Rembrandt. Gemälde 1991, p. 80, figs. 95-98. See also Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, “Rembrandt as Teacher,” in Actes du XXIIe congrès international d’histoire de l’art, Budapest, 1969, 2, Evolution générale et dévelopements régionaux en histoire de l’art (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1972), p. 106. 18 Rembrandt. Drawings and Etchings 1991, p. 116, no. 33. For differences in drawing the female nude between the Northern and Southern Netherlands in the seventeenth century, see Margit Thøfner “Helena Fourment’s Het Pelsken,” Art History 27 (2004): 133. 19 Edward Norgate, Miniatura, or the Art of Limning, eds. Jeffrey M. Muller and Jim Murrell (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 108, 209-10, n. 307. 20 See Jeffrey M. Muller, “Rubens’ Theory and Practice of the Imitation of Art,” Art Bulletin 64 (1982): 229-47. 21 See Marjon van der Meulen, Rubens: Copies after the Antique (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard 33), ed. Arnout Balis, 3 vols. (London: Harvey Miller, 1994); Rubens Cantoor: Een verzameling tekeningen ontstaan in Rubens’ atelier, exh. cat., Rubenshuis, Antwerp, 1993 (hereafter as Rubens Cantoor 1993). 22 Samuel van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der Schilderkonst (Lier, 1678) (Soest: Davaco, 1969), p. 194. 23 Hoogstraten 1678, p. 195. See Jeffrey M. Muller, Rubens: The Artist as Collector (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 245. 24 Hoogstraten 1678, p. 193. 25 Rubens Cantoor 1993, pp. 144-47. 26 Kerry Downes, Rubens (London: Jupiter Books, 1980), p. 139. William Sanderson, Graphice: The Use of the Pen and Pensil (London: Robert Crofts, 1658), p. 34. 27 English translation from Downes 1980, p. 10. See also Julius S. Held, Rubens: Selected Drawings (Mt. Kisco, NY: Moyer Bell, 1986), p. 26. 28 Downes 1980, p. 140.
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29 Waldemar von Seidlitz, “Bericht eines Zeitgenossen über einen Besuch bei Rubens,” Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 10 (1887): 111; M. Rooses, “De vreemde reizigers Rubens of zijn huis bezoekende,” Rubens-Bulletijn 5 (1910): 221-22. 30 Private collection. Anne-Marie Logan with Michiel C. Plomp, Peter Paul Rubens: The Drawings, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2005, p. 10, fig. 8. 31 Julius S. Held, The Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 479-81, no. 349, pl. 343; Jaffé 1989, no. 131 and 135 ABC. 32 Erik Duverger, Antwerpse Kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw (Fontes Historiae Artis Neerlandicae, I, 5) (Brussels: Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, 1991), pp. 278-79, nos. 70, 123. 33 Delen 1938, pp. 14-15, repr. on p. 13. When Hendrik Hillewerve bought the house on 18 January 1680, he transformed the room where Rubens’ assistants had worked into a bedroom. See also Tijs 1983, pp. 155, 158-61; Jeffrey M. Muller, “Rubens’ Collection in History,” in A House of Art: Rubens as Collector, exh. cat., Rubenshuis, Antwerp, 2004, p. 41, fig. 49, and p. 60, fig. 83. 34 F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700 (Amsterdam: Menno Hertzberger, 1949-), vol. 4, p. 213, nos. 129-148. See also Gabrielle Bleeke-Byrne, “The Education of the Painter in the Workshop,” in Children of Mercury, exh. cat., Bell Gallery, List Art Center, Brown University, Providence, 1984, pp. 28-39. 35 F. Mols, “Rubeniana,” II, 1 (Anecdotes, Lettres). Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Ms. 5726, fol. 10. 36 Joachim von Sandrart, Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675 [ed. A.R. Peltzer, Munich: G. Hirth’s Verlag, 1925] (Westmead: Gregg International Publishers, 1971), p. 157. 37 John Rupert Martin, The Ceiling Paintings for the Jesuit Church in Antwerp (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard 1) (London: Phaidon Press, 1968), pp. 213-14, Appendix I. 38 Peter C. Sutton, in The Age of Rubens, exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Toledo Museum of Art, 1993-94, p. 238, no. 10, with previous bibliography. 39 The copy begun by pupils after the Lion Hunt that Rubens painted for Maximilian of Bavaria and then retouched was priced the same – 600 florins – as Daniel in the Lions’ Den, supposedly “entirely by [Rubens’] hand.” Magurn 1971, p. 60. 40 Konrad Renger, Peter Paul Rubens. Altäre for Bayern, exh. cat., Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, 1990-91, pp. 46-55, pp. 90-91, doc. 12; Konrad Renger with Claudia Denk, Flämische Malerei des Barock (Munich and Cologne: Pinakotek-Dumont, 2002), pp. 305-09; Konrad Renger and Nina Schleif, Staatsgalerie Neuburg an der Donau: Flämische Barockmalerei (Munich: Pinakotek-Dumont, 2005), pp. 214-21. 41 Rooses and Ruelens 1887-1909, vol. 2, p. 227. Magurn 1971, p. 72. Jaffé 1989, no. 678. 42 Renger with Denk, 2002, p. 312. The price Rubens charged was the same as for the two Neuburg side altarpieces that were largely studio work. 43 See Micha Leeflang, “Workshop Practices in Early Sixteenth-Century Antwerp Studios,” Jaarboek of the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, 2006; and Natasja Peeters, “Marked for the Market? Continuity, Collaboration, and the Mechanics of Artistic Production of History Painting in the Francken Workshops in Counter-Reformation Antwerp,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 50 (1999): 59-79. For the value of collaborative efforts in Antwerp between 1550 and 1650, see also Elizabeth Honig, “The Beholder as a Work of Art: A Study in the Location of Value in SeventeenthCentury Painting,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 47 (1995): 252-97. 44 On the other hand, he apparently could be quite exasperating, so much so that one of his students, Lucas Vorsterman (1595-1675), who lived in Rubens’ house for three years working on the reproductive engravings, physically threatened the artist. See Julius S. Held, “Rubens and Vorsterman,” Art Quarterly 32 (1969): 111-29.
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45 Baron de Reiffenberg, “Nouvelles recherches sur Pierre-Paul Rubens contenant une vie inédite de ce grand peintre Philippe Rubens, son neveu,” Nouveaux Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres de Bruxelles 10 (1837): 4-13. English translation by L.R. Lind, “The Latin Life of Peter Paul Rubens by his Nephew Philip. A Translation,” Art Quarterly 9 (1946): 37-44. 46 Muller 1989, p. 145. 47 For a copy after Rubens’ certificate of 26 August 1628, written right before he left for Spain and witnessed by two other students of his, Justus van Egmont and Willem Panneels, see Cornelis de Bie, Het Gulden Cabinet van de edel vry Schilderconst (Lier, 1661) (Soest: Davaco, 1971), pp. 135-36; Rooses and Ruelens 1887-1909, vol. 4, p. 456. 48 Today in the Pinacoteca Civica. See Costanza Costanzi, in: Un capolavoro di Rubens. L’Adorazione dei pastori, exh. cat., Palazzo De Ferrari, Genoa, 2004, p. 40, repr. Del Monte later worked for Duke Wolfgang Wilhelm in Neuburg as an “engineer” and painter. Only a few of Del Monte’s paintings are known today. 49 Rooses and Ruelens 1887-1909, vol. 5, pp. 295-98; Rubens Cantoor 1993, pp. 47-52. See also Erik Duverger, “Some biographical details about Willem Panneels,” in Rubens Cantoor 1993, pp. 38-46. 50 See Jan Garff and Eva de la Puente Pedersen, Rubens Cantoor: The Drawings of Willem Panneels, 2 vols., exh. cat., Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, 1988, reviewed by Julius S. Held in Master Drawings 29 (1991): 416-35; and Rubens Cantoor 1993. 51 Garff and Pedersen 1988, no. 162, pl. 164. 52 “[D]it menneken hebbe ick oock gehaelt vant canteer [sic] ende is redelijck wel gecopieert” (I also fetched this little man from the cantoor and it is copied rather well). 53 See Muller 1982. 54 See Dorien Tamis, “‘In kompagnie geordonneert en geschildert.’ Een onderzoek naar de onstaansgeschiedenis van het ‘Aardse Paradijs’ van Peter Paul Rubens en Jan Brueghel d.O.,” Oud Holland 115 (2001-02): 111-30; Arianne Faber Kolb, Jan Brueghel the Elder. The Entry of the Animals into Noah’s Ark (Los Angeles: Getty Museum Studies on Art, 2005). 55 Logan with Plomp 2005, nos. 35, 37-39; Held 1986, nos. 54-55. 56 Paris, Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques, inv. no. 20.187. Held 1986, no. 28; Logan with Plomp 2005, no. 14. 57 Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst. Rubens Cantoor 1993, no. 1, 3 (G118). Garff and Pedersen 1988, no. 118, pl. 120. 58 A drawing in the Wellcome Institute, London, based on the Anatomical Studies in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Logan with Plomp 2005, no. 16), supports Huvenne’s idea. It is traced and served as the design for Pontius’ engraving. Pontius most likely made the copy after Rubens’ original in order not to damage it during transfer to the copper plate. 59 Jaap Bolten, Dutch and Flemish Drawings Books. Method and Practice 1600-1750 (Landau: Pfälzische Verlagsanstalt, 1985), pp. 102-07; Hans Dickel, Deutsche Zeichenbücher des Barock: Eine Studie zur Geschichte der Künstlerausbildung (Hildesheim / Zurich / New York: G. Olms, 1987), p. 71. 60 Haverkamp-Begemann 1972, pp. 105-13. 61 Jan Denucé, Bronnen voor de geschiedenis van de vlaamsche kunst, 2, De Konstkamers van Antwerpen in de 16e en 17e eeuwen. Inventarissen van Kunstverzamelingen (’s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1932), p. 70; Muller 1989, p. 145. 62 Renger 1990-91, pp. 62, 95-96, docs. 29-30. For the paintings, see David Freedberg, Rubens. The Life of Christ after the Passion (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard 7) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), no. 38 (formerly in the Church of the Discalced Carmelites, Brussels, now in Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels) and no. 41 (formerly in the Kapellekerk, Brussels, now in the Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf); Jaffé 1989, nos. 382, 523. 262 | in his milieu
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63 This must also have been the case for the Descent of the Holy Spirit, one of the altarpieces the duke had commissioned for his church in Neuburg in 1616 (Jaffé 1989, no. 537). In 1627, Rubens had the composition engraved by Paulus Pontius (the drawing is in the British Museum, London). The slight changes in the final altarpiece, now in the Staatsgalerie Schloss Neuburg, suggest that the engraving probably was based on the preliminary oil sketch still in the studio. See Renger 1990-91, p. 40. 64 Eveliina Juntunen has reported that Nils Büttner found documents showing that Rubens bought houses in his immediate neighborhood and allowed artists to live in them, at times rent free. See her review of the Braunschweig Rubens symposium in Kunstchronik 58 (2005): 334. 65 Montias 2001, p. 99.
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Abraham van Dijck (1635?-1680) a Dordrecht Painter in the Shadow of Rembrandt john loughman University College Dublin
Biographical Information Abraham van Dijck has long been an obscure figure in Rembrandt School studies. Until recently the sum of our information on Van Dijck’s life was the discovery of a document in 1906, which indicates that he was active in Amsterdam in the early 1660s; Abraham Bredius’ further identification of this artist with a man of the same name who was buried in the Westerkerk in 1672; and a few ambiguous details gleaned from Houbraken and old sale catalogues.1 Beginning in 1983, Werner Sumowski made the first comprehensive attempt to sketch out the perimeters of his oeuvre, a task marred by a dearth of signed and dated works.2 The impression that has emerged from Sumowski’s catalogue is of a painter who was highly eclectic and of decidedly mixed ability. Despite his obvious limitations and our lack of direct access to much of his work, which is in private hands, or was last seen at auction some decades ago, attempts have been made of late to attribute major works to Abraham van Dijck. Walter Liedtke has suggested that he may have painted the large sculptural Woman Cutting her Nails (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), for long accepted as a genuine work by Rembrandt before being reassigned to Nicolaes Maes, one of his most innovative pupils.3 Significant paintings formerly given to another of Rembrandt’s star apprentices, Willem Drost, including the monumental Manoah’s Sacrifice in Dresden, have been tentatively reattributed to Van Dijck by Jonathan Bikker.4 There has been considerable misunderstanding as to the identity of Abraham van Dijck. Eighteenth-century sale catalogues occasionally refer to him as the “Alkmaarder van Dyk,” or the “Hollandsche van Dyk,” undoubtedly to differentiate him from his Flemish namesake Anthony van Dyck.5 In a footnote to his published transcriptions of auction catalogues, Pieter Terwesten declared himself uncertain whether a painting of a drunken beggar given to the “Hollandsche van Dijck” in a 1768 Antwerp sale was in fact by “Philip
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van Dyk, or the so-called Van Dyk of Alkmaar, or of Dordt, or some other.”6 As well as Philip van Dyk (1680-1753), Abraham van Dijck has also been confused with another painter who worked in the first half of the eighteenth century, Abraham van der Eyk (1684-1726) of Leiden.7 The suggestion that there was an Alkmaar artist called Abraham van Dijck appears to have originated with Terwesten’s collaborator Gerard Hoet, who, in an earlier pamphlet, listed a history painter of that town with the same surname.8 There is no apparent trace of an Abraham van Dijck who was active as a painter in the Alkmaar archives.9 In his biographies of seventeenth-century Netherlandish artists, Arnold Houbraken briefly mentioned an Abraham van Dijck who painted “modern compositions” (moderne ordonantien) and spent most of his career in England.10 It has often been assumed that Houbraken must have confused this painter with the renowned Anthony van Dyck who spent most of the 1630s in London. However, this seems extremely unlikely as the biographer was very well acquainted with the latter’s artistic output, particularly his work in England that he had seen first-hand, and had written extensively about him in an earlier volume of his book.11 Houbraken’s other crucial yet fleeting reference to Abraham van Dijck is the artist’s connection with a disparate group of minor painters, most of whom, like Abraham Staphortius, Barent Bisbinck and Cornelis van Slingerland, had strong family ties with Dordrecht. Houbraken, himself a native of that city, was especially well informed and largely accurate when discussing his fellow Dordtenaars. Archival records for Dordrecht do indeed confirm the existence of an Abraham van Dijck who worked as an artist. In 1680, “Abram van Dijck bachelor painter” was buried in the Grote Kerk, Dordrecht.12 Prior to his death, he lived in the Steegoversloot “across from the gate of the Hof.” He was the son of the merchant Leendert van Dijck (1583-1674) and his wife, Hilleken Mattheus. Abraham van Dijck’s parentage is corroborated in the first instance by the last will and testament of a brother, Hugo van Dijck (1640-1716), who worked as a notary in Dordrecht between 1660 and 1710. This document, drawn up in 1704, mentions two portraits of the testator and his deceased first wife, which were painted respectively by his brother Abraham van Dijck and Nicolaes Maes.13 Hugo van Dijck had married Adriana van Ravesteijn (1640-1690) in 1660.14 Few male portraits are known by Abraham van Dijck, but one, signed and dated in the year of the marriage, may well be of his brother Hugo.15 Leendert van Dijck was a relatively well-to-do wine merchant. After his death, his estate, which included a house in the Kannecopers neighborhood and a garden outside the St. Joris Gate, was valued at close to 30,000 guilders.16 An inventory of Leendert van Dijck’s possessions was compiled in April 1678.17 His son Abraham was listed among the debtors of the estate. He had bor-
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rowed 100 guilders from his father, all but 15 of which were still outstanding. Among the furnishings described in the inventory were close to seventy paintings. Not surprisingly, Dordrecht painters were well represented. However, artists associated with The Hague such as Pieter Quast, Pieter Anthonisz. van Groenewegen, Catharina Knibbergen, and Joris van der Haagen also appear; this might indicate that Leendert had business dealings in The Hague, or spent a period of time there. Leendert van Dijck had commissioned a substantial number of family portraits from local artists, including his own by Paulus Lesire, pendants of him and his wife by Jacob van der Merck, and a group portrait of four of his children by Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp.18 Also mentioned is a representation of the prophet Elijah by Ferdinand Bol, whose work is extremely rare in Dordrecht inventories because he spent most of his career in Amsterdam.19 It is difficult to determine whether Abraham van Dijck had painted any of the listed works since many of them are unattributed. “One [painting] by/of Abraham van Dijck” hanging in the voorhuis is just as likely to have been a portrait of Abraham as a painting from his hand.20 Pictures of biblical characters like Josiah, the Prodigal Son, and Nicodemus are also found, but there are no accepted examples by Van Dijck. “A tronie of an old man” is, however, exactly the type of work associated with him.21 When he married in 1620, the artist’s father, Leendert van Dijck, was described as a native of Dordrecht and his bride as domiciled in Gorinchem, but a native of Schelluynen.22 The couple lived on the Steegoversloot and eleven children are recorded in the baptismal records between 1623 and 1646.23 Abraham’s name is absent from these records. However, in Leendert’s will of June 1670, Abraham is listed along with the four other unmarried children of the testator – Beatris (b. 1623), Jan (b. 1631), Sara (b. 1637), Helena (b. 1642) – and their two married siblings, Mattheus (b. 1629) and the previously mentioned Hugo.24 Jan and Abraham van Dijck were named as executors of their father’s estate and guardians of the minor heirs. Both also were bequeathed the clothes, linens, and woolens of their father and family armorials, as well as 2,500 guilders each. The only paintings itemized in the document were left to the three daughters: “the portrait of the testator made by Lesire as well as the portrait of his deceased wife with the three children on her lap, also some small paintings with which to decorate their home.”25 In May 1661, Abraham van Dijck, “artist aged around twenty-five years” appeared before an Amsterdam notary to give evidence.26 Van Dijck, who was described as a resident of that city, gave joint testimony with Hieronimus Moutet, a merchant two years his junior, about a seemingly innocuous incident that had occurred the previous month. There is some justification for identifying this Abraham van Dijck, who must have been born in 1635, or 1636, with the painter of the same name described in Dordrecht sources. Although the latter does not appear in the Dordrecht baptismal registers for
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these years, these archives are incomplete and no baptisms are listed for December 1635. Moreover, in documents concerning the estate of Leendert van Dijck, his surviving children are always listed according to their ages. Abraham van Dijck appears between his siblings Jan and Sara, born respectively in 1631 and 1637, which means that his birth must have taken place between these years. The duration of Van Dijck’s residence in Amsterdam is also unclear; a landscape drawing of the area near the Zaagmolenpoortje has been attributed to him and bears the date 2 October 1671.27 Bredius concluded that the artist had died in 1672 because an Abraham van Dijck was buried in the Westerkerk, Amsterdam, on 26 February 1672.28 However, the burial record only gives the address of this individual (the Elandstraat) and there is nothing to connect him with the man who testified in the city eleven years earlier. Also unwisely, given the ubiquity of the surname Van Dijck, Bredius speculated further that Abraham van Dijck may have been identical with an municipal official who had responsibility for trade with Stockholm and who was mentioned in notarial records in 1667. According to Bredius, this would have accounted for the scarcity of Van Dijck’s work.
Recreating the Artist’s Oeuvre Abraham van Dijck’s artistic training and subsequent development remain a matter of conjecture. His earliest dated painting, The Presentation in the Temple (Fig. 1), is from 1651. This work is rather awkward in its depiction of human anatomy and the spatial relationship between figures, weaknesses that are hardly surprising given that the artist was possibly only fifteen, or sixteen when it was painted. There are echoes of Rembrandt, particularly in the bejewelled stately high priest who reminds us of similar elaborately dressed figures in the Amsterdam master’s lost Circumcision painted for Prince Frederik Hendrik (now known only through a copy), and his etching of the same subject from 1630 (B.48). Had Van Dijck visited The Hague and seen the Passion series, or did he acquire his knowledge of Rembrandtesque exemplars by direct access to the Amsterdam painter before 1651? Older Dordrecht contemporaries like Benjamin Cuyp and Paulus Lesire appear to have absorbed elements from Rembrandt’s work in The Hague and through his prints without ever having studied with him.29 Alternatively, Abraham van Dijck may have been initially exposed to the compositional ideas and figural types of Rembrandt through interaction with one of his Dordrecht pupils. The most likely candidate is Samuel van Hoogstraten, who had returned from Amsterdam and tutelage with Rembrandt in 1647, or possibly the previous year. One of the few works by Van Hoogstraten datable to these years – The Incredulity of Thomas (1649; Mittelrheinische Landesmuseum, Mainz)30 – is exactly the type of multi-figured composition with dramatic responses, strong lighting
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Fig. 1. Abraham van Dijck, The Presentation in the Temple, 1651, oil on canvas. Sale, Sotheby’s, Amsterdam, 15 November 2005, lot 101.
effects, and warm russet coloring that may have served as a model for the younger artist. Drawings attributed to Van Hoogstraten and Maes of the Presentation in the Temple have a great deal in common with Van Dijck’s juvenile work and suggest that it may have been a subject that was jointly explored by all three.31 Michiel Roscam Abbing has plausibly suggested that Van Hoogstraten may have taken on his first apprentices in the period 1647-51, among them Nicolaes Maes and Jacobus Leveck.32 Maes and Leveck were both born in 1634 and, like Van Dijck, they came from the area around the Steegoversloot and Voorstraat. The two exact contemporaries later served as lieutenant and ensign of the militia company for this district of Dordrecht.33 There are also documented indicators of a close relationship between Nicolaes Maes and the Van Dijck family, who were neighbors on the Steegoversloot from at least 1656. As mentioned above, Maes painted a portrait of Hugo van Dijck’s first wife, perhaps as a pendant to a portrait of her husband executed by his older brother Abraham van Dijck. Maes also occasionally witnessed notarial documents
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for Hugo van Dijck.34 Some time before 1699, Hugo’s sister-in-law, Maria van Ravesteijn, sold a genre scene by Maes of a child in a cradle.35 Finally, in 1690, Nicolaes Maes, then largely resident in Amsterdam, sold a dwelling on the Steegoversloot next to his own house, to the three unmarried sisters of Abraham van Dijck: Beatris, Sara, and Helena.36 Because of their almost identical ages and backgrounds, and the way that their work evolved in tandem, it seems reasonable to propose that Van Dijck may have followed Maes and Leveck into Van Hoogstraten’s teaching workshop. With Van Hoogstraten’s (perhaps unexpected) departure from Dordrecht in May 1651 on a four-year trip which took him to Vienna, Rome, and Regensburg, the triumvirate would have been left without direction, although one, or both of the older two may have already departed for Amsterdam. It is perhaps no coincidence that Van Dijck would have dated a painting in this year at an unusually young age if he had been left without a master. The teenage Ferdinand Bol, who had probably been apprenticed to Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp before moving on to Rembrandt, had signed at least one painting in around 1635 without becoming a member of the Dordrecht guild of St. Luke.37 Subsequently, and again in imitation of Maes and Leveck, Abraham van Dijck may have decided to complete his artistic education in the “finishing school” of Rembrandt. Unlike his slightly older colleagues, there is no contemporary evidence for Van Dijck’s presence with Rembrandt. However, works such as Young Girl in Eastern Clothing, which must date to the mid-1650s, are very close to prototypes painted by Rembrandt.38 Bikker has also recently outlined the analogies that exist between the work of Van Dijck and Willem Drost, who trained in Rembrandt’s studio at the same time as Maes and Leveck and who may also have received preliminary instruction from Van Hoogstraten.39 Although we cannot be sure of Abraham van Dijck’s movements during the 1650s, he must have spent considerable time in Dordrecht. Proof for this supposition is offered by his paintings that reveal exceptional dependence on the work of Nicolaes Maes, who had returned to his native city by the end of 1653. A much more inventive artist, Maes’ scenes of quiet domesticity, painted between the mid- to late 1650s, attracted the attention of a raft of imitators in his native city, of whom Cornelis Bisschop was the most accomplished.40 However, it was Maes’ interest in picturesque old age that appealed most to Van Dijck. Maes’ initiated a vogue for single figure depictions of elderly men and women, some of whom are saying grace before meals, or praying, while others have fallen asleep while reading, or engaged in domestic chores.41 Van Dijck borrowed not only these themes, but also Maes’ pictorial vocabulary and rich coloring (Fig. 2).42 In portraiture also there are distinct parallels between the work of the precocious Maes and Van Dijck, as well as Jacobus Leveck. Van Dijck’s earliest dated portrait (Fig. 3) shows the
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Fig. 2. Abraham van Dijck, Sleeping Elderly Man, c. 1655-60, oil on canvas. Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum (on loan from The Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, Rijswijk/Amsterdam).
same stark frontality, clasped hand posture, strong lighting, and lively brushwork as in examples painted by his compatriots in 1655 and 1656.43 The small number of history paintings executed by Maes also influenced Van Dijck. The latter’s Adoration of the Shepherds is directly related to Maes’ 1658 representation of the same subject in the position of the kneeling shepherd seen from behind, the diagonally placed crook, and the boy carrying the lantern who is framed by the open doorway.44 While both paintings have their ultimate source in Rembrandt’s two versions of the Adoration from 1646, particularly the smaller painting in London, they also owe much to Van Hoogstraten’s interpretation of this subject painted in 1647.45
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Fig. 3. Abraham van Dijck, Portrait of a Woman Aged Fifty, 1655, oil on canvas. Milwaukee, Dr. Alfred Bader.
The ultimate source for many of Maes’ popular themes and motifs was the Leiden school of genre painting, and in particular the work of Gerard Dou, Isaack Koedyck, and Quirijn van Brekelenkam.46 It may also have been because of Maes’ influence that Van Dijck decided to engage directly with the work of some of these Leiden painters in the second half of the 1650s. Three dated works from 1657 and 1659 show Van Dijck largely circumventing his Dordrecht contemporary and working in a manner closer to his Leiden sources.47 Perhaps he may have returned to Amsterdam during these years and come into contact with Gabriel Metsu, resident in the city from around 1655, who was beginning to explore his Leiden roots through the depiction of genre subjects after devoting himself to history painting at the outset of
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his career.48 Van Dijck’s Herring Seller from 1659 has close analogies with Metsu’s representation of the same subject (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), painted at about the same time, in terms of composition, the interaction between a hunched elderly woman and a youthful counterpart, and the broad painterly facture.49 A second painting signed by Abraham van Dijck in 1659, which shares similar dimensions and provenance with the Herring Seller, is more oriented toward the style and figural types of Van Brekelenkam.50 The latter’s depictions of praying women and families, painted during the mid-1650s, with their Spartan interiors and sense of pious devotion, are the starting point for Van Dijck’s Prayer before Meal.51 Sumowski has also attributed two representations of another Leiden pictorial type, the praying, or meditating hermit, to Abraham van Dijck.52 It is difficult to establish a chronology for Abraham van Dijck’s work in the years after 1660. Only three dated works are known from this decade and none subsequent to 1667.53 Sumowski catalogued fifty-five works as having been painted by Abraham van Dijck, and the overwhelming majority he concluded were datable to the brief interlude 1655-60. His last dated work from 1667 is on an ambitious scale and represents a market scene.54 Maes, Metsu, and Hendrick Sorgh had painted such subjects before, but Van Dijck departs from their example in giving greater prominence to the fruit and vegetables in the foreground, making the figures more monumental, and cropping the figure of the little boy in the lower right-hand corner, a device used by him throughout his career. The only real precedent for this type of composition was the market and kitchen scenes of Aertsen and Beuckelaar, a sub-genre that was revived in Holland in the first quarter of the seventeenth century by painters such as Floris van Schooten and Pieter van Rijck. Van Dijck’s concentration on the still-life elements underlines his potential as a specialist in this area. Only one “pure” still life by Van Dijck is known that recently came to light (Fig. 4). Depicting the equipment and spoils of the hunt, it is strongly reminiscent of Ferdinand Bol’s single venture into still-life painting.55 Perhaps from the same period are two genre paintings of finely dressed men and women playing cards in well-appointed interiors, probably the type of “modern composition” that Houbraken remarked upon.56 The inspiration for such works appears to reside not in the work of Van Brekelenkam as Sumowski suggested, but in the high-life genre scenes of Gerbrandt van den Eeckhout and Jacob van Loo.57 We can only speculate on Van Dijck’s later work. There is a small group of paintings signed by the artist, or attributed to him by Sumowski, which share characteristics in common and may date from the 1670s.58 The figures in these works have long attenuated bodies and limbs, small puppet-like heads, and detached expressions, and there is a new emphasis on the sheen of fabrics. These works also display an apparent deterioration in Van Dijck’s artis-
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Fig. 4. Abraham van Dijck, Hunting Still Life with a Hanging Bittern, c. 1660-65, oil on canvas. Great Britain, Private Collection. Photography courtesy of Rafael Valls Ltd.
tic skills. No corroboration exists for Houbraken’s contention that Van Dijck spent a large portion of his career in England. The almost complete absence of his name from seventeenth-century Dordrecht inventories, however, would suggest either a prolonged exile, or a lack of productivity. If Van Dijck did venture across the North Sea, he likely made the trip in the period shortly after 1660, when the Restoration of Charles II led to increased opportunities for patronage. Samuel van Hoogstraten, who lived in London between 1662 and 1667, was among the influx of Dutch painters. The only clue to an English sojourn is offered by a painting in Leendert van Dijck’s inventory described as “portrait by/of Pieter Lelij.”59 Could this have been a portrait painted by the fashionable London portraitist of Dutch origin, Peter Lely, or perhaps an image of him painted by Abraham van Dijck? Lely, who had trained with Frans Pieter de Grebber in Haarlem, maintained strong links with his homeland. He was in Amsterdam in 1656, perhaps in connection with the expected sale of art works from Rembrandt’s bankruptcy proceedings, and he had a business relationship with the Uylenburgh art-dealing enterprise; Gerrit
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Uylenburgh possibly worked in his studio in 1677-79.60 Abraham van Dijck too may have been among the numerous assistants and specialists who aided Lely in the production of countless portraits and copies. The purpose of this essay has been to shed some light on the activities of Abraham van Dijck and to outline his development. His artistic origins clearly lie in Dordrecht and a circle of artists surrounding Van Hoogstraten and Maes. There is still much in his career that is shrouded in mystery. Until more of his signed work comes to light, it will be difficult to decide the limits of his abilities as an artist.
1
Abraham Bredius and Frederick Schmidt-Degener, Die Grossherzogliche Gemäldegalerie im Augusteum zu Oldenburg (Oldenburg: Oncken, 1906), p. 19. 2 Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, 6 vols. (Landau/Pfalz: Edition PVA, 1983-94), vol. 1, pp. 666-74; vol. 5, pp. 3091-93, 3177-87; vol. 6, pp. 3705, 3849-55. In total, Sumowski catalogued 55 works as by Van Dijck, including 10 signed works and 8 signed and dated paintings. 3 Walter Liedtke in Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Aspects of Connoisseurship, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1995, vol. 2, pp. 124-28, no. 36. 4 Jonathan Bikker, “Willem Drost (1633-1658). A Rembrandt Pupil in Amsterdam, Rome, and Venice,” Ph.D. diss., Universiteit Utrecht, 2001, pp. 42-43, nos. R1, R7, R8, R13, R16, R24. This essay was written before the revision and publication of Bikker’s dissertation by Yale University Press. 5 Gerard Hoet, Catalogus of naamlyst van schilderyen (The Hague, 1752) (Soest: Davaco, 1976), vol. 2, p. 88; Pieter Terwesten, Catalogus of naamlyst van schilderyen, met dezelver prysen zedert den 22. Augusti 1752 tot den 21. November 1768 (The Hague, 1770) (Soest: Davaco, 1976), vol. 3, p. 658. 6 Terwesten 1976, vol. 3, p. 658. 7 Alfred von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon (Vienna and Leipzig: Halm und Goldmann, 1906), vol. 1, pp. 447-48; vol. 3, p. 79. 8 Gerard Hoet, Aanmerkingen op het eerste en tweede deel des nieuwen schouburgs der Nederlantsche kunstschilders en schilderessen (The Hague, 1753), p. 263. 9 Harry de Raad of the Regionaal Archief Alkmaar kindly made a search of the Alkmaar genealogical sources and the indexes to the notarial records. The archivist C.W. Bruinvis did list Abraham van Dijck among Alkmaar painters in his Levensschetsen van en mededelingen over beeldende kunstenaars te Alkmaar (Alkmaar: Nederkoorn, 1905). However, Bruinvis does not include any archival references for Van Dijck, as was his practice with other local painters, and this strongly indicates he was following an established tradition in associating the artist with Alkmaar. Paul Huys Janssen in The Hoogsteder Exhibition of Rembrandt’s Academy, exh. cat., Hoogsteder & Hoogsteder, The Hague, 1992, p. 117, intimated that there was documentary evidence for Abraham van Dijck’s presence in Alkmaar “likely in around 1659,” without citing his source. 10 Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 2nd ed. (The Hague, 1753) (Amsterdam, 1976), vol. 2, p. 345. 11 Houbraken 1976, vol. 1, pp. 179-88. 12 SAD (Stadsarchief Dordrecht), Dodenregister Grote Kerk, DTB 41 and 42, 27 August 1680. See John Loughman in De Zichtbaere Werelt: Schilderkunst uit de Gouden Eeuw in
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Hollands oudste stad, exh. cat., Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht, 1992, p. 226, n. 3. 13 SAD, not. C. van Aansurgh, 19 August 1704, NA 708, fol. 336v. See Loughman 1992, p. 226, n. 3. 14 SAD, Huwelijksregister Augustijnenkerk, DTB 21, 12 September 1660. 15 Sale, Lempertz, Cologne, 15 May, 1956, no. 21. This portrait, which is signed “A.v.Dijck 1660,” was not included by Sumowski. 16 SAD, not. A. van Neten, NA 165, fol. 188, 20 November 1678. Given Leendert van Dijck’s profession, it is interesting that a picture depicting wine-tasting in a cellar was attributed to “De Alkmaarsche van Dijck” in an Amsterdam sale of 1813. This work has been identified with a painting now in the possession of the Instituut Collectie Nederland, which has been variously attributed to Jacob van Loo, Abraham van Calraet, and others. See Old Master Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst/Netherlands Office for Fine Arts (Zwolle: Waanders, 1992), p. 180, no. 1516. There are stylistic affinities between this painting and a mid-seventeenth-century copper shop sign of a wine merchant, now in the Simon van Gijn Museum, Dordrecht. See Aelbert Cuyp en zijn faimilie: Schilders te Dordrecht, exh. cat., Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht, 1978, pp. 60-61, no. 16. 17 SAD, not. A. van Neten, NA 165, fols. 169-82v., 14 April 1678. 18 The only surviving group portrait of children by Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp that fits the inventory description of “een van [de] vier kinderen door Cuijp” is dated 1645 and is now in a private collection. See Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp 1594-1652, exh. cat., Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht, 2002, no. 30. 19 “De propheet Elias door Ferdinandus Bol.” The only work given to Bol that corresponds to this description is the Elijah and the Angel (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no. A1937), but Blankert regarded this as a doubtful attribution. See Albert Blankert, Ferdinand Bol 1616-1680: Rembrandt’s Pupil (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1982), p. 159, no. D3. 20 “Een van Abraham van Dijck,” which follows “Een conterfeytsel van Jan van Dijck.” “Noch een conterfeytsel van Abraham van Dijck” in the beste kamer was also probably a portrait of the artist. 21 “Een out mans tronij.” 22 SAD, Huwelijksregister Augustijnenkerk, DTB 18, 9 August 1620. 23 SAD, Groot Doopregister, DTB 4 and 5: Beatris (1 September 1623); Adriaen (1 December 1624); no name recorded (1 February 1627); Mattheus (1 March 1629); Joannes (1 June 1631); Cornelis (1 August 1633); Sara (3 May 1637); Hugo (1 June 1640); Helena (1 January 1642); Jacobus (27 March 1644); and Jacobus (27 June 1646). Neither Abraham nor another brother Pieter, who died before 1670, are listed in these records. 24 SAD, not. A. van Neten, NA 151, fols. 91-93, 13 June 1670. 25 “...alnoch het conterfeytsel van hem testatice gemaeckt door Lesire, als mede het conterfeytsel van zijn za. huysvr. met de drije kinderen op haar schoot, oock eenige cleijn schilderijken daer toe om haer wooninge te vercieren” (SAD, not. A. van Neten, NA 151, fol. 92, 13 June 1670). 26 Bredius and Schmidt-Degener 1906, p. 19; GAA (Gemeentearchief Amsterdam), not. P. Padthuijzen, NA 2890B, p. 851, 19 May 1661. On 10 April 1661, Abraham van Dijck and Hieronimus Moutet, two years his junior, had dined with Judith van Axel in the home of her uncle and guardian Anthonij Bertelsz. Later a visit was arranged to the house of Van Axel’s mother on the Singel. The party included the host’s sisters and brothers-in-law, Pieter Emaus and Jacobus Elsevier. Upon arrival at their destination, however, a serving girl refused to admit them, claiming she was acting on her mistress’ orders. 27 Peter Schatborn, “Tekeningen van Rembrandts leerlingen,” Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 33, no. 2 (1985): 93-109. 28 GAA, Burial register of the Westerkerk, DTB 1102, p. 1, 26 February 1672.
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29 See Alan Chong and Marjorie E. Wieseman, “De figuurschilderkunst in Dordrecht,” in Dordrecht 1992, pp. 18-22. 30 Sumowski 1983-94, vol. 2, no. 824. 31 A drawing of the Presentation in the Temple, which Sumowski attributed to Van Dijck on the basis of its affinity with Figure 1, has also been given to Van Hoogstraten. See Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School (New York: Abaris, 1980), vol. 3, no. 575. A series of sketches by Maes of this subject are also extremely close to Van Dijck’s conception, particularly Sumowski, no. 1849. See William W. Robinson, “Nicolaes Maes as a Draughtsman,” Master Drawings 27 (1989): 156-59. 32 Michael Roscam Abbing, De schilder & schrijver Samuel van Hoogstraten, 1627-1678: Eigentijdse bronnen & oeuvre van gesigneerde schilderijen (Leiden: Primavera Pers, 1993), p. 41. Houbraken’s contention that Maes had received drawing instruction from a “general master” in Dordrecht before departing for Amsterdam and Rembrandt seems to run counter to Roscam Abbing’s argument. See Houbraken 1976, vol. 2, p. 215. 33 Abraham Bredius, “Bijdragen tot een biografie van Nicolaes Maes,” Oud Holland 41 (1923): 210-11. 34 Bredius 1923, pp. 210. 35 Bredius 1923, pp. 214. 36 SAD, not. J. van Dijck, NA 518, 9 April 1692. See Bredius 1923, pp. 213. 37 Blankert 1982, p. 16, no. 35. 38 Sale, Christie’s, New York, 27 January 2000, lot 55. This work has much in common with Rembrandt’s Saskia with a Flower (1641; Gemäldegalerie, Dresden). 39 Bikker 2001, pp. 42-43. 40 For a survey of Maes’ pupils and followers in Dordrecht, see Sumowski 1983-94, vol. 3, pp. 1960-62; and León Krempel, Studien zu den datierten Gemälden des Nicolaes Maes, 1634-1693 (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2000), pp. 39-40. 41 See, for example, Sumowski 1983-94, vol. 3, nos. 1338, 1358, 1366, 1367, 1368, 1369. 42 Among Van Dijck’s most Maes-inspired works are Sumowski 1983-94, vol. 1, nos. 370, 371, 372, 375, 376, 377, 378, 388; vol. 5, nos. 2047, 2050, 2051; vol. 6, nos. 2262, 2264. 43 See Sumowski 1983-94, vol. 3, no. 1389 (Maes) and no. 1165 (Leveck). Hofstede de Groot had difficulty in determining whether the latter portrait had been painted by Leveck’s, or Van Dijck (Hofstede de Groot fiches, RKD). 44 See Sumowski 1983-94, vol. 1, no. 360 (Van Dijck), and vol. 3, no. 1318 (Maes). 45 On Maes’ Adoration and its relationship to Van Hoogstraten’s earlier painting of the same subject, see William W. Robinson, “The Early Works of Nicolaes Maes, 1653 to 1661,” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1996, pp. 159-62. 46 Robinson 1996, pp. 169-88. 47 Sumowski 1983-94, vol. 1, nos. 383, 386, and vol. 5, no. 2053. 48 For a new appraisal of Metsu’s early career, see Adriaan Waiboer, “The Early Years of Gabriel Metsu,” Burlington Magazine 147 (2005): 80-90. 49 For Metsu’s painting, see Franklin W. Robinson, Gabriel Metsu, 1629-1667. A Study of His Place in Dutch Genre Painting of the Golden Age (New York: Abner Schram, 1974), p. 152, fig. 87. 50 Sumowski 1983-94, vol. 5, no. 2053. Sumowski only illustrated F.G. Fiesinger’s reproductive engraving. 51 See in particular Angelika Lasius, Quiringh van Brekelenkam (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1992), nos. 111, 116. 52 Sumowski 1983-94, vol. 1, nos. 379, 380. A depiction of a “hermit in a grotto, reading,” signed by Abraham van Dijck, was sold at an auction in The Hague on 10 June 1807, lot 90. 53 Sumowski 1983-94, vol. 1, no. 377, and vol. 5, no. 2055, as well as the portrait mentioned in note 15 above. abraham van dijck, a dordrecht painter in the shadow of rembrandt | 277
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Sumowski 1983-94, vol. 5, no. 2055. Sumowski 1983-94, vol. 1, no. 186. Sumowski 1983-94, vol. 5, no. 2054, and vol. 6, no. 2266. For a recent discussion of the genre production of Van Loo and Van den Eeckhout, see Wayne Franits, Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 175-80. 58 Sumowski 1983-94, vol. 1, nos. 366, 385, and vol. 6, no. 2265. 59 “Een conterfeytsel van Pieter Lelij” (SAD, not. A. van Neten, NA 165, fol. 175, 14 April 1678). 60 Jaap van der Veen, “Hendrick en Gerrit Uylenburgh, oud en nieuw,” Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis no. 1-2 (2001): 51-52.
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Joachim/Peter Wtewael, Father/Son, Master/Pupil anne w. lowenthal New York
“Who did it?” is the simplest of attribution questions, but investigating the landscape of authorship can take the art detective on a circuitous path, full of detours, cul-de-sacs, and potholes. Eventually, though, that path leads not only to an answer to the basic question but can also open up onto an expansive vista with larger ramifications. Such was my experience as I studied a painting that emerged at a Stockholm auction in 2003, a Denial of St. Peter attributed to Gerrit van Honthorst (Fig. 1), a picture now on the London art market.1 It bears no inscription. The attribution to “Gerardo della Notte” was understandable, given the emphatic chiaroscuro of a kind that generated his sobriquet. Indeed, Hon-
Fig. 1. Joachim Wtewael, The Denial of St. Peter, oil on canvas. London, Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox.
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Fig. 2. Peter Wtewael, A Flute Player, 1623, oil on panel. New York, Bob P. Haboldt and Co.
thorst did depict the Denial of St. Peter as a nocturne, with light provided by a single candle, in a painting in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.2 But some features in the painting at auction brought to mind not Honthorst, but other Utrecht artists, Joachim Wtewael and his son Peter. The naturalism associated with Honthorst is indeed present, not only in the convincing light effects, but also in the psychological truth of expression and gesture. Both Wtewaels painted nocturnes, including Joachim’s Annunciation to the Shepherds (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) and Peter’s Last Supper (Universitetets Konstmuseum, Uppsala), which are signed.3 Such naturalism coexists, however, with idiosyncratic manipulations we associate with a mannerist sensibility, for which Joachim is well known and which Peter shared. The figures seem tensely animated in poses designed for pictorial effect. Visual rhymes abound, as in the mirrored hands and feet of St. Peter and the soldier opposite him. The toothy smiles are characteristic signs of Peter Wtewael’s jovial personality, expressed in such works as a Flute Player (Fig. 2) and a Caritas (location unknown).4 The subject, too, is familiar from Peter’s Denial of St. Peter in the Cleveland Muse-
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Fig. 3. Peter Wtewael, The Denial of St. Peter, oil on panel. Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art.
um of Art (Fig. 3), which bears an indistinct signature.5 Yet the compositional rhythms, as in the intricately unified group at the right, the refinement and intensity of the handling (Fig. 4), and the expressive force of the newly discovered image spoke for Joachim rather than Peter.
Fig. 4. Detail of Fig. 1.
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Thus an attribution to one of the Wtewaels seemed justified, but which one? The painting was a puzzling amalgam of their styles. Was it a collaboration? Was it a work by Peter in which he responded to his father’s influence with exceptional skill? Or was it by Joachim, working in an atypical style that appeared to be more like Peter’s than his own? This last possibility has proven to be persuasive, for reasons I shall discuss here. Only when the London Denial of St. Peter could be studied side by side with Peter’s Cleveland painting of the same subject did the relationship between the two works – and the authorship of the newly discovered painting – become clear.6 The Cleveland and London pictures are compositionally similar, but the London example shows the figures full-length and the Cleveland painting knee-length. The latter may have been cut, but kneelength compositions were a popular Caravaggesque convention, so the format is plausibly original.7 Dominating the central axis of both pictures is the figure of a soldier, which forms a repoussoir seen from the back, silhouetted against a fire. Its flames cast a glow over the surrounding crowd—in each case eight men and one woman – illuminating faces and hands, which are held with fingers spread to catch the light, warming by the fire, or conveying the drama of accusation and denial. The same costumer seems to have worked for both sets of actors, providing hats with wide brims, turbans, and helmets adorned with feathers, and archaic breeches and jerkins with slit sleeves. In color, the two pictures share orange-red, deep blue-green, and gold, together with subtle mauves, light blues, olive greens, pinks, and lavenders. Both paintings faithfully depict the climax of a familiar episode from Christ’s passion, St. Peter’s triple denial of Christ, which is related by all four Evangelists.8 Luke’s version can set the scene for us: And when they had kindled a fire in the midst of the hall, and were set down together, Peter sat down among them. But a certain maid beheld him as he sat by the fire and earnestly looked upon him, and said, This man was also with him. And he denied him, saying, Woman, I know him not. And after a little while another saw him, and said, Thou art also of them. And Peter said, Man, I am not. And about the space of one hour after another confidently affirmed, saying, Of a truth this fellow also was with him: for he is a Galilean. And Peter said, Man, I know not what thou sayest. And immediately, while he yet spake, the co*ck crew. And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, Before the co*ck crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And Peter went out, and wept bitterly. In addition to the stylistic congruencies described above, the two images are
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congruent in their approach to the narrative. Each depicts the same moment, with a young woman leaning over St. Peter and pointing to him as if to say “This man was also with him,” as the surrounding men urge her on. Denying the accusation, St. Peter raises his hands defensively. His troubled expression contrasts with the amusem*nt of the hostile crowd, adumbrating his remorse. So much for the similarities. Among the physical differences is the fact that the Cleveland Denial is painted on panel, whereas the support for the London picture is finely woven canvas. Both are in good condition, although, as noted above, the Cleveland panel may have been cut. The London painting was relined, perhaps some fifty years ago, and at that time a strip of canvas about ten centimeters wide was added to the upper edge, running the entire width of the picture. That strip has been removed. In its present state, the London painting is somewhat larger, 21 by 26 inches, as compared with the Cleveland painting’s 11 by 18 inches.9 A close look at the handling of paint, under magnification, reveals even more significant contrasts between the two pictures. In the Cleveland painting, forms like hands are constructed with a build-up of relatively few strokes in different tones. Peter sometimes used impasto, as in the maidservant’s white apron and fichu, and sometimes worked more thinly and broadly, as in the slashed tunic of the soldier who kneels before her, but the handling is fairly broad and uncomplicated throughout. In the London picture, however, the paint surface is more varied, and the touch is exceptionally refined yet vibrant (Fig. 4). In hands, the illusion is realized with a multitude of tones and strokes, with less dependence on black than in the Cleveland painting. Looking once again at the maidservant’s garments, we find in her bodice and fichu a lively, richly worked area, full of fluid folds and complex details, side by side with more subtly worked, smoother passages. The London picture’s surface is enlivened throughout, reflecting the artist’s absorption in every detail. All of these characteristics are typical of Joachim Wtewael’s sensibility and technique. Even to the naked eye, the backs of the standing soldiers exemplify contrasting conceptions of form and surface. In the Cleveland painting, the anatomy is generalized, with broad, dark strokes indicating the spine and muscles. The soldier’s back in the London picture is no more anatomically accurate, but it is more elaborately defined, with a sinuous shadow indicating the spine, flanked by smooth areas at the waist and plausible, if inaccurate, musculature above. The bows that bedeck the tunics give telling evidence of two different approaches, with those in the Cleveland picture hard to discern among the surrounding muted, dark tones and those in the London painting a brilliant red that calls attention to the soldier’s conspicuous buttocks. The best evidence for seeing two distinctive hands at work in the Cleve-
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land and London Denials lies in the paint surfaces.10 Peter Wtewael’s hearty sensibility is evident in the broader handling in the signed Cleveland picture and in the relatively simple, uninflected realization of forms. Joachim’s authorship of the London picture is evident in the refined, complex technique as well as in the pervasive elaboration of pictorial elements. He varied and exaggerated the soldier’s contrapposto pose, showing the body twisting and balanced on one foot, captivating us with the figure’s sinuous contour and his muscular build. Subtle light plays over his profiled face, the studded brim and red feather of his helmet, the edges of his arms, and the little red bows and bands of his tunic and breeches. He holds an unlit lantern through which firelight shines, revealing the complicated three-dimensional form. Joachim created a witty play between surface and depth by juxtaposing forms – the dog’s nose “touching” a gauntlet, the ball feet of the lantern seeming to rest on a log. Everywhere, bright feathers, the glint of hilts, brims, buttons, and the luminous edges of clothing enliven the darkness. The quirky eroticism, in the suggestive thrust of the soldier’s pose and the peek-a-boo glimpse of the dog’s arousal, also bespeaks the hand of Joachim, not Peter. The two depictions of the Denial of St. Peter, one by Peter Wtewael and the other by his father, Joachim, resemble each other closely in composition and narrative, yet one is not a copy of the other. Rather, these similarities in combination with the differences I’ve noted suggest a different kind of dialogue between two artists. The fact that Joachim was Peter’s only known teacher is a clue to understanding the nature of the dialogue. In such a relationship, the teacher’s work usually precedes the student’s and serves as a model to be imitated. In many of Peter’s paintings it is indeed possible to identify sources of inspiration in Joachim’s works. For example, as late as 1628, he would turn to his father’s earlier paintings for the poses of the children in the previously mentioned signed and dated Caritas. It is possible that Joachim’s Denial of St. Peter preceded that of his son, with Joachim employing his customarily brilliant technique and formal wit but experimenting with a cast of characters more manifestly genial than usual. In this scenario, Peter seized upon these genial characterizations, together with other elements of his father’s style, and made them his own for years to come. Joachim, on the other hand, abandoned the experiment and went on to explore other manners. That a single image could have had such a potent effect on Peter’s development would not be surprising. It is not unusual for a student to take from the master what he can absorb at the time and use it as the basis of a lifelong career, a phenomenon perhaps best illustrated in the careers of many of Rembrandt’s students. Nor is it surprising that the London painting has a unique inflection among Joachim’s known works, for he was a chameleon, endlessly inventive, restless in his experimentation with pictorial vocabularies. In this respect he was an ideal exponent of self-conscious mannerist play with style. 284 | in his milieu
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One argument against this analysis of the chronological sequence, positing Joachim’s Denial of St. Peter as the direct inspiration for Peter’s, is that smiling faces do not appear in the Cleveland painting, rather, the facial expressions are subdued, with the maidservant’s being the most animated. Thus we must posit a situation in which Peter adopted some features of Joachim’s Denial of St. Peter for his own, but only later, in other works, imitated the facial expressions in his father’s conception, certainly by 1623, the date of the jolly Flute Player (Fig. 2), signed and dated in that year.11 Alternatively, Peter’s Cleveland Denial of St. Peter was painted first, and Joachim followed with a variant in Peter’s established style, as if to demonstrate to his son the unrealized potential of the conception. In this scenario, Joachim took the lantern that Peter had relegated to the periphery at the right and transformed it into a compelling central motif. He endowed the standing soldier with energetic contrapposto and complicated the play of chiaroscuro, emphasizing darkness out of which subtly lit faces and hat brims emerge. A rhythmic pattern of hands and feet unifies the composition. He intensified the contrast between the maidservant’s lighthearted accusation and St. Peter’s devastation. He almost caricatured the smiles that his son so often favored, as if to address this lesson specifically to him. This scenario assumes a date after this type of expression had been established in Peter’s works by such types as the smiling Flute Player, of 1623. It would account for several key motifs in Joachim’s Denial of St. Peter that appear to vary and enhance their equivalents in that of Peter, supporting the argument that Joachim’s London painting was a teaching piece, a demonstration of the master’s skill for the benefit of his pupil. Finally, we have arrived at an outlook that yields insight not only into the limited question of authorship but also into the relationship of two artists as expressed in these paintings. The detective work of attribution has cast a spotlight on Joachim Wtewael’s inventiveness and revealed how he functioned as his son’s mentor, at the same time offering a context for the genesis of important features of Peter’s style. Thus the exploration of the relationship between the Cleveland and London depictions of the Denial of St. Peter not only provides clues toward an attribution, it is also an exercise in analyzing the complex and often mysterious development of stylistic choices. Joachim and Peter Wtewael, bound together as father and son, master and pupil, provide an ideal case study. Author’s Note: This essay is in fond memory of Michael Montias, a fellow aficionado of Northern mannerism and of art markets.
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Stockholm, Bukowski Auktioner AB, 26-28 May 2003, lot 386. Oil on canvas; 53.5 x 68 cm. Now with Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, London. On the back of the stretcher, one can make out an old Christie’s inventory number, which is in the process of being identified. There is also a manuscript note: “This Picture Peter renouncing Christ I give to Lady Mallet (?) ...Mallet.” 2 Joaneath A. Spicer with Lynn Federle Orr, Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht during the Golden Age, exh. cat., The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, and San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1997-98, pp. 164-67, no. 12, color repr., and cover, detail in color. 3 Anne W. Lowenthal, Joachim Wtewael and Dutch Mannerism (Doornspijk: Davaco Publishers, 1986), pp. 86-87, no. A-9, pl. 11; and p. 181, no. D-20, pls. 181-182 and color plate XXVIII. 4 For the Flute Player (oil on panel; 56.8 x 36.2 cm), see Spicer 1997-98, pp. 322-23, fig. 3.The Caritas was sold at Sotheby’s, New York, 11 January 1990, lot 34. Signed and dated upper right, P wtewael / fe 1628. Panel; 82.5 x 61.5 cm. 5 Oil on panel; 28 x 45.7 cm. Signed at upper right: Pet[…] / W[…]. See Spicer 199798, pp. 167-70, no. 13, color repr.; entry by Anne W. Lowenthal. 6 Thanks to Mary Suzor, Chief Registrar, and Marcia C. Steele, Conservator of Paintings, at the Cleveland Museum of Art for generous help in making that comparison possible in July 2005. 7 The bottom edge of the panel is covered with a strip of wood, so any evidence of cutting could not be seen. 8 Matthew 26: 58, 69-75; Mark 14: 54, 66-72; Luke 22: 55-62; and John 18: 25-27. 9 The London Denial of St. Peter may be identical with a painting sold at auction in 1765, as The Temptation of Peter: “No. 21. De Verloochening van Petrus, door Joachim Uittewaal, hoog 18, breet 26 duimen.” Sold to Izaak Willer (for Fouquet?) for fl. 16. Auction, 1 June 1765, Leiden. See Lowenthal 1986, p. 207. Computing the duim at 2.5 cm, those measurements are fairly close to those of the London picture. 10 Marcia C. Steele, Conservator of Paintings, and Dean Yoder, a private conservator, with whom I studied the two paintings side by side, arrived independently at the conclusion that each was by a different hand. 11 See Spicer 1997-98, nos. 62-63, pp. 322-23, for a comparison of Peter’s Flute Player with Joachim’s pendant roundels of a Shepherdess and a Shepherd (Cambridge, MA, Fogg Art Museum), which illustrate Joachim’s typically more subdued and subtle expressions of delight and pleasure.
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At Home with the Ten Commandments: Domestic Text Paintings in SeventeenthCentury Amsterdam mia m. mochizuki Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley
In Jan Steen’s The Prayer before the Meal (c. 1663-65, Duke of Rutland, Belvoir Castle, Grantham), a modest scrap of parchment painted with text and hanging from a nail appears at the upper right of the painting above the hearth (Fig. 1). We could not be faulted for overlooking it, because the main scene of an average family about to settle down to grace first draws our attention and sympathy. But what is this unusual note tacked on high? It consists of a text painted on a rectangle of parchment, approximately eleven inches high and nine inches wide, stretched between two rollers. Steen took great care to make the writing legible, and it translates as: “My Lord desires to give neither overflowing riches nor great poverty on this earth.”1 Based on Proverbs 30:8 and known as Solomon’s Prayer, the words provide a reminder of the virtue of moderation in daily life. As if to claim that he took the words to heart, Steen even signed his name directly beneath it. The Prayer before the Meal raises the question of the meaning and function of such text paintings in the life of prosperous burgher families. In discussing Steen’s narrative devices, Lyckle de Vries stated that painted texts are known to have hung in homes, but he did not expand on the subject.2 Moreover, text paintings are rarely included in studies of domestic decoration; even examinations of the role of the Bible in the home omit them.3 This lack of interest in the genre could stem from poor preservation if the texts were only written on such fragile supports as paper, or parchment, as in the Steen painting, but we know these texts were frequently painted on panels that do survive. Alternatively, the texts may have fallen victim to the sophisticated analyses of interiors that show how often we are duped by the naturalism of a scene into believing the stuff of burgher fantasies.4 But even allowing for a justifiable caution of middle-class mirages, most likely the lack of interest in text paintings has its roots in their singular absence of visual charm. With their simple, even badgering script, perhaps we unconsciously
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Fig. 1. Jan Steen, The Prayer before the Meal, ca.1663-65, oil on canvas. Grantham, Belvoir Castle, The Duke of Rutland. Reproduced by kind permission of His Grace the Duke of Rutland.
sense the wagging finger reaching out to hector us over the years and instinctively turn a blind eye. This is our own loss, because much ink has been spilled over the iconography of domestic morality during this period, whether concealed, as in the “disguised symbolism” of still-life painting, or overt, as in the scenes of families saying grace.5 Even decorative art such as mirrors and bird cages have been examined, but, to my knowledge, very little has been written on the moralizing calligraphy of domestic text paintings. To thoroughly research this subject would require delving into archives for a broad range of documents, and in the case of extant examples, checking their transcriptions. But a preliminary survey can be made using the Montias Database in the Frick Art Reference Library in New York, whose design and evolution Louisa Wood Ruby has described elsewhere in this volume.6 For my purpose, the inventories and auction catalogues provide ample archival evidence that text paintings were not only created for the decoration of Dutch Reformed Church interiors, but also appeared in many seventeenth-century Dutch homes. In fact, the Database offers a significant amount of precise information concerning the genre: the terminology applied to such works; the materials from which they were made; their shapes and colors; the texts most often used; their degree of popularity over time; the range of prices at which they were valued; their appeal to various socio-economic and religious groups;
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and where they were displayed within the home. At the time I consulted the Montias Database, in February 2004, it contained about 1,200 Amsterdam inventories and auction sales dating from 1597 to 1679. Montias chose these documents because they contained one, or more paintings, a deliberate bias that we must keep in mind. But the Database can provide at least a temporary stay to our curiosity as we trespass in the homes of art-loving Amsterdammers and explore how religion became part of a public identity at a practical, local, and private daily level.
The Domestic Text Painting A quick perusal of the documents presents immediate evidence of painted texts, so it is clear from the outset texts were not a figment of an artist’s overactive imagination, hardly tempting really since text paintings offered neither the impression of wealth nor the reflective surfaces, like chandeliers, silver, or mirrors, where an artist could display his virtuoso technique. Entry descriptions vary – a reference to a “written panel,” “written painting,” or “gilded letters” – but most implied a painted text. Occasionally, there was an indication of an odd sheet of canvas, parchment, or paper, but the majority were on wood.7 Most tended to be rectangular in shape.8 Colors seem to have been chosen in a relatively restricted palette, and when mentioned, refer to gold text on a black ground, often with a gilded, white, or black frame. It is striking how few of these domestic text paintings have been identified in collections today. An anonymous Solomon’s Prayer, 1606 (Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht), gives one possible example of a painted text in a home, but we can’t be sure how typical it was of this genre, or even whether it originally hung on the wall of a home, or a church (Fig. 2).9 If the Utrecht Solomon’s Prayer was originally intended for domestic use, it suggests text paintings in homes were like the smaller and simpler text paintings in churches, such as the Ten Commandments recently restored in the Great Church in Harlingen (Fig. 3). The vivid colors and attention to composition in the Utrecht Solomon’s Prayer betray the very same pictorial concerns seen in the Harlingen text panel and the former’s trompe l’oeil cartouche and floating attributes are not unlike other church text paintings, particularly those donated by guilds like the Greengrocers and Linen Weavers in the Great Church in Haarlem.10 Although Montias’ sample group precludes much proof from sixteenth-century homes, informed speculation suggests these painted texts were part of a distinctly post-reformation form of domestic decoration rooted in the ideals of the Dutch Reformed Church, a textual art based upon Erasmian and Calvinist principles that carried over to the domestic interior. The net result of iconoclasm on church decoration then was not only a shift of devotional art from the church to predominantly secular public institutions and private homes,
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Fig. 2. Anonymous, Solomon’s Prayer, 1606, oil on panel. Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent.
but also a spilling over of text paintings into the home as part of the diffusion of a new ideal.11 In the sample, 171 houses listed some kind of painted text decoration hanging on walls (excluding nine homes with maps), just over one-seventh of the test group.12 In these homes, by far the most popularly identified subject matter was the Ten Commandments, which decorated 99 homes, distantly followed by Solomon’s Prayer, as in the Steen painting, which was displayed in 18 homes. In terms of text paintings, rather than homes, this translates into 119 Ten Commandments paintings, 18 Solomon’s Prayers, and 24 examples of other subjects (not including the 50 “loffdichten,” or odes, in one house, inv. no. 6060). In addition, there were more than a hundred paintings that specified “written,” or “gilded letter” decoration, although the descriptions resist thematic categorization. The number of paintings is noteworthy because it shows, at least among this visually sensitive focus group, two important points. First, painted text decoration was relatively common, or at least not uncommon, in many bourgeois households. These paintings were not the result of Jan Steen’s whim, or the pride of an eccentric uncle. Second, the numbers reinforce what many have long suspected: painted texts were not necessarily the product of a distrust, or dislike of the visual. Not only did these texts rely upon visual tools to communicate their message, albeit without figural imagery, they also were fairly common in homes that were in fact
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Fig. 3. Anonymous, Ten Commandments, 17th century, oil on panel. Harlingen, Great Church. Photographed by K. van den Nieuwenhuizen.
pre-selected as havens for liefhebbers of art. While the sample does not permit us to see if the texts were also prevalent in homes without paintings, perhaps a question worth investigating further, this preliminary survey indicates text paintings formed a modest but stable part of the appreciated visual culture of the seventeenth-century art lover. In addition to being the most prevalent subject for domestic text paintings, the Ten Commandments was also the earliest subject to appear in homes. The first mention of one in the inventories is from 1597, a Ten Commandments belonging to the late Barbara Jans, widow of Gerrit Thomasz. Rooseboom (inv. no. 783), and two more are in the lists from the following year (inv. nos. 778, 780). In fact, during the first quarter of the seventeenth century, Ten Commandments paintings were by far the most numerous, present in sixty-six homes. In the second quarter, the number dropped dramatically to twenty-five homes, then in the third quarter to only eight homes (although none after 1672). Ilja Veldman has shown how the Ten Commandments in particular increasingly became an exemplum for the comportment of daily life during the transitional sixteenth century and the popularity of this subject in text paintings supports her findings.13 In the church this was certainly true, as the Ten Commandments, like the Harlingen panel, maintained their societal value even while they changed from figural representations that relied
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Fig. 4. Crispijn de Passe the Elder after Maarten de Vos, Concordia, 1589, engraving. Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet.
heavily on the image of Moses to more acceptable textual versions.14 In the home, a Ten Commandments panel could symbolize harmony, as in Crispijn de Passe the Elder’s Concordia, 1589, where a model of an ideal family sits down to supper beneath a rather dominant, centrally placed Ten Commandments (Fig. 4). These tablets, notably without figural representation, or the pictorial concerns seen in the Utrecht Solomon’s Prayer, were even installed in such a way as to almost become a new type of house altar. De Passe’s didactic print goes some way toward communicating the authority that this subject enjoyed in the home. Only several years later, in 1603, the earliest Solomon’s Prayer appeared in the collection of Jacques Motte and his wife, Anne van der Bergh (inv. no. 766). Text paintings of Solomon’s Prayer remained a distant but consistent second choice in homes through most of the first half of the seventeenth century: the inventories record eight homes with a Solomon’s Prayer panel in the first quarter of the century; nine in the second; and only one in the third. Other texts embraced diverse subjects, some religious in nature, such as the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, biblical excerpts describing the Last Supper and passages from the Book of Job. But we also find quotations from Prince Maurits, resolutions of the States General, laudatory poems, teachings
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of Aristotle, and maxims in Dutch, Greek, and Hebrew.15 Interestingly, these three languages are specifically noted, but Latin is nowhere to be seen, again underscoring sympathy with the linguistic preferences of reformation art in Netherlandish churches. These alternative subjects do not seem to have been as popular initially (only three homes in the first quarter), but gained favor from the 1620s onward.16 The popularity of one type of subject matter over another was not necessarily reflected in the price of a domestic text painting, since most text paintings were generally valued under fl. 3 and the twenty-six that were worth more coincided roughly with the percentages of the different types of paintings. At the bottom end of the price spectrum were Ten Commandments images worth only fl. 0,4, or fl. 0,11, although these frequently referred to printed versions.17 Of the text paintings worth more than fl. 3 most tended to range in value from fl. 4 to 6. But there were exceptions. Top prices include Ten Commandments paintings worth fl. 25 (inv. no. 696) and fl. 22,10 (inv. no. 887). And the schoolteacher and noted calligrapher Antony Smijters owned a Solomon’s Prayer worth fl. 7,10 (inv. no. 619), while the Dutch Reformed merchant Jacques Verbeeck had an unidentified text painting worth fl. 12,10 in his collection (inv. no. 928). Text paintings were a fairly modest form of domestic decoration, roughly equivalent to the lower end of the art market and intended mainly for decorative purposes, not on the same level as paintings purchased by an art collector. But if the cost of individual paintings was moderate, the total sum for this kind of decoration in a single home could become substantial. Such was the case in the home of Judith Cotermans, widow of Hendrick Meurs, a Dutch Reformed schoolteacher, who had 14 unspecified “written” painted texts worth fl. 84. Given her husband’s occupation, these texts might have been inventory not yet sold, since calligraphy could be a profitable sideline for teachers. Nonetheless, it gives some idea of the general value of these painted texts and allows us to characterize this type of painting as a form of home decoration accessible to many.
The Owners Who owned such austere ornamentation? The answer is a bit of a surprise from what we might expect. It was not just schoolteachers, some of whom were well known for their calligraphic talents and the handwriting manuals they produced that also featured ornate script with similar moralizing and didactic overtones. (We have only to think of these common interests charmingly intertwined by the schoolteacher Pieter Claesz. [inv. no. 840], who even lived in a house called the “Schrijvende Hand,” or “Writing Hand.”) Nor were there many owners in what Montias has described as the “liberal professions,” composed primarily of preachers, doctors, or lawyers. Although the profes-
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sional background of a family is not always provided in the documentation, it seems painted texts were most popular in the homes of prosperous largescale merchants – those who dealt in wine and brandy, leather, cloth, grain, spices, and lumber. Twenty homes of large-scale merchants, for example, contained Ten Commandments paintings. But only three were owned by members of the “liberal professions,” and just two were in the homes of schoolteachers, a group incidentally considered apart from the “liberal professions” in the Database records. Artists as owners came in a distant second. This category included cartographers (such as Pieter van der Keer who owned the fifty poems mentioned above, inv. no. 6060), printmakers, glassmakers, and goldsmiths, although the largest number were in fact painters. So text paintings not only shared the structural link of paint on panel with fine art, they also had the same owners, who were often painters. Tying with artists for second place, with ten homes apiece – but only in the case of the Ten Commandments paintings – were employees of what Montias has referred to as the “service industries” (city government, social services, the military, the admiralty, water transportation, brokerages, and even a bakery). Somewhere in the middle of the occupational spectrum were the “unspecified,” usually modest retail merchants (including the occasional book dealer), who account for eight homes. Manufacturers (the fabric bleachers, or dyers, beer brewers and sugar and salt refiners) and artisans (the tailors, cobblers, joiners, and porcelain makers) represent five homes each. The same pattern of collecting seen in the Ten Commandments paintings emerges in text paintings of other subjects.18 Text paintings were always most represented in the impressive homes of the large-scale merchants and second place consistently fell to artists. The Database, by taking us inside the homes of a cross-section of Amsterdam families who owned paintings, allows us to gain some sense of collecting habits. What we find is that most families only had one Ten Commandments, or Solomon’s Prayer. In fact, not a single family owned two paintings of Solomon’s Prayer and only eight families possessed two Ten Commandments. But there were two families who owned four Ten Commandments panels each, and one family with no less than seven. The seven were sold at the request of Christoffel van Sichem the Younger, a Dutch Reformed cartographer and printmaker (inv. no. 883). But these were all prints, not paintings, and each was valued at only fl. 1,6, so again perhaps the seven prints represent the sale of the owner’s professional inventory.19 As a general rule, multiple copies of text paintings on a single subject do not seem to have found a place in most homes. Some families who owned text paintings on more than one subject just covered their bases, so to speak, with a Ten Commandments and a Solomon’s Prayer. Others owned additional text paintings on unknown subjects. The
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largest group was made up of those who combined a Ten Commandments with another subject. For example, we know of one family who kept a Ten Commandments and a textual Last Supper panel (inv. no. 632) and another collection that included a Ten Commandments painting and an Apostles’ Creed with an additional painting of Rebecca and two small prints (inv. no. 356). The presence of text paintings in collections with a great variety of other works of art betrays less specifically religious concerns than pure personal taste. Thus, in different homes, a painting of the Law could hang in the company of a series of twelve sibyl paintings, a small panel of a child, a map, a tronie sculpted in alabaster, and one painted on panel, or a winter landscape. This suggests that the separation of painted texts from what we would call fine art today was less common in seventeenth-century practice.
Family Values Why then would an art-loving, large-scale merchant choose to display a text painting with his other paintings? As the content was largely biblical, we might look to the religious, or confessional identity of the owners of text paintings. Although again, this is not always indicated in, or deducible from the Montias Database, the largest group of collectors by far was affiliated, whether nominally, or otherwise, with the Dutch Reformed Church. For the Ten Commandments paintings, this was twenty-seven (including one Remonstrant family) out of the ninety-nine homes with these paintings, roughly one-quarter of all Ten Commandments owners.20 This adds weight to the proposition that the domestic text painting developed after reformation, taking its cue from the decoration of Dutch Reformed churches. But for a multi-confessional society, or a society consisting of a range of religious minorities, it is also important to look at the other religious affiliations of the collectors. Because although the numbers are not large, their very presence shows that these painted texts were a kind of semi-religious decoration that was acceptable to many confessions. Again in the case of Ten Commandments paintings, there is evidence that a Lutheran and a Mennonite family each had one, as did three Roman Catholic families. A similar spread was found in the collecting of Solomon’s Prayer and other subjects. No Jewish families were noted as collecting either Ten Commandments paintings, or Solomon’s Prayer. But the Database does reveal one Portuguese Jewish family who owned a painting of “several Hebrew letters,” as well as a painting of Greek text and five small, framed painted texts in bad condition (inv. no. 1025). So although text paintings seemed to have had a particular resonance with Dutch Reformed families, it was not an exclusive association. With the exception of the Reformed preference, it is not even clear that certain confessions preferred specific subject matter, reminding us once again that we
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should resist religious-based assumptions in taste. The results for biblical text paintings follow Montias’ earlier evidence that there is little reason to suppose the religious affiliation of the collector had much influence beyond the obvious.21 Even the Dutch Reformed favoring of the Old Testament, in contrast to the Catholic preference for the New Testament at this time, should be viewed with a grain of salt, because we can point to the Catholic family of Catharina Queckels, widow of Cornelis van Campen, who hung texts of Solomon’s and Job’s Prayers in their home (inv. no. 1159) and a Lutheran, Emanuel van Baseroode, who owned an unusual Solomon’s Prayer with a map (inv. no. 458). What these two families shared was a socio-economic class as large-scale merchants, not religious affiliation. Yet the presentation and patterns of installation described in the documents suggest text paintings were an appreciated part of home decor. Unlike the small piece of parchment strung between rollers in the Steen painting, many domestic text paintings were recorded as beautifully framed in wood (often gilded), or ebony with the occasional addition of a coat of arms and a glass to protect the surface, seemingly intended as relatively permanent decorations, even inheritable goods. As Loughman and Montias have shown, for the majority of seventeenth-century Amsterdammers the ground floor of the home typically consisted of two spaces: the entrance room (voorhuis) and the “inner hearth” (binnenhaard, binnenhuis, or binnenkamer).22 The voorhuis could span the whole front width of the house, and although primarily a well-furnished area to receive visitors, where the best works of art were often displayed, it could double as a place of business, or work. The binnenhaard, on the other hand, was the room where food was cooked and eaten and family members might even sleep during the winter months. Visitors would see works of art in the voorhuis, but paintings with special familial associations, such as ancestral portraits, often hung in the binnenhaard. The division was between semi-public and private family spaces. The clear preference for all text paintings was for hanging them on the ground floor, and in the public rooms in particular – in what is described as the “voorhuys,” or “beste Kamer.” The former is consistently the most frequently cited single room for all domestic text paintings, irrespective of subject matter.23 Text paintings, as part of the décor in this more public space, could contribute to an ethical atmosphere for business transactions and social occasions. But there were also a number of text paintings cited as being in the “achtercamer,” a back room that could be added for storage, or living space.24 If we combine the text paintings located in the achtercamer with those found in the binnenhaard, the number in the private spaces on the ground level of homes becomes comparable to those in the public spaces.25 The roughly equal number of text paintings for private consumption can then be explained as consistent with Wayne Franits’ and Pieter van Thiel’s emphasis on the teaching of
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the next generation as a central tenet of Reformed belief, even what Van Thiel has referred to as illustrating the model of “the perfect Christian family.”26 Moral education was to be taught at table, not in the children’s room (“kinderen camer”), where only one home mentions a Ten Commandments painting. The fluxus of personal and public space is seen clearly, then, in the choice of location for moralizing texts in the home. And it thus would seem that text paintings played a role as images that permeated traditional divisions of public and private space, just as their display expanded from public churches to private homes. We can understand the disposition of such paintings around the primary rooms of the house in the context of other related phenomena. For example, Martha Hollander has evoked the complexity of public and private spaces in the domestic transitional zones that characterize the paintings of Pieter de Hooch, among others, and Benjamin Kaplan has shown how privately owned chapels, such as those found in embassies and homes, could challenge notions of private and public in early modern identity.27 Text paintings with their recommendations for daily life often became the bridge between public societal codes and the rules that governed family life irrespective of any one confessional identity. Returning to The Prayer before the Meal, we find that Montias’ Database gives us a better sense of how much of Steen’s vision rings true and how well it evokes the habits and ideals of seventeenth-century Dutch burgher society. The prosperous setting in Steen’s painting conforms to the finding that domestic text paintings were especially popular in the city domiciles of largescale Amsterdam merchants. And the room shown is certainly in the private part of the house, which fits with archival evidence that places text paintings as more, or less equally distributed. The family Steen depicts is about to break bread together. The artist underscores this subject with a belkroon, a chandelier hung with a bell that is placed at the top center and bears the inscription “Ons dagelyck Broot” (“Our daily bread”). The mother shows the child how to pray properly; this is in part a didactic painting. But Steen’s view of human nature goes beyond such models of exemplary behavior; the man at right wears temptation on his face as he eyes the young serving girl. An understanding of such human foibles is one key to Steen’s art. It is part of his humor to place an actual key behind the man, and yet further up, to have Solomon’s Prayer, the necessity of which his innuendoes makes clear. Text paintings codified central tenets of seventeenth-century Dutch family life and positioned a family’s dealings with the outside world within a shared moral and social code. Steen’s painting also demonstrates the artist’s virtuoso technique in describing a world of substances that immediately appeal to the senses: a satin dress; light shining off the surfaces of pewter and pottery, and near-magically transforming a leaded glass window; a dog’s furry coat; a crusty loaf of bread; a
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girl’s rosy cheeks; but he does not neglect the humble scrap of parchment. In the imagination of most painters, such marvels surely upstage the sobriety of text paintings, which helps to explain their rarity in paintings of burgher interiors – a rarity we now know to be deceptive. The documents Montias transcribed confirm that people spanning the range of Judeo-Christian confessional identities in the seventeenth-century Netherlands felt at home with the Ten Commandments. The Montias Database helps to outline the broad contours of a popular form of domestic decoration previously ignored and confirms the existence of yet another kind of painting-within-a-painting. In some ways, it reconstitutes the range of visual culture in the Golden Age by rejoining this modest, decorative art with what we might call fine art, showing how it could overlap in price, ownership, installation, and indeed even pictorial space. Moreover, in providing evidence that text paintings expanded beyond church walls, it challenges the rejection model posited for art in the move from sacred to predominantly secular spaces in the wake of iconoclasm. The domestic text painting alerts us to how public religion entered private life in practice, and likewise, how daily prescriptions for a healthy society were ratified by an entire community – from its most revered elders to the youngest members of the Dutch Republic. Author’s Note: Unlike many of the contributors to this volume, I have known Michael only a relatively short time, just thirteen years from when I began my graduate work at Yale. I will always be grateful to him for his ability to communicate the excitement of discovery and invest the past with something akin to expectation. During one of my last visits to his home he mentioned he had come across some text paintings in the inventories of his Database and suggested I take a look.
1
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Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr. in Jan Steen. Painter and Storyteller, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1996, no. 28, pp. 190-92. J.B.F. van Gils has identified the version of Solomon’s Prayer used by Steen in The Prayer before the Meal as part of a longer poem found on the last page of De Historie van den ouden Tobias (Gouda: Johan Rammazeyn, 1647). J.B.F. van Gils, “Het Gebed voor den Maaltijd door Jan Steen,” Oud Holland 57 (1940): 57. Lyckle de Vries, “Jan Steen ‘De Kluchtschilder,’” Ph.D. diss., Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 1977, pp. 90, 129, n. 79. For the most recent work on domestic decoration, see Frans van Burkom, Karin Gaillard, Eloy Koldeweij, Ton Schulte, Joost Willink, eds., Leven in toen. Vier eeuwen Nederlands interieur in beeld (Zwolle: Waanders, 2001); C. Willemijn Fock, ed., Het Nederlandse interieur in beeld 1600-1900 (Zwolle: Waanders, 2001); Jan de Jong, Bart Ramakers, Herman Roodenburg, Frits Scholten, Mariët Westermann, eds., Wooncultuur in de Nederlanden, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 51 (2000); Mariët Westermann, ed., Art and Home. Dutch Interiors in the Age of Rembrandt, exh. cat., The Newark Museum, Newark, 2001. On the role of the Bible in the home, see, for example, T.G. Kootte, ed., De Bijbel in huis, exh. cat., Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, 1991.
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An example is C. Willemijn Fock, “Semblance, or Reality? The Domestic Interior in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting,” in Westermann 2001, pp. 82-101. For the most recent discussions, where still-life painting in particular has played a critical role at the nexus of issues of prosperity, moral value, display, consumption, and domesticity, see Norman Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still-Life Painting (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990); Julie Berger Hochstrasser, “Imag(in)ing Prosperity. Painting and Material Culture in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Household,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 51 (2000): 194-235; Jan de Vries, “Luxury in the Dutch Golden Age in Theory and Practice,” in Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger, eds., Luxury in the Eighteenth Century. Debates, Desires, and Delectable Goods (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 41-56ff. For the iconography of families saying grace, see Wayne Franits, “The Family Saying Grace: A Theme in Dutch Art of the Seventeenth Century,” Simiolus 16 (1986): 36-49; Pieter J.J. van Thiel, “Poor Parents, Rich Children and Family Saying Grace: Two Related Aspects of the Iconography of Late Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Dutch Domestic Morality,” Simiolus 17 (1987): pp. 90-149. The Montias Database provided the foundation for Montias’ Art at Auction in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2002). Only one text painting is described as being painted on canvas (inv. no. 845). Only one round, or tondo text painting is discussed and this is a Solomon’s Prayer (inv. no. 1228). J. Dijkstra, P.P.W.M. Dirkse, A.E.A.M. Smits, De schilderijen van Museum Catharijneconvent (Zwolle: Waanders, 2002), pp. 312-13. Although this painting may have come from a church, the subject matter of Solomon’s Prayer is most often found in homes. For more on the Greengrocers’ and Linen Weavers’ Paintings and reproductions, see Mia M. Mochizuki, “An Overlooked Still Life by Jacob Saverij,” Source. Notes in the History of Art 23, no. 4 (Summer 2004): 25-37. Mia M. Mochizuki, “The Reformation of Devotional Art and the Great Church in Haarlem,” Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2001. This number includes the painted texts where the subject is unknown. Ilja M. Veldman, “The Old Testament as a Moral Code: Old Testament Stories as Exempla of the Ten Commandments,” Simiolus 23 (1995): 215-39. The transition from figural to textual Ten Commandments after reformation seems to have also occurred in homes, as is suggested by one of the earliest known examples of a Northern Ten Commandments painting, represented in a Holy Family by the Master of the Magdalena Legend (c. 1515-25; Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp). This painting-within-a-painting is a large panel with a full-length portrait of Moses carrying diminutive tablets whose script is illegible. For more on this transition as seen through Ten Commandments paintings in Dutch Reformed churches after reformation, see Mia M. Mochizuki, “Supplanting the Devotional Image after Netherlandish Iconoclasm,” in Anne McClanan and Jeff Johnson, eds., Negating the Image: Case Studies of Past Iconoclasms (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 137-62. The inventories of an additional thirty-seven homes, which only include such descriptions as “geschreven,” or “vergulde letters,” do not provide enough information to be included in this survey. Alternative subjects are found in ten homes in the second quarter and six in the third quarter. The numbers of the unknown, or incompletely described painted texts indicate an early popularity and generally consistent use of this form through the third quarter of the seventeenth century with fourteen, then eleven, and finally ten homes. For the cheapest Ten Commandments images, see inv. nos. 662, 673, 702, and 904. Interestingly, a Ten Commandments valued at fl 1:3 was priced higher than a calligraphy exempla book (fl 0:15) in the house of Christoffel Sichem the Elder (inv. no. 604).
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18 Although certainly the types of documents that Montias used for the Database go hand in hand with the kinds of homes included, it is noteworthy that the patterns of ownership are consistent within professional groups, even when an exceptional profession is mentioned, such as a single regent’s home with a quotation from Aristotle (inv. no. 348). 19 This case contributes to our knowledge regarding the ties between calligraphy and cartography: a shared interest in the didactic applications of the line; the use of identical tools (compass, straight-edge, and pen); and an appeal to the same collectors, whether for professional, or personal reasons. And of course cartographers often used calligraphy for necessary inscriptions, producing “caerten met schriften” (inv. no. 1002). 20 It is important to remember that although the Dutch Reformed Church eventually became the official “public” church, for most of the seventeenth century this church was a minority among other minority religions, a situation famously described and analyzed by J.J. Woltjer in “De plaats van de calvinisten in de Nederlandse samenleving,” De zeventiende eeuw 10 (1994): 16-19. The collecting of Ten Commandments paintings seems to support the notion of the Reformed community as a large, but still minority community. 21 Montias showed that in Amsterdam, Catholics and Protestants alike adorned their homes with religious paintings. Catholics, however, preferred New Testament subjects, portraits of Catholic notables, and generally more religious scenes, while Protestants tended to have Old Testament subjects, portraits of the Princes of Orange, and still-life scenes. See John Michael Montias, “Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam: An Analysis of Subjects and Attributions,” in Art in History, History in Art: Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Culture, eds., David Freedberg and Jan de Vries (Santa Monica: Getty Publications in the History of Art, 1991), pp. 337-40. 22 John Loughman and John Michael Montias, Public and Private Spaces: Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Houses (Zwolle: Waanders, 2000), pp. 22-30. 23 The “beste kamer,” or “best room,” was part of the expansion of the ground plan of the upper-class Dutch home in the second half of seventeenth century, when the number of rooms expanded and their functions became increasingly specific for those who could afford it. Since the beste kamer was intended as a reception room, it is considered here as part of the public spaces of the house. Loughman and Montias 2000, pp. 27-28. 24 Loughman and Montias 2000, p. 23. 25 For Ten Commandments paintings, this would mean seven paintings hung in the private rooms (three in the binnenhaard and four in the achtercamer) in comparison to ten located in public spaces (eight in the voorhuis and two in the beste kamer). For Solomon’s Prayer paintings this would work out to two in the private rooms and three in the public rooms. 26 Franits 1986, pp. 45-49; Van Thiel 1987, p. 90; Washington 1996, p. 190. 27 Martha Hollander, “Public and Private Life in the Art of Pieter de Hooch,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 51 (2000): 272-93; Martha Hollander, An Entrance for the Eyes. Space and Meaning in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Benjamin J. Kaplan, “Diplomacy and Domestic Devotion: Embassy Chapels and the Toleration of Religious Dissent in Early Modern Europe,” Journal of Early Modern History 6 (2002): 341-61; Benjamin J. Kaplan, “Fictions of Privacy: House Chapels and the Spatial Accommodation of Religious Dissent in Early Modern Europe,” The American Historical Review 107 (October 2002): 1030-64; Loughman and Montias 2000; Mia M. Mochizuki, “The Quandary of the Dutch Reformed Church Masters,” in ArieJan Gelderblom, Jan L. de Jong, and Marc Van Vaeck, eds., The Low Countries as Crossroads of Religious Belief. Intersections. Yearbook for Early Modern Studies 3 (2003): 141-63ff.; Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., and Adele Seeff, eds., The Public and Private in Dutch Culture of the Golden Age (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000).
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The Transfer and Reception of Dutch Art in the Baltic Area during the Eighteenth Century: The Case of the Hamburg Dealer Gerhard Morrell michael north Ernst Moritz Arndt Universität, Greifswald
The following case study reveals preliminary results of a research project on the art trade between the Netherlands and the Baltic Area, with special respect to Denmark. Apart from direct contacts between Holland and Scandinavia, the Hamburg art market played a crucial role. It emerged as the leading art market in eighteenth-century Germany, due to its favorable location and its liberal auction laws, as art auctions became the most important form of art supply for a growing number of collectors. This article examines the pattern of collecting in Hamburg and explores possible influences on collectors in Denmark, Northern Germany, and Poland.
Dealing in Art and Art Auctions During the course of the eighteenth century, an art market emerged in Germany. This market emerged regionally in territorially scattered Germany, but can be traced above all in the two major artistic and commercial centers of the Holy Roman Empire: Frankfurt and Hamburg. Behind them, Leipzig and Cologne played a minor role. Crucial for the slow development of a German art market – for example, in comparison with the Netherlands – was the small supply of paintings on the one hand, and the modest demand for paintings, especially in German cities on the other. Therefore the imports of paintings and an increasing local art production were the preconditions for a growing art market. These conditions seem to have been present in the eighteenth century. As in the seventeenth-century Netherlands, the expanding eighteenth-century German art market generated the new profession of art dealers, mainly in the middle of the century, when painters and merchants specialized in the art trade.1 This new art trade developed its own areas of specialization. While “international” art dealers supplied the courts and private collectors, the local
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art trade in cities like Frankfurt, or Hamburg expanded, supplying not only local collections but also the courts in their neighborhood. Besides patronage of local painters, art auctions became instrumental for this kind of local supply. As art auctions became the most important form of art supply for a growing number of collectors, auctions catalogues form a crucial source for the history of collecting and marketing of art. Frits Lugt provided an invaluable compilation of sale catalogues, in his Répertoire des catalogues de ventes, which included 114 German auction catalogues. Thorough research by the project on German sales of the Getty Provenance Index raised the number to 298 catalogues, which are documented by The Index of Paintings Sold in GermanSpeaking Countries before 1800. This source allows statistical research into the number of paintings sold in German auctions, while individual auction catalogues supply evidence on the subjects of paintings sold in auctions, that is, on patterns of collecting. In Germany in the seventeenth century, auctions of paintings had already taken place, as for example, that of the collection of Duke Rudolf Friedrich von Holstein-Norburg, sold by his heirs in Wolfenbüttel in 1690. By the eighteenth century, and especially during its latter half, the number of art auctions grew significantly. The auction catalogues collected by the Getty Provenance Index in its project on the German sales, clearly document this development. Table 1. Auction catalogues in Germany before 1800. Total Total Before 1750 1751-60 1761-70 1771-80 1781-90 1791-1800
298 27 9 32 61 82 87
Berlin furt 12 4 3 2 3
Frankburg 40 2 10 7 14 7
Ham140 11 6 9 37 34 43
Cologne Leipzig Others 9 1 4 1 3
27 1 2 1 11 12
70 12 1 4 14 20 19
From a total of 298 recorded auctions, 234 took place between 1770 and 1800. Before this period, auctions of paintings were isolated and irregular events, except in the case of Hamburg where a steady sequence of sales had already begun during the late seventeenth century, even if most of these primarily featured books. Twenty auctions took place in Hamburg before the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763. Accordingly, Hamburg, with a total of 140 auctions, was the leading art market in the Holy Roman Empire, followed by Frankfurt (40 auctions), Leipzig (27 auctions), and Cologne (9 auc-
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tions). With respect to the number of paintings sold at auctions, the difference between Frankfurt und Hamburg was not so significant, because an average Hamburg auction contained fewer paintings than a Frankfurt auction. The Hamburg catalogues register 17,895 paintings in total, while for Frankfurt, 10,153 paintings are recorded.
Centers of the Art Trade Which factors influenced the importance of the auction places and thus the professionalization of the art trade? Hamburg, for example, was favored by its convenient location for transit trade; the city attracted foreign merchants and also such art dealers as Gerhard Morell. He settled in Hamburg in order to sell paintings of the highest quality from Dutch auctions to the German princely collections, such as Hesse-Cassel and Mecklenburg-Schwerin, but also to private collectors. I will return to Morell later. Moreover, the Hamburg art market profited from the city’s liberal auction laws, due to the tradition of auctioning imported commodities. Unlike the Frankfurt and Cologne auctions, which at this time were most often held by public auctioneers domestically in the house in which the collector had died, the art auctions (as commodity auctions) were centralized at the stock exchange and organized by brokers. By 1785, there were more than thirty brokers registered in the Hamburg art trade, most prominent among them Packischefsky, Bostelmann, and Texier, mentioned on the title page of several auction catalogues. So free art trade dominated in Hamburg. This is in contrast to Leipzig, where the guilds of the booksellers and of the shopkeepers watched carefully that only estates, which local people had left, were auctioned. That explains why, in Hamburg, most of the collections sold originated from foreign, or other German cities. But Hamburg private collections were also recycled by auctions, and may have helped form the basis of new collections. Thus the auctions helped to satisfy the growing demand for paintings in urban households. After 1789, an increasing number of French collections was brought to Hamburg, often by Hamburg merchants, due to the favorable exchange rate and low prices in France.
Categories of Paintings and Patterns of Collecting in the Dutch Republic and Hamburg With the imports of paintings and collections from the Netherlands, Dutch patterns of collecting were also imported into Hamburg. The starting point for the reconstruction of the patterns of collecting is an analysis of Hamburg collections with respect to the major subjects and a comparison with Dutch collections. Concerning the Dutch Republic, we are familiar with the com-
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position of Delft and Amsterdam collections, due to the fundamental work of John Michael Montias, who broke down the subjects of seventeenth-century collections into histories, landscapes, portraits, still life, and genre, and who noticed significant changes in the importance of the different subjects over time: on the one hand, the continuous reduction in the number of histories and, on the other hand, the unstoppable increase in the number of landscapes. Between 1600 and 1630, nearly half of the collections (45 percent) were still composed of histories, but toward the end of the century, this position was usurped by landscapes, and only one-tenth of the pictures in the collections, according to the inventories, were histories. The share of other subjects, such as portraits and still life, first rose and then declined, while genre pieces grew in popularity throughout the century. Table 2. Paintings in Delft inventories 1610-79 (percentages). Subject matter Histories Landscapes Still Lifes Genre Portraits Others
1610-19 46.1 25.6 4.2 3.8 16.9 3.4
1620-29 44.5 23.7 11.2 4.6 13.6 2.4
1630-39 41.1 27.6 9.9 4.6 13.8 3.0
1640-49 34.3 26.1 11.7 3.7 21.8 2.2
1650-59 26.1 33.9 13.7 4.9 18.3 3.2
1660-69 26.3 38.6 15.4 4.8 12.2 2.5
1670-79 16.6 40.9 16.7 7.4 15.0 3.4
Table 3. Paintings in attributed Amsterdam estates 1620-89 (percentages). Subject matter Histories Landscapes Still Lifes Genre Portraits Others/ Unknown
1620-29 46.9 20.2 6.2 3.9 15.7 7.1
1630-39 32.4 25.3 8.0 6.9 15.4
1640-49 23.8 27.1 9.1 8.2 16.9
1650-59 16.1 28.5 8.7 7.4 19.7
1660-69 14.2 33.2 10.2 7.9 17.0
1670-79 15.5 32.2 9.0 10.3 15.2
1680-89 11.6 36.5 7.4 12.0 10.1
12.0
14.9
19.6
17.5
17.8
21.4
The earliest Hamburg collection of Dutch paintings that I could trace was the collection of Johann Outgertsen (Outgers), who had moved from the Dutch Republic to Hamburg and had been active in the Amsterdam-Hamburg trade. In the documents of the Reichskammergericht (Imperial Chamber Court), I found his household inventory of 1644. According to this inventory Johann Outgertsen had sixty-eight paintings, among them the best Dutch and Flemish painters and their special subjects: two portraits by Rembrandt van Rijn, one by Jan Lievens and one by Claes Elliassen, three family portraits by Sandvoort, four seascapes by Jan Porcellis, three landscapes by Jan van Goyen, three by Kuyper, two by Pieter Molijn, one landscape by Ruis-
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dael and one by Van de Velde, a vanitas still life by David de Heem and a banquette by Pieter Claessen. The most outstanding was a religious painting, Christ and the Apostles by Anthony van Dyck, estimated for 3,000 Mark Lübisch. More prominent than Outgertsen was Jacob de le Boe Sylvius, whose brother had been patron of the Leiden fine painters Gerrit Dou and Frans van Mieris. Jacob inherited his brother’s collection and transferred it to Hamburg. In his Teutsche Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste (1675), Joachim von Sandrart praised him as a Hamburg collector and connoisseur. However, we don’t have any evidence about the details of this collection. The same holds for Anthon Verborcht, a Dutch physician in Hamburg, whose collection was auctioned in 1731. Unfortunately, the auction catalogue has not been preserved. Therefore, we must turn to the existing auction catalogues of the mid-eighteenth and late eighteenth century. Although Hamburg witnessed several auctions throughout the eighteenth century, evidence of Hamburg collections is not as abundant as one would assume. Most of the documented auctions were anonymous auctions with paintings brought together in Hamburg, and sold there. Due to the limited evidence and the lack of research, art historians have often relied on an article by Niels von Holst, who contended that Hamburg collections were dominated by genre paintings and by Dutch artists, whereas German, Italian, and French paintings were represented only in small quantities. However, the few surviving catalogues of Hamburg collections—for example, the small collection of the Ratsherr and poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes (1747); the sales collection of the painter Balthasar Denner (1749); the collections of Joachim Hinrich Thielcke (1782) and Pierre Laporterie (1793); and an anonymous Hamburg collection (1793) – show a different picture. Landscape dominated by far in the Brockes and Denner collection, while portraiture and especially genre paintings played a minor role. The more traditionally structured collections of Thielcke and Laporterie, however, show a greater share of histories and notably genre paintings. Table 4. Paintings in Hamburg collections 1747, 1749, 1782, and 1793 (percentages). Subject matter
Brockes 1747
Denner 1749
Thielcke 1782
Histories Landscapes Still Lifes Genre Portraits Animals Others
20 30 18 7 20 3 2
9 45 13 9 22 2 0
17 27 5 23 24 2 2
Laporterie 1793 30 33 4 20 12 1 0
Anonymous 1793 13 42 8 13 21 2 1
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Imports of Paintings To what extent were these collecting patterns influenced by imports of Dutch paintings? To answer this question we have to examine the above-mentioned collections with respect to Dutch paintings. Table 5. Nationalities of painters in Hamburg collections 1747-93. Nationality
Brockes
Dutch 14 Flemish 6 German 35 Italian 3 French 1 Others/Unknown 41
Denner
Thielcke
45 7 31 8 1 8
19 10 24 2 1 44
Laporterie
38 10 19 13 7 13
Anonymous
32 12 35 4 1 16
In Hamburg, the Denner sales collection and the Laporterie collection show a significant share of Dutch paintings, while in the other Hamburg collections, Hamburg painters dominated. Moreover, an important number of anonymous paintings of the local art production is recorded. Brockes had seen the important Dutch collections during his studies in Leiden and established contacts with Dutch painters. That is why he bought two paintings by his contemporary Willem van Mieris that were later transferred into the collection of the connoisseur Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn and ended up in the Dresden Gallery. Very well represented were the paintings of the Hamburg Masters (“Hollandists”) Joachim Luhn, Mathias Scheits, Franz Werner Tamm, and Balthasar Denner, who satisfied the demand for “patriotic taste.” Denner’s collection aimed to assemble the representative Dutch painters for the different subjects: Berchem, Bloemaert, Bol, Gelder, Kalf, Lastman, Molijn, Neer, Oosterwijck, Ostade, Poel, Porcellis, Potter, Rembrandt, Ruisdael, Saftleven, Storck, and Van de Velde. The focus, however, was on landscapes, illustrated by seven paintings by Van Goyen. The German painters were represented above all by nineteen paintings by Denner, but as well by his Hamburg fellow painters. The Thielcke collection, auctioned in 1782, was with respect to quantity much richer. However, it shows a large share of anonymous painters. Nevertheless, the development of connoisseurship in this auction catalogue is striking. The dealer differentiated between “Unquestionably Rembrand,” “In the Manner of Rembrand,” “School of Rembrand,” and “As Beautiful as Rembrand.” These distinctions can, however, also be interpreted as marketing strategy, since the dealer wanted to satisfy the growing demand by collectors for Rembrandts.
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Morell and the Relations between Holland, Northern Germany, and the Baltic Area The influences on the Baltic Area are even more difficult to trace than the composition of Hamburg collections. Although there is much information on princely collections in Central and also in Northern Europe, we know nearly nothing about private collecting in those areas. Therefore, it is necessary to pursue research in this field by, for example, reconstructing the communication processes between dealers and collectors. However, there is evidence of the correspondence between dealers and princely collectors, for instance, of the already mentioned Hamburg dealer Gerhard Morell. Morell started his career as curator and director of the court gallery at Bayreuth, where he made contacts with the international elite of princely collectors, as well as with the Amsterdam art market. These contacts formed the basis of the enterprise he expanded after settling in Hamburg in the 1740s. In Hamburg, Morell sold high quality paintings from Dutch auctions to German princely collections, such as Hesse-Cassel and Mecklenburg-Schwerin, as well as to private collectors. As a case study, I have examined Morell’s letters to the Mecklenburg court, which have been kept at the Landeshauptarchiv in Schwerin. These letters provide interesting insights into the Amsterdam art market and marketing strategies of Dutch and international art dealers. In his writings, Morell carefully recorded the authenticity, quality, and condition of paintings in Dutch private collections, and in a few cases recommended the purchase of a painting: I must confess that the Weenix is good; but I call the experienced eyes of Your Serene Highness for evidence to what extent my v. Alst painting exceeds the Weenix as well the v. Alst, which is already in the possession of Your Serene Highness, with respect to diligence, beauty, composition, intelligence and good conservation. This piece has had the luck to have never been in the hands of such people, who, by cleaning, rubbing, correcting and retouching, make the master in the master[pieces] unrecognizable. This piece is without doubt by the most famous still life painter v. Alst, and is certainly his best production. By commenting on forthcoming auctions (according to the enclosed auction catalogues), on the current supply of paintings, and on various rival buyers, Morell shaped the taste of several aristocratic collectors. Morell, however, did not only deal in high quality paintings, but also offered large numbers of paintings (“as a bargain”) to private collectors, such as the Polish nobleman Jan Klemens Branicki, in 1748. The art historian Anna Olenska, one of the participants in the research project, “Land and Sea: Com-
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munication and Integration in the Baltic Sea Area,” on the dissemination of paintings from the Netherlands to the Baltic area, found a letter by Morell in the Polish State Archive in Warsaw in which he offered Branicki sixty (anonymous) paintings, for 30 ducats each. Although we do not know whether Branicki purchased the paintings, we may claim that there has been a desire, at least in Central Europe, to establish cabinets with Dutch works of art, giving art dealers the opportunity to make a fortune. In this rush for paintings, several dealers like Pahmann and Morell styled themselves as trustworthy advisers for princely and noble collectors all over Central and Northern Europe. Morell was probably one of the earliest art dealers to gain fame as a connoisseur. After he had purchased eighty-five paintings in 1755 and 1756 for the Danish crown, he was called to the royal Danish court at Copenhagen in 1757, as “Garde des tableaux et autres Raretés de S. Majeste Danoise et Commissaire de la Cour.” In this function he acquired more than two hundred paintings for the Danish court between 1759 and 1763, for example, Rembrandt’s Christ at Emmaus for the reasonable price of 75 Reichstaler. In 1763, he profited from the sale of The Hague collector Willem Lormier, where he bought especially Dutch “contemporary” paintings by Gerrit Hoet, Arnold Houbraken, Van der Eyck, and Eglon von der Neer. From the collection of Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga, he bought Italian masterpieces such as Andrea Mantegna’s Christ as the Suffering Redeemer (Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst). Moreover, Morell is traceable as the buyer of paintings and drawings at different Amsterdam auctions. It would be interesting to reconstruct his purchases and their provenance more fully. Morell’s activities, however, were not confined to the Danish court. He advised and supplied other famous Danish collectors such as the gehejmestatsminister Otto Thott (1703-1785) and Johan Ludwig Holstein (1694-1763), as well as the royal court marshal and counselor Count Adam Gottlob Moltke (1710-1792). Table 6. Paintings in Copenhagen collections (percentages). Subject matter
Moltke 1756
Morell 1773
Thott 1787
Histories Landscapes Still Lifes Genre Portraits Animal Architecture Others/Unknown
15.6 30.4 7.2 19.2 13.8 10.7 2.7 0.4
19.4 31.9 6.4 6.7 20.2 5.6 4.1 5.7
28.5 14.5 10.1 10.8 29.2 1.9 1.0 4.0
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Table 7. National origin of paintings in Copenhagen collections (percentages). Nationality Dutch Flemish German Italian French English Others/Unknown
Moltke 48.2 13.3 8.5 4.9 1.3 1.3 22.5
Morell 34.6 7.3 4.4 8.5 2.4 0.6 42.2
Thott 9.3 4.6 3.9 4.2 0.8 0.1 77.1
The Moltke collection consisted of 150 Dutch and Flemish masterpieces and was catalogued by Morell for auction in Copenhagen in the 1760s. Morell’s catalogue noted the important share of Dutch seventeenth-century painters in the collection. Morell’s own collection, auctioned in 1773, also had an important share of landscapes and Dutch and Flemish paintings. The major part of the Thott collection, however, consisted of anonymous paintings and was more traditionally structured. Then the collection was sold to court elites and officials as well as Copenhagen burghers, who were the main purchasers. Morell had laid the foundation for the emergence of a collecting culture in Denmark. This Danish Golden Age of art and art trade deserves closer examination. Research on Danish and Swedish auctions could trace the art trade to resolve the question: To what extent were paintings bought through Hamburg, or directly in Amsterdam? A further step would be a reconstruction of the pattern of collecting in order to trace the similarities and influences from Northwestern Europe to Northern Europe and the Baltic Area.
1
2
3
4 5 6
Michael North, Art and Commerce in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven and London, 1997), pp. 93-98. Marten Jan Bok, Vraag en aanbod op de Nederlandse kunstmarkt, 15801700 (Utrecht, 1994). Unlike Holland, in Germany, there are few probate inventories from this period, and those still extant very seldom document the composition of collections, such as the subjects of paintings in German households. Frits Lugt, Répertoire des catalogues de ventes publiques intéressant l’art ou la curiosité, tableaux, dessins, estampes, miniatures, sculptures, 1600-1925, 4 vols. (The Hague and Paris, 193887). Thomas Ketelsen and Tilmann von Stockhausen, Verzeichnis der verkauften Gemälde im deutschsprachigen Raum vor 1800, 3 vols. (Munich, 2002). Ketelsen and Stockhausen 2002, p. 21, table 1. Thomas Ketelsen, “Art Auctions in Germany during the Eighteenth Century,” in Michael North and David ormrod, eds., Art Markets in Europe 1500-1800 (Aldershot, 1998), p. 114. Thomas Ketelsen, “Barthold Heinrich Brockes ‘irdisches Vergnügen’ in Gemälden und Zeichnungen. Ein Beitrag zum Sammlungs- und Auktionswesen im
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frühen 18. Jahrhundert,” in Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert. Mitteilungen der Deutschen Gesellschaft für die Erforschung des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts 21 (1997): 153-77, esp. 172ff. Ketelsen 1998, pp. 145-51. Compiled from John Michael Montias, Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the Seventeenth Century (Princeton, 1982), table 8.3. Compiled from John Michael Montias, “Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam: An Analysis of Subjects and Attributions,” in Art in History / History in Art: Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Culture, eds. David Freedberg and Jan de Vries (Santa Monica, Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1991), pp. 331-72, table 3. Compiled from Montias 1982, table 8.3. Compiled from Montias 1991, pp. 331-72, table 3. Staatsarchiv Hamburg, “Reichskammergerichtsakten,” O 17, pp. 785-87: “Johann Outgersen in Othmarschen, für sich und als Bevollmächtigter des Johann Simons, Bürger zu Glückstadt, und des Johann van de Wouwer in Othmarschen.” Michael North, “Kunstsammeln in Hamburg im 18. Jahrhundert,” in Museum-MusenMeer: Jörgen Bracker zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. Olaf Matthes and Arne Steinert (Hamburg, 2001), pp. 53-65. Michael North, “Der Hamburger Kunstmarkt und seine Beziehungen in den Nord- und Ostseeraum,” in Martin Krieger and Michael North, eds., Land und Meer: Kultureller Austausch zwischen Westeuropa und dem Ostseeraum in der Frühen Neuzeit (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 2004), pp. 77-89. Niels von Holst, “Beiträge zur Geschichte des Sammlertums und des Kunsthandels in Hamburg von 1700 bis 1840,” in Zeitschrift des Vereins für hamburgische Geschichte 38 (1939): 253-88, esp. 256. See also Claudia Susanna Cremer, Hagedorns Geschmack. Studien zur Kunstkennerschaft in Deutschland im 18. Jahrhundert, Ph.D. diss., University of Bonn, 1989, p. 131. Another traditional collection with histories, landscapes, and genres was auctioned anonymously: “Catalogus einer schönen Sammlung auserlesener Cabinet. Mahlereyen und Portraits, welche in einem bekannten Sterbehause in der Neustädter Fuhlentwiete, an der Ecke der Neustraße, den 12ten April 1775 an die Meistbietenden verkauft werden sollen.” “Verzeichnis einiger Schildereyen und auserlesener Zeichnungen von den beruehmtesten Meistern, so von dem seel. Herrn Raths-Herrn Brockes gesammelt worden, und allhier im April dieses Jahres oeffentlich an den Meistbietenden verkaufet werden sollen,” Hamburg 1747; reprinted in Hans-Georg Kemper, Uwe-K. Ketelsen and Carston Zelle, eds., Barthold Heinrich Brockes (1680-1747) im Spiegel seiner Bibliothek und Bildergalerie (Wiesbaden, 1998), pp. 309-15. “Catalogus einer Sammlung auserlesener KunstMalereyen, welche am Donnerstage, den 31 Julii, vormittags um 10 Uhr, im Dennerischen Hause am Gaensemarkt oeffentlich an die Meistbietende verkauft werden sollen,” Hamburg 1749. “Catalogus einer vortrefflichen Sammlung Cabinet. Mahlereyen, welche vor fünfzig und mehreren Jahren mit vielen Gusto und Kenntniss gesammelt worden, und sich unter dem Nachlaß des seel. Herrn Joachim Hinrich Thielcke befinden, in dessen Sterbehause auf den großen Bleichen selbige auch den 18 Merz 1782, und folgende Tage durch Mackler Peter Texier an den Meistbietenden, gegen baare Bezahlung in grob. Courant, öffentlich verkauft werden sollen. Acht Tage vorher können solche in beliebigen Augenschein genommen werden,” Hamburg 1782. “Verzeichnis einer schoenen Gemaelde-Sammlung von Italienischen, hollaendischen und Deutschen Meistern, groeßtentiels in sehr saubern Raehmen, aus einer hiesigen bekannten Verlassenschaft entstehend, welche den 7ten Juny 1793 auf dem Boersen-Saal oeffentlich an den Meistbietenden verkauft werden soll, durch die Mackler: Bostelmann & Pakischefski.” Carston Zelle, “‘Ein klein Cabinett von Gemählden.’ Zum Versteigerungskatalog von Brockes’ Bildersammlung,” in Kemper, Ketelsen, and Zelle 1998, pp. 29-61. Translated from the German original: “Ohnfehlbar Rembrand” [no. 318], “Im Gusto
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von Rembrand” [no. 156], “Aus der Schule von Rembrand” [no. 147], “So schön wie Rembrand” [no. 52]. “Catalogus eines vortrefflichen Sammlung Cabinet. Mahlereyen, welche vor funfzig und mehreren Jahren mit vielem Gusto und Kenntniß gesammelt worden und sich unter dem Nachlaß des seel. Herrn Joachim Hinrich Thielcke befinden, in dessen Sterbehaufe auf den großen Bleichen selbige auch den 18 Merz, 1782, und folgende Tage durch Mackler Peter Texier an den Meistbiethenden, gegen baare Bezahlung, grob Courant, öffentlich verkauft werden sollen” (Hamburg: Kunsthalle). Cremer 1989. Translated from the German original: “Ich muß gestehen der Weenix ist gut allein ich ruhfe Ehrw. Hochfürstl. Durchl. erfahrene Augen zu Zeugen wie weit mein v. Alst dieses so wohl als den v: Alst welchen Ehrw. Hochfürstl. Durchl. schon besitzen, in Fleiß, Schönheit, Composition Verstand und guter Conservirung übertrifft, dieses Stück hat das Glück gehabt, nie in den Kunst Händen solcher Leute zu gerathen, die durch putzen, reiben, corrigiren und retouchiren den Meister in den Meistern selbst unkentlich machen, dieses stück ist kein Zweifels=Knoten, es bedeutet nicht, sondern ist von dem berühmtesten Stilleben Mahler v Alst, und zwar seine beste Geburth...” Staatsarchiv Schwerin, “Hofstaatssachen - Kunstsammlungen - Angebote und Erwerbungen”: 101, Gemäldehändler Morell 1745, fols. 14v-15. Anna Olenska, “Im Herzen des südlichen Ostseeraums: Danzig als Kunstzentrum und Vermittler fremder Einflüsse in Polen im Zeitalter des Barock,” in Krieger and North 2004, pp. 102-04. Archium Glówne Akt Dawnych (Main Archive of Ancient Records, Warsaw), “Archiwum Roskie, Korespondencja” (Correspondence), XIV/41. Ketelsen 1998, pp. 144ff. Everhard Korthals Altes, “The Eighteenth-Century Gentleman Dealer Willem Lormier and the International Dispersal of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Paintings,” Simiolus 28 (2000-2001): 251-311. See Gerhard Morell, Verzeichnis derer Anno 1763 eingekauften Mahlereyen (1763), preserved in the Statens Museum for Kunst Copenhagen. Morell 1763. H. Olsen, Italian Paintings and Sculpture in Denmark (Copenhagen, 1961), pp. 11-20. “Catalogus van’t uitmuntend Kabinet Schilderyen, craionnen, teekeningen, miniaturen en printen, Sammlung Jeronimus Toennemann, versteigert am 21.10.1754 durch Hendrik de Leth, Ansichtstermine am 18. und 19. 10. Kataloge in Deutsch und Französisch bei Hendrik de Leth zu erhalten,” Amsterdam 1754. Purchased by Morell: 10. Een uitmuntend Kabinetstuk met Beelden en Bywerk, waarin verbeelt worden de Werken van Barmhartigheid ongemeen konstig, van Nik. Knupfer, hoog 28, br. 45 duim, 500 f 25. een uitmunted kabinetstuk, van A. Both, zynde een Landschap met Gebouwen en diverse Beelden, hoog 26, breed 35 duim 210 f 27. een extraordinair schoon stuk van Asselyn, alias Crabbetje, verbeeldt een Winter daar einige Jongens malkander met Sneuwballen gooyen, zeer Natuurlyk geschildert, hoog 27 1/2, breet 32 duim 135 f 35. Een extra fraay en angenaam Landschap, van Isaak de Moucheron, hoog 26 breed 22 duim 36. Een dito van den zelven, zynde niet minder als het vorige, hoog 20 1/2 breed 22 duim, zusammen 150 f Beeldwerk 5. Een Christus aan’t Kruis, van Palmhout door den selven, hoog 2 1/2 voet, 100 f o.Nr. Het Kasteeel te Grave, door Klots, hoog 6 breet 16 duim 6f Twee stuks, met Oost Indsche ink, van Aldegraaf Twee dito, door den selven beude zusammen 13f 5
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Twee stuks Landschappen, door Hakkert, hoog 4 1/2, breet 7 duim 5f 10 Twee Landschappen van E. van de Velde 6f 15 26 “Catalogus over Sal. Herr Gerhard Morell, Forhyen Kongl. Dansk Kunst-KammerForvalters smukke Cabinet, Inbeholdende en meget anseelig Samling af Skilderier, Kaaberstykker og Tegninger,” Copenhagen 1773. “Fortegnelse paa den store Samling, som hans Höi Grevelige Excellence S. T. Hr. Geheimeraad og Stats-Minister Otto Greve af Thott har efterladt sig af Malerier i Oliefarve af berömte Mestere, Miniatur-, Vandfarve- og Pastel-Malerier og Haandtegninger,” Copenhagen 1797. “Catalogue des Tableaux de Son Excellence Monseigneur de Comte de Moltke.” 27 Michael North, “Einleitung,” in Michael North, ed., Kunstsammeln und Geschmack im 18. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 2002), pp. 9-14.
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Sleeping Caps, City Views, and State Funerals: Privileges for Prints in the Dutch Republic, 1593-1650 nadine m. orenstein The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The phrase cum privil, often inscribed at the bottom of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century prints, may seem to some ubiquitous and mysterious. In fact, only certain prints were allowed to display this privilege and its primary purpose was clear: to inform the public that a work had been protected against unsanctioned copying. It is the general parameter of such privileges, who applied for them and why, as well as their further significance that will be addressed in this essay. While a good deal of attention has been paid in recent scholarly literature to the privileges given to printmakers in Italy, less has been directed to their counterparts in the Dutch Republic.1 This study attempts to fill part of that gap by examining the nature of the privileges most frequently issued to Dutch printmakers – those awarded by the States General between 1593 and 1650 – and by appending a chart listing the privileges issued to printmakers and mapmakers during this period (see Appendix). The documentation of the States General’s discussions of the requests of printmakers can be found recorded in brief among its resolutions and in longer form among its minutes and acts now housed in the Nationaal Archief in The Hague.2 One reason for the discrepancy in the scholarship may be that the most widely discussed printmakers active in the United Provinces during the first half of the seventeenth century rarely applied for privileges. Rembrandt van Rijn, for example, included the inscription cum pryvlo in the lower margin of The Descent from the Cross, 1633, but there is no evidence that he actually requested, or received a privilege for this print, although clearly he attached some significance to the inscription.3 The majority of privileges in the Dutch Republic were awarded by the States General and they tended not to be issued to “artistic” prints of the type produced by Rembrandt, but rather to engravings whose imagery was more nationalistic in nature; for example, portraits of nobility, state funerals, maps of battles, and city views, created by such fig-
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Fig. 1. Willem Jacobsz. Delff after Michiel van Mierevelt, Frederik Hendrik, Prince of, orange, 1634, engraving. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum-Stichting.
ures as Jacques de Gheyn II, Jan van de Velde, Hendrick Hondius, Willem Delff, and Adriaen van de Venne. Privileges, like the ones requested in Venice and Rome, or those awarded in the Netherlands, served to thwart the copying and selling of protected prints. They seem to have been very much like present-day copyrights, but as Christopher Witcombe, Michael Bury, and others who have written about Italian privileges have emphasized, unlike copyrights, they did not serve as a protection of intellectual property but rather as a protection of the specified plate and the printing and selling of that plate. As Bury succinctly put it, “It was not a recognition of intellectual property rights, but a form of investment protection.”4 Thus, if we take the case of Willem Delff’s engraved Portrait of Frederik Hendrik after Michiel van Mierevelt, dated 1634 (Fig. 1), it would not have been Van Mierevelt’s painted image of the Prince of Orange that was protected by a privilege but rather the plate produced by Delff after it that was given a privilege in 1633 (April 16). In the United Republic, at least, privileges from the States General may not merely have served as forms of investment protection but also as forms of investment enhancement, a sort
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of governmental seal of approval on prints with nationalistic subject matter; but more on this below. The awarding of privileges for prints (as opposed to maps, or books) seems to have been a relatively new development in Northern Europe in the early seventeenth century. Hendrick Goltzius, for example, was one of the few Dutch engravers to request a privilege for his prints during the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Although he was active in Haarlem, he directed his application for a general privilege to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, hardly surprising given his repeated dealings with the Emperor and other figures in the court in Prague. The engravers in his circle followed suit: Jacob Matham in 1601, Jan Muller in 1606, and Jacques de Gheyn II in 1608 and again in 1610.5 In 1595, there does not seem to have been another body in the Netherlands that would have been interested in bestowing a privilege on the type of mannerist prints produced by Goltzius and his circle, although privileges for books, maps, and assorted inventions had been awarded by governing bodies for some time. Indeed, De Gheyn had been given a privilege by the States General for his Map of the Siege of Geertruidenberg in 1593 (July 21). But by 1600, the States General had begun to award privileges to prints that were not maps; the year before it had issued its first general privilege for prints to the Hague engraver Hendrick Hondius, who had already received privileges for single prints, like Maurits, Prince of Nassau-Orange in 1597 (June 24) and the Large View of the Vijverberg in The Hague in 1598 (July 16). By 1625, each of the members of the Goltzius circle mentioned above had appeared at least once before the States General to request privileges for prints: Matham in 1610, De Gheyn in 1593, as already mentioned, but also in 1606, and Muller in 1625. All of these were prints with clear nationalistic subject matter, from Matham’s portrait of Frederik Hendrik (21 January 1610) to De Gheyn’s Exercise of Arms (29 May 1606). From 1597, the States General awarded the bulk of privileges for prints produced in the United Provinces during the first half of the seventeenth century, although it was a practice that seems to have come to a halt with just a few exceptions by 1637.6 The Dutch privileges followed familiar formulae. In general, they were awarded for a specific amount of time and they warned that copying of the work covered by the privilege would be punished by confiscation of the copies and that the seller, or printer would be fined a specific sum of money to be divided equally among the official who imposed the fine, the privilege holder, and the poor.7 Privileges were sometimes awarded for a single print, like the one Jan Muller received for his engraving Christian IV, King of Denmark after a painting by Pieter Isaacx in 1625 (May 28). In this case, the privilege was good for a period of six years and accompanied by a fine for copying of 150 guilders. Muller inscribed an elaborate version of the privilege at the bottom of his plate, Cum sexennali Priuilegio Ordinum Foederatorum Belgij. 1625. The abbreviated version cum priv appears more frequently on prints. Howsleeping caps, city views, and state funerals | 315
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ever, no direction appears to have been given to privilege holders concerning the manner in which the privileges should be phrased on their work. The petitioners for privileges sometimes made written requests but more often appear to have made in-person presentations of their work to the meetings of the States General. At times, the print presented was in a finished state but at other times, as in the case of prints reproducing specific events like state funerals, the printmakers appear to have presented designs for prints rather than the completed works, possibly in order to be the first to receive a privilege for the depiction of that event. Jan van de Velde’s Funeral Procession of Prince Maurits, dated 1625, discussed in further detail below, is one such example (5 July 1625). In 1607, Michiel van Mierevelt received a privilege for his engraving Maurits, Prince of Nassau-Orange, dated 1608, a print that, according to the resolutions, he was planning to have cut in copper (14 May 1607). At the meeting, he no doubt presented the drawing made in preparation for the print that was eventually cut by Jan Muller. The petitioners no doubt paid for their privileges but records of such payments for prints have not yet been traced.7a However, they were often awarded money subsequently by the States General for dedications and additional money for impressions presented to members of the committee. On rare occasions, petitioners requested a general privilege (octroy generael). Hendrick Hondius was the first engraver to have been awarded such a privilege by the States General. It allowed him to print, publish, and sell all his own work and inventions cut by him, or others.8 It furthermore forbid those works to be reproduced in whole, or in part, in large, or small, by cutting, copying, or printing, or to have such works printed and published outside the United Provinces without Hondius’ permission.9 Breaking of this privilege would entail a fine of 200 guilders. No time limit was specified, thus after he received his privilege in 1599, the publisher included a variation of the inscription, cum privil, on almost everything that he produced, his own work and the work by others that he published. He continued this practice without oversight from the States General until 1627. Willem Jacobsz. Delff, the primary engraver of Michiel van Mierevelt’s painted portraits of the Dutch nobility, was among the few others to receive a general privilege during this period in 1622. Four years later, he requested that his privilege be extended to cover not only the cutting and etching of his portraits specified in the original privilege, but the printing and selling of his portraits as well. At that time he appears to have been instructed to show each of his prints to the body for approval before it could be covered by the privilege. Indeed after 1627, both he and Hendrick Hondius appeared repeatedly at meetings of the States General to present their printed portraits for approval. The mapmaker Hessel Gerritsz. (1618), the painter Peter Paul Rubens (1620), and Pieter Soutman (1636) were also awarded general privileges by 316 | in his milieu
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the same body. Rubens, who applied for privileges for the prints after his work in several countries, was one of the few foreign artists to hold a privilege. For his request in the Dutch Republic, he relied on acquaintances who were on-site and well-connected to intercede on his behalf and his letters on this matter provide us with additional, more vivid insight into the process that is not communicated in the procedural descriptions recorded in the resolutions of the States General.10 Pieter van Veen made the first request on Rubens’ behalf in May 1619, and this was turned down; the reason given was that Rubens was neither a citizen nor resident of the United Provinces. He then appealed to Sir Dudley Carleton, who interceded on his behalf on June 8. Upon this renewed request, the representatives of the States General asked that Rubens give them an impression of all of the prints that he would like to have covered by the privilege.11 Both Carleton and Van Veen went to work on Rubens’ privilege request and unspecified negotiations took place over a long period of time. It was not until February 24 of the following year, about eight months after the first request, that Rubens was awarded a privilege for seven years. In a subsequent letter, Rubens thanked Pieter van Veen “not only for your diligence, but also for the clever and apt reply which gave the decisive blow to all the difficulties placed in your way.”12 One can only imagine what must have taken place during those eight months. Privileges were awarded to many types of prints. As noted above, politically related, or patriotic subjects were among the most common. In 1625, for example, Jan van de Velde, best known for his etchings of Dutch landscape, received a privilege for eight years for the Funeral Procession of Prince Maurits created under the direction of Jacques de Gheyn II and co-published with Jodocus Hondius (5 July 1625). Maps, often of cities involved in the war with Spain, and views of cities both in the Netherlands and abroad were also awarded privileges. Willem Jansz., for example, presented in 1606 and 1614, respectively, views of Amsterdam and Venice (11 February 1606; 7 August 1614). In 1617, Simon Frisius along with Jan Jansz. were given a privilege for their Large Panorama of Seville, etched by Frisius (19 August 1617). One notable exception in the entire group is the sole religious subject, the Sacrifice of Abraham, engraved by Andries Stock after Peter Paul Rubens (24 December 1614, some six years before Rubens received his general privilege), a privilege requested by the painter Balthasar Flessiers, who at the same time requested a privilege for the portrait of Eva Fliegen also engraved by Stock. In 1643, Paulus Pontius presented another religious subject after Rubens’ Massacre of the Innocents and that was turned down for a privilege. Pontius, described in the resolutions of the States General as plaetsnyder tot Antwerpen, may well have met with the same response initially given to Rubens over twenty years earlier, that he was neither a citizen nor resident of the United Provinces, and may have lacked the well-connected emissaries to pursue the case on his behalf. sleeping caps, city views, and state funerals | 317
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By far the most unusual “prints” presented to the States General were Magdalena de Passe’s printed caps.13 On three occasions, the Utrecht engraver De Passe presented what were described as men’s caps and sleeping caps of linen and other material printed with such images as Frederick V, King of Bohemia; the city of Olinda with portraits of Diederik van Waerdenburg and Hendrick Lonck; Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden on horseback, and Gustavus Adolphus surrounded by images of the cities that he conquered (26 March 1630; 28 January 1631; 28 March 1631). None of these, and no other caps printed like them, appear to have survived but one can imagine that they amounted to engraved plates printed on fabric.14 As engravings with such specific subjects printed on hats, they seem to be unique for their time – precursors to present-day novelty T-shirts and hats – although their subjects fit in with the general type of prints that were given privileges at that moment. In addition to the one religious scene mentioned above, in a few instances, printmakers and producers of maps were denied privileges. Pieter Soutman, the Haarlem etcher, was turned down in 1636 for an unspecified work about two months after he had been awarded a general privilege and Frans Floris van Berckenrode, the Delft mapmaker, was turned down several times for privileges for maps.15 In certain cases it was specified that maps were not awarded privileges because they revealed information that was viewed as sensitive during a time of war. Such was the reason for not awarding a privilege in 1621 to Berckenrode’s Map of the Captured Regions in Flanders (11 November 1621). The plates were then purchased by the States General and the impressions were taken out of circulation.16 The request by Frisius and Jansz. for a privilege for ten years for the Large Panorama of Seville was initially turned down (18 August 1617). The next day (August 19), however, they were given a privilege for a period of seven years; the reasons for this change of heart are unfortunately lacking among the documents. One assumes that some behind-the-scenes negotiations of the type conducted by Rubens’ intercessors took place to account for this quick reversal. In a few cases, the issuance of a privilege was made contingent on corrections being made to the plate, as Willem Jansz. found in 1608 for his Map of the Seventeen Provinces with all the Governors (26 March 1608), although the corrections required are unspecified. Jan van de Velde and Jodocus Hondius received a privilege to make and publish their Funeral Procession of Prince Maurits in July 1625. The plate does not appear to have been finished, or in fact even started when the original request was made since it was not until a year later that they presented impressions to the States General for which they were eventually paid. At that later meeting, however, the representatives found that the print was unacceptable as presented since it contained unspecified errors. Van de Velde was instructed not to publish the print before the corrections were made and to retrieve impressions that had already been published. Indeed, two states of this print
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exist and between the first and the second state many changes were made to the identifying insignia, including the coats of arms and names of participants, alterations that no doubt reflect the objections made by the States General.17 Who applied for the privileges for prints? In general, the publishers were the holders of such privileges and for the most part they were also the engravers of the works, but there were also many variations on who applied for privileges. Hendrick Hondius presented many of his own portraits for approval from the States General and on several occasions he also presented works engraved by his son Willem, who did not have a general privilege himself.18 On rare occasions, the designer, or inventor of the work applied for the privilege. Adriaen van de Venne, for example, received a privilege for five years for the Triumphal Chariot of Frederik Hendrick Prince of Orange, engraved by Daniel van den Bremden (25 January 1630), while on earlier occasions it had been his brother Jan Pietersz. van de Venne who had made the application (18 August 1618 and 26 June 1621). Michiel van Mierevelt received one in 1607 for his portrait of Prince Maurits engraved by Jan Muller (May 14). From that time on, however, it was the engravers who made the application for privileges for the many prints after Mierevelt’s paintings: Jacob Matham, Boëtius à Bolswert, and Mierevelt’s son-in-law, Willem Delff. Most of the applicants, aside from Rubens, resided in the United Provinces. Even the British engraver Benjamin Wright, who received a privilege for The City of Jerusalem (17 April 1602), is described as an English printmaker living in Amsterdam.19 Even more specifically, it can be observed that those making the most frequent appearances to the States General were printmakers residing in The Hague and Delft, notably Hendrick Hondius, Willem Delff and Balthasar Florisz. van Berckenrode. Other well-known engravers of the time also appeared before the body more occasionally, among them Crispijn de Passe, the Utrecht engraver, and his daughter Magdalena de Passe. In the case of the print entitled Liberum Belgicum (14 March 1624), engraved by Magdalena’s brother Simon de Passe, it was the print’s designer, Adriaen van Nieulandt, who requested the privilege.20 It is interesting to consider not only who applied for privileges but who did not. It is surprising, for example, that Crispijn de Passe, whose stock of published work reflects in its range of reproductive prints that of Hendrick Hondius, never applied for a general privilege. He did, however, apply for single privileges in Holland as well as France.21 Perhaps even more surprising is the complete absence before the States General of the most prolific etcher and publisher of the time, Claes Jansz. Visscher, active in Amsterdam, whose production of city views and political prints would seem to have made his works obvious candidates for privileges.22 Yet he never applied for a privilege himself. In the case of the View of Deventer (3 December 1615), a print that stylistically comes out of Visscher’s workshop, Johan Christiaensz., a pub-
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lisher from Deventer, applied and received the privilege. The privilege for the Map of the City and Siege of Maastricht (1 November 1632), which Visscher published, was requested by the map’s designer Daniel cl*tzart, quartermaster to the Count of Solms. This begs the question of why some printmakers applied for privileges and others did not. Certainly protection against copying was a significant reason. In 1628, Willem Delff lodged a complaint against Jodocus Hondius and Francois van den Hoeye for making copies of his engraved portraits after Van Mierevelt and as a result the plates were directed to be confiscated.23 Yet this is the only such complaint that appears in the fifty years of States General resolutions surveyed.24 Perhaps the privilege was such a strong deterrent that there were no other incidents that required complaint. Perhaps lodging a complaint was too much of a bureaucratic effort to prove worthwhile. Perhaps those producing copies were rarely noticed. Still, if privileges were even a moderately efficient deterrent to copying, why would most print publishers not have applied for general privileges? Perhaps the fees to pay for privileges were considered prohibitive, or unprofitable for some publishers. An additional answer may be that privileges were viewed by some as a deterrent against copying but by others additionally as a sort of States General seal of approval on nationalistic imagery that would provide added cachet to a print. That prolific engravers and publishers like Crispijn de Passe, Jan van de Velde, or Jacques de Gheyn applied for privileges only occasionally and did so for prints with nationalistic subject matter that was exceptional in their oeuvres seems to support this theory. The cum privil must have meant that not only would a certain image have been protected from copying but that the States General had approved of a particular portrait of Maurits, or his funeral procession, or even the entire work of a print publisher. Such a distinction would no doubt have been particularly appreciated by the local clientele of printmakers who worked in circles related to the governance of the United Provinces. The fact that the printmakers and publishers who most frequently appeared before the States General between 1593 and 1650 were ones based in The Hague and Delft (Hendrick Hondius and Willem Delff) supports this theory as well. Rembrandt’s fabricated privilege in the lower margin of his Descent from the Cross offers further evidence. The privilege would have offered no real protection from copying, although perhaps he thought that the inscription alone would deter any unwanted copyists. More likely, it may have added a certain faux-prestige to this particular print, which reproduced the artist’s painting in the collection of the stadholder Frederik Hendrik.25 Author’s Note: Very early in my years as a graduate student Michael Montias taught a class at the Institute of Fine Arts in New York. To be honest, much of what took place during that class – such as reading from photocopies of original inventories and determining from them whether an artist was 320 | in his milieu
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Catholic, or Protestant – went right over my head, but he did communicate to me one essential point: that with persistent looking in the archives, one could gather a wealth of stimulating information. Hopefully this essay, written many years later, demonstrates his most valuable lesson. This study is based on research conducted while I was working on my Ph.D. dissertation in the Netherlands in 1988-91, supported by the Alfred Bader Fellowship from the Institute of Fine Arts, 1988-89, and the David E. Finley Fellowship from the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, The National Gallery of Art, 1989-92. I am grateful to Paul Hoftijzer for recently sharing his thoughts, research, and publications on book privileges, Olivia Poska and Kerry Barrett for their more recent help in conducting the research for this essay, and Alan Chong for help with translations.
1
2
3
See especially Eckhard Leuschner, Antonio Tempesta, Ein Bahnbrechter des römischen Barock und seine europäische Wirkung (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2005), pp. 204-18; Michael Bury, “Infringing Privileges and Copying in Rome, c. 1600,” Print Quarterly 22 (2005): 133-38; Christopher Witcombe, Copyright in the Renaissance: Prints and the Privilegio in Sixteenth-Century Venice and Rome (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004); Lisa Pon, Raphael, Dürer, and Marcantonio Raimondi: Copying and the Italian Renaissance Print (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); Michael Bury, The Print in Italy 1550-1620, exh. cat., British Museum, London, 2001, esp. pp. 128, 175-76; Lisa Pon, “Prints and Privileges: Regulating the Image in Sixteenth-Century Italy,” Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin 6, no. 2 (1998): 40-64; Eckhard Leuschner, “The Papal Printing Privilege,” Print Quarterly 15 (1998): 359-70. For privileges in the Netherlands, see Nadine Orenstein, Huigen Leeflang, Ger Luijten and Christiaan Schuckman, “Print Publishers in the Netherlands, 1580-1620,” in Dawn of the Golden Age: Northern Netherlandish Art, 1580/1620, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1993-94, pp. 173-74; Nadine Orenstein, Hendrick Hondius and the Business of Prints in Seventeenth-Century Holland (Rotterdam: Sound & Vision Interactive, 1996), pp. 90-94. Of particular importance are P.G. Hoftijzer's publications on book privileges, “Nederlandse boekverkopersprivileges in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw,” Jaarboek van het Nederlands Genootschap van Bibliofielen (1993): 49-62 and “Nederlandse boekverkopersprivileges in de achttiende eeuw. Kanttekeningen bij een inventarisatie,” Documentatieblad Werkgroep 18e Eeuw, 22, no. 2 (1990): 159-80. The privileges in this essay and the accompanying chart have been culled from a number of sources but primarily the records of the resolutions, acts, and ordinances of the States General in the Nationaal Archief in The Hague. In addition, the following publications of the resolutions of the States General were consulted: Resolutiën der Staten Generaal van 1576 tot 1609, 13 vols. (The Hague: Rijksgeschiedkundige Publicatiën, Grote Serie, 1915-70); Resolutiën der Staten Generaal van 1610-1670, 7 vols. (through December 1625) (The Hague, 1971-); and J.J. Dodt van Flensburg, Archief voor kerkelijke en wereldsche geschiedenissen, inzonderheid van Utrecht, 7 vols. (Utrecht, 1838-48). All references to texts of privileges quoted in this essay will be found in the listing of the corresponding privilege in the appended chart. Bartsch 81; note that Rembrandt employed an unusual spelling of cum privilegio with the letter “y.”
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Witcombe 2004, pp. 57-58; Bury 2005, p. 134. F. Kreyczi, “Quellen zur Geschichte der kaiserlichen Haussammlungen und der Kunstbestrebungen des allerdurchlaustigsten Hauses,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 15 (1894): CXXXV, no. 12227 (Goltzius); F. Kreyczi, “Quellen zur Geschichte der kaiserlichen Haussammlungen und der Kunstbestrebungen des allerdurchlaustigsten Hauses,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaisershauses 19 (1898): XX, no. 16218 (Matham), LXIV, no. 16602, XCIV, no. 16887 (Gheyn), XCIV, no. 16975 (Gheyn). See also Orenstein et al. 1993-94, p. 181. Clearly Goltzius and Matham were not put off by the stipulation written into their privileges that the prints must not contain anything that conflicted with the Catholic faith, or the laws of the Holy Roman Empire. 6 One other body that awarded privileges was the States of Holland, but Jan Muller was one of the few printmakers to request a privilege from this body for his Portrait of Joannes Neyen, General of the Order of Franciscan Friars, 1609. See Jan Piet Filedt Kok, “Jan Harmensz. Muller as Printmaker, I,” Print Quarterly 11 (1994): 256-58; and New Hollstein (Muller Dynasty) 60. (In this essay, references to The New Hollstein: Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts 1450-1700 will be preceded by the abbreviation NH and to F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700 [Amsterdam, 1949- ] by the abbreviation H.) Muller was the only printmaker to receive such a patent from that body between 1600 and 1654. A few mapmakers appear in records of the States of Holland, but the only other printmaker to make a presentation appears to be Pieter Soutman, who requested to dedicate his series Count and Countesses of Holland, Zeeland, and West-Frisia to them in 1651. The dedication was accepted on condition that in the inscription on the title page Zeeland would be removed from between Holland and Westvriesland and indeed that change is reflected in the second state of that print (H XL [Cornelis Visscher], no. 77-116; Archives of the States of Holland 27 March O.R. p. 161, N.R. p. 178). Hoftijzer notes that by the second half of the century book publishers had shifted their requests for privileges to the States of Holland (Hoftijzer 1993, p. 55). 7 …een derddendeel daervan tot behoeft van den Officier die de Calengie doen sal, het tweede derddendeel tot behoeft van die Armen, ende het resterede derddendeel tot behoeft van den voorsz. Willem Jacobsz Delff (from the text of the general privilege awarded to Delff in 1622). 7a Hoftijzer 1993, p. 58. 8 … te mogen drucken, uytgeven ofte vercoopen alle zyne eygen wercken ende inventien by hem in platen, of andersins te snyden (from the text of the general privilege awarded to Hondius in 1599). On Hondius’ career as an engraver and publisher, see Orenstein 1996 and Nadine Orenstein, Hendrick Hondius: The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700 (Roosendaal: Koninklijke van Pool, 1994). 9 …int geheel, off ten deele int groot of int cleyne na te snyden, na te maken, ende te drucken, of te doen drucken of buyten de vereenichde landen nagedruckt inde selve uyt te geven, of te vercoppen sonder consent des voor[noemde]henricks de hont (from the text of the general privilege awarded to Hondius in 1599). 10 Ruth S. Magurn, ed., The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991), pp. 68-74. On Rubens and printmaking, see Nico van Hout, Rubens et l’art de la gravure, exh. cat., Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, and Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, Quebec, 2004-2005. 11 Rubens had specified these earlier in a list because some of the prints were not yet completed. He later wrote on 11 March 1620, “The engravings you may leave where they are, since we have attained our end.” Magurn 1991, p. 74.
322 | in his milieu
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12 Letter of 11 March 1620. Magurn 1991, p. 74. Here Rubens even suggested that certain people involved in the awarding of the privilege might have to be paid. 13 Discussions of these in greater detail can be found in Ilja Veldman, Crispijn de Passe and His Progeny, 1564-1670: A Century of Print Production (Rotterdam: Sound & Vision Publishers, 2001), pp. 291-92; Nadine Orenstein, “Who Took the King of Sweden to Bed?” Print Quarterly 8 (1991): 44-47; Nadine Orenstein, “Engravers and Printers as Hatmakers,” Kostum und Waffenkunde 1/2 (1991): 121-26. 14 Veldman 2001, fig. 162, illustrates an example of a Crucifixion published by Magdalena de Passe and printed on a large piece of linen that was possibly used to cover a chalice. Engravings were often printed on satin as presentation pieces; see Orenstein 1996, p. 90, and two examples of such prints by Delff after Adriaen van de Venne in Walter Liedtke, Vermeer and the Delft School, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2001, pp. 501-04. Several privilege holders were recorded as having presented such impressions to the States General once they had received the privilege: Willem Delff presented portraits of the King and Queen of Bohemia in 1623, Amalia van Solms in 1626, and Frederick V, son of the King of Bohemia, in 1629, and Hendrick Hondius presented the portrait of Piet Hein in 1629, and Adriaen van de Venne showed an impression of Frederik Hendrik and the Counts of Nassau in 1630 in order to receive the privilege. 15 Although Soutman, who held a general privilege, had been instructed to present impressions of each of his prints to the States General, he only seems to have appeared before them this one time; however, almost all of the prints that he etched do bear the inscription cum privil, including a group dated 1642; see H, vol. XXVII, pp. 223-34. 16 Only once did the States General ban images. On 17 November 1619, they confiscated prints that were being sold depicting Oldenbarnevelt, Hogerbeets, Grotius, Uytenbogaert, and other Remonstrants in order to keep peace in the country. Resolutiën der Staten Generaal van 1610-1670, no. 2000. 17 Jodocus Hondius presented the print again on September 30 and was given the sum of 30 guilders. The artists do not appear to have been successful in retrieving all the impressions of the uncorrected version, since impressions of the first state can now be found in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig; and Albertina, Vienna; see H, vol. XXXIII, nos. 82/101. 18 Willem is listed on these prints as the engraver; however, none of these displays Hendrick’s name as publisher. 19 On Wright, see Arthur M. Hind, Engraving in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: A Descriptive Catalogue with Introductions, Part I, The Tudor Period (Cambridge: The University Press, 1952), pp. 212-20. 20 As Ilja Veldman (2001, p. 254) pointed out, the print does not list anyone as its publisher. Also interesting is the fact that while the privilege was awarded in March 1623, the print is dated to 1624, almost a year later. 21 Veldman 2001, p. 271. 22 On Visscher’s work, see Christiaan Schuckman’s volume on the artist in H, vol. XXXVIII (1991), with further references on p. 7. 23 I plan to discuss this example in further detail in a future article. 24 Michael Bury (2005, p. 136) noticed a similar paucity of complaints among the records of privileges in Italy. 25 The painting The Descent from the Cross (Abraham Bredius, Rembrandt: The Complete Edition of the Paintings, rev. ed., Horst Gerson [London: Phaidon, 1969], no. 550) is in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
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324 | in his milieu
The Siege of Geertruidenberg
Map of the Siege Baptista Boazio of Geetruidenberg (NH (Gheyn part II) 174
Map of Europe
Globe
1593
1593
1595
1596
Designer, or draftsman
Title and date of the print
Date of privilege
Jacques de Gheyn II
Engraver
Jacques de Gheyn II
Publisher
2 years to print and sell
2 years to print and sell
Length, purpose, and amount of fine attached to the privilege
Jodocus Hondius 10 years to make and sell
Jodocus Hondius 10 years
Jacques de Gheyn II and and Baptista Boazio
Harman Muller
Privilege Holder
20 July 1593 RGP 57, p. 149
Archival References
Complaint lodged against Hondius by Jacob Florisz van Langeren on 23 May
1 April, 23 May, and, 31 December 1597, RGP 62, p.705, 706, and 709
29 May 1595, RGP 57, p. 667
De Gheyn was 21 July 1593, paid 120 guilders RGP 57, p. 149 for the dedication by the States General and 80 guilders by them on behalf of the Council of State
Other specifications and notes
This chart records in chronological order the privileges for prints and maps awarded by the States General between 1593 and 1650. They were culled from the publications and records listed in note 2; references in parentheses following the titles refer to F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700, Amsterdam 1949– (H), The New Hollstein. Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts 1450-1700 (NH), and F. Muller, De Nederlandsche Geschiedenis in Platen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1863–70 (FM). For reasons of space, the archival references have been kept to a minimum. Thus, for archival references through the year 1625 which have been published in summary form in various volumes of the series of Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatiën, Grote Serie, the abbreviation RGP followed by the corresponding volume number has been given, although original archival material may have been consulted in these cases as well. For references after 1625, the references to the specific albums in the Nationaal Archief have been provided.
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Appendix
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View of Jerusalem
Large View of the Gillis de Saen Vijverberg in The Hague, 1598 (NH (Hondius) 42)
The Siege of Zaltbommel (H V (Berckenrode) 20)
Map of the Siege of Bommel?
General privilege
Battle in Nieuwpoort (H II (Berckenrode) 4)
1598
1598
1599
1599
1599
1600
Pagina 325
Maurits, Prince of Nassau-Orange, 1597 (NH (Hondius) 230)
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1597
04-12-2006
Floris Balthasarsz van Berckenrode
Floris Balthasarsz van Berckenrode
Hendrick Hondius
Hendrick Hondius
Hendrick Hondius
Hendrick Hondius
10 years; fine of 100 carolus guilders
4 years; to print, have printed, publish and sell
To print, publish and sell all his own work and the inventions cut by him in plates, or other ways; fine of 200 guilders
25 June 1599, RGP 71, p. 823
31 August 1599, RGP 71, p. 823, note 1
3 June and 17 August 1599, RGP 71, p. 822-23
16 July 1598, RGP 71, p. 372
11 March 1598, RGP 71, p. 371
24 June 1597, RGP 62, p. 707
With input from 31 August and 2 Maurits October 1600 RGP 85, p. 356
4 years, to cut, With a recomhave printed and mendation from publish Maurits
Floris Balthasarsz 4 years; fine of van Berckenrode 600 guilders
Hendrick Hondius
Lambrecht Cornelisz
Floris Balthasarsz 4 years, to cut, With a recomvan Berckenrode have printed and mendation from publish; fine of Maurits 100 guilders
Hendrick Hondius
Henrick Lode8 years; fine of wycks van 100 guilders Haestens, and Herman Allaertsz,
Hendrick Hondius
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326 | in his milieu
Map of all the victories, sieges of cities, fortresses, and castles including the lines of entrenchments and specifications of the Battle of Turnhout and the Taking of Nieuwpoort with the Geneology of the House of Nassau
The City of Jerusalem and other things belonging to the city and temple
The Siege of Grave on the Maas (H II (Berckenrode) 6)
The Land-Yacht of Jacques de Prince Maurits, Gheyn II 1603 (NH (Gheyn part II) 172)
1600
1602
1602
1603
Designer or draftsman
Pagina 326
Title and date of the print
14:08
Date of privilege
04-12-2006
Publisher
12 years; fine of 1,000 guilders
Length, purpose, and amount of fine attached to the privilege
Benjamin Wright 6 years; fine of 100 guilders
Pieter van den Dycke
Privilege Holder
Other specifications and notes
17 April 1602 RGP 92, p. 321
28 December 1600, RGP 85, p. 357
Archival References
Willem van Swanenburg
Christoffel van Sichem and Hendrick Haestens
Christoffel van Sichem
4 years; fine of 25 guilders
21 March 1603, RGP 92, p. 647
Floris Balthasarsz Floris Balthasarsz Floris Balthasarsz 2 years (the cur- Given 100 guilders- 1602, RGP 92, van Berckenrode van Berckenrode van Berckenrode rent and followingfor the dedication pp. 322-23 year); fine of 2 September 100 guilders
Pieter van den Dycke
Engraver
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View of the City of Amsterdam
Exercise of Arms, 1607 (NH (Gheyn part II) 340-457)
Maurits, Prince of Michiel van Nassau-Orange, Mierevelt 1608 (NH (Muller part II) 58)
1606
1606
1607
Jacques de Gheyn II
Map of the World in Two Circles
1605
Pagina 327
Siege of Oostende (H (Berckenrode) 7), 1604
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1604
04-12-2006
Jan Muller
Gheyn Workshop, Robert de Baudous and others
Willem Jansz
Floris Balthasarsz van Berckenrode
Jacques de Gheyn II
Willem Jansz
Michiel van Mierevelt
Jacques de Gheyn II
Willem Jansz
6 years; for the portrait that he was going to have cut in copper; fine of 100 guilders
8 years; fine of 100 Flemish pounds; to publish in 4 languages
6 years; fine of 100 guilders
Willem Jansz van 6 years; fine of Alkmaar 100 guilders
Floris Balthasarsz 2 years; fine of van Berckenrode 100 guilders
On April 2 1608 Mierevelt received 200 guilders for his painting of Maurits; on 9 June 1608 Jan Muller received 100 guilders for presenting the portrait to the States General based on Mierevelt’s drawing
14 May 1607, 2 April, and 9 June 1608, RGP 131, p. 316 and 624
29 May 1606, RGP 101, p. 826
11 February 1606, RGP 101, pp. 825-26
On 21 April with 23 April 1605, Herman Allaertsz RGP 101, p. given seventy-five 519 guilders for an impression of the map
19 June 1604, RGP 101, p. 234
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Victory in the Straight of Gibraltar over the Spanish Fleet (H II (Berckenrode) 13)
New Map of the World in Two Circles improved by Pieter Plancius
Map of the Seventeen Provinces with Images of All the Governors Who during the Reign of Philip II Led the Government of the Netherlands on Both Sides
Map of Schieland and Delfland, 1609-11 (H II (Berckenrode) 16)
Frederik Hendrik, Michiel van Prince of Orange Mierevelt (H XI (Matham) 382)
1607
1607
1608
1609
1610
Designer or draftsman
Pagina 328
Title and date of the print
14:08
Date of privilege
04-12-2006
Jacob Matham
Floris Balthasarsz van Berckenrode
Floris Balthasarsz van Berckenrode
Engraver
Willem Jansz
Publisher
Length, purpose, and amount of fine attached to the privilege
Jacob Matham
3 years
Floris Balthasarsz 10 years; fine of van Berckenrode 300 guilders
Willem Jansz
Herman Allaertsz 6 years; fine of Koster and David 200 guilders de Meyne
Floris Balthasarsz 1 year; fine of 100 van Berckenrode daalders
Privilege Holder
21 November 1607, RGP 131, p. 318
9 June 1607, RGP 131, p. 316
Archival References
21 January 1610, RGP 135 p. 17, no. 99; Dodt von Flensburg V. p. 17 (Book 12.300, fol.168v.)
12 December 1609, RGP 131, pp. 913-14
6 years but not 26 March 1608, before corrections RGP 131, p. 622 have been made
Other specifications and notes
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Frederik V Elector Michiel van Palatinate and Mierevelt Elizabeth, Princess of England, 1613 (H III (Bolswert) 382 and 383) Claes Jansz. Visscher
1615
1615
View of Deventer (H XXXVIII (Visscher) 128)
Eva van Meurs Vliegen, 1614 (H XXVIII (Stock) 29), and Abraham’s Sacrifice (H XXVIII (Stock) 1)
1614
DMD (unidentified)
Boëtius a Bolswert
Balthasar FlesAndries Jacobsz siers, Eva Vliegen, Stock and Peter Paul Rubens Abraham’s Sacrifice
View of Venice
1614
Map of the Hoogheemraadschap of Rijnland
1613
Pagina 329
Unspecified
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1612
04-12-2006
Request turned down on October 29 and ultimately awarded on December 24 1614 for 4 years
5 years
Request for privilege turned down
Johan Christiaensz 7 years of Deventer
Boëtius a Bolswert 5 years; fine of 60 pounds per piece
Balthasar Flessiers
Willem Jansz
Floris Balthasarsz van Berckenrode
Christoffel van Sichem senior and Junior
3 December 1615, RGP 151, p. 548, no. 932; Dodt van Flensburg VI, p. 382
September 12, 17 June and 12 Bolswert received September 1615 72 guilders for RGP 151, p. 460, the presentation no.500; Dodt van of 26 impressions. Flensburg VI, p. 370 and p 375
29 October 1614, RGP 151, p.344, no. 905; Dodt van Flensburg VI, p. 360
7 August 1614, RGP 151, p. 296, no. 670; Dodt van Flensburg VI, p. 358
14 May and 9 December 1614, RGP 151, p. 252, no. 417; Dodt van Flensburg VI, p. 354 and 361
5 May 1612, RGP 135, p. 636, no. 507; Dodt van Flensburg V, p. 259
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Plan of The Hague
Willem Louis, Count of Nassau, 1616 (H III (Bolswert) 388)
Map of Friesland and surroundings of Groningen
Large Panorama of Seville, 1617 (H VII (Frisius) 37)
Frederick V, Elector Adriaen van de Palatine and Venne Elizabeth Stuart at Vlissingen, 1613 (H XXV (Venne) 8): Maurits and Frederick Hendrick (H V (Delff) 57, 60)
1616
1616
1617
1618
Michiel van Mierevelt
Designer or draftsman
Pagina 330
Title and date of the print
14:08
1616
Date of privilege
04-12-2006
Simon Frisius
Boëtius a Bolswert
Engraver
Publisher
Jan Pietersz van der Venne
Simon Frisius and Jan Jansz
Willem Jansz
Boëtius a Bolswert
Cornelis Bosch and Jury Faes van Haren
Privilege Holder
6 years
Request for 10 years turned down; request for 7 years approved the next day
4 years
Length, purpose, and amount of fine attached to the privilege
Frisius received 128 guilders for the delivery of 16 impressions at 8 guilders each
Received 200 guilders for dedication
Other specifications and notes
18 August 1618, RGP 152, p. 471, no. 3243; Dodt van Flensburg VII, p. 40
18 August and 19 August 1617, RGP 152, p. 196, no. 1254 and p. 196, no. 1259; Dodt van Flensburg VII, p. 12 (Boek 4932 and 12.302 fol. 38; Ordonnantie boek 12505, fol. 72v.)
Res., 24 August 1616, RGP 151, p. 682, no. 626
15 April 1616, RGP 151, p. 602, no. 240; Dodt van Flensburg VI, p. 388
6 April 1616, RGP 151, p. 598, no. 216; Dodt van Flensburg VI, p. 388
Archival References
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The Funeral of Willem Louis, Count of Nassau (probably FM 1420)
Map of Rijnland, Delfland and Schieland
The Funeral of Pieter Feddes Willem Louis, van Harlingen Count of Nassau at Leeuwarden on July 13, 1620 (H VI (Harlingen) 26)
1620
1620
1620
Hendrick de Keyser
Two Sea Maps
1619
General privilege
1618
Pagina 331
The Synod in Dordrecht, 1618, 1619 (H XXVI (Schillemans) 1)
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1618
04-12-2006
Pieter Feddes van Harlingen
Floris Balthasarsz van Berckenrode and Balthasar Florisz van Berckenrode
François Schillemans
Johannes Hellenius
7 years; fine of 300 carolus guilders
Fine of 300 carolus guilders
4 years; extended to 6 years, in January 1619; fine of 1000 guilders
Pieter Feddes van Harlingen and Jan Starter
2 years; fine of 100 carolus guilders
Balthasar Florisz 9 years; fine of van Berckenrode 300 carolus guilders
Nicolaes de Clerck
Jan Jansz. Stampioen
Hessel Gerritsz
François Schillemans
Starter given 6 27 and 28 August guilders for 1620, RGP 176, several impressions p. 574, no. 3894. given to the States General
29 February 1620, RGP 176, p. 39394, no. 2687
7 January 1620, RGP 176, p. 3478, no. 2352
Request sent to 16 February 1619, Maurits for advice RGP 176, p. 46, no. 293; Dodt van Flensburg VII, p. 55
27 January 1618, RGP 152, p. 320, no. 2025; Dodt van Flensburg VII, p. 22)
26 November 1618, and January 17 1619, RGP 152, p. 571, no. 3923; Dodt van Flensburg VII, p. 47, p. 53-4
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General privilege Peter Paul Rubens
Map of the “riviere van de Elffue, suyden ende noorden, met alle hare aengelegen landen, sanden ende steden”
Map of the Maas and the Waal 1621, RGP 187,
1620
1621
1621
Designer or draftsman
Pagina 332
Title and date of the print
14:08
Date of privilege
04-12-2006
Engraver
Publisher
Request for 10 years turned down
Request turned down in May 1619 and ultimately approved in February 1620 privilege for 7 years; fine of 100 guilders)
Length, purpose, and amount of fine attached to the privilege
Request for the printing and publishing
Other specifications and notes
Frans Floris Request for 10 Berckenrode van Berckenrode years turned also requesdown on June 4; ted to dedicate the plates and the map to the impressions are States General purchased from on June 8; that Berckenrode and request was he is forbidden turned down on from distributing June 11 the map given the circ*mstances of the moment; the plates were returned to him on June 5
Gillis van Couwenberch
Peter Paul Rubens, communicated by Dudley Carleton
Privilege Holder
p. 170, no. 1066 and note 1066a
4, 5, 8, and 11 June
23 January 1621, RGP 187, p. 26, no. 153
17 May, 8 June 1619 and 24 February 1620, RGP 176, p. 129, no. 803, p. 150, no. 942, p. 387, no. 2637; Dodt van Flensburg VII, pp. 65 and 69
Archival References
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Map of the Battlefield near Emmerich
Map of the Captured Regions in Flanders
General privilege
1621
1621
1622
Pagina 333
Cavalcade of Eleven Adriaen van de Princes of the House Venne of Nassau-Orange, 1621 (H V (Delff) 95)
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1621
04-12-2006
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Pieter Gillisz
Frans Floris van Berckenrode
Jan Pietersz van der Venne
8 years; for the cutting, and etching of his portraits; fine of 600 guilders
Request turned down given the circ*mstances of the war at that moment; the plates purchased by the States General and impressions were taken out of circulation
Request turned down
6 years; to print or have printed and publish in painting and print (met schilderconste ende plaetsneede); fine of 200 carolus guilders
He must present 10 August 1622, all of his new RGP 187, p. 602, publications first no. 3911 to the States General
11 November 1621, RGP 187, p. 336, no. 2130
Floris received 12 8 October, and 8 guilders for the November 1621, offer of several RGP 187, p. 304, impressions on no. 1942 satin; they were returned to him so that he could benefit from them
26 June 1621, RGP 187, p. 191, no. 1230 and note 1230a
montiasdeel3
334 | in his milieu
Liberum Belgicum, Adriaen van 1624, (H XVI Nieulandt (Passe) 7) Michiel van Mierevelt
Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia (H V (Delff) 9)
Plan of Amsterdam, 1625 (H II (Berckenrode) 4)
Maurits, Prince of Michiel van Nassau-Orange Mierevelt (H V (Delff) 58)
Christian IV, King Pieter Isaacx of Denmark (NH (Muller, part II) 56)
1623
1623
1623
1625
1625
Designer or draftsman
Pagina 334
Title and date of the print
14:08
Date of privilege
04-12-2006
Publisher
Jan Muller
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Jan Muller
Balthasar Florisz Balthasar Florisz van Berckenrode van Berckenrode and Philips Molenvliet
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Simon de Passe
Engraver
5 years; fine of of 100 guilders
Length, purpose, and amount of fine attached to the privilege
Jan Muller
Willem Jacobsz Delff
6 years
Balthasar Florisz 6 years; fine of van Berckenrode 300 guilders and Philips van Molenvliet
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Adriaen van Nieulandt
Privilege Holder
The delivery of impressions to the States General to be discussed.
Received 116 guilders for 29 impressions on satin of the King and Queen of Bohemia
Other specifications and notes
28 May 1625, RGP 223, p. 369, no. 2107 (as May 10) (Boek 3184, fol. 186v.)
5 April 1625, RGP 223, p. 319, no. 1831
20 December 1623, RGP 208, p 384, no. 2414
15 March 1623, RGP 208, p.77, no. 498 and note 498a
14 March 1623, RGP 208, p. 76, no. 493
Archival References
montiasdeel3
sleeping caps, city views, and state funerals | 335
Amalia, Countess of Solms, 1626 (H V (Delff) 82)
Extension of general privilege
Plan of Rotterdam (H II (Berckenrode) 5)
Willem Louis, Prince of Nassau, (NH(Hondius) 241), and Floris II, Count of Culemborch (H (Delff) 69)
1626
1626
1626
1627
Hendrick Hondius and Willem Jacobsz Delff
Balthasar Florisz van Berckenrode and Evert Simonssen Hamersfelt
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Privilege of 1622 extended to additionally cover the printing and selling of his portraits for 8 years
Hendrick Hondius and Willem Jacobsz Delff
Balthasar Florisz 7 years van Berckenrode and Evert Simonssen Hamersfelt
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Jacques de Gheyn Jan van de Velde Jan van de Velde Jan van de Velde 8 years (dat hy (van de and Jodocus velde) t’selve sal Hondius hebben te doen by directie van Jacques de Gein)
Pagina 335
Funeral Procession of Prince Maurits (H XXXIII (Velde) 82-101)
14:08
1625
04-12-2006
19 February 1627, Boek 3186, fol. 71v.
11 November 1626, Boek 3185, fol. 457; Acten 12303, fol. 191
27 October 1626, Boek 3185, fol. 421v. and Acten 12303, fol. 186
Requested to 14 February 1626, deliver one im- Boek 3185, fol. 58 pression on satin Privilege of 1622
5 July 1625, 28 July 1626, 30 September 1626, RGP 223, p. 447, no. 2546 (Boek 3184, fol. 267; boek 3185, fol. 288-288v., and fol. 392; Acten 12303, fol. 124)
montiasdeel3
336 | in his milieu
King of France
Anna of Austria, Queen of France (NH (Hondius) 214)
Map of Holland and West Friesland
Marie de Medici, Queen Mother of France (NH (Hondius) 227)
Portrait of the Prince of Orange
Charles I, King of England and Ernst Casimir, Count of Nassau-Dietz (H (Delff) 2 and 51)
Philip Willem , Prince of NassauOrange (NH (Hondius) 234)
1627
1627
1627
1628
1628
1628
1628
Publisher
Privilege Holder
Hendrick Hondius
Hendrick Hondius
Hendrick Hondius
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Length, purpose, and amount of fine attached to the privilege
Hendrick Hondius
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Hendrick Hondius The request “is gedifficulteert”
Hendrick Hondius
Henricus Hondius Henricus Hondius Henricus Hondius (from Amsterdam)
Hendrick Hondius Hendrick Hondius
Hendrick Hondius Hendrick Hondius Hendrick Hondius
Engraver
Daniel Mytens Willem Jacobsz (Charles I) and Delff Michiel van Mierevelt (Ernst Casimir)
Designer or draftsman
Pagina 336
Title and date of the print
14:08
Date of privilege
04-12-2006
Other specifications and notes
27 July 1628, Boek 3187, fol. 402v.
12 July 1628 Boek 3187, fol. 359v.
7 January 1628, Boek 3187, fol. 240
7 January 1628, Boek 3187, fol. 9
26 and 27 July 1627, Boek 3186, fol. 322 and fol. 323v.; Acten 12303, fol. 241
26 July 1627, Boek 3186, fol. 321v.
23 April 1627, Boek 3186, fol. 166
Archival References
montiasdeel3
sleeping caps, city views, and state funerals | 337
Christian IV, King of Denmark (H XVI (S.de Passe) 43)
1629
Piet Hein, General Jan Daemsz of the West India de Veth Company (H IX (Willem Hondius) Bl. 39)
1629
Hendrick Hondius
Hendrick Hondius
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Hendrick Hondius
Willem Hondius Hendrick Hondius Hendrick Hondius
Hendrick Hondius
Willem Hondius
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Willem Hondius
Simon de Passe
Crispyn de Passe Crispyn de Passe 6 years
Jacob Hoefnagel Hendrick Hondius Hendrick Hondius Hendrick Hondius
Amalia, Countess of Solms (NH (Hondius) 213)
1628
Maria Eleonora, Queen of Sweden (NH (Hondius) 226)
Johann Ernest, Michiel van Duke of Saxony Mierevelt (H (W. Hondius) Bl. 42
1628
1629
Philip Willem, Prince of NassauOrange (H (Delff) 65)
1628
Pagina 337
Willem, Count of Everard Maes Nassau-Leck (H IX (W. Hondius) Bl. 64)
14:08
1628
04-12-2006
On 23 January the representatives order an impression on satin with rollers for each member; 23 delivered
3 May 1629, Boek 3188, fol. 270; Acten 12303, fol. 329
20 March 1629, Boek 3188, fol. 171
13 and 23 January and 14 February 1629, Boek 3188, fol. 27v., 48v., and 98, and Acten 12303, fol. 317
9 December 1628, Boek 3187, fol. 728
10 November 1628, Boek 3187, fol. 661
28 September 1628, Boek 3187, fol. 556
27 August 1628, Boek 3187, fol. 444
montiasdeel3
338 | in his milieu
Frederik Hendrik, Michiel van the Eldest Son of Mierevelt the King of Bohemia (H V (Delff) 12)
Frederick V, King Anthony van of Bohemia (H IX Dyck (Willem Hondius) Bl. 37) Michiel van Mierevelt
Amalia, Countess of Solms (H V (Delff) 83
Plan of ’s-Hertogenbosch
Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia (H. (W. Hondius) Bl. 34
Portrait of Hen- Daniel Mytens rietta Maria, Queen of England (H V (Delff) 3)
1629
1629
1629
1629
1629
1629
Designer or draftsman
Pagina 338
Title and date of the print
14:08
Date of privilege
04-12-2006
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Willem Hondius
Hendrick Hondius
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Willem Hondius
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Engraver
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Publisher
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Hendrick Hondius
Hendrick Hondius
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Hendrick Hondius
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Privilege Holder
Length, purpose, and amount of fine attached to the privilege
On 31 October he received 90 guilders for the delivery of 18 impressions printed on satin
Other specifications and notes
22 December 1629, Boek 3188, fol. 637v.
1 December 1629, Boek 3188, fol. 614v.
13 October 1629, Boek 3188, fol. 556v.
20 June 1629, Boek 3188, fol. 363v.
31 May 1629, Boek 3188, fol. 327
4 May and 29 and 31 October 1629, Boek 3188, fol. 272 and 577; Ordonnantie Boek 12505, fol. 361v.
Archival References
montiasdeel3
sleeping caps, city views, and state funerals | 339
Magdalena de Passe
Daniel van den Bremden
Henry IV, King of France, 1630 (NH (Hondius) 223)
Plan of the Siege Theodorus Niels, of ’s-Hertogenbosch Ingenieur, and (H XXIV (S. Adriaen van de Saverij) 10; Venne H II (Berckenrode) 8; FM 1619)
Elizabeth Queen of Michiel van Bohemia (H V Mierevelt (Delff) 11)
1630
1630
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Salomon Saverij and Balthasar Florisz van Berckenrode
Hendrick Hondius
Map of the Siege Jan Cornelisz Cornelis of ’s-Hertogenbosch van Rodenburch Danckertsz (FM 1605)
1630
1630
Portraits printed on linen canvas and other materials
1630
Pagina 339
Triumphal Chariot Adriaen van de of Frederik Hen- Venne drik of Orange (H III (Bremden) 1)
14:08
1630
04-12-2006
Hendrick Hondius
Cornelis Danckertsz
Magdalena de Passe
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Theodorus Niels Theodorus Niels
Cornelis Danckertsz
Magdalena de Passe
Adriaen van de Venne
7 years on 29 March, but the privilege was rescinded on June 8
3 years
15 years
He received 50 pounds for dedication to the States General and presentation of 2 impressions
12 June 1630, Boek 3189, fol. 270
9 April, 22 May, 1 and 8 June 1630, Boek 3189, fol. 161v., 238, 255v., and 265
6 April 1630, Boek 3189, fol. 156
29 March, 9 April, 22, May, 1 and 8 June 1630, Boek 3189, fol. 145v.,161v., 238, 255v., 265; Acten 12304, fol. 14-14v.
March 26 and 27 1630, Boek 3189, fol. 142; Ordonnantie boek 12304, fol. 13v.-14
25 January and 15 February 1630, Boek 3189, fol. 44; Ordonnantie Boek 12505, fol. 368; Acten 12304, fol. 5v.
montiasdeel3
340 | in his milieu
Frederik Hendrik Adriaen van de and the Counts of Venne Nassau
Maurits, Prince of Orange
Three men’s caps with illustrations of Frederick V, King of Bohemia, Sigismund III, King of Poland, Wladislaus Sigismund of Poland, and a representation of the city of Olinda with the images of Dirck van Waerdenburch and Hendrick Lonck
Duke of Nieuburch
1630
1630
1631
1631
Designer or draftsman
Pagina 340
Title and date of the print
14:08
Date of privilege
04-12-2006
Adriaen van de Venne
Publisher
Adriaen van de Venne
Privilege Holder
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Magdalena de Passe
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Magdalena de Passe
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Magdalena de Passe
Hendrick Hondius Hendrick Hondius Hendrick Hondius
Engraver
15 years
Length, purpose, and amount of fine attached to the privilege
Dedication to the States General also approved; impression on satin shown
Other specifications and notes
18 March 1631, Boek 3190, fol. 118
28 January 1631, Boek 3190, fol. 45v.-46
11 October 1630 Boek 3189, fol. 499v.
23 August 1630, Boek 3189, fol. 392v. and Acten 12304, fol. 30
Archival References
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sleeping caps, city views, and state funerals | 341
Theodoor van Weerdenburg, Commander of the East India Company, Governor of Brazil and Pernambuco (H IX (W. Hondius) Bl. 61
1631
Pagina 341
Nine sleeping caps with illustrations of the King of Sweden on horseback with the Battle, the King of Sweden Riding in Triumph, the Taking of Grieffenhagen by his Majesty of Sweden, the Scene (Tonneel) of the King of Sweden with Justice and Religion with Envy under His Feet, the King of Sweden with the Cities That He Has Won around Him, the Four Parts of the Day, the Four Elements, the Infante with Count Hendrick van den Berch with the Duke of Aerschot, the Crowning of the King with the Throne
14:08
1631
04-12-2006
Magdalena de Passe
Magdalena de Passe
The print is sig- Hendrick Hondius Hendrick Hondius ned Willem Hondius but the resolutions state that Hendrick Hondius is the engraver
Magdalena de Passe
5 April 1631, Boek 3190,
28 March 1631, Boek 3190, fol. 137v.
montiasdeel3
342 | in his milieu
Plan of the Siege of Maastricht
1633
Daniel cl*tzart
Frederick V, King Michiel van of Bohemia (H V Mierevelt (Delff) 10)
1632
Map of the City and Siege of Maastricht (H XXXVIII (Visscher) 73)
Three men’s sleeping caps with illustrations of the recent taking of the Spanish fleet on the 13th of September, the Capture of Leipzig that took place between the king of Sweden and Tilly , and four Sheperdesses, each in a roundel
1631
1632
Sophia Hedwig, Michiel van Princess of Bruns- Mierevelt wick-Luneberg, Wife of Ernst Casimir (H V (Delff) 15)
1631
Designer or draftsman
Pagina 342
Title and date of the print
14:08
Date of privilege
04-12-2006
Claes Jansz Visscher
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Magdalena de Passe
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Publisher
Daniel cl*tzart
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Magdalena de Passe
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Privilege Holder
Hendrick Hondius Hendrick Hondius Hendrick Hondius
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Magdalena de Passe
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Engraver
8 years; fine of 150 guilders
Length, purpose, and amount of fine attached to the privilege
Other specifications and notes
22 January 1633, Boek 3192, fol. 54
November 1 1632, Acten 12304, fol. 131
22 June 1632, Boek 3191, fol. 296
15 November 1631, Boek 3190, fol. 630v.
7 October 1631, Boek 3190, fol. 545
Archival References
montiasdeel3
sleeping caps, city views, and state funerals | 343
Plan of Maastricht
Frederik Hendrik, Michiel van Prince of Orange Mierevelt “van vivus op een plaat gesteecken,” 1634 (H V (Delff) 62)
King of Sweden Michiel van (H V (Delff) 87) van Mierevelt and Willem Louis, Graeff van Nassau (H V (Delff) 50)
Willem I, Prince of Nassau-Orange (NH (Hondius) 238)
Cardinal Richelieu, 1634 (NH (Hondius) 235)
Map, or Representation (een caerte offe affteyckeninge) of Bergen Op Zoom (H XXIV (Swaef)1)
1633
1633
1633
1633
1634
1634
Pagina 343
Plan printed on canvas (seecker caerte gedruct op douck)
14:08
1633
04-12-2006
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Willem Jacobsz Delff
The author responsible for representing the Map of Maastricht
Samuel de Swaef Samuel de Swaef Samuel de Swaef 6 years; fine of 300 carolus guilders
Hendrick Hondius Hendrick Hondius Hendrick Hondius
Hendrick Hondius Hendrick Hondius Hendrick Hondius
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Willem Jacobsz Delff
The author responsible for representing the Map of Maastricht
Pieter Vinckboons
18 July 1634, Boek 3193, fol. 363; Ordonnantie boek 12304, fol. 265v.-266
11 March 1634, Boek 3193, fol. 133v.
29 July 1633, Boek 3192, fol. 454v.
2 May 1633, Boek 3192, fol. 282v.
16 April 1633, Boek 3192, fol. 251v.
13 March 1633, Boek 3192, fol. 170v.
27 January 1633, Boek 3192, fol. 69v. and Ordonantie Boek 12304, fol. 140
montiasdeel3
344 | in his milieu
Charles Louis of Michiel van Bavaria, Count Mierevelt Palatine, 1634 (H V (Delff) 67) and Henry, Count de Bergh, 1634 (H V (Delff) 6)
Map of the West Indies including all that the company has now occupied
Willem II, Prince Michiel van of Nassau-Orange Mierevelt (H (Delff) 64)
Map of the Fort of ’s-Gravenweert oft Schenckenschans
General privilege for 9 years
1634
1635
1635
1636
1636
Designer or draftsman
Pagina 344
Title and date of the print
14:08
Date of privilege
04-12-2006
Pieter Soutman
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Hendrick Hondius (int cooper heeft laten snyden)
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Engraver
Pieter Soutman
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Publisher
Length, purpose, and amount of fine attached to the privilege
Pieter Soutman
1 August 1635, Boek 3194, fol. 387
30 August 1634 Boek 3193, fol. 436
Archival References
13 June 1636, Acten 12305, fol. 51v.
Impressions with 4 August 1635, rollers and frin- Boek 3194, fol. ges are purchased 394v. for each member of the committee
Other specifications and notes
9 years to publish He must present 3 September 1636, his portraits, or an impression of Boek 3195, fol. other prints each to the States 626v. General for approval
Jacob Sleyp 7 years; fine of (ingenieur) and 300 guilders Quiryn Lobbrechts, (controlleur vande fortificatien)
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Hendrick Hondius
Willem Jacobsz Delff
Privilege Holder
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sleeping caps, city views, and state funerals | 345
Map of Brazil in Four Parts
Wladislaw IV, King of Poland (H (W. Hondius) Bl. 66
The Massacre of the Innocents (H XVII (Pontius) 5)
Map of the Hoogheemraadschap of Rijnland
1637
1637
1643
1647
1602
Six Spanish Galleys Conquered by the Dutch and English Fleet on the North Sea (H XVII (Rem) 1)
Addendum
Wladislaw IV, King of Poland
1637
Peter Paul Rubens
Pagina 345
Unspecified
14:08
1636
04-12-2006
Philips Vinckboons
Johannes Rem
Paulus Pontius down
Willem Jansz
Johannes Rem
Dyckgrave and Hooge Heem raden van Rhynlandt
Paulus Pontius
Willem Hondius Willem Hondius Willem Hondius
Philips Vinckboons
Henricus Hondius Henricus Hondius Henricus Hondius
Pieter Soutman
5 years; fine of 100 guilders
25 years; to have cut and printed and published
Request turned
11 years; fine of 300 carolus guilders
Request turned down
8 November 1602, RGP 92, p. 323
17 June 1647, Boek 3253, fol. 347
3 January 1643, Boek 3249, fol. 4
26 May 1637, Boek 3196, fol. 218
4 May 1637, Boek 3196, fol. 184; Acten 12305, fol. 126
21 April 1637, Boek 3196, fol. 160
22 October 1636, Boek 3195, fol. 764
montiasdeel3
346 | in his milieu
Entry of the Army of the States General into Flanders (H II (Berckenrode) 2, or 5?)
Eight Galleys of Spinola in the Battle near Sluis (H XVII (Rem) 2)
View of Middelburg (H XXVI (Schillemans) 4)
Print of the terri- Adriaen van de ble condition of Venne the country under Alva and a Portrait of William of Orange (H V (Delff) 55
View of Utrecht (H XXXVI (Verstraelen) 2?)
1603
1603
1616
1622
1625
Designer or draftsman
Pagina 346
Title and date of the print
14:08
Date of privilege
04-12-2006
Willem Delff de Venne
Engraver
Jan Pietersz van de Venne
Publisher
Length, purpose, and amount of fine attached to the privilege
Jan Verstraelen (van Stralen)
Jan Pietersz van de Venne
François Schillemans
Johannes Rem
4 years; fine of 150 guilders
7 years; fine of 200 guilders
6 years; fine of 100 pounds
4 years; fine of 100 guilders
Floris Balthasarsz 4 years; fine of van Berckenrode 100 guilders
Privilege Holder
Other specifications and notes
7 March 1625, RGP 223, p. 283
22 July 1622, RGP 187, p.573-4
15 October 1616, RGP 151, p. 709
28 June 1603, RGP 92, p. 649
28 June 1603, RGP 92, p. 649
Archival References
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14:09
Pagina 347
Piety and Splendor: The Art Collection of Antwerp Burgomaster Adriaan Hertsen natasja peeters Koninklijk Museum van het Leger en de Krijgsgeschiedenis, Brussels
maximilaan p.j. martens University of Ghent, Ghent
Introduction When Adriaan Hertsen, former burgomaster of Antwerp, died on 11 January 1532 at the age of about fifty, he left behind a widow, many children, and an immense house full of art and other luxury objects. The notes of the clerks who made up the inventory of Hertsen’s worldly possessions provide an intimate view into the interior of the deceased’s large townhouse, or huizinghe. This document is also one of the richest and most complete early sixteenthcentury civic probate inventories to have surfaced thus far. The present contribution aims to clarify the nature of Hertsen’s art collection, to put it into a broader context by comparing it with other contemporary private collections, and to sketch the owner’s profile as a collector. Recent research has shed much light on the consumption of art and luxury objects by Antwerp citizens and foreign resident merchants during the 1530s and 1540s.1 The present study owes much to the interpretative methods introduced to art history during the last two decades by John Michael Montias2 and others,3 which allow for a systematic quantitative and qualitative analysis of people’s worldly goods.
Biographical Information Adriaan Hertsen was probably born around 1480. His parents were Jacob Hertsen and Johanna Schoyte. After the death of Jacob Hertsen, Johanna married Peter van der Dilft,4 and upon the latter’s death, Adriaan van de Werve.5 Adriaan Hertsen obtained the degree of Master of Law from the University of Orléans, where he was enrolled in 1502. On 18 October 1508, he married Kathlyne van Amstel (d. 1554). The couple had at least eight children: Jacob, Aart, Adriaan, Adriana, Ysebrandt, Willem, Margriet, and Katlyne. The last two were still very young at the time their father died and the inventory was taken. piety and splendor | 347
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Pagina 348
Hertsen was a member of the Holy Ghost mensa (H. Geesttafel) in the Church of Our Lady,6 and in 1530 he was head (hoofdman) of the civic militia of the Old Longbow (Oude Handboog).7 When Hertsen died in 1532, the city enjoyed an unprecedented prosperity, financially and artistically.8 Each year, Antwerp was managed by two burgomasters: one intra muros, and one extra muros.9 In the years 1527, 1529, and 1530, Adriaan served as the burgomaster intra muros. Together with the burgomaster extra muros, he administered the affairs of the municipality. In his role Hertsen would have been responsible for judicial aspects of the government, overseeing the distribution of requests for adjudication and the trials. He was alderman nearly every year from 1512 to 1519, and then again from 1521 to 1530. Hertsen probably became active in city administration through his mother’s family, which boasted many eminent patricians. His mother was probably the sister of Aart Schoyte, an alderman and burgomaster intra muros, and one of the most influential Antwerp magistrates of the sixteenth century.10 Like most other burgomasters and aldermen of Antwerp, Adriaan Hertsen and his family were intertwined with other important families, such as the Schoytes, the Van Lieres, Van der Dilfts, and the Van de Werves, who supplied many of its members to occupy functions in the city’s administration.11 Indeed, through his mother’s three “power-marriages,” Adriaan developed connections with the Van der Dilft and Van de Werve families, which must have encased him snugly in the wide-ranging web of reciprocal familial relationships of the political Catholic elite during these years. Although a substantial number of documents in the aldermen’s registers survive for Hertsen, others, such as notarial acts, are lacking; for example, no last will and testament, or account of Hertsen’s total real estate possessions has been found.12 Some sixty documents in the aldermen’s registers do give partial information about his financial dealings, including his purchase of real estate from 1514 to the year of his death. From this, it becomes clear that Hertsen lived in the affluent quarter of town, although unfortunately the street name and even the name of the house are not mentioned: it is thus not possible to pin down the location and immediate neighborhood of the house.13
The Inventory of 1532 The inventory of Hertsen’s goods, which comprises 105 folios, was drawn up over several days between 15 February and 28 March 1532. This was not an exceptionally long period of time, given the large size of the house. Furthermore, also included in the list are objects in Hertsen’s two summer houses at Lillo and Hoboken, then the countryside around Antwerp.14 The first part of the inventory consists of 57 densely written folios. It begins with the items on the ground floor in the main house, and ends provisionally on 8 March,
348 | in his milieu
montiasdeel4
04-12-2006
14:10
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having gone through twenty-four rooms. The second part of the inventory runs over 16 folios, and deals with three further rooms of the main house, as well as fifteen rooms of the new back house. It also covers the garden, the cellars, and the new small second house at Hoboken, which had eight rooms and spare but still luxurious furnishings. The third part consists of 3 folios, and describes the small stone house at Lillo. The fourth part continues in the main house at Antwerp, picking up where it left off downstairs, and numbers 29 folios. It partially treats new objects in rooms already recorded in the first part, but adds eleven more unrecorded rooms. No values, or names of artists are mentioned in the inventory, which is typical of most Antwerp sixteenth-century inventories. Our focus here is on the luxury objects, and, more specifically, the paintings and sculptures that were dispersed throughout the many rooms of the main house. It must be emphasized, however, that these constitute only a small part of this extraordinarily rich trove. The abundance of silver,15 glass, diamonds, gold, crystal, toys and dolls, coins, medallions, linen and clothing, children’s clothing, jewelry, furniture (also children’s furniture), and tapestries, as well as all the other domestic and functional goods, can offer much information to specialists in material culture.
Hertsen’s Townhouse in Antwerp From the description of the suites of rooms and the layout of the floors it appears that the construction pattern of Hertsen’s house was similar to that of other large Antwerp townhouses, although few have been well researched, and none has been preserved.16 Indeed, Hertsen’s huizinghe was an extended complex of long wings on three storeys. It had different cellars and many attics, a dining room, a kitchen, a house chapel, or capella domestica, living rooms, bedrooms, offices (comptoirs), a study room (studoir), maids’ rooms, and even a room that functioned as a toilet (pis kamerken, or privaet). It also had a back house with a bakery, kitchens, and bath houses (stoofkamers). The complex was probably grouped asymmetrically around a courtyard, or a garden, as was the custom: the inventory shows that there was indeed a garden with a summerhouse. The main house was most probably late medieval in style, as stepped gables, steep saddle roofs, and Renaissance decoration were only introduced to new private homes between the 1540s and 1560s. A gate opened onto the street, and another gate on the other side of the building led into the garden, or possibly into an inner court.
A Glimpse into the Interior of Hertsen’s Home Twenty of the thirty-eight rooms in the main house contained art as part of
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the interior decoration. Four of the fifteen rooms at the back house contained art objects. Besides being richly furnished with cupboards, beds, and chairs (tables were then still usually folded), many rooms boasted sculptures, narrative tapestries and embroideries, a selection of luxury books, some historical prints, and especially paintings. Before embarking on a quantitative analysis, we shall offer a concise description of some of the more remarkable rooms to provide a glimpse into the sumptuous interior of Hertsen’s house. In the wine cellar adjacent to the kitchen, there was a map of Oostland. In the kitchen hung a Virgin Mary, an image especially venerated in Antwerp, a painted Adoration of the Kings above the pantry, a scene of The Rich Miser, and a painted plate with the Head of St. John. There was also a lavishly furnished chapel at street level, where, according to the inventory, Mass was read daily. The chapel contained a polychromed lead fountain, tapestries, embroidered altar cloths, a chalice, and an antependium. Some liturgical objects and clothing were also kept in a coffer on the first floor. Besides this, there were many sculptures: a small wooden crucifix, two wooden statues of Christ, one St. Margaret, a sculpted altarpiece of the Birth of Christ, and one alabaster statue of the Virgin.17 This chapel was also decorated with paintings: one depicting the Virgin, another representing the Adoration, one of the Queen of Sheba before Solomon, one of Helen, and a portrait of the collector’s widow, Kathlyne van Amstel. Displayed in the chapel were a St. John’s Head mounted on a crown, an image of the Coronation of Emperor Charles V, and also a Portrait of Charles V. In the small room behind the chapel hung a print showing the Peace between Francis I, King of France, and Emperor Charles V. On the first floor, a large room contained a coffer with children’s toys, an ornate coconut beaker, and a painting depicting the Destruction of Jerusalem by Emperor Titus. Above the fireplace hung an Adoration of the Kings on canvas, an oil painting of the Nativity, and the heraldry of the Duke of Bavaria. On a treasury chest, or tresoor, stood a sculpted Passion and a gilt statue of the Virgin. In the bedroom, besides a painting of the Lamentation, was a bellows with a nude woman painted on it, probably a Venus. The door was covered with a tapestry depicting an Annunciation. In an upstairs room, which was probably situated above the chapel, some accessories for the Mass and liturgical dress were kept in a coffer. Among the items were a Bible, a damask chasuble embroidered in gold, a bell, Nuremburg candelabras, a silver gilt chalice, silver ampullae, a silver holy water vessel, stoles, maniples, and others. The coffer also contained a parchment, The Entry and Coronation of Emperor Charles V. In this room there were also a box and a bag of books belonging to Jacob Hertsen the Younger, the eldest son who was studying at the University of Siena at that time. The walls were decorated with paintings of Mary in the Sun and the Trinity. A large tablecloth, à la façon des Turcs, is mentioned as being made by the widow. The room also boasted some curiosi-
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ties, among them, peaco*ck feathers, a cup of exotic hardwood, another coconut beaker, and, oddly, two silk altar cushions depicting little monkeys. In the room above the dining room was a map of Brabant, and in the large upstairs front room a map of Brunswick and a sculpture of Christ wearing a chasuble, probably made of cloth. The rooms under the roof, as well as the maids’ room, were decorated as well. In the room above the kitchen hung a paper map of Venice, a canvas showing Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, the coat of arms of Cleves, and a panel painting of St. Veronica. In the room behind the office were books, including a large Flemish Bible, printed by Willem Vorsterman in 1528. In a room next to the dining room hung a canvas Portrait of Emperor Charles V, a written chronicle of Brabant, and one describing the Royal Entry of Emperor Charles V.
Hertsen’s Collection in Context We will now zoom in on the paintings, sculptures, and other luxury objects dispersed throughout the many rooms of the house, and attempt to place Hertsen’s art collection in a broader context. Following this section and to conclude the article, we will offer an interpretation of Hertsen as a collector. It should be noted that Hertsen’s inventory is exceptional for its wealth of detail and its abundance of luxury objects. Few other early probate inventories of patricians exist for comparison.18 It is, however, possible to compare it with another rich source of information: the series of judicial inventories for the years 1532 to 1548.19 Like probate inventories, these are lists of belongings, but they are different in that they were not recorded for the benefit of the heirs of the deceased owner, but because the owner had run into debt, or had been evicted. The belongings were inventoried for the purpose of being sold at the second-hand markets. Three caveats are important to keep in mind here. First, some inventories were compiled up to the amount of the debt, and may thus be incomplete. In addition, the debtor would have had the motive to hide some valuables elsewhere, as his possessions were about to be confiscated. For probate inventories, on the contrary, it would have been especially important for the descendants of the deceased to record every object, paper, and bond to avoid mismanagement of the inheritance by wardens and other family members. Second, a probate inventory shows the possessions collected over a lifetime. This implies the presence of old and new goods alike. It could contain objects – or family heirlooms – that were bought, or acquired many years earlier: the picture one gets is thus not exclusively a marker for contemporary consumption, or fashion. A judicial inventory usually includes goods that would have been acquired over a shorter period of time, but it could also comprise older
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goods. Third, the judicial inventories have been preserved as a nearly complete series for the 1530s and 1540s, and thus show trends and evolution in consumption; this is not possible for the rare probate inventories preserved for these same years. Notarial archives, containing wills, inventories, as well as many other pertinent documents, were of a private nature. In the sixteenth century, notaries were not required to deposit their papers with the city administration; the few Antwerp notarial registers that have been preserved for this period are thus exceptional. Despite the somewhat dissimilar origins and aims of judicial and probate inventories, it is nevertheless interesting to view Hertsen’s art possessions against the backdrop derived from the analysis of judicial inventories. During the period 1532 to 1548, 198 judicial inventories yielded 1,496 art objects (or, on average, 7.5 art objects per inventory). Hertsen’s house contained 133 art objects. Within the category of very large houses,20 Hertsen’s collection contained more than 6 times their average of 21 art objects. His collection thus deviates from the general picture: overall, it appears to be one of the largest collections recorded for the period. Twenty of the thirty-eight rooms of the main house recorded in Hertsen’s inventory displayed art objects. Some 75 objects were found upstairs and 58 downstairs. Between 1532 and 1548, art objects in Antwerp homes generally were kept downstairs, either in the front room, or at the back. In Hertsen’s house, 45 art objects were displayed in front rooms, mainly in the house chapel, while 77 were at the back of the house. The rest were at the back of the house and in a trunk. Specifically, 6 paintings were mentioned above fireplaces, or mantelpieces (voor de schouw). The number and percentages of art objects found in the judicial inventories and in Hertsen’s houses are summarized in the following table: Table 1. Number and percentages of art objects recorded in judicial inventories and in Hertsen’s probate inventory. Categories
General 1532-48
Paintings Sculptures Prints Tapestries Others
1,022 328 28 41 77
Hertsen 1532 65 28 6 21 13
General 1532-48 % 68 22 2 3 5
Hertsen 1532 % 48.8 21 4.5 15.7 9.7
Hertsen had about 20% fewer paintings than in the general sample, but this is made up for by the ample collection of tapestries, which is 12% above the average. Moreover, the tapestries probably represented a much larger value.
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In this respect, he conformed to the taste of his social layer: tapestries were much more expensive than paintings, and thus they were the prime luxury objects during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Hertsen’s tapestries depicted flowers, angels, a St. Veronica, an Annunciation, and a landscape. Among the books in Hertsen’s collection – besides many functional books, or study books belonging to the son – some were on parchment. A few Books of Hours are mentioned, one even kept in a satin case. In addition the burgomaster owned a Flemish Vorsterman Bible published in 1528.21 This was the second complete Flemish edition of the Bible after the Liesveldt Bible. It was lavishly illustrated with woodcuts by Jan Swart van Groningen, among others. There was also a book on the chapter of the Golden Fleece, the Habsburg aristocratic order that had met recently in Antwerp. The prints show views of cities, or regions such as Brabant, yet there was also a charta maxima. Others reflected political events such as the Crowning of Emperor Charles V in 1520, which was framed, and the Peace between the King of France and the Emperor of 1529. Remarkably, Hertsen also owned a parchment print Triumfus Bononienis, or The Triumphal Parade of Charles V and Pope Clement VII in Bologna, which occurred on 24 February 1530.22 Small sculptures were still a popular feature in Antwerp interiors of the 1530s.23 Of the twenty-eight sculptures Hertsen owned, twenty were wooden, three made of alabaster, one of glass, and one of lead (a polychromed fountain). All the sculptures were religious: ten depicted the Virgin Mary; seven Christ; and the others depicted the Adoration,24 the Passion, St. Margaret, and St. John. As to the dimensions of the sculptures, four of them were mentioned explicitly as small. Four statues of the Virgin Mary were gilt (one of these could be enclosed behind two doors with red glass) as was one Mary in the Sun and an Adoration. The most important art category was paintings, of which Hertsen owned sixty-five. Of these, twenty-one were on panel, twenty on canvas,25 two on parchment, one on paper, and twenty-one are on an unknown support. One Adoration was on a lynen bert, that is, canvas glued onto board.26 Five are explicitly mentioned as painted in oil. Not much information was conveyed on the dimensions of the paintings: only once does the inventory mention the presence of a small painting of the Virgin. Two had curtains in front of them, a painting of the Virgin with black caffa curtains, and a painting of Christ and Mary Magdalen with green wool curtains. The breakdown of the information from the inventory by iconographical category and subject is summarized in the following table:
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Table 2. Number and percentages of categories of luxury objects recorded in judicial inventories and in Hertsen’s probate inventory. Categories
General 1532-48
Painting, religious, N.T. 269 Painting, religious, O.T. 48 Painting, devotional 254 Painting, mythology 24 Painting, allegory 41 Painting, history 41 Painting, portrait 38 Painting, landscape 10 Painting, genre 32 Maps 9 Coat of arms 11 Others 138 Unknown 107 Total 1,022
Hertsen 1532
General 1532-48 %
Hertsen 1532 %
18
26
28
2 19 1 0 3 5 0 1 4 1 0 11 65
5 25 2 4 4 4 1 3 1 1 14 10 100
3 29 2 0 4 8 0 2 6 3 0 15 100
Hertsen’s collection conforms quite well to the general picture of Antwerp collections in the period 1532-48. There are slightly more New Testament and devotional scenes, and there are somewhat fewer Old Testament, historical, and genre scenes. But in his collection there are twice as many portraits (especially of Emperor Charles V), and six times as many maps; only in these two categories does the collection really diverge from the norm. Devotional painting gained importance during the 1530s and 1540s. Paintings of the Virgin Mary were present in almost every single collection, even in the most humble ones. Hertsen owned six paintings depicting the Virgin; unfortunately, we cannot tell whether, or not they were of the popular Virgin and Infant Christ type, by such painters as Quinten Metsys, Joos Van Cleve, or their contemporaries. Some of Hertsen’s devotional images can be considered old-fashioned, for example, Mary in the Sun (not found in any other inventory of the sample), and the Holy Trinity, of which there were three, probably resembling a Gnadestuhl.27 Were these family heirlooms? Some other paintings could also refer to fifteenth-century imagery, for example, the aensicht Christus metten croone, or the face of Christ with the crown of thorns, also known as Vera Effigies, of which Hertsen owned two. They may have resembled those painted by Jan van Eyck, Dirk, or Albrecht Bouts.28 Devotional images of St. Gregory, St. Veronica, St. John the Baptist, and St. Christopher were popular, and all were present in Hertsen’s house. One painting was explicitly listed as
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a Head of St. John the Baptist, a theme preserved in copies after Dieric Bouts and Quinten Metsys.29 During the 1530s, New Testament scenes were the preferred genre, somewhat more common than devotional images. Hertsen owned slightly more New Testament scenes than found in the general sample. The Adoration of the Magi was the most often represented theme in Antwerp painting of the first decades of the sixteenth century. Therefore it should not come as a surprise that Hertsen owned seven such paintings. Often, these Adorations were placed above the fireplace, or mantelpiece, as was the case twice in Hertsen’s house. Hertsen’s other themes from the New Testament included a depiction of Hell, the Annunciation, the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Miser on wood, a Lamentation of Christ on canvas, an Assumption of Christ on canvas, and a diptych with the Assumption of Christ and the Last Judgment. Qualitative information can be gleaned from the absence, or presence of certain subjects. Although Hertsen owned few paintings from the New Testament depicting semi-profane themes like the Calling of St. Matthew, he did own the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Miser, an uncommon subject in the judicial inventories. Old Testament scenes only gained popularity after the 1550s: amounting to only 5% in general between 1532 and 1548, with Hertsen owning 3%, their popularity rose to 10% in general in the 1560s. This was probably due to their appeal to Protestants on the one hand, and to the humanist public on the other. These later examples usually also feature large semi-nude women in an antique manner. In absolute numbers, Hertsen owned two paintings with an Old Testament theme: Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and the Ten Commandments. The first is very atypical in Antwerp inventories of the time; the second might have possibly been either a board with the commandments written on it, or perhaps more likely in the collection of a Catholic, a representation of Moses with the two tablets. Historical, mythological, and allegorical scenes do not seem to have had wide appeal for Antwerp collectors in general, amounting to 4%, 2%, and 4%, respectively, in the judicial inventories.30 Mythologies and allegories were probably painted for foreign merchants living in Antwerp, rather than for rich native burgers. Hertsen’s taste was no different: he owned 4% historical scenes, 2% mythological scenes, and no allegories. The first two paintings were on parchment and represented the Royal Entry of Emperor Charles V, and the Coronation of Emperor Charles V, a theme represented in a print as well. Hertsen also possessed a painting showing the Destruction of Jerusalem by Emperor Titus. Genre scenes among the Antwerp collectors were still rare at 3% in 1532; but these increased during the following decades. Hertsen had 1.5%, in absolute numbers, one genre piece showing flowers, more specifically referring to the Gillyflower (Goudblomme), one of the chambers of the Rhetoric
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of Antwerp, which presented festivities and annual contests. That he owned a panel with its depiction might well indicate his membership in that association. Indeed, strictly speaking, this panel is not a genre scene. As already mentioned, Herstens’ collection diverges from those of his contemporaries on two points: portraits and maps. He owned twice as many portraits (especially of Emperor Charles V) and six times as many maps. Regarding the latter, in general, between 1532 and 1548, the average was 1%, while Hertsen had 6%. The four painted maps showed Braunschweig, Oostland, Venice, and one unknown place. These four painted maps and the printed maps, the charta maxima and the map of Brabant, testify to Hertsen’s professional interest in the outside world. At 8%, portraits form the third largest category after devotional and New Testament painting, whereas in the years between 1532 and 1548, the average was 4%. Family, or owners’ portraits figure only in a very minor quantity in confiscation inventories. Aside from the sentimental value that these would have had for owners, thus keeping them out of the lists, such portraits probably held little interest for the second-hand buyers.31 Yet royal portraits in general were uncommon in Antwerp civic collections in the 1530s and 1540s.32 In addition to the portrait of Hertsen’s wife, there were portraits of Emperor Charles V.33 This alone makes Hertsen’s collection stand out. It does seem strange, however, that he did not have more portraits of himself and his family members. Lastly, Hertsen owned two coats of arms, or 3% compared to 1% found in other civic collections. Presumably Hertsen had a political, or professional interest in owning the coats of arms of Cleve and of the Duke of Bavaria. His possession of these may also be connected with the then recently held chapter of the Golden Fleece in Antwerp, with which Hertsen may have been involved professionally. It must be stressed that in many rooms there were also textiles, such as cushions, that were adorned with the coat of arms of his wife, Kathlyne van Amstel.
Profile of Hertsen as a Collector Adriaan Hertsen was without a doubt a materialist: he surrounded himself with earthly goods. As mentioned earlier, this essay is only the first examination of his rich inventory, and it has concentrated principally on his art work and other luxury objects. There is still much information for the historian of economics (on the coins, silverware, and bonds) and for specialists in material culture (books, toys, furniture, and clothing). It appears that Hertsen was one of the most important Antwerp collectors of art in the first third of the sixteenth century. Although we have learned much about what these patricians bought, in what quantities, and how they displayed their art, we still
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have many questions. At the current status of research, it is not clear how far Hertsen’s collection deviated from those of his fellow patricians. There is a close link between the shape and the size of Hertsen’s collection and his political, social, and professional position within Antwerp society. The many portraits, prints, and other references to Emperor Charles V and to recent historical events, for example, indicate that Hertsen was a man loyal to his ruler. Religious, especially devotional, paintings – some old-fashioned – and religious sculptures dominate all other categories of works in the collection. Hertsen’s earthly goods offered splendor, but they also evoked piety, apparent in the many devotional images of saints, the Virgin, and Christ, both in and outside of the house chapel. The Last Judgment, Hell, and the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Miser suggest a concern for the afterlife. Thus, his vast collection was an expression of both splendor and piety. Authors’ Note: We would like to thank the following colleagues for inspiring discussions and advice: Annick Born, Johan Dambruyne, Ria de Boodt, Molly Faries, Linda Jansen, and Micha Leeflang.
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Our research has been carried out according to the methodology explained in Maximiliaan P.J. Martens and Natasja Peeters, “Antwerp Painting before Iconoclasm: Considerations on the Quantification of Taste,” in Simonetta Cavaciocchi, ed., Economia e Arte Secc. XIII-XVIII (Prato: Istituto Internazionale di storia economica “F. Datini,” 2002), pp. 875–94; and Maximiliaan P.J. Martens and Natasja Peeters, “Antwerp Painting before Iconoclasm: Considerations on the Quantification of Taste II: The ‘Wonderyears’ 1566–67,” in Neil De Marchi and Hans van Miegroet, eds., Mapping Markets for Art (Durham: Duke University, 2006). See also Natasja Peeters, “Art Fever: Overview of Art Collections of Iberian Foreigners in Antwerp Confiscation Inventories, 1532–1567,” (in preparation). John Loughman and John Michael Montias, Public and Private Spaces: Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Houses (Studies in Netherlandish Art and Cultural History) (Zwolle: Waanders, 2000), pp. 51–70; John Michael Montias, “Quantitative Methods in the Analysis of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Inventories,” in V.A. Ginsburgh and P.M. Menger, eds., Economics of the Arts: Selected Essays (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1996), pp. 1–26; John Michael Montias, “Socio-Economic Aspects of Netherlandish Art from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century: A Survey,” Art Bulletin 72 (1990): 358–73. Bert Hendrickx, Het schilderijen bezit van de Antwerpse burger in de tweede helft van de zestiende eeuw: een socio-economische analyse M.A. thesis, Katholieke University, Leuven, 1997; Bruno Blondé, “Art and Economy in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Antwerp: A View from the Demand Side,” in Simonetta Cavaciocchi, ed., Economia e Arte Secc. XIII-XVIII (Prato: Istituto Internazionale di storia economica “F. Datini,” 2002), pp. 379–91. M. de Crayencour, “Van der Dilft,” De Schakel, Tijdschrift van de Antwerpse vereniging voor Familiekunde 10 (1955): 3–9. On the role of women in the patrician marriage market, see Koen Wouters, “De invloed van verwantschap op de machtsstrijd binnen de Antwerpse politieke elite (1520–1555),”
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10 11 12
13 14 15
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Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 28 (2002): 29–56, esp. 35; Koen Wouters, “Een open oligarchie? De machtsstructuur in de Antwerpse magistraat tijdens de periode 1520–1555,” in Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis 84 (2004): 905–36; and Yves Schmitz and Alfons Bousse, Les van de Werve, 800 ans d’histoire, 2 vols. (Brussels: Association familiale van de Werve, 1988). SAA SR (Stadarchief Antwerpen, Schepenregisters) 160, 16 October 1521, fol. 34v. SAA SR 177, 9 May 1530, fol. 400. Herman van der Wee and Jan Materné, “Antwerp as a World Market in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Jan Van der Stock, ed., Antwerpen, verhaal van een metropool, exh. cat., Antwerp, Hessenhuis, 1993, pp. 19–31. René Boumans, “Het Antwerps stadsbestuur,” in Antwerpen in de XVIe eeuw (Antwerp: Mercurius, 1975), p. 19. The burgomaster intra muros had a political and military function, and he was responsible for representing Antwerp in the outside world and the States of Brabant. Aart Schoyte belonged to one of the important patrician families; see Wouters, “De invloed,” p. 33. For bibliographical references on the city patriciate, see Wouters 2002, pp. 29–56. For a rare exception, see H.L.V. Groote, “De vermogensbalans van Melchior Schetz en zijn vrouw Anna van Stralen, met hun Testament van 1 juli 1569,” Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis 55 (1972): 226–63. SAA SR 162, 28 November 1522, fols. 122v.–123. We have not taken into account the art objects in the summer houses. Hertsen owned silver objects amounting to a weight of 96 mark, 6 once, and 7.5 ingels, that is, more than 68 kilograms. Although silver, gold, and jewelry serve as important markers for wealth, we cannot go into this aspect here. For an example, see 500 jaar woonhuizen te Antwerpen, 15e–19e eeuw: een overzicht, exh. cat., Antwerp, Generale Bank Maatschappij, 1980, no. 89, house of Dierick de Moelnere (1549–1561). A few examples are known of other house chapels, for example, that of the Van Immerseel family at Lange Nieuwstraat 31, which no longer exists; see André L. Jolly, Monographie de la chapelle de Bourgogne à Anvers (Vienna: Imprimerie Imperiale, 1858); Floris Prims, De “kapel van Bourgondië” van Jan van Immerseel (Antwerp: Veritas, 1930); Bouwen door de eeuwen heen in Vlaanderen. Een inventaris van het cultuurbezit in België. Stad Antwerpen; de 16e–eeuwse stadsuitbreiding (Ghent: Snoeck-Ducaju en zn., 1979), vol. 3nB, pp. 249–51. A second example is at Heilig Geestraat 9, in the house Gulden Cop, or Huis Draecke. Bouwen door de eeuwen heen in Vlaanderen. Een inventaris van het cultuurbezit in België. Stad Antwerpen; stad binnen de middeleeuwse vesten (Ghent: Snoeck-Ducaju en zn., 1976), vol. 3nA, pp. 102–03. Véronique Vandenbossche, “Item eenen dronckemansstoel.” Een historisch onderzoek naar de materiële cultuur: boedelinventaris-onderzoek in de stad Antwerpen (1530–1550) M.A. thesis, Katholieke University, Leuven, 2000, has recorded some of them. These ledgers (V 255–V 257) are the earliest continuous series of inventories preserved for Antwerp and are preserved in the Antwerp city archives as part of the Vierschaar (Court of Law) archives. Defined as houses with more than 15 rooms. “De bibel,” no. 62, in Hugo Soly and Johan van de Wiele, eds., Carolus, Keizer Karel V, exh. cat., Ghent (Ghent: Snoeck-Ducaju en zn., 1999), pp. 207–08; Michel Spanneut, “Autour d’une Bible flamande de Vorsterman (1528–1529),” De Gulden Passer 38 (1960): 157–77. Few works representing this even have been preserved, but among these is a later version by the Antwerp artist Robert Péril; see Soly and Van de Wiele 1999, pp. 261–62, no. 144.
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23 This would rapidly change as sculpture became nearly obsolete in the 1550s; see Natasja Peeters and Maximiliaan P.J. Martens, “A Cutting Edge? Wood Carvers and Their Workshops in Antwerp 1450–1550; A Study of Archive Sources,” in Carl van de Velde, Hans Beeckman, Joris van Acker, and Frans Verhaeghe, eds., Constructing Wooden Images. Proceedings of a Symposium on the Organization of Labour and Working Practices of Late Gothic Carved Altarpieces in the Low Countries Brussels, 25–26 October 2002 (Brussels: V.U.B. Press, 2005), pp. 75–92. 24 An example of a small Adoration for private homes is preserved at the Rockox house (inv. no. 77209), c. 1515–20, measuring 73 x 64.5 cm. It has painted wings. The authors wish to thank Dr. Ria de Boodt for the reference. 25 Canvas and panels existed side by side in the sixteenth century; see Diane Wolfthal, The Beginnings of Netherlandish Canvas Painting: 1400–1530 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Hélène Verougstraete and Roger Van Schoute, Cadres et supports dans la peinture flamande aux 15e et 16e siècles (Heure-Le-Romain: VerougstraeteMarcq, 1989). 26 See Catherine Reynolds, “The Function and Display of Netherlandish Cloth Paintings,” in Caroline Villiers, ed., The Fabric of Images: European Paintings on Textile Supports in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (London: Archetype, 2000), p. 94. 27 For an example, see the copy after Robert Campin’s Holy Trinity, in the Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België / Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels. 28 For an example, see the copy after Aelbrecht Bouts, Christ with Thorns, in the Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België / Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels. 29 See, for example, the painting after Dieric Bouts, Head of St. John on a Plate, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België / Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels. 30 For an overview, see Carl Van de Velde, “De Schilderkunst,” Antwerpen in de XVIe eeuw (Antwerp, Mercurius, 1975), pp. 419–45; and Fiona Healy, “Bedrooms and Banquets: Mythology in Sixteenth-Century Flemish Painting,” in Hans Vlieghe, Arnout Balis, and Carl van de Velde, eds., Concept, Design, and Execution in Flemish Painting (1550–1700) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), p. 74, on the low standing of antique subjects. 31 Loughman and Montias, Public and Private Spaces, p. 137, have remarked on this as well. 32 For examples of royal portraits, see Soly and Van de Wiele 1999, pp. 191–96 (as in n. 22). 33 For example, see the anonymous copy after Barend van Orley, Charles V, c. 1525, from Bruges, Cathedral of St. Salvator, now in the Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België / Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels). See further, Natasja Peeters, “Anoniem, ‘Keizer Karel V in zwart gewaad’,” in Soly and Van de Wiele 1999, pp. 285–86.
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Appendix 15 February (n.s.) - 8 March 1532. First part of the inventory of the holdings in the house of Master Adriaan Hertsen, former mayor of the city of Antwerp. Stadsarchief Antwerpen (SAA), Vierschaar Inventarissen van nagelaten goederen, 1525-66, V 298, unfoliated (items are spread throughout the register). Foliation of items by the authors. [fol. 1] Inventaris van allen den ruerenden1 goeden bevonden inden sterfhuyse van meester Adriaen hertsen zaligher gedachten burgermeester der stadt van Antwerpen begonst opten xv en dach februarij anno xv c xxxj stilo brabantie ende voleijnt ten daghe versuecke ende ten bijsijne der personen nabescreven Eerst bevonden in de co*kenen des voors. sterfhuyse dese nabescreven percheelen […] [fol. 2][…] Inde bottelrie […] de charte2 van oostland […] [fol. 2v][…] boven tscraprayken aenden heert […] Een bert metten iij coningen voer de scouwen […] op tstantfincke […] [fol. 3][…] i tafereel vanden Rycken vrecke i tafereel van marien beelde […] Inde vors. scapraeye van iiij sloten […] [fol. 3v][…] i sent Jans hooft hangende voer de scouwe […] Alle dese vors. percheelen sijn geweest bevonden in de vors. kokene In de zale […] i tafereel van Jesus voer de scouwe i bert van x geboden […] [fol. 4][…] onder den trap int portael voer de zale […] i tafereel van sinte christofels […] [fol. 4v][…] Opt hangende camerken boven tvors. poortken […] i tapijt sargieken met een groene kulcke daer op […] Geïnventariseert de xv februarij voorscr. presentibus Claes Serwouters ende art vanden schoote testibus requistis [fol. 5] xvj februari […] Inde voercamere boven aent strate3[…] i swerte damasten casuyfele met gouden borduersele i silveren vergulden kelckt ij silveren ampullen i silveren wijwatervat ende eenen silveren quispele i alve stoole manipels ende andre harer toebehoorten i misbouck i yvoiren pais i belle i lessenare ij norenberchsche candelars i crucifix cleyne van houte 360 | in his milieu
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dese stucken salmen vinden inde lade op de voercamere boven aent strate […]
[grote nedercamer] [fol. 5v] i grootachtigen houten Jesus i cleynen houten Jesus i sint margrieten beelde i tafereel van marien beelde van oliverwen5 ende dese vors. perchelen gaen den outaer6 ende misgewant ane In de selve camere i looden geschilderde fonteyne […] i tritsoor van scryn wercke i gesneden vergult tafereel vander kerstnacht opt selve tritsoor Item noch eenen tafereel van potratueren vander kerstnacht Item boven tselve tritsoor i tapijt van cleynder verdueren […] i blaesbalch gesneden metter wapenen i norenbersche metalen croone […] voor de schouwe i tafereel van lywade vander coninginne saba i tafereel na mijn joufrouwe de weduwe wylen Meester adriaens gecontrefeit i alabastren marien beelde sonder den voet de welcke peeter vander dilft seit hem toebehoorende [fol. 6] Item eenen grooten motaelen armkandelere voer de selve alabasten beelde staende i kurfken van pausvederen i kroone met sint Jans hoofde hangende voer de scouwe i isere root geverruwet met drie vergulden appelen daer de vors. norenbirsche croone aen hanckt […] i cleet metter wapenen voer den outaer te hangene i tapeserien met drie aensichten met eenen guldenen daeromme i gesteken tresoor cleet[…] In de groote spende metten drie sloten7[…] [fol. 6v][…] In de selve spende8 [fol. 7][…] i selveren agnus dei hangende aen de voerscreven sinte margriete i silveren cruysken hangende aenden meestren Josins vors.9 [fol. 7v] In de groote camere boven de vors. nedercamere […] i geschilderden blaesbalch […] i tafereel voer de scouwe vanden drie coningen in doeck i marien beeldeken op doeck i tafereel van de kerstnach in oliverwen i wapen vanden hertoge van beyeren […] [fol. 8][…] item met eene onbeslegen calcutsche not Item met bij cymbelen ende een cleyn houten sotken […] i tafereel metter destrixtien des heilichs lants […]
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iiij tappecerie kusken met cleyne verduere [fol. 8v][…] i tresoor met ij sloten daer inne allerley speelgereck van kinderen i tafereelken gesneden van der passien christi daer op ij tennen kandelaren met twee roomsche keersen i vergult marien beelt […] daer inne xviij tapeserije cussenen metter wapenen […] [fol. 9v][…] In de10 camere boven de sale […] i marien beeldeken van pottractueren ende noch een ander cleyn beeldeken aent bedde hangende i tafereel op doeck voer de scouwe […] i blaesbalch met eender naecter vrouwen […] i grauw milaens kistken met eenen wollen kintsdoeck met eenen saeyn weyndel ende een geheel weinsel van kintsdoecken met een wiite vont hune van taftaf met gouden ketenkens met een witte vonthune van damaste [fol. 10v] met peerlen geborduerte ende gouden letteren van credo in den rontomme besteken met een roode cramosijne nagelscroode met lam god met peerlen geboorduert ende noch met eenen groven bestekenen doeck ende eenen kersponen sout douck i doeck op een baerken te leggene met het lam gods iiij evangelisten ende eenen rooden boort besteken […] i roode zijden borse vol diversche heilichdoms […] i groote culckte metter wapenen van vranckrycke v ellen lanck ende iiij ellen breet i verduere tapijt voer een duere te hangene i duercleet tapijt van onser vrouwen boetscap i sargie van tapijte verduere vj ellen lanck v ellen breet i verduere banckkleet vj ellen lanck i verduere sargie met midden een antijcxsche ronde iij ellen lanck ende breet i groen carpet tafelcleet i out tapijt metter wapenen scrapers met lywaet gevoedert [fol. 11][…] i viercante sargie van tapijt verduere iiij ellen breet v ellen lanck iij blauwe laken sitte cussenen metter wapenen met rooden luessche […] [fol. 11v][…] Een tritsoor boven11 met twee sloten ende beneden een faelge perse […] daer op […] i tafereel op doeck vanden noot gods […] [fol. 12] In de voercamere boven aent strate […] i tafereel op eenren doeck van onser vrouwen in de sonne […] i tafereelken doeck van heiliger drivoldicheit […] vj blauwe lakenen cussens metter wapenen ende rooden luesschen […] [fol. 12v][…] i doose met boecken toebehorende Jacob den sone i saxken met boecken toebehoorende den selven […] Een viercante schrijne met eenen slote Daer inne […]
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de lade oft kiste van tmisse gewan daer inne al het misgewan dwelck in de nedercamere (als voren) bescreven is geweest mits datmen daer dagelycx de misse doet Item twee outaer steenen den eenen swert steen den anderen wit marber ij cleynere outaer dwaelken i outaer ammelaken […] [fol. 13][…] inde selve laeye bevonden […] die incompst ende croonenment des keysers in perchemijn […] Een cleerscrapraeye van vier scatten […] [fol. 13v] Een tritsoor met twee sloten […] daer op Een marien beelde in een tabernake vergult i kasken van sijden gewrocht met een gelas daer voir i vergulden aem metter roosen van bierno i corfken van pausvedren i spillecorfken van pausvederen i cop van pockhoute i not van callicut […] [fol. 14] Een viercante nieuwe schrijne met eenen slote Daer inne […] i groot tafelcleet op de wijse van turcks tapijt op lywaet gesteken daer de weduwe selve gemaect heeft12 […] ij sijden outaer cuskens met marmoesetkens daer op […] [fol. 14v] In dachter camer boven onder dack […] i tafereelken op douck van vander heiligen drivoldicheit […] Een tritsoor met twee sloten […] daer op i tafereel doeck ons heere uuten grave i crucifixken in een tafereel [fol. 15] Een goote viercante gesneden schrijne met eenen slote Daer inne i sargie tapijt verduere met lijsten tot een lit de champ i lanck tapijt verduere van omtrent xx ellen lanck i tapijt verduere van omtrent xvj ellen lanck i scoukleet verduere tapijt xviij blauwe sittecussens metter wapenen met rooden luesschen […] Een oude kiste met diversche oude13 gescreven boucken […] [fol. 15v][…] Opten oppersten vorsten solder […] i croone van elenden hooren […] [fol. 16][…] Opten meysens camere […] i leeren silver custode […] [fol. 16v] Een scrynhouten tritsoor met drie14 sloten […] daer op i tafereel doeck van sint gregoris […] Geinventarieert die pro dicta testibus super memoratis [fol. 17] xvij februari opte camere boven de kokene […] i tafereel doeck met onse heere int hoefken
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i marien beeldeken in de sonne vergult […] i tafereel doeck de drie coningen […] i tafereel metter wapenen van cleve […] [fol. 17v][…] i berdeken met veronica […] [fol. 18v][…] i ronde doose met steeckpatronen daer inne Noch een ronde doose met diversche steeckpatroonen daer inne […] Item ij swerte fluweelen borstlappen den eenen met een gouwen baegsken met onser liever vrouwen geamigheert ende dander met vive peerlen oock met een pennincxken van gouwe […] Een vouzele met twee sloten daerinne bevonden […] i papiren charte van venegien daer inne gecontrefeit […] [fol. 20][…] int comptoor achter byden andren boecken i duytsche biblele met twee sloten in berdren gebonden in15 groot formaat gedruct per W vorsterman daer op gescreven aldus BIBLIA [...] [fol. 21] Geinventarieert xix den februari anno xxxj Int comptoor opte camere boven de eetcamere int voorhuys […]16 [fol. 35] xxiiij februari […]17 [fol. 39][…] Int selve comptoir i gescreven getyde boucxken met eenren silveren slote […] [fol. 43v] Item int selve comptoor Een swerte fluwelen tessche met eenen silveren ringe met hunder beider wapenen […] [fol. 46] ij martij Int studoirken ter sijden zuytwaert aen den vors. camere boven deet camere […] [fol. 46v] int selve […] drie tafreelkens van beeldekens […] [fol. 47v] Int middelste camerken boven tpishuys ter sijden der eetcameren […] i oude luyte […] i tafereelken doeck van keyser Carolus […] i gescreven evangeli bouck in berdren gebonden […] [fol. 48][…] i gescreven cronycke van brabant i nieuwe ongescreven boucke in parchemijn gebonden i ongescrevenen grooten dicken bouck in grauw leere gebonden noch eenen ongescrevenen papiren bouck in francijne gebonden […] de blyde incompst gescreven […] [fol. 51] Inventaris vanden silvere V martij Presentibus Adriaen Vledinx scepenen ende peeter van dilf als momboren ende mer vrouwen
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de weduwe Jan de jonge rentmeestere Jan de mey silversmit ende Aerde vanden scoote getuygen Opte camere boven de co*kene int voerhuys bevonden in de kiste metten iseren banden i mans rinck van corniole ij gouden mans ringen metter wapenen deen eenren wapen steen ende den andren int goud gegraveerd, wegende beide tsamen een onche iij ingelsche ende eenen halven Eenen gouden rinck met eenen robbinne ende eenen gouden draet wegende ij engelschen ende iij fierlingen Eenen gouden rinck met eenen punt gecontrafeit diamant wegende ander halve ingelsche ende i troyken den sterfhuyse nu toebehoorende maer van andren gesedt in des gescorvenen hadden i geel papierken met vj cleyne turkoyskens i wit ront18 gordelken i nieuwen silveren waterpot wegende twee merck vive ingelschen [fol. 51v] Eenen ouden silveren waterpot wegende ij maerck xvij ingelschen i gedreven selveren waterpot met vergulde vlammen wegende i marck iiij onchen xiiij ingelsche ende eenen halven i cleyn silveren waterpotken met eenren tote wegende iiij onchen ende eenen ingelschen ende i halven ij nieuwe silveren geknorde19 coppen wegende tsamen20 ij marck iiij onchen xvj ingelschen vj vergulden croesens met letteren21 gesneden wegende tsamen22 vij marck twee ingelschen ende eenen halve xij silveren croesen met vergulde voeten ende canten boven wegende tsamen ix marck v ingelschen Drie silveren23 scalen met gedrevene pampen met hooge voeten wegende tsamen iij marck iiij onchen xvij ingelsche ende eenen halven vj silveren24 croesen met leege voetkens ende vergulde boordekens wegende tsamen iij marck vj onchen xj ingelschen ij hooge25 silveren soutvaten met vergulde boorden wegende tsamen ij merck ende xj ingelschen iii silveren bierpotkens wegende tsamen iij marck iiij onchen vj ingelschen i silveren toetpot wegende iiij marck ij onchen xij ingelschen i vergult teerlinck copken wegende i marck ende i onchen [fol. 52] i hoogen vergulden cop met een croonement met eenen pellicaen daer op26 met drie voeten met drie leeukes wegende iij marck ij onchen xv ingelschen i hoogen vergulden cop met drie voeten eende eenen tabernakel boven wegende v merck i onchen27 vive ingelschen twee hooge silveren28 wynpotten metter wapenen van amstel wegende viij merck min vive ingelschen vj silveren scalen wegende tsamen thien marck een halve onche min ij ronde29 silveren soutvaten op een slu*tende wegende tsamen i marck twee ingelsche ende i halve ij seskantige silveren soutvaten op een sluytende wegende tsamen i marck ij cleyne silveren scaelken met voetkens wegende tsamen een marck een onchen ende vyfthien ingelschen ix silveren lepels van diverschen sorten wegende tsamen een marck iij onchen xviij ingelschen Eenen silveren croes ende vj silveren lepels van erander sorten wegende tsamen twee merck twee onchen ende xv ingelschen piety and splendor | 365
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[fol. 52v] ij silveren scalen metter wapenen van amstel wegende tsamen ij marck xij ingelschen ij scaelkens i croesken ende twee suykersceppen van silver wegende tsamen i marck drie onchen i silver dagge metter silveren schee ende noch een daggesken met eenen yvooren hechte ende silveren schee den kinderen toebehoorenden i houten scale met den voet enden den boort met silver beslegen vj houten lepelen de stelen met silver beslegen i silveren segel wegende xix ingelschen i silveren oorlepel met een tongescrabbere wegende i onchen ende ij ingelschen Bevonden xv ingelschen gebroken silver dwelcke gesedt was in de handen vanden burgemeestre bijden dekens vanden ambachte vanden goutsmeden ende de welcke Jan de Jonge totter stadt behoorende thunwaerts genomen heeft als rentmeestre [fol. 53] Een roode gefiguureerde fluweelen tesschen de boorden met gouden30 geborduurt Noch bevonden vj martij Sesse silveren biercroesen met vergulden voeten ende vergulde boorden wegende tsamen drie merck vj onchen i silveren becken wegende vijf merck i vergulden cop buyten met silveren antijck duerluchtich werck beslegen wegende iij merck i onchen v ingelschen i vergulden cop de voeten ende tdexsel gedopt met een gewapent manneken opt decxsel wegende viere marck vive ingelschen Conclusit vj martij [fol. 53v] viij martij […] [fol. 57][…] conclusit v martij31 1532, ca 23 februari (n.s.) – Part two of the inventory of the house and the new house in Hoboken.32 [fol. 1] In de selve zale [...] noch een ladeken daer inne [...] Een tritsoor met een slot van buyten ende binnen iij sloten daer inne bevonden […] I blauwe cristalline pater noster met selver vergulde teeckenen ende een crucifixken i coralien pater noster van een hondert met selvere vergulde teeckenen beide de vorz. paternosteren toebehoorende margrieten der dochtere [...] [fol. 2][...] ij selveren beeldekens pennincwijs geslegen Int sdelve tritsoor I houten paternoster met S. Jacops schelpen I houten paternoster gesneden van diversche aensichten I paternoster van Quaeckeleyeen [...] i houten spaerpot […] op het vors tritsor i tafereel met drie alabasteren beeldekens
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i houten cruycifixken ii coperen candeleers elck met twee pijpen ende een pinne [fol. 5][...] Inde stoefcamere [...] i charta maxima i hollants setelken iii garde mapkens van pausvederen i tafereel van olieverwe met het aensicht Chr metten croonen [...] i blaesbach gesneden met verguldnis in de mande In dachter nedercamere I lit de champ gesneden op syn antycx […] I andere cleyn lit de champt oock op syn antyx gedrayt [...] [fol. 5v] t bay stoef camerken [...] i vernieuwt tritsoor antyck met eenen sloten [...] daer op i marien beelde doeck van der boetschap ii cleyne eeren candelaere met wassen keerssen [...] [fol. 6v] de groote camere boven de stoefcamere [...] i cleyn tafereelken met marien beeldeken [...] i tafereelken Veronica met een glas daer voere i tafereelken met Jesus ende magdaleene daer ome ii groene saeyen gardijnkens met zynen ommeloop ende geerdekens33 voer elcke venstere [...] [fol. 7][...] In Mer Joncfrauwe Comptoor [...] [fol. 7v] i schoone gegotene belle metter wapenen [...] i geleyersche cop met gebacken fruyte daer inne [...] i groote geleyersche becken metten lampetken [...] i cleyn gestoffert wiechsken i tafereelken van een gesneden vergult marienbeeldeken met een vont gelas daer vore met twee duerkens sluytende [...] i houten geschilderde huyl [...] [fol. 8][...] iii tene cleyne eyercommekens ii corfkens van witte pausvedere i papegaye huysken metten papegaeye alvan sijden gewrocht [...] i carte vanden crooninghen vanden keyser viercant op een rame [...] Sequitur hic bibliotheca [fol. 10v] xxiii febr. Int nieuwe huys tot hoboken In dachtercamere beneden [...] i norenberchs enckel kroonken i tafereel van martha op doeck [...] [fol. 11][...] i tafereel crucifix van eerden gebacken gestoffeert i tafereel marien beeldeken met rooden saeyen gardijnken [...]
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x hooge groen gelaeskens [...] [fol. 11v] i rode houten doose met houten clockspel daer inne [...] 1532, 21 februari (n.s.) – Two small inserted papers, enumerating books. [fol. 1] xxi. den febr. Int achter comptoir int nieuw huys 37. groote boecken [...] 9. boucken [...] 9. boucken [...] i busselken [...] [fol. 1v] 9. boexkens in 4. [...] ii cleyne boucxken in berderen met sloetkens op den gescreven SALOMON op dander prophete [...] 1532, 3 maart (n.s.) – Part Three of the inventory, including belongings kept in a house in Lillo. [fol. 1] den derden dach martio bevonden int stheenen huis tot Lillo [...] [fol. 1v][...] i Marienbeeldeken van lywaet [...] 1532, ca 27-28 maart (n.s.) – Part of part Four of the inventory. [fol. 1] Inventaris van allen den goeden35 Inde coeckene […] Item een beelt op doeck geschildert daer inne staet een lieve vrouwe [fol. 3][...] Item een bert daer innen gescreven stonden documenta notabilia [...] [fol. 3v][...] Item een geschildert houten cofferken met diversche oude briefkens [...] Item eenen cristallijnen bril in selver gesedt [...] Item opt poortcamerken [...] [fol. 4][...] Item vijf tafereelkens [...] Item een pluyscorf met pluymen [...] Item Item Item Item
int poortael [...] diversche houten vormen [...] een beelt daer ons lieve vrouwe inne geschildert is een gebedeberdeken
[fol. 5][...] Inde nedercamere Ierst een geschilderde tafele [...] Item een tafereel daer vrouwen herstsens wijlen inne gecontrefeyt stont36
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een looden geschilderde fonteyne eenen houten geschilderden dwalier [...] een houten gesneden Ste Magriete eenen geschilderden blaesbalck [...]
[fol. 5v][...] Item eene geschilderden doeck van helena [...] Item een beelt vanden croonige skeysers Item beelt van olieverwe van ons Lieve Vrouwe met swerte Caffa gardijnkens Item een beelt van oliverwe daer inne geschildert is de keyser Item eenen houten gesneden St Jans [...] Item eene cristallijne spiegel Item een berdeken daer inne gescreven stonden Documenta notabilia [...] [fol. 6][...] Item eenen lynen doeck daer inne drie personagien geschildert staen [...] Item een Roomerken met eenen silveren voet ende eenen silveren decxsel daer toe Item xviii cristalijnen gelasen Item twee blau gelasen Item lxiii gruen gelasen onder groot ende cleyn [...] [fol. 6v][...] Item vele cleyne speeldingen Item een pouppe te peerde Item een pouppe te voet Item alabasten lief vrouwe [...] Item diverse papieren van gedructe beelden [...] Item een crucifix [...] Item een tafereel op tselve37 tresoor, daer inne geschildert staet Salvatio Angelica [fol. 8][...] In de cleyn camere achter de grote camere [...] [fol. 8v][...] Item een distilleer clocke Item eenen urinael [...] [fol. 9][...] Item twee gebede berdekens [...] Int comptoir boven tselve camerken [...] Item een tafereelken met twee alabasten beelden daer innen [...] Item een tafereelken met twee dueren daer innen staet het oirdeel ende den sincxendach [...] Item een gebede berdeken […] [fol. 9v] Item een berdeken daer inne de keyser staet [...] Item een gebedeberdeken [...] Item eenen spaenschen preekstoel [...] [fol. 10][...] Item eenen pellicaen [...] Item een vogelhuys met dueren [...]
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Item eene carte daer inne den paix tusschen den coninck van vranckryck ende den keyser gedruct is […] [fol. 10v][...] Item een suyckerduale [...] [fol. 11] Item een gouden candelaer Inde camer voirgenoemd Item een kiste met yseren banden daer inne bevonden39 Item eenem peerssen christallynen pater noster met silveren vergulde teeckenen Item eenen perchementen geschreven getydeboeck met twee silveren sloten overtrocken met sattyne [...] Item eenen gestekene boecksack [...] [fol. 11v][...] Item een gesteken vrouwenborse met eenen silveren teeckensteck daer innen ende een verguldene margriete daer boven op Item een root fluwelen borseken met een gouden pennincxken daer op staet skeysers aensicht ende de collonnen ende noch eenen silveren penning van gelycken Item noch een sweerdeken ende eenen horens gulden daer inne [...] Item eenen gouden bagge met drie driecantige dyamanten ende drie peerlen daer aene hangenden in een cleyn doosken [fol. 12][...]40 [fol. 12v][...] 1 caroluspenning van goud van xxxi gulden41[...] [fol. 13][...]42 [fol. 13v] xxvii martij In deselve kiste bevonden Ierst een cleyn kistken met gheelen leeder overdeckt, ende daer inne bevonden Ierst een groot agnus dei in silvere [...] Item een poeppeken met een fluwelen bonnet Item noch een poeppe manneken Item noch een poeppe met eenen fluwelen capruyne [...] Item een lynen sacxken met roode zyde besteken daerinne een brocarden borseken met eenen Reaal van oistenryck ende eenen grooten leeuw. Item eenen silveren penninck met eenen carolus. Item noch eenen silveren penninck van hercules Dux ferrarae [...] [fol. 14][...]43 [fol. 14v][...] Item een houten doosken met een poeppeken daer inne […] Item een obligatie van Mr. Adriaen hertsen van viii c Carolus gulden op M. Willem de baros ende de quitancien dare bij [fol. 15] […] Item eenen gouden penn. Dare op staet eenen maximilanus [...] 370 | in his milieu
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[fol. 15v][...] Inde camere boven de cueckene [...] Item een truphus45 bononien. gedruct in parchemin [...] [fol. 16][...]46 [fol. 16v] Item eenen coffer geschildert [...] [fol. 17][...] Item opten selve camere een swert lederen kistken met yseren banden beslagen daer inne bevonden [...] Item eenen gescreven perckementen getydenboeck [...] Item een gebede boecxken Item eenen rooden bril met syn huysken [...] Item eenen yvoiren cam [...] [fol. 17v] Item een Item een Item een
Item een tafereelken mettten aensicht van Salvator lynen beeldeken daer de dryvuldicheyt inne geschildert is [...] dozyne tapitserie cussenen metten wapene van amstel ende den marcke [...] lynen tafereel van ons heeren int hoefken [...]
[fol. 18][...] Item een lynen beeldeken daer inne staete geschildert de helle [...] [fol. 19][...] Item een groot tapijt met cleyne bloemen daer inne eenen engel met eenen wapenen staet [...] Item een tapijt met roose [...] [fol. 19v][...] Item een croonken met vergulde appels Item int comptoir op te selve cameren Item een tafereelken met een lief vrouwen beeldeken [...] Folio ab hoc quinto, reperies quam praetera desyderantijs In de camere boven de eetcamere [...] [fol. 20][...] Item een caerte van Brab. [...] Item eene val van tapijten [...] Item eenen geschilderde gesneden blaesbalck [...] Item een houten berdeken om voir daen gesicht te houdene Item een lynen bert daer inne geschildert syn de drie Coninghen [...] Item een houten vergulden lief vrouwe Item een casken met een gesneden lieve vrouwen [...] [fol. 20v][...] Item een berdeken daer inne de goublomme gedruct is [...] Item een nachtegaelhuys Inde camere boven de zale [...] Item eenen groote witte culcke metten wapenen van vranckryck
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[fol. 21][...] Item een houte spel met clocxkens [...] Item eenen cop met fruyte van geleyser werck [...] Item een beelt daer inne geschildert is den kersnacht [...] [fol. 21v][...] Item eenen preeckstoel [...] Inde voircamere boven Ierst een bert metten47 caerten van bruynswijck Item noch een caerte [...] [fol. 22v][...] Item eene silveren wijnwatervat metten asperges Item eenen misboeck [...] Item een cleyn tafereelken met een crucifix Item eenen Jesus met eenen karsuyfel Item eenen houten crucifix [...] Item een gebreyt gesteken outaercleet [...] [fol. 23][...] Item vier tapijtserie cuskens met vroukens [...] Item twee torqsche tafelcleederen [...] int camerke boven tprivaet [...] Inde camere boven de coecken camere [...] [fol. 23v][...] Inde camere boven de selve camere Ierst een sledde root ende wit ruytwijs geschildert [...] Item een root papegayhuys Item een leeuwerik huys Item een spit die alleen loopt [...] [fol. 24][...] Gevonden inden selven huyse [...] [fol. 24v] xxviii martij Item noch gevonden opte selven camere boven de coeckene [...] Item een geborduert beelt van veronica Item een autaercleet geborduert metter wapenen van amstel ende scrapers daer inne noch stont een marien beelt [...] [fol. 25][...] Item een doosken met heylichdom [...] Item een fluweelen evangelieboecxken [...] [fol. 26][...] Item een cleyn doosken met een silveren St Jans hoofdeken in een schotele [...] Item een ronde dooze met patroonen [...] [fol. 27][...] Item een wit sacxken met eenen swerten agathen pater noster een de vijf vergulde teekcenen daer ane mitsgaders noch eenen silveren penninck met een maerien beelt [...]
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[fol. 27v][...] Item twee cleyn gebedeboecxkens ende eenen groote in perkement geschreven [...] [fol. 28][...] [fol. 28v][...] Item een gebroken gelasen marie beeldeken [...] [fol. 29][...] gevonden noch inden selven huyse [...] [fol. 29 v][...] Aldus gedaen ten jaere, daghe, versuecke ende presentien als boven, ende mij oick daer bij synde (signed) A. Grapheus
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
“haeffelijcken” deleted and replaced above the line by “ruerende.” “h” deleted. “In de groote nedercamere” deleted. This space served as house chapel. Sentence preceded by a pointing hand. All items in this list are marked by an “o”; the last four also by an “*.” “ane” deleted. Enumeration of textiles and embroidery from Tournai, Mechelen, and Venice. Enumeration of spices and food, which is rare in such inventories. Also these items are marked with an “o” and, or an “*.” “dachter” deleted and replaced by “de” above the line. “boven” added above the line. “daer de weduwe selve gemaect heft” added above the line. “boucken” deleted. “twee” deleted. “gedruct” deleted. Enumeration of property documents of immobile goods and rents. Chronologically, part III, dated 21 February, should have been placed here, followed by part II, dated c. 23 February. Enumeration of property documents of real estate and rents of the widow. Word deleted. “geknorde” added above the line. “stamen” added above the line. “gesneden” deleted. “stamen” added above the line. “silveren” added. “silveren” added. “silveren” added. “wegende” deleted. Two words deleted. “silveren” added. “ronde” added. “betrocken” deleted. Hereafter follows chronologically part V, dated c. 27 March.
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32 The format of the paper, the handwriting, and the appearance of two minor children, Margareta and Kathlijne, proves that this is the continuation of the same inventory. 33 “aen” deleted. 34 Possessions of the widow. 35 Empty space for the rubric. 36 Sentence deleted. 37 “compto[ir]” deleted. 38 “daer” deleted. 39 Jewelry. 40 Jewelry, including golden rings with rubies and diamonds. 41 Jewelry. 42 Jewelry and silverwork. 43 Jewelry. 44 Foreign coins. 45 sic. = “triumphus.” 46 Cloths, textiles, carpets. 47 “wapenen” deleted.
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Pictorial Archives: “Jordaans” in Delft michiel c. plomp Teylers Museum, Haarlem
The Flemish artist Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678) visited the Dutch Republic several times. He seems to have been in The Hague on at least three occasions. In 1660, his son-in-law, resident in The Hague, bought a house in his name in the neighboring village of Voorburg.1 Whether Jordaens ever visited nearby Delft is not known, but in the circle of connoisseurs, art dealers, and artists in that city, his work was evidently appreciated. Some Delft artists,
Fig. 1. Johannes Vermeer, Allegory of the Faith (with a composition of Christ on the Cross by Jordaens in the background), 1670-72, oil on canvas. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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such as Christiaen van Couwenbergh and Pieter Jansz. van Ruijven, were influenced by him. Van Ruijven – a distant cousin of Pieter Claesz. van Ruijven, the important patron of Vermeer – was actually Jordaens’ pupil in Antwerp. And at least two paintings by Jordaens were in Delft during the third quarter of the seventeenth century. The present article considers another composition associated with Jordaens in a seventeenth-century Delft collection. Relying on pictorial sources as much as on archival documents, it is meant as an addendum to Michael Montias’ magisterial Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the Seventeenth Century (1982). Before going into the “new Delft Jordaens,” let us briefly review the two already known. Famous of course is the Christ on the Cross in the background of Johannes Vermeer’s Allegory of the Faith (1670-72), now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Fig. 1). A Christ on the Cross by Jordaens in a private collection shows very much the same composition, and so either that painting, or a copy of it was probably the one Vermeer used for Allegory of the Faith. An item in the Delft master’s estate inventory of 1676, “a large picture, showing Christ on the Cross,” has led many scholars to suggest that Vermeer even owned Jordaens’ work.”2 Unfortunately, the name of the artist was left out, as was the case with nearly all the paintings in Vermeer’s estate. The second Jordaens composition in Delft, Venus Complains to Jupiter in the Presence of Mercury, was published by Montias in The Hoogsteder Mercury in 1991.3 The painting itself, evidently lost, is known through a quick black chalk sketch that the Delft artist Leonaert Bramer made after it, now in the collection of Prof. and Mrs. Seymour Slive in Cambridge, Ma (Fig. 2). The sheet was once part of the series of 107 drawings Bramer made, probably in 1652-53, after paintings belonging to eleven Delft collectors.4 Montias related the Jordaens composition to a lost painting by Vermeer, Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury, mentioned in the catalogue of an auction that took place in Delft in 1761. From Bramer’s drawing Montias concluded: “It is quite possible, indeed likely, that Vermeer had seen the Jordaens painting not long before he painted his own version of the subject....”
A Third Jordaens in Delft? Recently, yet another drawing by Leonaert Bramer has turned up, The Adoration of the Magi, inscribed “Jordaans” and belonging to the same series of 1652-53 (Fig. 3). When this sheet was auctioned in Amsterdam in 2001, the Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft, was able to acquire it together with another one from the series, The Gods on Olympus, after a work by Bramer himself.5 The Adoration of the Magi, as drawn by Bramer, shows Joseph, Mary, and the Christ Child at left. On the right, each of the three Magi, arranged along a diagonal, holds a costly gift. Before an open arch in the
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Fig. 2. Leonaert Bramer after Jacob Jordaens, Venus Complains to Jupiter in the Presence of Mercury, 1652-53, black chalk drawing. Cambridge, MA, Professor and Mrs. Seymour Slive.
background we see in the Magi’s retinue a helmeted soldier with a spear. The painting of The Adoration of the Magi that Bramer copied in this drawing seems not to have survived. Its prototype by another artist, however, is still extant. Students of Flemish art will recognize in the drawing a familiar composition: Peter Paul Rubens’ painting now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (Fig. 4). There are some differences between Bramer’s sketch and the Paris painting, such as Mary’s pose, the spears in the background, and the gift of the king on the right – in the painting he holds it close to its right side, while in the drawing he holds it in front of him. These variations make it clear that the Delft artist did not draw from a painting identical to the one now in Paris. It is nevertheless obvious that the painted Adoration of the Magi once in Delft was entirely dependent on the Rubens painting. The latter was a gift from either Peter Pecquius (1562-1625), the chancellor of Brabant, or from his wife Barbara Boonen, to the Monastery of the Annunciation in Brussels, where it was intended to hang above the high altar of the church. The painting was not yet finished when Pecquius died in 1625. Although the exact date when it was handed over is unknown, the year most likely was 1627, when the church was consecrated; in any case it was done before Barbara Boonen’s
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Fig. 3. Leonaert Bramer after Jacob Jordaens, The Adoration of the Magi, 1652-53, black chalk drawing. Delft, Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof.
death in 1629. Rubens’ Adoration of the Magi remained in Brussels until it was sold to the French King Louis XVI in 1777.6 The inscription “Jordaans” on the Prinsenhof drawing is in Bramer’s hand. As with all the other works he copied, Bramer seems to have been certain about the name of the artist. There is only one sheet in the series on which he wrote: “this one unknown” (den onbekent). Bramer’s series provided images of paintings in the collections of eleven Delft inhabitants, among which were patricians, art dealers and artists. Possibly he made them on the occasion of an auction. The owners of the paintings, of course, might have reported the artists’ names to him. Until now, the “attributions” on Bramer’s copies have always proved accurate. When Bramer made a sketch after Adam Elsheimer’s Burning Troy, he may not have realized that the painting was probably a replica, or a copy, but the name he wrote on the sketch, “Adam Elsheimer” was correct. In some cases Bramer’s annotated sketches provide important clues to forgotten aspects of certain artists. In the case of Ludolf de Jongh, for
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Fig. 4. Peter Paul Rubens, The Adoration of the Magi, c. 1626-29, oil on canvas. Paris, Musée du Louvre.
example, Bramer shows us a rare Utrecht-like genre scene by the Rotterdam artist, confirming Arnold Houbraken’s notice that De Jongh studied with Jan van Bijlert. A comparable case concerns Pieter van Laer. Until the 1960s, Van Laer was known only as a painter of Bambocciades, although seventeenthcentury biographers had presented him as a painter of animals and landscapes.7 Bramer’s two sketches after Van Laer, landscapes with a hunting scene and shepherds with their animals, clearly helped fill this gap. A substantial number of non-Delft artists are represented in the series, suggesting that Bramer, or the owners of the copied paintings – or both – were well versed in works of art produced outside their town.
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Jordaens, or Rubens? Our awareness of the close connection between Rubens’ Adoration of the Magi in Paris and the name “Jordaans” on Bramer’s drawing might make us question this lively image of the Delft draftsman’s connoisseurship. Given that the Louvre painting can be dated to the second half of the 1620s, the version that was in Delft must have been executed around the same time, or later. In those years Jordaens was intensely looking at Rubens, as one can see in his imposing Martyrdom of St. Apollonia of 1628, now in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp. The St. Apollonia, however, represents an instance of emulation, not copying. In his earlier years, Jordaens had actually copied the work of Rubens, but usually he interpreted the designs according to his own personality.8 Of course, one could consider the possibility that for his Annunciation altarpiece Rubens used an earlier composition that Jordaens might have known through a drawing, or an oil sketch. But this possibility is rather remote, and in any case such a working procedure would hardly result in two almost identical works. It seems that Bramer’s sketch is a rare exception in which the draftsman, or the owner was mistaken about the author of the original invention. The “new Jordaens” is most likely by one of Rubens’ pupils – a slightly changed version of The Adoration of the Magi then in the Annunciation Church in Brussels. It was probably also reduced in scale as compared to the almost life-size altarpiece. Why it was called “Jordaans” we will probably never know. One suggestion is that in 1652-53 Jordaens had just finished two important paintings in the nearby Huis ten Bosch, and therefore was enjoying particular fame in Holland.
Collecting Flemish Masters in Holland The discovery of Bramer’s drawing, which gives food for thought regarding the attribution of the copied painting, is an important document for the history of collecting. Paintings by Jordaens in Delft in the middle of the seventeenth century seem to have been very rare. One does not encounter his name in the archival material published in such studies as Montias’ Artists and Artisans in Delft (1982), Marten Jan Bok’s Society, Culture, and Collecting in Seventeenth-Century Delft (2001), or Jaap van der Veen’s Delft Collections in the Seventeenth and First Half of the Eighteenth Century (2002).9 According to the archival material compiled by these scholars, Jordaens’ work did not reach Delft despite his many visits to the United Provinces. And other Flemish seventeenth-century artists’ names occur only sporadically in their studies. Indeed, the authors agree that, quite in contrast to the nearby court, seventeenth-century Delft collectors had no great interest in contemporary Flemish paintings. Montias nevertheless honestly and straightforwardly acknowledged the contradictions raised by his type of research, writing: “If the share of paint-
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ings attributed to Delft-based painters in surviving inventories were representative of the actual composition of all inventories, then we should have to conclude that Delft collectors were quite provincial in their tastes, given to buying mostly local products irrespective of quality. While this conclusion is likely to be generally valid, it is potentially weakened by what may be a serious bias in the data: it is very probable that the notaries and their clerks who drew up the inventories, appraisals, and contracedullen on which we base our samples recognized the works of Delft painters much more readily than those of ‘foreigners.’”10 Bramer’s series of visual documents, containing copies after many non-Delft artists, several of whom were really “modern” in 1652-53 – Abraham van Beyeren, Karel Du Jardin, Egbert van der Poel, Adam Pynacker, Jan Baptist Weenix, and Philips Wouwerman – provides an interesting counterbalance to Montias’ interpretation. And Bramer’s drawing proves that, at the very least, artists in Delft at mid-century knew about Jordaens and considered his work noteworthy. The selection from eleven Delft collections that Montias considered in his publication of 1982 is incomplete. Out of 107 sketches, fifty-six, the majority of those known, are pasted down in an album that was likely assembled not too long before being acquired by the Rijksprentenkabinet in Amsterdam at the end of the nineteenth century. By 1982, ten loose sketches had been traced in the print rooms of Leiden, Rotterdam, Berlin, Paris and elsewhere, but forty-one out of 107 were still missing. Montias thought it conceivable that a large proportion of Delft artists were to be found among the missing drawings.11 The sheets that have turned up since 1982 keep us in suspense regarding Montias’ hypothesis. Of the eight that were recently found, four are after a Delft artist, namely Bramer himself, and four are not: Jacob Jordaens (two), Peter Paul Rubens (one), and Jan Miense Molenaer (one).12 There may be something at stake, however, in the following alternative possibility – namely, that the representation of non-Delft, or better, “foreign” artists will increase when more sheets from the series turn up. (“Foreign” here really means “Flemish,” since scholars agree that Italian and French paintings were all but non-existent in Delft.) A separate list of the now eighteen “loose” sheets includes copies after Gerard ter Borch (one), Leonaert Bramer (seven), Adriaen Brouwer (two), Jacob Jordaens (two), and one each after Jan Lievens, Jan Miense Molenaer, Peter Paul Rubens, Roelant Savery, David Teniers, and Jan Baptist Weenix. Of these artists, only Bramer was from Delft. While this small Delft percentage may be coincidental, I wonder whether it is an accident that examples by the Flemish artists – Brouwer, Jordaens, Rubens, Savery, and Teniers – are all among the loose drawings. In the Amsterdam album, only one sheet is after a Flemish artist, Pieter van Mol, an obscure painter who was probably not recognized as Flemish. I think we may have to consider the likelihood that the person who created the so-
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called “Album Bramer” in the Rijksprentenkabinet deliberately dismissed the sketches after Flemish artists because he wanted to concentrate on Dutch art.13 It remains a mystery what the thirty-three still missing copies might reveal. But to judge from the loose drawings, the percentage of Flemish works might well have been higher. In the nineteenth century, as in the eighteenth, a lack of interest in Flemish art was relatively common in Holland. Perhaps too easily we assume this was also the case in the seventeenth century. The interest in Flemish art in court circles at the time is well known; Jordaens’ contribution to the Oranjezaal provides eloquent testimony to the fact. The Flemish artist also enjoyed fame among “burghers,” however, as can be deduced from the commission of the Amsterdam burgomasters for the decoration of their town hall in 1661. In the 1640s, Jordaens worked for art dealers in Amsterdam, Haarlem, and The Hague and came to Holland to deliver his paintings. Already in 1632, in the estate inventory of Pieter Lastman, one of his paintings is listed.14 Finally, the presence of three paintings attributed to Jordaens in Delft collections in the middle of the century – something about which written archival sources are silent – should keep us open to the possibility of more widespread interest in Flemish paintings than is generally thought today.15 Author’s Note: I am grateful to my former colleague Walter Liedtke, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, for helpful suggestions he made after reading my essay.
1
2 3 4 5
6
R.-A. d’Hulst and Nora de Poorter, “Chronology,” in Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), exh. cat., Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, 1993, pp. 14 (1646: The Hague), 16 (27 March 1658: The Hague; 27 September 1660: Voorburg), 18 (April and May 1664: The Hague). Walter Liedtke in Vermeer and the Delft School, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2001, pp. 399-402, no. 77, with earlier literature. John Michael Montias, “A Postscript on Vermeer and His Milieu,” The Hoogsteder Mercury 12 (1991): 46, 49, repr. (drawing in Slive collection, 282 x 347 mm). Michiel Plomp, “‘Een merkwaardige verzameling Teekeningen’ door Leonaert Bramer,” Oud Holland 100 (1986): 81. Sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby’s, 6 November 2001, no. 56 (erroneously, the auction catalogue describes the drawing inscribed “Jordaans” as an Adoration of the Shepherds). Gemeente Musea Delft; Collection Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof, inv. nos. PDT 1004 Adoration of the Magi (black chalk; 409 x 307 mm; inscribed in brown ink, Jordaans, and numbered, 101) and PDT 1005 The Gods on Olympus (black chalk; 301 x 410 mm; inscribed in brown ink: L. Bramer, and numbered, 16). For the Rubens painting in Paris, see Arnauld Brejon de Lavergnée, Jacques Foucart, and Nicole Reynaud, Catalogue sommaire illustré des peintures du Musée du Louvre. L’ Ecoles flamande et hollandaise (Paris, 1979), p. 115, inv. no. 1762; Nora de Poorter, “Rubens online. Rubenianum,” www.rubensonline.be (accessed 17 October 2005).
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9
10
11 12
13
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Plomp 1986, p. 113 (Elsheimer), p. 117 (L. de Jongh), pp. 119-20 (P. van Laer), p. 149 (unknown; later changed into “Rembrandt”). R.-A. d’Hulst, “Jordaens’ Life and Work,” in Antwerp 1993, p. 24. For rare examples where the young Jordaens accurately copied Rubens, see R.-A. d’Hulst, “Drie vroege schilderijen van Jacob Jordaens,” Gentse Bijdragen tot de Kunstgeschiedenis en de oudheidskunde 20 (1967): 72-74; and Toshiharu Nakamura, “The Flight of Lot and his Family from Sodom: Rubens and his Studio,” in Rubens and his Workshop. The Flight of Lot and his Family from Sodom, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 1994, pp. 37-38; and Arnout Balis, “‘Fatto da un mio discepolo’: Rubens’ Studio Practices Reviewed,” in Tokyo 1994, p. 112. With thanks to Walter Liedtke for bringing the latter publication to my attention. John Michael Montias, Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the Seventeenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 250; Marten Jan Bok, “Society, Culture, and Collecting in Seventeenth-Century Delft,” in New York 2001, pp. 196-210; Jaap van der Veen, “Delftse verzamelingen in de zeventiende en eerste helft van de achttiende eeuw,” in Schatten in Delft: Burgers verzamelen 1600-1750, exh. cat., Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft, 2002, pp. 47-89. Montias 1982, pp. 248-49; see further p. 258 regarding the low frequency of paintings in Delft collections by “the masters who created the glories of Holland’s Golden Age.” Later, for example in Vermeer and His Milieu: A Web of Social History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), Montias modified this view, drawing particular attention to the collection of Pieter Claesz. van Ruijven. Montias 1982, p. 249. For Jordaens, see note 5; Michiel Plomp in Leonaert Bramer, 1596-1674: Ingenious Painter and Draughtsman in Rome and Delft, exh. cat., Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft, 1994, pp. 237-39, nos. 21-22. Dokumentation der durch Auslagerung im 2. Weltkrieg vermissten Kunstwerke der Kunsthalle Bremen (Bremen, 1991), p. 216, no. 1180, repr. (P.P. Rubens). Bramer’s drawing after J.M. Molenaer is in a Dutch private collection; for this drawing and a painted copy after the presumably lost original painting, see online databases of the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague—record number 65758, in: www.rkd.nl (accessed 19 August 2005). Many thanks to Erik Löffler, RKD, who brought the drawing after Molenaer to my attention. Another criterion for dismissing drawings from the “Album Bramer” in Amsterdam seems to have been “doublure.” Apart from Ter Borch, all the others artists we find among the loose sheets–Bramer, Lievens, Molenaer, and Weenix—were already represented in the album with one, or more copies. D’Hulst and De Poorter in Antwerp 1993, pp. 8 (7 July 1632: Lastman), 11 (1640-41: Amsterdam), 13 (March and 28, or 29 June 1645: Haarlem), 14 (1646: The Hague; 25 August 1648: The Hague), 16 (27 March 1658: The Hague). Another example of an important Flemish painting in Delft is The Judgment of Solomon painted in Rubens’ studio around 1615-20 and given to the city of Delft by Ewout van Bleijswijck in 1703. The large painting, which is still in Delft (Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof, inv. no. PDS 88), came from the estate of Ewout’s father, Heijndrick van Bleijswijck, former burgomaster of the city, who married in 1654 and died in 1703 (see Daniëlle H.A.C. Lokin, “Het oordeel van Salomo,” in Delfia Batavorum. Historisch Jaarboek voor Delft (2003): 81-91).
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Visiting Vermeer: Performing Civility herman roodenburg Meertens Instituut, Amsterdam
Calling on Artists Johannes Vermeer may be a celebrity now, but in his lifetime –, or so a parade of scholars has told us – he was sorely neglected. The Delft painter was a bit of a mystery, a genius manqué, making him all the more beloved among the art historians and the public at large. Even John Michael Montias, who finally gave us a historically sound Vermeer, found it hard to believe that, in fact, the painter’s fame may have extended beyond the city walls of Delft in his own day, and that – as two contemporary diaries suggest – it had spread among the highest circles in The Hague.1 Indeed, some art enthusiasts went to visit Vermeer in his studio. On 11 August 1663, the French diplomat Balthasar de Monconys (1611-1665) traveled from The Hague to Delft with only one objective, to meet the painter: “A Delphes ie [je] vis le Peintre Verme[e]r.” Six years later, on 14 May 1669, the Hague regent Pieter Teding van Berckhout (1643-1713) made a similar trip: “Estant arrivé ie vis un excellent Peijntre nommé Vermeer.” On June 21, he even paid a second visit: “[je] fus voir un celebre Peijntre nommé Verme[e]r.”2 Michael Montias published the latter notes in 1993. He was clearly surprised: “...it would never have occurred to me that he would be called ‘célèbre.’”3 Two, or three diary notes are not much to go on. But there is also the imposing figure of the poet and courtier Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), who probably accompanied Berckhout on his first visit to Vermeer. So did two other gentlemen, the Rotterdam regent Ewout van der Horst (c. 1631before 1672) and a former ambassador to England, Willem Nieupoort (16071678).4 Huygens ranked as the greatest artistic authority of his day, having earned that reputation in his capacity of secretary to the Court of Orange. He advised Frederik Hendrik and Amalia van Solms as to the best architects, sculptors, and painters to build and decorate their palaces.5 Huygens may very well have sent de Monconys to Vermeer. The two
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courtiers had met two months earlier, at a session of the London Royal Society in June. Moreover, both before and after his visit to Vermeer, de Monconys called on the Huygens family in The Hague. There he admired Huygens’ art collection and invited his host to join him in an excursion to see various painters in Leiden, among them Gerard Dou and Frans van Mieris. Unfortunately, Huygens had to decline, as he had to leave for the province of Zeeland that day.6 Did Huygens play a similar initiating role in 1669? Was it he who organized the trip, or was it his friends who invited him? When reading these and similar diary notes, one is struck by the group nature of such visits. Berckhout was accompanied by three friends and de Monconys by two Catholic gentlemen: a priest, called Father Léon, and Lieutenant Colonel Gentillo. As Samuel van Hoogstraten, a pupil of Rembrandt, confirms, this was undoubtedly how such things were arranged.7 Visits to notable collections exhibited a similar social structure. In 1625, Jacob van den Burch, secretary to Count Johan Wolfert van Brederode, invited Huygens on a visit to the Leiden merchant Matthijs van Overbeke to inspect his collection of paintings by Rubens, Bailly, Van Coninxlo, Porcellis, Van de Velde, Savery, and Vrancx. Initially, Huygens refused: “The man is rich, but he seems very plain to me.” Five years later, after a second invitation from Van der Burch, he had changed his opinion, answering that this time he would join him.8 Such excursions, then, were both collective and exclusive undertakings. These early connoisseurs were not overly interested in a plain merchant’s cultural capital.9 In this paper, I would like to survey some of the seventeenth-century social codes involved in visiting artists. Clearly, for the likes of Huygens and his friends, such visits meant that one might buy, or order a work of art to include it in one’s collection. But the social aspects of the studio visits and of viewing each other’s collections were hardly less important. These visits were part of the art of conversation, and of the prevailing notions of civility. Among the Dutch elite, the upper crust of nobles, courtiers, and regents, a lively and well-informed interest in the arts and sciences was de rigueur. It was the hallmark of every honnête homme. Baldessare Castiglione, in his well-known Book of the Courtier (1528), had advised his audience, nobles, and non-nobles alike, to be versed in all the arts and sciences, without becoming an artist, or scholar oneself; for centuries since, Castiglione’s guide was part and parcel of the codes of civility.10 Huygens and his circle were well aware of such requirements as was the Dutch elite at large. Like their counterparts abroad, they knew about civilité, and much more so than historians and art historians have hitherto assumed. Leafing through the book sales catalogues that have come down to us, we find a wealth of civility texts.11 This suggests that for a growing segment of this elite (including lawyers and university professors), such manuals had
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become instrumental in developing notions of civilité. While before 1600 this elite may have been small with a relatively large share of well-to-do-immigrants from the Southern Netherlands, it grew quickly in the first half of the seventeenth century. Among the seventeenth-century libraries described, we find those of Daniel Heinsius, Adriaen Pauw, Joan Huydecoper, Jan Six, and Petrus Francius. But here I will focus on three libraries, that of Huygens himself and those of his two eldest sons, Constantijn Huygens Jr. (1628-1697) and Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695).12 Constantijn Jr. would follow in his father’s footsteps and become a secretary to Prince William III, later the king of England. Indeed, as his father had advised Frederik Hendrik and Amalia van Solms, he would advise the prince and his wife, Princess Mary, on matters of art. Christiaan, the scientist, would embark on a very different career, which would lead him to the London Royal Society and to the Paris Académie des Sciences. But like his father and his brother, he cherished the arts. Examining such libraries and the values they represented can enlighten us on the performative dimensions of calling on artists, on how “selves” could be defined through different types of interaction with works of art, and on how these art works in such processes of connoisseurship acquired a performativity of their own.13
Civility and Books As the three book catalogues attest, Huygens and his sons knew their languages. They read Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, English, German, and Dutch. They all studied law, which was the natural preparation for all public servants. And books on law were the most numerous in their libraries, followed by theology. But it is in the catalogues’ libri miscellanei that we recognize the more gentlemanly and cosmopolitan bearings of the three men. What they consulted in the area of civility was almost exclusively in French, or Italian, sometimes even in Spanish, English, or German. They read what was published abroad and they were interested in much more than manners alone. Their libri miscellanei cover a wide range of topics, from the arts of conversation, letter writing, music, and connoisseurship to those of fencing, horsemanship, gardening, and war. It is these texts that allow us to discern what their education was aimed at: a world of civility in which they could converse both with princes and courtiers and with the urban elite of the Dutch Republic. In 1625, Constantijn Huygens (Sr.) published a long poem called Een wijs hoveling (“A Prudent Courtier”). It was part of his Otia ofte Ledighe Uyren, a collection of poetry with which he would garner his first literary fame in the Dutch Republic.14 Singing the praises of the prudent courtier, the poem has been rightly connected to Castiglione’s Cortegiano.15 Its influence is clear.
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Indeed, Huygens owned a copy of the Cortegiano, a French translation called Le parfait courtisan published in Paris in 1585. The Cortegiano was not the only civility text in Huygens’ library. We also find Le favory de cour, a 1557 translation of Antonio de Guevara’s Aviso de privados y doctrina de cortesanos, first published in 1539. And, among the more recent volumes are two copies (one in octavo, the other in duodecimo and bound in calf-skin) of Eustache de Refuge’s Traité de la cour, originally published in 1616, and a copy of Baltasar Gracián’s El discreto (the Spanish term for the honnête homme), originally published in 1646. The list is fairly modest and we may surmise that Constantijn Jr., or Christiaan might have taken some of his father’s civility books. However, that Huygens Sr. had copies of Castiglione, de Guevara, du Refuge, and Gracián, is an interesting fact. The manuals must have had a bearing on his functioning at court along with, we may assume, numerous other books listed in the catalogue: books on heraldry and the European nobility, the arts of war and diplomacy, conversation, letter writing, and so on. Even the art of gesture features in the catalogue. Huygens Sr. also owned a copy of Giovanni Bonifacio’s L’arte de’cenni, published in 1616. Like their father, both Constantijn Jr. and Christiaan possessed civility books. Constantijn Jr. owned a 1575 edition of Stefano Guazzo’s Civil Conversatione published in Venice. He also had copies of du Refuge’s Traité de la cour and René Bary’s L’esprit de cour, both remarkably enough in a German translation. Antoine de Courtin was well represented on Constantijn Jr.’s bookshelf, with his Nouveau traité, one of its Dutch editions, and also its sequel, the Suite de la civilité françoise, including its rules “pour converser et se conduire sagement avec les incivils et les fâcheux.” He also kept a 1658 copy of Erasmus’ De civilitate in his library. Perhaps some of the texts were meant for his son, also named Constantijn, who – having led a far from exemplary life – died young. Christiaan, the man of learning, boasted a far larger collection of civility texts. He owned two duodecimo editions of the Cortegiano, as well as copies of the French translation by Chappuys and the Spanish translation by Juan Boscán. Other manuals in his library were a French translation of Giovanni della Casa’s Galateo and copies of du Refuge’s Traité de la cour, Nicolas Faret’s Honnête homme, Jacques Du Bosc’s Honnête femme, Bary’s Esprit de cour, and another one of The Gentleman’s Calling (1660), attributed to Richard Allestree. He also possessed Gracián’s El discreto and two French translations of it. Perhaps Gracián was a favorite with Christiaan: he had his Obras and an English translation of his novel El criticón. Other civility texts were an English translation of de Courtin’s Nouveau traité, a copy of its sequel, a copy of Joachim Trotti de la Chétardie’s Instructions pour un jeune seigneur (and an English translation of it), and finally Jacques de Callières’ La fortune des gens
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de qualité. One wonders which of the older books, for example, those by Castiglione, della Casa, Faret, or Du Bosc, were first purchased by his father. Clearly, the Huygenses did not come from the gutter. As Huygens’ father jokingly phrased it: “we are born from respectable folk, are not washed to shore on a straw, or pissed down at the horse-fair.”16 Theirs was a world of culture and civility, and this applied to Christiaan no less than to his father and brother. Raised, like his brother, for a career at court, Christiaan became one of the most respected scientists of his day, famed for his work on optics, the planets and the pendulum clock. His would seem to be an altogether different world, more that of a scholarly recluse. But, as the cultural historian Steven Shapin argued in his study on civility and science in seventeenth-century England, science was to a remarkable degree a gentlemanly undertaking. The members of the Royal Society, including Christiaan, who joined in 1663, preferred to present themselves not as scholars but rather as free and independent gentlemen, as “disinterested amateurs.”17 This was already Castiglione’s view. His courtier was to be more than “passably learned” in all the arts and sciences of his day, but not to have mastered any of them professionally. As Shapin wrote, it was exactly the conventions and codes of gentlemanly conversation – this gentle identity – which offered a new and authoritative domain within seventeenth-century science for solving problems of scientific evidence, testimony, and assent.18 Interestingly, this was precisely how Huygens had dabbled in science, like Descartes, Mersenne, Galileo, Oldenburg, and Boyle, without ever posing as more than a mere amateur. In 1636, he wrote: “I am really not a scholar but take an interest in all sciences.”19 And, he would have agreed with Blaise Pascal, whose Pensées were in his library as well: “We should not be able to say of a man: ‘he is a mathematician,’ or ‘a preacher,’ or ‘eloquent,’ but that he is an honnête homme!” In short, one should know a bit about everything.20 Accordingly, there was a world of difference between the Huygenses and, for instance, that other famous inhabitant of Delft, the draper and microscopist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. As Christiaan wrote of him, he was “a person unlearned both in sciences and languages” and communicated his findings to the Royal Society through rough and vulgarly styled letters, thus compromising his credibility.21 Indeed, Leeuwenhoek admitted this himself, writing in his first letter to the Society that he had “no style, or pen to express my thoughts,” and that he was not raised “in languages, or arts, but in trade.”22 The gentlemanly conversation among the members of the Royal Society (and one may presume of the Académie des Sciences, which Christiaan joined at its foundation in 1666) exemplifies how the codes of conduct set forth in the civility texts worked. As Anna Bryson has noted, these were both a means of definition and a means of orientation. In construing the “natural” superiority of the gentleman as embodied in his demeanor, deportment, gesture,
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and conversation, the codes served to define social status and to enforce hierarchy and social exclusion.23 Obviously, as a representative of the merchant classes, Leeuwenhoek could not claim such superiority. It is clearly these codes of conduct that the libraries of the Huygenses (and those of the Dutch elite at large) epitomized. The honnête homme, so proclaimed all the promoters of civility from Castiglione to the Chevalier de Méré and beyond, was never to be pinned down on any of the arts and sciences: no pedantry for him. Yet he should be sufficiently versed in them to display successfully his sprezzatura, a kind of effortlessness in which no exertion, or intentionality was ever to shine through. Viewed from this perspective, the three libraries largely stood for all the effort, all the art, that had to be concealed. As Castiglione explained (in the words of Count Ludovico), sprezzatura was the art “which does not seem to be art.”24
Civility and Connoisseurs To be a “virtuoso” or, as Count Ludovico put it, to have “a knowledge of how to draw and an acquaintance with the art of painting itself,” was another of the courtier’s accomplishments. Such knowledge was “decorous and useful.”25 Huygens and his sons were well aware of this. The elder Huygens learned to draw at an early age, primarily, so it seems, to hone his powers of judgment. As he told us, it was his father’s conviction: “that in the field of painting...it is impossible to arrive at even a partially founded judgment unless one has actively tried to practice the basic principles of this art oneself.”26 The father had noticed how learned men without such practical experience made fools of themselves by ponderously proclaiming their views on painting; he wished to spare his sons such ridicule. Moreover, he found that a trained hand and a drawing pencil might be useful in mathematics (it certainly proved so in the scientific work of his grandson Christiaan). Similarly, the traveler would be saved from having to write lengthy descriptions were he able to draw the places of interest he came upon. Castiglione had already forwarded similar advice, though more focused on the aristocrat’s military pursuits. Besides “being most noble and worthy in itself,” the count explained, the art of painting was useful “in many ways, and especially in warfare, in drawing towns, sites, rivers, bridges, citadels, fortresses, and the like.”27 Huygens was first instructed by the painter and printmaker Hendrik Hondius, and in later years he took some additional lessons in miniature painting from his nephew Jacob Hoefnagel, son of Joris Hoefnagel. Similarly, he had his own children, not only the boys but also his daughter, Susanna, taught by the painter Pieter Monincx. While attending Leiden University, Constantijn Jr. and Christiaan were subsequently tutored by the painter Pieter Couwen-
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hoorn. The father praised the talents of his children, especially those of Christiaan and a younger son, Philips, who died too young. Constantijn Jr., however, became the most remarkable draftsman of them all; he often worked with his friend and fellow liefhebber (“art lover”) Jan de Bisschop (1628-1671), and joined his private drawing academy in 1660. It was all part of an aestheticized social arena, in which a growing part of the elite sought to unite the ideals of otium and art. None of them professionals, but merely liefhebbers, or virtuosos, they all “performed their expertise as a recreation,” as Michael Zell has noted, “never as an arduous, or laborious application.”28 Fleeing the town, the daily cares and worries of their negotium, these liefhebbers had a marked preference for landscapes and, like Huygens and his son Constantijn Jr., were often avid collectors and connoisseurs.29 Huygens’ artistic acumen was impressive. That he was a true connoisseur is well known from his notes on the famous and not-yet-so-famous painters of his time. In addition, Huygens collected paintings by Scorel, Bruegel, Elsheimer, Saenredam, Brouwer, Palamedes, Vinckboons, Molenaer, and Teniers. These were all highly valued painters, and de Monconys duly praised the collection. What treatises on painting did Huygens own? Surprisingly, his book catalogue includes only a 1619 edition of Giorgio Vasari’s Trattato della pittura and a copy of Franciscus Junius’ Painting of the Ancients (1638). The catalogue includes far more titles on architecture, from Vitruvius to Sebastiano Serlio. This suggests that many of the books on painting may have been transferred to the libraries of his sons. Interestingly, Huygens also dabbled in architecture. Both the imposing, classicist family house finished in 1636 and his country retreat Hofwyck finished in 1641 were designs of his own, though he certainly consulted two of his accomplished friends, the architects Jacob van Campen and Pieter Post.30 Far more impressive is the collection of painting texts in the possession of Constantijn Jr. For instance, he owned Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo’s Trattato della pittura (1585), Karel van Mander’s Schilder-boeck (1618), and the French 1651 edition of Leonardo da Vinci’s Della pittura. We also find two editions of Vasari’s Vite de’ pittori (1648 and 1668) and of Charles Alphonse DuFresnoy’s L’art de peinture (1668 and 1684). Other titles are André Felibien’s Entretiens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages des peintres (1666), Alexander Browne’s Ars pictoria (1669), Roger de Piles’ Conversations sur la connoissance de la peinture (1677), and an English translation of Roland Fréart’s Idée de la perfection de la peinture (1689). As Martin Weyl has pointed out, much of French art theory, in particular Félibien’s, was preoccupied with notions of civility and honnêteté.31 In addition, contemporary Italian authors, such as Baglione, Bisagno, Bellori, Dati, and Soprani, were represented in his library. These were all books “very necessary to the amateurs of our art,” as Constantijn Jr. phrased
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it in his praise of Baglione’s Vite de’pittori.32 And so was his collection on architecture, which rivaled his father’s. As a liefhebber he was also keen on the available practical writings. He owned Abraham Bosse’s Traité des manieres de graver (1645) and three works by Willem Goeree: his Inleydinge tot de algemeene teykenkonst (1668), his Menskunde of inleydingh tot de teykenkunde, schilderkunde, beelthouwery (1680), and his Natuerlijck en schilderachtigh ontwerp der mensch-kunde (1682). The latter volume was even dedicated to Constantijn Jr. for his encouragement of the author. Another book, Jan de Bisschop’s Signorum veterum icones (1669), a well-designed collection of prints of classical statues, was also dedicated to Constantijn Jr.33 Christiaan’s drawing talents as a child may have equaled, or surpassed his brother’s (in the 1650s they still exchanged drawings in their correspondence), but he would subordinate his art to his scientific investigations, often adding drawings to clarify an argument. This did not prevent him from reading widely on the subject and having ready opinions. In addition to Félibien, DuFresnoy, de Piles, and Fréart (again the English translation), he also owned Bosse’s manual on engraving and his Le peintre converti (1667). Moreover, like his father and brother, his bookshelves boasted a considerable number of books on architecture.
Conclusion In an important article on collaborative painting in seventeenth-century Antwerp, Elizabeth Honig has drawn our attention to two types of artistic value: one to be traced in the artist’s hands as inscribed in the work of art, and the other “generated by and for its beholder, who enacts a certain performance before it.”34 Honig also pointed out that only in the first half of the seventeenth century did connoisseurship arise and an actual vocabulary of art discourse emerge. One fine and convincing example of this is Abraham Bosse’s Sentiments sur la distinction des diverses manières de peinture, published in 1649. In this paper I have only hinted at the performative aspects of connoisseurship, a subject that deserves much more attention. But I hope that my exploration of the subject has pointed out that the contemporary vocabularies of connoisseurship and civility were closely interwoven (an aspect missing in Honig’s text); indeed, we may write not only a social history of truth but also, in Shapin’s sense, a “social history of beauty.” That is another subject to explore.
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John Michael Montias, “Recent Archival Research on Vermeer,” in Ivan Gaskell and Marijke Jonker, eds., Vermeer Studies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 99. Ben Broos, “Un celebre Peijntre nommé Verme[e]r,” in Arthur K. Wheelock, ed., Johannes Vermeer, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1995, pp. 4849. John Michael Montias, Vermeer en zijn milieu (Baarn: De Prom, 1993), p. 377. Like Berckhout, Van der Horst was a member of the Gecommitteerde Raden van Holland. A. Nieuwenhuis-Van Berkum, “Constantijn Huygens als kunstadviseur. Schilders, aankopen en opdrachten, 1625-1652,” in Huygens in Noorder Licht, eds. N.F. Streekstra and P.E.L. Verkuyl (Groningen: Universiteit Groningen, 1987), pp. 113-26. Broos 1996-97, pp. 48-49. Samuel van Hoogstraten, Den eerlyken jongeling, of de edele kunst, van zich by groote en kleyne te doen eeren en beminnen (Rotterdam: Abraham Andriesz, 1657). J.A. Worp, ed., De briefwisseling van Constantijn Huygens, 1608-1687, 6 vols. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1911-17), vol. 1, pp. 179, 181. On Matthijs van Overbeke, see Aernout van Overbeke, Anecdota sive historiae jocosae, eds. Rudolf Dekker and Herman Roodenburg (Amsterdam: Edita, 1991), pp. x-xi. On the long and impressive legacy of Castiglione’s text, see Peter Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995). For a more extensive treatment of these catalogues and their contents, see Herman Roodenburg, The Eloquence of the Body: Studies on Gesture in the Dutch Republic (Zwolle: Waanders, 2004), pp. 39, 41-43. The present paper is largely based on chapter two of this study. On these catalogues and what they tell us about the three libraries, see Ad Leerintveld, “‘Magnificent Paper’: The Library of Constantijn Huygens,” Quarendo 28 (1991): pp. 165-84. For a stimulating essay, see Elizabeth Honig, “The Beholder as Work of Art: A Study in the Location of Value in Seventeenth-Century Flemish Painting,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 46 (1995): pp. 252-97. For an emerging view on images and performativity, see, for instance, W.J.T. Mitchell, “Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture,” Journal of Visual Culture 1 (2002): 165-71; Hans Belting, “Image, Medium, Body: A New Approach to Iconology,” Critical Inquiry 31 (2005): pp. 302-19. Constantijn Huygens, Otiorvm libri sex. Poëmata varij sermonis, stili, argumenti (The Hague: Aert Meuris, 1625). For a modern edition, see Constantijn Huygens, Nederlandse gedichten 1614-1625, ed. Ad Leerintveld, 2 vols. (The Hague: Constantijn Huygens Institute, 2001), no. 112. See also Ad Leerintveld, Huygens over hovelingen. Eerste Dr. J.A. Worp-lezing (Voorburg: Huygensmuseum Hofwijck, 1994). Quoted in Jacob Smit, Het leven van Constantijn Huygens, 1596-1687. De grootmeester van woord- en snarenspel (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1980), p. 20. Literally, the letter said: “wij zijn van degelijke luitjens geboren, ende niet op eenen stro-wisch aangedreven noch op een peerdemarkt gepist.” Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994). Shapin 1994, p. 121. Worp 1911-17, vol. 2, pp. 181-82: “Ik ben waarlijk geen geleerde, maar stel belang in alle wetenschappen” (3 June 1636). Blaise Pascal, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Louis Lafuma (Paris: Edition DuSeuil, 1963), p. 95. Quoted in H.A. Hofman, Constantijn Huygens, 1596-1687: Een christelijk-humanistisch bourgeois gentilhomme in dienst van het Oranjehuis (Utrecht: Hes, 1983), pp. 118-19;
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Shapin 1994, pp. 306-07; see also Klaas van Berkel, “Intellectuals against Leeuwenhoek: Controversies about the Method and Style of a Self-Taught Scientist,” in Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, 1632-1723: Studies on the Life and Work of the Delft Scientist Commemorating the 350th Anniversary of his Birthday, eds. L.C. Palm and H.A.M. Snelders (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1982), pp. 187-209. Quoted in Van Berkel 1982, p. 188. Anna Bryson, From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 276-83. Baldessarre Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (1528), ed. Danile Javitch (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2002), p. 32 (book I, 26). Castiglione ed. Javitch 2002, pp. 57, 60 (book I, 49 and 52). J.A. Worp, “Fragment eener autobiographie van Constantijn Huygens,” Bijdragen en Mededeelingen van het Historisch Genootschap 18 (1897), pp. 63-64. Castiglione ed. Javitch 2002, p. 57 (book I, 49). Michael Zell, “A Leisurely and Virtuous Pursuit: Amateur Artists, Rembrandt, and Landscape Representation in Seventeenth-Century Holland,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 54 (2003), pp. 335-68. On Constantijn’s drawings, see J.F. Heijbroek, ed., Met Huygens op reis. Tekeningen en dagboeknotities van Constantijn Huygens Jr., 1628-1697, secretaris van stadhouder-koning Willem III, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1982-83. On Huygens and classicist architecture, see K.A. Ottenheym, “Huygens en de klassicistische architectuurtheorie,” in F.R.E. Blom et al., eds., Domus. Het huis van Constantijn Huygens in Den Haag (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1999), pp. 87-109. Martin Weyl, Passion for Reason and Reason of Passion: Seventeenth-Century Art and Theory in France, 1648-1683 (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), pp. 30-36, 70-72. Heijbroek 1983, p. 29: “tres necessaire à des amateurs de notre art.” Heijbroek 1983, pp. 32-33. Honig 1995, p. 284.
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The Montias Database: Inventories of Amsterdam Art Collections louisa wood ruby The Frick Collection, New York
As his obituaries made clear, Michael Montias’ love of Dutch art began when he was a graduate student of economics at Columbia.1 For his dissertation, he first proposed to write about the prices of Dutch paintings at Amsterdam auctions in the seventeenth century. This idea, although rejected by his thesis advisor, stayed with him throughout his career as an economist and during his work in the Delft archives. It was for his scholarly projects that he created the Database now installed at the Frick Art Reference Library, and which he used to produce his last book, Art at Auction in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (2002). He worked on the material until the very end, sending the Frick updates and additions to his Database as late as March of 2005, just four months before he died.
The Database Montias began recording details of ownership of works of art from the Gemeentearchief (Municipal Archive) in Amsterdam in the early 1980s. In 1986, he was given a grant by the Getty Art History Information Program (now the Getty Research Institute) to work in conjunction with its Provenance Index. He was one of the earliest contributors to the Index, which had been established only a few years earlier. As a result of this grant, he was well in the forefront of the use of databases and computers for art history research.2 Not realizing their potential, especially for compiling the kind of detailed information that Montias was collecting, few art historians were using personal computers in 1986. Initially, Montias’ relationship with the Getty was mutually beneficial: he received money and training that allowed him to transcribe information about owners and buyers of art into a database accessible for his own research purposes; the Getty received the transcriptions of documents necessary for its Provenance Index. Montias formally split with the
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Getty around 1988, apparently over differences in the selection of material and how it was being presented, but he remained somewhat connected to the institution into the 1990s.3 The Database as it now stands transcribes nearly 1,300 inventories drawn up between 1596 and 1681 for auctions, estates, and creditors. Today the original documents are stored almost exclusively in Amsterdam. They list a total of 51,071 works of art, including drawings, prints, paintings, and sculpture. Although Montias did not have enough time to transcribe all seventeenthcentury Amsterdam inventories, he chose an extremely useful cross-section. The 525 Orphan Chamber inventories were made for auction purposes. The Orphan Chamber of Amsterdam was responsible for disposing of the estates of deceased residents who had left heirs of minor age. If the will did not exclude the Orphan Chamber’s participation, a valued inventory was made and the net worth of the estate determined. If both parents were dead, the estate was sold at auction and proceeds went to the Orphan Chamber to be held until the heirs reached adulthood.4 Of the other inventories, 500 were made by notaries for estate purposes; and 130 or so were compiled on the occasion of bankruptcies. In individual data fields, which Montias defined in consultation with the Getty, he transcribed information from each inventory, including where and when it was made and where it is now stored (all but a few inventories are in the Gemeentearchief Amsterdam). Particularly significant is the information he included about the owners of works of art: their religion, occupation, address, life dates, and – based on his own additional research – their relationships with other buyers, sellers, makers, and lovers of art. For each work of art, he transcribed any and all given attributions, variant titles, location of the painting in the house of origin, subject matter, object type, sale price, buyer’s name, and as much about the buyer as possible. The wealth of information contained in the Database helps elucidate patterns of buying, selling, classifying, and collecting art in Amsterdam during the very late sixteenth century and more than threequarters of the seventeenth. Montias chose these inventories on the basis of the works of art they include, the status of the owners, and their relevance to his own work. Although his records from Orphan Chamber Sales between 1597-1638 are very nearly complete, the Database does not claim to be a complete record of all Amsterdam inventories from this period, but rather a selection from the hundreds of archives housed in the Gemeentearchief. Nonetheless, Montias’ Database enables analysis of a very substantial subset, one particularly geared to inventories of works of art, and many solid conclusions can be drawn from it.5 In Montias’ original arrangement, the information about the works of art in the inventories was in a separate database from the information concerning the owners of the goods being inventoried. Now the Frick Art Reference
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Library has integrated these two databases into one, web-based version, so that users can seamlessly move among all the items of information about a given inventory. Eventually, this web-based version will be much more accessible than the original, as the latter currently can only be accessed from an institution that has a Star Database.6 Soon, in fulfillment of one of Montias’ wishes, researchers around the world will have remote access to the Database on the Frick Collection and Frick Art Reference Library’s website.7 The great contribution of the Database, of course, is the online access it gives to vast treasures in the Gemeentearchief Amsterdam, presented in a fielded format. Compare, for example, the accessibility of the material in this Database with that of the notes Montias made from the Delft archives for his 1982 book, Artists and Artisans in Delft. His original intention for that project was “to write a comparative study of artists’ guilds in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century.”8 In the middle of his research, however, he was overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of material in the Delft archives, and at the same time realized that Delft “was of an ideal size and importance for a comprehensive survey of an artistic community.”9 As he stated with customary modesty, he then decided to produce a book with “more, or less solidly documented facts about Delft’s community of artists and artisans, the art market, art collections, and the city’s art industries… This multitude of facts may still be capable of satisfying a potential demand from readers who may some day wish to make use of them.”10 Montias wrote Artists and Artisans in Delft using the vast amounts of rich material he had collected, and then went on to scour his notes for yet more information. This eventually resulted in his second art history book, about Vermeer and his social milieu.11 Beyond the conclusions he drew from the facts that he published, all the material from the archives that Montias collected is still in his notes, handwritten papers that most likely will never be used again. By contrast, his Database can be mined by others who may then use the information for their own purposes. Searches can be composed and combined in creative ways to produce results that would be hard to achieve manually. One can combine a search of a particular time period and subject matter, religions of buyers with subject matter, prices of various artists over time, and so on. As Montias realized, the ability a Database affords to execute quick searches using variable criteria can be extremely useful for art-historical research. The computer is as significant a new tool for art history as photography was at the beginning of the last century. Then, photography made it possible for the first time for art historians to learn and record a great deal about a work of art without ever having to see it in person. Robert Witt and later Helen Clay Frick were among the first to recognize the benefit of bringing many photographs together in one place for researchers to access the new technology without having to take, or buy the photographs themselves. For exactly
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this purpose, they founded, respectively, the Witt Library in London (now at the Courtauld Institute) and the Frick Art Reference Library in New York. Today, digital technology is gradually making these photographs (as well as new, digital photographs) accessible via the web so that researchers will no longer have to travel even to see photographs. Nonetheless, not everyone has access to, or chooses to use digital technology. Art historians are facing a period of transition from reliance on slides to full exploitation of the potential that digital image banks hold. The process inevitably will be slow, because scholars dealing with particularly arcane subjects are still hard-pressed to find enough digital images to satisfy demand. Moreover, scholars working in a specialized field for many years have their own large and idiosyncratic slide collections that will not be available digitally for many years, if ever. Their collections are similar, in a sense, to the collection of inventories that Montias digitized – somewhat personal choices within a generally sensible framework (Amsterdam seventeenth-century inventories that include works of art). Just as museums and digital repositories are compiling comprehensive image collections online, we can look forward to archives creating accessible transcriptions of their collections. It is unlikely, however, that they will present documents specially pre-culled for art historians the way Montias did. Montias’ Database represents the very beginning of the long and arduous task of enlivening public records for public consumption. While it comprises a large and rich selection of inventories from the seventeenth century, it only contains material from three of the approximately 150 archives with seventeenth-century material belonging to the Gemeentearchief Amsterdam.12 This does not mean that all 150 have large numbers of inventories, since some are personal family archives, but it does indicate the scope of the material to be transferred. In addition, transcription into a database – like all transcriptions – may have inaccuracies, or omissions. Serious archival researchers, therefore, will always need to go back to the originals, much as an art historian may know a painting from a photograph, but in order to talk about it with great knowledge, must see it firsthand.13
Application The Montias Database is a deep and valuable resource that can be used in a multitude of ways that have only just begun to be plumbed. Many of the requests the Frick receives have come from scholars doing monographic research on a particular artist. For those involved in such an endeavor, there are many things to be found. For example, one can see if and when an artist’s paintings were bought and sold, to, or by whom, and often, their price. With combined searching in the Database, one can compare and assess the value
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of works by single artists over time, or compare the value of their works with that of other artists who executed works in the same genre, for example. A researcher can chart the popularity of particular genres of painting over time, as measured by numbers in collections and by the value placed on them. With the fields indicating the room of a house where a work hung, one can determine the importance that seventeenth-century Amsterdammers assigned to particular genres, or even particular artists. This feature, in fact, is what helped Montias and John Loughman identify the uses of particular rooms in seventeenth-century homes, in the book they co-authored in 1999, Public and Private Spaces.14 There, they addressed such questions as: Which types of paintings hung in which rooms? Which rooms had more paintings of higher value and with better attributions? How did “public” spaces differ from “private” ones?15 Other topics for which researchers have drawn on the Database include new subjects in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century art and their description and categorization in contemporary texts. Another is the role that religion played in the choice of subject matter, both in terms of what artists of different faiths produced and what collectors of various faiths collected. A very fruitful use of the Database has been the study of the etymology of certain art-historical words in seventeenth-century Holland. When was a word describing a subject first used? How was it used over time, and how was it spelled?16 One researcher at the Frick studied the market for seventeenth-century Dutch paintings of nudes and their function. With subject matter being one of the fields in the Database, a scholar can easily search for paintings of nudes that sold, the prices paid for these works, and where they were hung in Amsterdam houses. Similarly, for a Rembrandt exhibition, a scholar from the National Gallery of Art in Washington researched the appearance of Apostles in seventeenth-century Dutch paintings. For studies on a particular subject matter, such as market scenes, one can compare value in relation to other subjects by the same artist, or the same subject by different artists. One can determine which types of subject matter were considered to belong together, such as dawn and sunset, good and bad weather, prudence and folly. Two pictures painted by different artists could even be designated as a pair by their owner, and that pairing could be sustained over transfers of ownership. The fact that there are other types of art, or craft work besides paintings, statues, prints, and drawings in the Database is not very well known; however, it includes over 4,000 of such works including porcelains, embroideries, carvings, maps, and other household objects, all very valuable for scholars working on seventeenth-century domestic interiors. As increasing numbers of archives are digitized, we will eventually be able to compare data about art in various cities. In a preliminary way, I have used
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the Database for my research on works of art in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century New Amsterdam (later New York).17 A comparison of how and where paintings were hung in Dutch-American homes of the time shows that although houses in Dutch New York were smaller and less wealthy than those in Amsterdam, the placement of pictures was largely the same; that is, most paintings were hung in the most public of rooms, such as the voorhuis, or entryway. In the future, other investigations using the Database may include determining the subjects of pictures purchased by people in various professions, such as artists, or merchants. In a similar vein, one might undertake a study concerning artists serving as appraisers. The Database holds enormous potential for research on collectors, for, as stated earlier, Montias added data from research conducted outside the archives. This information allows us to better understand social milieus in various cities, just as Montias used his Delft material to weave a social web around Vermeer. It could also be extremely useful for those doing genealogical research.18 Now, when I read through the inventories in Montias’ Database, I find it hard to realize that he is not there in New Haven, ready, eager, and willing to take a call from me about an aspect of the Database, or a point in one of his books. How sad it is not to have him there to talk, share, muse, and speculate on such matters! Perhaps what his Database captures best is his ceaseless curiosity about all aspects of seventeenth-century Dutch life, and his great willingness to share that with others. He will be sorely missed.
1 2
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Kathryn Shattuck, “John Montias, 76, Scholar Of Economics and of Art,” The New York Times, 1 August 2005, Section A, p. 13. Despite his early mastery of data-entry techniques, Montias always acknowledged with gratitude the technical help he received over twenty years from Cuadra Associates, and specifically, David Smith. The website of the Getty Provenance Index includes 333 inventories provided by Montias, some of which they have updated with further research from the Gemeentearchief Amsterdam. The Getty Provenance Index is considering recording more of the inventories as one of their future projects, according to staff member Brigitte Herschensohn. I wove together this history of Montias’ association with the Provenance Index from emails and phone conversations with both Brigitte Herschensohn and David Smith of Cuadra Associates in September 2005. See John Michael Montias, Art at Auction in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2002), p. 17. Montias 2002, pp. 27-29. This is why the Database has not been installed at the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD) in The Hague, for example, even though the RKD has “joint custody” of the Database with the Frick. The two institutions are equally responsible for the future of the Database, and all major decisions concerning it.
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When the Montias Database goes on the Frick website, it will offer links to both the Provenance Index and the RKD website, giving researchers easy access to the rich resources of all three institutions. John Michael Montias, Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the Seventeenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 3. Montias 1982, p. 5. Montias 1982, p. 8. John Michael Montias, Vermeer and his Milieu: A Web of Social History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). Information from the Gemeentearchief Amsterdam, via email, September 2005. Montias, for example, occasionally gave the incorrect call number, or incorrectly transcribed notes, or letters, errors that The Frick Art Reference Library will now begin to rectify. John Loughman and John Michael Montias, Public and Private Spaces: Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Houses (Zwolle: Waanders, 2000). Using statistical formulas, Montias and Loughman found that public rooms had more and larger paintings, which were better attributed with subjects described, and of more value. In general, they found that landscapes constituted the most popular genre of painting. Private rooms, where the family would reside and outsiders not see, had more family portraits and more religious paintings. To me, one of the more interesting suggestions in the volume is how the voorhuis might have been an embryonic art cabinet before the age of museums: a public room, displaying wealth and works of art (Loughman and Montias 2000, p. 32). See John Michael Montias, “How Notaries and Other Scribes Recorded Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Sales and Inventories,” Simiolus 30 (2003): 217-35. My paper, “Dutch Art and the Hudson Valley Patroon Painters” was given at the University of Denver in March 2005 at the conference Holland in America 1609-2009 and in the near future will be published in a volume of papers from the conference by Brill Academic Press. In fact, I found an ancestor of my own mentioned in the Database, Adriaen Hendriksz. de Wees. It turns out De Wees organized and evaluated Rembrandt’s prints and drawings for sale at auction after Rembrandt’s bankruptcy. Thinking this find to be a humorous coincidence that Michael would appreciate, I told him about it, only to find this fact included in the next update of the Database he sent to the Frick! Although his gesture was characteristically generous, I encouraged him to remove this information from subsequent versions, but he did include further genealogical data on this man in the next version he sent.
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Some Questions Concerning Inventory Research gary schwartz CODART, Maarssen
In 1976, or 1977, a manuscript was submitted to the editors of Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, entitled “The Guild of St. Luke in Seventeenth-Century Delft and the Economic Status of Artists and Artisans.” The author, Michael Montias, was an American economist we did not know, and we read the manuscript with an extra measure of care. Quickly, we all realized that this was not the work of an amateur whose enthusiasm exceeded his knowledge. This was the work of a master researcher and scholar, and he was telling us things about our own field that we never knew, or suspected. That article, which appeared in volume 9 (1977), number 2 (published however in 1978), competed with an article on Vermeer in the 1977 volume of Oud Holland, Michael’s first published contribution on Dutch art history. We did not know then how many readers would be interested in the economic status of artists. If art historians had been content for seventy years to cite Hanns Floerke’s dissertation of 1905, which Davaco had reprinted unchanged in 1972, would they share our opinion that the economics of art mattered? Well, they did. In the summer of 1977, Michael visited me at home in Maarssen to discuss the publication of his second article for Simiolus, “Painters in Delft, 16131680” (vol. 10, no. 2, 1978-79). This article enriched the field in another way. It provided abundant materials for the prosopography of Dutch artists and artisans, their collective biography. Here was stimulating information on the religion of artists, the livelihood of their fathers, their place of birth, rates of success, or failure. Montias also reintroduced into Dutch art history the unsung hordes of artists without oeuvres, registered painters by whom no work is known. The visit was devoted mainly to a discussion of the tables and appendixes and lists of sources for “Painters in Delft.” This was demanding stuff for an art-history journal, and we wanted to get it right. But it stands out in
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memory more as my first acquaintance with a wonderful and mysterious man. Michael took boyish delight in his work, both in his discoveries and in his contacts with colleagues. He had a disarming ebullience, paired with a somewhat vulnerable sensitivity. Amazingly, he was able to effect a small revolution in art history without ever engaging in a polemic, or even raising his voice except in laughter. Our contact in the years to follow was sporadic, except for one exceptional year that we spent together as Getty Scholars (1986-87). The fruits of those meetings, not only with Michael but also with Jan de Vries, Lyckle de Vries, Ad van der Woude, Wim Smit, and Martin Jan Bok, are still being plucked. Although our acquaintance was deepened that year and extended to members of our families, including our children, I never got a complete picture of Michael’s many-sided life. In conversation, he would give the impression that he lived for nothing else but the documents in the Dutch archives. You knew about his art collection and his friendship with Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, but there was a lot more that he hardly ever talked about. His life in France, for example. By chance I discovered that we had mutual friends in Paris, where his mother lived. There he went under the name Jean-Michel, and was considered as much a part of the scene as we thought of him in Holland and others did in New Haven and who knows what other circles where else? At a dinner in 2002, I sat across the table from the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz, who spoke fondly about Michael as a colleague at Yale in the early 1970s and passed on his regards. On rare occasions, Michael talked more privately to my wife, Loekie, and me about himself and his exotic background. Always with the same mild irony, punctuated by his ready laugh and bright smile, always with a tint of melancholy. On his final visit to the Netherlands, still at work although bearing heavy medical treatment in his hotel room every evening, Michael took the initiative to bring together a small group of friends for what we knew would probably be our last dinner together. Taking our cue from him, we enjoyed the everyday gezelligheid of small talk and fond memories. That evening I realized something that I had not seen before. With the greatest affability in the world and without anyone being aware of it, Michael nonetheless managed to maneuver his environment into the position he wanted it. Perhaps it was that gift, just as much as the newness of his approach and the quality of his scholarship, that helped Michael turn Dutch art history into the acknowledged forefront in the economic history of art. • • • On the turn of a fiscal year, businesses are required for tax purposes to draw up a list of all their possessions. In businesses that sell products, this neces-
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sitates stocktaking. That process, which tends to get redesigned every year, is a recurrent punishment for everyone involved, and the results are notoriously unreliable. In the publishing business, there is a famous saying by Alfred Knopf: “Stocktaking!” he exclaimed, “Gone today and here tomorrow.” Inventories, in other words, are not always what they seem. They do not necessarily list all those objects and only those objects referred to in the header. Usually, their raison d’être is financial. The goods they list represent money, often the money of people in difficult circ*mstances. In Holland in the seventeenth century, it was not the tax collectors and the bankers who wanted to see inventories, it was the Orphans’ Court and the Bankruptcy Chamber. These institutions were after an adequate estimate of the worth of the estates that were inventoried for them. However, not everyone involved in the process stood to benefit from a fair estimate. In her 1987 book Achter de gevels van Delft, Thera Wijsenbeek reviewed the interests of the various parties involved.1 On the basis of Wijsenbeek’s analysis, one can construct a scale of reliability in inventories. The least disinformation is to be expected in inventories drawn up at the behest of the relatives of a deceased person on behalf of minor heirs who remained with the family. In those cases, all objects and capital were to remain in the group, where everyone was looking over everyone else’s shoulders for signs of inequity. Less reliable are inventories commissioned by the Orphans’ Court for children who were to enter orphanages. Since the goods were destined to become the property of the orphanage, it was in the interest of the heirs to keep as many valuable pieces as possible out of the inventory. The lowest degree of reliability is found in bankruptcy inventories. In such cases the primary source of information – the bankrupt person him-, or herself – was present to influence the proceedings both before and during the taking of the inventory and had a strong interest in doing so. Wijsenbeek considered these inventories to be so untrustworthy that she actually removed them from her sample. (This should be a warning for students of Rembrandt’s inventory who treat it as an adequate representation of his possessions.) Once aware of the possible distortions, a researcher may be able to correct for some effects of these kinds. Other factors are not dealt with that easily. For example, Wijsenbeek pointed out with puzzlement that although inventories sometimes include exact counts of all the socks and stockings and ribbons in an estate, they almost never listed shoes, aside from exceptional ones such as embroidered slippers, or riding boots. There are no formal regulations excempting shoes from an inventory. There must be an unspoken convention at work that we can only identify in its effects. Whether other such conventions operated, concerning less obvious items, we do not know. In sum, inventories are the end result of procedures that were difficult to conduct and full of uncertainties. The absence in an inventory of a particu-
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lar item, or group of items cannot be construed as proof that such things were not owned by the party concerned. Most importantly for their use as a source in art history is that they were not drawn up for the primary purpose of cataloguing collections and their objects. To consult them as if they were catalogues is asking for trouble. This applies not only to individual items, or inventories, but also to large-scale statistical research. The dangers can be demonstrated with regard to one of the main uses to which inventories are put by art historians, that is, the division of genres in Dutch painting of the seventeenth century. What percentage of the production was history paintings, what percentage portraiture, and so on. In 1988, Marten Jan Bok published a critical and influential review in Simiolus of Wilfried Brulez’s book Cultuur en getal, a quantitative study of various trends in European culture from 1400 to 1800.2 One of Brulez’s main conclusions is that there was a steady process of secularization in the subject matter of painting, and that Dutch painting anticipated the European shift. The evidence for this was based on a sample of 4,000 paintings over the entire period from five museums. Bok took Brulez to task for this. Part of his objection is, or seems technical. “The sample of 4,000 paintings as a cross-section of four centuries of European art is simply too small,” he wrote. “Artists painted a large number of subjects, so only a very large sample would yield significant results.” But Bok also objected on principle to the use of museum catalogues for reconstructing historical ratios. “It is hard to maintain,” he wrote, “that the five museums culled by Brulez contain a cross-section of European painting. All five mirror an acquisitions policy governed by quality and taste, and all five are weak in ‘bad paintings.’ If one wishes to discover the original distribution of subject matter one should follow Montias and concentrate on archive research. But if it is decided to use modern sources, then auction catalogues would probably be more representative than museum catalogues.” Bok was referring, of course, to the pioneering research of John Michael Montias in Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the Seventeenth Century (1982), a book to which our field is forever indebted. In other words, Bok maintained that there is a larger bias in museum collecting and catalogues with regard to the division of genres than in the Delft inventories on which Montias’ figures are based. That standpoint, it seems to me, is taken too categorically. On the basis of some counting of my own, I take issue with Bok’s objection to the numerical inadequacy of Brulez’s sample. For the period 1600 to 1700, Brulez’s base contains 1,806 paintings of all European schools in five museums. In the framework of the NWO project Dutch Culture in European Context, my associate, Trudy van den Oosten, and I built a comparable but considerably larger database. Our project was carried out in the working group for the year 1650, one of the four benchmark years that yielded a volume on Dutch culture in the period con-
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cerned. Our database contains 3,430 paintings of all European schools from the period 1625-75 in nine museums, only one of which coincides with one of Brulez’s. Our base is two-and-a-half times as large as Brulez’s, covers half the period and is independent of it. In terms of the vital statistic – sacred versus secular – our findings come quite close. Brulez found 25.6% sacred versus 74.4% secular, whereas the 1650 base shows 22.4% sacred and 77.6% secular.3 In more refined divisions of the subject matter, some of the differences were greater and some smaller than this, but in all cases the ranking was the same. The fact that the larger 1650 database, with paintings from different museums, comes so close to Brulez’s weakens Bok’s second objection as well as his first. I repeat it. “It is hard to maintain,” he wrote, “that the five museums culled by Brulez contain a cross-section of European painting. All five mirror an acquisitions policy governed by quality and taste, and all five are weak in ‘bad paintings’.” Now that Brulez’s figures and those of the 1650 database cover more than 5,000 paintings in thirteen museum collections, this argument is less persuasive. Over the centuries in which these holdings were accumulated, from the princely collection of Munich to the collectors’ museum of the Metropolitan Museum to the perhaps more curatorial one of the National Gallery in London, the acquisitions policies, such as they were, cover the entire field. If one allows for one major policy change per museum per century, we are not talking about “an acquisitions policy” but dozens of them. To my mind, this is typically a case of local differences canceling each other out. As for Bok’s claim that the museums are weak in “bad paintings,” this may be an undeserved tribute. On the rare occasions when a museum displays all holdings of a certain kind, as in the 1996 exhibition Rembrandt / Not Rembrandt in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, we are given a glimpse of the bad paintings that are usually kept in storage. Of course, the average level of quality of museum paintings is higher than outside the museum, but one cannot use this truism to dismiss the representativeness of museum collections in other respects. Now let us turn to the source that Bok recommended: archival research such as that of Michael Montias. Montias would be the first to admit that his sample of Delft inventories is biased. In Artists and Artisans in Delft, he mentioned three varieties of bias. One of them is a result of the researcher’s understandable predilection for inventories with named artists. By his own estimate, this resulted in a sample of estates that were about “twice as wealthy as the average inhabitant of Delft with a separate household” (p. 225). In addition to this “significant...bias...[of the researcher] toward the upper end of the wealth distribution,” the material itself from which it was chosen displays a certain partiality. “It is likely,” Montias observed, “that many of the original collections – particularly those of the poorer strata of society – were never
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notarized...” while “many inventories described in contemporary notarial records have disappeared” (p. 223). If these came mainly from the poorer strata of society, they are certain to have been composed differently than the surviving inventories. Another weakness in Montias’ sample, which he did not mention, is that he ignored the difference in reliability of inventories pointed out by Wijsenbeek. Montias did not weight more reliable against less reliable inventories, not even the bankruptcy inventories that Wijsenbeek eliminates altogether. Moreover, while Montias drew emphatic attention to the overrepresentation of wealthy inventories in his sample, he did not attach any conclusions to this fact concerning the reliability of his data. “These defects notwithstanding,” he wrote, “a sample containing perhaps 70 to 80 percent of all the attributed paintings in extant inventories should still have considerable value for the study of art collections in Delft” and goes on to the order of the day. This seems to me a bit too easy. There are major unexplained discrepancies between counts based on museum catalogues and those based on inventories, and these discrepancies reflect on the value of the inventories for the research purposes to which we put them.4 The share of genre painting in the Northern and Southern Netherlands in the seventeenth century is as much as six times higher in museums than in inventories. Between 1610 and 1679, the share of all genre paintings in Montias’ Delft collections is 4.75%. In the figure for Amsterdam in Montias’ article of 1991 in Art in History / History in Art, the percentage is 7.6%. In Brulez’s sample, the figure for 1600 to 1650 is 14.5% and from 1650 to 1700 it is 30.4%! In the 1650 database, the share of genre between 1625 and 1675 is 20%. Jochai Rosen, in a student paper of 1996, formulated a number of hypotheses to explain the discrepancy. One of his suggestions concerns the admitted biases in Montias’ data. Since genre paintings are the smallest and cheapest of Dutch pictures, he wrote, it is reasonable to assume that they are overrepresented exactly in the households that in Montias’ sample are underrepresented – the poor ones. They would be more inclined to occur in collections that were never inventoried, and within the inventoried collections would be more likely to be undescribed. In order to check on his suspicion that Montias’ data systematically underestimates the occurrence of genre paintings, Rosen took Marten Jan Bok’s advice and compared it to the results of a random auction sale of Dutch paintings at Christie’s in Amsterdam in 1991. The share of genre turned out to be 14%, exactly Brulez’s figure for 1600 to 1650 and far above Montias’. Rosen’s hypothesis seems to make perfect sense, and it would be nice to be able to adopt it without further ado. We might take it as a rule of thumb that the number of genre paintings in a large sample of Dutch collections will have been about three times larger than the inventory entries indicate.
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The reason they are not in the inventory is that they belonged to people of modest means, whose collections did not merit complete description. This picture of things, however, collapses at once when we test it against Montias’ findings in Amsterdam.5 There he examined the relationship between inventories with attributions and those without. The former are richer, the latter poorer. If therefore there were more genre paintings in poorer estates than in richer ones, we would expect to find more of them in the inventories without attributions. However, Montias reported the exact opposite. In all inventories with attributions, the percentage of genre is 8%, while in inventories without attributions there are only 6.2% genre paintings. Paradoxically, the ratio of history paintings is the other way around. There are considerably more history paintings in inventories without attributions than in those with. Surely this goes completely against our expectation that richer collections would own relatively more history paintings than poorer ones. Montias did not comment on this puzzling phenomenon. At the least, this situation should serve as a warning against exclusive reliance on archival inventories for the study of historical production. Existing collections and other sources of information should also be taken into consideration. Rather than dismissing, or ignoring discrepancies, we should home in on them as vital signals. • • • The first impulse toward the use of archival research in the history of Dutch painting was initiated by Pieter Scheltema in the 1850s. He treated individual documents as discrete sources of art-historical information. This impulse continues, through Abraham Bredius, Isabella van Eeghen, Bas Dudok van Heel, Michael Montias, Marten Jan Bok and an increasing number of others, to enrich the field. A second wave was initiated by Montias in the 1970s and has been practiced vigorously since by Montias, Bok, Ad van der Woude, and various specialists in material culture. This second-generation approach works with documents in the statistical aggregate. It couples archival research with the quantitative and economic-historical study of art.6 At this point, I would suggest, a third wave is called for. This approach should begin with a critique of the prevailing definitions and models. It will ask pointed questions about the nature of the archives and documents we study and their relationship to the historical paradigms and presumptions on which we operate. It will not play favorites in the study of sources but will develop new means for integrating various kinds of historical knowledge and critical reflection. It will cease to pay mere lip service to the fragmentary nature of the information at our disposal but will look for ways of developing it into a positive learning factor. All of human knowledge is fragmentary,
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after all, and the archive gives us one of the few environments in which we can gauge and come to terms with the extent of that incompleteness. Author’s Note: This essay is adapted from a paper delivered at a symposium on the use of archival inventories in art history held in The Hague on 6-7 June 1996. The symposium was organized by the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) and held in the Royal Library (KB).
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Thera Wijsenbeek-Olthuis, Achter de gevels van Delft: Bezit en bestaan van rijk en arm in een periode van achteruitgang, 1700-1800 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1987). Marten Jan Bok, review of Wilfried Brulez, Cultuur en getal: aspecten van de relatie economie-maatschappij-cultuur in Europa tussen 1400 en 1800 (Cahiers Sociale Geschiedenis, vol. 6) (Amsterdam: Nederlandse Vereniging tot Beoefening van de Sociale Geschiedenis, 1986), in Simiolus 18 (1988): 63-68. In this context, I accept Brulez’s contention that landscape painting, still-life painting, etc. are “secular,” a view that is no longer as self-evident as it seemed in the 1980s. This problem was tackled by Jochai Rosen in a seminar that I gave at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1995-96. Rosen subsequently was awarded his Ph.D. at the Hebrew University in 2003 with a dissertation entitled “Jacob Duck and the ‘Guardroom’ Painters: Minor Masters as Inventors in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting.” He is now professor of art history at Haifa University. John Michael Montias, “Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam: An Analysis of Subjects and Attributions,” in Art in History / History in Art: Studies in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Culture, eds. David Freedberg and Jan de Vries (Santa Monica: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities 1991), pp. 331-72. Both of these approaches were supported materially and morally for years by the Art History Information Program (AHIP) of the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities (now the Getty Research Institute). AHIP lives on in drastically reduced form in the form of the Provenance Index, but without the committed leadership of Burton Fredericksen, the founder of AHIP, it no longer plays the central role it once did in European inventory research.
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Marketing the Dutch Past: The Lucas van Leyden Revival around 1600 larry silver University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
During the early decades of art collecting in the later sixteenth century, the first Northern artist to receive intense interest was Albrecht Dürer (d. 1528), whose revival climaxed around the year 1600 in what has been termed a “Dürer Renaissance.”1 For example, in one of the earliest surviving print collections, the albums of Ferdinand, archduke of Tyrol from the late sixteenth century, the only artist who is singled out with volumes under his own name – in contrast to the prevailing thematic organization according to religion, moralities, or iconography that prevailed in the remainder of the albums – is Dürer.2 In addition to such collecting of authentic works of drawings, or prints, Dürer was widely copied (including Aegidius Sadeler’s engravings after the artist’s drawings) and he was imitated, even forged, by a variety of artists – including Hans Hoffmann, Daniel Fröschl, Georg Hoefnagel, and, surprisingly, Bartholomeus Spranger – from the Prague court of Rudolf II, where the passion for collecting Dürer’s originals reached its peak. Rudolf’s acquisition of art by Dürer climaxed when he succeeded in obtaining The Feast of the Rose Garlands (1506) out of Venice’s church of San Bartolommeo; from there he had it carried by hand like a religious relic back to Prague, unfortunately resulting in its damaged condition. Less attention has been given to an analogous situation in late sixteenthcentury Holland, where the other major Northern painter-printmaker of Dürer’s era, Lucas van Leyden (d. 1533), was collected and imitated with almost equal zeal. Rudolf II played a major role in this revival too, seeking out major paintings by Lucas for his burgeoning collection of revered old masters. In the process, he dispatched his court painter Hans von Aachen to Holland in 1603 to act as an agent in acquiring works by Lucas and others.3 The life of Lucas that Karel van Mander wrote for his Schilder-boeck (1604, fol. 213v.) makes several references to Rudolf’s contemporary pressures toward acquiring paintings by the Dutch master, including the celebrated large Last
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Judgment Triptych in Leiden (1526; Lakenhal, Leiden). Van Mander wrote of the triptych as being “so beautiful that important foreign princes have enquired after it in order to purchase it,” and reported that the work ultimately did not leave the city.4 By the Schilder-boeck’s publication date of 1604, however, the emperor did succeed in acquiring an Annunciation (1522; Alte Pinakothek, Munich), the exterior of a Lucas diptych depicting The Virgin and Child with Mary Magdalen and a Donor.5 Van Mander described this Annunciation, and noted: “this little painting now belongs to Emperor Rudolf, the greatest art lover of our day.” According to documents, Rudolf II had already used his envoy Count Simon zur Lippe, as well as one of his favorite graphic artists, Jan Muller, to make an offer for The Last Judgment in 1602. He seemed to have found the perfect envoy in Muller, a Prague engraver trained in Haarlem by Hendrik Goltzius himself.6 Although both Prince Maurits and the States General asked the Leiden town council to comply for reasons of diplomacy, the council declined. Van Mander explained that those “honorable [Leiden] officials politely refused to [sell] on the grounds that respect for their famous fellow townsman compelled them not to part with it, no matter how large the sum offered” (fol. 213v.). It seems plausible that both Van Mander and his good friend Goltzius, artists who prized the earlier Dutch painting tradition, formed part of the resistance. In his biographical entry on Goltzius, Van Mander attested to his subject’s admiration for Lucas, asserting that the master engraver had recently acquired for his collection a major triptych by Lucas van Leyden, Christ Healing the Blind Man of Jericho (1531; The Hermitage, St. Petersburg). Quoting Van Mander: But his [Lucas’] supreme work, the best and most beautiful, is a triptych, belonging today to Goltzius in Haarlem, who is as much an art lover as an artist. He bought it in Leiden in 1602 for a large sum of money; he was very pleased, because his expert knowledge of art had led him to love and covet Lucas’ works. (Fol. 212v.) As agent to Rudolf II, Hans von Aachen then sought out this same work, Christ Healing the Blind Man of Jericho, after having failed to acquire Lucas’ Last Judgment triptych from the Leiden town councilors. This fruitless effort is documented in a letter from the painter Johann Tilmans to Count Simon zu Lippe (7 June 1603), wherein Tilman remarked that Goltzius held the picture so dear that he asked an exorbitant amount for its purchase.7 Goltzius’ admiration for Lucas had already found frequent earlier expression in his prints. For the most part, previous scholars have focused upon the obvious Lucas imitations by Goltzius, which approach an uncanny “channel-
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ing” of the earlier artist into print recreations of favorite Lucas subjects in a close simulation of his style. But now Nadine Orenstein has perceptively noted that, even at the height of his infatuation with the mannered muscularity currently fashionable in the pictorial idiom of Haarlem, led by Cornelis van Haarlem, Goltzius nonetheless turned to Lucas’ woodcuts for inspiration. In particular, he used the Fall of Man from the small Power of Women series by Lucas (1517) for his own chiaroscuro woodcuts, Demogorgon in the Cave of Eternity and Proserpina (c. 1588-90). In these two works, Goltzius adapted from Lucas’ woodcuts both the twisting figure posed in a landscape and the strongly outlined forms.8 Orenstein has also observed how Lucas’ late engraving, Adam and Eve Lamenting the Dead Abel (1529), provided figural models for Goltzius’ early engraved series, The Creation of the World (1589), executed by the same Jan Muller.9 These traditional figural motifs span nearly a century. Yet for all previous scholars, Goltzius’ use of the Spranger-style idiom of his own virtuoso early engravings had effectively masked the engravings’ specific sources in Lucas.
Fig. 1. Hendrik Goltzius after Lucas van Leyden, Adoration of the Magi, 1594, engraving. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Ladd Collection, Gift of Hershel V. Jones, 1916.
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By contrast, Goltzius’ overt emulation of Lucas’ Adoration of the Magi (1513) for the same subject in his Master Engravings series, The Life of the Virgin (1594; Fig. 1), has been widely celebrated since its own day.10 Goltzius’ version of The Adoration of the Magi picks up many of the figure types from Lucas’ ample precedent. And even as he altered the format of the original from horizontal to vertical, he made use of another, slightly later Lucas engraving, Esther before Ahasuerus (1518) for various specifics of architecture and background, as well as for general composition and format. Moreover, Goltzius’ tribute to his renowned predecessor extended to imitating his distinctive engraving technique of fine burin strokes and achieving an overall effect of silvery tonality. Goltzius’ Adoration of the Magi, then, effectively embodies Lucas’ imagery and forms as it stands alongside his simultaneous evocation of Dürer in the Circumcision and of Barocci and other Italian print masters in the remaining four engravings of the same Master Engravings suite. Van Mander’s biography of Goltzius (fol. 284v) offers an anecdote about the artist’s success in persuading the public that his Master Engravings were actually authentic old master works. Describing first the Dürer imitation, then the Lucas print, Van Mander declared: ...[he] smoked several impressions, aging them as if they had been in circulation for many years. This print then traveled, disguised and in masquerade, to Rome, Venice, Amsterdam, and elsewhere, whereupon it was seen with astonishment and delight by artists and knowledgeable collectors, some of whom bought it at great cost, happy to have gotten hold of a previously unknown work by the Nuremberger.... The same thing happened with the plate of the Adoration of the Magi after Lucas. What was strangest was that certain engravers, who thought themselves expert at recognizing the rendering and burin-stroke of the best masters, were themselves deceived.11 Goltzius’ emerging dialogue with Lucas became even more intense with a series of ten engravings of the Passion (1596-98). These emulate Lucas’ own response and homage, in his Passion cycle of 1521, to Dürer’s earlier engraved Passion series of 1507-12.12 Van Mander (fol. 285r.) offered special praise for the Goltzius series as “wholly in the manner of Lucas van Leyden, diverging only in the disposition of the figures” – but in compositions that display an individual style worthy of the older master. He cited this Passion cycle as proof that Goltzius was truly “a rare Proteus, or Vertumnus in art by which he can truly inhabit every style.”13 As with the earlier Adoration of the Magi, among the delights of this finely wrought engraved Passion series is our recognition of its dialogue with the facial types, settings, and engraved effects of models by two great earlier artists,
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Lucas and Dürer, but produced in a format twice as large as these precedents. Of course, the very choice of an engraved Passion engraving cycle links Goltzius not only to both Lucas and Dürer, but even to celebrated pioneer engravers of the later fifteenth century, such as Martin Schongauer. This phenomenon, a contest among engravers across time, is nothing new.14 Van Mander (fol. 212v.) already noted in his Lucas biography that Some are of the opinion that Albert Dürer and he [Lucas] attempted to equal, or top each other, specifically, that Lucas later engraved some of the same figure compositions, or other prints that Albert had done before, and that they studied each other’s prints with the greatest admiration....” As Huigen Leeflang has pointed out, the piquancy of connoisseurship for print collectors at the end of the sixteenth century would consist precisely of this triangulation of Lucas, Dürer, and Goltzius, abetted by the placement of the earlier prints in albums that grouped images by both artist and subject.15 Such collectors would notice with pleasure that Goltzius’ format, tellingly, is twice as large as that of Lucas’ 1521 set, and the number and variety of his figures greater, yet he reverently retains much from his predecessor in the way of subjects, forms, and even Lucas’ trademark silvery technique. In Christ before Pilate from this series, Goltzius followed Van Mander’s compositional dictate that artists use framing figures to achieve the illusion of depth; significantly, one of these figures is a well-dressed onlooker in “modern” attire – but expressly in the fashion of Lucas’ day, circa 1520. The Passion series was carefully prepared by Goltzius through a series of chalk drawings that survive intact (Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig).16 This project coincided with the moment in Goltzius’ career when he often delegated the task of producing engravings after his drawings to such followers as Jacob Matham and Jan Saenredam. Then, on the eve of his abandonment of engraving altogether in favor of a career as a painter, Goltzius made other drawings in ink after the manner of Lucas: these combine grotesque, older male facial features – exaggerations of some of the types he inherited from Lucas – with distinctively rounded, younger female visages from the same source. They include a standard Lucas Power-of-Women subject, Solomon’s Idolatry (Fondation Custodia, Frits Lugt Collection, Paris), and another favorite early sixteenth-century subject, The Ill-Matched Pair (1596; Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin).17 Reznicek rightly noted that neither drawing derives directly from a Lucas composition. But like the engraved Adoration of the Magi, they represent adaptations of figure types, costumes, and favorite subjects into original combinations that are recognizably Goltzius’ own. From chalk portrait drawings by Lucas, Goltzius also developed bustlength “fantasy portrait” drawings. These usually depict caricatured, portly
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old men, their costumes resembling the antiquated fashions of around 1520 – another iconographic nod to Lucas.18 The most notable of these is a meticulous vanitas image in ink, but with a linear vocabulary like an engraving: Young Man with Tulip and Skull (1614; Pierpont Morgan Library, New York), in which the soft, feathered hat stands close to Lucas’ engraving, Young Man with Skull (c. 1519).19 It should be noted that during the period of Van Mander and Goltzius, this elegant youth was understood to be a self-portrait by Lucas van Leyden, as Van Mander’s biography duly notes (fol. 212v.): “Lucas was on the short side and rather slight; there is a portrait of him engraved by himself, young and beardless, a bit more than half-length, wearing a large feathered cap and holding a skull to his breast inside his mantle.” Goltzius’ taste for Lucas van Leyden surely remained formative for Dutch artists in Haarlem, including Karel van Mander and such students of his own in engraving, Matham and Saenredam. Van Mander designed a Passion series (engraved by Jacques de Gheyn II and Zacharias Dolendo), evidence of a friendly rivalry between him and his Haarlem confrère, Goltzius.20 Moreover, in his paintings, Van Mander readily adopted the subjects and sometimes even utilized the inverted compositions of Lucas van Leyden. A good example is Van Mander’s Dance around the Golden Calf (1602; Frans Halsmuseum, Haarlem), which freely adapts the inverted composition and inverted emphasis of Lucas’ own small triptych (c. 1530; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). Van Mander, the biographer of Lucas, viewed the latter’s triptych in a private collection on the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam.21 In addition, his Calvary in the Snow (1599; private collection, England) owes a considerable debt to Lucas’ small-figure, engraved composition, Calvary (1517). As an index of Lucas’ stature in the early seventeenth century, we can also cite Arnoldus Buchelius (Arnold van Buchell, 1565-1641), a Utrecht canon, jurist, and scholar, whose diary and Res picturiae were first written around the time of Van Mander’s paintings and writings. Buchelius praised Lucas as a supreme artist, judging his works to be of eternal worth, deserving of comparison with the great painters of the world.22 Jan Muller’s fascination with Lucas’ precedent bordered on virtual identification. While a number of deceptive copies of Lucas prints span the entire sixteenth century, Muller produced a near replica of the 1521 Passion engravings by Lucas, exact in figures, composition, size, and format. These engravings are identifiable as Muller’s own solely through the inscription of his name on The Last Supper, first in the series.23 During the 1590s, Jan Saenredam, who served as principal engraver after designs by Goltzius, executed several prints that derive from Lucas’ model, especially drawings of two Old Testament heroines, Judith and Jael (c. 1595).24 Both Saenredam prints can be matched with existing Lucas drawings from the early 1520s: Jael (Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam) and
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Fig. 2. Jan Saenredam after Lucas van Leyden, The Hymn of the Daughters of Israel to the Triumphant David, 1600, engraving. Northwestern University, Mary and Leigh Block Gallery.
Judith (British Museum, London).25 These round-faced female figures and their virtuous actions constitute positive versions of the Power of Women, otherwise rendered by Lucas with negative examples in two different woodcut cycles. Judith and Jael, along with Esther, were the Jewish epitomes of Worthy Women; as such, they were frequently paired with triads of pagan and Christian women in painted and print cycles.26 In medieval Christian interpretations, these Old Testament heroines were also frequently considered prefigurations of the Virgin Mary and her triumph over evil. Saenredam’s skills as a professional engraver are apparent in the meticulous replication of the linear syntax of Lucas’ drawing and in his preservation of its original orientation, countering the reversal process of printing. In The Hymn of the Daughters of Israel to the Triumphant David (1600; Fig. 2), Saenredam even reproduced an early Lucas van Leyden painting on glass (c. 1510-15). Here, the young hero returns to the gates of Jerusalem with the giant head of Goliath atop his sword (I Samuel 18: 6). Van Mander recorded it as “the women dancing out to greet David...done with amazing technique” (fol. 214r.), and as a possession of none other than Hendrick Goltzius, “who is very fond of Lucas’ work.”27 He further noted, “a print has been
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Fig. 3. Abraham Bloemaert after Lucas van Leyden, The Expulsion from Paradise, 1604, engraving. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Ethel Morrison Van Derlip Fund, 1984.
made after it also, very well engraved by Jan Saenredam.” A reverse copy of the Saenredam print by Pieter de Jode, a professional engraver of the next generation, provides yet another attestation to the popularity of Lucas. One final example of Lucas’ influence after the turn of the century comes from the hand of a Dutch artist of the next generation, Abraham Bloemaert of Utrecht. Bloemaert’s designs for his own six-print cycle of prints, The Life of Adam and Eve (1604), clearly reveal inspiration from Lucas’ prior engraved series of the same subject (1529), a late cycle also in six prints. To produce this series, Bloemaert utilized the same team of professional printmakers as Goltzius, principally Jacob Matham and Jan Saenredam. In following Lucas, Bloemaert revealed a decided interest in the representation of idealized male and female nude figures, but without the overwrought muscularity of the Goltzius generation. Within his version Bloemaert interpolated an unprecedented engagement with the natural delineation of fauna, especially in the first print, Adam Naming the Animals.28 Another notable overlap, The Expulsion from Paradise (Fig. 3), shows Bloemaert’s very thorough assimilation of the Lucas model (Fig. 4) in the form of a punishing angel bearing a sword tipped with flames, who appears before the darkening sky above; the thick forest and dappled foliage, however, remain Bloemaert’s own.
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Fig. 4. Lucas van Leyden, The Expulsion from Paradise, 1529, engraving.
The international orientation of the Goltzius circle and Bloemaert during a period of intense collecting gave rise to a specifically Northern Netherlandish history of art. In this, as we have seen, Lucas van Leyden was the most fascinating object of the backward glance that cosmopolites and connoisseurs alike took in their search for the roots of a burgeoning local pictorial heritage. Let us recall, for example, Arnoldus Buchelius, a member of the younger generation of Bloemaert, who had expressed immense admiration for Lucas around the same time as did Van Mander and Goltzius. Of course, Buchelius is one of the primary written sources so deftly utilized by Michael Montias in his magisterial Artists and Artisans in Delft, which picks up in the seventeenth century where this study of Leiden, Haarlem, and Utrecht leaves off.29 Author’s Note: This note provides one last opportunity to acknowledge with profound gratitude Montias’ formative scholarship for our entire field, particularly for such questions of production and consumption as have shaped the present essay.
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Giulia Bartrum, Albrecht Dürer and his Legacy, exh. cat., British Museum, London, 2002, pp. 266-67; Matthias Mende, “Dürer Renaissance,” in Jane Turner, ed. Dictionary of Art (London: Macmillan, 1996), vol. 9, pp. 445-47; Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Hermeneutics in the History of Art: Remarks on the Reception of Dürer in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century,” in Jeffrey Chipps Smith, ed., New Perspectives on the Art of Renaissance Nuremberg: Five Essays (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), pp. 23-39; Gisele Goldberg, “Zur Ausprägung der Dürer-Renaissance in München,” Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst 31 (1980): 129-75; Hans Kauffmann, “Dürer in der Kunst- und im Kunsturteil um 1600,” Anzeiger des Germanischen National Museums (1940-53): 18-60. Peter Parshall, “The Print Collection of Ferdinand, Archduke of Tyrol,” Jahrbuch der historischen-kunst Sammlungen in Wien 78 (1982): 139-84, esp. 140-41, 46-49. See also Bart Cornelis and Jan Piet Filedt Kok, “The Taste for Lucas van Leyden Prints,” Simiolus 26 (1998): 23-26, noting also a portfolio of prints by Lucas in the large collection by Paul van Praun (d. 1616), assembled in Nuremberg around 1600. Joachim Jacoby, Hans von Aachen, 1552-1615 (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2000), p. 75, n. 70; R.A. Pelzer, “Der Hofmaler Hans von Aachen, seine Schule und seine Zeit,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen der Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 30 (1911-12): 106, 172, docs. 6-9. See also I.I. Orlers, Beschrijvinge der stadt Leyden (Leiden, 1614), pp. 115-16; P.F.J.M. Hermesdorf et al., “The Examination and Restoration of The Last Judgment of Lucas van Leyden,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 29 (1978): 327, nn. 64-65, 411-13, docs. 3-8. Note especially doc. 7 (6 November 1602), a letter from Jan Muller to Count Simon zur Lippe, in which the engraver informs the count that the purchase has fallen through, “since I wrote to Herr Hans van Achen about it, in the meantime Mister Goltzius came with Mander.” Elise Lawton Smith, The Paintings of Lucas van Leyden (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1992), pp. 30-35, 83-84, 124-31, no. 20. Lawton Smith 1992, pp. 111-16, no. 14; Jan Piet Filedt Kok et al., “Das Diptychon des Lucas van Leiden von 1522: Versuch einer Rekonstruktion,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 26 (1975): 229-58, esp. 245-52. On Muller, see Jan Piet Filedt Kok, “Jan Harmensz. Muller as a Printmaker, I” Print Quarterly 11 (1994): 223-64, 351-78; Jan Piet Filedt Kok, “Jan Harmensz. Muller as a Printmaker, II,” Print Quarterly 12 (1995): 3-29. N. Nikulin, “Some Data Concerning the History of the Triptych The Healing of the Blind Man of Jericho by Lucas van Leyden,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 29 (1978): 301-02. Whether, or not his assessment was driven by sour grapes, Tilmans also claimed that the painting was already in grave condition. Nadine Orenstein, “Finally Spranger. Prints and Print Designs 1586-1590,” in Huigen Leeflang and Ger Luijten, Hendrick Goltzius, 1558-1617: Drawings, Prints, and Paintings, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2003, pp. 104-06. Orenstein in Leeflang and Luijten 2003, pp. 109-10. Huigen Leeflang, “A Proteus, or Vertumnus in Art: The Virtuoso Engravings 15921600,” in Leeflang and Luijten 2003, pp. 213-14, no. 75d; Cornelis and Filedt Kok 1998, pp. 36-41; Walter Melion, “Hendrick Goltzius’ Project of Reproductive Engraving,” Art History 13 (1990): 458-87, esp. 476-79. Translation in Walter Melion, Shaping the Netherlandish Canon: Karel van Mander’s Schilder-Boeck (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 46. See Leeflang in Leeflang and Luijten 2003, pp. 223-25, no. 80, pointing out affinities with Dürer as well as Lucas. For the association of Goltzius with the shape-shifting Greco-Roman god Proteus and the significance of this identity, see Melion 1991, pp. 46, n. 27, pp. 158, 167; also Walter Melion, “Theory and Practice: Reproductive Engravings in the Sixteenth-Century
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Netherlands,” in Timothy Riggs and Larry Silver, Graven Images: The Rise of Professional Printmakers in Antwerp and Haarlem, 1540-1640, exh. cat., Northwestern University: Block Gallery, Evanston, 1993, esp. pp. 57-63. Lucas had earlier produced a larger, circular Passion series (1509). For Dürer’s full range of drawn, engraved, and woodcut Passion images, see Jordan Kantor, Dürer’s Passions, exh. cat., Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA, 2000. For Lucas’ relationship to the Dürer models in both woodcut and engraving, see Jan Piet Filedt Kok, Lucas van Leyden-grafiek, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1978, pp. 63-66; also Cornelis and Filedt Kok 1998, pp. 38-39. See Leeflang in Leeflang and Luijten 2003, pp. 224-25, n. 85: “The fact that sixteenthcentury print collections tended to be arranged by subject would have significantly assisted this examination and comparison of works by different masters.” However, as noted by Parshall, “Ferdinand, Archduke of Tyrol,” (cited in note 2), pp. 146, 177, cat. nos. 1-3, for the Ambras albums, Dürer formed the notable exception to this trend, and for print collectors, Lucas might also occasionally have been singled out for artistic individuation. See also Cornelis and Filedt Kok 1998, pp. 36-39. Emil Reznicek, Die Zeichnungen van Hendrick Goltzius (Utrecht: Haentjens Dekker & Gumbert, 1961), 98-99, 249-50, nos. 33-44. Reznicek 1961, pp. 113-14, nos. 13, 192; for Lucas and the Power of Women theme, see Yvonne Bleyerveld, Hoe bedriechlijck dat die vrouwen zijn: Vrowenlisten in de beeldende kunst in de Nederlanden circa 1350-1650 (Leiden: Primavera, 1999), esp. pp. 95-115; for the Ill-Matched Pair theme, see Alison Stewart, Unequal Lovers: A Study of Unequal Couples in Northern Art (New York: Abaris, 1977); and more generally, H. Diane Russell, with Bernardine Barnes, Eva/Ave: Woman in Renaissance and Baroque Prints, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1990, esp. pp. 163, 194, 190, nos. 100, 115, 120. Reznicek 1961, pp. 125-26; esp. no. 332 (1614; Pierpont Morgan Library, New York); also nos. 160, 178, 292, 299, 301, 307, 318-20, 324, 329, 333, 341, and woman’s head, no. 365. Leeflang and Luijten 2003, pp. 262-63, no. 96. Cornelis and Filedt Kok 1998, p. 39, fig. 26. The brother of Zacharias (d. before 1604), Bartholomäus Dolendo (c. 1571-after 1629), engraved a Flute-Player after Lucas, bearing both the year of its creation, 1530, and a monogram “L,” after a lost composition, presumably a painting. Lawton Smith 1992, pp. 179-80, no. C46, fig. 64. For the Lucas, see Lawton Smith 1992, pp. 39-42, 64-68, 106-09, no. 11; for Van Mander, see Melion 1991, pp. 4-6, 68-69; Marjolein Leesberg, “Karel van Mander as a Painter,” Simiolus 22 (1993-94): 27-28, n. 131, identifying the collection as that of book dealer Jan Lossert. The compositional inversion is discussed by Peter Parshall, “Lucas van Leyden’s Narrative Style,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 29 (1978): 185-237; for this picture, see also Lawrence Silver, “The ‘Sin of Moses’: Comments on the Early Reformation in a Late Painting by Lucas van Leyden,” Art Bulletin 55 (1973): 407-09. G.J. Hoogewerff and J.Q. van Regteren Altena, eds., Arnoldus Buchelius’ “Res Pictoriae”: Aantekeningen over kunstenaars en kunstwerken voorkomende in zijn diarium (The Hague, 1928), pp. 80-81, cited by Cornelis and Filedt Kok 1998, p. 39, n. 76. See also HansWolfgang von Löhneysen, Die ältere Niederländische Malerei (Eisenach/Kassel: Eric Röth Verlag, 1956), pp. 289-91, 479. Cornelis and Filedt Kok 1998, p. 41, n. 79; Filedt Kok 1994, p. 261, n. 88; Konrad Renger, Graphik der Niederlände 1508-1617, exh. cat., Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, 1979, pp. 66-67, no. 117. Bleyerveld 1999, pp. 200-01, fig. 101; Jan Piet Filedt Kok, “Hendrick Goltzius: Engraver, Designer, and Publisher, 1582-1600,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 41-42 (199192): 189, fig. 114.
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25 Bleyerveld 1999, pp. 198-200, fig. 100; Wouter Kloek, “The Drawings of Lucas van Leyden,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 29 (1978): 444-45, nos. 10-11; Ger Luijten and A.W.F.M. Meij, From Pisanello to Cezanne, exh. cat., Boymans-Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, 1990, pp. 54-56, no. 15; Timothy Husband, The Luminous Image: Painted Glass Roundels in the Lowlands, 1480-1560, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1995, pp. 118-19, no. 51, arguing that these paired drawings were designs for glass painting panels. 26 Russell 1990, pp. 36-39, no. 1; for Judith, see also 60-73, nos. 20-32. Bleyerveld 1999, pp. 179-211. It should be noted, however, that Lucas includes Jael within his smaller Power of Women woodcut cycle. For Goltzius’ own print cycles—in the most modern style—of Old Testament Heroes and Heroines, engraved by his stepson Jacob Matham (1588), as well as a second cycle, engraved by Nicolaes de Braeu (1589), Bleyerveld 1999, pp. 201-07, figs. 102-03; see also Dawn of the Golden Age, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1993, pp. 347-48, no. 14, for the drawings of the first cycle (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Reznicek 1961, nos. 16-19). 27 Lawton Smith 1992, pp. 95-98, no. C4, fig. 10. For Lucas as a glass painter and the wider tradition in the Netherlands, see Husband 1995, esp. pp. 116-28, no. 56, pl. 13, where the extant glass panel (Ambrosiana, Milan), in reverse orientation, is attributed as the original, though it differs from the Saenredam engraving in several compositional details, including a taller print with more sky and landscape at its edges. The glass shows David more in the foreground, bearing a larger head of Goliath. 28 A turkey appears in the Temptation, along with a cat. Bruce Davis, Mannerist Prints: International Style in the Sixteenth Century, exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1988, pp. 318-20, nos. 146-147. 29 John Michael Montias, Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the Seventeenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 55-58.
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“Les regards dards”: Werner van den Valckert’s Venus and Cupid1 eric jan sluijter University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam
One of Werner van den Valckert’s most engaging paintings, Venus and Cupid (Fig. 1), turned up recently on the art market and was sold in 2005 to a collector in the United States.2 It is the kind of painting Michael Montias would have loved to possess. I vividly remember Michael’s expression of heightened interest (especially his twinkling eyes) when I explained to him – it must have been in the early eighties – my ideas on how artists structured the viewer’s involvement in many paintings of female nudes in the late sixteenth and seventeenth century. In the late sixteenth century and the first decades of the seventeenth century, numerous paintings and prints portraying Venus and Cupid were produced in the towns of Holland. However, Werner van den Valckert’s painting of this subject is in many respects different from those painted, drawn, or engraved by such artists as Hendrick Goltzius, Cornelis van Haarlem, Joachim Wtewael, and Jacques de Gheyn II. Those artists were of an older generation, but they were all active in the period in which Van den Valckert painted his Venus and Cupid. Several motifs attract our attention immediately in Van den Valckert’s painting: his Venus directly addresses the viewer with an inviting look; she removes for us the clothing that covered her body, a body that does not represent a stylized ideal but seems to have been studied from life and is more voluptuous than usual for this period; and Cupid is about to shoot his arrow at the beholder who enjoys this nude image of Venus. These motifs, which in combination deviate from the usual depictions of Venus, demonstrate Van den Valckert’s ambition to depict this highly traditional subject in an innovative and unexpected way, and to involve the viewer as much as possible.
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Fig. 1. Werner van den Valckert, Venus and Cupid, 1612-14, oil on canvas. United States, Private Collection.
The Pictorial Tradition of Van den Valckert’s Venuses Van den Valckert’s Venus and Cupid bears no date, but it is probably one of the earliest paintings we know by his hand. This would mean that the artist, who was born, raised, and married in The Hague, and settled in Amsterdam as of 1613, may have painted this panel when still living in the town of his birth, or just after his move to Amsterdam.3 Van den Valckert became an independent master sometime between 1600 and 1605, but his earliest dated works, all of them etchings, bear the date of 1612.4 One of these shows a Sleeping Venus Spied Upon by Two Satyrs (Fig. 2).5 This etching is probably based on a now-lost painting, a picture that would have shared some similarities with our Venus, thus suggesting an approximate date. In both works, the shape of the female body is indicated by a sharp outline of the back and hip against a dark background, Venus’ side is strongly lit, while the front of her torso is in shadow, and an undulating line that defines the transition from light to dark models her upper body. Other similar elements are these: one of her breasts catches the light, while the other remains in shadow; a strikingly sharp line, dividing light and shade, runs from the ridge of the nose to the eyebrow; a rather deep shadow indicates the rounding of the cheek, suggesting a smile. And
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Fig. 2. Werner van den Valckert, Sleeping Venus Spied Upon by Two Satyrs, 1612, etching.
finally, both depict the goddess with a similarly voluptuous and somewhat stocky build. In the only other female nude by Van den Valckert known to us, an Amphitrite dated 1619, we encounter a very different way of modeling the body, further indicating a dating of around 1612-14 for our Venus.6 The print of the Sleeping Venus Spied Upon by Satyrs – and its likely painted model – might have been produced in competition with a then quite famous, but now lost, work by Jacques de Gheyn II. Van Mander mentioned in 1604 that De Gheyn had just made a painting of “The Sleeping Venus…a life-size figure with a sleeping Cupid lying next to her. At her feet there are two satyrs one of whom timidly ventures to lift up a thin cloth, which covers her lap, or pudendum.”7 This could be an indication that Van den Valckert studied under De Gheyn and that this invention is an example of the ambitious pupil aspiring to emulate his renowned master, just as Rembrandt would do with Pieter Lastman one decade later.8 The theme of a reclining sleeping nude and one, or two satyrs, who often lift fabric from the woman’s almost completely naked body, is often traced to Venice.9 The many precedents of a reclining sleeping nude and a spying man include, notably, three engravings by Jacob Matham and two by Agostino Carracci from his famous Lascivie series.10 A comparison of Van den Valckert’s print with these prece-
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dents indicates his familiarity with the erotic images that were disseminated at that time and reveals his up-to-date interest in prints of the Carracci family.11 Despite generic similarities with such prints, closer comparison reveals Van den Valckert’s reliance on a different type of nude than depicted in these prototypes. Instead of the graceful and relatively slender physique of the women in the above-mentioned prints, Van den Valckert consciously chose a heavier and more solid physical type, with larger breasts and more prominent stomach. A similar body type can be found in an etching by Annibale Carracci representing Jupiter in the Guise of a Satyr Approaching the Sleeping Antiope.12 Van den Valckert seems to have been in search of a type of female nude that would completely break away from the stylized mannerist nudes of the previous decades. Hendrick Goltzius also sought such a nude in his late paintings, as we see in his version of Jupiter Approaching the Sleeping Antiope, produced in the same year as Van den Valckert’s etching.13 It seems to me that this painting was Goltzius’ response to the etched invention by Van den Valckert (and possibly the painting by Jacques de Gheyn no longer known to us). As with his Sleeping Venus, in the case of the Venus and Cupid (Fig. 1) one may also wonder if Van den Valckert was emulating a painting by De Gheyn, since it clearly relates to a work of around 1604 with the same subject by this master, which was probably owned by Prince Maurits (Fig. 3).14 This lifesize Venus, too, addresses us directly with a slight smile while Cupid is drawing his bow. A remarkably similar feature is the sharp, uninterrupted line from the ridge of the nose to the eyebrow. However, Van den Valckert’s Venus has strikingly different anatomical proportions, and apart from the figure of Cupid, she is without the usual attributes of roses, doves, burning heart, apple, pearls around her neck, or embroidered girdle. Van den Valckert’s Venus is, above all, a young woman undressing. This is emphasized by the act of her removing, not a generic “classical” drapery, but a white chemise, clearly defined as such by the lace cuff on the sleeve; later Rembrandt employed the same device in many of his depictions of nudes. Such a detail, combined with the fact that she is sitting on a rumpled bed littered with soft cushions and discarded clothing, certainly brings her closer to the world of the viewer than any of the other images of Venus by Van den Valckert’s contemporaries. Also the scraps of paper scattered behind her, one of which bears the artist’s signature and some other words now illegible,15 recall little love notes. This seems a far cry from the world of an Olympian goddess. Van den Valckert would have been very familiar with the many engravings of Venus and Cupid after the inventions of Hendrick Goltzius, which were engraved between about 1585 and 1612 by Goltzius himself or, more often, by Jan Saenredam and Jacob Matham (Fig. 4).16 For any young artist setting
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Fig. 3. Jacques de Gheyn II, Venus and Cupid, probably 1604, oil on canvas. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum.
out to depict mythological and religious themes, Goltzius must have been an awe-inspiring figure; his prints offered artists numerous examples to emulate and surpass. To amateurs and connoisseurs as well, his compositions must have served as benchmarks for many subjects. In Goltzius’ numerous inventions of Venus and Cupid – some showing the figures in full-length, but most in half-length – Venus usually holds an apple, or a burning heart and is surrounded by several standard attributes. Goltzius presented his Venuses as totally naked beauties with only some undefined draperies fluttering around their shoulders and pudenda. These images show a distinct development in Goltzius’ idealization of the female body. After his return from Italy, and especially in the early 1600s, the elongated figural type of the 1580s – displaying a small head, long neck, small breasts, elongated diaphragm, rather narrow hips, long legs, and quite pronounced muscles – gives way to proportions that are both more natural and more classical. In a Venus and Cupid engraved by Jacob Matham in 1612, we see how the rather distinct and unfeminine musculature of the earlier nudes has disappeared and how much care has been given to the smooth modeling of the torso, suggesting a softness of the body, while the hips and stomach are more emphatic (Fig. 4). The distance between the breasts and navel, however, remains unnaturally long; in several respects Goltz-
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Fig. 4. Jacob Matham after Hendrick Goltzius, Venus and Cupid, 1612, engraving.
ius retained the stylized proportions that were quite different from the classical statues he drew in Rome.17 Van den Valckert’s approach to his nudes diverges from that of Goltzius, and more emphatically differs from that of his contemporaries who favored smooth and stylized nudes, including Abraham Bloemaert, De Gheyn, and Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem.18 Van den Valckert’s nudes convey a much stronger impression that they were observed from life. However, at the same time, Van den Valckert had a classical example in mind when he conceived his Venus. The profile view of the nude with light coming from behind, as well as the outline of her back and nape and the raised arm, show that he studied an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi of the so-called Crouching Venus, or Venus Doidalsas (Fig. 5).19 It was an inventive idea to raise the arm a bit more, so that the breasts appear completely in view, and to transform this gesture into a pose of removing her clothing. I assume that connoisseurs, who would have been familiar with this print by Raimondi after a famous antique statue of Venus (a variant of the so-called pudica-pose), appreciated this witty variation on the classical source. It presented observers with the opportunity to show off their pictorial knowledge and to recognize the “dissimilar similarity,” to use the words of Franciscus Junius.20 One recalls how
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the slightly older, learned Rubens (for whom, incidentally, this Crouching Venus was a very important source of inspiration) often took classical sculpture as his point of departure. To breathe life into the venerable examples of Antiquity was a crucial element in Rubens’ theory of selective imitation.21 Like Rubens, Werner van den Valckert did his utmost to present the body of Venus as life-like as possible. Little is left of the pronounced anatomy in which the muscles under the skin protrude, such as we see in Raimondi’s print. Van den Valckert modeled Venus’ body to suggest soft, flowing forms, delicately transforming Raimondi’s solid folds of the stomach into soft creases of the skin. The subtle color and texture of her skin are emphasized through the contrast with the white linen sheet on her legs and the white chemise. Light reflected from the white sleeve hanging down from her hand serves to model the shadowed part of the torso: only the shiny pink nipples of her breasts stand out. To make the shape of the left breast visible against the dark background, part of the white chemise hangs behind it.
A New Manner It is clear that Van den Valckert belongs to a generation of artists who emphatically distanced themselves from the artificial stylization of the former generation and for whom the suggestion of life-likeness seems to have been of
Fig. 5. Marcantonio Raimondi (after an antique statue), Crouching Venus, engraving.
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paramount importance. The poet Gerbrand Adriaensz. Bredero, trained as a painter and of the same generation as Van den Valckert (who may even have portrayed the poet), referred to this trend in the art of painting in his introduction to the Geestigh liedt-boexcken (“The Witty Songbooklet”) of 1618.22 Bredero stated that he preferred the everyday, native Dutch idiom rather than the jargon used by learned writers, “for, as a painter, I have followed the schilderachtig saying [a saying common among painters] that ‘the best painters are those who come closest to life,’ not those who believe it is witty to strike attitudes alien to nature, to twist and bend limbs and bones, which they often elevate and contort too unreasonably, beyond the bounds of what is proper and fitting.”23 As a matter of fact, it was only a few years earlier that the news of Caravaggio’s naturalism had first arrived in Holland: Karel van Mander reported in 1604 that the Italian painter – whose “fame, honor, and name” were already great – had said that anything not done from nature was a mere “bagatelle, child’s play, or trifle,” because one should only imitate life in all its diversity. Caravaggio never took up his brushes without having “life” before his eyes, Van Mander noted.24 Van Mander, who must have heard this exciting piece of news from a local artist just back from Italy (in fact, this is the very first printed information on Caravaggio), added that this was all well and good, but first one had to learn to distinguish the most beautiful in nature. Thus it appears that Van Mander was still ambivalent about this extreme standpoint and found that both methods should be combined: working from nature and choosing the most beautiful through studying Antiquity and other artistic precedents. Our painting of Venus and Cupid shows that Van den Valckert certainly studied antique models, but consciously transformed this classical heritage with a distinct naturalism. In other works by his hand, this naturalism could become quite uncompromising, as if he wanted his compositions to be as ungraceful and unstylized as possible. Long before the return from Rome of the Utrecht Caravaggisti, Van den Valckert seems deliberately to have followed a new ideology of strong naturalism, employing large-scale, narrowly framed figures that appear close to the picture plane. We even notice how, in this early work, he modeled the body with strong contrasts of light and dark, making it emerge dramatically from a dark background. Although it is unlikely that Van de Valckert had been in direct contact with the work of artists like Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci, he undoubtedly heard about the new style of painting that these much-discussed artists had introduced in Rome. He may even have seen drawings after their works, brought back by Amsterdam artists who had been in Rome.
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Fig. 6. Heinrich Aldegrever, Jupiter and Cupid, engraving.
Cupid’s Arrow In contrast to the engraving by Marcantonio Riamondi after the Antique, Van den Valckert gave Venus’ head less pronounced a turn, so that we do not see her en face. He did, however, turn the head just enough to enable this auburnhaired Venus to ogle us with one large, shiny eye. By contrast, in the many Venus and Cupid inventions by Goltzius, Venus usually addresses her son, while he holds up one of his arrows. Although none of these prints shows Venus looking at the beholder,25 this feature is present in the painting by De Gheyn II (Fig. 3). By combining her enticing glance at the viewer with Cupid’s pointing of his arrow at this same viewer, instead of holding up an arrow as he usually did, Van den Valckert invented a more seductive and interactive image of Venus.26 By depicting Cupid with his drawn bow in this portrayal of Venus and Cupid, Van den Valckert introduced a device that had already been used, but in a different context. Shortly before, in a drawing of around 1610, Jacques de Gheyn had represented a young archer who, with the loving help of a milkmaid, aims his arrow directly at the viewer.27 Van den Valckert would also have known a series of prints of the gods by Heinrich Aldegrever (Fig. 6), in which the king of the gods, Jupiter – so often Cupid’s victim and thus
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the paragon of the notion that Cupid is, after all, the true master of the universe – is accompanied by Cupid aiming his arrow at us: Amor vincit Omnia.28 (In this series, Venus is represented in the traditional way, while holding the hand of Cupid who looks up at her with bow in hand.) By combining the frontal archer with a Venus eyeing us, Van den Valckert wittily illustrated the current belief that love flows in rays that come out of the eye and into the eye of another. This was considered a physiological reality: the gaze of a woman could send out a powerful force that entered through the eyes of the beloved, inflaming his heart. For instance, we can read in the Dutch translation of Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia that Marsilio Ficino proves “How a fire shoots out of the eyes to the heart,” after which follows a long account of how one should imagine this phenomenon, concluding with the words: “no wonder that an open eye, which is intensely aimed at someone, shoots arrows of rays from the eyes into the eyes of the one who looks at those eyes: which rays, shooting through the eyes of the other, penetrate the heart and makes him suffer;…they are wounded in the heart by the arrows issued from the other heart.”29 An emblem in Otto van Veen’s famous Amorum Emblemata of 1608 shows arrows literally coming out of the eyes of a woman and striking the heart of an agonized young man (Fig. 7). The French motto expresses the conceit most wittily: “Les regards dards.”30 In Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft’s wonderful booklet of love emblems, the Emblemata Amatoria of 1611, we read how these “arrows” are received: “A member that I care for, catches me in its snares / Which is the eye: through this wound the arrow hits my heart.”31 That beauty incites love and lust by entering the body through the sense of sight, the highest but also most dangerous of the senses, was considered self-evident, which we find expressed in numerous variations on the workings of love since Antiquity. As Van Mander wrote: “One found the eyes to be the seat of desire,” or in the more poetic words of Hooft: “You [the eye] are the mouth through which we taste beauty. / Love, as well as that sweet lust, which rescues / This mortal race from extinction, gets through you, her greatest power.”32 In Van den Valckert’s Venus and Cupid, this notion is cleverly expressed by a painting of a young woman who kindles love in the viewer. That a depiction of a nude woman – like the reality on which it was based – could have just this effect we find mostly in negative criticism of the day.33 Well known is Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert’s saying: “The mill of thought turns incessantly. Throw in the chaff of paintings with the nude Venus, what else will it grind but fiery unchasteness, burning desire and feverish love,” and elsewhere: “Imagine a beautiful nude Venus / What will it make churn in one’s mind but an unchaste fire? / Douse this spark before you go up in flames! Swiftly extinguish this fiery image, / Abide firmly by your reason, / Such that it turns your eyes away from lust, / Because the sight of lust breeds evil desire.”34 In
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Fig. 7. Otto van Veen, “Les regards dards,” in Amorum Emblemata, 1608, engraving.
both these quotes, Coornhert wittily used the verb “malen,” which can mean to grind, to churn, to rave, and – to paint. Many playful variations on this theme can be found in later seventeenth-century poems by Joost van den Vondel and Jan Vos. For instance, in a poem by Vondel lauding a painting of Venus by Dirck Bleecker that was owned by Prince William II, the painted image of Venus “speaks” to his wife, the princess, with the words: “If my nudity with its lifelike rays / Pierces His Majesty’s heart, this should not pain you. / Finding no hold on paint and life’s semblance / He will, inflamed by glowing heat, take revenge upon you. / And if this agrees with you, do not despise me / But rather praise the excellence of the brush.”35 The poet, praising the painter by exaggerating the supposed effect on the viewer, played cleverly with current topoi. Such conventional usage does not mean, however, that these texts were meaningless. On the contrary, such utterances, the negative ones from moralists as well as the playful erotic poems, all repeat over and over again the same thoughts: commonplace ideas that determined the expectations of the viewer as well as the concerns of the painter. The often formulated awareness that images are capable of arousing desire and the endlessly voiced notion that the eyes are the most powerful “seducers” of the mind make clear that the contemporary beholder would have been highly conscious of the erotic implications of such paintings.36 He could value this negatively, or positively, depending on his religious, social, and intellectual background. Contemporary negative reactions to paintings of nudes were certainly more
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numerous than positive ones.37 However, given the substantial production of nudes in paintings and prints, there must have been a considerable public that appreciated them highly and had no qualms about the supposedly “dangerous” erotic power of such images. For them, representations of the nude Venus were part of a lighthearted and erudite play that had its place in the context of courtship and marriage. Prints with Venus and Cupid Worshipped by Young Men and Women are to be found on the title pages of songbooks and amorous emblem books that were highly popular among the youthful urban elite precisely in this period. Beautiful examples are the title prints of Hooft’s Emblemata Amatoria (1611) and of Bredero’s The Great Fountain of Love (“De Groote Bron der Minnen”), part of his Great Songbook (“Groot Liedboeck”), containing not only many lighthearted love songs, but also quite flippant marriage poems in which Venus and Cupid are the main actors.38 For this audience, a certain amount of erotic playfulness with corresponding sexual innuendos was permitted in special circ*mstances, even publicly. In the literature of the time we find this wonderfully exemplified in poems by Bredero, an Amsterdam poet and playwright, who probably moved in the same circles as Van den Valckert. In many of his marriage poems, Bredero felt free to use sexual metaphors and allusions that would have been unthinkable under other circ*mstances. Among Bredero’s poems made for weddings, we do find very serious, edifying, and pious verses, but for quite a different segment of the Amsterdam elite he produced merry and erotic marriage poems full of jokes alluding to the wedding night. In the latter, Venus and Cupid are the leading characters.39 In many cases, the bridegroom has been suffering up to that point because he was unremittingly hit by Cupid’s arrows: “This [Cupid], Mr. Bridegroom, is the same loose child / That has its domicile in the lovely eyes / Of your beloved bride. / There he hid, since I saw him last. / This, Mr. Bridegroom, is what caused the fire in your breast, / About which you are sighing, but not dare to speak of.”40 After this passage, the bride is urged by the poet to cure the pain of the gruesome wounds that have been struck in the heart of the groom. She has been pretending long enough, the poet says, and now she will die this ultimate sweet death; after having experienced this, for nothing in the world would she want to have back her virginity. So, let us all kiss her, so that she can go to bed; the rest will be dealt with by the bridegroom, the poet says. It is within this artistic and literary world that a painting like the Venus and Cupid of Werner van den Valckert should be considered. The image of Venus, the goddess who secures procreation, would have been a fitting present for a marriage. “Would I turn my back on the human race / No men would be fired by lust anymore, no woman would give birth. / And the world would be empty of people before one realizes,” Venus proclaims in a little play that Hooft made for the occasion of a marriage around 1606-07.41 In
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connection with sixteenth-century Italian paintings of Venus and Cupid, it has been argued convincingly that such works were often intended as marriage presents. A well-known example is the startling painting of Venus and Cupid by Lorenzo Lotto in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is bursting with sexual symbols.42 To conceive a child when seeing a beautiful and arousing image of Venus would increase the chance, presumably, of generating beauty in the offspring. In the early seventeenth century, Giulio Mancini summarized the function of “lascivious pictures” in the bedroom, “because once seen they serve to arouse one and to make beautiful, healthy, and charming children.”43 From the many songbooks, love emblems, love poetry, and epithalamia, it becomes clear that the figures of Venus and Cupid must have been very familiar to the urban elite, especially in this period; no wonder that the subject was also popular in paintings of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Viewing this popularity in the context of elite culture concerning courtship, marriage, and procreation also makes the emphatically golden tip of Cupid’s arrow aimed at the viewer more meaningful. Ovid, emphasizing the omnipotence of Cupid in the story of Apollo and Daphne, wrote: “He [Cupid] took from his quiver two darts of opposite effect: one puts to flight, the other kindles the flame of love. The one which kindles love is of gold and has a sharp, gleaming point; the other is blunt and tipped with lead.”44 Bredero expressed the same thought in a marriage poem when he wrote: “Two arrows sharp and pointed, but with different powers / The one kindled love in those he hit / The other would cause a terrified fleeing from love in those who were shot with it.”45 In an inventive, witty, and amusing way, Van den Valckert brought together several known motifs in his depiction of Venus and Cupid, which resulted in an innovative solution to a traditional subject. Van de Valckert presented a life-like young woman eyeing us as we behold her removing her clothes for us. The painter made sure that the “lively rays” coming from Venus’ eyes would pierce our hearts, seeing to it that we will be irretrievably lost, because Cupid, her mischievous accomplice, wounds us with the golden tip of his arrow. However, we have fallen in love with paint on panel – “life’s semblance” only – which will cause us to “praise the excellence of the painter’s brush.”46
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“Les regards dards” is the French motto for an emblem in Otto van Veen’s Amorum Emblemata (Antwerp, 1608), p. 150, fig. 8. It plays on the noun “dard” (“spear, javelin”) and the verb “darder” (“to hurl [a javelin], to shoot [an arrow], as well as to cast a glance”). Signed W.v.Valckert pinxit. 103 x 76.5 cm. Provenance: Sale, Berlin, 11 February 1902,
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lot 16. Collection G.C.V. Schöffer, Amsterdam, from 1906-22 on loan to the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. no. C792; cat. 1912, no. 2357a); sale, Amsterdam, 14 June 1949, lot 184; Jack Kilgore & Co and Otto Naumann, Ltd. New York. For the most complete - albeit scant - biographical data on Werner van den Valckert’s life, see the authoritative article on the artist (with a full catalogue of his works) by Pieter J.J. van Thiel, “Werner Jacobsz. van den Valckert,” Oud Holland 97 (1983): 12895. On the early works in The Hague, see Van Thiel 1983, pp. 131-38. Van Thiel dated the painting around 1612, and Hudig had already pointed out that it should be dated around the same time as the etchings of the Sleeping Venus and the Holy Family, but read the dates of both mistakenly as 1615. See F.W. Hudig, “Werner van den Valckert,” Oud Holland 54 (1937): 54-66, without further substantiating the dating. Van Thiel assumed that the painting was produced in The Hague in 1612. However, although close in date to the prints, it might as well have been painted slightly later. Van Thiel 1983, no. E 6. Van Thiel 1983, no. 3. Karel van Mander, The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, vol. 1, trans. and ed., Hessel Miedema (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1994), pp. 436-37 (fol. 294v.). Ernst van de Wetering, “Rembrandt’s Beginnings: An Essay,” in The Mystery of the Young Rembrandt, exh. cat., Staatliche Museen Kassel, Kassel, and Museum het Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam, 2001-2002, pp. 22-57, esp. pp. 41-49. For the Venetian provenance of this theme, see Millard Meiss, “Sleep in Venice: Ancient Myths and Renaissance Proclivities,” in The Painter’s Choice: Problems in the Interpretation of Renaissance Art (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 212-39. For a concise discussion of the impact in the north, see Eric Jan Sluijter and Nicole Spaans, “Door liefde verstandig of door lust verteerd? Relaties tussen tekst en beeld in voorstellingen van Cimon en Efigenia,” De Zeventiende Eeuw: Cultuur in de Nederlanden in interdisciplinair perspectief 17, no. 3 (2001): 74-106. One of the engravings by Matham, after the German artist Johann Rottenhammer (B. 193), shows three satyrs secretly watching the sleeping Venus. The other two are inventions of Matham himself, one of them representing another voyeuristic subject: Cimon Watching the Sleeping Efigenia. Cimon is also trying to draw a thin cloth away from Efigenia’s body. For Cimon and Ephigenia, see Sluijter and Spaans 2001, passim. For the Carracci prints, see Diane DeGrazia Bohlin, Prints and Related Drawings by the Carracci Family: A Catalogue Raisonné (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1987), nos. 176-190, esp. nos. 184-185. The pose of Van den Valckert’s sleeping Venus is based on motifs in two different prints by Agostino in which a satyr approaches a sleeping nymph (B. 128 and B. 131). In one print, the satyr urges us to be silent, thus making the viewer an accomplice. Van Thiel 1983, pp. 135-36, 139, refuted the impact of Italian examples, earlier proposed by Hudig 1937; Van Thiel saw more of a relationship - especially the same mentality - with the artists of the Haarlem School. He termed Van de Valckert “a late adept” of the Haarlem School, and pronounced his style “conservative academic.” I do not agree with this view. DeGrazia Bohlin 1987, pp. 450-51, no. 17. Van de Valckert would have been interested in this print not only for the depiction of the nude, but also for its experimental etching technique. Art historians have pointed to similarities between Van den Valckert’s paintings and those of Goltzius from the same period; on this basis, it has been proposed that he was a pupil of Goltzius. Van Thiel (1983), for instance, saw Van den Valckert’s style as mainly based on Goltzius’ late work. However, the similarity in manner is superficial and seems more a matter of striving after comparable goals. It is highly unlikely that Goltz-
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ius had pupils around 1600, the time that Van den Valckert would have been an apprentice. Goltzius had just started to paint and was still training himself to be a painter. For Goltzius’ beginnings as a painter who most likely learned the craft of painting from the much younger Frans Badens after the latter’s return from Italy, see Eric Jan Sluijter, “Goltzius, Painting and Flesh; or, Why Goltzius Began to Paint in 1600,” in Marieke van den Doel et al., eds., The Learned Eye: Regarding Art, Theory, and The Artist’s Reputation. Essays for Ernst van de Wetering (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005), pp. 158-77. Moreover, the two artists had distinctly different techniques of depicting flesh, and the consistently transparent softness of Goltzius’ shadows is quite unlike the relatively heavy chiaroscuro of Van den Valckert in this period. I was able to ascertain this when I saw the Venus and Cupid after it had just been cleaned by Nancy Krieg; I was accompanied by Nica Gutman, conservator of the Kress Collection, who is making a study of Goltzius’ technique of depicting flesh. On Goltzius’ Jupiter and Antiope (which also has the motif of a satyr urging silence from the viewer) and related works, see Eric Jan Sluijter, “Venus, Visus and Pictura,” in Seductress of Sight: Studies in Dutch Art of the Golden Age (Zwolle: Waanders Publishers, 2000), pp. 156-59 (hereafter as Sluijter 2000a). See also Albert Blankert, Dutch Classicism, exh. cat., Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, 1999-2000, pp. 64-67. I.Q. van Regteren Altena, Jacques de Gheyn: Three Generations, 2 vols. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1983), vol. 1, p. 109; vol. 2, no. P6. See also Kees Zandvliet et al., Maurits van Oranje, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2000, pp. 144, 298-99. Below the signature, there seems to be another name in a slanting Gothic handwriting, now illegible (that of the patron?): one is tempted to read it as Jan Govertsz., who was an important patron of Goltzius, and who appeared in several of his paintings (including, as one of the Elders, in his Susanna and the Elders of 1607) and drawings. See, for example, B. 51, 57, 63, 66, 68; B. 25, 153, 160, 161, 295, 299; B. 257. For other examples, see Sluijter 2000a, figs. 100-106. For reproductions of those drawings, see E.K.J. Reznicek, Die Zeichnungen von Hendrick Goltzius. Mit einen beschreibenden Katalog, 2 vols. (Utrecht: Haentjens Dekker & Gumbert, 1961), vol. 2, figs. 165, 166, 168, 169, 180, 181. Many of these are reproduced in Sluijter 2000a, figs. 100-106; compare also figs. 91, 92, 96, 107-09. See, for example, Cornelis’ many paintings of Venus and Cupid: Pieter J.J. van Thiel, Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem (Doornspijk: Davaco 1999), figs. 85 (1592), 202 (1610), 267 (1622), 283 (c. 1624), 315 (1628), fig. 735. B. 313. For the statue, see Phyllis Pray Bober and Ruth O. Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture: A Handbook of Sources (London: Harvey Miller, 1986), pp. 62, no. 18. The most famous specimen, which was in Rome in the beginning of the sixteenth century (at the time that Raimondi made the print) and later in the century in Mantua (where Rubens drew it), is now in the British Museum. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there were several other copies in Rome. Franciscus Junius, De Schilder-konst der Oude (Middelburg: Zacharias Roman, 1641), p. 29. Junius maintained that the best artists are those who know how to add a new argument to the great art of the past and who have the wit to charge their paintings “with the pleasant amusem*nt of a dissimilar similarity.” See Jeffrey M. Muller, “Rubens’ Theory and Practice of the Imitation in Art,” Art Bulletin 64 (1982): 229-47. For Bredero’s portrait, engraved by Hessel Gerritsz., see Van Thiel 1983, pp. 156-57; Van Thiel argued convincingly that it might have been based on a prototype by Van den Valckert. Garmt Stuiveling, ed., De Werken van Gerbrand Adriaensz. Bredero: Boertigh, amoreus, en aendachtigh groot lied-boeck (Culemborg: Tjeenk Willink/Noorduin, 1975), pp. 17-18 (the
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introduction was first published in the third edition of the Geestigh liedt-boexcken). The English translation is quoted from Boudewijn Bakker, “‘Schilderachtig’: Discussions of a Seventeenth-Century Term and Concept,” Simiolus 23 (1999): 152. Karel van Mander, “Het leven der moderne, oft dees-tijtsche doorluchtighe Italiaensche schilders,” in Karel van Mander, Het Schilder-boeck (Haarlem: Passchier van Wesbusch, 1604), fol. 191r. Remarkably, the same is true of the paintings of Venus and Cupid by Cornelis Cornelisz., Wtewael, and Bloemaert. One of the earliest examples of a Venus with Cupid holding up the arrow is Lucas van Leyden’s beautiful engraving, dated 1528, with the inscription, “Venus la tresbelles deesse damours”; B.138. The motif of Cupid shooting his arrow at the viewer appears two decades later in a work of Guercino: Venus, Mars, and Cupid, dated 1633 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC). It also occurs in the 1620s in a work by Alessandro Turchi, Allegory of the Power of Love (Rijksmuseum Paleis Het Loo, Apeldoorn; on loan from the Mauritshuis, The Hague). De Gheyn’s invention was probably engraved by Andries Stock. For this print, see Eddy de Jongh and Ger Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life: Genreprints in the Netherlands 15501700, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1999, pp. 129-32, no. 21. Around the same time, David Vinckboons drew the subject as well: an archer shooting at the viewer and a milkmaid. Pieter Serwouters engraved, after Vinckboons, a kneeling archer aiming his arrow at the viewer (De Jongh and Luijten 1999, figs. 3-4). De Gheyn seems to have been inspired by an anonymous German print of a soldier aiming at the viewer (De Jongh and Luijten 1999, fig. 1), while images of death pointing an arrow at the beholder are to be found in German art of the sixteenth century, culminating in the Last Judgment of Hermann tom Ring, presently in Utrecht; see Angelika Lorenz, Die Maler tom Ring, exh. cat., Westfälischen Landesmuseum, Münster, 1996, vol. 2, pp. 310-13. B. 78. Quoted in Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft, Emblemata Amatoria (1611), with introduction and commentary by Karel Porteman (Leiden, 1983), pp. 166-68. Porteman referred to this passage in the Dutch version of Ripa’s Iconologia in connection with Emblem XIV of the Emblemata Amatoria. Porteman referred to this emblem in his edition of Hooft’s Emblemata Amatoria (see previous note): see Otho Vaenius, Amorum Emblemata (Antwerp, 1608), facsimile edition (New York and Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 1978), pp. 150-51. Hooft 1611, Emblem XIV (pp. 104-05). Karel van Mander, “Den Grondt der Edel vry Schilder-const,” in Van Mander 1604, fol. 24v. (chap. 4, verse 26). For Hooft, see F. Veenstra, Ethiek en moraal bij P.C. Hooft (Zwolle: Tjeenk Willink, 1968), p. 147. Veenstra quoted extensively the famous doctor Laurentius, who discussed as a physiological phenomenon the way in which love enters the body through the eyes and in the end incites sexual desire in the liver. The quoted lines by Hooft are from Dankbaar Genoegen (Appendix, p. 15), verse 178, written after Leonora Helleman’s refusal of Hooft’s proposal of marriage. For many other examples of this thought, which stems from Antiquity, see Eric Jan Sluijter, De “heydensche fabulen” in de schilderkunst van de Gouden Eeuw (Leiden: Primavera Press, 2000), pp. 160-62 (hereafter Sluijter 2000b); Sluijter 2000a, pp. 118-20. For many examples, see Sluijter 2000b, pp. 157-60; Sluijter 2000a, pp. 120-23 (esp. in the footnotes). Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert, Zedekunst dat is Wellevenskunste (1589), ed. B. Becker (Leiden: Hes Publishers, 1982), p. 31. The other quotation is in G. Brom, Schilderkunst en litteratuur in de 16de en 17de eeuw (Utrecht and Antwerp: Het Spectrum, 1957), p. 90. J.F.M. Sterck et al., eds., De werken van Vondel, 10 vols. (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 1927-40), vol. 8, p. 639.
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36 On the perception of images as “living” when they arouse sexual feelings, see David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), chap. 12, “Arousal by Image.” Many texts, from art-theoretical to poetical, make clear that the viewer wanted to see the things represented in paintings as a “virtual reality,” which was thought to have the same impact on the mind as seeing the same things in reality (see my forthcoming book on Rembrandt’s nudes, chap. 5; and Thijs Weststeijn, De zichtbare wereld. Samuel van Hoogstratens Kunsttheorie en de legitimering van de Schilderkunst in de zeventiende eeuw, Amsterdam 2005, Ph.D. diss, pp. 109-30). 37 See, for instance, Karel Porteman, “Vondels gedicht ‘Op een Italiaensche schildery van Susanne,’” in G. van Eemeren and F. Willaert, eds., ’t Ondersoeck leert. Studies…ter nagedachtenis van L. Rens (Leuven and Amersfoort: Uitgeverij Acco, 1986), pp. 313-14; Gregor J. Weber, Der Lobtopos des “lebenden” Bildes: Jan Vos und sein “Zeege der Schilderkunst,” von 1654 (Hildesheim/Zürich/New York: Olms Verlag, 1991), chap. 8, no. 4: “Die Erweckung der Affekte der Begierde und Liebe.” 38 The print in Bredero’s Groot Lied-boeck (published posthumously in 1622) is by Pieter Serwouters after Michel le Blon. See Pieter J.J. van Thiel, “De illustraties van Bredero’s Liedboek,” in Garmt Stuiveling, ed., De werken van Gerbrand Adriaens. Bredero: Boertigh, amoreus, en aendachtigh groot lied-boeck (Leiden: Nijhoff, 1983), vol. 2, p. 108. The title print of Hooft’s Emblemata Amatoria (1611) is attributed to Hessel Gerritsz.; see also the beautiful title print by C. de Passe of the Nieuwen Jeucht Spieghel (1617). Goltzius also made a drawing, engraved by Jan Saenredam, of Venus Worshipped by Amorous Couples. For these prints, see Sluijter 2000a, pp. 116, 134, 128, figs. 95, 111, 107. 39 See, especially, Maria A. Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, “Hochzeitsdichtung und christlicher Glaube: Einige Epithalamia niederländischer Dichter,” Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik (Series A) 8, no. 4 (1980): 31-37. 40 Bredero, Lied-boeck, pp. 91-94 (“Bruyd-lofs-gedicht, ter eeren Dirck Pietersz. Voskuyl, ende Aafgen Willemsdr.”). 41 Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft, “Paris Oordeel,” in Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft, Alle de gedruckte werken 1611-1738, vol. 3, Gedichten in Amsterdam 1636, eds. W. Hellinga and P. Tuynman (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1972), p. 178. 42 Keith Christiansen, “Lorenzo Lotto and the Tradition of Epithalamic Paintings,” Apollo 124 (1986): 166-75. 43 Quoted by David Rosand, “So-And-So Reclining on Her Couch,” in Rona Goffen, ed., Titian’s “Venus of Urbino” (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 48, who argued that the Venus of Urbino, too, is a marriage picture. See also Rona Goffen, “Sex, Space, and Social History in Titian’s ‘Venus of Urbino’,” in Goffen 1997, pp. 63-91. Alberti had already recommended that in the bedroom of the master of the family and his wife one should only hang images of “dignity and handsome appearance: for they say that this may have a great influence on the fertility of the mother and the appearance of future offspring.” 44 Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I, 467-472, quoted from Ovid in Six Volumes, vol. 3, Metamophoses, vol. 1, trans. and ed. by F.J. Miller (Cambridge, MA, and London: Loeb Classical Library, 1977), p. 35. 45 Bredero, Lied-boeck, p. 232 (in “Bruylofts-gedicht, ter eeren Guillebert de Flines, ende Anna Cornelis van Grootewal,” pp. 230-35). 46 See Vondel, as in note 35 above.
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The School of Cornelis van Poelenburch nicolette c. sluijter-seijffert The Hague
While there were thousands of painters active in the Northern Netherlands in the seventeenth century, not all of them trained pupils and only a few ran workshops with apprentices and assistants. To become a painter, a boy was apprenticed to a master painter; his training could begin already at the age of twelve. Usually he was accepted on probation for a short time, before he could qualify as a real apprentice. The training lasted at least two years and often much longer, up to seven years. After learning the fundamentals of painting during the first years, a pupil became a “disciple;” he now had to learn to make accurate copies after his master to be sold in the master’s shop.1 For the last year, or so, he was considered a “free guest” (vrije gast), or “working mate” (werkgezel). At this stage, he was truly productive in the studio and worked in the master’s, or his own style, but had not yet the right to sell paintings under his own name. Afterwards, he could become an independent master, or decide to continue in the workshop; the latter option provided him with a salary without the risks attendant in running a studio of his own.2 This may well explain the existence of so many copies, different versions of the same composition, and imitations in the style of various masters, which frustrate our attempts to attribute such works to specific hands. Of course the most famous studio – and the one about which we are best informed from contemporary publications and extensive archival sources – was Rembrandt’s. Although less is known about other workshops, interesting details have emerged from less obvious sources such as inventories and auction catalogues. In the case of the Utrecht painter Cornelis van Poelenburch (1594/95-1667), a celebrated artist in his own day, much can be gleaned about the pupils and assistants in his workshop from these type of sources.3 The most reliable data about apprentices is usually found in the archives of the guilds, as far as they have been preserved, but these are not of much help in reconstructing Van Poelenburch’s workshop. In Utrecht, the accounts
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of the St. Lucas Guild from 1611 to 1640 still exist. During this period, 105 pupils are mentioned as being apprenticed with fourteen of the seventy-five masters listed. Only four of these masters are recorded as having a significant number of pupils: Paulus Moreelse, Adam Willaerts, Abraham Bloemaert, and Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot. However, these accounts are not always accurate. For example, Gerard van Honthorst did not report a single pupil for years, yet Joachim van Sandrart, who was himself apprenticed to Honthorst, stated he had many pupils at one time.4 The name of Cornelis van Poelenburch is also absent from these accounts, as are his apprentices. This is curious, since Van Poelenburch was a prominent member of the guild during the 1640s and 1650s – he served as a member of its board and even as chairman – and since other secondary sources report that he did have pupils. Indeed, inventories and auction catalogues suggest that Van Poelenburch taught and inspired a whole generation of Italianate painters in a manner quite distinct from those Dutch artists who worked in an Italianate style yet painted directly from nature. Cornelis van Poelenburch painted mostly small idyllic landscapes on copper, or panel, with mythological, or biblical staffa*ge, which generally brought high prices (see Fig. 1).5 As early as 1636, he was one of the few distinguished artists from the Northern Netherlands portrayed in Anthony van Dyck’s Iconographie, and throughout the rest of the seventeenth century he was included – and highly praised – in all Netherlandish and French artists’ biographies. Born in Utrecht in 1594-95 and apprenticed to Abraham Bloemaert in that city, Van Poelenburch lived in Italy from 1617 until about 1625, mostly in Rome, but also in Florence, where he made paintings for Grand Duke Cosimo II de’ Medici. Back in his native town, in 1627 the Provincial Council of Utrecht bought his Banquet of the Gods upon the Earth for 575 guilders, to present to Amalia van Solms, wife of the stadholder Frederik Hendrik. From the inventory of 1632 of the two houses inhabited by the princely couple, it appears that they possessed twelve paintings by Van Poelenburch, as well as three landscapes by Alexander Keirincx that contained figures added by Van Poelenburch. By 1635, he was at work with three other Utrecht artists on the Pastor Fido series, a commission from Frederik Hendrik and Amalia intended for their newly built hunting lodge at Honselaarsdijk. The king and queen of Bohemia, living in The Hague and Rhenen, commissioned him to paint group portraits of their children in 1628 and 1630; several versions of this first portrait historié are extant, one of which is in the British Royal Collection. In 1637, he departed for London, where King Charles I paid his rent and awarded him a stipend of 60 pounds a year. Van Poelenburch worked off and on in London for the next four years, returning for good to Utrecht in 1641. His most important patron there during the 1640s and 1650s was Willem Vincent, Baron van Wyttenhorst. As is evident from the baron’s inventory,
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Fig. 1. Cornelis van Poelenburch, Landscape with Nymphs and Satyrs, oil on copper. Art market.
drawn up by the owner himself, Van Wyttenhorst possessed fifty-seven paintings by Van Poelenburch; about twenty of these were painted on commission, while the others were bought directly from the workshop.6 This very brief summary of Cornelis van Poelenburch’s career demonstrates the popularity of his works among an aristocratic clientele. However, the artist must have sold the majority of his paintings to other buyers, probably through his shop. There he sold his own pictures – the “principalen” or originals – as well as copies and works painted in his style by disciples and assistants. Not only were these pictures sold from his shop, they also often bore his monogram “C.P.” On stylistic grounds, we can determine that numerous extant paintings with this monogram cannot have been painted by the master.
The Van Poelenburch Workshop Few Dutch painters, with the exception of Rembrandt and Jan van Goyen, had so many direct followers as Cornelis van Poelenburch, a fact that still makes the separation of hands a complicated task. The best followers seem to have been apprenticed to him, or to have worked in his studio for some time. Even after leaving the studio, these painters got a piece of the pie of
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Van Poelenburch’s success by making similar types of paintings, which probably sold for lower prices than the more expensive works by the master. Several secondary sources offer evidence of apprentices training with Van Poelenburch. In the biography of “Franciscus” Verwilt, included in Cornelis de Bie’s Het gulden cabinet van de edel vry-schilderconst of 1661, the author stated that Verwilt had been apprenticed to Van Poelenburch.7 De Bie also reported that Jan Gerritsz. van Bronchorst learned so much from his conversations with Van Poelenburch that he was inspired to leave glass painting to become a picture painter.8 Joachim von Sandrart (1675) also named Verwilt as a pupil.9 Arnold Houbraken provided more information in his generally reliable De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche kunstschilders en schilderessen, written between 1714 and 1719. In his biography of Cornelis van Poelenburch, Houbraken listed his pupils: “Joan van der Lis, born in Breda” (Dirck van der Lisse; 16071669), “Daniel Vertangen of The Hague” (1600-1681/84), “François Verwilt of Rotterdam” (c. 1623-1691), “Warnard van Rysen, born in Bommel” (c. 1625-c. 1665), and “a Cousin Willem van Steenree,” about whom nothing further is known, but who must have been a relative of Van Poelenburch’s wife, Jacomina van Steenre.10 Not here, but in the biography of Jan van Haensbergen (1642-1705), Houbraken called Van Haensbergen a pupil and direct follower of Van Poelenburch.11 As for Abraham van Cuylenborch (16201658), not mentioned by Houbraken but often designated as a pupil in the later art-historical literature, a seventeenth-century inventory is now known in which he is called “een Disciepel van Poelenburch.”12 Nothing about other apprentices has been located in printed seventeenth-century sources. In the nineteenth-century literature, several more followers are noted, some of them called pupils as well. The grounds for this were probably the perceived similarities between their paintings and those by Van Poelenburch. The cited followers include: Cornelis Willaerts (c. 1600-before 1675), Jan Linsen (1602/03-1635), Toussaint Gelton (c. 1630-1680), Claes Tol (c. 1628-52), Gerrit van Bronchorst (c. 1637-1673), and Gerard Hoet I (1648-1733). These artists were inspired by Van Poelenburch’s style and subject matter, and they painted in his manner, some for most of their careers, some only occasionally. Cornelis Willaerts painted landscapes with mythological scenes that relate in composition and type to Van Poelenburch’s works.13 Jan Linsen, who worked in Rome for a time, is the only follower who imitated the paintings with genre figures that Van Poelenburch made in Italy, although his pictures also remind one somewhat of Bartholomeus Breenbergh’s Italian work.14 Toussaint Gelton made copies after Van Poelenburch, or worked in his manner. In the above-mentioned Van Wyttenhorst inventory, two portraits and two copies with “many figures and a pleasant landscape” are explicitly listed as having been painted by Gelton after Van Poelenburch.15 It is unusual for a copyist to be mentioned in a seventeenth-century inventory, or auction cata-
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logue; generally, when a copy is listed, only the name of the original master is given. However, Gelton was anything but an unknown artist making copies; in the 1670s, he was a painter at the court of the Danish king Christian V. Another follower, Gerrit van Bronchorst, painted some mythological representations and landscapes with ruins and nymphs in Van Poelenburch’s fashion.16 From the Utrecht artist Claes Tol, we have a signed picture with gods on the clouds and a few small Arcadian landscapes, which remind us of Van Poelenburch’s late manner, despite the much less balanced composition and rather clumsy figures. The pupils already mentioned by Houbraken – François Verwilt and Warnard van Rijsen – were also faithful followers; they imitated not only Van Poelenburch’s landscapes with mythological and bathing figures, but also his religious paintings.17 In his history paintings, such as Bathsheba, Verwilt often made his figures larger in scale, although anatomically less accomplished, than Van Poelenburch’s. His many putti, somersaulting through the sky, are as lively as his master’s. Van Rijsen’s figures may be rather stiff and he has a characteristic, schematic way of painting rocks, but his compositions and type of landscape with staffa*ge are directly taken from Van Poelenburch. No works by any of these followers are known that diverge in style, or subject matter from that of Van Poelenburch. Gerard Hoet I, however, is a different case. 18 While he mainly painted history pieces in a classicist style, sometimes even as large as wall hangings, he also painted some small pictures with a style and subject matter inspired by Van Poelenburch: a grotto with nymphs, gods on the clouds, scenes of Diana, and landscapes with nymphs and satyrs. Several of his figures directly quote those of Van Poelenburch and others of his school. From the 1660s, Vertangen and Van Haensbergen concentrated exclusively on portraits; this suggests that there was no longer a market for their landscapes with staffa*ge.19 However, judging by the work of the popular painter Gerard Hoet, there must have been at least some interest in this genre even during the last three decades of the seventeenth century.
Van Poelenburch’s Best Pupils Cornelis van Poelenburch’s most important and successful pupils were Daniël Vertangen, Dirck van der Lisse, and Jan van Haensbergen; although it is not certain that he was a pupil, Abraham van Cuylenborch belongs among these artists. Daniël Vertangen must have been apprenticed to Van Poelenburch before 1617, when the latter was in Rome, or after the master had settled again in Utrecht around 1626. Since Vertangen, born in 1600, was at that time already twenty-six years old, an unusual age for a pupil, and his paintings were clos-
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er to Van Poelenburch’s work from after 1630, it may be presumed that he worked in the studio as an assistant (vrije gast) rather than as a pupil. Vertangen made and signed a number of copies after Van Poelenburch’s pictures; one example is the Grotto with Nymphs that was on the market in 1994, after the original now in the Russell Collection in Amsterdam.20 Vertangen also painted numerous paintings in the manner of his master that sometimes bear the monogram “C.P.” These are mostly landscapes with biblical, or mythological scenes, in which the figures, with strongly articulated arms and legs, are very characteristic of this artist. A small, signed painting on copper, Landscape with Apollo and Coronis, is a good example of his style (Fig. 2).21 Houbraken wrote the following of him: “Daniel Vertangen, of The Hague, very gracefully painted Hawking Parties, bathing Women, and dancing Bacchantes, in decorative landscapes.”22 The description of a painting by him in an auction catalogue of 1736 reveals that in the eighteenth century his pictures were still being connected with those by Van Poelenburch: “A Piece by Vertangen, Cupid very Rich in Images and Ordonnance seldom seen like this of his hand, so in Painting as in Drawing as good as Poelenburg….”23 Eventually, Vertangen abandoned painting landscapes with nymphs and took up the apparently more lucrative art of portrait painting, just as Van der Lisse and Van Haensbergen did. Although many portraits from his hand are still in existence, virtually all 488 pictures that appeared at auction between 1650 and 1840 (Getty Provenance Index) are landscapes with biblical, or mythological figures, or nymphs. Inventories and auction catalogues also list copies after Vertangen and works “in his manner.” Without a doubt, Van Poelenburch’s best pupil was Dirck van der Lisse, who came closest to the master’s style of about 1630. Contrary to what Houbraken wrote, Van der Lisse was born in The Hague and also died there.24 From 1626 on, he lived and worked in Utrecht, and between 1635 and 1640, he was alternately in Utrecht and The Hague. He settled permanently in The Hague, where he was one of the founders of the Confrérie Pictura in 1656. From 1659 until his death in 1669, he served as mayor several times; he probably did not paint much in these last ten years. Until 1840, inventories and auction catalogues list remarkably few of his paintings, compared, for instance, to Jan van Haensbergen, Abraham van Cuylenborch, and especially Daniël Vertangen.25 Nevertheless, Van der Lisse was a successful artist. He was one of four painters who around 1635 were asked to work on Frederik Hendrik’s Pastor Fido commission, for which he not only painted one of the main scenes but also one of the four landscapes that hung below them. Often his paintings bear his own monogram, which is why we have a reasonably good idea of his style. He did paint some copies after Van Poelenburch, for example, after the latter’s Diana and Actaeon in Copenhagen. Two such copies exist, one of the whole composition and one of the right half only.26 His estate of more
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Fig. 2. Daniël Vertangen, Landscape with Apollo and Coronis, oil on copper. Art market.
than one hundred paintings included three originals by Van Poelenburch, four copies after him, and two paintings by “disciples.” In spite of his close connection to Van Poelenburch, his paintings usually have a distinctly personal character. Many of Van der Lisse’s landscapes are emptier and/or flatter than those of his teacher, more horizontal, with fewer trees, and looser, thinner leaves (but with similar ruins). In contrast, other paintings are vertical, high mountainous landscapes with closely packed rocks. His nude female figures are very much the same as his master’s: lively, with arms pointing in various directions and legs that stick out, the movements without a narrative. A good example of his work is a Diana and Nymphs Bathing in a Mountainous Landscape, which was on the art market some time ago (Fig. 3).27 Houbraken wrote the following about Van der Lisse: “This one came so close to him [Van Poelenburch] in the specific way of selection, natural mixing of colors and handling of the brush that his work often was taken for Poelenburg’s work.”28 Repeating Houbraken’s story and exaggerating it, Campo Weyerman, writing a bit later, reported that Van der Lisse’s paintings followed Van Poelenburch’s manner so closely “that the art swindlers are still cheating the art lovers with them everyday.”29 Although Weyerman, who took his facts from Houbraken, liked to embellish his stories, this one could be true. An auction catalogue of 1737, for example, lists a painting by Van der Lisse that, although described as an “imitation,” is valued at the same price as originals by Cornelis van
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Fig. 3. Dirck van der Lisse, Diana and Nymphs Bathing in a Mountainous Landscape, oil on canvas. Art market.
Poelenburch in the same auction. This was the sale of the large collection (209 paintings) of Samuel van Huls, a mayor of The Hague; in the sale were fifteen works by Cornelis van Poelenburch himself. One of the paintings by Van der Lisse was described in the auction catalogue as: “an exceptionally elaborate Bath with many Nymphs and further accessories, by J. Lis, not inferior to Poelenburg….”30 Jan van Haensbergen, born in 1642 in Gorcum, must have been one of Cornelis van Poelenburch’s last pupils. Two years after his master’s death, Van Haensbergen moved to The Hague, where he specialized in portraiture. His landscapes, occasionally monogrammed “C.P.,” recall his master’s late work more than any other’s. The compositional similarities include steep repoussoirs, in the foreground and in the middle ground; these works are often con-
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sidered direct imitations. It is not surprising that Houbraken wrote “that his little works of art were more than once taken to be his master’s, because he so intelligently, in a clear and pleasing way, could imitate the selection, arrangement of the figures, grounds, backgrounds, and skies.”31Auction catalogues of the eighteenth century often described his paintings as “in the manner of Poelenburg” and sometimes “as good as Poelenburg.”32 As a rule, Van Haensbergen’s trees and plants are less finely detailed than those of Van Poelenburch; his heavy figures are distinctive with rather clumsy limbs, hooked noses, and currant eyes. Yet, in his use of color and fine brushwork, Van Haensbergen almost measures up to Van Poelenburch’s late work. The 1679 inventory of his belongings, made on the occasion of his second marriage and presumably in the presence of the artist himself, shows that he owned four paintings by Cornelis van Poelenburch, one by Jan Both with figures by Van Poelenburch, and several copies after Van Poelenburch. The last number of the inventory reads, presumably in his own words: “Several models of mine painted after Poelenburch, being necessary for my studies and belonging to my way of painting.”33 So even at the end of the 1670s, Van Haensbergen still made use of the motifs, and probably the style, he had learned in his master’s studio. It is therefore not surprising that many direct copies after paintings by Cornelis van Poelenburch can be attributed to Jan van Haensbergen, such as a Rest on the Flight into Egypt in Budapest (after the original now in
Fig. 4. Attributed to Jan van Haensbergen, Landscape with Diana and Nymphs among Ruins, oil on copper. Art market. the school of cornelis van poelenburch | 449
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Fife, Scotland).34 In his choice of subject matter, Van Haensbergen remained close to Van Poelenburch, painting not only landscapes with nymphs, but also an Adoration of the Shepherds, or the Magi, a Rest on the Flight into Egypt, and a Heaven of Gods (Godenhemel). A characteristic painting by Jan van Haensbergen is the Landscape with Diana and Nymphs among Ruins (Fig. 4), which shows well his somewhat “woolly” manner of painting.35 Abraham van Cuylenborch (c. 1610-1658) lived and worked in Utrecht his entire life and produced numerous paintings.36 His landscapes, usually showing a cave, or a rocky area with classical ruins and virtually always nymphs bathing, can easily be recognized; such works were commonly called “grottoes” (grotjes). Now and then he depicted a biblical scene; even then, nude female figures played the leading part, as for example, in a Susanna and the Elders, or a Lot and His Daughters.37 The poses of his figures are often directly derived from Van Poelenburch’s, although their proportions are more slender and their rendering is less accomplished. The idyllic character of sunny landscapes with classical ruins and bathing nymphs is quite similar, as, for example, in the Landscape with Diana and Nymphs in the Mauritshuis, The Hague (Fig. 5).38 Earlier commentators on his work have also remarked on the closeness of his paintings with those of his (presumed) master: “A Cabinet Piece with Bathing Women in a Cave, by A. Cuilenburg, as good as Poelenburg.”39
Fig. 5. Abraham van Cuylenborch, Landscape with Diana and Nymphs, oil on panel. The Hague, Mauritshuis. 450 | in his milieu
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As we have seen, it is thus with good reason that these pupils and followers can be considered as comprising a “School of Van Poelenburch.” For four, or five decades during the seventeenth century, numerous artists painted idyllic, Poelenburch-like landscapes with staffa*ge, mostly nude female figures. Considering the many extant pictures of this kind, they must have been extremely popular with buyers. The careers of these followers mostly coincide with the second and third generation of Italianate painters, and indeed, the artists of the “School of Van Poelenburch” have been called Italianates. However, the landscapes of the “real” Italianates are much more monumental and give the impression of well-observed depictions after the Roman Campagna. Instead of ruins, their landscapes are usually filled with contemporary buildings and figures. In contrast, the artists of the Van Poelenburch School painted hilly Italian landscapes with a classical ambience, evoked by Roman ruins and mythological figures, or nymphs bathing. None of these pupils and followers, with the exception of Jan Linsen, ever went to Italy. Their inspiration, therefore, was not the Italian landscape itself but the classical idyll evoked in the landscape paintings, of which Cornelis van Poelenburch was the – and their – master. Author’s Note: I am grateful to Worth Bracken for assisting me with the translation of this article into English.
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The meaning of the phrases “leerjongen” and “disciple” were not fixed and could differ from town to town; the successive stages of the training process, however, were probably the same everywhere. Marion E.W. Goosens, Schilders en de markt: Haarlem 1605-1635, Ph.D. diss., Leiden University, 2001, pp. 69-85; R. de Jager, “Meester, leerjongen, leertijd: Een analyse van zeventiende-eeuwse Noord-Nederlandse leerlingcontracten van kunstschilders, goud-en zilversmeden,” Oud Holland 104 (1990): pp. 69-111. I am preparing the monograph, Cornelis van Poelenburch: The Paintings, to be published by the Amsterdam University Press in 2007-2008, which will include further discussion of the pupils and followers mentioned in this article. Marten Jan Bok, “‘Nulla dies sine linie’: De opleiding van schilders in Utrecht in de eerste helft van de zeventiende eeuw,” De zeventiende eeuw 6 (1990): pp. 58-68. Sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 5 October 2001, lot 42. Copper, 36.2 x 48.3 cm. Monogram at lower left, C.P. Marion Boers, “De schilderijenverzameling van baron Willem Vincent van Wyttenhorst,” Oud Holland 117 (2004): pp. 181-243. Cornelis de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vry-schilderconst, inhoudende den lof van de vermarste schilders, architecten, beldthowers ende plaetsnyders van dese eeuw (Antwerp 1661), pp. 405-06. De Bie 1661, pp. 278-79. A.R. Pelzer, ed., Joachim von Sandrarts Academie der edlen Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675 (Munich, 1925), p. 193: “Franz Verwilt, von Roterdam, folgte des Cor-
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nelii von Poelenbourgs Manier so eifrig, dass er endlich in kleinen Figuren, Landschaften und Ruinen ihn überschritten und hoher als derselbe geschatzet worden.” Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche kunstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols. (The Hague, 1753), vol. 1, pp. 129-30. Houbraken 1753, vol. 2, p. 169. Inventory of Maaijken Collaarts and Aert Teggers in Dordrecht, 14 February 1688: “Achter op de Sael… Een stuckie: van Kuylenburch, een Disciepel van Poelenburch.” It is not clear whether an advanced student was indicated here. Cornelis Willaerts is included in the same inventory as Abraham van Cuylenburg: “Paris oordeel: van Willaart, een discipul van Poelenburch.” See note 12. Van Poelenburch, Breenbergh, and Linsen lived in Rome at the same time and all three are represented in anonymous drawings (earlier attributed to Jan van Bijlert) of the Bentvueghels in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Boers 2004, p. 224: “een copij van Poeleburch seer curieus gedaen deur Tousseyn met veel figuerties ende lantschap seer plaijsant….” Gerrit van Bronchorst was the son of Jan Gerritsz. van Bronchorst, who was said to have become a painter because of his discussions with Cornelis van Poelenburch, and who also made several prints after drawings by Van Poelenburch. For example, the (signed) paintings of the Adoration, or Mary Magdalene by Verwilt, and landscapes with bathing nymphs, or with saints by Van Rijsen. Gerard Hoet I, born in Bommel (Zaltbommel) and died in The Hague, worked in many different places, including Utrecht (1686-1714). Although he cannot have been an apprentice of Cornelis van Poelenburch, he could very well have known of his work. See Houbraken 1753, vol. 3, pp. 169-71. In his biography of Van Haensbergen, Houbraken discussed how sensible it is when a painter applies himself to another genre, if he has the talent for it and the new genre brings in more money. Sale, Paris, Drouot-Richelieu, 7 December 1994, lot 14, repr., as Daniël Vertangen. Oil on panel; 27 cm (diam.). Monogram at left center, DV. London, Alan Jacobs Gallery (1980s). Oil on copper; 11.8 x 16 cm. Signed at lower right, D. Vertangen. “Daniel Vertangen, een Hagenaar, schilderde heel bevallig Valkejagten, badende Vrouwtjes, en danssende Bachanten, in cierlyke landschappen.” Houbraken 1753, vol. 1, p. 129. Sale, Robbert de Neufville Ridder Baronnet, Leiden, 15 March 1736, lot 21: “Een Stukje door Vertangen, Cupido zeer Ryk van Beelden en Ordonnantie weynig van hem gesien zoo in Schildering als Teykening zoo goet als Poelenburg, br. 2 v. h. 1 v. 7 d. 33-0.” Gerard Hoet, Catalogus of naamlyst van schilderyen met derzelver pryzen... (The Hague, 1752), vol. 1, p. 460. Houbraken 1753, vol. 1, p. 129. See the Getty Provenance Index. The copy after the whole composition by Cornelis van Poelenburch is in the Staatliche Gemäldegalerie, Dresden (panel; 60.5 x 91 cm); the copy after the right half is in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (panel; 44 x 56 cm). The inventory of Van der Lisse is included in Bredius’ notes in the RKD (oral communication, E. Buijsen). See also Edwin Buijsen, Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw (Zwolle: Waanders, 1998), pp. 194-99. London, Colnaghi’s (1990s). Oil on canvas; 71.8 x 64.8 cm. In the nineteenth century, this painting was attributed to Jan Both, with figures by Cornelis van Poelenburch. “Deze kwam hem zoo na in de eigen wyze van verkiezing, natuurlyke vermenginge der verwen en penceelbehandeling dat zyn werk, dikwils voor Poelenburgs werk is aangezien.” Houbraken 1753, vol. 1, p. 129. “dat er de Konstbeursesnyders de ligtgeloovige Liefhebbers noch dagelyk mee bedriegen.” Jacob Campo Weyerman, Levens-beschrijvingen (’s-Gravenhage, 1729), p. 334.
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30 “Een ongemeen uytvoerig Badje met veele Nymphjes en ander bywerk, door J. Lis, niet minder als Poelenburg…” (RKD, Hofstede de Groot card file). 31 “dat zyne Konststukjes menigmaal voor zyn meesters werk wierden aangezien, wyl hij de verkiezinge, schikking der Beeltjes, gronden, agterwerken en de luchten zoo geestig helder en aangenaam wist na te bootsen.” Houbraken 1753, vol. 3, p. 169. 32 For example, the sale in Amsterdam, 12 September 1708, lot 46: “Maria Hemelvaert, van Haansbergen, zoo goed als Poelenburg, op koper. 125 - 0” (RKD, Hofstede de Groot card file). 33 “Verscheyde modellen van myn geschildert naer Poelenburch, en dat dependant is aen myn studie en behoort tot myn doen off schilderen.” Abraham Bredius, KünstlerInventare. Urkunden zur Geschichte der Holländischen Kunst des XVI., XVII. und XVIII. Jahrhunderts (The Hague, 1915-22), vol. 6, pp. 2075-77. 34 Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. no. 9786 (oil on canvas; 40 x 47.5 cm). In the museum’s catalogue of 2000 attributed to J. van Haensbergen (p. 78). 35 Sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby’s, 13 May 2003, lot 35, as “Circle of Cornelis van Poelenburgh.” Oil on copper; 33.6 x 43.8 cm. Monogram at lower right, C.P. 36 In the Getty Provenance Index there are a few paintings by Abraham van Cuylenborch listed in inventories; there are many listed in auction catalogues from around 1750 onward (285 works). 37 See Getty Provenance Index. 38 Inv. no. 24. Oil on panel; 32 x 40 cm. Signed, A.V. Cuylenborch f. 39 Sale, The Hague, Johan van Schuylenburg, Mayor, 20 September 1735: “Een Cabinet Stukje met Badende Vrouwtjes in een Grot, door A. Cuilenburg, zoo goet als van Poelenburg, op een kopere plaat, h. 10 en drie vierde d. br. 1 v. 1 d. 29 - 0.” Hoet 1752, p. 455.
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From Art to Politics: The Paintings of Jean de Warignies, Lord of Blainville (c. 1581-1628) mickaël szanto Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris
In the winter of 1624-25, Balthazar Gerbier, the Duke of Buckingham’s art expert and a painter himself, was in Paris to look for Venetian old master paintings.1 He was surprised to discover “so many rare works in Paris.” On November 17, Gerbier wrote to the Duke to inform him of his latest acquisitions – works by Titian, Tintoretto, and Giorgione.2 He also sent him “a list of paintings in the hands of Lords in Paris,” that he hoped to acquire.3 This list, recently published by Antoine Schnapper, is of great importance because it enables us to understand the circle of art collectors in Paris at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Gerbier first mentioned “Monsieur Blinville, Chevallier du St Esprit et Gentilhomme de la chambre du Roÿ,” followed by Villeroy, Souvré, and Montmorancy; he described the pictures of President Chevalier at length, and concluded his list with a painting of the “garde des tableaux du roi,” very likely one of the Douet brothers. If most of the collectors’ names are familiar today, one remains little known: “Monsieur Blinville,” who according to Gerbier possessed a beautiful painting, “un tableau du Tintoret, histoire de Schipion. Excellent.” The recent discovery of the inventory of Blainville’s estate, drawn up at his death in 1628, casts new light on this forgotten amateur (see Appendix).4 The document is of singular importance, not only because it gives us an insight into his collection, but above all because it brings new elements to the social history of the arts. First, it demonstrates a new French notarial practice, as it is the earliest inventory in which an auctioneer specified the artists’ names for several items: Rubens, Guido Reni, Raphael, and Titian, among others. As far as we know, there are no Parisian inventories that include such an important number of attributions prior to that of 1628.5 Second, it reveals a new development in the presentation of works of art by French collectors. Rather than place the most valuable paintings in the gallery, or “cabinet,” as was the custom, Jean de Warignies hung his in his bedroom. Usu-
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ally decorated with sumptuous tapestries, the master bedroom was the central space in aristocratic mansions in which the owner’s social standing was on display for his guests. Here is proof that painting had achieved a higher status in French court circles. I would like to show how this group of paintings listed in Warignies’ inventory, atypical for that time, cannot be reduced to the taste of a singular amateur, but instead belongs to an emerging system of representation among the French elite, reinforced by a particular historical context that rather suddenly placed painters and paintings within the sphere of politics. ••• Jean de Warignies, Lord of Blainville, came from a noble family in Picardy, which acquired the Blainville estate in the fifteenth century. 6 Born around 1581, he was the son of Jacques de Warignies, gentleman of the chamber to the Duke of Alençon, and of Adrienne Martel de Bacqueville. When the Regency was established, Blainville found grace with Maria de’ Medici and maintained this status, it is said, thanks to the support of Marshal d’Ancre, Concino Concini. Warignies became lieutenant of the king in Normandy, and there married Catherine de Voysins in February 1611.7 The same year, he obtained the office of “enseigne de la compagnie des gendarmes du roi,” earning a salary of 2,400 livres, with an additional 1,600 livres in 1613. He then became master of the king’s Garde-robe in 1614. The assassination of Concini in 1617, commanded by the young Louis XIII, did not affect Blainville’s brilliant career. His salary of 4,000 livres as the Guidon of the company was doubled in 1618. In March 1619, he hastened to the Duke of Lorraine to encourage him not to support Maria de’ Medici, who had escaped from Blois. During the year 1620, it was again he who was sent by the king to the Château de Brissac, on three occasions, to convince the queen to reconcile with the king, but without success. A decisive turn in his career as a courtier was evident in the years 1621-22. He bought the Hôtel de Retz, a splendid mansion opposite the Louvre, in 1621, for 75,000 livres,8 and obtained an enviable office as “premier gentilhomme de la chambre du roi,” left vacant owing to the departure of Henri de Foix de la Valette “sous le bon plaisir de Sa Majesté.” 9 Blainville was now considered one of the most important figures of the French court. From September 1625 to May 1626, he served as special ambassador to England to represent French interests; this appointment was another indication of royal favor. A powerful lord and talented courtier, Blainville managed to gain the young king’s friendship while at the same time maintaining the confidence of Maria de’ Medici. But he hated Cardinal Richelieu “more than the devil himself.” Well informed of this, Richelieu had him exiled
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to Normandy on 5 December 1626, using the Chalais conspiracy as a pretext. In November 1627, Blainville nonetheless took part in the siege of La Rochelle, but had to leave the army the following year. He died in Issy on 26 February 1628, leaving a widow without children, and an estate crippled by debts, as was typical of the court aristocracy. On 8 March 1628, an inventory of Blainville’s Parisian mansion was drawn up.10 Blainville had the building modernized probably shortly after acquiring it in 1621,11 but the general distribution of the rooms, as they existed under the previous owner, Henri de Gondi, seems to have been little altered.12 The mansion was an ancient building, part of the Hôtel d’Alençon, partially reconstructed in 1578 and embellished with galleries and a grotto by Albert de Gondi, Duke of Retz. In 1599, the mansion was enlarged by the annexation of the adjoining Hôtel de Dampierre. Here, the famous duch*ess of Retz (Pasithea to the Poets)13 installed her apartments, while the duke remained in the old building giving on to the street. His death in 1602 did not prompt alterations to the mansion. It was not until 1617 that the old Hôtel de Dampierre was sold to the Princess of Conti, while the son and heir to the Duke of Retz, Henri de Gondi, kept the original building. It was finally sold to Blainville at the death of the wife of Henri de Gondi on 12 May 1621.14 The paintings found in the various rooms of the mansion in 1628 were uncommon enough for the auctioneer to engage a local painter, Charles Masson, to estimate their value. The fifty-odd paintings listed in different rooms and the ninety-six portraits of illustrious men all in one “cabinet” – without any mention of sculptures, antiques, medals, and various curiosities such as shells, corals, stones, and the like – reveal that Blainville was not a “curieux.” Blainville’s home was rather the dwelling of a gentleman of the court where only painting reigned. In the “grande salle,” a portrait of the young King Louis XIII, treading on Jealousy, had pride of place over the chimney. In the room called the “cabinet des tableaux” was the series of ninety-six portraits, and in the gallery twenty-six paintings, with subjects generally unidentified. The most beautiful paintings, twenty in all, were to be found in the lord’s bedchamber. It is regrettable that the descriptions of the paintings are often incomplete and their names misspelled. “Le Passant” very likely refers to Jacopo Bassano and “Paschal Urbin,” probably Raphael d’Urbino, but who would “Bernard Dalvare” be?15 One could see this as a distortion of “Léonard Dalvins,” but Da Vinci’s name appears correctly written for another painting. More surprising are the valuations given by the expert—particularly low prices for such prestigious names: 40 livres for a Virgin by Raphael, 50 livres for a Seneca by Rubens, 30 livres for a St. John by Leonardo da Vinci. Interestingly, a Charity, a mere copy after “André del Sarte,” was estimated at around the same price, 40 livres. At first glance, it might seem that these low prices would indicate that all were only copies. from art to politics | 457
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However, the unexpected intervention of the royal administration during the drawing up of the inventory speaks in favor of the authenticity of the works. We learn that certain pictures were of a prestigious origin: the King’s Cabinet. Indeed, François Moymier, general Guard of the King’s furniture, came to claim five paintings “as being part of the King’s furniture…all to be returned to the King’s Cabinet from where they have been removed by the deceased”16: two of these had been placed in Blainville’s garde-robe and three others in the gallery. The painters’ names were not mentioned but the paintings must certainly have been of value, as Moymier specified that they were “given to His Majesty by the Prince of Piemont.” Nevertheless, these five works, offered probably by Vittorio Amadeo di Savoia to Louis XIII on the occasion of his marriage to Chrétienne de France in 1619, were estimated at only 122 livres. After Moymier’s visit, Jacques Douet, Guard of the King’s Cabinet, intervened to claim another picture belonging to the king, this time hung in Blainville’s bedroom: “the painting where a Virgin Mary is represented and depicted, which is said to belong to the King and to have been loaned by Douet himself to the deceased sieur of Blainville.”17 Five paintings of the Virgin Mary from Blainville’s room are mentioned in the inventory, but only one was valued individually, very likely the one demanded by Douet: “A Virgin by Raphael of Urbino estimated 40 livres.” We know indeed that at the beginning of the seventeenth century there was a Virgin by Raphael in the King’s Cabinet under Jacques Douet’s supervision18: not the Holy Family from François I’s collection, then in Fontainebleau,19 but the Belle Jardinière (Musée du Louvre, Paris).20 The presence of such an important painting in Blainville’s house is puzzling, and one wonders why Douet agreed to this loan that nothing could justify a priori, except that Blainville was one of the king’s intimates. Gerbier himself stated in a letter on 8 February 1625 that the Guard of the King’s Cabinet (here Jacques Douet’s brother, Claude) supervised his paintings in Fontainebleau, especially Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa that Gerbier tried in vain to buy, as “a treasure always watched over by the Kings like a sacred relic.”21 It could precisely be Gerbier’s interest in the king’s paintings since 1624, the conspicuous presence of Rubens in Paris during spring 1625, acting then as much as a painter as a diplomat, and at last the impending arrival of Buckingham, in May 1625, that incited Blainville to possess prestigious pictures such as those offered by the Prince of Piemont to Louis XIII, and even more so the Virgin by Raphael. It was surely an excellent manner for winning renown in the eyes of the foreign embassies, at a time when Paris, with the festivities for the wedding of Charles I with Henriette of France and the inauguration of the Rubens Gallery in the Luxembourg Palace, was the most brilliant theater of European history. Thus, Blainville, among “the most astute and cunning gentlemen of the Court,”22 according to Richelieu himself,
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became one of the first in France to display paintings as an instrument of political prestige and power. In fact, it is striking to note that Blainville showed through his choice of paintings his fidelity both to Maria de’ Medici and to her main opponent, her son, Louis XIII, by having copies made of their most prestigious pictures. Blainville could also attract the attention of his peers with works by the most celebrated artists of his own time, Rubens and Reni. In his gallery, The Rape of the Sabines could have been a copy of the famous Bassano owned by Concini,23 one of Blainville’s first supporters. (In the inventory, this work is listed without any attribution, but after the “grand tableau coppié après le Passant [Bassan]”; see Appendix.) In his bedroom, the Charity after Andrea del Sarto is surely a copy of the king’s famous picture in Fontainebleau (Musée du Louvre, Paris). But what should we make of the “saint Jehan de Leonnard delignite” (estimated at 30 livres)? If we see it as a Leonardo, is it a simple copy, or could it be an original? It immediately brings to mind, not the Fontainebleau Bacchus, but much more likely the small St. John the Baptist (Musée du Louvre, Paris) given by the Duke of Liancourt to Charles I in 1630 during his official visit to England. There has been much debate concerning this picture. For some time, it was considered the property of Louis XIII, who then might have given it to the king of England through the intermediary of Liancourt, his ambassador. But nowadays, we tend to believe that it was offered by Liancourt in his own name. In such a case, the picture would have left the royal collection at an earlier date.24 Therefore, it is possible that the precious painting was removed from the King’s Cabinet around 1625 and offered, or lent by Louis XIII to Blainville before being in the possession of Liancourt (who was also “premier gentilhomme de la chambre du roi”). As for the “Joconde” and the “Flora” valued together at 24 livres, they are undoubtedly copies of the two famous pictures by Leonardo, the Mona Lisa – then in the king’s collection at Fontainebleau – and the Flora – in Maria de’ Medici’s Paris Cabinet (this later painting is lost).25 The whole Blainville collection, and particularly these two Leonardo copies presented side by side, reflect the political role played by Blainville during the decade of the 1620s: to bring together Maria de’ Medici, to whom he owed his early career at the court, with Louis XIII, to whom he was loyally devoted. In the grande salle, adorned on important occasions with a Flemish tapestry The Triumph of Caesar,26 the portrait of the young king stood out as the only picture present. In the lord’s bedroom, there were copies and originals from the King’s Cabinet, after, or by Del Sarto, Raphael, or Leonardo, as well as contemporary works that showed, with Rubens and Reni, the taste of Maria de’ Medici. The four main paintings in this room, a Lucretia and a Judith (each estimated at 200 livres, but without an attribution),27 a Bathsheba by Reni and a Venus by Titian (120 livres each), are not only an ode to the beau-
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ty and the virtues of women; they are also an obvious tribute to the queen. The presence of works by Reni and Rubens, both artists attached to the history of the Luxembourg Palace, again reveals that Blainville was indeed part of the close entourage of Maria de’ Medici. It is known that, since 1623, the French administration had Guido Reni in mind for the realization of the second gallery of the Luxembourg Palace, even though Rubens had already signed a contract in February 1622 for the decoration of the two galleries, the first one being far from completed.28 Would the queen have asked Reni for a sample of his art in order to judge, as she did for Orazio Gentileschi, “what he’s able to do and if he can satisfy me with the works that I have the intention to commission him for my Palace”?29 Even if we can’t be sure that the Blainville painting was directly linked to the transactions between the royal French administration and the Italian painter, it is certain that the Bathsheba is the first Reni painting mentioned in a Parisian inventory. It is also the first time that a Rubens painting appears in such a document. In the case of Rubens’ Seneca, the inventory fails to record the exact circ*mstances that led to its acquisition. We find mention neither of Blainville nor of the painting in the correspondence between Peiresc and Rubens, but it is quite possible that the Seneca was sold, or offered directly by Rubens to the “premier gentilhomme de la chambre du roi,” as he would have known of the latter’s close links with the king. Blainville might have met the Flemish painter during his visit in Paris in the winter of 1622, but more likely during his second trip in May-June 1623. He may have then expressed a wish to possess one of Rubens’ works. In this case, the picture would have been sent to Blainville shortly afterward, or given to him when Rubens stayed in Paris in 1625. The painting may be identified with the Munich version, dated around 1612-13, and later enlarged by Rubens himself.30 This subsequent modification may be connected with its French destination. The painting’s subject, the Death of Seneca, is again an exemplum virtutis, which echoes the great Death of Lucretia, or Tintoretto’s Scipio, seen by Gerbier in the Blainville mansion in 1624. Yet the latter painting wasn’t to be found in the Blainville inventory four years later. Did Gerbier succeed in obtaining it for Buckingham, or was it rather Rubens who exchanged it for his own Seneca, given that he was himself looking for Venetian paintings? However, this must remain pure speculation, for Tintoretto’s Scipio has not been recorded in the collections of Buckingham, Rubens, or Charles I. ••• For a court dignitary to assemble for his own bedchamber a group of prestigious paintings, whether copies, or originals, marks a turning point in collecting practices by the French nobility. The Blainville pictures are less a col-
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lection reflecting personal taste than a group of rarities, master paintings, substituting for the precious bedroom tapestries that the nobility must have abandoned with reluctance. For Warignies to take this new step was highly significant. It was sure to please Gerbier, a fervent art lover, as well as his patron, the Duke of Buckingham, a great amateur collector of paintings and a major actor on the political stage at the time. Moreover, it was probably just before the arrival of Buckingham in Paris that Blainville borrowed rare paintings from the royal collections. One element may confirm this hypothesis: in the 1628 inventory, forty-eight pairs of guns were valued in the attic of Blainville’s mansion; it was specified that “these arms belong to the King and were lent…about three years ago,”31 in other words, around 1624-25. The loan of these guns recalls an escort of forty-eight guards surrounding the person of Blainville, reflecting a grand style maintained with the king’s support. The Blainville paintings demonstrate a revival in French court art collecting among those in the close entourage of Maria de’ Medici and already indicate a new direction in taste for painting – toward Bassano and Raphael, Reni and Rubens – that was to take hold and be maintained during the Grand Siècle. They also reveal the symbolic importance that painting as well as painters rather suddenly acquired in political and diplomatic circles. Significantly, as Blainville was leaving for England on a mission to calm tensions due to the cool reception given to Louis XIII’s younger sister at the English court of Charles I, the French king himself wrote him: “I have also to add that since your departure, a painter of the Duke of Buckingham named Gerbier and his main mediator came to see my cousin the Cardinal Richelieu with a submissive letter from which I conjecture that he repents the things that happened over there” (15 September 1625).32 Even though the Blainville pictures were associated with such politically powerful figures of the French court, the valuations given in the 1628 inventory reveal how little these paintings were worth at that time. They were very specific goods whose values were difficult to determine in the urban economy. For example, the value of the “Vierge de Raphael Urbin,” at 40 livres, was the approximate price for a bed made by a Parisian furniture maker. Moreover, that a modest painter of the Parisian guild, Charles Masson, was engaged by Blainville’s descendants to establish the “just price” of such uncommon paintings shows that at this time the value of art objects relied less on the artist’s international reputation, or on the rarity of the work, but more on criteria such as the dimensions of the painting, the number of figures in the composition, or quality of the frame. It is precisely this neglected area of research – the emergence of urban art markets and the evolution of the paintings’ prices – that must be investigated today, an area that the pioneering studies of John Michael Montias have already shown can enrich our knowledge of the development of the arts in Europe.
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On Gerbier’s activities, see L.-R. Betcherman, “The York House Collection and Its Keeper,” Apollo 92 (1970): 250-59. See G. Goodman, The Court of King James the First by Mr Godfrey Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester, to which are added, letters illustrative of the personal history of the most distinguished characters…now first published…by John S. Brewer, vol. 2 (London, 1839). Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Tanner 73, fol. 121; reproduced in A. Schnapper, Curieux du Grand Siècle. Collections et collectionneurs dans la France du XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1994), p. 123. Paris, Archives nationales, Minutier Central, LIV, 305, 8 March 1628. The entries in the inventory relating to the paintings are reproduced here in the Appendix. This document is mentioned in Mickaël Szanto, “Gli itinerari delle pitture dall’Italia alla Francia nel primo Seicento: Dalle vie diplomatiche ai circuiti bancari,” in M. Fantoni, L.C. Matthew, S.F. Matthews-Grieco, eds., The Art Market in Italy, 15th-17th Century (symposium held in Florence, 2000) (2003), p. 419, n. 15. The paintings listed in the estate inventory of Sébastien Zamet (13 August 1614), in part copies after the king’s paintings, include no attributions, except for works by Bassano (expert painter, Jacques Quesnel). See C. Grodecki, “Sébastien Zamet, amateur d’art,” in Les Arts au temps d’Henri IV (symposium held in Fontainebleau, 1989) (1992), pp. 185-254. Biographical information from Roman d’Amat’s entry on Blainville in the Dictionnaire de biographie française, eds., M. Prévost and J.-Ch. Roman d’Amat (Paris, 1954), vol. 6, pp. 565-66. Paris, Archives nationales, Minutier central, LIV, 305, 8 March 1628, paper 30. It is specified that the marriage contract was drawn up by Abraham Theroulde and Pierre Lambert, notaries in Rouen, 12 February 1611. Contract drawn up in Paris by Herbin and Contesse, 12 May 1621 (Archives nationales, Minutier central, LIV, 305, 8 March 1628, paper 23). The mansion belonged to the first Duke of Retz, the Florentine Albert of Gondi, favorite of Catherine de’ Medici. His wife, Claude Catherine de Clermont, was the hostess of the famous “salon vert,” headquarters of the “Brigade.” See below, note 13. Archives nationales, Minutier central, LIV, 305, 8 March 1628, paper 14. The inventory was drawn up at the request of his heir, his brother, Tanneguy Warignies, and in the presence of his widow, Catherine de Voysins. The inventory of the papers mentions a bundle of receipts “des ouvriers qui ont travaillé aud. hostel de Retz.” See the estate inventory of Henri de Gondi, Duke of Retz, drawn up on 26 February 1621 (Archives nationales, Minutier central, LIV, 304). On the duch*ess of Retz and her “salon vert,” see H. Chamard, Histoire de la Pléiade, vol. 3 (Paris, 1940), pp. 156-57; see also G. Wildenstein, “Pasithée, maréchale de Retz et ses collections,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (October 1958): 209-18. For the change of ownership of the Hôtel de Retz, see Archives nationales, S 1051, Censier de Saint-Denis-de-la-Chartre. See especially, A. Berty, Topographie historique du vieux Paris, vol. 1 (Paris, 1866), p. 88. See Appendix: “Item deux tableaux après Bernard Dalvare scavoir une petite Vierge et un petit Crist et un saint Jehan prisez dix huict livres chacun revenant ensemble à XXXVI lt.” The two paintings could be related to the Leonardos then in Fontainebleau, The Virgin of the Rocks and the St. John / Bacchus (today in the Louvre, Paris). See Appendix: “comme estant des meubles du roy…pour estre le tout reporté dans le cabinet du Roy d’où ils ont esté tirez par iccelluy defunct….” See end of Appendix: “led. tableau où est représentée et dépeinte une Nostre Dame lequel il a dict appartenir au roy et l’avoir iceluy Douet presté aud. deffunct sieur de Blainville.”
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18 From 1613, Jacques Douet is described as “peintre et valet de chambre du roi, garde de ses cabinets de peinture au Louvre” (Archives nationales, Minutier central, VIII, 583, 15 March 1613; M.-A. Fleury, Documents du Minutier central concernant les peintres, les sculpteurs et les graveurs au XVIIe siècle, 1600-1650 (Paris, 1969), p. 310; see also Schnapper 1994, p. 288. 19 The king’s paintings in Fontainebleau weren’t under the supervision of Jacques Douet, but of his brother, Claude (1585-1660). See Arnold Brejon de Lavergnée, L’inventaire Le Brun de 1683. La collection des tableaux de Louis XIV (Paris, 1987), pp. 41-42. 20 See Schnapper 1994, p. 288. 21 Goodman 1893, p. 371. 22 Mémoires du cardinal de Richelieu, ed. Michaud and Poujoulat, in Nouvelle collection des mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de France depuis le XIIIe siècle jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIe..., vol. 7 (Paris, 1837), p. 351 23 See Schnapper 1994, p. 120. 24 See Brejon de Lavergnée 1987, no. 58, pp. 135-37; Schnapper 1994, p. 162. 25 The painting is listed as being in the collection of Cardinal Richelieu before it was claimed by creditors of the queen (Schnapper 1994, p. 132). 26 Tapestry in eight pieces, unfortunately not valued in the inventory. It is probably similar to one listed in the 1614 Zamet inventory: “tapisserie de Bruge rehaulsée de soie représentant les Triomphes de Cesar contenant huict pieces de vingt huict aulnes et demie de cours sur trois aulnes ung tiers de hault 2 500 l.” See Grodecki 1992, p. 242. See also G. Delmarcel and E. Duverger, Bruges et la Tapisserie, exh. cat., Gruuthuse Museum and Memling Museum, Bruges, 1987, pp. 228-43, nos. 13-17. Two other tapestries are described in the Blainville inventory, one representing the Story of Solomon, the other the Story of Diana. This latter might be the one realized after the drawings of Toussaint Dubreuil. 27 It is tempting to relate these two important paintings, the most highly valued of the inventory, with the two famous works of Guido Reni, indeed completed around 1625. See Steven Pepper, Guido Reni. L’opera completa (Novara, 1988), no. 93, p. 258 (Judith, Sedlmayer Collection) and no. 97, p. 260 (Lucretia, Neues Palais, Potsdam). 28 Letter from Richelieu to des Roches, in Lettres, instructions diplomatiques et papiers d’État du Cardinal de Richelieu, ed. D.-L.-M. Avenel, vol. 1 (Paris, 1853-77), p. 766. 29 See Schnapper 1994, pp. 127-28. 30 Munich, Alte Pinakothek, oil on canvas, 167 x 154.7 cm, without the enlargements made by Rubens around 1620. See David Jaffé, Catalogo completo. Rubens (Milan, 1989), no. 179, p. 181. In the eighteenth century, the painting was in the Düsseldorf gallery. 31 “Item quarante huict paire d’armes complettes telz quelz prisées ensemble C L lt. Inventoriant lesquelles armes led. sieur…a déclaré que lesd. armes sont au Roy et ont esté prestées…il y a environ trois ans et dont led. feu sieur de Blainville a baille son recepve.” 32 “J’ay aussy à vous adiouster que depuis votre despart un nommé Gebier [sic] qui est paintre du Duc de Bouquinquam & son grand entremeteur est venu de par deça vers mon cousin le cardinal de Richelieu avec lettre un peu soubmise ayant égard à son naturel de laquelle ie coniecture qu’il se repent des choses qui sont advenues de par delà.” Bibliothèque nationale de France, Manuscrits, Français 23603, fol. 87r.
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Appendix Note: Only the sections of the inventory related to paintings are transcribed here. The inventory is preserved in Paris, Archives nationales, Minutier Central, LIV, 305. 8 March 1628 Inventory of Jean de Warignies “chevalier des ordres du roi, conseiller en ses Conseils d’Etat et privé, premier gentilhomme de la chambre du roi,” living rue des Fossés, parish of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, drawn up in the presence of his widow, Catherine de Voysins, and on the request of his brother, Tanneguy Warignies, heir without liability to debts beyond assets descended. En une chambre au dessus dud. office Item ung estuit à mettre un tableau avecq le bois d’une selle ployante prisez ensemble huict solz VIII s. Dans la grande salle Item un tableau qui est sur la cheminée auquel est représenté la figure du roy avecq une envie soubz ses piedz prisé vingt livres XX lt. [Dans une autre pièce] Item un tabernacle de bois doré peinct au milieu duquel est un petit tableau où est dépeinct un crucifix, six petit* vases en chacun desquelz y a un bouquet de soye deux petitz chandeliers de bois doré, un petit chandelier de cuivre, un petit tableau dont le chassis est d’ébeyne fermant où est enchassé le crucifix de Cyrolle et Nostre Dame de Lorette, un autre petit tableau d’ébeyne dans lequel est une teste de Crist de cuivre doré sur velour noir, deux paix d’émail, deux bras d’estain servant de chandellier et deux grands bouquet de soye, un soubassem*nt de satin vert moucheté garny de passem*ns d’or et d’argeant de frange de soye, une de serge verte, une petite chaire de bois servant à mettre les burettes et bassin garny d’un soubassem*nt de satin vert avecq passem*ns d’or et d’argeant et à l’entour de thoille et grand passem*nt, un corporallier, deux orilliers de satin, la chasuble, l’estole et le fanon le tout de satin vert moucheté garny de passem*nt d’or et d’argeant, un voile de tafetas vert à mettre sur le calice garny d’une dentelle d’or et d’argeant à l’entour, le canon et missel couvert de maroquin, un aube de thoille garny de son amy et ceinture, un autre petit tableau d’ébeyne où est représenté au dedans une Nostre Dame de Lorette, une orillier de velour vert brun avecq ses houppes & un prie dieu sur lequel y a de la mocquette verte prisé le tout ensemble quarante livres cy XL lt. En un petit cabinet servant d’oratoire Item un tableau peinct sur toille sans chassis où est peinct un Crucifix prisé avecq une grand paire d’heure prisé quatre livres dix solz cy IIII lt. X s. En un autre grenier joignant apellé le magasin Item deux chassis à tableau et un escran garny de satin de burge tel quel prisé ensemble vingt solz XX s. En la garde robe dud. deffunct Item deux tableaux dont l’ung de marbre garny d’ébeyne où est depint d’ung costé une Nativité et de l’autre une Annonciation scize sur ung pivot d’ébeyne et l’autre de cuivre rouge aussy garny de son chassis d’ébeyne prisés ensemble cinquante livres
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En inventoriant lesquelz tableaux est survenu noble homme François Moymier concierge et garde général des meubles du roy lequel a protesté que l’inventaire desd. tableaux ne luy puisse nuire ne préjudicier et avoir requis luy estre rendu comme estant des meubles du roy dont il est chargé plus a déclaré que led. deffunct est chargé de luy rendre non seullement lesd. deux tableaux mais encore trois autres tableaux qui appartiennent pareillement à Sa Majesté dont il a faict (...) contenir au procès verbal dud. Michel Parque commissaire lesquelz trois tableaux il demande pareillement luy estre renduz pour estre le tout reporté dans le cabinet du Roy d’où ils ont esté tirez par icelluy deffunct ayant esté donnez à Sa Majesté par le prince de Piedmont (signé:) Moymier Item deux Item boys
deux petit* tableaux peintz sur bois garnyz de leur chassis d’ébeyne où sont dépeintz dames prisés ensemble soixante solz cy LX s. deux petitz chassis de tableaux d’ébeyne avecq le portraict dud. seigneur peintz sur sans chassis prisez ensemble trente sols cy XXX s.
Ensuit les tableaux prisez et estimez par led. Paris appellé avecq luy pour faire lad. prisée Charles Masson maistre peintre à Paris y demeurant rue Saint Honoré vis à vis la croix du Tirouer En la gallerie Item ung grand tableau coppié après le Passant [Bassan] prisé XL lt. Item une autre tableau du ravissem*nt des Sabines avecq sa bordure prisé XXIIII lt. Item un tableau du pourtraict de Paschel Urbin [Raphaël d’Urbin?] prisé XVIII lt. Item vingtz tableaux d’une [même] grandeur ou environ parties sur bois et l’autre partie sur toille prisé quatre livre chacune revenant aud. prix à la somme de IIII xx lt. Item trois tableaux que le sieur Moimier garde des meubles du roy a dict apppartenir à Sa Majesté dont deux peinctz sur marbre et l’autre sur cuivre prisez vinquatre livres chacun revenant ensemble aud. prix à LXXII lt. En la chambre dud. deffunct seigneur Item un grand tableau d’une Lucresse qui se tue prisé deux cens livres II c lt. Item un tableau d’une Judic prisé II c lt. Item un tableau d’une Vénus du Tissian prisé VI xx lt. Item une Bersabée du Guide prisé VI xx lt. Item un tableau d’une Charité après André del Sarte prisé XL lt. Item un Senecque de Rubens prisé L lt. Item deux tableaux d’oiseaux prisez soixante livres chacun revenant aud. prix à VI xx lt. Item deux Vierges d’une mesme grandeur prisez trente livres chacun revenant aud. prix à LX lt. Item deux tableaux après Bernard Dalvare [Léonard?] scavoir une petite Vierge et un petit Crist et un saint Jehan prisez dix huict livres chacun revenant ensemble à XXXVI lt. Item deux tableaux en l’un desquelz est peinct une Vierge avecq sainte Elizabeth et saint Jehan et en l’autre une Magdelaine prisez quarante livres chacun revenant aud. prix à LXXX lt. Item un tableau d’Adam et Eufve comme l’ange les chassent du jardin d’Aedem prisé XXX lt. Item une Vierge de Raphael Urbin prisée XL lt. Item un ange qui tient une teste de mort prisé XL lt. Item un saint Jehan de Leonnard delignite prisé XXX lt. Item une Joconde et une Vénus ou Flora prisez vingt quatre livres chacun revenant à XLVIII lt.
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Au cabinet des tableaux proche la chambre dud. deffunct Item quatre vingtz seize tableaux garnys de leur chassis bois peinct et doré fors ung représentant des princes seigneurs et dames de la cour prisé six livres pièces revenant à IIII c IIII xx lt. Item deux tableaux de paysage garnys de leur chassis peinct et doré prisé ensemble XV lt. En la garderobbe de lad. dame Item huict petitz tableaux peinctz sur bois dont quatre à chassis d’ébeyne prisez ensemble VI lt. Item quatres aultres tableaux peinct sur marbre garnys de leur chassis dont l’un d’ébeyne prisez ensemble XII lt. Item quatres aultres petitz tableaux dont l’un assez grand peinct sur cuivre rouge garnys de leur chassis d’ébeyne prisés ensemble VIII lt Item trois aultres petitz pourtraictz sur bois dont l’un garny de son chassis prisé ensemble XXX s. Item deux toilles peinctes dont l’une imparfaicte et non achevé où sont despeinctz à chacun une femme prisez ensemble XXX s. Item six petitz tableaux à chassis d’ébeyne prisez ensemble III lt. Item six petites vaisselles de pourceline prisez ensemble vingt solz XX s Au cabinet d’en bas dud. seigneur Item cinq rideaux à tableau de tafetas bleu garnis de leurs verge de fer telz quelz prisez ensemble VI lt. En la garderobe joignant Item un petit tableau de cuivre doré garny de son petit chassy d’ébeine prisé XXX s Est comparu le sieur Jacques Doué painctre et valet de chambre du roy et garde de ses peinctures lequel est entré dans la chambre dud. deffunct sieur de Blainville où il a requis led. tableau où est représentée et dépeinte une Nostre Dame lequel il a dict appartenir au roy et l’avoir iceluy Douet presté aud. deffunct sieur de Blainville, partant en demande délivrance : (signé) Douet
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Van Eyck Out of Focus christopher s. wood Yale University, New Haven
On 28 August 1815, Goethe received as a birthday gift from Sulpiz Boisserée, the pioneering collector of medieval art, an engraving after a work by Jan van Eyck (Fig. 1).1 Boisserée, reverent, concealed a few of his own verses under the print, framing the sheets of paper with sprigs of oak, laurel, and clover. In his diary, Boisserée recorded the great man’s reaction to the poetry but
Fig. 1. Cornelis van Noorde after Jan van Eyck, St. Barbara, 1769, engraving. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum.
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not to the print, unfortunately.2 The engraving replicates with near-perfect fidelity every dash, dot, and stroke of Van Eyck’s work, the St. Barbara, now in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp (Fig. 2).3 Although framed and signed, the picture is not in fact an oil painting but a kind of drawing on prepared panel. It measures 41 by 28 centimeters with its frame, the print very nearly the same.4 The engraved facsimile is so successful that on quick inspection one might easily mistake it for a pen drawing, as some contemporaries of Goethe apparently did. Wurzbach reported that the print was long exhibited in Bruges as a drawing.5 The birthday gift marked a shift in European taste, a breakdown of the long dominance of a painterly neoclassicism grounded in the form-world of Raphael and Michelangelo and codified in the writings and engravings generated by the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century academies. The print after Van Eyck’s St. Barbara documented and recognized a long-obsolete mode of cultic painting. With its obsessively inductive, cumulative approach to form, its static, vertical, indeed tower-like composition, its indifference to ideal canons of human form, and its mysterious, anecdotal fascination with the busy construction site behind the saint’s back, Van Eyck’s picture violated every possible precept of the academic and neoclassical painting tradition that in many ways still dominated Goethe’s Europe. The engraving recovered the panel from oblivion. The institution of the so-called “reproductive” engraving had emerged in the sixteenth century as a means of notating and disseminating a canon of imitation-worthy works and forms.6 To publish a painting was to assert its value. The translation to the medium of engraving signaled a work’s exemplarity. The print presented to Goethe symbolically repudiated the academic tradition that had for so long neglected Van Eyck and his contemporaries. In the last decades of the eighteenth century and first of the nineteenth, the challenge to neoclassical taste was just beginning to take shape in the collecting activity of the Boisserée brothers,7 by Goethe himself,8 and soon enough by the reproductive engravings of Antoine Michel Filhol, Johann Nepomuk Strixner, J.B.L.G. Seroux d’Agincourt, and others.9 Some works by Van Eyck and other Flemish primitives hung in the Grande Galerie of the Louvre already by 1799. Friedrich Schlegel studied these paintings in 1802; shortly afterward, the Boisserées arrived in Paris and met both Schlegel and Van Eyck.10 Sulpiz’s birthday gift to Goethe in 1815 in effect “closed” the neoclassical tradition, creating it as a tradition, and in its place initiated a new tradition, a new concept of art, that would in the end manage to embrace both Raphael and Van Eyck.11 The exceptional interest of this particular engraving is its precocity. For, in fact, it was published already in 1769, when Goethe was only twenty years of age, and only a year after the death of J.J. Winckelmann, the great schol-
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Fig. 2. Jan van Eyck, St. Barbara, 1437, panel. Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten.
arly and critical exponent of Hellenophilic neoclassicism. The engraving of the St. Barbara predates by more than a generation the German Romantic rediscovery of the primitifs flamands. The engraving was not a German work, but Dutch, the combined product of Haarlem civic patriotism and a more general Netherlandish tradition of reproductive printmaking. It had been commissioned by the owner of the painting, the noted book publisher and collector Johannes Enschedé of Haarlem (1707-1780).12 At the lower left of the bottom sheet, outside the engraved frame, an inscription names Enschedé as “Possessor hujus Picturae originalis” and gives the date 1769. The lower right names the Haarlem printmaker Cornelis van Noorde (1731-1795), who engraved it “ex originali.” The print accompanied a pamphlet written by Enschedé, a short monograph on the origins of oil painting in the form of an open letter, Aan de Beminnaars der Tekenen Schilder-Konst (Fig. 3). The text is printed on four pages, on a single folded folio. The text looks engraved, but is in fact a calligraphic type font that simulates cursive script. The printed St. Barbara was thus a complex publication comprising three separate sheets of paper: the reproduction of the original wooden frame, signed “IOHANNES DE EYCK ME FECIT” and dated
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Fig. 3. Johannes Enschedé, Aan de Beminnaars der Teken- en Schilder-Konst, 1769, fol. 1. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum.
1437; the reproduction of the painting itself, tipped in (that is, attached to the sheet representing the frame); and the four-page pamphlet on oil painting.13 Enschedé’s text begins by boasting of the technical and scientific ingenuity of the Netherlandish forefathers, exceeding that of far larger nations. As an example, he pointed out that book printing had been invented by Laurens Coster, the shadowy Haarlem alderman who according to local lore invented movable metal type already around 1430, a few years before Gutenberg. Enschedé went on to discuss oil painting, conceding that the Italian Cimabue was the first, around 1240, to throw off the “slavish yoke of Gothic painting” (“het slaafsche Juk der Gotthische Schilderkunst”) and introduce an improved taste for beauty. But these old paintings in tempera colors were pale and weak. It was left to us Netherlanders, Enschedé continued, to invent a way of making paintings “more detailed and durable” (“uitvoeriger en bestendiger”). In the early fifteenth century, Jan van Eyck of Maaseyck and Bruges began painting with oil colors on a white lime ground. According to the
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painter and old masters expert Tako Jelgersma, whom Enschedé quoted at length, the method was still used by some painters as late as the seventeenth century, for example, Adriaen Brouwer. The publication of a “getrouwe Afbeelding” of an old and rare panel offered to amateurs (liefhebbers) of the arts of painting and drawing “a true sample and worthy relic” (“een echt Stuk en waardig Overblyfzel”) of this now forgotten and obsolete method of painting. In effect, Enschedé was pushing back the threshold of the modern era of art, for it was now the pre-Eyckian, not the pre-Raphaelite paintings, which looked poor and rudimentary. For Van Eyck’s status as inventor of oil painting, Enschedé cited Karel van Mander, the Haarlem artist and author whose Schilder-boeck of 1604 had extended the art-critical and art-historical project of Giorgio Vasari to the northern sphere. Although the legend of Van Eyck’s invention had a local life of its own, Van Mander had, in fact, relied on Vasari for most of his information.14 No one understood the chemistry of Van Eyck’s technique, but everyone seemed to agree on his priority. The possibility that the Northern Europeans had pioneered oil painting was taken up with renewed enthusiasm by eighteenth-century antiquarians and amateurs looking to contest the absolute superiority of Italian art. In 1720, an anonymous English traveler was shown a painting in Ypres attributed by inscription to Jan van Eyck and, presumably by oral report, “said to be the first made in oil.”15 Van Mander’s Lives, testimony to a vigorous, non-classical counter-tradition of European painting, were reprinted in 1764. Horace Walpole in these years was provoked by the Wilton Diptych, a splendid panel of around 1400 possibly of English authorship, to question Van Eyck’s absolute priority as painter in oils, and not without reason.16 Enschedé, finally, submitted to the debate his own elegantly printed pamphlet and faithful reproduction of Van Eyck’s painting, patriotic documents of the two great Netherlandish medial innovations, movable type and oil painting. The reproduction of the picture, as noted, was tipped in rather than engraved continuously with the frame. The frame is printed in brown ink rather than black. The detachable frame signals the publication’s hesitation between presenting Van Eyck’s panel as a historical document and presenting it as a work of art. For if the St. Barbara was thought of as a document of a bygone culture, then its signed and dated frame had to be included. But if Van Eyck had made a work of art capable of standing alongside the masterpieces of the post-Raphael tradition, then the image ought to stand on its own, unframed, like any other. Reproductive engravings of oil paintings by normative masters such as Correggio, or Carracci, after all, did not normally reproduce frames. Nor did they reproduce paintings in actual size. It would be interesting to know whether Boisserée’s gift to Goethe in 1815 amounted to the entire publication – image, frame, and treatise –, or only the image. But the diary does not tell us.17 van eyck out of focus | 471
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Enschedé’s treatise does not go so far as to present Van Eyck’s painting as an aesthetic paragon, for this was still unthinkable in 1769. It presents the work strictly as a document, as if Enschedé had purchased a rude and unsightly but fascinatingly informative archaic Greek vase. The ostensible context for Enschedé’s double publication of panel and pamphlet was antiquarian scholarship, not the normative, prescriptive sort practiced by Winckelmann, but a non-evaluative, relativistic scholarship more interested in describing the past than in shaping it to fit modern, neoclassical taste. The pioneering example of such a descriptive project was Les monuments de la monarchie françoise of the Abbé Bernard de Montfaucon (5 vols., 1729-33), with its remarkably sensitive engravings after works of medieval French art.18 And yet, despite Enschedé’s caution in the treatise, his interest in the picture is clearly more than scientific. His publication represents a transitional phase between Montfaucon’s objectivity and the Boisserée’s enthusiasm. The puzzle of the publication is that Van Eyck’s St. Barbara, which was not an oil painting at all, would seem to be the least effective illustration of Enschedé’s patriotic monograph. Enschedé at first said the painting is painted on a smoothly polished white ground “met Olyverf,” but then immediately conceded that it is painted “in a drawing-like manner with hatchings, in grisaille, with no other color than black” (“op eene tekenagtige wyze met Arceeringen geschilderd in ’t graauw, met geene andere Couleur dan zwart”) (p. 2). He reported that the paint had turned brown, or yellowish with age, so that the work today looked at first glance like an India-ink drawing (p. 3). (The bluish washes in the sky, Enschedé correctly noted, are later additions and were therefore not registered in the engraving; p. 2, n. 5.) There is thus a blatant and confusing clash between the claims of the pamphlet and the fact of the panel. Why would Enschedé build a pamphlet on early oil painting around this picture, thus asking a non-oil painting to stand for the whole achievement of the medium? Tako Jelgersma had told Enschedé that the old masters used to draw in fine hatchings on a white ground before applying their oil paint (p. 2, n. 2). When the St. Barbara fell into Enschedé’s hands, it seemed to provide a unique insight, some few days before the advent of infrared reflectography, into the lost art of underdrawing and the secret of Eyckian oil painting. He had his engraver reproduce the fine linear network in soft but crisp lines, the necessary, even if not sufficient, condition for the Eyckian painting mode –, or so Enschedé believed. Today we know that extensive underdrawing of this sort was by no means a necessary condition. Indeed, no early Flemish painting had underdrawings as extensive as this. Although the working out of tonal values on the blank painting surface served as a guide for the painter, it was not indispensable to the process of patient layering of oil glazes. The panel’s true function and meaning form a riddle taxing enough for
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modern scholarship. Van Eyck’s St. Barbara is certainly not an unfinished painting, as the signed and dated frame attests. At one point, Enschedé simply calls it a “Konst-Stuk,” and here he was not wrong. J.R.J. Asperen de Boer has noted that the picture was drawn with both stylus and brush, suggesting perhaps that the work began as an ordinary underdrawing and was only later, for unknown reasons, converted into a display piece, a drawing as finished work of art. 19 Paul Vandenbroek has pointed out that the taste for grisaille drawings was already well-established among patrons of the finest manuscripts.20 Van Eyck’s work was a virtuoso jeu d’esprit addressed to a sophisticated audience, presumably a particular patron, who would recognize it as the representation of an unfinished painting; as something like a staged glimpse behind the scenes of the painter’s workshop. The unfinished tower, still under construction, is the emblem of its unfinishedness, which is only a virtual unfinishedness, in ironic dissonance with the signature and date on the frame. The modular Gothic architecture, an assemblage of linear compartments, meanwhile, is a figure for the linear, skeletal approach to description that the panel as a whole takes. Enschedé’s point about movable type is clouded by a similar indirection. He invoked Laurens Coster and the origins of letterpress, but then had his own text printed in a calligraphic font that imitates engraved scripts, like the scripts at the bottom of the reproductive print, rather than in one of the many standard, modern typographic fonts that traced their roots back to the fifteenth century. In fact, any modern printed broadsheet could have easily served as an illustration of the origins of printing, to the point that it would have been transparent and therefore ineffective as an illustration. Enschedé apparently decided that the only way to break out of this circle and point emphatically to the medium was to use a strange typeface that simulated another medium, engraving (which in turn was simulating the handheld pen). Just as the apparent clash between medium and message revealed the essence of the oil painting technique, so too does the calligraphic font that appears to clash with the content of the text reveal the flexibility of movable type. One might say that seventeenth-century Dutch culture never articulated a theory adequate to its own art. The paintings and prints were obliged to theorize themselves. In this respect, however, Dutch art may not be so special. Theoretical texts of all times and places, from Alberti to Vasari, from Van Mander to Winckelmann, are often the least articulate about what the art of their day is doing. In the premodern period, art theory is habitually indirect, knowing what it wants but not how to say it. Enschedé’s publication also expresses an art theory, a theory that embraces both Raphael and Van Eyck, but without words, or with the wrong words. By choosing to represent Eyckian oil painting through its linear, monochrome substratum, Enschedé identified a deep-structural principle common
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to both the surface and underdrawing: both are compiled by patient, additive processes, calling for devotion and diligence beyond anything modern painters are capable of. And by producing not a mere representation of the Eyckian panel, but rather an exact, one-to-one facsimile of its surface, a perfect analogue in true dimensions, the engraver Van Noorde achieved an absence of coding that an oil painting aiming to replicate the look of the world could only envy. For the original mythic force of oil paint – Enschedé knew this but could not quite say it – lies in its promise to give you the world as it really is, without recourse to schemas, or conventions. The oil painter uses blue to represent blue, and red to represent red. Enschedé’s publication isolates analogicity as the defining power of oil paint. Neoclassical theory, by contrast, had been unwilling to ground a theory of art on color’s genius for matching. Academic theory tended to assign color a merely supplementary and cosmetic status, subordinate to an intellectually generated design principle.21 Vasari had explained the advantage of oil as a binder in terms that reveal both the power and the limits of color: “Questa maniera di colorire accende più i colori; nè altro bisogna che diligenza ed amore, perché l’olio in sè si reca il colorito più morbido, più dolce e dilicato, e di unione e sfumata maniera più facile che gli altri.”22 (“This manner of coloring better kindles the pigments; nothing is required other than diligence and love, because the oil in itself renders the coloring softer, sweeter, more delicate, more easily blended in a smoky manner than do the other methods.”) Oil does the work, in other words, producing ready-to-use colors and freeing the artist to concentrate on the invention and design. Enschedé was, in effect, shifting the focus away from design and back to the analogic power of pure paint. The engraving was uncoded (vis-à-vis Van Eyck’s panel) in exactly the way that the nonexistent notional oil painting that Van Eyck’s brush drawing prepared – standing for the oil painting of Van Eyck in general – was uncoded (vis-à-vis nature). The analogic capacity of oil paint was the basis for the whole project of simulating perception, of unrolling a virtual world before the eyes of the beholder. Enschedé was really saying in his essay, therefore, that the key to modern painting was not the idealizing, or rhetorical model offered by academic theory, a model locked in doomed competition with poetry, but rather the illusionistic doubling of perception.23 Van Noorde’s engraving signals its solidarity with the analogic approach by differentiating itself from the traditional reproductive engraving sponsored by the academies.24 The neoclassical reproductive engraving had represented tonal values by a conventional system of curved and intersecting swirls and hatchings. Van Noorde, by contrast, rendered Van Eyck by reproducing, as if by rote, every single line.25 His facsimile does not avail itself of the graphic conventions, or codes developed by the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century engravers. It returns the art of engraving to a primitive state. Lines may
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blend illusionistically in Van Noorde’s engraving, but then this blending occurs already in Van Eyck’s work. On the panel, shade is generated by accumulation of tiny brush strokes, without application of the flat brush. The picture emerges out of a multitude of graphemes, which either describe real edges, or are arrayed conventionally in rows to simulate solid areas of shade. Some of the lines are to be read literally, as lines in reality, while others are meant to be assembled by the eye in a kind of perceptual calculus, simulating continuous areas of shade. The print does not interpret, or translate the grouping of lines in Van Eyck’s panel that “read” as shade. It simply repeats and preserves the graphemes, counting on the facsimile to do whatever it was that the original work did. A line, in Van Noorde’s image of Van Eyck’s panel, is signified by a line. This is non-conventional, uncoded representation. Neither Cornelis van Noorde nor Johannes Enschedé invented the analogue reproductive engraving. This approach to the rendering of drawings goes back to the most creative period of printmaking, the first decades of the sixteenth century. The earliest iron etchings were intended as facsimiles of pen drawings.26 A woodcut by Ugo da Carpi printed from three tone-blocks – black, red-brown, and violet – was meant as a kind of mechanical facsimile, in true dimensions, of a wash drawing by Raphael.27 The so-called chiaroscuro woodcut had a long career alongside the engraving. Meanwhile, reproductive engravers were striving to develop techniques for rendering tonal values and eventually color itself with greater fidelity. Mezzotint, a semi-analogue technique involving the simulation of continuous surfaces by the use of rockers and other devices for roughening the plate, was developed in the midseventeenth century.28 The French printmaker Jean-Baptiste Le Prince invented aquatint, a true analogue technique, in the late 1760s.29 Among the Dutch, the master of the analogue reproductive print was the eighteenth-century amateur Cornelis Ploos’ van Amstel (1726-1798).30 This two-color etching, for instance, replicated a drawing by Hendrick Goltzius in red and black chalks (Fig. 4).31 The rendering of both lines and indeterminate forms and shading is uncoded; it is perfect mark-to-mark representation. Such a print met an emerging interest in drawings and in the history of art among modern collectors and connoisseurs. The attentiveness to seventeenthcentury Dutch art, now a “closed” tradition, was appreciative and not merely documentary. The eighteenth-century amateur, whether he could find old drawings, or only Ploos replicas, was quietly building an alternative canon, unnoticed by the Italians, and laying the groundwork for the revolution in taste of the next century.32 Enschedé in his pamphlet wrote that Ploos van Amstel particularly encouraged him to introduce the Van Eyck panel to a broader public (p. 3). Ploos van Amstel himself bought the old painting at auction in 1786, six years after Enschedé’s death.33 The traditional reproductive engraving, which rendered tone by a linear
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Fig. 4. Cornelis Ploos van Amstel and Johannes Körnlein after Hendrick Goltzius, Portrait of Maria Tesselschade, 1770, engraving. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum.
code, implied that tone, or coloristic effect were accidental and could be rendered with liberty, or even sacrificed without really altering the significance of the work. The traditional reproductive engraving isolated invention and design as the essential features of the work. Such a print was not a copy, but an interpretation, a translation, as even contemporary sources averred.34 Such a print anticipated and pre-shaped the response to the painted work. The analogue reproductive print, by contrast, was a substitute, or ersatz drawing. It announced a shift of power over to the beholder, inviting independent judgment – just as oil painting had in Van Eyck’s time. Enschedé’s publication, pamphlet and engraving together, asserted Van Eyck’s pre-emptive refutation of the neoclassical orthodoxy. The modern re-engagement with Van Eyck initiated by Enschedé implied a rejection of the rhetorical and communicative theory of art offered by academic doctrine. The publication argued, inarticulately but effectively, that the native painting manners of Northern European painting, although institutionally subordinated to neoclassicism, had a “theory” of their own. The choice between perception-based and convention-based modes of graphic reproduction is figured by the contrast between Van Noorde’s tippedin image of St. Barbara and his image of Van Eyck’s frame. Van Noorde could not provide an analogue rendering of the frame, because here he was dealing not with an array of graphemes, but rather with pieces of wood that happen to have lines in them, a grain. The grain of the wood could be rendered
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as lines, but to produce a decent illusion of a wooden frame the engraver also needed to employ conventional graphic devices for representing surfaces. Van Noorde had to interpret the frame. The lines in Van Noorde’s frame oscillate back and forth from grain to hatching, from denotation to connotation, as indeed all lines do in a traditional, convention-based engraving. Van Noorde even represented shadow falling on the frame, as if light were hitting it. This is a completely different approach to representation, for in the central pictorial part he reproduces the thing as it is and then lets perception work on it, whereas in this part of the print, the engraver gives us the results of perception. Van Noorde’s engraving treats the interior image as an integral unit. The split in Van Noorde’s work falls between the image and the frame, whereas in Van Eyck’s original work there had been no such split. The wooden frame with its signature announcing Van Eyck’s authorship was conceptually continuous with the interior image where the exposed handiwork had done the same job, advertising Van Eyck’s virtuosity. In Van Eyck’s work, the true seam is inside the image, between the foreground saint and the background with its tower and landscape. The saint was a conventional figure, an extract from prior paintings, whereas in the background, at least notionally, Van Eyck was transcribing a fresh perception of the world. Van Eyck’s reason for drawing this internal distinction, in this and other works, was to call attention to the optically-based, mimetic conception of art that he was pioneering. Van Eyck inverted the customary relationship between subject and attribute in a religious painting. The tower was a conventional attribute of the third-century amateur theologian Barbara, who had been imprisoned in such a structure by her pagan father. It is usually a miniature tower, at her feet, or held in her hands, to make it instantly clear that it was to be read as a symbol. Instead, in this picture, Van Eyck piled up an excess of description in the background, analyzing and articulating the world into graphic units, with an intensity of effect rivaling what he could have achieved with color. Van Eyck was naturalizing, or “motivating” the symbolic attribute by absorbing it into a plausible fiction of perception.35 The attribute is motivated to such an extent that the background appears more lifelike and credible than the saint herself. The saint comes to look unmotivated, artificial, like an inexplicable supplement to the landscape. Van Eyck in this way created a disjunction between, on the one hand, the background that represents a plausible world and, on the other, a foreground figure, the ostensible subject of the picture, who looks like she has been copied from other works of art. He reversed the expected hierarchy between them. He then pointed to this disjunction by setting up bridges and rhymes between the two parts of the picture, such as the areas of dark focus in the tower above and the drapery below. The eighteenth-century engraving, as noted, shifts the split in the work
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outward to the seam between image and frame. Van Noorde flattened out Van Eyck’s ingenious interplay between world and art. In the engraving, the image has become a seamless unity that Van Eyck never meant it to be. Perhaps this is the reason that eighteenth-century observers “forgot” the subject of the picture.36 Van Eyck’s motivation, or naturalization of the tower, which a contemporary of his, familiar with images of St. Barbara, would have recognized as a clever joke, prevented the eighteenth-century viewer from seeing it as the martyr saint’s attribute.37 Enschedé realized she is a saint but guessed that she might be the patron saint of the church under construction in the background. Enschedé in the text designated himself “possessor” of the painting, thus calling a halt to the endless chain of cult images, liberating the object from its dark historical labyrinth and hauling it into the bright light of public scholarship. With such a print, the academic function of the reproductive engraving, its utility to artists, finally breaks down, and the modern reproduction is born, either as the instrument of dry scholarship, or as the catalyst of bourgeois taste. Enschedé’s publication gives us a sudden glimpse forward to the chromolithograph, the postcard, the color reproductions of paintings sold in museum shops. But it also looks forward to the scholarly study of art history, to modern connoisseurship, which will abandon reproductive engravings and rely instead – short of access to the object itself – on photographs, a superior analogue medium (or digital but sufficiently fine-grained to pass for an analogue medium). This shift away from reliance on the reproductive engraving was begun in these very decades, by Pierre-Jean Mariette, whose notes on the history of art were grounded in his collection of nearly 10,000 drawings.38 The analogue prints by the French engravers and by Ploos van Amstel were in a sense responding to Mariette’s demand for the original. But they could not compete economically with lithography and photography. In the long run, the reproductive engraving was useless to art-historical scholarship. Only in the last decades has the reproductive engraving re-emerged, not as a tool but as an object of art-historical study in its own right. Enschedé and Van Noorde’s multiple, hesitant framings of Van Eyck’s panel register the complexities of a new, relativistic approach to historical art. Historical relativism cleared the ground and in effect “called for” a modern art. Modern art, the art of Goethe’s time and beyond, will not look much like Enschedé and Van Noorde’s print, but will nevertheless be governed by a comparable historical perspectivism and by a comparable indecision – indeed persisting to this day – about whether historical art is exemplum, or document, whether it lives in a permanent present tense, or in the past. Neoclassicism, by contrast, had no doubt on this question: historical art was interesting only when beautiful. We can imagine the hesitation of Goethe, whose life bridged two eras of art, on receiving Sulpiz Boisserée’s diffident gift.
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1
There are two impressions in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Suzanne Sulzberger, “La ‘Sainte Barbe’ de Jean van Eyck: Détails concernant l’histoire du tableau,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 34 (1948): 292, referred to impressions seen at the Museum at Bruges and possibly at Lille in the nineteenth century. On the print, see Suzanne Sulzberger, La réhabilitation des primitifs flamands 1802-1867 (Brussels: Académie royale de Belgique, 1961), pp. 114-15; and Th. Laurentius, J.W. Niemeyer, and G. Ploos van Amstel, Cornelis Ploos van Amstel, 1726-1798: Kunstverzamelaar en prentuitgever (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1980), p. 57. 2 For the anecdote, see the autobiographical writings collected under the title Sulpiz Boisserée (Stuttgart, 1862), vol. 1, p. 272;, or Eduard Firmenich-Richartz, Sulpiz und Melchior Boisserée als Kunstsammler (Jena: Diederichs, 1916), p. 410. Boisserée had purchased the print only the day before from a dealer where he had seen it seven years earlier. See also the account of the episode in Sulzberger 1948, pp. 292-93. 3 Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, inv. no. 410. Paul Vandenbroek, Catalogus schilderijen 14e en 15e eeuw (Antwerp: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 1985), pp. 168-73. Elisabeth Dhanens, Hubert et Jan van Eyck (Paris: Albin Michel, 1980), pp. 254-65, 386-87. Karel van Mander, who saw the panel at the house of his teacher Lucas de Heere in Ghent, described it as “een cleen conterfeytselken van een Vrouw-mensch…met een Landtschapken achter, dat maer ghedootverwet was, en nochtans seer uytnemende net, en glat” (“a small portrait by him of a woman with a landscape behind which was merely underpainted but nevertheless most excellently neat and smooth”). Karel van Mander, The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, ed. Hessel Miedema (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1994), vol. 1, pp. 68-69 (1604 edition, fol. 202v.). Karel van Mander, Das Leben der niederländischen und deutschen Maler, ed. Hanns Floerke (Munich and Leipzig: Müller, 1906), vol. 1, p. 44. 4 The dimensions of the darker of the two Amsterdam impressions are 402 x 268 mm to the edge of the frame. The tipped-in print measures 313 x 180 mm. 5 Alfred von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon (1906-11) (Amsterdam, 1963), vol. 2, p. 241. Sulzberger 1948, p. 202, noted that Jules Michelet saw the print at Bruges but described it as a drawing. 6 On the “reproductive” engraving, see Susan Lambert, The Image Multiplied: Five Centuries of Printed Reproductions of Paintings and Drawings (London: Trefoil, 1987); David Landau and Peter Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 1470-1550 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 162-68; Rebecca Zorach and Elizabeth Rodini, Paper Museums: The Reproductive Print in Europe, 1500-1800 (Chicago: Smart Museum of Art, 2005). See also the provocative reconceptualization by Caroline Karpinski, “Preamble to a New Print Typology,” in Coming About…A Festschrift for John Shearman, eds. Lars R. Jones and Louisa C. Matthew (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, 2001), pp. 375-80. 7 See most recently Uwe Heckmann, Die Sammlung Boisserée: Konzeption und Rezeptionsgeschichte einer romantischen Kunstsammlung zwischen 1804 und 1827 (Munich: Fink, 2003). 8 Goethe, “Heidelberg” (1816), in John Gage, ed., Goethe on Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 130-49. 9 Reproductions of fifteenth-century works before 1820, or so were exceedingly rare, however; see Sulzberger 1961, pp. 95-97. Karl Joseph Ignaz Mosler made line drawings after works in the Boisserée collection; Friedrich Schlegel recommended them to Goethe in 1808; Firmenich-Richartz 1916, pp. 74-77, 115-16. 10 On the rediscovery of the northern primitives, see Francis Haskell, History and its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 432-36. 11 On interest in the “primitives” generally in this period, see Sulzberger 1961, esp. pp. 35-43, and 104-21 on enthusiasm for Van Eyck; and Giovanni Previtali, La fortuna dei primitivi (Turin: Einaudi, 1989), pp. 129-237. van eyck out of focus | 479
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12 J.W. Enschedé, “Johannes Enschedé in 1780,” Het Boek 3 (1914): 25. A note in the 1764 edition of Van Mander identified the panel as the one owned by Johannes Enschedé of Haarlem; see Vandenbroek 1985, p. 173. Karl-Heinrich von Heinecken, Nachrichten von Künstlern und Kunst-sachen (Leipzig, 1768), vol. 1, p. 58, also mentioned the picture, though he called it a Virgin and Child. 13 The engraving attracted some attention in its day. Enschedé sent it to Christoph Gottlieb von Murr, who discussed it in his Journal zur Kunstgeschichte 3 (1776), pp. 23-24. Murr thought that Van Eyck’s painting must have been intended as a guide for an engraver! Seroux d’Agincourt published a crude, postage-stamp-sized reproduction of the painting, at that time still in private hands, in his Histoire de l’Art par les Monuments depuis sa Décadence au IVe siècle jusqu’à son Renouvellement au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1823), vol. 6, pl. CLXIV. 14 The earliest attestations of Van Eyck’s priority were Italian. Already in 1454, the Italian humanist Bartolommeo Fazio described “Jan of Gaul” as a not unlettered man and reported that “he is thought for this reason to have discovered many things about the properties of colours recorded by the ancients.” Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 106. Filarete mentioned Van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden as masters of oil colors in 1464. Vasari’s report on Van Eyck’s supposed invention and its dissemination in Italy is distributed across two passages in the first, 1550 edition of the Lives of the Painters: in the Introduction and in the Life of Antonello da Messina; Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori, 9 vols., ed. Gaetano Milanesi (Florence: Sansoni, 1906), vol. 1, pp. 184-87; vol. 2, pp. 565-66. Vasari then garnered further information from Lambert Lombard, Domenicus Lampsonius, and Ludovico Guicciardini; to his second edition of 1568 he added the chapter “Di diversi artefici fiamminghi” (Vasari ed. Milanesi 1906, vol. 7, p. 580). For all these sources, see W.H. James Weale, Hubert and John Van Eyck, Their Life and Work (London and New York: Lane, 1908), pp. lxxiii-lxxxiii. For Van Mander’s discussion of Van Eyck and oil paint, see Van Mander ed. Miedema 1994, vol. 1, pp. 54-58 (fols. 199r.-200r.); or Van Mander ed. Floerke 1906, vol. 1, pp. 26-27; as well as Miedema’s remarks in Van Mander ed. Miedema 1994, vol. 2, Commentary, pp. 193-98. For the (latest) truth about Van Eyck and oil painting, see Raymond White, “Van Eyck’s Technique: The Myth and the Reality, II,” in Susan Foister, Sue Jones, and Delphine Cool, eds., Investigating Jan van Eyck (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), pp. 101-06, esp. p. 98. 15 Kees van Strien, Touring the Low Countries: Accounts of British Travellers, 1660-1720 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1998), p. 217. The so-called Malbeke Madonna is known today only through copies. 16 Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England (1762) (London, 1876), vol. 1, pp. 24ff. On Walpole and other early commentators on the technique of the Wilton Diptych (which was in fact painted in egg tempera), see Ashok Roy, “Van Eyck’s Technique: The Myth and the Reality, I,” in Foister et al. 2000, p. 98. 17 Wurzbach 1963, p. 241, said that the sheet with the frame is usually missing, thus enabling the nineteenth-century misidentifications of the engraving as a drawing. 18 On Montfaucon, see Haskell 1993, pp. 131-44. 19 J.R.J. Asperen de Boer, “Over de techniek van Jan van Eycks ‘De Heilige Barbara’,” Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (1992), pp. 9-18. 20 Vandenbroek 1985, pp. 169-70. 21 See Jacqueline Lichtenstein, La couleur éloquente: rhétorique et peinture à l’âge classique (Paris: Flammarion, 1989). Lichtenstein illustrated her book exclusively with black-andwhite reproductive engravings. 22 Vasari ed. Milanesi 1906, vol. 1, p. 185. 23 This relationship of support between the engraving system and the conceptual aims of oil painting seems not so different from Karel van Mander’s paradoxical understanding
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of teyckenconst (an art practiced by Hendrick Goltzius in the form of reproductive engraving) as the “representation of rendering” itself; see the complex arguments of Walter S. Melion, Shaping the Netherlandish Canon: Karel van Mander’s Schilder-Boeck (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 43-59, esp. 45, and 102-05. See the interesting analysis of Giulio Carlo Argan, “Il valore critico della ‘stampa di traduzione’” (1967), in his Studi e note dal Bramante al Canova (Rome: Bulzoni, 1970), p. 164. Argan argued that the layered networks of the linear system (“tessuto segnico”) reproduced the layering of oil paint and were thus better adapted to Venetian colorism than to Roman disegno. In the late seventeenth century, this system gave way to the totally different “maniera nera.” The classical system offers both alternatives: hatching that “is” shading from one viewing distance, and “stands for” shading at another distance. Analogue reproduction will remove this power of the work to manipulate the viewer; instead, what the viewer sees is what the viewer gets. On early etching and the representation of the draftsman’s “hand,” see Christopher S. Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape (London: Reaktion Books, and Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 246-66. Compare, for example, the Resurrection by Ugo da Carpi, B. 26, to the drawing by Raphael at Chatsworth; see Konrad Oberhuber, Roma e lo stile classico di Raffaello, exh. cat., Palazzo Te, Mantua, nos. 112-13. Not all chiaroscuro woodcuts directly reproduce drawings, however; I have no interest here in oversimplifying the question. On the early chiaroscuro woodcut, see Landau and Parshall 1994, pp. 150-54, 179-202, 27483. Arthur M. Hind, A History of Engraving and Etching (1923) (New York: Dover, 1963), pp. 258-87, and 287-99 on the crayon manner and stipple; Zorach and Rodini 2005, pp. 21-25. Hind 1963, pp. 300-05; Colorful Impressions: The Printmaking Revolution in EighteenthCentury France, ed. Margaret Morgan Grasselli, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2003. In the early nineteenth century, the lithograph, a planographic technique, will become the reproductive medium par excellence; see Sulzberger 1961, pp. 9798. See the sophisticated triangulation of intaglio and planographic techniques with photography in Stephen Bann, Parallel Lines: Printmakers, Painters, and Photographers in Nineteenth-Century France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). Ploos van Amstel made facsimiles of drawings (printtekening or actypa) from 1765 to 1787, mostly after seventeenth-century Dutch artists. Hind 1963, p. 302. For a catalogue of his prints, see Laurentius et al. 1980, pp. 255-91. Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinett, after a drawing in the Amsterdams Historisch Museum. See Laurentius et al. 1980, no. 18. On the reproduction of works by Adriaen Brouwer, for instance, see Horst Scholz, Brouwer Invenit: Druckgraphische Reproduktionen des 17. bis 19. Jahrhunderts nach Gemälden und Zeichnungen Adriaen Brouwers (Marburg: Jonas, 1985). Sulzberger 1948, p. 290; Laurentius et al. 1980, p. 57. See, for instance, the comments by Malvasia discussed by Argan 1970, pp. 158-60. This motivation of the symbol is the true meaning of what is often called “disguised symbolism.” Even Van Mander did not recognize her as St. Barbara; see note 3 above. Although Enschedé quoted this passage, p. 3, n. 1, it is admittedly not certain that Van Mander was referring to this painting. Some modern scholars, including Hanns Floerke (Van Mander ed. Floerke 1906, p. 408, n. 33), doubt that Van Mander was talking about the Antwerp panel. Miedema (Van Mander ed. Miedema 1994, vol. 2, Commentary, p. 221) left open the possibility that Van Mander did see this panel but misrecognized or forgot its subject. Heinecken described the seated figure as the Madonna; Murr correct-
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ed him, pointing out that the palm made her a martyred saint; see notes 12 and 13 above. The first to identify the subject as St. Barbara, as Sulzberger (1948, p. 293) pointed out, was none other than Sulpiz Boisserée in his diary! G.F. Waagen, Handbuch der deutschen und niederländischen Malerschulen (Stuttgart, 1862), vol. 1, p. 89, called her St. Ursula. 37 Interesting but puzzling in this context is Goethe’s account of Titian’s Madonna of S. Niccolò dei Frari, which he saw at the Vatican Museums on 3 November 1786; a painting frequently reproduced in the eighteenth century. In his published travel diary, Goethe carefully described the six depicted saints but was seemingly unable to identify any of them, even St. Sebastian pierced by arrows and St. Peter holding keys. Possibly he was affecting ignorance of elementary Christian iconography in order to make a deeper point: “Wir sagen uns: hier muss‚ ein heiliges altes Überliefertes zum Grunde liegen, da‚ diese verschiedenen, unpassenden Personen zu kunstreich und bedeutungsvoll zusammengestellt werden konnten. Wir fragen nicht nach wie und warum, wir lassen es geschehen und bewundern die unschätzbare Kunst.” Italienische Reise, Sämtliche Werke (Munich: Hanser, 1992), vol. 15, pp. 149-50. 38 See Le Cabinet d’un grand amateur, P.-J. Mariette 1694-1774, exh. cat., Réunion des musées nationaux, Paris, 1967.
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Landscape’s Pleasures: The Gifted Drawing in the Seventeenth Century michael zell Boston University, Boston
In 1618, the English gentleman and miniature painter Edward Norgate wrote William Trumbull, King James I’s agent in Brussels, requesting help in procuring a particular type of drawing for his patron, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, the first Englishman to appreciate and collect drawings seriously. “How very welcome a few…Drawings of Rewbens, or [Guillaume] van Nieulandt…would be…,” Norgate wrote, especially “some of theire first and sleight drawings, either of Landskip, or any such kind as might happily be procured.” His desire to find a “first and sleight” sketch departs from contemporary preference for highly finished sheets.1 Even more unexpected is Norgate’s remark that such drawings were “never sold but given to frends that are Leefhebbers,” using the Dutch term for art lover.2 For sophisticates like Arundel, members of a small circle of collectors who did not yet constitute an established market for drawings, works of art intentionally withdrawn from the operations of both traditional patronage and the art market had assumed an aura of rarity and hence extraordinary value precisely because of their estrangement from monetary transactions. The allure of such works was enhanced by their exclusivity as objects unattainable by all but the privileged few, who were members of inner circles of artists and art lovers. By the early seventeenth century, then, cultural and social capital could be accumulated through the possession of art works that were normally beyond the reach of money and marketplace. Taking as a point of departure Norgate’s designation of landscape as a preferred subject of the drawings he sought, this essay explores landscape’s discrete status, particularly in drawings, among seventeenth-century art works that defy explanation as commercial undertakings, and which circulated –, or were perceived to circulate – only irregularly in the form of gifts. It must be acknowledged that Norgate’s remarks constitute virtually the only surviving evidence that certain kinds of landscape drawings were traded as gifts among
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familiars. While it is often asserted that some artists made landscape drawings for private pleasure and that these works were presented as gifts to intimates, documentary evidence for these private, non-commercial exchanges is not surprisingly lacking, or extremely scant. Norgate’s statement is significant not only as confirmation of the possibility that particular drawings were traded primarily in the form of gifts and that scholars should keep an eye out for evidence of this practice. His assertion in fact reveals that contemporary connoisseurs and collectors placed an extraordinarily high premium on art works assumed to be available from artists only as personal presentations. The crucial point is not whether it can be securely established that a landscape work was exchanged as a gift, but that it conforms to a type of object that liefhebbers (“art lovers”) believed to have left an artist’s possession only under exceptionally personal circ*mstances. Norgate’s request for drawings that, as he said, were never surrendered to the market but only given away as gifts indicates an awareness of drawings’ privileged status within the economy of presenting art works as gifts. Drawings played a distinctive and significant role within the complex symbolism of gift giving. The medium’s relative intimacy, as Alexander Nagel has discussed, allowed it to serve at times as a kind of refuge from the commercialism of the art market, or the dependency implied by production on com-
Fig. 1. Michelangelo Buonarotti, Head of Cleopatra, 1528-34, drawing in black charcoal. Florence, Uffizi, Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe (Photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY).
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mand;3 the “presentation drawing,” a new class of art work in the Renaissance, arose from this context of gift exchange. Johannes Wilde coined the term for Michelangelo’s refined, beautifully realized sheets with mythological, historical, and sometimes sacred subjects that he offered intimates, including the testa divina (“divine head”) Cleopatra from 1528-34 (Fig. 1) and The Archers, an enigmatic figural composition from 1533.4 Although intensely private works, Michelangelo’s presentation drawings already entered the public realm in his own lifetime: in 1562, Tomasso Cavalieri presented Cosimo I de’ Medici with the Cleopatra, which he had received from Michelangelo as a personal gift, writing “it was so dearly beloved by me that I feel as though I am losing one of my sons, for hitherto no one else in the world was able to get it from me.”5 Gift drawings evidently had become prized for their exceptionally intimate forms of address and exclusive circuits of exchange. But presentation drawings are normally highly finished works, with little of the medium’s potentially experimental character and freedom from the formal expectations of painting and printmaking of the period. Norgate’s specification that he wanted a slight sketch, a casual, incomplete rendering, is therefore illuminating. He desired not only works endowed with transcendent value due to their unavailability, but also seemingly unmitigated access to the artist’s creativity. In 1638, Franciscus Junius, Arundel’s librarian and therefore a member of Norgate’s circle, also wrote that true connoisseurs perceived in unfinished drawings – which he called “these naked and undistinguished lineaments” – “the very thoughts of the studious Artificer, and how he did bestirred his judgment before he could resolve what to like and what to dislike.”6 Norgate’s and Junius’ remarks reveal a nascent discrimination among connoisseurs for works perceived virtually to dissolve the distinction between the privacy of the artist and the art object itself.7 If presented as a gift, a sketch’s aura of privacy became simultaneously magnified and publicized, for as Marcel Mauss showed in his classic study The Gift, any object exchanged as a gift retains a powerful association with its donor.8 Normally sketches and study sheets remained part of artists’ studios, but occasionally they were given to fellow artists, or favored patrons. Raphael’s famous presentation to Albrecht Dürer of a life study of three nude men in red chalk now in the Albertina, Vienna, on which the German artist proudly inscribed that he had received it as a gift in 1515, endowed the sheet with a unique aura of publicized privacy.9 But why did landscape come immediately to Norgate’s mind when describing the distinctive and rarely traded drawings he sought? I think his specification is significant and provides an insight into the intertwining social and aesthetic values of landscape representation, particularly but not exclusively in drawing, in the hierarchy of production of certain major artist of the
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seventeenth century: the Flemings Rubens and Van Dyck, the Italian Guercino, and the Dutchmen Goltzius and Rembrandt.10 Each was an ambitious, publicly acclaimed history and figure painter who generally reserved landscape for less formal, occasional representation, at times primarily in the graphic media. These artists’ landscapes, sometimes numbering in the hundreds in the case of drawings, usually were not yielded to the marketplace, or to most patrons. Moreover, unlike other artists’ landscape and nature studies that served exclusively as practice and source materials, their landscape drawings were very often not preliminary to more formal works. We know that some entered the collections of privileged patrons and intimates, indicating that they circulated infrequently through personalized exchanges, or in the form of gifts. And because such landscapes were exempt from normal market operations, they had acquired notoriety as highly prized collectibles among aficionados like Norgate and Arundel. Executed with apparent disregard for profitable gain, they resist and confound attempts to explain them as commercial undertakings. Norgate therefore was responding perceptively to a condition of landscape’s practice that was to become more pronounced as the century unfolded. Retained by certain artists as private possessions, or perhaps traded only in exceptionally personal circ*mstances, landscapes had assumed a highly subjective value that placed them above exchange, or commercial value. Let us now turn to some of these landscapes and scholarship’s attempts to account for them. Common to all assessments is the idea that such works were primarily exercises of diversion, respites from their makers’ public identities and labors as figure painters. Norgate specifically wanted landscapes by Rubens, the most celebrated works of the genre generally considered to have been made for an artist’s own recreation, not profit. These include not only Rubens’ drawings, usually nature studies of individual motifs often made independently from more formal works, but also oil sketches and late landscape paintings, such as his glorious Autumn Landscape with a View of Het Steen (National Gallery, London) and its pendant Landscape with a Rainbow (Wallace Collection, London). These large panels are rightly interpreted as Rubens’ personal expressions of his withdrawal from the pressures of his career as a courtier and embodiments of the aristocratic values with which he identified as Lord of Steen.11 They were among the eighteen landscape paintings listed in the inventory of Rubens’ personal property at his death in 1640, and most likely hung at Het Steen, his country retreat outside Antwerp. Rubens painted landscapes mainly for his own pleasure and for a few friends, such as his brother-in-law, Arnold Lunden, and favored patrons including the Duke of Buckingham and Everhard Jabach, whose collections most of his other landscapes entered.12 Jabach may have obtained from Rubens himself an infor-
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Fig. 2. Peter Paul Rubens, Landscape with an Avenue of Trees, oil on paper mounted on panel. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow Fund, 43.1332. (Photo: © 2006 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).
mal oil sketch on paper of the countryside in the vicinity of the artist’s estate (Fig. 2), which was recorded in Jabach’s collection before the end of the seventeenth century.13 Anthony van Dyck’s delicate watercolors and pen-and-ink studies of the English and Flemish countryside, which rarely relate directly to more formal works, have also been characterized as leisure exercises carried out for personal enjoyment.14 Guercino was a more prolific landscape draftsman than either Fleming, and in fact his landscape drawings (Fig. 3) outnumber any other Italian seventeenth-century artist’s, including the specialist Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi.15 While the vast majority of Guercino’s drawings were preparatory studies mainly for paintings, his landscape sheets, like his genre and caricature drawings, did not serve this utilitarian function. He abandoned painting the subject once he became engrossed with commissions for altarpieces and history paintings, yet continued to produce landscape drawings of various types throughout his long career. David M. Stone has stated that Guercino made landscapes for his own pleasure and to give away as gifts, though
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Fig. 3. Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barberini), River Landscape, drawing in pen and brown ink, brush with brown wash. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Denman Walso Ross Collection, 20.863. (Photo: © 2006 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).
no documentary evidence of such exchanges is known.16 Invoking the language and economy of the gift thus resolves landscape’s anomalous place within the artist’s otherwise clearly defined system of production.17 Landscape was of course most fundamental to the Dutch pictorial tradition, which Norgate famously acknowledged when he conceded in his treatise on miniature painting, Miniatura, or the Art of Limning of 1648, “to say truth, the art is theirs.”18 Many Dutch artists specialized exclusively in landscape, probably the most popular and diversified subject of seventeenth-century Dutch art, and some also made independent landscape drawings for the market. It is not surprising, therefore, that Goltzius and Rembrandt, whose aesthetic commitments were oriented toward historical and figural subjects, also created some landscapes. However, their landscape drawings, today considered seminal contributions to the Golden Age of Dutch art, were not necessarily made with the expectation of financial reward, or for public access. Goltzius’ series of three drawings depicting the dunes and countryside near Haarlem from 1603 (see Fig. 4 and two other sheets in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam) are hailed as the inauguration of the naturalistic, naer het leven tradition of rendering the local Dutch countryside. Yet they were never transposed into print, unlike the landscape drawings of the next generation of Haarlem artists Esaias and his cousin Jan van de Velde, among other contemporaries, who codified and popularized this image of the Dutch landscape in numerous print series that were reissued throughout the
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Fig. 4. Hendrick Goltzius, Landscape in the Neighborhood of Haarlem, 1603, drawing in pen, some brush, in brown and brownish red ink. Paris, Institut Néerlandais, Collection Frits Lugt.
century.19 Goltzius’ pioneering landscapes, by contrast, are intimate and informal drawings altogether distinct from his virtuoso performances with the pen, or penwerken, for which he was renowned, as well as from his other drawings of landscape views, which are usually fantastical images done in an ornamental, calligraphic style of penmanship. Scholars have sought to explain these exceptional works as therapeutic and pleasurable exercises that Goltzius, who suffered from a recurring and debilitating illness, drew on the daily walks Karel van Mander reported he made in the environs of Haarlem “to liven his spirits.”20 Rembrandt painted very few landscapes – perhaps only eight have survived, and all but one are fictional, dramatized displays of painting uit den geest, or from the imagination.21 But Rembrandt created well over two hundred landscape drawings and twenty-seven etchings, almost all of which date from the early 1640s to the early 1650s. His landscapes on paper, unlike the paintings, are usually based directly on specific and often recognizable locations in the vicinity of Amsterdam, such as the Amstel River near the manor Kostverloren (Fig. 5) and Ouderkerk, and the villages of Diemen and Sloten, which he sketched outdoors in the tradition of recording motifs naer het leven, or from life.22 Rembrandt’s prints and paintings were conceived with the expectation of attracting buyers, yet as Boudewijn Bakker has recently observed, the vast majority of his landscape sheets were not undertaken as a commercial enterprise.23 Only seldom can Rembrandt’s landscape drawings be identified as preparatory studies for paintings, or prints. He also very rarely signed his sheets, even though a large number are fully composed works of art elaborated in the studio, presumably from informal sketches recorded on walks in the surrounding districts of Amsterdam. A substantial number, moreover, were drawn on coarse oatmeal, also known as cartridge, paper (see Fig. 5), or on paper prepared with a delicate colored wash to suggest
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Fig. 5. Rembrandt van Rijn, Bend in the Amstel at Kostverloren, drawing in pen and brown ink, wash, white highlights, on cartridge paper. Chatsworth, The Devonshire Collection, reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees.
weather and atmosphere and to enhance the sheets’ pictorial effects. Rembrandt probably kept most of the drawings until forced to sell them at his bankruptcy auction in 1658, when the artist and collector Jan van de Cappelle presumably acquired his 277 landscape drawings by Rembrandt.24 While Rembrandt has been depicted as a genius-entrepreneur of Holland’s early capitalist economy, his practice as a landscape draftsman surely cannot be understood solely as a market-oriented initiative.25 The prestige each of these artists accorded to historical and figural subjects accounts for landscape’s relatively subordinate status in the hierarchy of their productions. The intertwining ideals of art and leisure that animated the aesthetics of landscape also endowed the subject with a discrete place in their work that resists economic, or functional explanations. For history painters since the Renaissance, landscape had been conceived as a leisure exercise, a pleasurable diversion from and reward for the serious business of making istoria. Already in 1527, Bishop Paolo Giovio praised the landscapes of Dosso Dossi as parergon (“by-works”) to his “proper works,” remarking that Dosso painted them “with pleasurable labor” and as “delightful diversions.”26 It was a conception informed by ancient associations of landscape with the locus amoenus, or pleasant place of recreation and enjoyment, as well as with the ideal of villa life, a rarefied form of elite sociability predicated on the opposition between otium (“relaxation and freedom of mind”) and negotium (“city business”).27 As Christopher Wood has suggested, landscape in the Renaissance came to function as what Derrida defines as “supplement,” a fundamental extra, or superfluity to work.28 If work and recreation are enclosed in a mutual dependency, representing landscapes could be recognized as an
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enactment of leisure, the obverse of, or counterbalance to an artist’s professional, public identity. Such an understanding of landscape also reverberates in seventeenth-century art treatises. Norgate wrote that he himself owed “much to this harmeless and honest Recreation,”29 and in 1604, Van Mander recommended sketching excursions in the countryside as a revitalizing respite from the studio for the aspiring young history painter.30 By 1668, Willem Goeree, author of a Dutch handbook on drawing, called sketching landscapes “an enjoyable Study, and a useful relaxation.” Landscape’s status as a leisure pastime also accounts for its popularity among amateur artists; the lawyer Jan de Bisschop and the statesman Constantijn Huygens the Younger are just two of the many Dutch amateurs who made accomplished landscape drawings as a form of recreation and diversion from professional obligations.31 And of course in the later eighteenth century, Gainsborough would extol the freedoms and pleasures of landscape representation over the drudgery of his business as a society portraitist, famously complaining: “I’m sick of Portraits and wish very much to walk off to…where I can paint Landskips and enjoy…Life in quietness and ease.”32 Thus landscape’s affiliation with leisure and freedom from professional, or commercial pressures clarifies its circ*mscribed and anomalous role in certain artists’ practices, and suggests why landscape occurred to Norgate when requesting drawings that normally did not circulate on the market. As virtually inalienable possessions, landscapes could constitute performances and embodiments of their maker’s retreat from the alienating conditions of the marketplace, or the dependency implied by production on command. Giving examples away as gifts only heightened this aura of independence from commerce. It might even be said that the landscapes artists presented as gifts –, or those that collectors thought only left the artist’s possession in the form of gifts – fulfill what anthropologists Annette Weiner and Maurice Godelier call the paradox of “keeping-while-giving,” or “keeping-for-giving”; deliberately not surrendered through normal channels of exchange and transcending a mere cash economy, they accumulated tremendous imaginary power and, as a consequence, potentially endowed collectors and their collections with powerfully symbolic capital.33 Rembrandt, however, was prescient enough to capitalize on the fledgling market for such exclusive collectibles. It is probably no coincidence that one of his landscapes remains permanently associated with a cultivated art lover and collector. The title of his 1645 etching Six’s Bridge, which translates the spontaneous scribbles and marks of his landscape drawings into printmaking, derives from eighteenth-century cataloguers who believed erroneously that Rembrandt had depicted the country estate of the patrician poet and art collector Jan Six, whom he portrayed twice, in 1647 and again in 1654.34 Intuitively associating the print’s audaciously free handling with this sophisticat-
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ed patron and intimate, the cataloguers recognized that it assumed a rarified audience that could appreciate Rembrandt’s performance, and that he had brought the intimate and private address of his landscape drawings into a more public arena of art. While Rembrandt apparently sketched his experience of his local surroundings as a pastime, in etchings like Six’s Bridge he also disseminated this privacy into a more fully public, and therefore commercial domain. Author’s Note: Research for this study has been generously supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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On the seventeenth-century preference for finished drawings, see Julius S. Held, “The Early Appreciation of Drawings,” in Studies in Western Art: Acts of the Twentieth International Congress of the History of Art, vol. 3 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 72-95. Quoted in Jeffrey M. Muller and Jim Murrell, eds., Edward Norgate: Miniatura, or the Art of Limning (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 5. Parts of the passage are also cited in David Howarth, Lord Arundel and His Circle (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 231, n. 3. Alexander Nagel, “Art as Gift: Liberal Art and Religious Reform in the Renaissance,” in Gadi Algazi, Valentin Groebner, and Bernhard Jussen, eds., Negotiating the Gift (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2003), pp. 354-55. See also Alexander Nagel, “Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna,” Art Bulletin 79 (1997): 647-68. On Michelangelo’s presentation drawings, see Michael Hirst, Michelangelo and His Drawings (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), chap. 10, pp. 105-18; and Johannes Wilde, Michelangelo: Six Lectures by Johannes Wilde (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 147-59. On this drawing and Cavalieri’s letter, see in particular Elizabeth Cropper, “The Place of Beauty in the High Renaissance,” in Alvin Vos, ed., Place and Displacement in the Renaissance (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1995), esp. p. 201; and Paolo Barocchi’s translation in Michael Hirst, Michelangelo Draftsman (Milan: Olivetti, 1988), p. 116. For the letter’s original wording, see Giorgio Vasari, La vita di Michelangelo nelle redazioni del 1550 e del 1568, ed. Paola Barocchi (Milan: R. Ricciardi, 1962), vol. 4, pp. 1890-91. Franciscus Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, in Three Books […] (London, 1638), pp. 270-71, quoted in Jan Gerrit van Gelder and Ingrid Jost, Jan de Bisschop and His Icones and Paradigmata. Classical Antiquities and Italian Drawings for Artistic Instruction in Seventeenth-Century Holland, ed. Keith Andrews (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1985), vol. 1, pp. 194-95. As William N. West, “Nothing as Given: Economies of the Gift in Derrida and Shakespeare,” Comparative Literature 48 (1996): 5, n. 6, has noted, gift economies dissolve the distinction “between the privacy of a person and the publicity of the things the person exchanges.” Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W.D. Halls, foreword by Mary Douglas (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1999). Dürer’s inscription reads: “1515 Raffahell de Vrbin der so hoch peim pobst geacht ist gewest, der hat dyse nackette bild gemacht vnd hat sy dem Albrecht Dürer gen Nornberg geschikt, im sein hand zw weisen.” On this drawing, see in particular Arnold Nes-
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selroth, “Raphael’s Gift to Dürer,” Master Drawings 31 (1993): 376-89; Joseph Leo Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 96; and Alice M. Kaplan, “Dürer’s ‘Raphael’ Drawing Reconsidered,” Art Bulletin 56 (1974): 50-58. For a study of Rembrandt’s landscape drawings in this context, see Michael Zell, “A Leisurely and Virtuous Pursuit: Amateur Artists, Rembrandt, and Landscape Representation in Seventeenth-Century Holland,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 54 (2003): 335-68. On Rubens’ landscapes, see in particular Christopher Brown, Making and Meaning. Rubens’ Landscapes, exh. cat., National Gallery, London, 1996; and Lisa Vergara, Rubens and the Poetics of Landscape (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982). Brown 1996, p. 11. An annotated edition of the list of art works in Rubens’ house compiled in 1640 is published in Jeffrey Muller, Rubens. The Artist as Collector (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 89-146, no. 1. For Lundens’ collection, see Hans Vlieghe, “Une grande collection Anversoise du dix-septième siècle. Le cabinet d’Arnold Lunden, beau-frère de Rubens,” Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen n.s. 19 (1977): 172-204. For Jabach’s collection of paintings, see Horst Vey, “Die Bildnisse Everhard Jabachs,” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch (1967): 157-88. Brown 1996, p. 64. This small oil sketch was later pasted onto an oak panel and expanded with two horizontal strips to provide a high cloud-filled sky and foreground hill. Leo van Puyvelde, Van Dyck (Brussels: Elsevier, 1950), p. 168, wrote that Van Dyck made landscape drawings “pour le plaisir de dessiner.” Quoted in Martin RoyaltonKisch, The Light of Nature: Landscape Drawings and Watercolors by Van Dyck and His Contemporaries, exh. cat., Rubenshuis, Antwerp, 1999, p. 56, n. 37. On Guercino’s landscape drawings, see in particular Denis Mahon and Nicholas Turner, The Drawings of Guercino in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 101-03; and David M. Stone, Guercino: Master Draftsman, exh. cat., Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA, 1991, pp. 153-54. Stone 1991, p. 153. On Guercino’s fixed prices, see Richard Spear, “Guercino’s ‘Prix-Fixe’: Observations on Studio Practices and Art Marketing in Emilia,” Burlington Magazine 136 (1994): 592602; and Richard Spear, The “Divine” Guido: Religion, Sex, Money, and Art in the World of Guido Reni (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), chap. 12, “Marketing.” Muller and Murrell 1997, p. 82. See in particular David Freedberg, Dutch Landscape Prints of the Seventeenth Century (London: British Museum Publications, 1980). Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617): Drawings, Prints and Paintings, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2003, p. 201, under no. 74; and E.K. Reznicek, Die Zeichnungen von Hendrick Goltzius (Utrecht: Haentjens Dekker and Gumbert, 1961), vol. 1, p. 428, under no. 400. For Van Mander’s discussions of Goltzius’ illness, see Karel van Mander, The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, ed. Hessel Miedema (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1998), vol. 5, p. 394, fol. 284r. Cynthia Schneider, Rembrandt’s Landscapes (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990). Josua Bruyn, Bob Haak, Simon H. Levie, Pieter J.J. van Thiel, and Ernst van de Wetering, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 3 (The Hague, Boston, and London: Nijhoff, 1990), reduced the number even further by rejecting Landscape with a Coach (Br. 451) and The Mill (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC [not in Br.]). On Rembrandt’s landscape drawings and prints, see in particular Rembrandt’s Landscapes: Drawings and Prints, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1990; Martin Royalton-Kisch, “Rembrandt’s Landscape Drawings,” in Diana Dethloff, ed., Drawing. Masters and Methods. Raphael to Redon. Papers Presented to the Ian Woodner Master
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Drawings Symposium at The Royal Academy of Arts, London (London and New York: H.N. Abrams, 1992), pp. 114-35; Landscapes by Rembrandt: His Favorite Walks, exh. cat., Gemeentearchief, Amsterdam, 1998; and Zell 2003, pp. 349-64. Boudewijn Bakker, “‘A Booke fulle of Landscapes drawne from Life’: Art and Reality in Rembrandt’s Landscapes,” in Amsterdam 1998, pp. 15-39, esp. pp. 32-34. Peter Schatborn, “Aspects of Rembrandt’s Draughtsmanship,” in Rembrandt: The Master and His Workshop, vol. 2, Drawings and Prints, exh. cat., Kupferstichkabinett, S.M.P.K., Berlin, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and National Gallery, London, 1991, pp. 11-13. On Van de Cappelle, see Margarita Russell, Jan van de Cappelle. 1624/6-1679 (Leigh-onSea: F. Lewis, 1975), with the 1680 inventory of Van de Cappelle’s collection published on pp. 49-57, App. I. See Svetlana Alpers, Rembrandt’s Enterprise: The Studio and the Market (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). Quoted and translated in Christopher S. Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 59. My discussion is indebted to Wood’s insightful presentation of landscape’s status as a diversion, or pastime for figure painters. On the relevance of these concepts to Netherlandish landscape imagery, see in particular Walter S. Gibson, Pleasant Places: The Rustic Landscape from Bruegel to Ruisdael (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2000). Wood 1993, pp. 54-56. See especially Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Goyatari Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). Muller and Murrell 1997, p. 83. Van Mander’s chapter on landscape in Den grondt der edel vrij schilder-const, part of his Schilder-boeck of 1604, advises young painters to rise early on a summer morning and take a recreational sketching excursion in the countryside: “Come, let us lighten our spirits and go look at the beauty that is to be seen outdoors, where beaked musicians pipe their songs. There we’ll see many views that will serve us in painting a landscape on canvas, or on hard oak panels. Come, I think you’ll be satisfied with the trip.” See Karel van Mander, Den grondt der edel vrij schilder-const, ed. Hessel Miedema (Utrecht: Haentjens Dekker and Gumbert, 1973), vol. 1, 8:3, quoted and translated in Vergara 1982, p. 21. For Goeree, see Bob van den Boogert, “Leren en tekenen naar de natuur,” in Buiten tekenen in Rembrandts tijd, exh. cat., Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam, 1998, pp. 23-24. See in particular Zell 2003, pp. 335-39. See The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough, ed. John Hayes (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), p. 68, quoted in Thomas Gainsborough. 1727-1788, exh. cat., Tate Britain, London, 2002, p. 212. See Annette Weiner, Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-while-Giving (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); and Maurice Godelier, The Enigma of the Gift, trans. Nora Scott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). Valerius Röver’s inventory from c. 1730 lists the print as “Six bruggetje”; see Jan Gerrit van Gelder and N.F. van Gelder-Schrijver, “De ‘Memorie’ van Rembrandt’s prenten in het bezit van Valerius Röver,” Oud Holland 55 (1938): 16. See also Edmé-François Gersaint, Catalogue raisonné de toutes les pièces qui forment l'oeuvre de Rembrandt (Paris: Hochereau, 1751), pp. 162-63, no. 200.
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