OUD HOLLAND最新文献

Recent archival finds fill some gaps in the biography of Pieter Cristus (c. 1420-1475), the painter who succeeded Jan van Eyck and who is considered the flagbearer of the highly esteemed Eyckian style in Bruges. Several spellings of his name occur but most often authors have chosen the Latinised version, Petrus Christus. Nonetheless, consistency demands to name him by his Middle Dutch name Pieter Cristus, just like all other fifteenth-century early Netherlandish painters. Two important aspects of Pieter Cristus’ life have now been uncovered, regarding his origins and regarding his Bruges residence.

The painter’s odd family name Cristus is strongly related to his native town Baarle in the duchy of Brabant (now on the Belgian-Dutch border). The synthesis of numerous documents, including charters, aldermen’s deeds, notarial deeds, tax registers and fief enumerations – many of which were previously unpublished – enabled the construction of a comprehensive understanding of Pieter Cristus’ origins in Baarle. His relatives were clearly part of the local elites, taking up roles as a notary, financial expert, administrator, burgomaster or a village priest. One member of the family, probably a cousin of Pieter Cristus, was closely related to the Burgundian court. Even his presumed father, an expert in finance whose name was Peter Cristus, was found.

The second part of the article deals with Pieter Cristus’ residence in Bruges. Just recently the location of his house was discovered in a forgotten and overlooked annuity register. The house, formerly owned by a mayor of Bruges and located in the middle of the international business quarter, testifies to the painter’s high social position, quite appropriate for a man with his background. The various finds, both in Baarle and in Bruges, substantiate a consistent picture of a painter who moved comfortably in high social circles.

Frans Hals (1582-1666) is renowned for his vivid family portraits, usually set outdoors. A debate has long taken place as to whether Hals ran a workshop with assistants and specialists who helped him with the production of particular motifs and genres, such as the landscapes in the background of these often-extensive group portraits. In seeking answers, the monumental family portrait of Gijsbert Claesz van Campen (1585-1645) and Maria Jorisdr Palesteyn (1582-1666) with their thirteen children is particularly illuminating. Based on the meticulous stylistic analysis of the three remaining fragments of this painting – Hals’ earliest-known family group portrait – it can now be determined that the landscape was painted by his contemporary, Gerrit Claesz Bleker (1592-1656).

As a celebrated landscape painter of the time, Bleker must have shared a social and professional network with Hals and his commissioners. The manner in which the trees and foliage in the background and the large goat at its centre have been depicted in the family portrait shares a striking resemblance to Bleker’s other work. The painting can therefore be identified as a joint collaboration between the two Haarlem specialists – possibly the only known occurrence.

The dating of the group portrait to circa 1623-1625 also has important implications for another painting by Frans Hals: the double portrait of Isaac Massa and Beatrix van der Laan. Formerly dated around 1622, the year the two were married, the work reveals such an advanced style and technique that it should instead be placed among Hals’ later works from circa 1627. It also explains why Hals asked another landscape specialist to collaborate; Pieter de Molijn’s skills were more in line with Hals’ new approach to vivid portraits in outdoor settings. Therefore, rather than a usual wedding portrait, as is commonly accepted in literature, this much beloved painting was likely a commission on the occasion of the featured couple’s anniversary in 1627.

Masquerading for many years under the name of Federico Zuccaro, the newly identified modello for the outer wings of the triptych commemorating Maria Snyders (1588-1659) is an important addition to the drawn oeuvre of the Flemish artist Jan Boeckhorst (1604-1668). Its discovery adds to our understanding of his process of work, moving from the depiction of the symbols of the four evangelists proposed in the preliminary drawing towards a more compact and balanced composition. It also provides an opportunity to revisit the dating of the Snyders triptych itself and to reconsider a drawing traditionally associated with it.

More than the finished panel painting, the fluid depiction of the four evangelists’ symbols in brown wash and white body colour over black chalk, with delicate touches of oil, accentuates links with Boeckhorst’s designs for prints for the Plantin publishing house in Antwerp. The author argues that there is reason to believe that not only was the triptych conceived some time before the death of Maria Snyders in 1659, but that the drawing at least was executed around 1654.

The author also argues that another drawing by Boeckhorst, kept in the Teylers Museum and known under the title Epitaph for Maria Snyders, should be disassociated from the triptych and viewed separately. Not only are there clear indications that it was intended for a print and not as the basis of a painting, but it conveys a different message. If the Snyders triptych speaks of salvation, the drawing in Haarlem promotes veneration of the Virgin Mary as the surest path to Christ, not least through quotations from the works of the ardent Marian Jesuit Petrus Canisius (1521-1597).

Herman van Swanevelt (c. 1603-1655) was born in Woerden in the Netherlands but lived for an unknown period in Paris before travelling to Rome c. 1629, where he became a successful landscape painter and printmaker with an elite clientele. He returned to Paris c. 1643 and was equally prosperous, his success due to his pastoral landscape paintings and etched views of Rome. The focus of this article is the sequence of thirteen etchings of Roman landscapes entitled ‘Diverses veues deseignees en la Ville de Rome’, that Swanevelt executed for a French patron, the Sieur Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux (1619-1692) in 1650. Tallemant was renowned for his ‘Historiettes’, short, sometimes scurrilous biographies of elite members of the ‘Ancien Regime’, and had a prestigious position as councillor to the French High Court.

To provide a context for the commission, a fresh view is offered of Tallemant and the relevance of the prints to his character and experience, in particular the journey he made to Rome in 1638. Despite his Protestant background, the patron’s activities included visiting the Palazzo Barberini, family residence of pope Urban VIII Barberini (reigned 1623-1644). The major resident was Cardinal Antonio Barberini (1607-1671), who was responsible for diplomatic relations with France and, during Tallemant’s visit, a key figure in celebrations marking the birth of a Dauphin to the French crown.

At this time the cardinal was also taking possession of a large number of mythological landscapes in pastoral settings, commissioned from Herman van Swanevelt. It is suggested that artist and patron may have already met in this milieu in Rome. This, and other aspects of Swanevelt’s and Tallemant’s careers are examined to make points of connection. The nature of the commission, the undated prints’ conception, style, content, execution and publication are analysed to establish their novelty in the French printmaking environment, as well as the role they played in establishing Swanevelt’s status as an independent designer, printmaker and publisher in Paris.

This article discusses four portraits by Abraham de Vries (c. 1590-1649/50), three of which were recently recognised as the artist’s work, and all of which were subject to changes over time. The appearance of these portraits, as the authors came across them, prompted further investigation.

The first two are portraits of the same girl (figs. 1a and 2a) from c. 1629 that originally had virtually the same appearance, as technical research has revealed. The first was reduced in size, the second was overpainted substantially, particularly in the costume.

A portrait of a bearded man (fig. 11a) had been sold as a portrait of a rabbi by Simon Kick, but technical examination revealed that it was initially painted as a portrait of the French garden designer Jacques Boyceau, signed in monogram by De Vries and dated 1629 under a layer of overpaint. The original appearance of the portrait is known through a contemporary print (fig. 14). Interestingly, later changes appear to have been executed by De Vries himself, but the circumstances remain unclear. Additionally, a signed portrait of an unidentified sitter, also from 1629 and now in the Petit Palais in Paris (fig. 12a), had received a different collar at some point in its history, which was cleaned off before its acquisition by the museum.

Similarities in handling and execution with other portraits by Abraham de Vries, for instance in the hair, collars and eyes, prove his authorship of the four portraits that are the focus of this article. They enrich the painter’s oeuvre and further confirm his excellent abilities as a portraitist in the first half of the seventeenth century.

A remarkable thirteenth-century reliquary shrine of Saint Odilia kept in the Church of Saint Odulphus in Borgloon (Belgium) – notably the oldest dated example of panel paintings in the Low Countries – has been the topic of several art historical studies. These studies attempt to unravel the iconography of the painted panels, indicating how they should be interpreted, and in which order. The difficulty of this, however, lies in the fact that the reliquary shrine has been fully overpainted but also dramatically modified in the seventeenth century to fit into a smaller location. In the process, the original roof panels were modified, with sawn-off elements lost to time. The reliquary shrine, commissioned by the Order of the Holy Cross in Huy (Belgium) in 1292, depicts multiple scenes, on all sides, that illustrate the life of Saint Odilia.

Scholars have regularly drawn on published legends of Odilia from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but no consensus on the source of the images has ever been reached. The current article, however, draws attention to a much earlier, fifteenth-century manuscript of the legend of Saint Odilia that is kept in the library of the University of Liège. The manuscript, written by Wolterus of Nijmegen in 1467 with references to an even older version from 1291, has rarely been associated with the reliquary shrine, but it is of vital importance for the analysis and interpretation of the paintings. In bringing this version of the legend of Saint Odilia together with recent material-technical research carried out at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in Brussels, a new iconographic analysis and reconstruction of the reliquary shrine is presented here.

It can now be verified that each panel had to be read from left to right, with the first roof scene with the arrival of the virgins in Rome originally positioned above the murder scene in Cologne. The second scene on the roof, where Saint Ursula receives the Pope’s blessing, was placed above the excavation and translation of Odilia’s relics. Additionally, the depiction of Saint Ursula with a banner can be seen as a highly unusual example of panel painting in the Low Countries, and it probably even shows the oldest depiction of the Pope in relation to the Saint Ursula cult. Finally, this study shows how the shrine was used: each pilgrim was given the opportunity to experience the legendary life of Saint Odilia in chronological order by walking around the reliquary shrine not once, but twice.

Between 1648 and 1652, Amalia van Solms, widow of Stadholder Frederik Hendrik, had the central hall of her new country house in the Haagse Bos decorated from floor to ceiling with paintings. To perform the work, she hired twelve painters from both the Dutch Republic and the Southern Netherlands. The room at Huis ten Bosch Palace is known today as the Oranjezaal. A great deal is known about the production of the hall’s decorations thanks to the well-preserved correspondence of the stadholder’s secretary, Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) and other contemporary documents. Several of the notes are not dated, however, which means the precise circumstances, sequence of activities and dating of some of the paintings has remained unclear. Fortunately, new archive documents turn up from time to time that can fill in the gaps.

This article presents one such find: a short letter from François Oliviers to Huygens. Although this has already been published by J.A. Worp in 1911-1917, the document has not previously been connected with the Oranjezaal. Oliviers was the ‘primuerder’, who supplied the prepared canvases for the ensemble. These were made to size, primed and sent out to the artists tasked with executing the paintings for the walls of the hall. Oliviers’ letter accompanied a consignment of four such prepared canvases and several ‘models’. While the letter is brief, it nonetheless provides all manner of fresh information, including confirmation of Oliviers’ previously suspected place of residence, Haarlem.

Also, a more precise dating is proposed here for two already known but undated documents. One of these – a report from Huygens for Amalia – can be dated more accurately thanks to a letter from the painter Pieter Soutman to Huygens, published by K. Barrett in 2009. The other document proved harder to date. In this note, the painter and architect Jacob van Campen, who acted as designer and project manager for the Oranjezaal, lists the number of pieces still to be done. It is not clear, however, whether he is referring to paintings, as has long been thought, or possibly to design sketches. The more accurate dating offers a better insight into the decoration of the Oranjezaal and the discussions that lay behind it.