OTTO VAN VEEN ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS

Dr. Virginia Brilliant Ulla R. Searing Curator of Collections

This spring, we are delighted to welcome a new painting to the art museum’s collection: The Adoration of the Shepherds by Otto van Veen (born Leiden c. 1556, died Brussels 1629). A distinguished and scholarly artist, Van Veen is best known as a teacher of Peter Paul Rubens. Born into an aristocratic family, Van Veen studied in the Netherlands and Italy and spent most of his career in Antwerp, where he had a large studio. He found great success as a court painter and worked for, among others, Rudolf II in Prague, William V in Bavaria, and Alessandro Farnese in Brussels.

According to the Gospel of Saint Luke, an angel appeared to a group of shepherds to announce the birth of Christ; they left their sheep and hastened to see the Child, just born to the Virgin Mary in a stable in Bethlehem. In Van Veen’s painting, the roughly dressed shepherds and shepherdesses adore the newborn, and present him with humble gifts of apples (the forbidden fruit consumed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, reminding us that Christ will redeem humanity), eggs (alluding to the purity of the Virgin and to the

Resurrection), and a bound lamb (a symbol of Christ’s future sacrifice).

Van Veen’s scene is dense with figures, and uses brilliant colors and dramatic lighting effects. Striking are the variety of facial types and expressions, from the graceful Virgin at center to the muscular shepherd at right, from the mischievousness of the husky angel at the composition’s apex and the shepherd caressing his female companion at left to the thoughtful shepherd in the right background. Charming too are the animals, particularly the lamb in the foreground and the quizzical cow at the Child’s crib. Although Rubens came to adopt a more painterly working method than his teacher, the range of faces and gestures, sculpturally threedimensional figures, attention to everyday detail, and glowing colors that are hallmarks of Van Veen’s work feature in Rubens’ oeuvre as well.

The Adoration of the Shepherds is painted on an unusually large and thick piece of copper. A popular support among Flemish artists during the seventeenth century, copper was valued for its fine, reflective surface. The reverse of the panel bears the mark used by Antwerp coppersmith Pieter Stas before 1608, which consists of his initials inside a heart-shaped design. Thus the present work was probably created just after 1600.

This painting will be displayed alongside works by Van Veen’s famous pupil Rubens. The Ringling is home to perhaps the foremost collection of works by Rubens in America, and thus it is fitting for the museum to own a work by his talented master which ably and clearly demonstrates the origins of Rubens’ distinctive style, elements of which he retained in his own art and others which he shrugged off altogether, radically altering the course of the history of art.