Aemulatio

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Aemulatio

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Aemulatio Imitation, emulation and invention in Netherlandish art from 1500 to 1800 Essays in honor of Eric Jan Sluijter

Editors: Anton W.A. Boschloo Jacquelyn N. CoutrĂŠ Stephanie S. Dickey Nicolette C. Sluijter-Seijffert

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Waanders Publishers, Zwolle

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Contents 8 10

Preface Fi o n a H e a ly

Terminus: Crossing Boundaries in Maarten van Heemskerck’s Saint Luke Painting the Madonna in Haarlem 25

Koenraad Jonckheere

Nudity on the Market: Some Thoughts on the Market and Innovations in Sixteenth-Century Antwerp 37

Boudewijn Bakker

Au vif - naar ‘t leven - ad vivum: The Medieval Origin of a Humanist Concept 53

I l j a M . Ve l d m a n

A Display of Ambitions: Isaac Duchemin’s Portrait of Jan van der Noot 66

Marion Boers-Goosens

Paintings in Sixteenth-Century Wealthy Interiors: Two Case Studies 77

Mia M. Mochizuki

Seductress of Site: The Nagasaki Madonna of the Snow 89

Huigen Leeflang

‘Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus’ ‘after’ Bartholomeus Spranger: An Early Parody of Style 103

Barbara Haeger

Rubens’ Singular Tribute to Adam Elsheimer 116

Lyckle de Vries

Painterly Chaos: The Choice of Subject Matter in Dutch Art 126

E r n s t v a n d e We t e r i n g

Subordinating Colour to Light and Shadow: Rembrandt’s Fatal Choice?

138

W i l l i a m Wo r t h B r a c k e n

‘So as to give birth to your own inventions, too’: Rembrandt Transforming Annibale

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a e m u l at i o

153

Eddy de Jongh

Van Campen’s ‘White’ versus Lievens’ ‘Black’ 167

Ann Jensen Adams

Aemulatio of Taste: Thomas de Keyser and the New Classicism of the 1630s 182

H. Perry Chapman

Rembrandt and Caravaggio: A Question of Emulation?

195

H e n k va n O s

The Painter as a Competitive Reader 208

Th i j s We s t s t e i j n

Karel van Mander and Francisco Pacheco 224

Arjan de Koomen

Titus, Titian and Tante Titia: On Rembrandt and Onomastics 233

Stephanie S. Dickey

Saskia as Glycera: Rembrandt’s Emulation of an Antique Prototype 248

Alison M. Kettering

Rembrandt and the Male Nude 263

Susan Donahue Kuretsky

Rembrandt’s Cat 277

Albert Blankert

Rapen Again: Notes on Aemulatio and Plagiarism in Dutch Painting 288

M a r g r i e t va n E i k e m a H o m m e s

‘As though it had been done by just one Master’: Unity and Diversity in the Oranjezaal, Huis ten Bosch 304

Wa l t e r L i e d t k e

Van Dyck’s ‘Influence’ in the Dutch Republic 318

Amy Golahny

Rembrandt’s Callisto Bathing: Unusual But Not Unique 326

C e l e s t e B r u s at i

Painting at the Threshold: Competition and Conversation in Perspective

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contents

342

Marten Jan Bok

Van Goyen as Burgher of Delft? Jan Steen and the Moralistic Mode 358

Frauke Laarmann

Abraham and the Angels 371

Ronni Baer

Dou’s Nudes 382

Elmer Kolfin

Omphalos Mundi: The Pictorial Tradition of the Theme of Amsterdam and the Four Continents, circa 1600-1665 393

Frans Grijzenhout

Michiel van Musscher and Bartholomeus van der Helst: Theft of Honour or Creative Imitation?

407

A d r i a a n E . Wa i b o e r

A Clean Competition: Some Hypotheses on Vermeer’s Lost Gentleman Washing His Hands 419

Emilie E.S. Gordenker

Standing at the Crossroad: Arnold Houbraken on the Career of Jan de Baen 429

A n n a Tu m m e r s

The Painter Versus His Critics: Willem van Nijmegen’s Defense of his Art 442

J ac qu e ly n N . C o u t r é

‘Schoenmaaker blyft by uw leest’: On a Case of Emulation in Gerard de Lairesse’s Groot Schilderboek 454

Charles Dumas

Improving Old Master Drawings by Aert Schouman (1710-1792) 471 474 476 481 512

Bibliography of Eric Jan Sluijter Photo Credits Index Color plates Colofon

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a e m u l at i o

Preface Eric Jan Sluijter is a remarkably versatile art historian, both in his approach to art and in his choice of themes. Testifying to this are his explorations of style and pictorial tradition, his theoretical and iconological studies, as well as those on the reconstruction of the history of houses on Rapenburg Canal in Leiden, and the social and cultural position of their occupants, and finally on the painter and the dynamics of the art market, themes that all require different approaches. The many subjects he has examined include metamorphoses and other mythological themes in painting and the graphic arts, self-portraits, Leiden fijnschilders, eighteenth-century Dutch painters, Netherlandish artists in England, and artists, such as Hendrick Goltzius, Jan van Goyen, Gerrit Dou, Johannes Vermeer and - naturally - Rembrandt. Yet no matter how great the variety of topics and approaches, they all bear the stamp of the author’s specific work method. This is determined by Eric Jan’s own distinctive practice of the history of art, which consists of detailed, precise and scrupulously documented research set against the background of broadly formulated questions based on an extensive knowledge of the matter at hand. In this he has significantly enriched the study of Netherlandish art, not only through the stimulating effect of his publications, but also through many years of dedicated teaching.

The concepts of imitation, emulation and invention have occupied an important place in Eric Jan’s wide-ranging publications, as well as his lectures, since the beginning of the 1990s. These interrelated concepts have been chosen as the theme of this festschrift. Every artist engaged in the creative process finds himself in a field of tension between imitation, emulation and invention, for consciously or not he will always want to measure up to his predecessors and contemporaries. This applies both to artists wishing to locate themselves in a tradition, evidencing admiration for their predecessors, and those seeking to distance themselves from them. It is therefore a central theme in the history of art, one, moreover, that affords a host of perspectives. For this reason it was perfectly suited for a festschrift affording a platform to authors with widely divergent art historical points of departure and practice.

By entitling this book Aemulatio, we acknowledge not only our central theme, but also the ways in which so many colleagues and students over the years have been encouraged to emulate Eric Jan’s example of inspiring scholarship. In establishing such a cohesive theme, we have also posed a challenge for our authors that is not always required of contributors to a festschrift. Together, their creative and insightful responses to this challenge have produced a comprehensive overview of an essential topic in the history of Netherlandish art. While some studies address instances of direct exchange within Dutch and Flemish art of the early modern era, many range farther afield, tracing Netherlandish artists’ relations with the classical past and with contemporaries from Spain and Italy to Japan. Some

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preface

articles work out new aspects of subjects on which Eric Jan has also published: nudes by Dou, male nudes by Rembrandt, a follow up on the Steen discussion. Rembrandt figures strongly in ten essays, of which ‘Rembrandt’s Cat’ is a very special contribution. There are also more theoretical essays, besides - naturally - an article about Amsterdam and even one about a no longer extant painting by Vermeer. Southern Netherlandish art is also examined in essays on Maarten van Heemskerck, Rubens, and Van Dyck.

Taken in any sequence, these essays invite the reader to join in a rich and thoughtprovoking discourse. In addition to the many explicit examples of imitation and emulation, other more implicit, not immediately perceptible, forms of emulation are presented that lend themselves equally well to discussion and reflection. To mention just one: did Rembrandt actively compete with Caravaggio, and if so how should this form of emulation be defined and what is its meaning? Precisely with this combination of studies with detailed comparisons and others in which the reader is presented with more hypothetical relationships in the light of aemulatio, supplemented with more general considerations, the editors hope to do justice to the range and significance of the art historical research of the scholar and teacher this festschrift honors.

This book owes its existence to the contributions of a variety of authors. They include students and colleagues, mostly from the Netherlands and the United States; they are all specialists in Netherlandish art and, above all, good friends of Eric Jan. The editors

The editors would like to thank the individuals and institutions who have contributed financially to the publication of this book: Otto Naumann, Johnny van Haeften, Tom Kaplan, Salomon Lilian, the Netherland-America Foundation, the American Friends of the Mauritshuis and the Stichting Charema - Fonds voor Geschiedenis en Kunst. We are also grateful for the help of Jennifer Kilian and Katy Kist, translators, Marijke Tolsma for helping with the Index, Carijn Oomkens and Peter van der Ploeg of Waanders Publishers and the designer Frank de Wit.

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a e m u l at i o

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Terminus: Crossing Boundaries in Maarten van Heemskerck’s Saint Luke Painting the Madonna in Haarlem Fiona Healy

1 Jan Saenredam after Hendrick Goltzius, Allegory of Visus and the Art of Painting, 1616, engraving, 245 x 187 mm, British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, London

Among the images discussed by Eric Jan Sluijter in Seductress of Sight is Jan Saenredam’s (1597-1665) engraving of 1616 after Hendrick Goltzius’ (1558-1617) Allegory of Visus and the Art of Painting (fig. 1).1 This print shows an elderly bespectacled artist painting a naked woman who can be identified as Venus, but also Visus, the personification of Sight. Unlike earlier interpretations that saw the print as Goltzius’ condemnation of the inappropriate application of the sense of sight by artists, Sluijter persuasively demonstrates that the composition’s multifarious elements in fact add up to an overwhelming affirmation of the positive importance of sight for the artist.2 The bird’s head crowning the easel, hitherto overlooked as a purely decorative feature, is identified by Sluijter as a phoenix, and as such a personal reference to Goltzius, who according to Karel van Mander (1548-1606) was known as ‘a phoenix with golden pens’.3 Sluijter convincingly links the easel to the elaborately constructed example in Maarten van Heemskerck’s (1498-1574) Saint Luke Painting the Madonna, presented in 1532 to Haarlem’s Guild of Saint Luke and hung in St. Bavo’s on the north-west crossing pier where the guild had its altar (fig. 2, color plate 1).4 Goltzius greatly admired this painting, and it is entirely plausible that his own transportation of emblematic meaning onto such an ordinary piece of artistic equipment was a deliberate emulation of the older master’s depiction of the male head on Saint Luke’s easel.5 He must, one presumes, have recognised that Van Heemskerck used the easel to convey a particular message, though what Goltzius believed that to be is not recorded, and of course need not necessarily have been the same meaning that Van Heemskerck intended; however, as will be shown below, there are indications in Goltzius’ oeuvre which suggest he did indeed understand Van Heemskerck’s intentions.6 Van Heemskerck’s Saint Luke has received considerable scholarly attention, much of which has

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a e m u l at i o

centred on the role of the male figure crowned with a wreath on the very right, thought by Van Mander to have Van Heemskerck’s features and to represent a ‘sort of poet’;7 the easel and its possible significance had have by contrast attracted surprisingly little interest. Admittedly, the painting’s early date makes such an undertaking difficult and any identification more tentative than usual since those tools that normally facilitate such a task, notably emblems but also other textual and visual material, had by 1532 not yet been consolidated into widely available books. Nonetheless, the composition does provide clues to an identification of the male head, which in turn permits reflection on its possible relevance for the painting.

Around 1650 Salomon de Bray (1597-1664) made two drawn copies of the Saint Luke. Beautifully executed in pencil and red chalk, one drawing reproduces the entire composition,8 the other just the right half (fig. 3).9 The detailed and faithful nature of this latter copy makes it particularly useful when describing the easel. The panel on which the patron saint of painters portrays the Virgin and Child rests on an easel which is crowned by the bust of a long-haired bearded male while the two front legs and

2 Maarten van Heemskerck, Saint Luke Painting the Madonna, 1532, oil on oak panel, 168 x 235 cm, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem

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Te r m i n u s : C r o s s i n g B o u n d a r i e s

connecting stretcher are decorated with stylised acanthus leaves; the third, back leg is unadorned. The man is youngish, with full cheeks and sharply defined features that are all the more prominent given the intended di sotto in su perspective of the viewer. He stares, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, over the head of the painter-evangelist. His locks of hair and parted beard frame each side of the apex of the easel; a flamboyant bushel of hair covers his ear and the end of the band of elaborately moulded acanthus leaves that masks the line where hair and forehead meet.

This head is not simply an addition but rather forms an integral part of the easel itself, which is carved entirely from stone - as indeed are all furnishings in the painting. While conforming in overall shape and basic construction to typical wooden easels, Van Heemskerck went to considerable trouble to devise a complex structure to replace the

3 Salomon de Bray after Maarten van Heemskerck, Saint Luke Painting the Madonna, (detail of right half), c. 1650, drawing, black and red chalk, 417 x 316 mm, Collection Frits Lugt, Institut NĂŠerlandais, Paris

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simple stretchers that normally connect the upper and lower parts of the ‘triangular’ support formed by an easel’s two front legs. The front is basically a shaft, solid just below the head but hollowed out and cut away lower down so that the two sides can form legs, here carved to resemble those of goats. The transition is hidden by a large acanthus leaf and the concave inner part richly ornamented with foliage that continues up the shaft to the top of the triangle formed by the parted beard. To my knowledge, this easel is in its material, form and execution quite unique. A survey of depictions of painters at work confirms that easels merely served a practical purpose and were considered unworthy of any form of adornment apart from the odd simply carved scroll or rosette at the apex.10 In addition to the easel in Goltzius’ Allegory of Visus, the only other example known to me that is decorated with a symbol that may have some meaning within the overall context of the image is Lancelot Blondeel’s (1498-1561) Saint Luke Painting the Madonna of 1545.11 The top of that wooden easel is more intricately carved than usual and crowned by the head of an angel - a possible allusion to the divine inspiration behind Saint Luke’s task.

The attention Van Heemskerck lavished on his easel surely implies it had a function and meaning beyond its everyday purpose as a tool in an artist’s studio. Its visual dominance suggests a symbolic significance, yet even Van Mander ignored it in his detailed discussion of the Saint Luke.

In more modern studies, if dealt with at all, it is usually the head rather than the entire easel that is mentioned. Grosshans refers to a ‘bearded head’, though other authors might conceivably have arrived at their identification on the basis of the goat legs: ‘the mask of a satyr’ (Klein), a ‘Dionysus head’ (Kraut) or ‘reminiscent of a faun’ (Biesboer and Köhler).12 Sluijter implicitly acknowledges the atypical construction of the easel when he identifies the head as a herm, as does Scheick, who alone supplies an interpretation when he refers to the easel as an ‘Apollo headed hermpilaster with carved fig-leaves (alluding to the Apollo-like Son of God’s healing of humanity’s Adamic shame)’, an identification that follows the - unconvincing - proposal that Van Heemskerck had modelled the head on the Apollo Belvedere.13 The key to the identification of the head is indeed the easel, which both Scheick and Sluijter correctly see as resembling a herm. But not just any herm, for Van Heemskerck refers, I suggest, to a very specific one - Terminus.

Terminus is the name of the Roman god who supposedly resided in the stones marking the boundaries of property; these stones were the subject of annual celebrations, the Terminalia, held each year on 23 February and described in Ovid’s Fasti (II, 639-684).14 More a personification than a deity with a higher calling, Terminus rarely appeared in human form in

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Te r m i n u s : C r o s s i n g B o u n d a r i e s

art.15 He is, however, ever-present in an architectural feature: the ‘terminal figure’ is a bust- or half-length figure in human form, with or without arms, with a base (pillar, pilaster, pedestal etc.) and closely related to the herm statue, a shaft surmounted by a bust or head, which in ancient Greece usually depicted Hermes and had male genitals carved on the shaft front.16 Van Heemskerck’s elaborate rendition of the lower structure of the easel and his choice of stone as its material is central to the identification of the head as that of Terminus. While stone accords with Van Heemskerck’s overall aesthetic concept for the painting, it renders the easel immovable and therefore totally impractical for an artist, but all the more suitable for a god whose origin lay in stone and whose credo was: I yield to none.17 This refers to Terminus’ refusal to leave the new temple erected on the Capitol and dedicated to Jupiter, with the result that his stone or altar remained untouched under a specially constructed opening to the sky.

Van Heemskerck’s unique depiction on the side of Saint Luke’s seat of the Evangelist holding on for dear life to the bull, his symbol, unquestionably invited viewers to recall Jupiter’s rape of Europa. Panofsky and others concluded that this vignette reproduces the myth’s interpretation in the Ovide moralisé where Europa is deemed to represent the human soul and the bull Christ.18 Be that as it may, the unmistakable allusion to Jupiter as opposed to the placid bull that normally accompanies and identifies the Evangelist may have been intended as a visual nod in the direction of Terminus.19 Equally, the stylised foliage so prominently decorating the bottom of Van Heemskerck’s easel may have served to further trigger the association with Terminus, who after all resided in fields, a location alluded to in many sixteenth-century depictions showing clumps of grass growing around the stone base.20 That an artist living in Haarlem in the early 1530s knew what physical attributes were appropriate for a god of boundaries is not all that surprising given that Terminus had by then very much entered the consciousness of early modern Europe through one of its most famous figures - Erasmus of Rotterdam. While in Rome in 1509, Erasmus received the gift of a gold ring with an antique carnelian stone engraved with the bust of a bearded man on a block of stone, who was subsequently identified - incorrectly as it happens - as Terminus.21 Erasmus adopted the god as his personal emblem, and between 1513 and 1519 had a seal made showing a now beardless god with his name inscribed on the block and framed by his credo: Cedo nulli – ‘I yield to none’.22 In 1519 Quinten Massijs (1465/66-1530) designed a portrait medallion of Erasmus and on the reverse Terminus, young and in profile, his name on the base, with the slightly adapted motto: Concedo Nulli – ‘I concede to none’ (fig. 4).23 Hans

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a e m u l at i o

Holbein the Younger’s (1497/98-1543) elaborate set of images includes a 1525 stained glass window showing Terminus as a half-figure herm in an extensive landscape and framed by an elaborate architectural structure,24 a slightly adapted version of the deity alone is recorded in a painting in Cleveland,25 and finally, around 1538/40, the woodcut Erasmus ‘im Gehäus’ showing the scholar standing in a richly adorned arch (Gehäus), his right hand resting on the head of Terminus, this time older and slightly bearded.26 The scholar’s association with the pagan god was so well known that gifts bearing depictions of or references to Terminus were dispatched throughout Europe, either to or from Erasmus.27 Though conjectural, it is conceivable that Van Heemskerck was familiar with at least some of these images, in particular Massijs’ medal and Erasmus’ seal. What is certain is that interest in Terminus was widespread in the early decades of the century, so much so that by 1546 he was included in Alciati’s influential book of emblems.28 Although fewer images of Terminus were in circulation before Van Heemskerck painted his Saint Luke, he could nevertheless have been informed of the god’s basic iconography and role, especially in view of his fascination with all things related to the ancient world, an interest which brought him into contact with a learned circle of acquaintances.

One visual precedent Van Heemskerck could have been familiar with is Marcantonio Raimondi’s (c. 1480-c. 1534) Il Morbetto or The Plague (fig. 5).29 To be sure, the name Terminus is nowhere cited, but the herm’s position at the transition point between interior and exterior, night and day, surely suffices to identify him as the god of boundaries. Not only

4 Quinten Massijs, Portrait Medallion of Erasmus (obverse) and Terminus (reverse), 1519, bronze, diameter 10.5 cm, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

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