Maarten van Heemskerck
Maarten van Heemskerck | |
---|---|
Born | Maerten Jacobsz 1 June 1498 |
Died | 1 October 1574 | (aged 76)
Nationality | Dutch |
Known for | Painting |
Movement | Mannerism |
Patron(s) | Cornelis Muys, Haarlem council, Delft Council |
Maarten van Heemskerck or Marten Jacobsz Heemskerk van Veen (1 June 1498 – 1 October 1574) was a Dutch portrait and religious painter, who spent most of his career in Haarlem. He was a pupil of Jan van Scorel, and adopted his teacher's Italian-influenced style. He spent the years 1532–36 in Italy. He produced many designs for engravers, and is especially known for his depictions of the Wonders of the World.
Biography
Early life
Heemskerck was born in the village of Heemskerk, North Holland, halfway between Alkmaar and Haarlem. He was the son of a farmer called Jacob Willemsz. van Veen. According to his biography by Karel van Mander, he began his artistic training with the painter Cornelius Willemsz in Haarlem, but was recalled to Heemskerk by his father to work on the family farm. However, having contrived an argument with his father he left again, this time for Delft, where he studied under Jan Lucasz, before moving on to Haarlem, where he became a pupil of Jan van Scorel, learning to paint in his teacher's innovative Italian-influenced style.[1]
Heemskerck then went to lodge at the home of the wealthy curate of the Sint-Bavokerk, Pieter Jan Foppesz (whose name van Mander writes as Pieter Ian Fopsen). They knew each other because Foppesz owned land in Heemskerk. The artist painted him in a now famous family portrait, considered the first of its kind in a long line of Dutch family paintings.[2] His other works for Foppesz included two life size figures symbolising the Sun and the Moon on a bedstead, and a picture of Adam and Eve "rather smaller but (it is said) after living models".[1] His next home was in the house of a goldsmith, Justus Cornelisz, on the edge of Haarlem.[1]
Before setting off for Italy on a
Italy
He travelled around the whole of northern and central Italy, stopping at Rome, where he had letters of introduction from van Scorel to the influential Dutch cardinal
It is evident of the facility with which he acquired the rapid execution of a scene-painter that he was selected to collaborate with
While in Rome where he made numerous drawings of classical sculpture and architecture, many of which survive in two sketchbooks now in the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin. He was to use them as source material throughout the rest of his career.[5] Among these are the Capitoline Brutus, van Heemskerck being the first known artist to make a sketch of this now famous bust.
However, a study published in 2024 argues that the drawings in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett are not by Heemskerck, but by Cornelis Floris (II), called Cornelis Floris de Vriendt and were only created around 1535/36-1538. The Berlin collection of drawings comprises the pages of three disintegrated sketchbooks and individual sheets which, according to this thesis, are all by Floris with a few exceptions.[6]
Later career
On his return to the
The alteration in his style, brought about by his experience of Italy was not universally admired. According to van Mander, "in the opinion of some of the best judges he had not improved it, except in one particular, that his outline was more graceful than before".[1]
He painted large altarpieces for his friend, the art maecenas and later Catholic martyr of the
Engravings
He was one of the first Netherlandish artists to make drawings specifically for reproduction by commercial printmakers. He employed a technique incorporating cross-hatching and stippling, intended to aid the engraver.[5]
Wonders of the World
Heemskerck produced designs for a set of engravings, showing eight, rather than the usual seven wonders of the ancient world. His addition to the conventional list was the
-
Martin Heemskerck
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Hanging Gardens of Babylon, said to be the oldest-known imaginary reconstruction from historical descriptions[10]
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The Temple of Artemis, has the "old-fashioned" look of Santa Maria Novella in Florence and other Italian quattrocento churches of the mannerist generation.
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A fanciful reconstruction of Phidias' Statue of Zeus at Olympia, engraving by Philip Galle in 1572, from a drawing by Heemskerck
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A fanciful 16th-century interpretation of the Pharos, or Lighthouse of Alexandria
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The Great Pyramid of Giza (Bettman collection)
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Fanciful interpretation of theMausoleum of Halicarnassus, 1572
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He painted his self-portrait with the Colosseum.
Paintings
Many works by van Heemskerck survive. Adam and Eve and
He painted a crucifixion for the Riches Claires at Ghent (now in the
In 1550, Heemskerck painted a large, now dismembered
There is a Crucifixion in the Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg, and two Triumphs of Silenus in the gallery of Vienna. Other pieces of varying importance are in the galleries of Rotterdam, Munich, Cassel, Brunswick, Karlsruhe, Mainz, Copenhagen,[4] Strasbourg and Rennes.
Parrots
In his depiction of
Death
In Amsterdam he made a will, which has been preserved. It shows that he had lived long enough and prosperously enough to make a fortune. At his death, he left money and land in trust to the orphanage of Haarlem, with interest to be paid yearly to any couple who should be willing to perform the marriage ceremony on the slab of his tomb in the cathedral of Haarlem. It was a superstition in Catholic Holland that a marriage so celebrated would secure the peace of the dead within the tomb.
Reputation
Heemskerck was widely respected in his own lifetime and was a strong influence on the painters of Haarlem in particular. He is known (along with his teacher Jan van Scorel) for his introduction of Italian art to the Northern Netherlands, especially for his series on the wonders of the world, that were subsequently spread as prints. Karel van Mander devoted six pages to his biography in his Schilder-boeck.
Public collections
- Courtauld Institute of Art[14]
- Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam[15]
- Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa[16]
- National Gallery, London[17]
- Rijksmuseum Amsterdam[18]
- Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg[19]
- University of Michigan Museum of Art[20]
- Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Juan B. Castagnino, Rosario[21]
References
- ^ a b c d e van Mander, Karl; Kerrich, Thomas (translation) (1829). "The Life of Martin Heemskerck". A Catalogue of the Prints which have been Engraved after Martin Heemskerck. London: J. Rodwell.. Translated from a biography in Het Schilder-boeck, Haarlem, 2020 (available as a Dutch online text from the DBNL; a more modern translation is in The Lives of the Netherlandish and German Painters, H. Miedema, ed. 1994–9)
- ISBN 978-90-6550-186-8
- ^ "Ter eeren S. Lucas heeft hy't bedreven/Dus ghemeen ghesellen heeft hy mede bedacht."
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Heemskerk, Martin Jacobsz". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 199. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ a b Fifteenth to Eighteenth Century Eighteenth Century Drawings in the Robert Lehman Collection: Central Europe. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 133.
- ^ Thürlemann, Felix (2024). Der Blick des Pan. Cornelis Floris und die ‚Heemskerck‘-Skizzenbücher. 2 vol. Reimer Verlag - Edition Imorde.
- ^ Cornelis Musius in NL Wikipedia
- ^ Kerrich 1829, p.105
- ^ "The eight wonders of the world". British Museum.
- ^ AdSummus, for Art History with Michelli. "Hanging Gardens—Images". plinia.net.
- ^ "Heemskerck's Style and Technique". Drama and Devotion: Heemskerck's "Ecce Homo" Altarpiece from Warsaw. Retrieved 23 July 2012.
- The Walters Art Museum.
- ^ ISBN 978-90-284-1678-9
- ^ "Heemskerck, Mary Magdalene". The Courtauld Institute of Art. Retrieved 22 April 2021.
- ^ "Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen". boijmans.nl. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 1 September 2014.
- ^ "Loading... | Collections Online - Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa". collections.tepapa.govt.nz. Retrieved 22 April 2021.
- ^ "Marten van Heemskerck | The Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist | NG6508.1 | National Gallery, London". www.nationalgallery.org.uk. Retrieved 22 April 2021.
- ^ "Search - Rijksmuseum". Rijksmuseum.
- ^ "Heemskerck – peinture". musees-strasbourg.skin-web.org. Musées de la ville de Strasbourg. Retrieved 21 June 2023.
- ^ "Exchange: The Resurrection". exchange.umma.umich.edu. Retrieved 22 April 2021.
- ^ "Autorretrato". castagninomacro.org. Retrieved 7 July 2022.
Sources
- Kerrich, Thomas (1829). A Catalogue of the Prints which have been Engraved after Martin Heemskerck. London: J. Rodwell. Includes an English translation of van Mander's biography of Heemskerck.
Further reading
- Felix Thürlemann, Der Blick des Pan. Cornelis Floris und die ‚Heemskerck‘-Skizzenbücher. Berlin, Reimer Verlag - Edition Imorde 2024, 2 vol.
- Tatjana Bartsch, Maarten van Heemskerck. Römische Studien zwischen Sachlichkeit und Imagination. (München: Hirmer 2019) (Römische Studien der Bibliotheca Hertziana Bd. 44).
- Arthur J. DiFuria, Maarten van Heemskerck's Rome: Antiquity, Memory, and the Cult of Ruins. (Leiden: Brill 2019).
- Marco Folin - Monica Preti, Les villes détruites de Maarten van Heemskerck. Images de ruines et conflits religieux dans les Pays-Bas au XVIe siècle, (Paris: Institut national d'histoire de l'art, 2015).
- Tatjana Bartsch - Peter Seiler (ed.), Rom zeichnen. Maarten van Heemskerck 1532–1536/37. (Berlin: Mann 2012) (humboldt-schriften zur kunst- und bildgeschichte, 8).
- Tatjana Bartsch, "Maarten van Heemskercks Zeichnung des 'Brutus' und seine Verbindung zu Kardinal Rodolfo Pio da Carpi," Agnes Schwarzmaier (ed.), Der 'Brutus' vom Kapitol: Ein Porträt macht Weltgeschichte. (München: Ed. Minerva, 2010) (exh.-cat. Berlin), 81–89.
- Arthur J. DiFuria, "Maerten van Heemskerck's Collection Imagery in the Netherlandish Pictorial Memory," Intellectual History Review, 20, 2010 - Issue 1, 27–51.
- Arthur J. DiFuria, "Remembering the Eternal: Maerten van Heemskerck's Self-Portrait Before the Colosseum," Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaerboek. 59(1), 2009, 90-108.
- Tatjana Bartsch, "Transformierte Transformation. Zur 'fortuna' der Antikenstudien Maarten van Heemskercks im 17. Jahrhundert," Ernst Osterkamp (ed.), Wissensästhetik: Wissen über die Antike in aesthetischer Vermittlung (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008) (Transformationen der Antike, 6), 113–159.
- Tatjana Bartsch, "Kapitell. Colosseum. Überlegungen zu Heemskercks Bildfindungen am Beispiel von fol. 28 r. des römischen Skizzenbuches," Kathrin Schade e.a. (ed.), Zentren und Wirkungsräume der Antikenrezeption. (Münster: Scriptorium, 2007), 27–38.
- Erik Zevenhuizen - Piet de Boer (ed.), Maerten van Heemskerck, 1498 - 1574: 'constigh vermaert schilder' (Heemskerk: Historische Kring Heemskerk, 1998).
- Ilja Veldman, Maarten van Heemskerck. (Roosendaal: Koninklijke Van Poll, 1993-1994) (The new Hollstein Dutch & Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts, 1, 2).
- Jefferson Cabell Harrison Jr., The Paintings of Maerten van Heemskerck – a Catalogue Raisonné. (Charlottesville/Va., University of Virginia, Phil. Diss., 1987).
- Rainald Grosshans, Maerten van Heemskerck. Die Gemälde. (Berlin: Boettcher, 1980).
- Ilja Veldman (Michael Hoyle, trans.), Maarten Van Heemskerck and Dutch Humanism in the Sixteenth Century. (Maarssen: Gary Schwartz, 1977).
External links
- Entry on Maarten van Heemskerck in the RKD Artist database
- Works by Maarten van Heemskerck in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
- Literature on Marten van Heemskerk
- A catalogue of the prints which have been engraved after Martin Heemskerck
- Vermeer and The Delft School, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which includes material on Maarten van Heemskerck (see index)
- Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Drawings and Prints, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which includes material on Maarten van Heemskerck (see index)
- Prints after Maarten van Heemskerck in Dresden's Kupferstich-Kabinett