Isaak Nicolai or Isaac Claesz van Swanenburg (1537 – Leiden, 1614), was a Dutch

Dutch people

The Dutch people are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common culture and speak the Dutch language. Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Suriname, Chile, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United...

 Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 painter and glazier

Glazier

A Glazier is a construction professional who selects, cuts, installs, replaces, and removes residential, commercial, and artistic glass. Glaziers also install aluminum storefront frames and entrances, glass handrails and balustrades, shower enclosures, curtain wall framing and glass and mirror...

 active in Leiden and Gouda

Gouda

Gouda is a city and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. Gouda, which was granted city rights in 1272, is famous for its Gouda cheese, smoking pipes, and 15th-century city hall....

. He was a city council member from 1576 and became mayor of Leiden five times.

Biography

According to Houbraken

Arnold Houbraken

Arnold Houbraken was a Dutch painter and writer from Dordrecht, now remembered mainly as a biographer of artists from the Dutch Golden Age. He had ten children. His son Jacobus Houbraken was an engraver of portraits and book illustrations, including books by his father...

, Swanenburg was a very good painter, whose paintings hung in various council buildings of Leiden. Houbraken was surprised that Swanenburg was never mentioned in Karel van Mander's Schilder-boeck. Houbraken was however mistaken, because Swanenburg is mentioned as one of more than 20 disciples of Frans Floris

Frans Floris

Frans Floris, or more correctly Frans de Vriendt, called Floris was a Flemish painter. He was a member of a large family trained to the study of art in Flanders.-Biography:...

 in Van Mander's long list of pupils. According to the Netherlands Institute for Art History, Swanenburg was in Antwerp studying with Floris for 6–8 years in his youth, and settled in Leiden after his training in 1565. He briefly fled to Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

 for a year during the Siege of Leiden

Siege of Leiden

The Siege of Leiden occurred during the Eighty Years' War in 1573 and 1574, when the Spanish attempted to capture the rebellious city of Leiden, South Holland, Netherlands, and ultimately failed.-Background:...

, but had returned by 1574. He kept a large and respected workshop in Leiden, for oil- and glass painting. His pupils were Jan van Goyen, Coenraet van Schilperoort, Otto van Veen

Otto van Veen

Otto van Veen, also known by his Latinized name Otto Venius or Octavius Vaenius, was a painter, draughtsman, and humanist active primarily in Antwerp and Brussels in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century...

, and his three sons. He was buried in the Pieterskerk, Leiden

Pieterskerk, Leiden

The Pieterskerk is a late-Gothic church in Leiden dedicated to Saint Peter. It is best known today as the church of the Pilgrim Fathers where John Robinson was buried.-History:...

.

Paintings

Swanenburg created the cartoons for the stained glass windows no. 25 and 26 from Leiden to the Janskerk

Janskerk (Gouda)

The Sint Janskerk in Gouda, the Netherlands, is a large Gothic church, known especially for its stained glass windows, for which it has been placed on the UNESCO list of Dutch monuments.-History:...

 in Gouda

Gouda

Gouda is a city and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. Gouda, which was granted city rights in 1272, is famous for its Gouda cheese, smoking pipes, and 15th-century city hall....

. The reference in Van Mander is to Isaack Claessen Cloeck, which is revealing considering that the registers of Gouda show Swanenburg was paid a third of the sum that went to the Leiden glasspainter Cornelis Cornelisz Clock. This Clock was a probable relative.

Legacy

Swanenburg's paintings of various notable burgers of Leiden have survived, as well as a series of monumental historical allegories on the wool trade, an important source of income for the city during his time as councilman.

Swanenburg's oldest son, Jacob Isaacsz Swanenburg, became a painter and a master of the young Rembrandt. Klaas Isaacsz Swanenburg also became a painter and lived and worked in the Hague, where his art was appreciated. The youngest son, Willem Isaacsz Swanenburg

Willem Isaacsz Swanenburg

Willem Isaacsz van Swanenburg , was a Dutch Golden Age engraver and the youngest son of Isaac van Swanenburg.-Biography:...

, became an engraver.