Juan van der Hamen
Encyclopedia
Juan van der Hamen y León (bapt. 8 April 1596 – 28 March 1631) was a Spanish painter, a master of the still life
paintings, also called bodegones
. During his lifetime, he was prolific and versatile, painting allegories, landscapes, and large-scale works for churches and convents. However, today he is remembered mostly for his still lifes. In the 1620s, He popularized still life painting in Madrid
.
before 1586, and Dorotea Whitman Gómez de León, a half-Flemish mother of noble Toledan ancestry . Van der Hamen and his two brothers Pedro and Lorenzo (both of whom were writers) emphasized their Spanish roots by using all or part of their maternal grandmother's family name, Gómez de León..
The painter's father, Jan van der Hamen, had come to Spain
, as an archer, to the court of Philip II
were he settled, married, and his children were born. According to 18th-century sources, the artist's father had also been a painter, but there is no evidence for this.
Juan van der Hamen inherited his father's honorary positions at court and also served as unsalaried painter of the king. Van der Hamen's artistic activity in the service of the crown is first recorded on 10 September 1619, when he was paid for painting a still life for the country palace of El Pardo
, to the north of Madrid.
and Philip IV
and established the popularity of the new genre of still life in Madrid in the 1620s.
A prolific artist, van der Hamen painted all his works during the first decade of the reign of Philip IV. It is known that he painted more still lifes in 1622 than in any other period of his life.
He also reached great personal fame as a portraitist, being this field, the one that provided him with greater personal success, since still life was considered a lesser genre. He executed a portrait of Philip IV and worked during the 1620s in a series of portraits of the principal intellectuals and writers of his time, including: Lope de Vega
, Francisco de Quevedo
, Luis de Góngora
, Jose de Valdivieso, Juan Pérez de Montalbán
, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón
and Francisco de Rioja
. On van der Hamen's death, twenty of these portraits were inventoried as a single item among his belongings. The portrait of his older brother, Lorenzo van der Hamen, probably belonged to this series. The series itself was a focal point for philosophic speculation on the art of portraiture by some of the most distinguished minds of the time, who frequently praised Juan van der Hamen in verse and prose.
Among Van der Hamen portraits, there is one of a dwarf, painted around 1623 in a powerful naturalistic style. This painting (Madrid, Museo del Prado
) anticipated the later made by Velázquez
.
In 1626, van der Hamen painted cardinal Francesco Barberini
, after a previous portrait by Velázquez had failed to please the sitter. Well satisfied with his work Cardinal Barberini acquired three further works from him.
As a religious painter Juan van der Hamen worked for several religious institutions in and around Madrid and Toledo
, like the Monastery of the Descalzas Reales, in Madrid, for which he painted altars. Few of these paintings are extant. The best surviving examples of his religious work are in the cloister of the Royal Convent of La Encarnación
in Madrid, painted in 1625 in a naturalistic tenebristic style.
Juan van der Hamen was also a pioneer in the field of flower painting. Van der Hamen probably began painting floral arrangements in response to the flower pieces of Flemish artists, such as Jan Brueghel
, who were regarded as exemplary masters in the field and whose works were much sought after in Spain.
One good example of his work as a flower painter is his Offering to Flora , a visual poem that parallels the lyric verse of his time, in which he united his skills as portraitist and flower painter to produce one of the most beautiful paintings of the allegory of spring. The large canvas, painted in 1627, shows the goddess of the flowers seated besides a cornucopia of spring flowers. The painting adopts a Flemish compositional; type and reveals an interest in the play of light on iridescent fabrics that probably derived in the style of Juan Bautista Maino. The offering to Flora and the pair of paintings: the still life with Flowers and a Dog, and Still-Life with a Puppy, formed part of the interior decoration of Jean de Croy's palace in Madrid. Jean de Croy, conde de Solre and Diego Mexia, marqués de Leganés
, were Van der Hamen's greatest patrons.
Juan van der Hamen died in Madrid on 28 March 1631, when he was only thirty five years old. His paintings are exhibited today in leading European and American museums.
In 2006 The Royal Palace of Madrid
and the Dallas, Meadows Museum of Art held the exhibition: Juan van der Hamen y León and the Court of Madrid, gathering Van der Hamen's paintings from Museums around the World and bringing his work to the limelight.
The still life, which had often been considered a minor genre, flourished throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. In Spain, this particular subject matter was termed bodegón and depicted in an austere gloomy style (tenebrismo). Van der Hamen was considered as the greatest Spanish still life painter of the seventeenth century, when that form was revived as a worthy subject in and of itself rather than as an adjunct to a symbolic or narrative work.
Van der Hamen's still lifes are painted in a style markedly Flemish but they reflect the strong influence of those painted at the beginning of the seventeenth century in Toledo
by Juan Sánchez Cotán
, in which fruits and vegetables are often shown suspended from a window frame or arrange along a ledge. Van der Hamen adapted Sánchez Cotán compositional style to the conditions of cosmopolitan life in Madrid, using more elaborate objects and foods compositions and objects ranging elaborate confessions, imported Venetian crystals and ceramic vessels along a simple shelf. The objects are silhouetted against a dark background and caught in a powerful light. Their regular, zigzag arrangements and the strong shadows falling on the shelf result in a placid sense of space that is heightened by the impression given by the wafers extending beyond the edge of the shelf towards the viewer.
From 1626 on wards, Van der Hamen made his still lifes more varied and complex than his early ones by placing objects on different levels. This type of composition seems to have originated in Rome during the early 1620s and is seen in works attributed to Tomasso Salini and Agostino Verrocchi. However, van der Hamen's use of this scheme differs from that of the Roman painters, who liked to scatter a profusion of inanimate objects over the surface. Van der Hamen drastically reduces the number of elements and arranges the remainder into exquisitely balanced, asymmetrical compositions, strongly lit in the Spanish manner. This allows him to concentrate on the rendering of each individual object and thus to enhance the sensation of corporeality and texture.
Juan van der Hamen still lifes exerted a great influence in his contemporaries like Francisco and Juan de Zurbarán, father and son and in later painters as Antonio Ponce and Juan Arellano.
One of the features of Van der Hamen's still life painting for which he was best known lay in the depiction of expensive luxury glassware, such as the pieces represented here.
Concerned simply with the harmonious arrangement of objects and the accurate representation of texture and light, Van der Hamen arranged the objects represented in in geometrical compositions, circles and spheres play. In contrast with the geometric severity of the setting, the artist arranged the objects on stepped stone ledges, thus varying their distances from the light source. The objects represented, fruits vegetables, wood, terra cotta, and crystal are masterfully described. He carefully calculated the distribution of color that casts a shadow and, at the same time, reflects the light. The calculated, red in various tones, weaves the forms into a harmonious whole whose simplicity, at first glance, belies its careful structure.
Still life
A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural or man-made...
paintings, also called bodegones
Bodegón
The term bodega in Spanish can mean "pantry", "tavern", or "wine cellar". The derivative term bodegón is an augmentative that refers to a large bodega, usually in a derogatory fashion...
. During his lifetime, he was prolific and versatile, painting allegories, landscapes, and large-scale works for churches and convents. However, today he is remembered mostly for his still lifes. In the 1620s, He popularized still life painting in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
.
Life
Juan van der Hamen y (Gómez de) León was baptized on 8 April 1596 in Madrid, therefore, he must have been born there just days before that date. He was the son of Jehan van der Hamen, a Flemish courtier, who had moved to Madrid from BrusselsBrussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
before 1586, and Dorotea Whitman Gómez de León, a half-Flemish mother of noble Toledan ancestry . Van der Hamen and his two brothers Pedro and Lorenzo (both of whom were writers) emphasized their Spanish roots by using all or part of their maternal grandmother's family name, Gómez de León..
The painter's father, Jan van der Hamen, had come to Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, as an archer, to the court of Philip II
Philip II of Spain
Philip II was King of Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, and, while married to Mary I, King of England and Ireland. He was lord of the Seventeen Provinces from 1556 until 1581, holding various titles for the individual territories such as duke or count....
were he settled, married, and his children were born. According to 18th-century sources, the artist's father had also been a painter, but there is no evidence for this.
Juan van der Hamen inherited his father's honorary positions at court and also served as unsalaried painter of the king. Van der Hamen's artistic activity in the service of the crown is first recorded on 10 September 1619, when he was paid for painting a still life for the country palace of El Pardo
El Pardo
The Royal Palace of El Pardo is a historical building near Madrid, Spain, in the present-day district of Fuencarral-El Pardo. Owned by the Spanish state and administered by the Patrimonio Nacional agency, the palace began as a hunting lodge.-Overview:...
, to the north of Madrid.
Works
Noted for his versatility, Juan van der Hamen painted religious history paintings; allegories, landscapes, low-life subjects, portraits and still lifes but the last two categories brought him the greatest fame. He served at the courts of Philip IIIPhilip III of Spain
Philip III , also known as Philip the Pious, was the King of Spain and King of Portugal and the Algarves, where he ruled as Philip II , from 1598 until his death...
and Philip IV
Philip IV of Spain
Philip IV was King of Spain between 1621 and 1665, sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands, and King of Portugal until 1640...
and established the popularity of the new genre of still life in Madrid in the 1620s.
A prolific artist, van der Hamen painted all his works during the first decade of the reign of Philip IV. It is known that he painted more still lifes in 1622 than in any other period of his life.
He also reached great personal fame as a portraitist, being this field, the one that provided him with greater personal success, since still life was considered a lesser genre. He executed a portrait of Philip IV and worked during the 1620s in a series of portraits of the principal intellectuals and writers of his time, including: Lope de Vega
Lope de Vega
Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio was a Spanish playwright and poet. He was one of the key figures in the Spanish Golden Century Baroque literature...
, Francisco de Quevedo
Francisco de Quevedo
Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas was a Spanish nobleman, politician and writer of the Baroque era. Along with his lifelong rival, Luis de Góngora, Quevedo was one of the most prominent Spanish poets of the age. His style is characterized by what was called conceptismo...
, Luis de Góngora
Luis de Góngora
Luis de Góngora y Argote was a Spanish Baroque lyric poet. Góngora and his lifelong rival, Francisco de Quevedo, are widely considered to be the most prominent Spanish poets of their age. His style is characterized by what was called culteranismo, also known as Gongorism...
, Jose de Valdivieso, Juan Pérez de Montalbán
Juan Pérez de Montalbán
Juan Pérez de Montalbán , Spanish Catholic priest, dramatist, poet and novelist, was born at Madrid.At the age of eighteen he became a licentiate in theology, was ordained priest in 1625 and appointed notary to the Inquisition...
, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón
Juan Ruiz de Alarcón
Juan Ruiz de Alarcón y Mendoza , one of the greatest Novohispanic dramatists of the Golden Age, was born in New Spain .-Genealogy:...
and Francisco de Rioja
Francisco de Rioja
Francisco de Rioja was a Spanish poet. Rioja was a canon of Seville Cathedral and a member of the Supreme Inquisition.-Works:...
. On van der Hamen's death, twenty of these portraits were inventoried as a single item among his belongings. The portrait of his older brother, Lorenzo van der Hamen, probably belonged to this series. The series itself was a focal point for philosophic speculation on the art of portraiture by some of the most distinguished minds of the time, who frequently praised Juan van der Hamen in verse and prose.
Among Van der Hamen portraits, there is one of a dwarf, painted around 1623 in a powerful naturalistic style. This painting (Madrid, Museo del Prado
Museo del Prado
The Museo del Prado is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It features one of the world's finest collections of European art, from the 12th century to the early 19th century, based on the former Spanish Royal Collection, and unquestionably the best single collection of...
) anticipated the later made by Velázquez
Diego Velázquez
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist...
.
In 1626, van der Hamen painted cardinal Francesco Barberini
Francesco Barberini
Francesco Barberini may refer to:*Francesco Barberini , Cardinal-nephew of Pope Urban VIII from 1623*Francesco Barberini , Cardinal from 1690...
, after a previous portrait by Velázquez had failed to please the sitter. Well satisfied with his work Cardinal Barberini acquired three further works from him.
As a religious painter Juan van der Hamen worked for several religious institutions in and around Madrid and Toledo
Toledo, Spain
Toledo's Alcázar became renowned in the 19th and 20th centuries as a military academy. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 its garrison was famously besieged by Republican forces.-Economy:...
, like the Monastery of the Descalzas Reales, in Madrid, for which he painted altars. Few of these paintings are extant. The best surviving examples of his religious work are in the cloister of the Royal Convent of La Encarnación
Royal Convent of La Encarnación
The Royal Monastery of the Incarnation or Real Monasterio de la Encarnación is a convent of the order of Recolet Augustines located in Madrid, Spain. The institution mainly interned women from noble families, and was founded by the Queen Margaret of Austria, wife of Philip III, and thus was well...
in Madrid, painted in 1625 in a naturalistic tenebristic style.
Juan van der Hamen was also a pioneer in the field of flower painting. Van der Hamen probably began painting floral arrangements in response to the flower pieces of Flemish artists, such as Jan Brueghel
Jan Brueghel
Jan Brueghel can refer to two Flemish painters:*Jan Brueghel the Elder *Jan Brueghel the Younger...
, who were regarded as exemplary masters in the field and whose works were much sought after in Spain.
One good example of his work as a flower painter is his Offering to Flora , a visual poem that parallels the lyric verse of his time, in which he united his skills as portraitist and flower painter to produce one of the most beautiful paintings of the allegory of spring. The large canvas, painted in 1627, shows the goddess of the flowers seated besides a cornucopia of spring flowers. The painting adopts a Flemish compositional; type and reveals an interest in the play of light on iridescent fabrics that probably derived in the style of Juan Bautista Maino. The offering to Flora and the pair of paintings: the still life with Flowers and a Dog, and Still-Life with a Puppy, formed part of the interior decoration of Jean de Croy's palace in Madrid. Jean de Croy, conde de Solre and Diego Mexia, marqués de Leganés
Diego Felipez de Guzmán, Marquis of Leganés
Diego Mexía Felipez de Guzmán y Dávila , vicecount of Butarque and first Marquis of Leganés, was a Spanish politician and army commander.-Biography:...
, were Van der Hamen's greatest patrons.
Juan van der Hamen died in Madrid on 28 March 1631, when he was only thirty five years old. His paintings are exhibited today in leading European and American museums.
In 2006 The Royal Palace of Madrid
Royal Palace of Madrid
The Palacio Real de Madrid is the official residence of the King of Spain in the city of Madrid, but it is only used for state ceremonies. King Juan Carlos and the Royal Family do not reside in the palace, choosing instead the more modest Palacio de la Zarzuela on the outskirts of Madrid...
and the Dallas, Meadows Museum of Art held the exhibition: Juan van der Hamen y León and the Court of Madrid, gathering Van der Hamen's paintings from Museums around the World and bringing his work to the limelight.
Still lifes
Van der Hamen is well known as a gifted still life painter of the Spanish Golden Age, but during his lifetime he was most esteemed by his peers for his versatility—for his portraits, allegories, landscapes, flower paintings, and large-scale works for churches and convents. Today he is remembered mostly for his still lifes.The still life, which had often been considered a minor genre, flourished throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. In Spain, this particular subject matter was termed bodegón and depicted in an austere gloomy style (tenebrismo). Van der Hamen was considered as the greatest Spanish still life painter of the seventeenth century, when that form was revived as a worthy subject in and of itself rather than as an adjunct to a symbolic or narrative work.
Van der Hamen's still lifes are painted in a style markedly Flemish but they reflect the strong influence of those painted at the beginning of the seventeenth century in Toledo
Toledo, Spain
Toledo's Alcázar became renowned in the 19th and 20th centuries as a military academy. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 its garrison was famously besieged by Republican forces.-Economy:...
by Juan Sánchez Cotán
Juan Sánchez Cotán
Juan Sánchez Cotán was a Spanish Baroque painter, a pioneer of realism in Spain. His still lifes, also called bodegones were painted in a strikingly austere style, especially when compared to similar works in Netherlands and Italy.- Life:Sánchez Cotán was born in the town of Orgaz, near Toledo, Spain...
, in which fruits and vegetables are often shown suspended from a window frame or arrange along a ledge. Van der Hamen adapted Sánchez Cotán compositional style to the conditions of cosmopolitan life in Madrid, using more elaborate objects and foods compositions and objects ranging elaborate confessions, imported Venetian crystals and ceramic vessels along a simple shelf. The objects are silhouetted against a dark background and caught in a powerful light. Their regular, zigzag arrangements and the strong shadows falling on the shelf result in a placid sense of space that is heightened by the impression given by the wafers extending beyond the edge of the shelf towards the viewer.
From 1626 on wards, Van der Hamen made his still lifes more varied and complex than his early ones by placing objects on different levels. This type of composition seems to have originated in Rome during the early 1620s and is seen in works attributed to Tomasso Salini and Agostino Verrocchi. However, van der Hamen's use of this scheme differs from that of the Roman painters, who liked to scatter a profusion of inanimate objects over the surface. Van der Hamen drastically reduces the number of elements and arranges the remainder into exquisitely balanced, asymmetrical compositions, strongly lit in the Spanish manner. This allows him to concentrate on the rendering of each individual object and thus to enhance the sensation of corporeality and texture.
Juan van der Hamen still lifes exerted a great influence in his contemporaries like Francisco and Juan de Zurbarán, father and son and in later painters as Antonio Ponce and Juan Arellano.
One of the features of Van der Hamen's still life painting for which he was best known lay in the depiction of expensive luxury glassware, such as the pieces represented here.
Concerned simply with the harmonious arrangement of objects and the accurate representation of texture and light, Van der Hamen arranged the objects represented in in geometrical compositions, circles and spheres play. In contrast with the geometric severity of the setting, the artist arranged the objects on stepped stone ledges, thus varying their distances from the light source. The objects represented, fruits vegetables, wood, terra cotta, and crystal are masterfully described. He carefully calculated the distribution of color that casts a shadow and, at the same time, reflects the light. The calculated, red in various tones, weaves the forms into a harmonious whole whose simplicity, at first glance, belies its careful structure.