Marten Jacobszoon Heemskerk van Veen
Encyclopedia
Maarten van Heemskerck or Marten Jacobsz Heemskerk van Veen (1498 – 1 October 1574) was a Dutch
portrait and religious painter, known for his depictions of the Seven Wonders of the World.
, North Holland
, halfway between Alkmaar
and Haarlem
.
His father was a small farmer, Jacob Willemsz. van Veen (whose portrait he painted). According to his biography, written by Karel van Mander, he was apprenticed to Cornelis Willemsz in Haarlem. Recalled after a time to the paternal homestead and put to the plough or the milking of cows, young Heemskerk took the first opportunity that offered to run away, and demonstrated his wish to leave home for ever by walking in a single day the 80 km which separate his native hamlet from the town of Delft
. There he studied under Jan Lucasz whom he soon deserted for his contemporary Jan van Scorel
of Haarlem. Even today, many of Heemskerck's paintings are mistaken for work by van Scorel. He boarded at the home of the wealthy Pieter Jan Foppesz (the van Mander spelling is Pieter Ian Fopsen), curate of the Sint-Bavokerk
. He knew him because he owned a lot of land in Heemskerck
. This is the same man whom he painted in a now famous family portrait, considered the first of its kind in a long line of Dutch family paintings.
In 1532 he started on a Grand Tour
, with the purpose of seeing and painting the seven wonders of the world, and during which he visited the whole of northern and central Italy, stopping at Rome, where he had letters of introduction from van Scorel for the influential Dutch cardinal William of Enckenvoirt
. Before he left, he painted a scene of St. Luke painting the Virgin as an altarpiece for the St. Luke's altar in the Bavokerk. On the bottom it states in a tromp l'oeil paper that he painted it for his comrades. It is evidence of the facility with which he acquired the rapid execution of a scene-painter that he was selected to co-operate with Antonio da Sangallo the Younger
, Battista Franco and Francesco de' Rossi (Il Salviati)
to re-decorate the Porta San Sebastiano
at Rome
as a triumphal arch (5 April 1536) in honour of Charles V
. Giorgio Vasari
, who saw the battle-pieces which Heemskerk then produced, said they were well composed and boldly executed.
in Rome, and the Colosseum. On his return to the Netherlands
in 1536, he settled at Haarlem, where he soon (1540) became president of the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke, married twice (his first wife and child died during childbirth), and secured a large and lucrative practice.
He painted large altarpieces for his friend, the art mecenas and later martyr of the Protestant Reformation
, Cornelis Muys. Muys, (or Musius) had returned from a period in France to the Netherlands in 1538 and become prior of the St. Agatha cloister in Delft, which later became the Prinsenhof
. This lucrative and high profile work in Delft earned Heemskerck a commission for an altarpiece in the Nieuwe Kerk (Delft)
for their Guild of St. Luke. In 1553 he became curate of the Sint-Bavokerk
, where he served 22 years (up to the Protestant reformation
). In 1572 he left Haarlem for Amsterdam
, to avoid the siege of Haarlem
which the Spaniards laid to the place. In Amsterdam he made a will which has been preserved, and 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 which still exists in Catholic Holland that a marriage so celebrated would secure the peace of the dead within the tomb.
The works of Heemskerk are still very numerous. Adam and Eve and St. Luke painting the Likeness of the Virgin and Child in presence of a poet crowned with ivy leaves, and a parrot in a cage - an altar-piece in the gallery of Haarlem, and the Ecce Homo in the museum of Ghent, are characteristic works of the period preceding Heemskerk's visit to Italy. An altar-piece executed for St Laurence of Alkmaar
in 1538-1541, composed of at least a dozen large panels, which including portraits of historical figures is, since the Reformation, preserved in Linkoping Cathedral, Sweden, giving us a clue to his style after his return from the south.
In its absence we have a Crucifixion executed for the Riches Claires at Ghent (now in the Ghent Museum) in 1543, and the altar-piece of the Drapers' Company at Haarlem, now in the gallery of the Hague, and finished in 1546. In these we observe that Heemskerk studied and repeated the forms which he had seen at Rome in the works of Michelangelo
and Raphael
, and in Lombardy in the frescoes of Andrea Mantegna
and Giulio Romano
. But he never forgot the while his Dutch origin or the models first presented to him by Schoreel and Mabuse.
As late as 1551 his memory still served him to produce a copy from Raphael's Madonna of Loreto (Frans Hals Museum). A Judgment of Momus, dated 1561, in the Berlin Museum, proves him to have been well acquainted with anatomy, but incapable of selection and insensible of grace, bold of hand and prone to daring though tawdry contrasts of color, and fond of florid architecture. Two altar-pieces which he finished for churches at Delft in 1551 and 1559, one complete (St. Luke painting the Virgin), the other a fragment, in the museum of Haarlem, a third of 1551 in the Brussels Museum, representing Golgotha, the Crucifixion, the Flight into Egypt, Christ on the Mount, and scenes from the lives of St. Bernard and St. Benedict, are all fairly representative of his style.
Besides there is a Crucifixion in the Hermitage of St 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 and Copenhagen.
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
portrait and religious painter, known for his depictions of the Seven Wonders of the World.
Biography
He was born at HeemskerkHeemskerk
Heemskerk is a municipality and a town in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland.-Local government:The municipal council of Heemskerk consists of 25 seats, which are divided as follows:* PvdA - 5 seats* CDA - 5 seats* VVD - 5 seats...
, North Holland
North Holland
North Holland |West Frisian]]: Noard-Holland) is a province situated on the North Sea in the northwest part of the Netherlands. The provincial capital is Haarlem and its largest city is Amsterdam.-Geography:...
, halfway between Alkmaar
Alkmaar
Alkmaar is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands, in the province of Noord Holland. Alkmaar is well known for its traditional cheese market. For tourists, it is a popular cultural destination.-History:...
and Haarlem
Haarlem
Haarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland, the northern half of Holland, which at one time was the most powerful of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic...
.
His father was a small farmer, Jacob Willemsz. van Veen (whose portrait he painted). According to his biography, written by Karel van Mander, he was apprenticed to Cornelis Willemsz in Haarlem. Recalled after a time to the paternal homestead and put to the plough or the milking of cows, young Heemskerk took the first opportunity that offered to run away, and demonstrated his wish to leave home for ever by walking in a single day the 80 km which separate his native hamlet from the town of Delft
Delft
Delft is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland , the Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam and The Hague....
. There he studied under Jan Lucasz whom he soon deserted for his contemporary Jan van Scorel
Jan van Scorel
Jan van Scorel was an influential Dutch painter credited with the introduction of High Italian Renaissance art to the Netherlands.-Biography:He was born in Schoorl, north of Alkmaar and close to Egmond Abbey...
of Haarlem. Even today, many of Heemskerck's paintings are mistaken for work by van Scorel. He boarded at the home of the wealthy Pieter Jan Foppesz (the van Mander spelling is Pieter Ian Fopsen), curate of the Sint-Bavokerk
Sint-Bavokerk
The Grote Kerk or St.-Bavokerk is a Protestant church and former Catholic cathedral located on the central market square in the Dutch city of Haarlem...
. He knew him because he owned a lot of land in Heemskerck
Heemskerk
Heemskerk is a municipality and a town in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland.-Local government:The municipal council of Heemskerk consists of 25 seats, which are divided as follows:* PvdA - 5 seats* CDA - 5 seats* VVD - 5 seats...
. This is the same man whom he painted in a now famous family portrait, considered the first of its kind in a long line of Dutch family paintings.
In 1532 he started on a Grand Tour
Grand Tour
The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...
, with the purpose of seeing and painting the seven wonders of the world, and during which he visited the whole of northern and central Italy, stopping at Rome, where he had letters of introduction from van Scorel for the influential Dutch cardinal William of Enckenvoirt
William of Enckenvoirt
William of Enckevoirt, also spelled as Enckenvoirt was a Dutch Cardinal, bishop of Tortosa from 1524 to 1524, and bishop of Utrecht from 1529 to 1534.-Early life:...
. Before he left, he painted a scene of St. Luke painting the Virgin as an altarpiece for the St. Luke's altar in the Bavokerk. On the bottom it states in a tromp l'oeil paper that he painted it for his comrades. It is evidence of the facility with which he acquired the rapid execution of a scene-painter that he was selected to co-operate with Antonio da Sangallo the Younger
Antonio da Sangallo the Younger
thumb|250px|The church of Santa Maria di Loreto near the [[Trajan's Market]] in [[Rome]], considered Sangallo's masterwork.thumb|250px|View of St. Patrick's Well in [[Orvieto]]....
, Battista Franco and Francesco de' Rossi (Il Salviati)
Francesco de' Rossi (Il Salviati)
Francesco de' Rossi was an Italian Mannerist painter from Florence, also active in Rome. He is known by many names, prominently the adopted name Francesco Salviati or as Il Salviati, but also Francesco Rossi and Cecchino del Salviati.-Biography:Salviati was born and died in Florence...
to re-decorate the Porta San Sebastiano
Porta San Sebastiano
Porta San Sebastiano is the modern name for the ancient Porta Appia, a gate in the Aurelian Wall of Rome, through which the Via Appia, now the Via di Porta San Sebastiano at that location, left the city in a southeasterly direction. It was refortified at the end of the 4th century and was again...
at Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
as a triumphal arch (5 April 1536) in honour of Charles V
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V was ruler of the Holy Roman Empire from 1519 and, as Charles I, of the Spanish Empire from 1516 until his voluntary retirement and abdication in favor of his younger brother Ferdinand I and his son Philip II in 1556.As...
. Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari was an Italian painter, writer, historian, and architect, who is famous today for his biographies of Italian artists, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing.-Biography:...
, who saw the battle-pieces which Heemskerk then produced, said they were well composed and boldly executed.
Work
He painted the Seven Wonders, most notably his painting of the construction of the St. Peter's BasilicaSt. Peter's Basilica
The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter , officially known in Italian as ' and commonly known as Saint Peter's Basilica, is a Late Renaissance church located within the Vatican City. Saint Peter's Basilica has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world...
in Rome, and the Colosseum. On his return to the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
in 1536, he settled at Haarlem, where he soon (1540) became president of the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke, married twice (his first wife and child died during childbirth), and secured a large and lucrative practice.
Seven Wonders of the World
He earned money from his engravings on the seven wonders, and after he died printers still found it profitable to reproduce his engravings:He painted large altarpieces for his friend, the art mecenas and later martyr of the Protestant Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
, Cornelis Muys. Muys, (or Musius) had returned from a period in France to the Netherlands in 1538 and become prior of the St. Agatha cloister in Delft, which later became the Prinsenhof
Prinsenhof
The Prinsenhof in Delft in the Netherlands is an urban palace built in the Middle Ages as a monastery. Later it served as a residence for William the Silent. The building still exists and now houses the municipal museum...
. This lucrative and high profile work in Delft earned Heemskerck a commission for an altarpiece in the Nieuwe Kerk (Delft)
Nieuwe Kerk (Delft)
Nieuwe Kerk is a landmark Protestant church in Delft, Netherlands. The building is located on Delft Market Square , opposite to the City Hall . In 1584, William the Silent was entombed here in a mausoleum designed by Hendrick and Pieter de Keyser. Since then members of the House of Orange-Nassau...
for their Guild of St. Luke. In 1553 he became curate of the Sint-Bavokerk
Sint-Bavokerk
The Grote Kerk or St.-Bavokerk is a Protestant church and former Catholic cathedral located on the central market square in the Dutch city of Haarlem...
, where he served 22 years (up to the Protestant reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
). In 1572 he left Haarlem for Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
, to avoid the siege of Haarlem
Siege of Haarlem
The siege of Haarlem was an episode of the Eighty Years' War. From December 11, 1572 to July 13, 1573 an army of Philip II of Spain laid bloody siege to the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands, whose loyalties had begun wavering during the previous summer...
which the Spaniards laid to the place. In Amsterdam he made a will which has been preserved, and 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 which still exists in Catholic Holland that a marriage so celebrated would secure the peace of the dead within the tomb.
The works of Heemskerk are still very numerous. Adam and Eve and St. Luke painting the Likeness of the Virgin and Child in presence of a poet crowned with ivy leaves, and a parrot in a cage - an altar-piece in the gallery of Haarlem, and the Ecce Homo in the museum of Ghent, are characteristic works of the period preceding Heemskerk's visit to Italy. An altar-piece executed for St Laurence of Alkmaar
Alkmaar
Alkmaar is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands, in the province of Noord Holland. Alkmaar is well known for its traditional cheese market. For tourists, it is a popular cultural destination.-History:...
in 1538-1541, composed of at least a dozen large panels, which including portraits of historical figures is, since the Reformation, preserved in Linkoping Cathedral, Sweden, giving us a clue to his style after his return from the south.
In its absence we have a Crucifixion executed for the Riches Claires at Ghent (now in the Ghent Museum) in 1543, and the altar-piece of the Drapers' Company at Haarlem, now in the gallery of the Hague, and finished in 1546. In these we observe that Heemskerk studied and repeated the forms which he had seen at Rome in the works of Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
and Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
, and in Lombardy in the frescoes of Andrea Mantegna
Andrea Mantegna
Andrea Mantegna was an Italian painter, a student of Roman archeology, and son in law of Jacopo Bellini. Like other artists of the time, Mantegna experimented with perspective, e.g., by lowering the horizon in order to create a sense of greater monumentality...
and Giulio Romano
Giulio Romano
Giulio Romano was an Italian painter and architect. A pupil of Raphael, his stylistic deviations from high Renaissance classicism help define the 16th-century style known as Mannerism...
. But he never forgot the while his Dutch origin or the models first presented to him by Schoreel and Mabuse.
As late as 1551 his memory still served him to produce a copy from Raphael's Madonna of Loreto (Frans Hals Museum). A Judgment of Momus, dated 1561, in the Berlin Museum, proves him to have been well acquainted with anatomy, but incapable of selection and insensible of grace, bold of hand and prone to daring though tawdry contrasts of color, and fond of florid architecture. Two altar-pieces which he finished for churches at Delft in 1551 and 1559, one complete (St. Luke painting the Virgin), the other a fragment, in the museum of Haarlem, a third of 1551 in the Brussels Museum, representing Golgotha, the Crucifixion, the Flight into Egypt, Christ on the Mount, and scenes from the lives of St. Bernard and St. Benedict, are all fairly representative of his style.
Parrots
In his depiction of St. Luke painting the Virgin, which Heemskerck painted twice for two painter's guilds, there is some confusion in the literature about a parrot. In both paintings he painted a parrot, but the parrot in a cage has been sawn off the first painting and is no longer visible.Besides there is a Crucifixion in the Hermitage of St 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 and Copenhagen.
Legacy
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 seven wonders of the world, that were subsequently spread as prints. Karel van Mander devoted six pages to his biography in his Schilder-boeck.Further Studies
- Tatjana Bartsch, "Transformierte Transformation. Zur 'fortuna' der Antikenstudien Maarten van Heemskercks im 17. Jahrhundert," in Ernst Osterkamp (hg), Wissensaesthetik: Wissen ueber die Antike in aesthetischer Vermittlung (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008) (Transformationen der Antike, 6), 113-159.