COV.FEB10.v.1:cover.june.pp.

corr 12/01/2010 10:36 Page 1

FEBRUARY
2010
T H E B U RLINGTON MAG AZI NE

Dutch and Flemish art

A reunited panel by Quentin Metsys of ‘Christ blessing’ and the ‘Virgin in Adoration’
Jan Gossaert: the sitter for his Washington merchant; the patron for his London ‘Adoration’
NO .

Drawings by Wouter Crabeth II | More on Rubens, Van Dyck and the Antwerp sketchbook
1283

Ter Brugghen’s ‘Bagpipe player’ acquired by the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Botticelli | Wouwerman | Avercamp | Dutch paintings in Geneva | Maíno | Rodin/Matisse | Hockney | Orozco
VOL . C L II

USA $35·50 February 2010 £15.50/€ 24

FEB.Contents:cont.nov.pp.corr 19/01/2010 17:03 Page 1

VOLUME CLII • NUMBER 1283 • FEBRUARY 2010

EDITORIAL
111 Florence 1900. The Quest for Arcadia,
75 Exhibitions in 2010
B. Roeck
by ALISON BROWN
ARTICLES
111 Edvard Munch, Complete Paintings,
76 A rediscovered prototype by Quinten Metsys: G. Woll
‘Christ blessing with the Virgin in adoration’ by JILL LLOYD
by KIFFY STAINER - HUTCHINS , SIMON WATNEY and 112 James Ensor. The complete paintings,
HUGO PLATT
X. Tricot
82 The sitter in Jan Gossaert’s ‘Portrait of a merchant’ by PATRICK FLORIZOONE
in the National Gallery of Art, Washington: 113 Chagall and the Artists of the Russian
Jan Snoeck (c.1510–85) Jewish Theater, S. Tumarkin
by HERMAN T h. COLENBRANDER p.83
Goodman, ed.
86 The patron of Jan Gossaert’s ‘Adoration of the Kings’ by CHRISTINA LODDER
in the National Gallery, London 114 Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The
by LORNE CAMPBELL Dynamics of Portraiture, A. Collins
90 Three drawings attributed to Wouter Pietersz Crabeth II Goodyear and J.W. McManus, eds.
by CATHERINE CRAFT
by XANDER VAN ECK
115 In & Out of Amsterdam: Travels in
94 Rubens’s lost ‘pocketbook’: some new thoughts
Conceptual Art, 1960–1976, C. Cherix
by DAVID JAFFÉ
by TON GEERTS
99 Hendrick ter Brugghen’s ‘Bagpipe player’ acquired by the
National Gallery of Art, Washington
by ARTHUR K . WHEELOCK J r. 115 PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED
p.91

BOOKS
EXHIBITIONS
101 Pre-Eyckian Panel Paintings in the Low Countries,
C. Stroo, ed. 117 David Hockney
by JAN PIET FILEDT KOK by MARINA VAIZEY

102 Hans Memling: Master Painter in Fifteenth-Century 119 Matisse and Rodin
Bruges, B.G. Lane by CATHERINE LAMPERT
by TILL-HOLGER BORCHERT
121 Jean Baptiste Vanmour
103 Conrad Laib. Ein spätgotischer Maler aus Schwaben by YURIKO JACKALL
in Salzburg, A.-F. Köllermann p.119
by MARK EVANS
122 Hendrick Avercamp
by QUENTIN BUVELOT
103 The Netherlandish Image after Iconoclasm 1566–1672:
Material Religion in the Dutch Golden Age, 124 Beyond the Dutch
M.M. Mochizuki by TONY GODFREY
by SIMON WATNEY 125 Philips Wouwerman
105 Die Zeichnungen von Adam Elsheimer: Kritischer by LUUK PIJL
Katalog, J. Jacoby 126 Botticelli
by LUUK PIJL by SCOTT NETHERSOLE
106 Painting and Politics in Northern Europe: Van Eyck, 128 Johann Heinrich Schönfeld
Bruegel, Rubens and their Contemporaries, M.D. Carroll by OLIVER TOSTMANN
by MARK MEADOW
129 Contemporary art in Munich
106 Rembrandt’s Faith. Church and Temple in the Dutch by CATHERINE CRAFT
Golden Age, S. Perlove and L. Silver p.117
by XANDER VAN ECK 131 Dutch and Flemish paintings in Geneva
by JESSICA STEVENS-CAMPOS
108 Jan van Noordt. Painter of History and Portraits in
Amsterdam, D.A. de Witt 133 Juan Bautista Maíno
by ERIK SPAANS by PETER CHERRY

109 Vermeer: The Complete Paintings, W. Liedtke 134 Gabriel Orozco

by QUENTIN BUVELOT by MORGAN FALCONER

109 The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. Collection of

Dutch Paintings XVII–XIX Centuries, M. Senenko
by MARJORIE E. WIESEMAN 136 CALENDAR
110 In Another Light. Danish Painting in the Nineteenth
Century, P.G. Berman 140 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
by JAN GORM MADSEN p.130

Cover illustration: Portrait of a merchant, here identified as Portrait of Jan Snoeck, by Jan Gossaert. c.1530. Panel, 63.6 by 47.5 cm. (National Gallery of Art, Washington).
Illustrated in this issue on p.83.
FEB.Masthead:Masthead 18/01/2010 16:29 Page 1

VOLUME CLII • NUMBER 1283 • FEBRUARY 2010

Editor: Richard Shone Managing Director: Kate Trevelyan Kee

Deputy Editor: Bart Cornelis Advertising & Development Director: Mark Scott
Associate Editor: Jane Martineau Design & Production Manager : Chris Hall
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FEB.Editorial:Layout 1 19/01/2010 09:42 Page 739
Editorial
Exhibitions in 2010
OVER THE LAST FEW WEEKS a mass of press releases and emails
have announced exhibition plans for 2010 and, with additional
sleuthing, we have gathered together some of the more out-
standing museum shows for a highly selective overview of the
year. It has to be said, however, that our pulse has not quickened;
there are many of considerable interest and potential enjoyment
but few that break new ground or that venture beyond Western
European painting and sculpture. While scholarly shows tend to
be of the smaller, in-focus variety and are often all the better for
it, budget cuts have bitten deeply into major loan shows and the
usual tranche of blockbusters (as they began to do last year).
Much more affordable ‘in house’ exhibitions have become the
order of the day. There is no harm in this – indeed it is welcome;
a fascinating example which blends scholarly connoisseurship
and technical expertise will be the National Gallery’s Fakes,
Mistakes and Discoveries (30th June to 10th September); a special
issue of this Magazine in June will coincide with this. A modest
appetiser, currently (but only to 7th February) at the Victoria and
Albert Museum, is Fakes and Forgeries in which works by the
notorious ‘Bolton forger’ Shaun Greenhalgh are displayed along-
side examples of police methods of detection and investigation.
Such methods might well come in handy at the numerous
celebrations marking the four-hundredth anniversary of the
death of Caravaggio. We cannot yet vouch for the quality of
works that will be displayed under his name but two exhibitions
in Italy in particular appear to be showing some works by the
artist, one opening in Rome this month at the Scuderie
(18th February to 13th June) and another of Caravaggio e i
Caravaggeschi, to be held in Florence at the Uffizi and the Pitti
simultaneously (22nd May to 17th October). Further exhi-
bitions celebrating round-figure anniversaries are thin on the
ground. The five-hundredth anniversary of the death of Botti-
celli was marked a little prematurely by the Städel Museum,
Stuttgart, and the resulting show is reviewed in this issue on
pp.126–28. And the birth of Jacopo Bassano in, probably, 1510
is celebrated in Bassano del Grappa in an international loan show
running from 6th March to 2nd June. But as far as we know the
deaths in 1910 of Holman Hunt and Félix Nadar are not being
commemorated, although Le Douanier Rousseau, who died
in the same year, is remembered in a fine loan exhibition
currently at the Fondation Beyeler, Basel (to 9th May).
Modestly conceived monographic exhibitions are sure to
reveal unexpected works and new scholarship. They include the
London National Gallery’s look at the Danish painter Christen
Købke (17th March to 13th June; then in Edinburgh); Gabriel
Metsu at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin (4th September
to 5th December; then in Amsterdam and Washington); the
impressive survey of sculpture by Houdon (Musée Fabre,
Montpellier; 16th March to 27th June); Sir Thomas Lawrence
at the National Portrait Gallery, London (21st October to 23rd
January); the Hamburger Kunsthalle’s retrospective devoted to
Philippe Otto Runge (1st November to 31st January); and Otto
Dix is at the Neue Galerie, New York (11th March to 30th
August). Already seen in Paris, the show devoted to the influ-
ential late work of Renoir is now installed at the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art (to 9th May; then in Philadelphia);
there is a full-scale retrospective devoted to Kirchner (Städel
Museum, Frankfurt; 23rd April to 25th July); the crucial period
1913–17 in Matisse’s work is explored at the Chicago Art Insti-
tute (20th March to 20th June; then at MoMA, New York); and
the Arshile Gorky retrospective, recently in Philadelphia, is at
Tate Modern (10th February to 3rd May).
The Burlington’s March issue contains articles on Sienese art
to coincide with the substantial exhibition of the arts in Siena in
the first half of the fifteenth century (in the galleries of S. Maria
della Scala and elsewhere; 26th March to 10th July). The show
pays particular attention to Jacopo della Quercia, Donatello,
Gentile da Fabriano and Sassetta. Other exhibitions of Italian art
include Bronzino’s drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York (to 18th April), and his paintings at Palazzo
Strozzi, Florence (24th September to 23rd January); the British
Museum’s Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings
(22nd April to 25th July); Salvator Rosa at the Dulwich Picture
Gallery (15th September to 28th November); Canaletto and his
contemporaries at the National Gallery, London (13th October
to 16th January); and, moving into the last century, a major
exploration of the early career and European influence of
Giorgio de Chirico, which will be at the Palazzo Strozzi,
Florence, from 26th February to 18th July. Italian modernism is
well to the fore, alongside German and French art, in the New
York Guggenheim’s show Chaos and Classicism: 1918–1936 (1st
October to 9th January).
Two more general anniversaries remind us of the extraor-
dinary influence of the Russian Ballet and of Post-Impressionism
in the early twentieth century. Several shows have already been
devoted in 2009 to Diaghilev’s company and its revolutionary
designs for the opera and ballet. In England it made its first great
sensation in 1911, and the Victoria and Albert Museum is
mounting a substantial exhibition, Serge Diaghilev and the Golden
Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909–1929, running from 25th Septem-
ber to 9th January. But no exhibition appears to have been
planned to mark one of the cardinal shows of the twentieth
century in Britain, Manet and the Post-Impressionists, held at the
Grafton Galleries, London, from 8th November 1910 to 15th
January 1911. However, two exhibitions at either end of 2010
remind us of the impact of two of the best-represented artists in
that show. The Real van Gogh: the Artist and His Letters is already
on view at the Royal Academy of Arts (to 18th April), marking
the superb publication of Van Gogh’s complete correspondence;
and Tate Modern is holding a major show (30th September
to 16th January) devoted to Gauguin, who was the first of the
Post-Impressionists to have gained some favour in Edwardian
London. We shall publish a special issue on aspects of Post-
Impressionism in December, mindful of the generally supportive
position the Magazine assumed in the famously turbulent recep-
tion of the Grafton Galleries exhibition.
the burlington m a g a z i n e • cLiI • february 2010 75
MA.FEB.STAINER.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 19/01/2010 16:58 Page 76
A rediscovered prototype by Quinten Metsys:
‘Christ blessing with the Virgin in adoration’
by KIFFY STAINER-HUTCHINS, SIMON WATNEY and HUGO PLATT
1. Christ blessing, here attributed to Quinten Metsys. c.1491–1505. Panel, 37.6 by 30.4
cm. (Holy Trinity Church, Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire).
THE WORKSHOP OF Quinten Metsys (1465/66–1530) produced
a number of variant versions of paintings of Christ blessing and
the Virgin in adoration, some of them diptychs, with varying
degrees of participation by Metsys himself. His influence was
We wish to thank the following people for their help: the Revd Canon William
Matthews and his parish (Holy Trinity Church, Bradford-on-Avon), Lady Juliet
Tadgell, Lorne Campbell, Rachel Billinge and Cathy Metzger, as well as Nancy
Allred, Konrad Bernheimer, Xanthe Brooke, David Bull, Nichola Costaras, Yolande
Decker, Joe Fronek, Amanda Gray, Johnny van Haeften, David Koetser, Alastair
Laing, Cindy Pardoe, Caroline Platt, Karen Sanig, Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Alice
Tetlow, Alexandra Walker, Tim Warner-Johnson, Lucy Whitaker, Baroness
Willoughby de Eresby and Martin Wyld.
1 A technical publication illustrating this study in more depth is planned in the near
future.
2 Other workshop and later versions and copies of the Tadgell Virgin include:
Virgin in adoration (Los Angeles County Museum of Art); Virgin (Priesterseminar,
Salzburg); Virgin at prayer (private collection, Leicestershire; see M.J. Friedländer:
Early Netherlandish Painting, VII: Quentin Massys, pl.13–5c); and Virgin (Wallraf-
Richartz-Museum, Cologne). Versions and copies of the Bradford-on-Avon Christ
include: Christ blessing (Suermondt Museum, Aachen); Salvator Mundi (North
Carolina Museum of Art); Christ blessing (Grosvenor Museum, Chester); Christ bless-
ing (Thomas Plume Library, Maldon, Essex); and Christ blessing (with an identical
76 f e b r u ary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
2. The Virgin in adoration, by Quinten Metsys. c.1491–1505. Panel, 34.7 by
26.5 cm. (Trustees of the Rt. Hon. Olive, Countess Fitzwilliam’s Chattels
Settlement; Lady Juliet Tadgell).
such that there are also many variants by artists in his circle, as
well as many later copies. In January 2006 the present writers
discovered a small painting depicting Christ blessing, hanging in
Holy Trinity Church, Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire. Although
morse; sale, Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, 19th to 21st February 1957, lot 411;
present whereabouts unknown). A version of the combined Bradford-on-
Avon/Tadgell image can be seen in the Praying Mary and the blessing Christ (where-
abouts unknown; Kaufmann sale, Berlin, 4th December 1917, lot 84). A now lost
copy of the Antwerp Christ was once owned by Nicholas Rockox; see J. Denucé:
The Antwerp Art-Galleries: Inventories of the Art Collections in Antwerp in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries, The Hague 1932, p.89. Versions of the Prado pair include a
Christ (sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 24th January 2008, lot 6) and a separated pair with
the figures reversed in Christ as saviour (Kunstmuseum, Winterthur) and Virgin at
prayer (private collection, Germany).
3 The reverse of the panel is inscribed with ‘5965’ in faint pencil and ‘5137’ in blue
crayon. On the reverse of the frame is ‘5965’ in white chalk and ‘No 28’ in light
orange/red wax(?) crayon.
4 Label on reverse of frame reads ‘Leonard Koetser / Old Master Paintings / 13
Duke Street St James’s / London, SW1 / Telephone Whitehall 9349 / ‘The Virgin
Adoring’ by Quentin Matsys. / catalogue no. 10. / Spring Exhibition, 1960’.
Additional paper label on reverse of frame reads ‘143’. Ink stamp on reverse of cradle
(Christie’s stock number) reads ‘HS 558’.
MA.FEB.STAINER.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 19/01/2010 16:58 Page 77
clearly early Netherlandish, the painting (Fig.1), hereafter called
the Bradford-on-Avon Christ, was displayed in a nineteenth-
century-style frame which bore an erroneous attribution to
the Spanish painter Luis de Morales (1509–86). However, the
exceptionally fine detailing and brushwork appeared typical of
Quinten Metsys.
Upon further examination, the Christ blessing (unusually
comprising two short horizontal planks) appeared to have been
cut down along the right edge, cropping Christ’s left shoulder
and rendering the image spatially imbalanced on that side. It was
later established that rather than being one half of a pair or of
a diptych, the painting was originally the left half of a single
rectangular panel of which the missing right-hand side was found
to be a figure of the Virgin in adoration which is now in the
collection of the Trustees of the Rt. Hon. Olive, Countess
Fitzwilliam’s Chattels Settlement (Lady Juliet Tadgell), hereafter
called the Tadgell Virgin (Fig.2).
The technical evidence confirming this is set out in the
Appendix to this article,1 and the comparisons made are restrict-
ed to those paintings which most closely relate to this discovery:
the Virgin at prayer (placed on the left) and Christ as saviour
of c.1505 by Quinten Metsys and workshop in Antwerp, here-
after called the Antwerp pair (Figs.8 and 9); the Christ and the
Virgin (placed on the right as with the Tadgell Virgin) of
c.1510–25 from the workshop of Quinten Metsys in London,
hereafter called the London pair (Figs.10 and 11); and to a lesser
degree the much later unaltered diptych of the Virgin at prayer
(placed on the left) and Christ as saviour by Quinten Metsys from
Madrid, hereafter called the Prado diptych, which is signed and
dated 1529 on the reverse.2
Thus far tracing the provenance of the Bradford-on-Avon
Christ 3 and the Tadgell Virgin 4 has proved difficult.5 The only
information that can be firmly established is that the Christ
blessing belonged to Major Thomas Clarence Edward Goff, who
in 1940 gave it to Holy Trinity Church, Bradford-on-Avon,6
and that the Virgin in adoration was with the Leonard Koester
Gallery, London, from whom it was acquired in May 1960 by
Baron Fermor-Hesketh; it was put up by for sale by an anony-
mous source at Christie’s, London, on 8th July 1988 (lot 131),7
and purchased later that year by the current owner.
The original combined panel of Christ blessing with the Virgin in
adoration (Fig.3) would have measured approximately 38 by 61
cm. and would have been set within an engaged frame. In the
Tadgell painting, the Virgin’s head is slightly downcast and
turned with her shoulders in three-quarters profile to the left.
5 Nothing has emerged from extensive searches at the National Archives, National
Trust archives (Goff bequest), Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby archives,
Royal Archives, Leonard Koetser Gallery archives, Witt Library, Rijksbureau voor
Kunsthistorische Documentatie and Getty Provenance Index. A search of the
Getty Provenance Index for similarly titled works listed under Metsys found
nothing, but for those under Morales there were a number of possibilities which,
although poorly described, might be worth researching further, as Luis de Morales
used to be a popular attributional dumping ground for unassigned religious works
in this vein.
6 Major Goff was the great-grandson of William IV and the actress Dorothy
Jordon. He lived at The Courts, Holt, near Trowbridge, Wiltshire, and formerly
at Carrowe Park, County Roscommon, Connaught, Ireland. In 1943 Goff
bequeathed The Courts to the National Trust but continued to live there until
his death in 1949. Various family obituaries and letters to The Times between 1949
and 1975 record a Royal inheritance that included ‘furniture, pictures, letters and
notebooks which had once belonged to William IV’. If there is any basis to this
claim it is likely that these items were part of William IV’s private collection at
Bushy House. Among Major Goff’s collection was a picture by Michael Dahl, A
A REUNITED PANEL BY METSYS
3. Reconstruction of the original state of Figs.1 and 2.
Therefore, in the original composition her head would have
been inclined towards Christ, with her hands, which are held
together in prayer, directed towards him. The background of
both paintings, beneath differing and, in places, misleading,
restoration, is covered with gold, flecked with a pattern of
reddish-brown spots and shading. Raised golden rays radiate
from behind the heads of both Christ and the Virgin to the top
and sides of the panels. It seems probable that the two paintings
were separated long ago and, while their original construction
and matching technique appear highly typical of the period and
origin, as a result of later restorations the two fragments now
appear rather different.
Christ’s mantle is clasped at the base of the neck with a morse
of gold set with rubies, pearls and other precious stones. In design
it closely resembles examples of similar late Gothic jewellery in
the celebrated painting by Petrus Christus of A goldsmith in his
shop, possibly St Eligius (1449; Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York). The impastoed detailing of Christ’s morse and the
Virgin’s pearls and robe edging are extremely finely rendered
(Figs.5 and 7), using a combination of raised dots and carefully
positioned painted highlights and shadowing that give a brilliant
three-dimensional effect. The exceptionally fine depiction of the
jewellery in particular may perhaps be identified as by the hand
of the master rather than that of his workshop; compare, for
example, Christ’s morse with the large brooch of Metsys’s
Grotesque old woman (c.1513; National Gallery, London). Addi-
tionally, the delicately painted eyelashes involve fine ‘beaded’
Horse Guards trumpeter, which had been inherited from his grandfather, the Revd
Lord Augustus Fitzclarence, an illegitimate son of William IV. See M.F. Sandars:
The Life and Times of Queen Adelaide, London 1915, pp.287–88; Lady Cecile Goff:
letter to The Times (17th December 1928), p.10; C. Hussey: ‘The Court [sic], Holt,
Wiltshire – I and II’, Country Life (1st and 8th January 1943); obituary of Major
T.C.E. Goff in The Times (15th March 1949), p.7; and latest wills for Mr Tom Goff
(Major T.C.E. Goff’s son) in The Times (2nd July 1975), p.18. The National
Archives at Kew may well have the actual codicils to Queen Adelaide’s will listing
the items left to the Fitzclarences. The Revd A. Richardson in the Holy Trinity
Church Records of 1940, p.98, wrote: ‘In June a picture, Head of Christ, was
presented by Col. Goff of Holt. hung in the North Aisle’. ‘Colonel’ appears to have
been a temporary promotion given to Major Goff to reflect his activities as military
attaché to Major-General Lord Athlone in the Second World War.
7 The Koetser spring exhibition catalogue of 1960, p.10, refers to the painting
as ‘The Virgin Adoring’. The painting was also similarly advertised (with image) in
the Connoisseur (April 1960), ‘Collection L. Koetser, London’. The Christie’s sale
catalogue of 1988 calls the painting Virgin at prayer, comparing it with the Antwerp
Virgin and giving a full attribution to Metsys.
the burlington m a g a z i n e • february 2010 • clIi 77
MA.FEB.STAINER.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 19/01/2010 16:58 Page 78
A REUNITED PANEL BY METSYS
4. Detail of
Fig.1.
5. Detail of
Fig.1.
strokes (possibly in a water-based medium), as a finishing touch
(Figs.4 and 6; the Virgin’s lashes are slightly abraded or smeared).
Although the beaded brushstroke technique is not exclusive to
Metsys, it is skilfully executed here and the same hand can be
seen at work on the eyelashes of both the Antwerp pair and
Prado diptych, as well as on the hairs of the old man’s fur collar
in the Ill-matched lovers (c.1520–25; National Gallery of Art,
Washington), but not on the London pair.8
The imagery of Christ blessing and the Virgin Mary in
Netherlandish painting has been much discussed in recent years.9
The presence of the adoring Virgin in prayer on Christ’s
left-hand side made the subject suitable for private devotion and
the theme spawned a large number of variants which attest to its
popularity.10 The most direct antecedent for the format of the
original image is Christ blessing with the Virgin at prayer from
Robert Campin’s workshop, which moreover is not a diptych.
The Philadelphia painting has long been recognised as an
important precursor for Metsys’s various diptychs of Christ and
the Virgin.11 The discovery of the Bradford-on-Avon/Tadgell
painting serves to demonstrate further how directly Metsys drew
on Campin’s composition as a model – showing Christ and the
Virgin in the same proximity, the Virgin behind Christ’s left
shoulder and using the same hand gestures, as well as adopting
8 See notes 13, 14 and 28 below. See also J.O. Hand, C.A. Metzger and R. Spronk:
exh. cat. Prayers and Portraits; Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych, Washington
(National Gallery of Art) and Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten)
2006–07, pp.109 and 282–84.
9 See G. Finaldi, ed.: exh. cat. The Image of Christ, London (National Gallery) 2000,
pp.94–96; and Hand, Metzger and Spronk, op. cit. (note 8).
10 H. van Os: exh. cat. The Art of Devotion in the Late Middle Ages in Europe, 1300–1500,
Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1994–95, pp.40–43.
11 S. Kemperdick and J. Sander, eds.: exh. cat. The Master of Flémalle and Rogier van
der Weyden, Frankfurt (Städel Museum) and Berlin (Gemäldegalerie) 2008–09; see
also Hand, Metzger and Spronk, op. cit. (note 8), p.110.
12 Kemperdick and Sander, op. cit. (note 11), p.216.
78 f e b r u ary 2010 • clIi • the burlington magazine
6. Detail of
Fig.2.
7. Detail of Fig.2.
the device of placing Christ’s foreshortened left hand on the edge
of the frame, so that it had the appearance of reaching beyond the
confines of the picture plane into the viewer’s space.
Jochen Sander has concluded that the Philadelphia picture ‘is
likely to have been painted in the 1430s’, by the same artist
in Campin’s workshop who was responsible at much the
same time for a fragment of the Crucifixion of the bad thief (Städel
Museum, Frankfurt) from a lost altarpiece. Furthermore, he
argues that the Philadelphia painting ‘established an independ-
ent Netherlandish tradition, which in the course of time would
separate the two figures again, assigning each to his or her own
half of  a diptych’.12 The Bradford-on-Avon/Tadgell painting
strongly suggests, however, that the Campin workshop’s inno-
vative early fifteenth-century combination of Christ blessing
and the Virgin at prayer within a single picture retained its own
autonomous currency within later Netherlandish art, at least in
Metsys’s studio.
13 Unlike the Bradford-on-Avon Christ, the head of the Antwerp Christ is now
surrounded by a stronger corona of light, and Christ holds a delicate filigree-cross in
his left hand, while the Antwerp Virgin now wears a crown. Recent technical
studies by Catherine Metzger show that the two Antwerp panels have been much
altered from their initial format; see Hand, Metzger and Spronk, op. cit. (note 8),
pp.110–15 and 283–84. They were made into a diptych, to which end the larger
Christ panel, originally created as a ‘Salvator Mundi’, was reduced and converted into
a ‘Christ blessing’. The original ‘Virgin of Sorrows’, although always intended as part
of a diptych format, was changed during painting to the ‘Queen of Heaven’.
Metzger concludes that Metsys himself had a major hand in the painting of both
pictures, but the workshop may well have participated in the reformatting and
preparatory work necessary to convert a stand-alone painting (i.e. the Christ) into a
MA.FEB.STAINER.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 19/01/2010 16:58 Page 79
8. Virgin at prayer,
by Quinten
Metsys and
workshop. c.1505.
Panel, 40.9 by 30.6
cm. (Koninklijk
Museum voor
Schone Kunsten,
Antwerp).
The exceptionally subtle modulation and colouring in the
Bradford-on-Avon and Tadgell paintings clearly reveals Metsys’s
own hand, particularly when compared with the universally
accepted Virgin at prayer and Christ as saviour in Antwerp
(Figs.8 and 9). However, not only are the respective positions of
the Christ and Virgin reversed in the Antwerp pair, but it has
recently been discovered that they were originally independent
paintings which were later adapted to form a diptych.13 Stylist-
ically the Bradford-on-Avon/Tadgell paintings also display a
palpable intimacy and freshness that is not so evident in other
variants, and as they were originally combined in one single
picture plane (a feature of design that began to wane as the
diptych became more popular), it seems that they may be
marginally earlier in date than the Antwerp pair.
Both the Bradford-on-Avon/Tadgell and Antwerp paintings
are certainly of much higher quality than the Christ and Virgin in
London (Figs.10 and 11), which are currently accepted as later
products of Metsys’s workshop.14 Hitherto most art historians
have regarded the London panels as variants of the Antwerp pair.
However, Christ and his mother in the combined Bradford-on-
Avon/Tadgell painting share the same relative positions as the
London pair, which similarly place Christ on the left and the
Virgin on the right (as viewed), and which are also lit from the left
– as in the majority of accepted works of Christ and the Virgin
from the Metsys workshop (the exceptions being the Antwerp
pair and the much later Prado diptych). The details of the Virgin’s
dress in the many workshop versions are also closer to that of the
Tadgell Virgin than in the Antwerp Virgin (Fig.8). Thus it now
seems more likely that the London paintings are in fact direct
diptych; thus the representation of the pair in the Franz Franken II’s painting of a
Banquet in the house of burgomaster Rockox of c.1630–35 (Alte Pinakothek, Madrid),
approximately 120 years later, is probably correct; communications between Stainer-
Hutchins and Metzger, January 2009.
14 As with the Antwerp pair, and following a recent technical survey by Campbell,
Billinge and Jill Dunkerton, it now appears that the London panels did not start
life together either but were altered to form a diptych some time later. Campbell
also concludes that while assessment is hampered by extensive old restoration
(including a crude re-gilding of the backgrounds), the two paintings appear to be
by different assistants active within the Metsys workshop; communications
between Stainer-Hutchins and Campbell and Billinge between October 2007 and
January 2009.
A REUNITED PANEL BY METSYS
9. Christ as saviour, by
Quinten Metsys and
workshop. c.1505.
Panel, 40.9 by 30.8 cm.
(Koninklijk Museum
voor Schone Kunsten,
Antwerp).
workshop versions after the Bradford-on-Avon/Tadgell painting
rather than a reversed image variant after the Antwerp pair.15
The morse in the Bradford-on-Avon Christ (Fig.5) is very
similar to the one on the London Christ, though larger in
relation to the overall composition and more brilliantly detailed.
It is also relatively similar to the morse in the Antwerp version,
but seemingly finer in execution. The elaborate raised painting
of these morses seems to derive directly from Jan van Eyck,
perhaps mediated through the later workshop practice of Hans
Memling. It is instructive to compare it to the equally brilliantly
painted jewellery and other metalwork in Metsys’s celebrated
painting of The banker and his wife of 1514 (Musée du Louvre,
Paris), as well as in other autograph works by this artist – includ-
ing the Grotesque old woman as previously mentioned.
The stylistic and technical comparison of the combined
Bradford-on-Avon/Tadgell painting with similar accepted
works by Metsys, particularly the Antwerp pair, establishes a
solid case for the work to be considered the product of Metsys’s
own hand.16 Larry Silver dated the Antwerp paintings to the
years c.1491–150717 but more recent research points out that
they are now almost universally accepted as from around 1505.18
We would therefore suggest a similar or perhaps even earlier date
for the Bradford-on-Avon/Tadgell painting, which stylistically
seems likely to have been painted before the Antwerp pair and
thus conceivably completed between 1491 (shortly after Metsys’s
entry into the Guild of St Luke) and 1505. However, this
Antwerp Mannerist adaptation of an essentially conventional late
medieval devotional image seems to speak more of the very early
sixteenth century than the late fifteenth.
15 L. von Baldass: ‘Gotik und Renaissance im Werke des Quinten Metsys’, Jahrbuch
der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, NS 7 (1933), pp.137–81, esp. p.166, con-
tended that the London panels were workshop copies after lost early works by Metsys
and that the Antwerp panels were variants produced by him at a slightly later date.
16 It is also important to note that in 1960 Leonard Koetser believed the Tadgell
Virgin to be by the hand of Metsys, not his studio (communication between Stainer-
Hutchins and David Koetser, 4th November 2008, and so did Christie’s in 1988 (see
note 7 above).
17 L. Silver: The paintings of Quinten Massys (with a Catalogue Raisonné), New York
1984, pp.192–99.
18 Hand, Metzger and Spronk, op. cit. (note 8), p.110, although the alterations may
be slightly later (see note 13 above).
the burlington m a g a z i n e • february 2010 • clIi 79
MA.FEB.STAINER.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 19/01/2010 16:58 Page 80
A REUNITED PANEL BY METSYS
10. Christ, by the workshop
of Quinten Metsys.
c.1510–25. Panel, 60.2
by 34.6 cm. (National
Gallery, London).
Finally and perhaps most importantly, we should ask whether
the Bradford-on-Avon/Tadgell painting should be considered as
the original early prototype for all the closely related subsequent
works by Metsys and/or his workshop. The possibility of a
missing compositional prototype was first proposed in 1933 by
Ludwig von Baldass, who suggested that a pair of panels once
existed earlier in date than the Antwerp pair with the position of
the figures reversed:
. . . not too far removed in date from the two large altarpieces
are the beautiful heads of the Virgin praying and of Christ
blessing in the Antwerp gallery. Both pictures are obviously
fragments. The complete compositions – Christ facing the
same way, Mary facing the opposite way – have been
preserved in the workshop copies in the National Gallery,
London, although these differ in various details. The style
of these workshop pictures is also slightly more archaic. One
may reasonably assume that they go back to lost originals by
Metsys and that the artist himself then painted the versions in
the Antwerp Museum a little later.19
In concurring with this theory, Lorne Campbell concludes that
the lost originals were probably created by Metsys early in his
career and that the Antwerp panels were probably the earliest
variations on this theme.20
In Silver’s discussion of the Antwerp pair, he observes that
both this ‘diptych’ and Van Eyck’s Ghent altarpiece, the work
which he considered to be the chief model for the Antwerp pair,
display the Virgin on God’s and Christ’s right-hand side (our left
19 Baldass, op. cit. (note 15), p.166.
20 Campbell adds that Metsys’s workshop may have continued over a long period to
produce further versions, including the London panels, but at the end of his life he
painted the very different Prado diptych, which he signed and dated 1529 on
the reverse; communications between Stainer-Hutchins and Campbell between
October 2007 and January 2009.
21 See Silver, op. cit. (note 17), p.196, who explains that in terms of heraldic
form, when standing behind the shield, the ‘correct’ or more normal related
positions for Christ and the Virgin is to have Christ in dexter (right) and the Virgin
80 f e b r u ary 2010 • clIi • the burlington magazine
11. Virgin, by the workshop of
Quinten Metsys. c.1510–25.
Panel, 60.3 by 34.7 cm.
(National Gallery, London).
as viewed) – this being an aberration to the heraldic norm but by
no means iconographically incorrect as it still places the Virgin in
an intercessionary role. Both the Philadelphia painting and the
Bradford-on-Avon/Tadgell painting, together with most of
Metsys’s many workshop versions and copies of this theme, as
well as his altarpiece of the Holy Trinity with the Virgin (Alte
Pinakothek, Munich), all show the related positions in their
reversed, more conventional norm – that is, the Virgin on
Christ’s left (our right as viewed) in her supplicatory role. Silver’s
main argument against Baldass’s theory is that there is no neces-
sary reason to assume an earlier version than the Antwerp pair
since the chief difference between this diptych and the many
subsequent versions and copies is merely a ‘correction’ of the
figures’ relative positions.21
However, the original state of the Bradford-on-Avon/Tadgell
painting undoubtedly strengthens Baldass’s hypothesis of a lost
earlier version of the subject with Mary on Christ’s left (our
right), although the prototype now appears to be a single panel
painting rather than a pendant pair or a diptych. This discovery
also reinforces the strong probability that this image played a
determining role as a model for other surviving variants and
copies, especially those in which the Virgin is placed on the right.
Using a variety of such models, copies or variants would have
been produced which could be later paired and adjusted to suit
individual patrons. As a result, assistants were able to produce
multiple versions of popular images from stock compositions
without needing help from the master.22 Direct sources for a
Virgin placed on the right would have been readily available and
in sinister (on his left) – i.e. Christ on the viewer’s left and the Virgin on the
viewer’s right.
22 Hand, Metzger and Spronk, op. cit. (note 8), pp.4 and 22–25. See also J. Dijkstra:
‘Methods for the Copying of Paintings in the Southern Netherlands in the 15th and
early 16th Centuries’, in H. Verougstraete-Marcq and R. van Schoute, eds.: Le Dessin
Sous-Jacent dans La Peinture, 8: Dessin Sou-Jacent en Copies, Louvain-La-Neuve 1991,
pp.67–76.
23 Ibid.; and Baldass, op. cit. (note 15), p.156: ‘. . . Quinten’s workshop must have had
journeymen of great skill and versatility, adept at varying the master’s motifs’.
MA.FEB.STAINER.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 19/01/2010 16:58 Page 81
copying techniques were various, including tracings on sheets of
gelatine or oiled paper, or more skilled freehand interpretations
such as the London pair.23
If we accept that the Bradford-on-Avon/Tadgell painting is
stylistically of a similar or slightly earlier date to the Antwerp pair
as first painted by Metsys, and that it is of equal or perhaps even
higher quality, and that Metsys was as directly influenced by the
composition of the Philadelphia painting as by the physiognomy
of Van Eyck’s lost Head of Christ, and that there would have
been a practical need within the Metsys workshop for such a
stock image as this, then the hitherto hypothetical idea of a lost
prototype must be reconsidered. This rediscovered masterpiece
in its original form (Fig.3) does indeed appear to constitute the
lost compositional prototype which Baldass suspected existed.
Appendix
Technical examination of Quinten Metsys’s ‘Christ blessing with the Virgin
in adoration’.
Since its separation from the Tadgell Virgin panel, the Bradford-on-Avon Christ has
received relatively little interference and survives largely in excellent condition. Seen
from the front the panel has been trimmed very slightly on the top and left edges (right
up to the original paint-edge, or barbe); the bottom edge remains intact. The sawn edge
on the right has a newer looking slight chamfer on the reverse together with a very
narrow stepped cut along the profile edge – both appear to be later modifications or a
forged attempt to match other edges and make the panel appear as a stand-alone paint-
ing taken from a much smaller engaged frame. The figure of Christ has been selective-
ly cleaned leaving the background covered in multiple layers of aged darkened varnish
and some minimal restoration. More recent retouchings can be seen along the plank
join through the chin. There is almost no paint abrasion from past cleaning methods.
The Tadgell Virgin has received rather more intervention. The panel has been
cut down at the top by about 2.5 cm. and trimmed slightly on the bottom edge.
Additionally, a 0.4 cm. wide strip of paint and ground abutting the sawn edge on the
left has been scored and scraped in an attempt to forge a barbe (i.e. the creation of a
false paint-edge that might once have abutted an engaged frame if the work had
been created as a single image). More recently the panel has been thinned to a depth
of 0.5 cm. and cradled on the reverse. Cleaning and restoration has resulted in some
misinterpreted retouching, including an over-defined straight gold band in the upper
background (which is not analogous to work of the period or to Metsys), and a
poorly reconstructed veil behind the Virgin’s head. Microscopic examination also
shows that cleaning abrasion is evident on some details (e.g. the raised pearls and ruby
in the centre of the circlet around the head, the veil, the robe-edging and knuckles
on the back of the hand).24
X-rays of both paintings, carried out at the National Gallery, London, clearly
confirm that the panels were once conjoined and that the vertical cut between the two
figures butts up exactly.25 The Bradford-on-Avon panel is the wider of the two as the
painting was sawn just to the right of Christ’s left hand. Presumably this was to leave
the hand intact as well as to ensure that the figure of the Virgin sat centrally on its own.
However, once separated, the Tadgell panel would have appeared rather tall and
narrow, thus encouraging the removal of the top 2.5 cm. and cropping the golden rays
emanating from the Virgin’s head. Christ’s left upper arm has been cut through but
remains visible in shadow in the lower left corner of the Tadgell Virgin (Fig.3).
Originally the rectangular panel comprised two matching horizontally grained
oak planks glued and joined together with two internal vertical dowels. The join runs
horizontally (approximately 17 cm. up from the bottom edge of both panels), in a
matching straight line across the paintings through the cleft of the chin of both
figures. X-rays of the Christ show a wooden dowel and slot at right angles to the panel
grain across the plank join in the area of Christ’s right cheek. The remains of a
corresponding dowel-slot in the thinned Tadgell panel, across the plank join in the
area of the Virgin’s left cheek, is visible only to the naked eye as an oval shadow on
the reverse, between the fourth and fifth horizontal (from bottom) and third and
fourth vertical (from left) cradle members.
The Bradford-on-Avon panel reveals the original thickness of the whole panel to
have been up to 1.6 cm. The largely intact reverse shows a curved convex profile (in
24 The restoration is evident in the image published in 1960 in the Connoisseur
(see note 7 above), and the structural and cosmetic attentions seem to comprise one
campaign that appears typical of a mid-twentieth-century treatment. The pigment
titanium white, not commercially available until the 1950s, appears to have been
used in places.
25 It has not been possible to reproduce the X-rays here (see note 1 above).
26 For example, images of St Luke painting the Virgin that date from the early
sixteenth century depict the artist working in this way; see the St Luke painting the
Virgin and Child (c.1520?) by a follower of Metsys in the National Gallery, London.
A REUNITED PANEL BY METSYS
the vertical direction only) which is 0.6 cm. thicker in the middle than at the top and
bottom edges. Seen from reverse there are no original bevelled edges. Instead, narrow
(approximately 0.6 cm. wide) right-angled sawn steps were cut into and along all four
reverse edges of the combined panel, and these formed the ‘tongue’ that once slotted
tongue-and-groove style into the now lost original engaged frame. These steps survive
on the reverse left edge slightly trimmed, and reverse right and bottom edges of the
Bradford-on-Avon panel. The step on the top edge is missing and the step on the right
reverse ‘separated edge’ is forged. The thinned Tadgell panel also has the shadowy
remains of a matching sawn step seen down the reverse left edge only.
The original engaged frame would have been of the same wood and, as described
above, would have been closely fitted around the panel before painting. The whole,
including the image panel, would then have been prepared, gilded and painted at the
same time. Most northern painters of this period painted portraits and small diptychs
with the works already framed in this way.26
Seen facing, and where original edges survive, both ground and paint end in a
barbe together with a further 0.4 cm. or so of bare wood (the stepped tongue that was
inserted into the groove of the engaged frame). These strips of bare wood (and
thus the original barbe also) remain largely intact on both the bottom edge of the Brad-
ford-on-Avon panel and the right edge of the Tadgell panel. However, the top and
left edges of the Bradford-on-Avon panel and the bottom edge of the Tadgell panel
have been trimmed right up to, or just along the line of the barbe. This trimming
(including the loss of some of the stepped cuts on the reverse) probably resulted from
the method of extraction of the panel from its original frame before it was sawn in two.
While not yet analysed, the pigment and media of the paint and ground layers
appear entirely typical for the period and place of origin as well as consistently
similar on both the separated paintings. The creamish-white ground is characteristic
of chalk and glue size and is of medium thickness sufficient to cover the texture of
the wood grain. A thin intermediary second priming (e.g. typically comprising lead
white with a pigmented toning) appears evident under both infra-red reflectography,
and as a pale paint layer under magnification at the bottom paint-barbe of the
Bradford-on-Avon panel.
Infra-red reflectography of both paintings (also carried out at the National
Gallery) shows some underdrawing in the form of free-hand contour lines and
shading.27 On the Christ there are lines describing and shading the right hand raised
in benediction. In the Virgin the line of the bodice, the Virgin’s chin, some strokes of
hair and lines and shading around the eye sockets are described in a similar style. The
underdrawing is followed fairly closely in the upper paint layers, however some
painted alterations are apparent, including parts of Christ’s left hand, the heel of his
right hand and tip of his right middle finger raised in benediction. The characteristics
of the underdrawing in particular compare very closely with that found on the
related Antwerp pair and also on the much later Prado diptych.28
The upper paint layers appear largely typical of oil. The paint surface is notably
smooth overall, with the exception of Christ’s morse, the Virgin’s pearl beading
and the halo rays on both (all of which have raised work) and perhaps the Virgin’s
blue robe. The images are painted in a highly detailed manner with very fine brush-
work. The typical build-up of multiple layers, including opaque reflective base
body-colours, reserves, transparent glazes and opaque highlights, has resulted in a
translucent and vibrant effect showing all the craft of Flemish art of the period.
The gold leaf of the background has been applied first over the ground, leaving a
reserve for the figures, and is covered in the upper sections with a pattern of dots
and dashes of a now brownish-red lake (possibly madder) comparable to that found
on the background of the diptych Ecce Homo and the Mater Dolorosa by Albrecht
Bouts in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge MA. Seen more clearly behind the
Virgin, this pattern is actually evident on both paintings and should blend gradual-
ly into a denser shadow behind the shoulders of each figure. However, the pattern
on the Bradford-on-Avon Christ can only be seen under the microscope beneath
several thick layers of heavily discoloured, aged varnish and, as mentioned earlier,
the upper background of the Tadgell Virgin has been wrongly restored to an over-
defined horizontal gold band.
The raised lines of the halo rays appear to be rendered using a mixture including
chalk and an oil mordant, then gilded. The rays do not run beneath either hair or veil
and abut a reserve for these areas.
Finally, the overall palette appears typical for the date and origin. For example,
characteristically, the gold colour of the morse together with the edging of Christ’s
robe and the Virgin’s under-dress appear to have been painted using lead-tin yellow
pigment. The pale purplish-crimson of Christ’s robe appears typical of a thin
crimson-red lake glaze (possibly applied with a blotting technique) over a light grey
body-colour. The very thick deep blue of the Virgin’s robe has a slight greenish tinge
and displays a marked drying craquelure typical of a well-preserved azurite pigment
densely loaded in oil. An identical fine and even aged crackle pattern in the paint
layers is evident on both panels.
27 It has not been possible to reproduce the infra-red reflectograms here (see note 1
above).
28 Communications between Stainer-Hutchins, Metzger (National Gallery of Art,
Washington) and Campbell and Billinge (National Gallery, London) between Octo-
ber 2007 and January 2009. For details on underdrawing and technique in the Antwerp
and Prado pairs, see Hand, Metzger and Spronk, op. cit. (note 8), pp.104–09, 110–15
and 282–84. The much later Prado paintings are the only known pendant works on
this particular theme that were originally created as a diptych and which remain
unaltered (see notes 13 and 14 above for alterations to the Antwerp and London pairs).
the burlington m a g a z i n e • february 2010 • clIi 81
MA.FEB.COLENBRANDER.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 18/01/2010 15:26 Page 82
The sitter in Jan Gossaert’s ‘Portrait of a merchant’
in the National Gallery of Art, Washington:
Jan Snoeck (c.1510–85)
by HERMAN Th. COLENBRANDER
ONE OF T HE GREAT treasures of the National Gallery of Art,
Washington, is Jan Gossaert’s portrait of an unknown man,
thought to be a banker or a merchant, seated in his office
(Fig.12). The discovery of a watercolour (Fig.13) in the Snouck
van Loosen Stichting in Enkhuizen throws light on the identity
of the sitter in this remarkable portrait.
On the outskirts of the city of Gorinchem in the province of
South Holland is the sixteenth-century manor of Schelluinder-
berg at Schelluinen (Fig.14). Although it has undergone some
transformation, this charming house, with its characteristic
hexagonal stair tower, has miraculously survived.1 At the top of
the tower there is a copper weather-vane, incised with a pike
(Fig.15). Because the Dutch word for pike is snoek (snoeck in old
spelling), this vane, as well as the sandstone portrait busts in the
antique manner, the coat of arms and the relief on the wall with
a cartouche showing a pike and the motto INT WATER CLOUC
(‘Brave in the water’; Fig.16), have kept alive the name of
the original inhabitant of this rare sixteenth-century mansion.
It was built c.1546 for Jan Jacobsz Snoeck (c.1510–85) of
Gorinchem and expanded and embellished c.1568, work which
was possibly carried out by the stonemason Cornelis Bloemaert.2
Jan Snoeck, descended from a patrician family of Gorinchem,
which for several generations had held important offices in
the city and which was to maintain its prominence up to the time
of Napoleon and even afterwards, must already have been a
substantial businessman to have been appointed one of the city’s
aldermen at the age of twenty-four. Later he served as alderman
eleven times, as mayor about fourteen times, as chairman of the
dike board of the district of Arkel in 1537, as treasurer of the city
between 1554 and 1557 and in 1558 as member of the first city
council, newly appointed by Philip II of Spain. In 1567 he signed
up on the city’s behalf to the League of Beggars (a league of
nobles who had vowed to defend the Netherlands against
Philip II). In 1572 and again in 1584 he was first delegate at the
1 See H.J. Zuidervaart: Schelluinderberg. De geschiedenis van een buitenplaats en pastorie
in de omgeving van Gorinchem, Schelluinen 1988; and C.L. van Groningen, et al.: De
Nederlandse Monumenten van Geschiedenis en Kunst. De Provincie Zuid-Holland.
De Alblasserwaard, Zwolle 1992, pp.317–21. I am especially grateful to the late J. de
Waal-Kalisformer, the former owner of the house.
2 Zuidervaart, op. cit. (note 1), figs. on pp.82 and 17. It has not been possible to
establish who was the architect of the house, of which the rental value in 1553 was
estimated at 30 florins carolus. On account of the stylistic affinity with other houses
in Gorinchem, the mason may have been Cornelis Bloemaert of Utrecht, who taught
the architect Hendrick de Keyser and was the father of the painter Abraham
Bloemaert.
3 R.F. van Dijk, archivist of the city of Gorinchem, kindly communicated to me
references to Jan and Jacop Snoeck in documents in the archives of Gorinchem; see
notes 14 and 15 below.
4 In 1905 Frans Beelaerts van Blokland (1872–1956) married Maria Adriana Snoeck
(1873–1948), and in 1910 his younger brother, Willem Adriaan Beelaerts van
Blokland (1883–1935), married Adriana Maria Catharina Snoeck (1881–1951), the
82 f e b r u ary 2010 • clIi • the burlington magazine
assembly of the States of Holland at Dordrecht and in Delft.
Furthermore, he was churchwarden in 1550, king of the Old
Crossbowmen and in 1572, as was his father before him, Master
of the charitable institution of the Holy Spirit. In the 1560s
he was also a member of the Guild of Pedlars.3 During his
mayorship in 1542 the harbour of Gorinchem (now called the
Wijdschild) was constructed.
Both Jan’s grandfather and father amassed considerable wealth
and possessions and the next generations added to these through
fortunate marriages. In 1533 Jan married Anna van Seven-
bergen, the daughter of the well-to-do mayor of Gorinchem.
Thereafter fortune smiled on the various branches of the family,
money marrying money right through to the present.
Important among Jan Snoeck’s direct descendants who kept
their forebear’s memory alive were the brothers Hubert (born
1703), alderman in Gorinchem, and Samuel (born 1709), bailiff
in Papendrecht. Both were sons of Matthijs, the great-great-
great-grandchild of Jan Snoeck. In his genealogical research into
the first ten generations of the Snoeck family, published in
1909, Frans Beelaerts van Blokland, himself related to the family
by marriage,4 mentions Jan Snoeck: ‘His portrait came by inher-
itance into the possession of the Van Asch van Wijck family and
was sold at the end of the last century to a foreign art dealer’.5
(In 1772 Michiel Antonii Van Asch van Wijck of Gorinchem
married Cornelia Snoeck, daughter of the above-mentioned
Hubert.)6 It has not yet been possible to establish when and to
which dealer the portrait was sold and the work did not resurface
thereafter, at least not under the sitter’s name.7
Another branch of the family, descended from Samuel, after-
wards called Snouck van Loosen, also remained rich up to 1885,
when Margaretha Maria Snouck van Loosen, the last of four
unmarried daughters died, bringing that branch of the family to
an end. In her will the huge family fortune was entrusted to a
foundation, the Snouck van Loosen Stichting in Enkhuizen that
sister of Maria Adriana Snoeck. Presumably it was his marriage that prompted Van
Blokland to undertake his genealogical research on the Snoeck family; see Nederland’s
Adelsboek 10 (1912), pp.117–18; and additions in Nederland’s Adelsboek 72 (1981),
pp.117 and 125.
5 ‘Zijn geschilderd portret kwam door erfopvolging in het bezit van het geslacht Van Asch van
Wijck en werd in het laatst der vorige eeuw aan een buitenlandschen kunsthandelaar verkocht’;
see F. Beelaerts van Blokland: ‘De eerste tien generatiën van het Gorinchemsche
regentengeslacht Snoeck’, De Nederlandsche Leeuw 27 (1909), cols.41–46, 65–74 and
101–06. See also ‘Snoeck, Snouck van Loosen en Snoeck van Tol’, in Jaarboek van den
Nederlandschen Adel 1 (1888), pp.211–14.
6 Beelaerts van Blokland, op. cit. (note 5), pp.44–45. From the family tree it appears
that on 18th October 1772 Cornelia Snoeck (1746–1813), daughter of Hubert
Snoeck and Anna van Cruijskerken, married in Gorinchem Michiel Antonii Van
Asch van Wijck, lord of Prattenburg (1742–1804), and canon of Oud Munster in
Utrecht; see Nederland’s Adelsboek 46 (1953), p.454. According to a communication
of Mrs Van Asch van Wijck, a number of objects, among them paintings, were sold
after a division of the family estate.
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12. Portrait of a merchant, here identified as Portrait of Jan Snoeck, by Jan Gossaert.
c.1530. Panel, 63.6 by 47.5 cm. (National Gallery of Art, Washington).
still exists.8 Among this Foundation’s holdings, H.J. Zuidervaart
came across not only a portrait of the last heiress, Margaretha
Maria, by the Dutch painter J.A.J. Kruseman, but also a fine
watercolour portrait of Jan Snoeck (Fig.13).9
On the basis of its style and cartouche, the watercolour
may be dated to the mid-eighteenth century and the sitter
obviously resembles the man in the Washington painting
(Fig.12).10 On the console beneath the portrait to the left we
read: ‘GEBOREN Ao MD’, and to the right: ‘OVERLEEDEN VI
AUGUSTUS MDLXXXVI’. The inscription on the white marble slab
reads: ‘IOHAN. SNOUCK. IACOBSZOON. SCHEPEN. 1525. EERSTE
7 Zuidervaart, op. cit. (note 1), p.28, fig. on p.36. Zuidervaart hoped that it might
come to light for it ‘would be a most desirable acquisition to the Museum “Dit is in
Bethlehem” in the Gasthuisstraat 25 [in Gorinchem]’.
8 See Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek 2 (1912), col.1336.
9 Zuidervaart, op. cit. (note 1), fig. on p.28. I am grateful to the late W. van
Leeuwen, trustee of the Snouck van Loosen Stichting, Enkhuizen, for his kindness
in putting at my disposal a good colour print of the watercolour and for supplying me
with additional information.
10 J.O. Hand and M. Wolff: The Collections of the National Gallery of Art. Systematic
Catalogue. Early Netherlandish Painting, Cambridge 1986, pp.103–06. In 1866 the
painting was in the collection of the Marquess of Lansdowne, London and Bowood,
Wiltshire (in 1866 the painting was lent for an exhibition at the British Institution
and on that occasion (21st August) George Scharf made a sketch in his sketchbook
now in the National Portrait Gallery, London; Sketchbook SSB 77, fol.30v–31). In
1967 it was with Thos. Agnew & Sons, London. See also A. Mensger: Jan Gossaert:
die niederländische Kunst zu Beginn der Neuzeit, Berlin 2002, pp.166–67, fig.95. The
Museum of Art in Philadelphia owns an old and fairly faithful copy; see W.R.
GOSSAERT’S ‘PORTRAIT OF A MERCHANT’
13. Portrait of Jan Snoeck, by an anonymous artist after Jan Gossaert. c.1750.
Watercolour, 49 by 39 cm. (Snouck van Loosen Stichting, Enkhuizen).
VROEDSCHAP 1538 XIV MAAL BURGEMEESTER en SCHOUT
der STAD GORINCHEM en LANDE van ARKEL. EERSTEGECOMMIT-
TEERDE ter DAGVAART der STATEN van HOLLAND te DOR-
DRECHT. 1572’. The coat of arms is vert and shows a quarter 1.
of gold a rose gules, and 2. 7 muschetons in two rows 4 and 3
(white and black).11 The watercolour closely follows the paint-
ing, although more readily visible in the watercolour is the
pattern on the sitter’s garment, just below the V-neck, in which
one might discern the date 1525.12
Compared with the watercolour, the painting in Washington
is more richly detailed. The ‘banker’ Jan Snoeck, seated in his
Valentiner: John G. Johnson collection: catalogue of Flemish and Dutch paintings, Philadel-
phia 1972, pp.43 and 179. In 1902 this copy was in the collection of R. Porgès in Paris.
11 This second quarter is smaller and may not be a quarter in the real sense. The shape
of the coat of arms was not in use before c.1630; see O. Neubecker: Elseviers gids van
de heraldiek, Amsterdam and Brussels 1981, p.51; and Zuidervaart, op. cit. (note 1), fig.
on p.28.
12 The watercolour is in excellent condition. According to an annotation the
new mount was made c.1955 by Mr Van Oort at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. A
black-and-white negative (no.C 6639) is in the Stichting Iconografisch Bureau, The
Hague. The late W. van Leeuwen kindly informed me that the last descendant of the
Snouck Van Loosen family, Margaretha Maria, gave in her will of 1885 detailed
instructions concerning the family possessions. She appointed two trustees of which
one was the grandfather of W. van Leeuwen. The former house of the family had to
be converted into a home for old ladies, and all family papers and portraits had to be
burned. The testament was disputed and all papers went into storage. A few portraits,
among others the one by Kruseman mentioned in the text, were restored and hung
in one of the downstairs rooms.
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GOSSAERT’S ‘PORTRAIT OF A MERCHANT’
14. Manor of Schelluinderberg, Schelluinen. (Photograph: Rijksdienst voor
Archeologie, Cultuurlandschap en Monumenten, Zeist).
comptoir among his papers and office paraphernalia, looks up
alertly at the viewer. On either side of his head are hanging
files – at left Alrehande Missiven and at right Alrehande Minuten.
Above his head there are balls of twine and a tasselled dagger.
On the table in front we see, from left to right, a sander, a flat
round box, scissors, a leather pen and ink case, two piles of
gold coins, a balance with a dobla excelente (a Spanish coin) on
the triangular scale and a weight on the round one, a penknife,
a leather-bound book, an inkstand with four quills, a stick of
sealing wax and a little roll of paper. In front he has a notebook
in a parchment folder on which is lying a loose quire of paper
on which he is writing.
All these similarities conclusively prove that the Washington
portrait is the model for the watercolour of Jan Snoeck. The
provenance of the picture is undocumented before 1866, the
year in which it was lent, under the name of Hans Holbein, from
the collection of the Marquess of Lansdowne to an exhibition at
13 Hand and Wolff, op. cit. (note 10), pp.103 and 106, note 16.
14 Gorinchem, Regionaal Archief Gorinchem, Rechterlijke Archieven van
Gorinchem en het Land van Arkel 134, fol.152.
15 Gorinchem, Regionaal Archief Gorinchem, Archief Stadsbestuur AS 132,
fol.158v.
16 Jan Snoeck’s father, Jacob, is not known to have served as secretary. He was
born before 1486; in 1509 and 1510 he was stadholder of the bailiff of Gorinchem and
in 1525 and 1527 alderman. He died in 1530. In 1656 the painter Samuel van
84 f e b r u ary 2010 • clIi • the burlington magazine
15. The weather-
vane on the
manor of
Schelluinderberg,
Schelluinen.
(Photograph:
L.J.P. de Waal).
16. Relief on the façade of the manor of Schelluinderberg, Schelluinen.
(Photograph: author).
the British Institution in London.13 It is fair to assume that this
was the same painting as the one with the Van Asch van Wijck
family in the nineteenth century that was sold abroad.
Nevertheless we should bear in mind that although the iden-
tification here proposed of the Washington portrait is entirely
dependent on the impeccable provenance of the watercolour, it
is by no means a guarantee of an irrefutable identification of the
sitter. In the light of the fact that the written information on the
watercolour does not in all respects correspond with the data
concerning Jan Snoeck in the archives in Gorinchem, we must
further investigate the identification proposed here.
Hoogstraten succeeded his grandfather (who died many years before) in the position
of master of the mint in Dordrecht; see C. Brusati: Artifice and illusion: The art and
writing of Samuel Van Hoogstraten, Chicago and London 1995, pp.17–19, 78–79
and 82–83. In the Huygens family the function of secretary to the stadholder was
apparently a hereditary prerogative for three generations.
17 J.G. Smit: Bronnen voor de economische geschiedenis van het Beneden-Maasgebied. 2e
deel. Rekeningen van de Hollandse tollen 1422–1534, The Hague 1997, pp.199–226:
‘M Rekening van de tollen te Gorinchem en Schoonhoven 1518. Jan Snouck en
MA.FEB.COLENBRANDER.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 18/01/2010 15:26 Page 85
17. Detail of ring worn by the sitter in Fig.12. 18. Detail of the cap worn by the sitter in
Fig.12.
According to the inscription on the watercolour, Jan Snoeck
was born in 1500 but documents record that in 1584 he was
seventy-four years old, from which it can be concluded that he
was born c.1510.14 If c.1510 is correct as his date of birth, it is
highly unlikely that he was elected alderman at the age of
fifteen. The record books of the Gorinchem aldermen show
that he was not appointed to this office for the first time until
1534. However, in 1525 his father was an alderman, but as the
painting depicts a relatively young man, the possibility that it is
of his father is not very likely as he had been born before 1486
and died in 1530. Furthermore, according to the inscription Jan
Snoeck died on 6th August 1586, but in fact he died on the 24th
August of that year.15
Any identification may be strengthened by exploring the
possible occasion for the commissioning of Jan Snoeck’s portrait.
It cannot have been undertaken to mark his first appointment as
alderman. As we have seen, this took place in 1534; Gossaert had
died two years before in 1532. Neither does Snoeck seem
to have been represented here as a pendant to a portrait of his
wife (as might be presumed by analogy with Maerten van
Heemskerck’s portraits of a man and a woman, possibly Pieter
Gerritsz Bicker and Anna Codde, in the Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam), for Jan and Anna only married in 1533 or 1534.
On account of the Alrehande Missiven and Minuten on either
side of Jan’s head, as well as of his clothes, it is more likely
that the painting belongs to the genre of the office portrait.
Missiven and Minuten were typical papers of an administrative
organisation. We know that between 1501 and 1517 Jan’s
grandfather (died 1527) was secretary of the city. Jan may have
had himself portrayed as secretary of the city, having possibly
succeeded his grandfather.16 However, on the basis of recent
research, he is more plausibly portrayed in his capacity as the
collector of river tolls at Gorinchem, for his grandfather, Jan,
Willem Codde, 18 juni–30 september’.
18 This monogram on the ring led Leo van Puyvelde to the identification of the
sitter as Jerome Sandelin, tax collector of Zeeland for the region of the western
Schelde, mentioned in documents between 1539 and 1557; see L. van Puyvelde: ‘Un
portrait de marchand par Quentin Metsys et les percepteurs d’impôts par Marin
van Reymerswael’, Revue Belge d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’Art 26 (1957), p.9. This
identification was accepted in J. Rosenberg: ‘A Portrait of a Banker (Jerome
Sandelin?) by Jan Gossaert called Mabuse’, Studies in the History of Art 1 (1967–68),
GOSSAERT’S ‘PORTRAIT OF A MERCHANT’
19. Seal of Jan Snoeck on a letter dated 1577.
(Archief Ridderlijke Duitsche Orde, Balije van Utrecht,
Utrecht; inv. no.31–6).
had also been toll collector of the province of Holland in
Gorinchem. In 1516 Jan’s father, Jacob (died 1530), had been
appointed ‘beziener’ (inspector), another office of the same toll.
We know that in 1544 and in 1551 Jan was ‘controleur’ of the toll,
so we might well presume that before 1532 he was already
attached to the same toll, possibly as clerk. The river toll in
Gorinchem, at the confluence of the Walloon and the Meuse,
was one of the most important and profitable tolls in the
province of Holland, as all shipping on these rivers passed by the
city.17 In that case the portrait of Jan Snoeck may be seen as an
example of the tradition in which secretaries of cities and the
holders of other important offices had themselves portrayed to
mark their appointment.
But whatever the particular occasion for having his portrait
painted, the arguments for the identification of the sitter as Jan
Snoeck are rendered conclusive in view of the following. In the
portrait in Washington there are two essential details present
which the copyist, for whatever reason, has omitted in the
watercolour. On his index finger Jan Snoeck is wearing a ring
bearing the letters IS (Fig.17). There can be no doubt these are
his initials.18 Moreover, less clearly visible is a monogram on his
cap of the letters IAS (Fig.18). The assumption that these letters
may represent the initial letters of his motto is obvious.
As mentioned above, on the north façade of the house in
Schelluinen a relief carries Snoeck’s device of a swimming pike
and his motto INT WATER CLOUC. From that we might expect
the motto, reduced to its initials, to have been IWC, as indeed
can be found on his seal (Fig.19), and not IAS.19 At that time,
mottos were always in a foreign language, never in the mother
tongue. Clearly Jan Snoeck violated this rule on his relief,20 but
the Latin translation of the motto reads ‘In Aquis Strenuus’,21 the
initials giving us IAS, precisely the letters of the monogram on
Jan Snoeck’s cap.
pp.39–43, but Hand and Wolff, op. cit. (note 10), p.104, doubt it in view of the age
of the sitter. Van Puyvelde’s suggestion can now be discarded.
19 Zuidervaart, op. cit. (note 1), p.82. It shows two upright pikes, back to back, with,
in the corners, the letters (clockwise) IWCS (Int Water Clouc Snouck).
20 M. Praz: Studies in seventeenth-century imagery, 2nd ed., Rome 1975, p.63. For the
use of signs on hats and caps, see Y. Hackenbroch: Enseignes. Renaissance Hat Jewels,
Florence 1996.
21 With thanks to Harm-Jan van Dam and Mies Wijnen.
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MA.FEB.CAMPBELL.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 18/01/2010 15:24 Page 86
The patron of Jan Gossaert’s ‘Adoration of the Kings’ in
the National Gallery, London
by LORNE CAMPBELL
JAN GOSSAERT’S Adoration of the Kings (Fig.20) is signed in two
places and is generally dated between c.1510 and c.1515.1 It was
first mentioned in 1600, when it was in a chapel dedicated to
the Virgin in the church of the Benedictine abbey of St Adrian at
Geraardsbergen (Grammont) in East Flanders, south of Ghent and
west of Brussels. In August 1600 Albert and Isabella, the rulers of
the Spanish Netherlands, returning from Oudenaarde to Brussels,
visited the abbey, saw the painting and asked to have it.2 On 5th
April 1601 Albert authorised a payment of ‘2,100 livres de 40 gros’
to the abbot for its purchase3 and on 18th May 1601 it was record-
ed that the painter Gijsbrecht van Veen, residing in Brussels, had
been sent to Geraardsbergen to buy from the Abbey of ‘St
Andrew’ the painting in oil on panel of the Adoration of the Three
Kings or Magi, 2 3⁄4 ells high by 2 1⁄2 ells wide, with its plain frame.
It was to be placed on the high altar of the chapel of the palace in
Brussels.4 The picture was reframed and installed in the chapel in
1603.5 In 1696 Gislenus Coucke, afterwards (1703–13) abbot of St
Adrian’s, noted that, at Geraardsbergen, a copy had replaced the
original, which had been removed to Brussels; the copy was still at
Geraardsbergen at the end of the eighteenth century.6
It is usually assumed that Gossaert painted the Adoration for
the abbey.7 Little is known about the history of the abbey of St
Adrian. The buildings were sold in 1797 and afterwards most of
them were demolished; the archives have been dispersed or
destroyed. The choir and towers of the church seem to have been
knocked down in 1799.8 According to Benoist Ruteau, writing
in 1637 about the cult of St Adrian and the abbey at Geraards-
bergen, other paintings by Gossaert were in the abbey in his time:
a Last Judgment, in the chapel of St Natalia (St Adrian’s wife); a
1 M.J. Friedländer: Early Netherlandish Painting, VIII, Leiden and Brussels 1972,
pp.16–25 and 92, no.12; and M. Davies: National Gallery Catalogues: The Early
Netherlandish School, 3rd ed., London 1968, pp.63–66.
2 J. van Waesberghe: Gerardi Montium sive altera imperialis Flandriae Metropolis eiusque
Castellania, Brussels 1627, p.178 (the Abbot Jérôme de Monceaux ‘Epiphaniam sacelli
Deiparae Virginis, Ioannis Malbodij egregij pictoris opus cessit Alberto Austriaco Belgarum
Principi Aldenarda hac Bruxellas cum coniuge serenissima Isabella transeunti, & magno opere
roganti’); B. Ruteau: La Vie et martyre de S. Adrien tutelaire de la ville de Grardmont
[. . .] avec le commencement & Chronique de son Monastere . . ., Ath 1637, pp.228–29
(‘Soubs le mesme Abbé l’Archiduc Albert auec Isabella Infante d’Espagne, venant d’Audenarde
à Grardmont, & visitant l’Eglise de S. Adrien, il impetra de l’Abbé & Conuent la peinture de
la Chapelle de nostre Dame, pour la mettre en la sienne Royalle, comme elle est encore present-
ement, & offrit au Monastere en recompense deux mille florins: c’estoit vn oeuure de Iean de
Maubeuge excellent peintre . . .’). J.K. Steppe: ‘Tableaux de Jean Gossaert dans l’ancienne
Abbaye de Saint-Adrien à Grammont’, in H. Pauwels, H.R. Hoetink and S. Herzog:
exh. cat. Jean Gossaert dit Mabuse, Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen)
and Bruges (Groeningemuseum) 1965, pp.39–46, cites manuscript sources of the late
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They are later than the books by Van
Waesberghe and Ruteau and do not seem to add significantly to what is printed there.
3 ‘. . . pour l’achapt qu’avons faict de luy d’une pièce de paincture représentant les Trois Roys
. . .’. See M. de Maeyer: Albrecht en Isabella en de schilderkunst, Brussels 1955, p.269;
for the payment itself, see J. Finot: Inventaire sommaire des archives départementales
antérieures à 1790 [. . .] Nord, série B, Chambre des Comptes de Lille, VI, Lille 1895, p.5.
4 ‘Digo yo, Joachim Denzenhear, guarda ropa y joyas del Sermo Sor Archiduque Alberto, que
la pintura sobre tabla, al olio, de la Adoracion de los Tres Reyes Magos, de dos añas y tres
quartas de alto y dos y media de ancho, con su marco llano, que Su Ala mando comprar por
mano del pintor Grisbeque Benio, beçino de Brusselas, del abadia de Sant Andres, que esta en
86 f e b r u ary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
Crucifixion, on the ‘autel privilegé’; and other, unspecified paint-
ings.9 The Last Judgment was mentioned in an inventory taken in
1791, when it was still on the same altar.10 If these paintings were
in truth by Gossaert, then it would appear that he was employed
at the abbey. It seems very likely that he painted the Adoration for
the abbey and that he may have executed other commissions for
Geraardsbergen at much the same time.
According to Jan van Waesberghe, writing in 1627 about the
history of Geraardsbergen, and Ruteau (1637), the Adoration
came from the ‘chapel of the Virgin’ at St Adrian’s.11 According
to Ruteau, Jan de Broedere, or Van Coppenhole, abbot from
1504 until 1526, ‘restored the crypt behind the choir and built
there a fine chapel dedicated to the Virgin’.12 Historians have
taken this statement rather literally and have concluded that De
Broedere paid for the building. The chapel, visible in some views
and plans of the abbey,13 seems to have been about 13 metres
long. The crypt had been the burial place of several abbots, many
monks and some noblemen of the district, whose tombs appear
to have remained after the crypt was reconstructed as a chapel.14
Jan de Broedere himself was buried there under a plain ‘blue’
stone.15 In the will dated 12th April 1518 of Daniel van
Boechout, lord of Boelare near Geraardsbergen, it was recorded
that the abbot Jan de Broedere had agreed that Daniel and his
wife should be buried in the chapel of the Virgin behind the
choir,16 and, indeed, their tomb was erected there.17 When their
daughter died in 1563, she was buried in the abbey church ‘in her
father’s chapel’.18 It seems clear that Daniel van Boechout may
have contributed towards the cost of the chapel of the Virgin and
that it was for a time known as his chapel.
camara de Gramont, en ocho mill y quatroscientos reales pagados por finanças, por mano del
recividor general Christobal Godin en el mes de abril de mill y seiscientos y un años, que la dicha
pintura hea de poner en la capilla real del palacio de Brusselas en el altar mayor de la dicha
capilla. La qual dicha pintura queda en mi poder. En cuya berdad di esta firmada de mi
nombre. Al dicho Christobal Godin en Brusselas, a 18 de mayo año de 1601 años. Joachim
Dencenhear’; see De Maeyer, op. cit. (note 3), p.270.
5 The previous retable, made by Jean Mone in 1538–41 and installed in 1554, was
removed and restored; it is now in the cathedral of Brussels; see J. Duverger et al.:
‘Nieuwe gegevens aangaande XVIde eeuwse beeldhouwers in Brabant en
Vlaanderen’, Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen,
Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Klasse der Schone Kunsten 15/2 (1953), pp.23 and
89–90. For the history of the chapel and palace, see A. Smolar-Meynart et al.: Le Palais
de Bruxelles. Huit siècles d’art et d’histoire, Brussels 1991.
6 Ghent, Stadsarchief, Vreemde Steden nr 52. See G. van Bockstaele: Het Cultureel
Erfgoed van de Sint-Adriaansabdij van Geraardsbergen 1096–2002, Geraardsbergen 2002,
p.98, with references; I am grateful to Geert van Bockstaele for sending photocopies
of the document.
7 See in particular Steppe, op. cit. (note 2). François Mols (1722–91), however,
writing in the 1780s, claimed that it had come from ‘the effects of David of Burgundy,
Bishop of Utrecht, in whose service Jean de Mabuse worked for a long time’:
‘Ce Rare Morceau avoit été Achetté de feues L.A.R. Les Archiducs Albert & Isabelle – de
LAbbaye de Grammont (ou Mons S.ti Gerardi) en flandre – en 1605 – pour Deux Mille florins
– Mais Le tableau Même vennoit des Depouilles De David Batard de Bourgoigne Eveque
dUtrecht, au Service duquel Jean de Maubeuse avoit été longtems’; see Mols’s notes in his
copy of H. Walpole: Anecdotes of Painting in England, 2nd ed., Strawberry Hill 1765,
I (Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, shelf mark II 11928), facing p.50. In 1788 an anony-
mous author claimed that it had been ‘carried to Holland, and during the Troubles
MA.FEB.CAMPBELL.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 18/01/2010 15:24 Page 87
20. Adoration of the Kings, by Jan Gossaert. c.1510–15. Panel,
177.2 by 161.3 cm. (National Gallery, London).
Gossaert would appear to have painted the Adoration between
about 1510 and about 1515.19 Between 1508 and 1524 he was in
the service of Philip of Burgundy, Bishop of Utrecht from 1517.
Although the exact terms on which Philip employed Gossaert are
not known, it seems unlikely that he could have worked for other
patrons without Philip’s consent. It therefore appears logical to
in the Low Countries, it escaped the Iconoclastes’; see the Description, a printed sheet
perhaps prepared for an exhibition of 1787 and made available at a London sale in
1788: Horace Walpole acquired one of these printed Descriptions and preserved it in
his own copy of his Anecdotes, formerly in the library of the Earl of Derby. It was
reprinted in M.W. Brockwell: The ‘Adoration of the Magi’ by Jan Mabuse Formerly
in the Collection of the Earl of Carlisle, London N.D. [1911], appendix, pp.7–9. David
of Burgundy was Bishop of Utrecht from 1456 until his death in 1496. It was his
half-brother, Philip of Burgundy, Bishop from 1517 to 1524, who employed
Gossaert. These confused reports are clearly unreliable.
8 G. van Bockstaele: ‘Abbaye de Saint-Adrien à Grammont’, in Monasticon belge,
VII: Province de la Flandre Orientale, II, Liège 1977, pp.53–128; and idem, op. cit. (note
6), pp.50–51.
9 ‘. . . Iean de Maubeuge excellent peintre, duquel ils ont encore des rares pieces, comme celle
du iugement en la Chapelle de S. Natalie, celle de la Crucifixion à l’autel priuilegé & autres’:
see Ruteau, op. cit. (note 2), p.229.
10 Steppe, op. cit. (note 2), p.43.
11 See note 2 above.
12 ‘L’Abbé Coppenolle fit bastir le quartier Abbatiale, puis la Censse ou bastimens au bas de
la cour, ou est presentement le college: il releua aussi la grotte derriere le choeur, & y bastit vne
belle Chapelle dediée à la Vierge’: see Ruteau, op. cit. (note 2), p.219.
13 See Van Bockstaele, op. cit. (note 6), pp.69 and 72, for reproductions of a late eight-
eenth-century painting of the abbey (by the local artist Petrus Canivé, born in 1738)
and a late eighteenth-century plan (both in the abbey at Geraardsbergen).
14 ‘In d’abdie van Sint Adriaens, achter de choor, in Onse Vrauwe capelle licht, int’ harnas,
met zijn wapen zeer triomphant, daer staet: Cij gist noble homme monsieur Rogier de Gavre
d’Escornaij, ch[eva]l[ie]r, sr de Hoornebeke, obiit 1456, le 21 d’octobre’; see Baron de
Béthune: Epitaphes et monuments des églises de la Flandre au XVIme siècle, d’après les
GOSSAERT’S ‘ADORATION OF THE KINGS’
look for connections between Philip and the possible patrons of
the Adoration, Jan de Broedere and Daniel van Boechout.
Very little is known about Jan de Broedere, alias Van
Coppenhole, also called Johannes de Cruce.20 He seems to have
come from the Geraardsbergen area.21 Philip the Handsome is
supposed to have asked De Broedere’s predecessor, Gijsbrecht
manuscrits de Corneille Gailliard et d’autres auteurs, Bruges 1897–1900, p.111. Rogier
was a younger son of Arnold VI van Gavere, Baron of Schorisse (Escornaix), and was
himself lord of Horebeke, east of Oudenaarde (ibid., pp.104–06).
15 Van Bockstaele, op. cit. (note 6), p.160, citing a manuscript of 1699.
16 Ibid., p.166.
17 Béthune, op. cit. (note 14), pp.104–05 and 111–12.
18 Ibid., p.104.
19 See Friedländer, op. cit. (note 1), pp.16–25 and 19, no.12.
20 Van Bockstaele, op. cit. (note 8), pp.101–03.
21 The abbot’s coat of arms was described by Ruteau in 1637: ‘. . . deux croix en deux
coings, & trois coquilles en chasque des deux autres coings. Sa deuise estoit VIVE MEMOR
LETHI, viuez memoratif de la mort’; see Ruteau, op. cit. (note 2), p.219. The quotation
is from Persius’ Satires, V, 153; see Van Bockstaele, op. cit. (note 6), p.153: ‘Vive memor
Lethi; fugit hora’, which has been freely translated as ‘Forget not death, for time is on
the wing’. For the coat of arms, see ibid., pp.139 and 153, with reproductions of one
of the abbot’s seals. Jan de Broedere was probably a descendant of Jan van Coppen-
hole, who seems to have died in 1406 and who was buried at St Adrian’s with his
wife, Margareta, and their son; her arms were d’azur à trois coquilles d’or;
see Béthune, op. cit. (note 14), p.105. The abbot was perhaps a son of Gilles de
Coppenolle, from Moerbeke, south of Geraardsbergen, who died before 1st Decem-
ber 1492, leaving a widow, Christoffe de le Croix (= de Cruce); see J. Verschaeren:
Rijksarchief te Ronse, Inventaris van het archief van de Sint-Adriaansabdij te Geraardsbergen,
Brussels 1974, p.258. In 1507 the heirs of Gillis de Broedere, alias vander Crusen
(= de Cruce), had rights over property at Kokenbeke near Sint-Maria-Lierde, north
of Geraardsbergen; ibid., p.148. The abbot was not the same person as the priest Jan
de Broedere, alias Coppenole, who was residing at Moerbeke in 1497 but who died
before 1520; ibid., pp.85 and 262; and Van Bockstaele, op. cit. (note 8), p.101.
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GOSSAERT’S ‘ADORATION OF THE KINGS’
van Ouwegem, to demit his charge because of his great age. In
1504 De Broedere, who had been his coadjutor, obtained a papal
bull confirming his right to succeed and, after Gijsbrecht’s death,
he was consecrated at Valenciennes on 25th November 1506.
His abbacy was a period of great prosperity and he died in 1526.
A missal, sold at Christie’s in 2002, is decorated with his coat
of arms and was presumably commissioned by him.22 The minia-
tures, which are of fairly indifferent quality, hardly substantiate
the idea that De Broedere was a discerning patron. There is at
least one indication that he had connections with the court of
Margaret of Austria. On 9th April 1511 Margaret summoned to
Ghent both Jan de Broedere and Jan Clercx, Abbot of Ninove;
they were to celebrate divine service on the eve of Palm Sunday
(12th April), on Palm Sunday itself, on Maundy Thursday and
on Good Friday.23 It is possible that, at Margaret’s court, De
Broedere might have made the acquaintance of Gossaert’s patron
Philip of Burgundy.
Daniel van Boechout, on the other hand, is relatively well
documented and was closely associated with Philip of Burgundy.
He was very much more likely than the abbot to have had
the opportunity to employ Gossaert while he was in Philip of
Burgundy’s service.
Daniel inherited through his father, Johan van Boechout, the
lordship of Boelare near Geraardsbergen;24 and from his mother,
Johanna van Vianen, the lordship of Beverweerd, about seven
miles south east of Utrecht.25 His mother and his father’s brother
Daniel van Boechout, Viscount and Castellan of Brussels, were
the leading members of a noble company that went in 1440–41
to the Town Hall of Brussels to inspect ‘the town’s painting’,
evidently one or more of the Scenes of Justice painted by Rogier
van der Weyden for the ‘Golden Chamber’ there.26 The Van
Boechouts were closely related to many of the great families
of Brabant and Liège; the Van Vianens, the Van Borselens
and many of the other great families of the northern provinces.
22 Sold at Christie’s, London, Printed Books and Manuscripts from Beriah Botfield’s
Library at Longleat Sold by Order of the Trustees of the Longleat Chattels Settlement, 13th
June 2002, lot 3. The coat of arms corresponds with that on the abbot’s seal; Van
Bockstaele, op. cit. (note 6), pp.139 and 153, although the quarterings are reversed and
the combinations of colours in the first and fourth quarters, azure a cross gules, infringe
the rules of heraldry.
23 M. Bruchet and E. Lancien: L’Itinéraire de Marguerite d’Autriche Gouvernante des
Pays-Bas, Lille 1934, p.86.
24 M. van Trimpont: Het land en de baronie Boelare, 2nd ed., Geraardsbergen 2001,
pp.155–63.
25 L. G[alesloot]: ‘Le domaine de Bouchout, près de Bruxelles. Quelques souvenirs
historiques’, Messager des sciences historiques (1880), pp.265–96 and 413–38; A.J. Maris:
Rijksarchief in de provincie Utrecht, Repertorium op de Stichtse Leenprotocollen uit de Lands-
heerlijke Tijdvak, I: De Nederstichtse Leenacten (1394–1581), The Hague 1956, pp.52 (56),
73 (81) and 414–15 (447); and S. van Ginkel-Meester and T. Hermans:
‘Beverweerd’, in B.O. Meierink et al., eds.: Kastelen en ridderhofsteden in Utrecht, 2nd
ed., Utrecht 1995, pp.132–37.
26 L. Galesloot: ‘Notes extraites des anciens comptes de la ville de Bruxelles’,
Compte-rendu des séances de la Commission royale d’histoire, ou Recueil de ses Bulletins, 3e
sér. IV (1867), pp.475–500, esp. pp.487–88.
27 His parents married in 1440 or 1441; see idem: Inventaire des Archives de la Belgique,
Inventaire des Archives de la Cour Féodale de Brabant, Brussels 1870–84, I, pp.134–35;
according to J.-T. de Raadt: Sceaux armoriés des Pays-Bas et des pays avoisinants,
Brussels 1898–1903, I, p.307, Johan van Boechout was already calling himself lord of
Beverweerd in 1440 and must therefore have been married to Johanna, the heiress;
she was described as his wife on 19th August 1441; S.W.A. Drossaers: Algemeen
Rijksarchief, Het Archief van den Nassauschen Domeinraad, Het Archief van den Raad- en
Rekenkamer te Breda tot 1581, The Hague 1948–55, II, p.224, no.859. Daniel was the
younger of their two sons; see Van Trimpont, op. cit. (note 24), pp.158–59. His
sister Katharina, aged five on 26th September 1461, was born in 1455–56; Galesloot
1870–84, op. cit., I, p.176.
88 F E B R U ARY 2010 • clII • the burlington magazine
Perhaps born in about 1455,27 Daniel was probably brought up
on his mother’s estates near Utrecht. He may have been the
‘Daniel de Bouchoute of the diocese of Utrecht’ who matric-
ulated in 1476 at the University of Louvain.28
Although his father, Johan, inherited Boelare from his
maternal uncle Pieter van Reynghersvliete, who died shortly
after 1462,29 Pieter’s widow, Margriet van Halewyn, continued
to live in the castle there, which was part of her dower, and
only after her death in about 1480 did the Van Boechout fam-
ily come into their Flemish inheritance.30 When Daniel’s elder
brother, Jan, decided to enter the Church,31 Daniel became his
parents’ heir and seems to have divided his time between his
estates in the northern provinces and his lands in Flanders. On
27th July 1487 David of Burgundy, Bishop of Utrecht, certified
that, in his presence, Daniel’s widowed mother had made over
to Daniel all her landed property.32 On 24th August 1487 he
contracted to marry Marie de Luxembourg, daughter of
Jacques de Luxembourg (died 1487), Lord of Fiennes, a Knight
of the Golden Fleece, and sister of Philippe de Luxembourg
(died 1519), Cardinal (1498) and Bishop of Le Mans (1476) and
Thérouanne (1498). In the marriage contract, Daniel estimated
his annual income at about 8,480 livres parisis monnaie de Flandre
‘4,240 livres de 40 gros’, out of which he paid 4,000 livres
parisis to his mother, brother and sister.33
When David of Burgundy died in 1496, Daniel was his
castellan at Ter Horst near Rhenen.34 At an unspecified date,
Daniel was one of the chamberlains at the court of Philip the
Handsome.35 By 1517, when Philip of Burgundy became
Bishop of Utrecht, Daniel was well established in his favour,
and when Philip made his ceremonial entry into Utrecht in
May 1517, Daniel took a prominent place in his entourage and
the town of Utrecht made him generous gifts of wine.36 Philip
appointed him to his council; during Philip’s absences from
the Nedersticht (the area around Utrecht), Daniel was his
28 ‘Ex lilio [. . .] Daniel de Bouchoute, Traj. Dioc.’: see J. Wils: Matricule de l’Université
de Louvain, II, Brussels 1946, p.349.
29 Van Trimpont, op. cit. (note 24), pp.148–53.
30 A. de Portemont: Recherches historiques sur la ville de Grammont en Flandre,
Ghent 1870, II, pp.426–28; R.C. van Caenegem: Les Arrêts et jugés du Parlement de
Paris sur appels flamands, Textes, Brussels 1966–77, II, pp.547–49; F. de Potter and J.
Broeckaert: Geschiedenis van de gemeenten der provincie Oost-Vlaanderen (5th series, 4th
vol.), Ghent 1900, ‘Over Boelare’, pp.14 and 19; J.T. de Smidt and E.I. Strubbe:
Chronologische Lijsten van de Geëxtendeerde Sententiën en Procesbundels (dossiers) berustende
in het archief van de Grote Raad van Mechelen, I, Brussels 1966, p.119; and Verschaeren,
op. cit. (note 21), pp.260–61.
31 The ‘heer Johan van Bouchout’ who in February 1476–77 witnessed a deed of David
of Burgundy, Bishop of Utrecht (A.M.C. van Asch van Wijck: Archief voor kerkelijke
en wereldlijke geschiedenis van Nederland, meer bepaaldelijk van Utrecht, Utrecht 1850–53,
I, p.78), may have been Daniel’s father or alternatively his elder brother, who was a
canon of Utrecht Cathedral by 1476–77 and who died in or around 1507. See F.C.
Butkens: Trophées sacrés et prophanes du duché de Brabant, 2nd ed., with supplement,
The Hague 1724–26, II, pp.270–71; N.B. Tenhaeff: Bronnen tot de bouwgeschiedenis
van den Dom te Utrecht, II, I: Rekeningen 1395–1480, The Hague 1946, pp.533, 550
and 562; Drossaers, op. cit. (note 27), III, p.90; Maris, op. cit. (note 25), p.52; J.
Alberts, C.A. Rutgers and E. Roebroeck: Bronnen tot de bouwgeschiedenis van den Dom
te Utrecht, II: Rekeningen 1480/1–1506/7, The Hague 1969, p.765; B. van den Hoven
van Genderen: De Heren van de Kerk, De Kanunniken van Oudemunster te Utrecht in de
late middeleeuwen, Zutphen 1997, p.418; and Van Trimpont, op. cit. (note 24),
pp.158–59.
32 Drossaers, op. cit. (note 27), III, p.90, no.1289.
33 V. Campen: La Baronnie de Boulaere, Geraardsbergen 1930, pp.66–67 (Geert van
Bockstaele kindly sent photocopies from this book), and Van Trimpont, op. cit. (note
24), pp.159–60, resume the terms of the marriage contract.
34 Van Asch van Wijck, op. cit. (note 31), I, p.25; for the castle, now destroyed, see
J. Renaud: ‘Ter Horst’, in Meierink et al., op. cit. (note 25), pp.259–60.
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stadhouder, or representative, there; and he was castellan of
Philip’s principal residence at Duurstede.37 He had stabling
there for his horses and a room in the great tower, which in
1533 was still known as ‘the lord of Boelare’s chamber’.38 In his
will of 1518, however, Daniel expressed his desire to be buried
at Geraardsbergen.39 Philip of Burgundy died on 7th April
1524. On 13th May, Daniel – one of Philip’s four executors 40
– and some colleagues were diligently compiling inventories of
Philip’s goods at Duurstede.41 Daniel was still there on 13th
November 1524 but died between 26th September 1525 and
23rd July 1527.42 He was buried in the Chapel of the Virgin in
the Abbey Church of St Adrian at Geraardsbergen. Daniel’s
elder daughter and heir, Marie van Boechout, married in 1512
as her first husband Hugues de Lannoy, Lord of Rollencourt,
who died in 1528; their granddaughter and heir was Anne of
Egmont (1533–58), the first wife of William the Silent, Prince
of Orange. Daniel’s second daughter, Françoise, married in
1527 Richard de Merode, Lord of Frentzen.43 Jeanne van Boe-
chout van Boelare, probably an illegitimate daughter of
Daniel’s, married in 1508 Alvaro de Almaras, a merchant from
Segovia. In 1517 Jeanne was able to buy for 7,150 Rhenish
florins Daniel’s property of Diepenstein (near Steenhuffel,
north of Brussels and west of Mechlin), which was being sold
by order of the Council of Brabant to pay debts owed by Daniel
to his sister.44 Jeanne and her husband are represented as donors
in a window of the Virgin of the Seven Sorrows in the church at
Steenhuffel. It is dated 1535, the year of Alvaro’s death. Their
son Alvaro the younger, who died in 1560, married Maria
Scheyfve, whose father, Pieter Scheyfve, commissioned from
Bosch in about 1495 the triptych of the Adoration of the Kings
now in the Prado.45
Daniel may have got to know Philip of Burgundy when both
were involved in the civil strife that afflicted Flanders in the
early 1490s 46 or afterwards, when they were at the court of
35 Butkens, op. cit. (note 31), III, p.46: ‘Chambellans [. . .] Le Seigneur de Boulers’.
36 A. Matthaeus: Veteris aevi analecta seu vetera monumenta hactenus nondum visa . . ., 2nd
ed., The Hague 1738, I, p.177; J.W.C. van Campen: ‘De intocht van Philips van
Bourgondie, Bisschop van Utrecht, Ao 1517’, Jaarboekje van ‘Oud Utrecht’ (1933),
pp.73–96, esp. p.95; C.A. van Kalveen: Het bestuur van Bisschop en Staten in het
Nedersticht, Oversticht en Drenthe 1483–1520, Utrecht 1974, p.320; and J. Sterk: Philips
van Bourgondië (1465–1524) Bisschop van Utrecht als protagonist van de Renaissance, zijn
leven en maecenaat, Zutphen 1980, p.34.
37 Ibid., pp.36–37.
38 Matthaeus, op. cit. (note 36), I, pp.224 and 226–27; Sterk, op. cit. (note 36), p.243;
and H.A. Enno van Gelder: Gegevens betreffende roerend en onroerend bezit in de
Nederlanden in de 16e eeuw, The Hague 1972–73, I, p.110.
39 See note 16 above.
40 Sterk, op. cit. (note 36), pp.86–88.
41 Van Asch van Wijck, op. cit. (note 31), III, p.119.
42 Ibid., p.145; Drossaers, op. cit. (note 27), III, p.171, no.1584; Maris, op. cit.
(note 25), pp.414–15; and H. van Ongevalle: ‘De baronnen en de baronie van
Boelare van ca.1377 tot 1563’, licentiaat dissertation (Katholieke Universiteit,
Leuven, 1987), p.61.
43 For these family connections, see Galesloot, op. cit. (note 25), pp.267–86;
Drossaers, op. cit. (note 27), ad indices; D. Schwennicke: Europäische Stammtafeln, N.F.
VIII, Marburg 1980, and XVIII, Frankfurt 1998; and Van Trimpont, op. cit. (note 24),
pp.162–73.
44 Galesloot, op. cit. (note 25), pp.284–85; and R. Fagel: De Hispano-Vlaamse wereld.
De contacten tussen Spanjaarden en Nederlanders 1496–1555, Brussels and Nijmegen 1996,
p.109. Alvaro knew Diego Flores, treasurer to Margaret of Austria; see his will of
1534, summarised in ibid., p.85.
45 J. Helbig and Y. Vanden Bemden: Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi, Belgique, III. Les
vitraux de la première moitié du XVIe siècle conservés en Belgique: Brabant et Limbourg, Lede-
berg and Ghent 1974, pp.24–53; and X. Duquenne: ‘La famille Scheyfve et Jérôme
Bosch’, L’Intermédiaire des généalogistes 59 (January–February 2004), pp.1–19, esp. p.4.
GOSSAERT’S ‘ADORATION OF THE KINGS’
Philip the Handsome. They must certainly have met when both
were in the service of David of Burgundy, Bishop of Utrecht.
At the time of David’s death in 1496, Daniel was his castellan at
Ter Horst while Philip was his castellan at Duurstede; Philip was
asked to protect Ter Horst when it was under threat.47 Gossaert
had been in Philip’s service since the winter of 1508–09, when
he accompanied Philip on his embassy to Rome, and, as
Gossaert seems to have had lodgings in Philip’s residences,48 it is
more than likely that Daniel van Boechout had met Gossaert in
about 1508 and that the two men knew each other well.
Daniel van Boechout, Philip of Burgundy and Gossaert
appear to have shared a taste for erotic images. Among the
items which Daniel had from the estate of Philip of Burgundy
were ‘two precious little panels of fornication (de boelschap),
well done, with a cover or case (custodie) for one of them’.49
These were two paintings of explicitly erotic subjects; the
cover may have been put there to avoid embarrassing the
innocent. They may very well have been by Gossaert. Philip’s
taste for erotic works of art must have been well known, for he
owned a marble statue of the ‘false god Priapus’ as well as many
paintings of nudes;50 he gave several such pieces to his relatives
Margaret of Austria51 and Philip of Cleves-Ravenstein.52
Gossaert’s Neptune and Amphitrite, dated 1516 and painted for
Philip of Burgundy (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin), shows how
successful he was in creating such images. Daniel and his wife,
who predeceased him, were buried in ‘a beautiful [. . .] tomb
in the Italian style’:53 if it was made in Daniel’s lifetime, it gives
another indication of his aesthetic tastes.
Daniel van Boechout provides the obvious link between
Gossaert and the abbey at Geraardsbergen and it was probably
Daniel who secured the permission of Gossaert’s employer
Philip of Burgundy to commission him to paint not only the
great Adoration but also his other paintings which once adorned
the abbey church.
46 G. Doutrepont and O. Jodogne, eds.: Chroniques de Jean Molinet, Brussels 1935–37,
II, p.241; Van Trimpont, op. cit. (note 24), pp.160–61.
47 See note 34 above; Van Kalveen, op. cit. (note 36), p.11; and Sterk, op. cit.
(note 36), p.16.
48 J. Prinsen, ed.: Collectanea van Gerardus Geldenhauer Noviomagus, gevold door den
herdruk van eenige zijner werken, Amsterdam 1901, p.235.
49 Sterk, op. cit. (note 36), p.264: ‘Twee costelicke taffereelkens van de boelscap wel gedaen
mit een custodie daer d’een in hoirt ’, with the marginal note: ‘Dese taefferelen heft die here
van Boeler’. They came from Philip’s small town house. The other items appropriated
by Daniel included a length of blue velvet, two precious gold rings, one with a
cameo, and a great bed; Sterk, op. cit. (note 36), pp.90, 227 and 248.
50 Ibid., pp.227 (‘Een groot taeffereel van een naict vroutken mit een pijl in de hant genoempt
Cupido . . .’), 248 (‘Twee groete taefferelen mit naicte figueren van mannen’) and 263
(‘Item eenen marmeren afgod Preapus genaempt’).
51 H. Michelant: ‘Inventaire [. . .] de Marguerite d’Autriche . . .’, Compte-rendu des
séances de la Commission royale d’histoire, ou Recueil de ses Bulletins, 3e sér., 12 (1871),
pp.5–78 and 83–136, esp. p.110: ‘Item, ung beau tableau auquel est painct ung homme et
une femme nuz, estant les pieds en l’eaue; le premier bort de marbre, le second doré et en bas
ung escripteau, donné par Mons gr d’Utrecht’.
52 J. Finot: Inventaire sommaire des archives départementales antérieures à 1790 [. . .] Nord,
série B, Chambre des Comptes de Lille, VIII, Lille 1895, p.432 (Enghien, 1528: ‘ung grand
tableau de deux personnaiges nudz de Mars et Vénus, cloz de feuillet, venant de feu
monseigneur d’Utrecht; ung autre grand tableau de paincture d’une belle fille qui se déshabille,
venant be feu monseigneur d’Utrecht’).
53 ‘. . . een schoone triomphante hooghe verheven tombe op d’italiaensche maniere . . .’;
Béthune, op. cit. (note 14), p.112. Daniel’s wife was dead by 6th October 1523, when
he laid down how his property was to be divided between his two daughters. This
document, mentioned in Campen, op. cit. (note 33), p.69, belonged to Campen and
cannot now be found; I am grateful to Geert van Bockstaele for sending a photocopy
of a typed transcript where there is a reference to ‘vrouwe Marie van Luxembourg
zaelieger memorie zyne wettelicke gheselnede was’.
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Three drawings attributed to Wouter Pietersz

Crabeth II
by XANDER VAN ECK

THE BRITISH MUSEUM owns two drawings illustrating scenes

from the parable of the Good Samaritan, The Samaritan carrying
the wounded man on his horse and The Samaritan paying the innkeeper
(Figs.22 and 23). Each measuring 27 by 40 cm., they have a
monumentality that derives from the closeness of the figures to
the picture plane, clear contours and an elaborate modelling
through hatching, dark washes in ink and white highlights. The
first of these drawings is signed ‘WCrabeth’. In 1932 A.E.
Popham attributed them to Wouter Crabeth (died 1589), the
famous glass-painter from Gouda who, together with his
brother Dirck (died 1574), played a major part in the stained-
glass decoration of Gouda’s St John’s church between 1555 and
1571.1 They still carry this name in the online inventory of the
British Museum, although Zsuzsanna van Ruyven-Zeman,
who painstakingly established a core of smaller drawings and
glass panels attributable to the master, rejected this authorship
outright.2 The drawings she accepts (such as Fig.21) show the
same dynamism, elongated figures and Frans Floris-like bearded
heads as Wouter Crabeth’s well-documented cartoons (life-size
working drawings) for the Gouda church windows – features
which are clearly absent in the two Good Samaritan drawings.3
Although the present drawings have some features that at first
sight appear to belong to the late sixteenth century, such as
their Heemskerck-like compositions,4 the ‘body stockings’ the
figures wear, the elaborate, slashed clothes and the grotesque
decorations of the boots, they reveal a draughtsman who is
closer to somewhat later artists such as Abraham Bloemaert,
whereas the classical ruins in the background look much like the
ones Pieter Lastman and Bartholomeus Breenbergh produced in
Rome around 1620. Apart from that, the signature would be a 21. The Supper at Bethany, by
Wouter Pietersz Crabeth I. 1567.
one-off, as neither of the glass-painting Crabeth brothers ever Pen with brown wash, 41 by 14
signed any of their known works. cm. (Ecole nationale supérieure
There is another logical candidate with the same initials – des Beaux-Arts, Paris).
indeed the same name – as the glass-painter: Wouter’s grandson
Wouter Pietersz Crabeth II (Gouda 1594–1644), the foremost
painter in the city of Gouda in the first half of the seventeenth records confirm these travels: in 1615 he was in Paris and
century. He has figured in art-historical literature mainly as one between 1619 and 1622 he was in Rome. We find him back in
of the Dutch Caravaggists on the periphery of the Utrecht Gouda in 1626, where he stayed until he died. His known œuvre
school5 and played a major role in publications by the present until now consists solely of paintings, including five large
writer about paintings made for clandestine Catholic churches in religious works (four of them traceable to a clandestine Catholic
the Northern Netherlands.6 church in Gouda) and half a dozen genre paintings of card
According to Houbraken, Crabeth was apprenticed to Cor- sharpers and shepherds. Crabeth also received portrait commis-
nelis Ketel before he travelled to France and Rome.7 Archival sions from a Gouda family (a portrait-historié of The wedding at

I am grateful to Zsuzsanna van Ruyven-Zeman, who put me on the right track in Museum drawings are discarded in note 6); and idem: ‘De gebroeders Crabeth en
this research. Furthermore I would like to thank Truus van Bueren, Marten Jan Bok Willem Tybaut, nieuw werk van de kunstenaars van de Goudse Glazen’, Delineavit
and Marijn Schapelhouman for their comments. et sculpsit 31 (2007), pp.2–22.
1 A.E. Popham: Catalogue of drawings by Dutch and Flemish artists preserved in the 3 X. van Eck, C. Coebergh-Surie and A. Gasten: The stained-glass windows in the

Department of prints and drawings in the British museum, V, London 1932, p.152. Sint-Janskerk at Gouda, II: The works of Dirck and Wouter Crabeth, Amsterdam 2002,
2 Z. van Ruyven-Zeman: ‘Some drawings attributed to Wouter Crabeth, the nos.6, 8–9 and 11.
glass painter from Gouda’, Master Drawings 23–24 (1985–86), pp.554–51 (the British 4 Compare The Good Samaritan carrying the wounded man, by Dirck Coornhert after

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DRAWINGS ATTRIBUTED TO CRABETH II

22. The Samaritan carrying the wounded

man on his horse, by Wouter Pietersz
Crabeth II. c.1635. Pen and brown ink,
with grey-brown wash, over black chalk,
heightened with white, 27 by 40 cm.
(British Museum, London).

23. The Samaritan paying the innkeeper, by

Wouter Pietersz Crabeth II. c.1635. Pen
and brown ink, with grey-brown wash,
over black chalk, heightened with white,
27 by 40 cm. (British Museum, London).

Cana; MuseumgoudA, Gouda) and the Gouda militia (Harmanus
Herberts and his officers; MuseumgoudA, Gouda).
Some of these paintings are signed and carry dates between
1628 and 1641. Whereas the genre paintings are without
exception dependent on Caravaggesque examples, the history
paintings draw on a much broader stylistic range. The only Car-
avaggesque ones are his two versions of the Doubting Thomas
(c.1626; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and private collection, Bel-
gium), whereas his Assumption of the Virgin (1628; MuseumgoudA,
Gouda) is clearly based on Carracci and Reni. His Adoration of the

Maerten van Heemskerck, repr. in I.M. Veldman: The New Hollstein. Dutch and
Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts 1450–1700: Maerten van Heemskerck, Amsterdam
1993, no.352.
5 A. von Schneider: Caravaggio und die Niederländer, Karlsruhe 1933, p.48; and
B. Nicolson: The International Caravaggesque movement, Oxford 1979.
6 X. van Eck: ‘Wouter Pietersz. Crabeth II en de parochie van St. Johannes
de Doper in Gouda’, Oud Holland 101 (1987), pp.35–49; idem: Kunst, twist
en devotie. Goudse katholieke schuilkerken 1572–1795, Delft 1994; and idem:
Clandestine splendor. Paintings for the Catholic church in the Dutch Republic, Zwolle
2008, pp.70–75.
7 A. Houbraken: De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen,
Amsterdam 1718–21, I, pp.178–79.

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DRAWINGS ATTRIBUTED TO CRABETH II
24. Adoration of the Kings, by Wouter Pietersz Crabeth II. 1631. Canvas, 84 by 182
cm. (MuseumgoudA, Gouda).
25. St Bernard of Clairvaux converting St William of Aquitaine, by Wouter Pietersz
Crabeth II. 1641. Canvas, 143 by 239 cm. (MuseumgoudA, Gouda).
Kings (Fig.24) and St Bernard of Clairvaux converting St William of
Aquitaine (Fig.25) are more difficult to categorise, with their
eclectic mix of Mannerist and early Baroque features.
Crabeth’s signatures vary somewhat: in 1628, shortly after his
return from Italy, he signed his Assumption of the Virgin with a
Latinised version of his name (‘Gualterus Crabeth f. 1628’), but
soon after he reverted to his Dutch initial. His Adoration of the
Kings of 1631 and his St Bernard of Clairvaux converting St William
of Aquitaine of 1641 carry a signature that is compatible with the
one on the drawing of The Samaritan carrying the wounded man on
his horse (Figs.26 and 27).
There are many elements in Crabeth’s paintings that support
the hypothesis that the Good Samaritan drawings are indeed
his. In the Adoration of the Kings (Fig.24) we observe a similar
awkwardness in the stance of the figures and the use of clear,
theatrical cast shadows under the figures, implying a light source
located over the left shoulder of the viewer. In all his history
paintings, as in the two drawings under discussion, the figures are
very close to the picture plane, their heads almost reaching the
frame. There are also some striking similarities in details, such as
the use of old-fashioned slashed clothing, leather boots with flaps
and grotesque ornaments at the front and metal spurs attached
with a strap over the shoe. The handle of the Good Samaritan’s
sword has an eagle’s head for a pommel, with a crossguard that
curls up on one side and down on the other, just like the sword
of William of Aquitaine in Crabeth’s picture of 1641 (Fig.25).
8F.W.H. Hollstein: Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts c.1450–1700,
Amsterdam 1949, no.5.1.
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26. Detail of
Fig.22.
27. Detail of
Fig.25.
A drawing in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in
Braunschweig expels any doubts that might remain: The prodigal
son taking leave of his parents (Fig.28), marked ‘WPC’, has the
same clear contours and sparse hatching as the British Museum
drawings, with which it also shares the robust figures of men
and animals, the slashed clothing and turbans to suggest biblical
times and places, and the combination of classical and vernacular
architecture, with Bruegelian houses in the background. This
time we can be sure that Wouter’s grandfather was not involved,
since this drawing was clearly based on a design by David
Vinckboons of 1608, a composition that was engraved by Claes
Jansz Visscher (in reverse to the drawing). Crabeth may have
used this print and mirrored the composition, but he could also
have used the original drawing, now in the British Museum
(Fig.29).8 Typically, he moved the figures closer to the picture
plane to increase their monumentality.
Given the Roman features in Crabeth’s drawings, a date
before his stay abroad seems out of the question; it is more
likely that they belong to the period after his return home. It
seems that the example of Ketel and Vinckboons started to play
an ever more important role in his paintings from the period
1630–42, after the strongly Italianate period just after his return
from Italy in 1626. An indication that, for example, the
Vinckboons drawing was still of interest to the painter later in
his career, is the fact that he borrowed its compositional
framework, with a receding building on the right with a group
9 U. Mielke: The new Hollstein. German engravings, etchings and woodcuts, 1400–1700:
Heinrich Aldegrever, Amsterdam 1996, nos.40–43.7
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DRAWINGS ATTRIBUTED TO CRABETH II

28. The prodigal son taking leave of his parents,

by Wouter Pietersz Crabeth II. c.1635.
Pen and brown ink, with grey-brown
wash, over black chalk, heightened with
white, 26 by 39 cm. (Herzog Anton
Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig).

29. The prodigal son taking leave of his parents,

by David Vinckboons. 1608. Pen and
brown ink, with grey wash, 22 by 30 cm.
(British Museum, London).

of people in front of it, for his St Bernard of Clairvaux converting
St William of Aquitaine (Fig.25).
The finished execution of all three drawings discussed here
and the squaring of The Samaritan paying the innkeeper seem to
indicate that they were not just sketches but models of some
kind. Considering Crabeth’s œuvre as we know it, it would only
be logical to assume that they were preparatory studies for oil
paintings, although the fact that only one of the drawings is
squared is puzzling.
Considering the iconography of the Good Samaritan drawings,
it seems likely that a series of more than two was intended – a
print series of the story by Aldegrever from 1554 has the same two
scenes preceded by The traveller falling among thieves on the road
between Jerusalem and Jericho and The Good Samaritan tending to the
traveller’s wounds.9 As Crabeth’s circle of patrons until now has
proved to be purely Gouda-based, we might speculate that a series
of paintings about the Good Samaritan could have been destined
for a Gouda institution that took care of the sick and disabled. The
first candidate that comes to mind would be the Catharina
Gasthuis, at the time housed in a building that was to become
the municipal museum in the nineteenth century. Ironically,
Crabeth’s most important paintings have been gathered there
over the years, but until now no trace has been found of paintings
of the Good Samaritan, nor, for that matter, of the Prodigal Son.

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Rubens’s lost ‘pocketbook’: some new thoughts
by DAVID JAFFÉ
TWO FOLIOS FROM what is known as the Antwerp sketchbook,
plausibly attributed to Anthony van Dyck, show a series of sketch-
es of a Boy boxer and a Boy with a goose, both of which are drawings
after sculpture (Fig.31). Whether or not the sketchbook can
indeed be attributed to Van Dyck is not our concern here, but it
is important to note that these sketches are almost certainly copied
from Rubens’s so-called pocketbook, as has been observed by
other scholars, and the present writer has argued elsewhere that the
Antwerp sketchbook is largely a compilation after Rubens’s lost
pocketbook and other drawings by him.1 The sketches on these
two folios, and the sculptures represented, are a source for figures
in a number of works by Rubens, and so help date this part of the
original Rubens pocketbook. The drawings are of particular inter-
est because Rubens singled out these images in an important early
tract he wrote on exemplary antique sculpture portraying children.
Fol.65r records a series of views of the famous classical sculp-
ture Boy with a goose, and it is likely that Rubens was copying the
example from the Cesi collection in Rome (Fig.30), which he
visited in the early 1600s.2 On the previous sheet (fol.64v) there
is another image of the Boy with a goose, this time among various
sketches of the Boy boxer, a small Paduan bronze of c.1500
(Fig.32), which was thought by Rubens – and still by eighteenth-
century scholars – to be an antique work. The recto of the same
sheet presents further views of the Boy boxer (Fig.33), making up
a survey of six studies in all of this figure. Both sheets demon-
strate Rubens’s interest in recording how each sculpture looked
from a variety of angles as he rotated the statue, intently explor-
ing the stance and torso of each of these child figures.
When Michael Jaffé first published the Antwerp sketchbook in
1966, he concluded that the Boy boxer studies it contains were
derived from Rubens’s lost pocketbook because they also
occurred in the Johnson manuscript, which is acknowledged as a
transcription of Rubens’s pocketbook and is now in the Cour-
tauld Gallery, London. Marjon van der Meulen subsequently
1 For the sketchbook, see M. Jaffé: Van Dyck’s Antwerp sketchbook, London 1966,
where the Johnson copy of the pocketbook, now in the Courtauld Gallery, London,
is cited; J. Bolten: Method and practice: Dutch and Flemish drawing books 1600–1750,
Landau 1985, pp.101–16; A. Balis: ‘Rubens und Inventio. Der Beitrag seines
theoretischen Studienbuches’, in U. Heinen and A. Thielemann, eds.: Rubens
Passioni; Kultur der Leidenschaften im Barock, Göttingen 2001, pp.11–40; D. Jaffé with
A. Bradley: ‘Rubens’s “Pocketbook”: An Introduction to the Creative Process’, in
D. Jaffé et al.: exh. cat. Rubens: A Master in the Making, London (National Gallery)
2005, pp.21–27; T. Meganck: ‘Rubens on the Human Figure: Theory, Practice and
Metaphysics’, in J. Vander Auwera et al.: exh. cat. Rubens: a genius at work, Brussels
(Royal Museums of Fine Arts) 2007–08; and J. Barone: ‘Rubens and Leonardo on
Motion: Figures, Inscriptions, and Texts’, in C. Farago, ed.: Re-Reading Leonardo: The
Treatise on Painting across Europe, 1550–1900, Farnham 2009, pp.441–74.
2 The invention survives in many replicas, sadly all without the original heads; see
M. van der Meulen: Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, part 23: Rubens, copies after
the antique, II, London 1994, pp.87–88, no.70, who argues that a copy in Copenhagen
after Rubens’s drawing proves Rubens saw the Cesi version.
3 See ibid., I, London 1994, pp.250–53, esp. p.253, note 9. L. Planiscig: Kunst -
historisches Museum Wien, Sammlung für Plastik und Kunstgewerbe: Die Bronzeplastiken,
Statuetten, Reliefs, Geräte und Plaketten, Vienna 1924, p.53, no.97. The silver eyes in
the Vienna bronze suggest Padua, c.1500. There is a companion in the Museo
Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; see A. Radcliffe, M. Baker and M. Maek-Gérard: The
94 f e b r u ary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
drew attention to the similarity of this figure with the Renaissance
bronze in Vienna (Fig.32), and a comparison of the drawings
confirms that tentative identification, revealing as it does precise
matching details such as the ties for the boxer’s knee protectors.3
These tell-tale ties behind the knees are only visible in the sketch-
book at Chatsworth.
It has not been noted that the drawings after this sculpture
were the source for the rather muscular Cupid who accompanies
his mother, Venus, in Rubens’s Judgment of Paris in London
(Fig.34). This work was probably painted before May 1600 when
Rubens left Antwerp for Italy and so he must have begun this
section of his pocketbook before he left for Italy. It is significant
too that his interest in using sculpture as models for his painting
is evident so early on in his career.4
Rubens was certainly intrigued by the figure of the Boy boxer
and it is possible that he knew it from the collection of his friend
and Antwerp patron, Nicolaas Rockox, as a sculpture of the type
in Vienna is cited in the inventory of Rockox’s collection: ‘puer
paratus pugnam committere cestu’ (‘a boy ready to start fighting with
a boxing glove’). That inventory was prepared by Nicolas-
Claude Fabri de Peiresc, the famous antiquarian and learned
correspondent who was a friend of Rockox (and later of Rubens
too); he had come from his home in Aix-en-Provence in 1606
on an extended visit to view Northern humanist collections.5
If Rubens’s sketches were indeed made from Rockox’s sculpture
then this would confirm the idea that the pocketbook was
started before Rubens’s trip to Italy and provide further evidence
of an Antwerp provenance for the Judgment of Paris, as Rubens’s
Antwerp patron would surely have recognised the visual citation
of this sculpture in the painting.6 Jan Brueghel’s and Rubens’s
Sense of Sight (1617; Museo del Prado, Madrid) includes two
all’antica sculptures from Rockox’s collection, which suggests
that there was a tradition of quoting specific items, although
there the works are not ‘disguised’ as living models.7
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Renaissance and later sculpture, with works of art in bronze,
London 1992, p.169. There was considerable interest in the late sixteenth century in
ancient boxing. I am not aware of any images showing ancient boxers wearing knee
protectors, which may have more to do with Renaissance parade armour. The leather
cap was standard headwear for Greek boxers; see C. Tovar: ‘Battered but unbeaten:
a new Getty acquisition’, Apollo 167 (February 2008), pp.63–67, citing Z. Newby:
Greek athletics in the Roman world, Oxford 2005.
4 Rubens possibly also used the Boy boxer in his Nature adorned by the Graces (c.1618;
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow), where the figure appears as a flying
putto.
5 R.W. Scheller: Nicolaas Rockox als oudheidkundige, Antwerp 1978, p.69 (fig.23 on
p.50). Peiresc visited Rockox in 1606; see D. Jaffé: ‘Rubens’ Samson and Delilah, an
Antwerp Chimney Piece in Context’, in idem et al.: exh. cat. Samson and Delilah: a
Rubens painting returns, Antwerp (Rockoxhuis) and Vienna (Liechtenstein Museum)
2007–08, pp.11–18. Rubens’s brother Philip knew Rockox from an early date and it
is possible that Peter Paul met him when assisting Otto van Veen.
6 See Balis, op. cit. (note 1), where it is postulated that many of Rubens’s early
inventions are preserved in the Chatsworth sketchbook. F. Healy: Rubens and the
Judgement of Paris: a question of choice, Turnhout 1997, p.67, argues for a date of 1601
for the Judgment of Paris; on pp.56–57 she dates the pocketbook to before Rubens’s
Italian journey.
7 Unless one accepts that the Cupid in that painting is also based on the Boy boxer.
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RUBENS’S LOST ‘POCKETBOOK’

30. Boy with a goose. Roman copy of 31. Fols.64v and 65r of the Antwerp sketchbook, by Anthony van Dyck. Pen on paper, 20.6 by 32 cm. (Duke of
Hellenistic original. Marble, 85 cm. high. Devonshire collection, Chatsworth).
(Museo Palazzo Altemps, Rome).

32. Boy boxer. Paduan, c.1500. Bronze, silver and enamel, 28.5 cm. high. 33. Fol.64r of the Antwerp sketchbook, by Anthony van Dyck. Pen on paper, 20.6 by
(Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). 16 cm. (Duke of Devonshire collection, Chatsworth).

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RUBENS’S LOST ‘POCKETBOOK’

36. Detail of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga and his family adoring the Holy Trinity, by Peter
Paul Rubens. c.1604–05. Two canvases, each 185 by 462 cm. (Palazzo Ducale,
34. Detail Mantua).
of Judgment
of Paris, by
Peter Paul
Rubens. The Antwerp sketchbook studies of the Boy with a goose were
c.1597–99. even more influential for Rubens’s early work. Unlike the Boy
Panel, boxer, the studies of the Boy with a goose do not appear in the
133.9 by
174.5 cm. Johnson manuscript, but Rubens’s authorship is clearly estab-
(National lished by their quotation in some of his earliest Italian paintings.
Gallery, The artist inserted two of these views (the first side view and the
London).
penultimate rear view) into his Judgment of Paris in Vienna
(Fig.35). Another side view of the Boy with a goose can be seen
in the angel holding up Christ’s cloak in Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga
and his family adoring the Holy Trinity (Fig.36),8 and a schematic
rendition of a rear view of the boy occurs on the right of the
sarcophagus below Christ in the Lamentation over the dead Christ
(Fig.37). These early citations again point to Rubens’s author-
ship of the drawings recorded in the Antwerp sketchbook and
indicate that this section of the original Rubens pocketbook was
certainly in existence before 1602.
Rubens later found uses for the Boy with a goose as a rather awk-
wardly kicking putto in his St Jerome in his study (1610; Schloss
Sanssouci, Potsdam), then as a putto aiding the disrobing of Mars
in The return from war: Mars disarmed by Venus (Fig.38) and, as has
been observed, in his Statue of Ceres (c.1616; State Hermitage
Museum, St Petersburg).9 Unlike the early paintings, these last
two display the more obvious, classic poses. We also know that
around 1628 Willem Panneels copied three conventional frontal
views of the sculpture drawn by Rubens, suggesting that the sur-
prising twisted angles appealed more to the younger Rubens.10
35. Detail of Judgment of Paris, by Peter Paul Rubens. c.1602. Copper, 34 by 45 cm. The artist’s borrowing of such ‘antique’ images is not merely
(Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna). incidental, as Rubens outlines a comprehensive scheme for

8 Rubens’s painting was clearly inspired by Mantegna’s fresco of putti holding an
inscription on the west wall of the Camera degli Sposi in the Palazzo Ducale, Man-
tua. Van der Meulen, op. cit. (note 2), II, p.87, notes that the sculpture also
informed a putto in his Statue of Ceres in the State Hermitage Museum, St Peters-
burg, and Venus mourning Adonis in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, but the
latter could, like Rubens’s Horrors of war in Palazzo Pitti, Florence, be indebted
9 For the St Jerome, see H. Vlieghe: Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, part 8:
Saints, London 1973, II, pp.97–99, no.120; for The return from war, see A.T. Woollett:
exh. cat. Rubens & Brueghel: a working friendship, Los Angeles (J. Paul Getty Museum)
and The Hague (Mauritshuis) 2006–07, pp.52–59, no.2. The connection with the
Statue of Ceres was made by Van der Meulen (see note 8 above).
10 See Van der Meulen, op. cit. (note 2), II, pp.87–88, no.70.

instead to Marcantonio Raimondi’s engraving after Raphael of the Judgment of 11 P.P. Rubens: Théorie de la figure humaine, considérée dans ses principes, soit en repos

Paris. The print was also copied in the pocketbook. ou en mouvement. Ouvrage traduit du latin de Pierre-Paul Rubens, avec XLIV planches

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illustrating children by reference to antique sculpture in his

brief essay on children (‘de pueris’) in his pocketbook, which is
cited in full below. Indeed, this passage identifies as ideal
models for mature infants both the Boy boxer and the ‘Boy with
a swan’ – undoubtedly the famous Boy with a goose. Rubens’s
original Latin text is preserved in the Johnson manuscript and
was first published, in French translation, in 1773 by C.A.
Jombert, who illustrated it with engravings of Rubens’s sketches
of the Boy boxer (though not the Boy with a goose).11 Van der
Meulen also connected the Rubens tract on children to these
pocketbook drawings and noted the absence of any ancient
example of a Boy boxer.12
37. Detail
When taking statues as models, the best ones should always of the
Lamentation
be selected and imitated as models of the different ages over the dead
concerned – infancy, say, of which the nicest example is Christ, by
provided by the putti on the statue of the Nile and of the Peter Paul
Rubens.
Tiber in the Vatican Gardens. Self-contained in their smooth c.1601–02.
rotundity, they are playful in their gestures, crawling on the Canvas, 180
ground and clambering over the massive limbs of their father by 136 cm.
(Galleria
as if they were mountains. Similar to these are the ones next Borghese,
to the Tiber statue in the same place, being suckled by the Rome).
she wolf. Next a slightly more advanced age, but still that of
a baby, was illustrated by the ancients in the Cupid asleep on
an outspread lion skin, with a torch in his left hand. A later
stage than this is shown in the boy next to Leda where he is
struggling with the swan, and in the Hercules crushing the
serpents in his cradle. Finally, a somewhat more substantial
age is represented in the little Greek boy fighting with
boxing gloves. All these children of different kinds, yet still
possessing the chubbiness of infancy, can be seen in ancient
marbles in Rome.13
It is probable that Rubens wrote this passage during his first
stay in Rome in 1602 as it exudes the artist’s excitement at
encountering these ancient monuments. The nomenclature and
structure of some of the references, such as that to the Leda and
the boy struggling with a swan, closely follow the mistaken
identifications of both these figures in Mauro and Aldroandi’s
1556 guidebook to ancient sculpture in Rome.14
It is interesting to consider why Rubens thought the Boy boxer
was Greek. Elizabeth McGrath has demonstrated that in the
decoration of the façade of his own house Rubens chose to show
Alexander the Great naked because he knew from Pliny that the 38. Detail of The return from war: Mars disarmed by Venus, by Jan Brueghel and Peter
Greeks portrayed their heroes nude, unlike the Romans. Thus Paul Rubens. c.1613. Panel, 127.3 by 163.5 cm. (J. Paul Getty Museum,
the lack of dress, and the fact that it was bronze and archaically Los Angeles).
frontal, may all have suggested to Rubens a Greek origin.15
Athletic feats were celebrated in the literature and art of the
ancient world: Pindar wrote poems which celebrated victorious assumed that this sculpture was antique both because he knew
Greek boy boxers and Pausanias described many commemora- that such sculptures existed in the ancient world and because
tive statues around the temple of Olympia and elsewhere. As a he was persuaded by the work’s detailed and informed represen-
scholar of such ancient texts, Rubens may naturally have tation of antique boxing gloves and cap.

gravées par Pierre Aveline, d'après les desseins de ce célebre artiste, ed. C.A. Jombert, figure humaine, ed. N. Laneyrie-Dagen, Paris 2003, p.157.
Paris 1773. 13 Van der Meulen, op. cit. (note 2), I, pp.65, 71–75 and 251–52.
12 Ibid., I, p.253, note 9. Curiously Van der Meulen does not seem to realise 14 L. Mauro and U. Aldroandi: Le antichita de la Citta di Roma, Venice 1556; Van

Jombert had already made the same link (she notes that the Vienna bronze is der Meulen, op. cit. (note 2), I, p.49; and II, p.88, mentions the guidebook without
illustrated in P. Gauricus: De Sculptura [1504], ed. A. Chastel, Geneva 1969, drawing attention to its influence on Rubens’s text.
fig.44. Chastel’s illustration is without any reference). Nadeije Laneyrie-Dagen 15 E. McGrath: ‘The Painted Decoration of Rubens’s House’, Journal of the Warburg

describes the match as very close in her commentary in P.P. Rubens: Théorie de la and Courtauld Institutes 41 (1978), pp.245–77, esp. p.254, note 38.

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RUBENS’S LOST ‘POCKETBOOK’
39. Detail of
Crucifixion, by
Pellegrino
Tibaldi.
1587. Fresco.
(Escorial,
Spain).
16 S. Béguin and M. Di Giampaolo: ‘Pellegrino Tibaldi e gli affreschi del sagrario e
del chiostro’, in M. Di Giampaolo, ed.: Los frescos italianos de El Escorial, Madrid 1993,
pp.146–49, fig.20. For a drawing for the fresco, see C. van Tuyll van Serooskerken:
The Italian drawings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in the Teyler Museum, Haarlem,
Ghent and Doornspijk 2000, pp.379–80, no.396.
17 A. Vergara: Rubens and his Spanish Patrons, Cambridge 1999, pp.7–9. His letters
show that he was based at Valladolid, the new home of Phillip III’s court, from May
1603 to the end of that year, and he probably accompanied the court to Ventosilla
(sixty kilometres east of Valladolid).
18 The visit probably took place on his journey from Alicante to Valladolid (Madrid
is around two thirds of the distance from the port to Valladolid); see M. Rooses and
C.L. Ruelens: Codex Diplomaticus Rubenianus. Documents relatifs à la vie et aux œuvres
de Rubens, Antwerp 1887–1909, I, pp.223–24; R.S. Magurn, ed.: The letters of Peter
Paul Rubens, Cambridge MA 1955, p.33: ‘. . . the Duke of Lerma. For he is not
without knowledge of fine things, through the particular pleasure and practice he
has in seeing every day so many splendid works of Titian, of Raphael and others,
which have astonished me, both by their quality and quantity, in the King’s palace,
in the Escorial, and elsewhere’. The copies in the pocketbook of Navarrete’s
Beheading of St James (fol.11r) and Titian’s Adoration of the Magi (fol.21v) may well
have been made during the same visit to the Escorial. Evidence that Rubens may
98 f e b r u ary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
It is tempting to view the Antwerp sketchbook sheet, where
the infant figures are interwoven in sequence, as an accurate
copy of Rubens’s illustrations for his essay on antique models
for the depiction of children. In this case the original sketches
were probably made around 1598–1602 and, perhaps a year
later, the painter appears to have inserted an unrelated image
of the nailing of Christ to the Cross. This previously uniden -
tified sketch records Pellegrino Tibaldi’s fresco from the Cloister
of the Evangelists (c.1587–90) in the Escorial (Fig.39).16
Rubens was in Spain as a representative of Vincenzo Gonzaga,
Duke of Mantua, from 22nd April 1603 until the end of that
year,17 and his letter of 24th May indicates that he had just
visited the Escorial.18 It can be concluded that Rubens was
the author of the original study on which this sketch was based,
as well as the rest of the sheet: it bears all the hallmarks of his
abbreviated draughtsmanship. Van Dyck never travelled to
Spain and it is highly unlikely that he would have known
the Tibaldi invention.
Rubens’s written and visual codification of ancient sources
for the depiction of children and his enthusiastic application
of these sources to his early paintings, gives an insight into his
disciplined search for a humanistic language of art. The age of
an infant must fit the context, be it a Cupid or an angel. Rubens
was aware of the drawbacks of copying sculpture. In his essay
‘On the imitation of Sculpture’, probably written a few years
after his essay ‘On Children’, he warned against ending up with
images that looked like painted sculpture.19 A painter could
learn much from studying great ancient statues, especially about
athletic physiques, but in the end nature was the best guide. In
one of his last letters he praises casts of putti made by the
sculptor François Du Quesnoy for looking as if they were
formed by nature, not art.20 We should remember that both
Rubens and his brother married in the same year, 1609, and they
soon had their own family models for infants, of which there are
many life studies in Rubens’s work. On 9th May 1640 he
reminded his pupil Lucas Faydherbe that making a family was
more important than finishing the ivory child for him.21
Rubens’s depictions of infants show that ancient sculpture was
an influence on his invention but it became less dominant
after the impact of his early encounters was moderated by
observation as well as imagination.
have made use of the horse rubbing its nostrils with its foreleg in the latter painting,
a version of which is in the Escorial, is cited by I. von zur Mühlen in C. Syre et al.:
exh. cat. Tintoretto: The Gonzaga cycle, Munich (Alte Pinakothek) 2000, p.185 and
note 49. It has been observed that Rubens saw Giambologna’s Samson and a
Philistine (Victoria and Albert Museum, London), then in the collection of the Duke
of Lerma, as he responds to the sculpture in a drawing in the Amsterdams Historisch
Museum; see R.-A. d’Hulst and M. Vandenven: Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig
Burchard, part 3: Rubens, the Old Testament, London 1989, p.105, no.29, fig.70.
Rubens’s Philistine closely follows the marble, and the example seems to have been
used for the Amazons subdued by Hercules in the artist’s Battle of the Amazons of
c.1602–03 (Schloss Sanssouci, Potsdam).
19 R. de Piles: Cours de peinture par principes, Paris 1708, pp.139–47; translation from
English edition (The Principles of Painting, London 1743) quoted in J.R. Martin:
Baroque, London 1977, pp.271–73. See also G. Waagen: Peter Paul Rubens, his life and
genius, London 1840, pp.123–26; and J. Muller: ‘Rubens’s Theory and Practice of the
Imitation of Art’, Art Bulletin 64 (1982), pp.229–47.
20 In one of Rubens’s last letters of 17th April 1640 he thanks Du Quesnoy for models
and plaster casts, praising the way the marble is softened into living flesh; see Rooses
and Ruelens, op. cit. (note 18), VI, p.271; and Magurn, op. cit. (note 18), p.413.
21 Ibid., p.415.
MA.FEB.Wheelock.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 18/01/2010 16:17 Page 99
Hendrick ter Brugghen’s ‘Bagpipe player’ acquired by the
National Gallery of Art, Washington
by ARTHUR K. WHEELOCK Jr.
HENDRICK TER BRUGGHEN (1588–1629) captured the rhythms
of music in the very way he composed his paintings. His
musicians lean into their instruments, their bodies alive with the
joy of the sounds they make, whether coaxed from a violin, lute,
recorder or bagpipe. In the remarkable painting under discussion
(Fig.40), a bagpipe player, seen in strict profile, squeezes
the leather bag between his forearms as he blows through the
instrument’s pipe and fingers a tune on the chanter. Two large
drones, composed of different wooden sections, rest on his bare
shoulder. The interlocking rhythms of this ensemble – the broad,
round shapes of the musician’s shoulder, beret and brown bag-
40. Bagpipe player, by Hendrick ter
Brugghen. 1624. Canvas, 100.7 by 82.9
cm. (National Gallery of Art, Washington).
pipe bag, the flowing patterns of folds in his creamy shirt and
taupe robe, the pronounced diagonals of the drones and pipe,
and the verticality of the chanter – parallel those of a musical
score. Broad, fulsome notes, quickly cadenced flourishes and
strong beats not only punctuate melodies with dynamic accents
but also culminate in a well-defined and emphatic finale.
This masterpiece, which the National Gallery of Art, Wash-
ington, acquired in 2009, came to the art market after it was resti-
tuted by the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, where it had
hung between 1938, when the Museum acquired it in a forced
sale of the collection of H.W. Lange in Berlin, and 2008, when
the burlington m a g a z i n e • clii • february 2010 99
MA.FEB.Wheelock.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 18/01/2010 16:17 Page 100
TER BRUGGHEN’S ‘BAGPIPE PLAYER’
it was returned to its rightful owners. Subsequently, the painting
was auctioned in January 2009 at Sotheby’s, New York.1
Ter Brugghen’s Bagpipe player is muted in tonality but bold and
forceful in its scale and painting techniques, qualities that have
been fully revealed after the careful restoration treatment by David
Bull.2 The artist’s sure, broad brushstrokes flow across the canvas,
reflecting in their energy the bagpipe player’s passion for his
music. The numerous adjustments made by the artist in the folds
of the shirt and robe, as well as in the shape of the bagpipes,
indicate the freedom with which he approached his subject. Also
astonishing is Ter Brugghen’s control of light, which falls most
strongly on the bagpipe player’s shoulder, shirt and fingers while
leaving his face in shadow – evidence that the painting focuses pri-
marily on the sensuality of music and not on a specific individual.
The bagpipe player is a muscular, rough-hewn type, hardly an
ideal of grace and refinement. His head is large, his nose round,
and he sports a shepherd’s moustache and beard. His hands and
knuckles are thick, yet from the manner in which he fingers the
chanter, leaving the vent hole uncovered, it is clear that he
understands how to play the instrument. Bagpipes were tradi-
tionally viewed as folk instruments, played by herdsmen and
shepherds wiling their time or at country dances. However, Ter
Brugghen does not depict a local peasant or shepherd whom the
artist may have encountered on a foray into the countryside:
shepherds did not play bagpipes with drones resting on a bare
shoulder. The bagpipe player’s loosely draped robes reflect a
manner of dress based on antique fashions (all’antica). This mode
of dress alluded to an Arcadian ideal of country existence that was
popular in aristocratic and court circles, and among the urban
elite, particularly in Utrecht and The Hague. Essential to this
mythology was not only the purity and bounty of country
existence, but also the romantic ideals of love and beauty that
derived from Renaissance literary and pictorial traditions.
Bagpipes were often included in these odes to pastoral life,
which may help explain the appeal of paintings of musicians
for aristocratic patrons during the early to mid-seventeenth
century.3 In Daniel Heinsius’s poem ‘Pastorael’ of 1616, the
shepherd Cordion sits quietly in the countryside dreaming of his
beloved while he soulfully plays his bagpipe and sings his lover’s
lament.4 Two extremely popular pastoral plays of the period,
Giovanni Battista Guarini’s Il Pastor Fido of 1590 and Pieter
Cornelisz Hooft’s Granida of 1615, similarly evoked an Arcadian
ideal of bucolic existence quite different from the profligate ways
1 It was purchased by a consortium of dealers consisting of Johnny van Haeften,
London, Otto Naumann, New York, and Colnaghi-Bernheimer, Munich, from
whom the Gallery acquired it. The first painting by one of the Utrecht Caravaggisti
to enter the Gallery’s collection would not have been possible without the generous
and enthusiastic support of Greg and Candy Fazakerley.
2 Aside from some thinness in the background, the painting is in remarkably good
condition. Since its acquisition the painting has also been reframed.
3 E. Winternitz: Musical Instruments and their Symbolism in Western Art: Studies in
Musical Iconology, New Haven and London 1979, pp.78 and 80.
4 D. Heinsius: ‘Pastorael’, in idem: Nederduytsche poemata, Amsterdam 1616,
pp.34–36: ‘Oock heb ick veel vreucht bedreven, / En mijn lullepijp gestalt / Naer de deunen
van het veldt’.
5 See A. Kettering: The Dutch Arcadia: pastoral art and its audience in the Golden Age,
Montclair 1983, esp. pp.101–13.
6 Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, and National Gallery, London;
see A.K. Wheelock Jr. and S.J. Barnes: exh. cat. Anthony van Dyck, Washington
(National Gallery of Art) 1990, p.304, no.81.
7 L.J. Slatkes and W. Franits: The Paintings of Hendrick Ter Brugghen, 1588–1629. Cata-
logue Raisonné, Amsterdam 2007, pp.176–77, nos.A61–A62, argue that the paintings are
pendants ‘with antithetical types rather than two young musicians playing in harmony’.
8 Ibid., nos.A63–A72, RA2 and W16.
9 Ibid., nos.A70–A72, RA2 and W16; Slatkes and Franits propose that the Bagpipe
100 f e b r uary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
of urban and courtly existence.5 Musicians playing bagpipes,
flutes and other pastoral instruments created the auditory
ambiance for such plays. In 1637, for example, Anthony van
Dyck depicted François Langlois playing a bagpipe and dressed as
a Savoyard, an itinerant shepherd and musician such as one
would have found in performances in French aristocratic circles.6
The specific character of the Bagpipe player – a single,
over-life-size musician depicted against a plain greyish-ochre
background – owes much to the influence of Gerrit van
Honthorst and Dirck van Baburen, Dutch Caravaggist painters
who returned to Utrecht from Rome in 1620. They brought
with them stylistic and thematic predilections appropriate for
expressing the sensuous, idealised concepts of Arcadian subject-
matter that they adapted from paintings by Caravaggio and his
followers, particularly Bartolomeo Manfredi. Even though Ter
Brugghen had earlier been in Italy, and had presumably seen
some of Caravaggio’s paintings of musicians, these additional
pictorial sources probably inspired his initial foray into this
subject-matter in 1621, when he painted the Flute player and the
Shepherd flute player, both in Kassel.7
It was not until 1624, however, the date of the Bagpipe player,
that Ter Brugghen fully turned his attention to the depiction of
musicians. In that year he painted no fewer than five separate
compositions devoted to music, featuring not only bagpipe
players but also musicians – sometimes singing – who play the
lute and the violin.8 Although no commissions for these works
are known, the similarities in subject, style and size of the can-
vases have led to the supposition that Ter Brugghen conceived
of a number of these paintings as pendants.9 He continued this
interest in the years to follow. Just what prompted this output
is not known, but the appeal of this subject was such that Ter
Brugghen and/or his workshop made a number of replicas of
these works, including the Bagpipe player.10
Ter Brugghen’s Bagpipe player should be seen as part of a broad
cultural interest during the early seventeenth century in the
pastoral’s evocation of the idyllic pleasures of country existence,
particularly as experienced through music. Ter Brugghen fully
embraced this theme in a series of remarkable paintings of musi-
cians and singers that capture both the joy and the sensuality of
life. As with this masterpiece, these engaging images invite us
into a world where, through the boldness of the artist’s brush and
the rhythms of his forms, we feel the enduring power of music
on the human spirit.
player has a pendant, the so-called Pointing lute player, now in a private collection.
They argue that the two works, which are identical in size, are signed and dated 1624,
and have complementary compositions, are also thematically conjoined. They
believe that the lute player’s laughing demeanour and pointing gesture mock the
bagpipe player as he plays this rustic instrument, a mocking gesture that draws its bite
from ancient mythology – the musical contest between Marsyas, who played Pallas
Athene’s cast-off aulos (which was occasionally depicted as a bagpipe in fifteenth-
century publications), and Apollo, who won the contest by playing a lyre, a stringed
instrument. Even though wind instruments were certainly considered to be less
refined and elegant than string instruments, their hypothesis is not entirely con-
vincing. While the Pointing lute player must have had a pendant, it probably was not
the Bagpipe player. The compositional relationship between the works is not as com-
pelling as they initially seem. The scale and disposition of the figures are different: the
bagpipe player is larger than the lute player, higher in the picture plane and more fully
fills the space around him. It should also be noted that the only seventeenth-century
reference to one of Ter Brugghen’s paintings of a bagpipe player did not have a
pendant. Most importantly, however, the Bagpipe player is an image of quiet grandeur
and dignity. Nothing about the figure’s pose, expression or gestures suggests that Ter
Brugghen conceived this image as the focus of a lute mockery.
10 The Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Houston TX. The painting, which
measures 89.3 by 83.2 cm., has been trimmed on all sides; see ibid., nos.W16
and RA2.
BR.FEB.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 20/01/2010 14:53 Page 101
Books
Pre-Eyckian Panel Paintings in the Low
Countries. Edited by Cyriel Stroo. 2 vols.
504 + 224 pp. incl. numerous col. + b. & w.
ills. (Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, 2009),
€90. ISBN 978–2–87033–014–2.
Reviewed by JAN PIET FILEDT KOK
T H I S P U B L I C A T I O N P R E S E N T S the first results
of a research project devoted to Pre-Eyckian
panel paintings in the Low Countries, a
collaboration between the Centre for the
Study of Fifteenth-Century Painting in the
southern Netherlands and the Principality of
Liège and the Royal Institute for Cultural
Heritage (IRPA/KIK). It describes ten
such paintings in Belgian public collections,
all of which underwent conservation treat-
ment at the IRPA after the Second
World War; the Tower retable (Mayer van
den Bergh Museum, Antwerp) and the St
Ursula shrine (Bruges) are currently being
treated again.
The ten works belong to a larger corpus of
about forty Pre-Eyckian paintings made in the
northern and southern Netherlands between
c.1350 and 1435. This includes the wings
by Melchior Broederlam for the Crucifixion
triptych in Dijon (c.1395–98; Fig.41); the
Antwerp–Baltimore quadriptych (c.1400);
and the Norfolk triptych in Rotterdam
(c.1415–20). In their introduction Cyriel
Stroo and Dominique Vanwijnberghe rightly
characterise the surviving works as ‘glimpses
of a lost splendor’; the Walcourt panels in
Namur – an Annunciation and a Visitation – are
not only fragments but miss much of the orig-
inal paint layers. The St Anne with the Virgin
and Child in Neerlanden was completely
overpainted (until the restoration at the IRPA
in 1994–98), and although parts of the paint
layers have survived, the pastiglia and inlays in
the gilded background have completely gone.
Gilding, refined pounced decoration of the
background details and the imitation of costly
textiles are characteristic of most Pre-Eyckian
panel painting. In addition to punchwork and
pastiglia, prefabricated reliefs in metal foil
(mostly tin-foil) were glued onto the panel
and gilded. These older techniques disappear
in the paintings of the Flemish Primitives,
who mostly suggested gold with (lead-tin)
yellow paint.
The second volume with essays puts the
Pre-Eyckian paintings in a broader context,
which is necessary to understand fully the ten
individual works of art discussed in the first
volume. An essay by Barbara Baert examines
the importance of the use of gold. The tech-
nique of relief decorations, applied brocades
and inlay work, among others, are discussed by
Ingrid Geelen and Delphine Steyaert. Gilding
and embellishment of gold surfaces is also one
of the subjects in Christina Currie’s essay.
Not all new insights presented in this pub-
lication can be summarised, but a few paint-
ings deserve brief mention. The technical
aspects of the outside wings of Broederlam’s
Crucifixion altarpiece, commissioned with the
altarpiece of Saints and Martyrs by Duke Philip
the Bold of Burgundy for the Charterhouse of
the Carthusian monastery outside Dijon, were
newly studied by Currie in August 2006 and
are discussed here again in an essay which
presents a better understanding of the data and
which benefits greatly from new infra-red and
photographic documentation. Closest in style
to Broederlam’s Dijon wings is the Tower
retable, dated to c.1395 and located in the
southern Netherlands. Already described at
length in 2003 by Stroo and Nicole Goetghe-
beur,1 here it receives a more extensive tech-
nical analysis, supplemented by an essay in the
second volume by Livia Depuydt-Elbaum,
who treated the painting in 2000–03. The
conservation treatment recently begun on the
large Carrand diptych in the Bargello in Flo-
rence, dated c.1385–90, is important for our
understanding of the Tower retable because
it shows strong technical similarities. One of
the more surprising discoveries includes the
extensive underdrawing in the figures in the
Kortessen panel in Brussels, which infra-red
reflectography has now revealed; they are
similar to Broederlam’s underdrawing in his
Dijon Crucifixion and suggests the artist is an
experienced draughtsman. The Crucifixion
with Sts Catherine and Barbara in Bruges, here
extensively investigated for the first time, is
generally dated between 1390–95 and 1415,
but dendrochronology makes a dating of
c.1425 or later more plausible. It proves, as in
the case of the Walcourt panels and the Neer-
landen St Anne, that the archaic technique of
the Pre-Eyckian painters survived when Jan
van Eyck and the Master of Flémalle were
developing their new technique. The stylistic
similarities with the wings of the large Passion
in the St Reinold’s church in Dortmund,
which is dated by the authors c.1420–25,
makes further investigation of this altarpiece a
strong desideratum.
This brings us to a weakness in this pub-
lication: the omission of further information
the burlington ma g a z i n e
41. Wings of a
Crucifixion
triptych, by
Melchior
Broederlam.
c.1395–98.
Panel, 166.5 by
502 cm. (with
frame). (Musée
des Beaux-Arts,
Dijon).
about a number of key works of Pre-Eyckian
painting. They have so far not been inves -
tigated by the Brussels research project, even
though a few have recently been published
elsewhere.2 According to the acknowledge-
ments, preliminary examinations of some
other Pre-Eyckian paintings were carried
out by the research team: for example, the
Trinity triptych (c.1400) and the Holy Family,
both in Berlin; the Passion altarpiece in Dort-
mund; the large Carrand diptych in the
Bargello, Florence; and the Norfolk triptych
(c.1415–20) in Rotterdam. Hopefully more
paintings will be added and investigated in
future publications, including works from
the northern Netherlands, for example the
Calvary of Hendrik van Rijn of 1363 (currently
on loan to the Centraal Museum, Utrecht,
during the renovation of the Antwerp
museum); the Memorial tablet for the lords of
Montfoort (c.1400; now also on loan to the
Centraal Museum); and the Eighteen scenes
from the life of Christ, known as the Roermond
Passion (Gelre; c.1430–40), both in the
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
Another quibble is that the question of
technical innovations in the use of binding
media is hardly touched upon.3 The authors
conclude that although oil paint was used, the
handling was archaic. It was the next genera-
tion – Van Eyck and his contemporaries –
who exploited the properties of oil in their
quest for illusionistic representation. Until
recently it was supposed that a complex range
of binding media – oil, protein and tempera –
was used by the Pre-Eyckian painters. Where-
as the investigation of the Broederlam panels
in Dijon in the 1980s found a protein binder
in the underpaint layers and oil in the glazes
and greens, the analyses of binding media pre-
sented here seldom provide straightforward
results. Both protein and oil binding media are
found in a limited number of cases, but the
stratigraphy is seldom clear.
The works of art have mostly been studied
in situ, and the possibility of comparing them
in the context of an exhibition is rare. For a
better understanding of the technical and
stylistic developments, an exhibition of key
works from the Pre-Eyckian period, including
• cliI • february 2010 101
BR.FEB.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 20/01/2010 14:53 Page 102
BOOKS
works in other media such as polychrome
sculpture and illuminated manuscripts, is
essential; plans for such an exhibition are
being developed in Louvain and Rotterdam,
and this excellent publication, although still
incomplete, offers a very useful starting point.
1 In H. Mund, C. Stroo, N. Goetghebeur and H.
Nieuwdorp: Corpus of fifteenth-century painting in the
Southern Netherlands and the Principality of Liège, vol.20:
The Mayer van den Bergh Museum, Antwerp, Brussels
2003, pp.202–53.
2 For example, the two Antwerp panels of the
Antwerp–Baltimore quadriptych in ibid., pp.254–87,
and the Last Judgment from Diest in A. Diest, R. Slach-
muylders, G. Patigny and F. Peters: Catalogue Royal
Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Volume V: The Flemish
Primitives, Anonymous Masters, Brussels 2009, pp.57–107.
3 The most recent and extensive publication in this
respect is Melanie Gifford’s technical study of the
Antwerp–Baltimore quadriptych, which turned out to
have been painted in a medium that was primarily
linseed oil; M. Gifford: ‘Interpreting Analyses of the
Painting Medium: A case Study of a Pre-Eyckian
Altarpiece’, in M. Faries and R. Spronk, eds.: Recent
Developments in the Technical Examination of Early Nether-
landish Painting. Methodology, Limitations & Perspectives,
Turnhout 2003, pp.107–16.
Hans Memling: Master Painter in
Fifteenth-Century Bruges. By Barbara
G. Lane. 386 pp. incl. 27 col. + 277
b. & w. ills. (Harvey Miller Publishers,
London and Turnhout, 2009), £140.
ISBN 978–1–905375–19–6.
Reviewed by TILL-HOLGER BORCHERT
BARBARA LANE’S MONOGRAPH on Memling
appears fifteen years after the comprehensive
exhibition devoted to the artist at the
Groeningemuseum, Bruges, in celebration
of the five-hundredth anniversary of Mem-
ling’s death, and the simultaneous publi-
cation of Dirk de Vos’s book that contained
an extensive catalogue raisonné of Mem-
ling’s known œuvre.1 Since 1994 there has
been a significant number of studies devoted
to Memling, and this fully justifies Lane’s
efforts. Her monograph avoids fashionable
rhetoric and bravely leaves the discussion of,
for example, aspects of painting technique to
other experts. Instead, her book offers a lucid
and concise narrative that presents us with a
critical discussion of recent literature, while
Lane’s own valuable contributions on the
artist are expanded as part of a well-organised
argument.2
The book consists of four parts. The first,
entitled ‘Wanderjahre’, discusses Memling’s
artistic origins and training (chapters 1–4).
Lane cautiously weighs the circumstantial
evidence in support of his possible association
with Rogier van der Weyden – both Vasari
and Guicciardini mention his training with
the Brussels master – but wisely refrains from
attempting to define the relationship or
that with other members of the Brussels
workshop. She continues to examine the
102 f e b r uary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
influence of Cologne painting on Memling’s
pictorial vocabulary. Lochner, the city’s lead-
ing painter, once more emerges as an impor-
tant source of inspiration, while Memling’s
synchronous narratives (‘Simultanbilder’) point
to even earlier local conventions and, presum-
ably, to an extended early stay by Memling in
the city. Perhaps more interesting and hither-
to rarely recognised are the links between
Memling and Bouts that Lane convincingly
establishes (chapter 3). She concludes her
remarks on the artist’s ‘Wanderjahre’ with a
cogent analysis of the impact of both Van
Eyck and Petrus Christus on the development
of Memling’s Bruges style.
The book’s second part focuses on
Memling’s workshop and his patrons in
Bruges (chapters 5–6). Lane gives a succinct
account of the painters’ main activities during
three decades of his career in Bruges and
addresses the possible organisation and
structure of his workshop. While only two
apprentices are documented – neither of
whom can be associated with any existing
painting – other artists may have worked with
Memling, and Lane examines the facts with
regard to Schongauer, Sittow, the Master of
the St Bartholomew Altar and Dürer.3 There
is no compelling evidence to support the
idea of direct contact between Memling and
any of these artists, but her observations
amount to a stimulating study in the reception
of Memling’s art outside the Netherlands.
After all, Memling’s fame – as Lane correctly
stresses – must have made his workshop a like-
ly destination for aspiring painters from the
Low Countries and beyond.
The chapter on Memling’s clientele that
follows is a concise survey of patronage in
Early Netherlandish painting and serves as an
introduction to Lane’s remarks on Memling’s
‘Major Commissions’, the third, and perhaps
most persuasive, part of Lane’s book (chapters
7–9). Three of Memling’s most important
commissions – the Gdansk Last Judgment, the
Bruges Moreel altarpiece and the Passion
altarpiece from Lübeck – are discussed as
‘funerary altarpieces’ and their iconography is
thoroughly analysed. Rather than examining
the altarpieces’ specific functions within the
context of the patrons’ foundations, Lane
focuses on the pictorial strategies Memling
applied to satisfy the demands of his clients.
Memling’s synchronous narratives – the
subsequent focus of the book – are considered
to aid the beholder in a ‘spiritual pilgrimage’.
Although there is no factual evidence of any
indulgences having been attached to Mem-
ling’s ‘Simultanbilder’, there can be little doubt
that in the artist’s lifetime such narratives were
meant to evoke mental images and served as
visual stimuli for mental pilgrimages. Lane
reconstructs the way in which simultaneous
depictions of consecutive biblical events
would have functioned within a spiritual
context, while acknowledging the inherent
social and commemorative significance of
the commissions. The third part concludes
with Memling’s paintings made between
1474 and 1489 for the Bruges Hospital of St
John, one of the leading charitable institutions
in the city. When discussing Memling’s St
John altarpiece (pp.179–86), Lane correctly
reminds us that the four saints depicted on the
exterior were not only the patron saints of the
altarpiece’s donors, but also had ‘intercessory
powers against diseases’; it should be pointed
out that the Hospital possessed relics of all
four saints, which might have added to their
pictorial significance.
In the fourth and final part consisting of two
chapters entitled ‘Memling and Italy’, Lane
first focuses on Memling’s Italian commissions
and analyses Italian responses to his painting.
Her second chapter takes an equally fresh
and thorough look at how Italian artists –
Ghirlandaio, Leonardo, Perugino and Raphael
in particular – attempted to emulate Mem-
ling’s paintings. It expands on arguments in
her previous articles on the subject and offers
valuable new insights, and although both
chapters greatly benefit from recent studies by
Michael Rohlmann and Paula Nuttall, she
adds new material to the ongoing debate of
Italian reactions to Northern painting.
Lane concludes her book with a concise
and very useful catalogue of Memling’s
works, conveniently arranged by location
instead of using more problematic categories,
such as chronology or function. Contrary to
De Vos, whose monograph primarily consist-
ed of a catalogue raisonné, Lane’s listing of
Memling’s works functions more as a supple-
ment to the impressive scope of her narrative.
She accepts seventy-five works as autograph,
a further fourteen works are disputed (B) and
four are rejected (C). With its updated bib -
liography and discussion of recent literature, it
supplements De Vos’s catalogue of 1994 (who
accepted ninety-three works as autograph). A
few remarks are in order. The fragment of an
Ecce Homo (no.75), until recently on loan to
the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh,
has never been explicitly doubted in the liter-
ature, but its lamentable state of preservation
should prevent us from a definite attribution
to Memling. There is no reason to assign the
exquisite little tondo of the Virgin nursing the
Christ (B.12) to Memling’s workshop and to
withdraw it from the catalogue of accepted
works, the more so since its stylistic peculiar-
ities can be explained by the fact that it copies
an earlier, Flémallesque prototype. It was
shown in the Groeningemuseum in Bruges in
2005–06 and is now on long-term loan to the
Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Leaving aside the question of whether late
medieval workshop practice actually supports
the notion of a clear distinction between
master and workshop, caution is certainly
needed in this respect. It might be useful to
include here some information that was not
yet available when Lane’s book went to
print. The conservation treatment of the
three panels from the Najera altarpiece in
Antwerp (no.1) has revealed that each of them
shows a distinctive manner of painting; it was
also established that the groundlayer contains
gesso, indicating that this monumental work
was presumably executed by Memling and/or
members of his workshop in Spain. Recently
discovered fragments from an altarpiece made
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by Memling (and workshop), possibly for a
Franciscan monastery in Spain, may have
been produced at around the same time and
during the same sojourn.4 Future technical
examination of these panels may help to
establish a connection to one of the Najera
panels and point to activities of workshop
members in Spain during this time.
Given the broad scope of Lane’s mono-
graph, however, these remarks are certainly of
minor concern. Her beautifully designed
book is a thorough, well-conceived study that
will not only satisfy the specialist but also
a dispersed triptych of the Crucifixion. The
central panel, dated 1449, is now in Vienna
and its wings, with four scenes from the life of
the Virgin on the inside and images of St
Korbinian and St Florian on the outside, are
divided between Padua and Venice. Further
panels of St Hermes and St Primus, still in
Salzburg, probably belong to its upper tier.
In the Crucifixion, the saddlecloth on the
Good Centurion’s horse bears the inscription
‘d. PFENNING 1449 ALS ICH CHUN’. The term
‘pfenning’ may indicate that the work was
payment for Laib’s citizenship, while the
Laib was the subject of a dossier-type exhi-
bition and a volume of collected essays in
1997.1 The present publication is based on
the author’s doctoral dissertation, submitted in
2004 to the Freie Universität, Berlin. Its aca-
demic origins are apparent in a rather elaborate
recapitulation of previous literature, which can
make for heavy reading and obscures the
author’s personal contribution. Nevertheless,
students of late medieval art will benefit much
from this conscientious monograph.
1 A. Saliger, ed.: exh. cat. Conrad Laib, Vienna

those looking for a useful introduction to the
artist’s work and the problems attached to the
study of Early Netherlandish painting.
1 D. de Vos et al.: exh. cat. Hans Memling, Bruges
(Groeningemuseum) 1994; and idem: Hans Memling: the
complete works, London 1994.
2 B.G. Lane: ‘The Patron and the Pirate: The Mystery
of Memling’s Gdansk “Last Judgment” Altarpiece’, Art
Bulletin 73 (1991), pp.623–40; idem: ‘The Question of
Memling’s Training’, in H. Verougstraete, R. van
Schoute and M. Smeyers, eds.: Memling Studies, Leuven
1997, pp.53–70; idem: ‘Memling and the Workshop
of Verrocchio’, in H. Verougstraete and R. van
Schoute, eds.: Le dessin sous-jacent et la technologue dans la
peinture. Colloque 12, Leuven 1999, pp.243–50; and
idem: ‘Memling’s Impact on the Early Raphael’, in I.
Alexander-Skipnes, ed.: Cultural Exchanges between the
Low Countries and Italy: 1400–1600, Turnhout 2007,
pp.179–92.
3 See J. Nicolaisen: ‘Martin Schongauer – ein Mitar-
beiter der Werkstatt Hans Memlings?’, Pantheon 57
(1999), pp.33–56; S. Kemperdick and M. Weniger:
‘Der Bartholomäusmeister: Herkunft und Anfänge
seines Stils’, in R. Budde and R. Krischel: exh. cat.
Genie ohne Namen: der Meister des Bartholomäus-Altars,
Cologne (Wallraf-Richartz-Museum) 2001, pp.26–43;
and H.G. Evers: Dürer bei Memling, Munich 1972.
4 See the entry by A. Muntada I Torrelas in L.
Chamorro, ed.: exh. cat. Paisaje interior, Soria (Concat-
edral de S. Pedro) 2009, pp.430–38, no.II.3.
Conrad Laib. Ein spätgotischer Maler
aus Schwaben in Salzburg. By Antje-Fee
Köllermann. 204 pp. incl. 62 col. + 123
b. & w. ills. (Deutscher Verlag für
Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin, 2007), €78.
ISBN 978–3–87157–217–3.
Reviewed by MARK EVANS
T O G E T H E R W I T H L U K A S Moser, Konrad
Witz and Hans Multscher, Conrad Laib
belongs to the first generation of German
artists who were acquainted with Nether-
landish realism. He is documented as ‘cuntz
layb moler’ (Conrad Laib, Maler) in 1431 at
Nördlingen in Bavaria. In 1448 Laib became a
citizen of Salzburg.
Laib had probably arrived earlier in
Salzburg, as wall paintings dated 1446 and
1447 of the Man of sorrows and the Agony in the
garden in its parish church (subsequently Fran-
ciscan church) are attributed to him. Its lofty
choir, completed in 1452, may have been the
original location of one of his principal works,
phrase ‘as I can’ includes a shortened form of (Museum Mittelalterlicher Kunst, Unteres Belvedere,
his first name. Similarly self-congratulatory Orangerie) 1997.
inscriptions are found on works by Moser
and Multscher. The equestrian figures in the
Crucifixion have been likened to those in
Altichiero’s fresco of the Crucifixion in the
Oratorio di S. Giorgio in Padua and on
medals by Pisanello. The Netherlandish Image after Icon-
Laib revisited the theme of the Crucifixion in oclasm 1566–1672: Material Religion in
a larger work, signed ‘LAIB’ and dated 1457, the Dutch Golden Age. By Mia M.
painted some 240 kilometres to the south-east, Mochizuki. 399 pp. incl. 179 col. + 35
at the court church (now cathedral) of St b. & w. ills. (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2008),
Aegidius in Graz, the capital of Styria. While £65. ISBN 978–0–7546–6104–7.
this lacks the claustrophobic intensity of its
predecessor, its taste for the grotesque is even Reviewed by SIMON WATNEY
more marked. Some time after 1450, Laib also
painted a triptych for the church of St George THE MODERN STUDY of iconoclasm has been
in Pettau in Lower Styria (now Ptuj in Slove- largely the province of sociology and social
nia), some one hundred kilometres south-east psychology rather than art history. On the one
of Graz. This represents The death of the Virgin, hand there is a tendency to seek generalised
flanked by wings with St Jerome and St Mark, explanations of iconoclasm understood as a
which fold one over another to reveal the potentially explosive force in every society
Crucifixion and fixed outer wings with St and directed at many types of imagery, and on
Nicholas and St Bernardino. Suggestions that the other hand lies an increasing number of
the latter saints, as well as the unusual shape case studies of specific outbreaks of icon-
and configuration of this altarpiece, derive oclasm, particularly those associated with the
from earlier Italian pale are endorsed with Reformation in northern Europe, reflecting
reservations in the book under review. Köller- varying types and degrees of violent Protes-
mann points out that Laib’s use of Netherlan- tant hostility to the outward expressions of
dish motifs – derived principally from Van late medieval Catholic piety. This handsome-
Eyck and the Master of Flémalle – is actually ly illustrated new book shares aspects of both
quite meagre, stressing instead the Swabian approaches, while addressing the subject in an
elements of his style, with particular reference
to the sculptor Hans Multscher of Ulm.
In an interesting excursus, the author shows
how Laib exploited a range of standardised
figure types which were modified for re-use
from one work to another. However, his
use of this procedure seems not to have been
associated with life study, as it was in the work
of academic draughtsmen from Perugino to
Ingres and beyond.
Laib’s adoption of Van Eyck’s celebrated
motto ‘Als Ich Can’ may indicate that
the early Netherlandish masters enjoyed a
celebrity in south Germany which exceeded
the availability there of their work. There
also seems to be a disjuncture between the
Italianate features which have been divined in
Laib’s paintings and his lack of concern for
the relative scale of figures, apparent in the
variations from one panel to another of
the Pettau altarpiece, or the group around
the bad thief in the Graz Crucifixion. Such
inconsistencies seem resolved in the dramatic
hybrid style of Michael Pacher, Laib’s prin- 42. Framed text of the New Testament description
cipal successor as the leading painter in the of the Last Supper. c.1581. (St Bavo Cathedral,
Austrian Alps. Haarlem).

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original manner by focusing mainly on the
newly made fittings and furnishings intro-
duced by the Dutch Reformed church to
facilitate appropriate forms of Calvinist
worship in churches designed for Roman
Catholic use and lately robbed of their offend-
ing devotional and liturgical contents.
Mochizuki takes as her central subject the
transformation of the interior of St Bavo’s
Cathedral in Haarlem following the expulsion
of occupying Spanish forces from the city
in 1578, five years after the famous siege by
Habsburg forces which cruelly decimated
the population and was followed by harsh
reprisals. In such tragic circumstances, about
which she writes surprisingly little, it is hardly
surprising that victorious Dutch Protestantism
was intimately associated with the identity
of the newly established United Provinces,
where, however, a substantial proportion of
the population remained loyal to the old faith
of their ancestors. The looting and desecration
of St Bavo’s was in fact remarkable for the
relatively limited scale of violent triumphal-
ism, and many painted altarpieces were simply
removed to safety and survive elsewhere to
this day. Many of the other older furnishings
were also spared, including the choir screen,
although purged of its newly offending statu-
ary, and the choir stalls. One measure of the
Reformed Church’s confident outlook was
reflected in the fact that Catholics continued
to be buried inside St Bavo, albeit with the
addition of a handful of consecrated earth, and
even the temporary ringing of funeral bells
was permitted for an extra charge (p.279). The
new Calvinist church leaders were evidently
quite as keen to accrue income from inter-
ments as their Catholic predecessors had been.
It is perhaps surprising in this context that so
little attention is paid in these pages to the
magnificent polished black ledger-stones
which still floor the entire church and con-
tribute so much to its appearance.
The book’s central subject is the series of
framed religious texts, most of which are
housed around the east end of the church.
The largest and most important of these,
dating from c.1581, reproduces the New
Testament description of the Last Supper
(Fig.42), facing west, together with a poem on
the other side in a triptych format describing
the hardships endured during the Siege of
Haarlem. This was provocatively displayed on
the site of the former high altar as a permanent
affront to Catholic and, for that matter, much
other Protestant liturgical practice. These
texts are confidently described as ‘paintings’
(following the Dutch term ‘tekstschilderijen’
rather than ‘tekstborden’) although they consist
of nothing more than lengthy quotations in
large classical wooden frames (p.7). This
approach, however, allows the author to
regard them as ‘a lost alternative paradigm for
picture-making [. . .] with the same basic
materials as the late medieval devotional
image, oil on panel’ (p.127). But was this in
fact ‘picture-making’ in any meaningful
sense? Surely the defiant display of such texts
was by contrast intended to celebrate the
repudiation of all traditional forms of repre-
104 f e b r uary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
sentational ecclesiastical art, which Calvinist
orthodoxy deemed idolatrous? Indeed the
argument advanced here of some essential
underlying pictorial continuity between the
older culture of devotional images and the
purely verbal texts which replaced them
seems to me fundamentally mistaken. It is,
however, in keeping with Mochizuki’s insis-
tence that iconoclasm should be acknowl-
edged not only for the damage it caused,
‘but also for its generative power and the
remarkable creativity it unleashed’ (p.7). Far
from being merely destructive, iconoclasm,
she argues, should be recognised as a distinct-
ly creative process, ‘a positive, constructive
deed’, and a vital, if neglected, component of
the Golden Age of Dutch art (p.116).
It may well be the case that the various other
texts set up in St Bavo by local professional
guilds after the Reformation may be con -
sidered as, at least in some sense, descendants
of the demolished altars which they had
previously commissioned and at which they
had formerly worshipped, such as the Linen
Weavers’ biblical lineage of the weaving trade
or the suspended models of ships which the
Shippers’ Guild maintained on the site of their
previous altar, doubtless invoking some form
of Provident blessing in regard to the perilous
seas on which Dutch trade and wealth so
depended. Costly brass chandeliers donated
by the guilds and other institutions similarly
doubtless reflect unbroken continuities of
pious civic pride. Yet the central thrust of
Calvinist theology was of its essence icono-
phobic rather than merely iconoclastic, to use
the helpful distinction introduced by Patrick
Collinson in his study of contemporary Eng-
lish religious beliefs and behaviour.1 Taking
the Second Commandment literally, it equat-
ed all images with idols. As elsewhere, the
shifting of the seating alignment to a new
north–south axis defied the entire architectur-
al logic of the encasing Gothic building. Such
innovations constituted a deliberate insult to
the respect in which Catholics and many
Protestants held the east end of their churches,
and represented a permanent visual prof-
anation of the spatial aura of sacramental
Eucharistic sanctity which Calvinism wholly
rejected. A massive wooden pulpit on the
south side of the nave eventually became the
building’s new principal focus, with its own
enclosure where baptisms also took place from
a small basin rather than a traditional font.
Throughout early Protestant Europe such
pulpits celebrated the victory of the Word,
and were often much larger than those
they replaced, although devoid of religious
imagery, with huge suspended testers over-
head to amplify the theatrical rhetoric of the
preacher’s voice. Pulpits also greatly facilitat-
ed the close moral scrutiny of parishioners by
church Elders, which was in turn related to
regular public rituals of atonement and repen-
tance, not discussed in these pages. This was
of course a rigidly hierarchical and deeply
patriarchal society, as reflected in every last
detail of church attendance. Pulpits were fre-
quently surrounded by biblical texts, often
painted over recently whitewashed medieval
wall paintings. Yet such changes were surely
not the products of some innately creative
iconoclasm, but straightforward expressions
of Calvinist faith, ever vigilant against the
heresies of idolatry and superstition. Nor were
the texts which dominated the interiors of
Calvinist churches in any way commensurate,
as the author claims, with contemporary
Lutheran narrative devotional art (p.195).
On the contrary, it was precisely its extreme
logocentric iconophobia which distinguished
Calvinist religious observance from other rival
Protestant congregations, which tolerantly
retained religious imagery, albeit stripped of
Marian and non-biblical iconography. One of
the many paradoxes of Calvinist aesthetics not
considered here involves the great anxiety
concerning all religious imagery, alongside a
seeming indifference to the use of contempo-
rary strapwork decoration, often pagan in
origin, and bustling with winged cherub-
heads, fruit, flowers, hovering putti and so on,
framing epitaphs and sacred texts and pulpits
alike, as if compensating for an otherwise
intolerable visual austerity.
Such Reformed fittings and furnishings
evidently embodied an anti-sacramental creed
which emphasised obedience and uniformity
and, as Mochizuki points out, were examples
of a ‘material religion that was a result of
re-imagining the invisible’ (p.321). It is,
however, difficult to accept her further con-
clusion that iconoclasm split the trunk of late
medieval devotional art into two branches,
one of which was supposedly the image-
purged art of the Reformed Church, with the
other branch divided between the new genres
of secular painting and the evolving Catholic
tradition (p.325). For the Reformed Church
certainly had its own artists, and another
central question not addressed in these pages
concerns how it was that Christian art and
iconography remained widely popular and
acceptable for private Calvinist households,
but not for public churches. In many respects
it is the body of this book which seems
at times split in two, with a timely and
fascinating study of post-Reformation St
Bavo rather uncomfortably hinged to a wider
and much more generalised survey of the
entire ecclesiastical visual culture of Dutch
Calvinism. Frequently the text lapses into full-
scale postmodern Derridean obscurantism,
which greatly distracts from the welcome
focus on the neglected history of early
Protestant church furnishings. A deeper
problem furthermore remains, for iconoclasm
creates nothing but a violent registration of
the iconoclasts’ fears, and surely there is no
real artistic equivalence whatsoever between
the creative imaginative skill of the trained
mason’s or wood-carver’s chisel and the
destructive work of the iconoclast’s hammer?
To claim otherwise runs the risk of justifying
the project of iconoclasm by other means,
and privileging the radiant severity of the
vandalised kirk over the entire artistic
tradition of the West.
1 P. Collinson: From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia; the Cultur-
al Impact of the Second English Reformation, Reading 1986.
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Die Zeichnungen von Adam Elsheimer:
Kritischer Katalog. By Joachim Jacoby.
420 pp. incl. 184 col. + 87 b. & w. ills.
(Graphische Sammlung, Städel Museum,
Frankfurt am Main, 2008), €78.
ISBN 978–3–935647–40–3.
Reviewed by LUUK PIJL
DURING THE IMPRESSIVE Elsheimer exhibi-
tion that was held three years ago in
Frankfurt, Edinburgh and London,1 it was
strongly felt that our understanding of his
draughtsmanship was still limited, despite the
extensive studies devoted to the subject by
art historians such as Wilhelm von Bode,
Heinrich Weizsäcker, J.G. van Gelder and
Ingrid Jost, and Keith Andrews. Especially at
the Frankfurt venue, where a few drawings
and gouaches were displayed alongside
the paintings, this lacuna was very much
apparent. The announcement during the
event of a new research project concerning
Elsheimer’s works on paper was therefore
welcome. The Städel deserves full praise for
this initiative, the scope of which stretches far
beyond the Museum’s holdings. In fact, the
Städel owns just two autograph drawings by
Elsheimer, one of which was acquired as
recently as 2005 (cat. no.18). The acquisition
was supported by the Gabriele Busch-Hauck
Foundation, who also financed the research
and production of the book under review.
The independent German art historian
Joachim Jacoby was entrusted with the task
and he produced his rich and monumental
study with admirable speed.
The first reference to Elsheimer’s draughts-
manship is by Karel van Mander, who in 1604
stated that the artist did not busy himself much
with drawing, but instead sat in churches and
elsewhere to absorb the works of the great
masters. In more recent times Johan David
Passavant and Von Bode covered new ground
defining Elsheimer’s drawn œuvre. Von Bode
attributed no less than three hundred sheets
to the master. This large number is all the
more surprising since Von Bode was to some
extent aware of the problematic distinction
between drawings by Elsheimer and the pro-
lific draughtsman and printmaker Hendrick
Goudt. Central in the Elsheimer–Goudt
discussion is the attribution of 179 drawings in
the so-called Frankfurter Klebeband. This
volume was acquired by the Städel in 1868
and all drawings were initially considered to
be by Elsheimer, despite Goudt’s Utrecht
address on one of them. Gradually more and
more drawings were attributed to Goudt,
until Van Gelder and Jost proposed that all,
except two by an unidentified hand, were by
Goudt, a view that is now generally accepted.
Compared to Goudt’s drawings, we detect
that with Elsheimer everything has form,
structure and a clear arrangement, however
free the lines of the pen, while with Goudt the
individual elements often become formless
and unresolved.
In what is modestly called the ‘introduc-
tion’, Jacoby succinctly and lucidly discusses
the history of the study of Elsheimer draw-
ings, the artistic relationship between
Elsheimer and other artists, as well as the func-
tion of the drawings. The author describes
Elsheimer’s draughtsmanship as dependent on
the sixteenth-century German tradition of
Philip Uffenbach and Hans Mielich and also
argues that the drawings by the Bassano fami-
ly played a role in Elsheimer’s formative years
in Venice. His interaction with artists work-
ing in Rome, such as Paul Bril, Agostino
Tassi, Carlo Saraceni, David Teniers the Elder
and Martin Faber, is also explored. The core
of Jacoby’s book, however, is the catalogue
in which the pros and cons concerning attri-
butions are discussed. The author considers
twenty-two drawings and five gouaches to
be autograph. In the last critical catalogue of
Elsheimer’s work by Keith Andrews (1977),
a total of twenty-five sheets were attributed
to the artist. Five formerly unknown drawings
by Elsheimer have reappeared during the
last three decades (nos.12, 13, 14, 16 and 19),
while Jacoby rightly rejects three drawings
that were accepted by Andrews (nos.A2,
A3 and GK7br). The catalogue is chronolog-
ically arranged. Only five drawings are
dated to before 1600, which means that they
must be from before Elsheimer’s Roman
years. Based on the assumption that the draw-
ings are crucial for our understanding of
Elsheimer’s working method, much attention
is devoted to the function of the sheets.
Jacoby discriminates between no less than
six different types of drawings: finished
album drawings (six sheets); pure sketches
(four); composition studies (six); composi-
tion designs (three); chiaroscuro studies (six);
and autonomous drawings (two). This diver-
sity within a small œuvre makes attributions a
complicated matter.
Five gouaches are included among the
autograph works (nos.23–27), all represent-
ing figures such as Ceres, Bathsheba and
Salome. Unfortunately, the authorship of
none of these can be documented, which
makes firm statements about them very
the burlington ma g a z i n e
BOOKS
difficult. Therefore, as Jacoby acknowledges,
the gouaches present a special challenge in
terms of connoisseurship. As early as the
eighteenth century several gouaches were
attributed to Elsheimer, but later many of
these were given to Hendrick Goudt, Gerrit
van Battum and Pieter de With. No render-
ing of a pure landscape in this medium can
today be ascribed to the master.
The description of individual sheets is
exemplary; technical aspects, provenances,
references, stylistic observations, dating and
remarks concerning their relationship with
works in other media by Elsheimer and
others are discussed by Jacoby with great
insight. A relatively large part of the book
(pp.271–315) is devoted to drawings after
Elsheimer’s paintings. These (mostly anony-
mous) sheets are above all an indication of
the popularity of Elsheimer’s paintings and
underline the assumption that he is an artist’s
artist, but for obvious reasons they are not
very informative about his draughtsmanship.
It is telling that only one sheet (no.GK7b)
of this sizeable group was considered as
a preliminary drawing by Andrews, although
it was generally doubted by earlier writers,
among them its former owner Heinrich
Weizsäcker. For this section Jacoby took
Elsheimer’s extant painted œuvre as his guide,
and as a result interesting drawings after lost
paintings by Elsheimer are omitted. For
example, a sheet in the Louvre by Moses van
Uyttenbroeck based on a lost composition by
Elsheimer (Fig.43) is not mentioned. Van
Uyttenbroeck, whose output is closely con-
nected with that of Elsheimer, is one of the
few artists who would have merited more
attention in the present study.
The book also contains interesting excur-
sions on the term ‘gouache’ and on the
album of Abel Prach, in which Elsheimer’s
contribution, a dedication dated 21st April
1600, provides the earliest documentary evi-
dence of his stay in Rome. In addition, there
are two useful lists, one chronological and
one ordered by collections, of references to
43. Mercury
and Battus, by
Moses van
Uytten-
broeck.
c.1625. Pen
and brown
ink, 14.9 by
19.8 cm.
(Musée du
Louvre,
Paris).
• cliI • february 2010 105
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Elsheimer’s drawings in inventories, sale cat-
alogues and other sources. It attests to the
general thoroughness of this study that only
very few critical remarks can be made. For
example, Jacoby mentions the ‘Utrechter
Goltzius-Schule’ (p.23), which does not exist.
A few minor remarks concern the literature:
‘Negro/Ruby 2003’ should read ‘Hendriks
2003’ and Adriaen Waiboer’s exhibition
Northern Nocturnes. Nightscapes in the Age of
Rembrandt, held in Dublin in 2005, is not
mentioned despite the ample attention paid
in it to night scenes by painters such as
Lastman, De With and Van Battum. But
these are only small quibbles, which in no
way detract from the importance of this
publication.
Jacoby identifies two key moments in the
study of Elsheimer’s drawings: Weizsäcker’s
publication in 1923 on the ‘Frankfurter
Klebeband’ mentioned above, and the
groundbreaking exhibition held at the Städel
Museum in 1966 and Van Gelder’s and Jost’s
subsequent review of that show in Simiolus.
With the publication of Jacoby’s book a third
key moment has been added. This beautifully
designed and excellently illustrated work will
be an indispensable tool for Elsheimer studies
for many decades to come.
1 Reviewed by the present writer in this Magazine,
148 (2006), pp.567–69.
Painting and Politics in Northern
Europe: Van Eyck, Bruegel, Rubens and
their Contemporaries. By Margaret D.
Carroll. 280 pp. incl. 172 col. ills. (Pennsyl-
vania State University Press, University Park
PA, 2008), $75. ISBN 987–0–271–02954–0.
Reviewed by MARK MEADOW
I N T H I S B O O K Margaret Carroll offers an
illuminating overview of her research into
the art of the early modern Low Countries
and its socio-political resonances. Discussing
works of art ranging from Jan van Eyck’s
Arnolfini portrait of 1434 (National Gallery,
London) to Otto Marseus van Schrieck’s
Forest floor with lizard, snake and butterfly of
1664 (Musée Fabre, Montpellier), the author
explains that her six essays collectively form a
narrative arc concerning ‘the emergence of
“modern” theories of politics and natural
law . . .’. This trajectory divides the book
into two sections. In the first three chapters,
treating Van Eyck and Pieter Bruegel, Carroll
refers to political models that equate the nat-
ural order with harmonious social relations
and stable political structures. Moving in the
final three chapters into the seventeenth
century and the age of absolutism, she
presents the art of Rubens, Snyders and Van
Schrieck as exemplary of a contrasting
ideology in which natural order is predicated
upon violent struggle as a necessary response
to political instability.
106 f e b r uary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
Two leitmotifs run through the book: the
first, signalled in the book’s title, is the nature
and constitution of political power in early
modern Europe; the second is a feminist
analysis of male/female power dynamic, espe-
cially in regard to the institution of marriage.
Carroll links these two themes by alluding
to the habit of ancient and early modern polit-
ical philosophers, from Aristotle to Budé,
Bodin and Lipsius, to liken the body politic to
domestic marriage and the ‘natural’ relation-
ship of husband and wife. Each chapter,
however, successfully stands as an independ-
ent essay, and the book’s ultimate connective
thread is Carroll’s scholarly engagement with
politics and gender.
In the process of weaving these independ-
ent studies into an effective whole, Carroll
offers her readers the rare opportunity to
contemplate an overarching conceptual
framework for Netherlandish art spanning
nearly three centuries. The topic of gender
and politics allows the author to synthetically
and intriguingly link Burgundian portraiture,
Flemish genre scenes, Rubens’s grand narra-
tive history paintings and Dutch still-life
paintings.
Carroll proposes a number of novel read-
ings of canonical works. Thus, Van Eyck’s
Arnolfini portrait in her view is concerned not
with a wedding or a betrothal, but with a
mandate – akin to a power-of-attorney –
between a merchant and his wife that allows
her to manage his business affairs when
he is absent. Building upon this, she suggests
that the image in fact served a rhetorical
function in establishing the credentials and
social virtues of the sitter. Carroll brings
into her analysis her substantial knowledge of
fifteenth-century property and marital law,
trade and political philosophy.
In her second chapter, she proposes that we
see Bruegel’s Netherlandish proverbs (Gemälde-
galerie, Berlin) and Battle of Carnival and Lent
(Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), both
of 1559, as an antithetical pair, respectively
presenting a biting critique of the oppressive
foreign rule from the Spanish, on the one
hand, and a celebratory view of Netherlandish
local rights and traditions on the other.
Strangely, she does not mention where we are
to place the compositionally and thematically
related Children’s games (Kunsthistorisches
Museum) in relationship to this pair. In the
third chapter, working out from a brilliant
analysis of Bruegel’s Tower of Babel 0f 1563
(Kunsthistorisches Museum), Carroll links the
image specifically to the indignities visited
upon the Netherlands by the enforcement of
Spanish Catholicism, and sees that artist’s
engraving of Skating outside St George’s Gate
in Antwerp as a commentary on the imposition
of taxes and other financial hardships that
followed the construction of new civic for-
tifications by the Spanish authorities.
The fourth chapter takes on Rubens’s Rape
of the daughters of Leucippus (Alte Pinakothek,
Munich) and compellingly suggests that it
should be read in the context of the political-
ly expedient betrothals of Louis XIII and
the future Philip IV of Spain to each other’s
sisters, addressing the tendency of monarchs
to regard the subject of rape as a way of
legitimising absolute power and noting that
the actual results of such strategic alliances are
not always successful. Carroll’s reading of
Rubens’s cycle for Marie de Médicis, while
researched as meticulously as the rest of the
book, is in many ways the least surprising,
perhaps because it concerns the most
unabashedly political imagery she explores.
The most surprising of her chapters is the final
one, in which she discusses a variety of paint-
ings depicting fighting animals as illustrative of
a political philosophy espoused by authors
such as Justus Lipsius and Hobbes, which
sought the origins of human and state aggres-
sion and bellicosity within nature itself.
As with any political discourse, other
scholars will certainly find various points
of disagreement with details of Carroll’s
argument. Nonetheless, her combination of
careful visual scrutiny and thorough, wide-
ranging research ensures that her readers will
learn a great deal and, more importantly, see
these and other Netherlandish works of art in
a new light.
Rembrandt’s Faith. Church and Temple
in the Dutch Golden Age. By Shelley
Perlove and Larry Silver. 532 pp. incl. 28
col. + 203 b. & w. ills. (Pennsylvania State
University Press, University Park PA, 2009),
$100. ISBN 978–0–271–03406–5.
Reviewed by XANDER VAN ECK
WHEREAS NINETEENTH-CENTURY Roman-
tics saw Rembrandt as someone who direct-
ly translated his deeply felt understanding
of the Bible onto canvas and was sympathet-
ic to the Jews living in his neighbourhood,
modern art historians such as Bruyn, Veld-
man and Tümpel have shown how much
Rembrandt depended on the visual tradition
of biblical illustrations and religious prints, as
well as on non-biblical sources such as the
works of Flavius Josephus.
It is today common wisdom among art his-
torians that sixteenth-century humanism and
the Reformation made much larger parts of
the Bible eligible for depiction. In medieval
Catholic art, the choice was usually restricted
to scenes from the New Testament that relat-
ed to the liturgy and Catholic articles of faith,
and the Old Testament was mainly relevant
insofar as it could provide ante-types of those
scenes. However, the new philological dis-
cipline led to the appreciation of these stories
in their own right. Exemplary value all but
replaced typological and sacramental value in
Dutch art. Old Testament stories functioned
as examples of unwavering belief in God or
correct civic behaviour, and Christ’s actions
and his parables showed people how to be
good Christians. Much of the attention art
historians devoted to this phenomenon can
eventually be traced to the wish to solve
BR.FEB.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 20/01/2010 14:53 Page 107
the problem of Rembrandt’s extraordinarily
broad choice of biblical subjects.
At the heart of Perlove’s and Silver’s
undertaking that resulted in the book under
review, a hefty volume that treats Rem-
brandt’s religious imagery from his entire
career, lies the conviction that typology had
not lost its relevance and was, after all, the
driving force behind his religious work.
They argue that Rembrandt’s reading of the
Bible was based on the supposition that both
the Old and New Testament are part of one
integrated revelation. He ‘roamed through
the bible with his fingers, mind, memory,
and imagination to create his freshly innova-
tive images of the Temple and the Christian
religion, linking the entire scriptural text
into a coherent vision of divine provenance
and covenant theology’ (pp.8–9).
The authors argue that Rembrandt’s
brand of typology was heavily influenced
by the kind of Pauline theology that was
practised by sixteenth-century humanists
and reformers such as Erasmus, Luther and
Calvin, and which left its mark on the Staten-
bijbel, the official Dutch Bible translation of
1637. Pauline theology had a dark view of
mankind living ‘Under the Law [of Moses]’
and painted a negative picture of Jews, who
failed to recognise the importance of the
coming of Christ and held on to their rigid
Temple rituals and old beliefs. There was a
topical element to this: starting with Eras-
mus, parallels with the ritualism and materi-
alism of the Catholic Church were often
drawn. Of course, reformist theologians did
not neglect the Old Testament; the Jews
were the chosen people whose covenant
with God was an essential element of
humankind’s path to Salvation. Since the
beginning of the Eighty Years War with
Spain (1568–1648), Dutch Protestants
strongly identified with the Jewish people
who overcame hardship and tyranny through
God’s help.
In addition to being a rich and informative
guide about all things Jewish in Rembrandt’s
work, the most important merit of this
book is that it shows that both strands of
typology were indeed relevant for Rem-
brandt’s work – the first one, for instance, in
the etching of the Presentation in the Temple,
where the dark, looming figure of the priest
in the middle ground can convincingly be
argued to represent the non-believing Jews,
whereas the figure of Simeon in the fore-
ground represents the enlightened; several
scenes from the Esther story clearly fit into
the second category.
The greatest weakness of the book is the
obligation the authors took upon themselves
to identify the typological elements in virtu-
ally all Rembrandt’s religious prints and
paintings. It is not just the tiresome effect of
reading more than two hundred catalogue
entries welded together, but also the fact
that most of the arguments are speculative.
Typology is a tricky field, especially when we
realise that the interdependent relationship
between the Old and the New Testament is
at the heart of Christianity. Almost every Old
44. Adam and Eve, by Rembrandt van Rijn. 1638.
Etching, 16.2 by 11.6 cm. (British Museum, London).
Testament story can be seen to foreshadow
some part of the New, and every scene
depicting Jesus can be seen as a part of the
fulfilment of the promise of the Old Testa-
ment. Whatever we may think about Rem-
brandt’s exact denomination – a question that
remains, wisely, unanswered by the authors –
we can assume that he considered himself a
Christian or, if one wants to be cynical, at
least catered to a Christian public. But it is a
problem that he never actually painted scenes
from the Old and New Testament side by
side, so that any typological references can
only be implicit. The iconographer who is set
on teasing out these references will always
find something, the Bible notoriously being a
book that holds everything. In an interpreta-
tion of Rembrandt’s etching of Adam and Eve
of 1638 (Fig.44), for instance, the authors
focus on the only paradisiacal animal visible,
the lone chunky elephant in the background.
After considering several textual references to
elephants suggested in earlier literature, the
authors finally settle for the comment in
the Statenbijbel to a passage in Job 40:10–18,
where Behemoth (a wild elephant) is said to
show God’s power in taming savagery, which
the authors consequently relate to God’s vic-
tory over Satan through his sending of Christ.
Another result of this over-eagerness to
demonstrate typological elements are the
inferred cross-references from one work to
another. The fact that the salver in the fore-
ground of Rembrandt’s etching of Abraham’s
sacrifice (1655) has the same shape as the
oblong pans in two Lamentation grisailles of
1634–35, is taken as a sign that ‘the artist
visually associated the Bloodless Sacrifice of
Isaac of the Old Covenant with the life-
giving blood shed by Christ in the new
Dispensation’ (p.366). Who on earth was
supposed to notice this, apart from a twenty-
the burlington ma g a z i n e
BOOKS
first-century art historian who has the luxury
of leaning on 150 years of research into
Rembrandt’s œuvre? Surely the similarity of
these salvers is much more a matter of visual
repertory or studio props than of theological
considerations.
Not only biblical Jews play a role in this
book; there is ample attention for Rem-
brandt’s personal relationships with Jews
as patrons and the interest in Jewish and
biblical history expressed by local scholars
and amateurs. Much is made of a group of
intellectuals and Christian religious leaders
with millenarian ideas who around 1650
were trying to find ways to convert the Jews
to Christianity, to help prepare the world for
the Second Coming. The starting point for
research in this direction is Rembrandt’s
series of illustrations for rabbi Menasseh Ben
Israel’s Piedra Gloriosa of 1655, which was
based on the apocalyptic visions of Daniel.
The importance for Rembrandt of the group
of Christian Hebraists who were in a dia-
logue with Ben Israel was first pointed out by
Perlove in 1997 and supported by thorough
research in Michael Zell’s Reframing Rem-
brandt (2002).
This certainly does not mean that Rem-
brandt is monopolised for that group – the
authors are fully aware that the artist mingled
with Remonstrants, Counter-remonstrants,
Catholics and Mennonites alike. But while
we have a specific provenance for many por-
traits, or know the identity of the sitter, only
in very few cases do we know the first owner
of a religious work. Research into invento-
ries has taught us that the iconography itself
can never be trusted to be indicative of a spe-
cific denomination, yet the authors do just
that a fair number of times, thereby under-
mining their own thesis that Rembrandt’s
own ‘coherent vision’ was what shaped the
iconography. Rembrandt’s Baptism of the
Moor used to be considered a Mennonite
subject because an adult is baptised, but
recent research has shown that it could just as
easily decorate a baptismal chapel in a
Catholic church. Perlove and Silver make a
renewed effort to claim this painting for the
Protestant side, because the eunuch stands
back from the water while a dog is drinking
from it, the message apparently being that
Protestant theologians do not consider the
water as holy in itself, whereas Catholics do.
In itself this kind of speculation could be
useful, if it were treated as a hypothesis that
was later corroborated by further research
into the provenance of the painting and the
specific ideas that the first owner had about
baptism, but standing by itself, as it does
here, it remains a non sequitur.
Although nearly every page in this book is
an illustration of the sheer impossibility of
presenting Rembrandt’s religious œuvre as a
theological unity, the ‘Conclusion’ insists
that it can be done if we declare the artist a
ecumenist. He ‘undertook a mission to
bridge the Old and the New Testament’,
answering to a ‘special vocation [. . .] aimed
to forge a consensus religion’ (p.363). It is
true that Rembrandt’s religious work was
• cliI • february 2010 107
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BOOKS
appreciated by many people from different
walks of life. However, this was not because
they picked up on a theological message
aimed at bringing them together, but
because Rembrandt devised his pictures in
such a way that any person who had read the
Bible could identify with them. Surely, for
all Rembrandt cared, as long as all Christians
thought of the Bible as the foundation of
their belief, they could comfortably stay
within whichever religious community to
which they happened to belong.
Jan van Noordt. Painter of History and
Portraits in Amsterdam. By David A. de
Witt. 398 pp. incl. 42 col. + 152 b. & w. ills.
(McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal,
2008), £53. ISBN 978–0–7735–3275–5.
Reviewed by ERIK SPAANS
J A N V A N N O O R D T is something of an odd
man out among seventeenth-century Dutch
painters for he does not seem to fit into any
specific school or category. He probably stud-
ied with Jacob Backer in the late 1630s and,
like his master, specialised in history paintings
and portraits. Stylistically, however, he was
also influenced by Rembrandt, Rubens and
Jordaens. Some of his paintings are reminis-
cent of Flemish rather than Dutch art.
Van Noordt was (probably) born and (def-
initely) raised in Amsterdam at a time when
the art market was booming. But by the time
he had become a master in his own right, the
artistic climate had shifted. The economy of
the Dutch republic was shaken by a series of
Anglo-Dutch wars, and artists (and other
manufacturers of luxury goods) were the first
to suffer the consequences. In the third quar-
ter of the seventeenth century the art market
became increasingly saturated, and compe-
tition among painters was fierce. Van Noordt
was not very successful as a history painter but
appears to have fared better as a portraitist.
However, in 1675 he left Amsterdam with
heavy debts, never to return.
A few decades later he was all but forgotten.
Arnold Houbraken in his Groote schouburgh
(1718–21) mentions Van Noordt only in pass-
ing – as the teacher of Johannes Voorhout.
Voorhout provided Houbraken with biogra-
phical information on various artists but
apparently did not take the trouble to include
his own teacher among their number. This is
hardly the picture David de Witt draws in this
monograph. Van Noordt is described as a high-
ly esteemed and moderately successful artist
who rubbed shoulders with the cultural elite of
Amsterdam. De Witt states: ‘Having emulated
the energy and refinement of the foremost
Flemish models in history painting, Van
Noordt proceeded in the 1670s to develop a
more powerfully dynamic style that eventually
achieved an extreme with no parallel in the
Dutch or Flemish Baroque’. This is a remark-
ably bold claim, unless of course the word
108 f e b r uary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
‘extreme’ signifies that Van Noordt’s efforts at
emulation were somewhat overblown. In
defining the unique qualities of Van Noordt’s
history paintings, the first thing that jumps to
mind is their awkwardness. Some of his figures
and compositions are downright clumsy. It is
fair to say that Van Noordt was a painter whose
aspirations did not quite match his talent.
The quality of his paintings is very uneven. In
the best (portraits mostly) he comes across as a
‘missing link’ between Rembrandt and Jor-
daens. But on other occasions viewers might
find themselves dumbfounded by his ill-
matched colours and grotesque figures. To
be fair to De Witt, he does not deny these
limitations: ‘Occasionally his works suffer from
a visual surfeit’. All this does not make Van
Noordt less interesting. On the contrary, to
some extent these failures are precisely what
make him such an intriguing artist.
A monograph on such an unconventional
painter can contribute to a better under-
standing of what is arguably the most lively
and important period in Dutch art, and
De Witt deserves credit for pushing Van
Noordt into the limelight. He gives a vivid
description of the milieu in which Van
Noordt was raised. His father was a school-
teacher and – later – a musician. Two of
Jan’s brothers were also musicians (and com-
posers) employed by the city of Amsterdam.
Anthoni van Noordt was organist of the
Nieuwe Kerk and as such had good contacts
with Amsterdam regents, including the Van
Hinlopen family who were portrayed by his
brother. Although De Witt provides some
interesting material on the contacts between
contemporary painters and musicians, when
it comes to defining the position and influ-
ence of Van Noordt among his colleagues he
is somewhat less convincing.
De Witt stresses that Van Noordt was called
‘famous’ by Houbraken and makes much of
45. Rest on the flight into Egypt, by Jan van Noordt.
c.1650? Canvas, 92 by 68.8 cm. (State Hermitage
Museum, St Petersburg).
the fact that he was among a group of painters
who were asked to judge the quality of an Ital-
ian painting owned by the art dealer Gerrit
Uylenburgh, which apparently ‘lends further
support to Houbraken’s assertion concerning
his reputation’. If so, why was Van Noordt
unable to obtain prestigious commissions
throughout his career? The decoration of the
new Town Hall provided plenty of work for
contemporary painters, including relatively
obscure artists such as Willem Strijcker and
Cornelis Brisé and foreigners such as Erasmus
Quellinus and Jürgen Ovens, but Van Noordt
was not among them. Neither is there any
evidence that he received lucrative commis-
sions from the countless public institutions or
was ever asked to paint a group portrait of
Amsterdam regents.
Van Noordt did, however, receive com-
missions to paint portraits of powerful regents
from the Van Hinlopen and Huydecoper
families, but the claim that he thereby ‘estab-
lished a market in Amsterdam’s social élite’
seems somewhat inflated. De Witt is perhaps
too eager to count Van Noordt among suc-
cessful colleagues such as Bartholomeus van
der Helst, Govert Flinck, Ferdinand Bol and
Nicolaes Maes. He assumes Van Noordt must
have had a studio of some stature which ‘may
have been the site for a kind of Academy for
drawing from the nude’. This assumption is
based on a single line from Houbraken that
mentions Johannes Voorhout and Dirck
Ferreris as drawing nudes at an academy
(‘oeffenschool’). Why this should have been in
Van Noordt’s studio remains unclear, espe-
cially since his skills in anatomical drawing
were very limited, as De Witt himself
acknowledges: ‘his most serious weakness is a
casual approach to human anatomy’.
De Witt assumes Van Noordt owned (or
rented) a studio and lived in a separate house.
The inventory of his possessions ‘strongly
suggests that he was using the premises on the
Egelantiersgracht as an atelier only and was
living elsewhere’. There is no indication that
in the 1670s Van Noordt could afford two
separate premises – in fact quite the opposite.
Yet somehow De Witt persists in describing
him as the head of a studio. This becomes
most clear in the chapter on rejected paint-
ings, which has some surprising choices. De
Witt rejects the Jupiter and Mercury (Sine-
brychoff Museum, Helsinki) and the Juno,
Jupiter and Io (Musée du Louvre, Paris) and
ascribes them to ‘the same anonymous artist’,
while the Rest on the flight into Egypt (State
Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg; Fig.45) is
also rejected. One can easily understand why
these museums might be reluctant to accept
these rejections: all these paintings seem to
represent the qualities and – even more telling
– the limitations so typical of Van Noordt’s
style. The Hermitage picture is ascribed to ‘a
follower or pupil, perhaps even working in
the artist’s workshop’. The number of artists
in seventeenth-century Amsterdam who ran a
workshop where pupils or assistants actually
kept on working (in their master’s style) after
their training, is limited, and it seems unlikely
Jan van Noordt was one of them.
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Vermeer: The Complete Paintings. By
Walter Liedtke. 208 pp. incl. 116 col. + 76
b. & w. ills. (Ludion, Antwerp, 2008), €100.
ISBN 978–90–5544–742–8.
Reviewed by QUENTIN BUVELOT
AFTER TITIAN AND BRUEGHEL, it is the turn of
Vermeer in the Classical Art Series, a com-
mendable initiative by Ludion to publish beau-
tifully produced new monographs on great
masters, which follows in the footsteps of the
famous Klassiker der Kunst volumes. The series
serves specialists and the general reader alike.
Walter Liedtke, Curator of European Paintings
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, and an expert on the Delft school, took
up the challenge to write a book about an artist
who has been the subject of a plethora of pub-
lications, not all of which are equally serious.
It was thus necessary to distinguish
between fact and fiction and in this Liedtke
has succeeded. His factual approach has
resulted in an annotated catalogue of the thir-
ty-six paintings that are now widely accepted
as by the artist, with Young woman seated at a
virginal (no.36) as the latest addition to
Vermeer’s œuvre. Although it was included in
older monographs as an authentic work, it
had gradually disappeared from the Vermeer
literature, only to resurface after the death of
its owner. Doubts about its attribution were
removed after a thorough technical examina-
tion, whose results were published in this
Magazine after the picture’s public auction in
2004.1 Liedtke’s comment in his introduction
(p.7) that ‘circumstances are so different
today that rejections from the corpus of
authentic works require no mention in our
catalogue’ is somewhat bewildering because
it was exactly this latest addition that had
been ignored in some publications devoted to
the artist. Liedtke in his turn ignores the
attribution to Vermeer of St Praxedis which,
like Young woman seated at a virginal, is still in
private hands. This attribution has proved to
be untenable – Jørgen Wadum convincingly
demonstrated that the history painting is of
Italian origin2 – but it should at least have
been mentioned in the book under review.
Vermeer’s early years remain shrouded in
mystery and it is still not clear who was his
teacher. With the deattribution of St Praxedis,
any ‘evidence’ of his entirely hypothetical stay
in Italy has also disappeared. Liedtke’s proposal
for the chronology of Vermeer’s earliest works
is convincing: he places Diana and her nymphs
(Mauritshuis, The Hague) before Edinburgh’s
Christ in the house of Mary and Martha, with the
Dresden Procuress (dated 1656) as the artist’s ear-
liest genre painting. These three works will be
included in an exhibition devoted to the young
Vermeer opening in May at the Mauritshuis.
Although Liedtke above all tries to be
informative and to avoid any possible debate –
he even writes that ‘the proper arena for
crossing pens on academic points is a scholarly
journal or a symposium’ (p.9) – he cannot
always escape the need to express an opinion.
He has thus dedicated an entire appendix to the
rather controversial subject of Vermeer’s possi-
ble use of a camera obscura. Where some
authors, such as Philip Steadman, believe that
Vermeer used this device, others are less con-
vinced, including the present reviewer.3 When
using a camera obscura, the image is displayed
upside down and in mirror image, which must
have been highly impractical. Whoever thinks
that Vermeer’s paintings show exactly what the
painter had before him and thinks that the
measurements of the rooms depicted in his
paintings can be reconstructed will be disap-
pointed. In view of certain optical effects in his
paintings, such as the reflections on the armrests
adorned with lion heads in some works,
Liedtke concedes that Vermeer must have been
interested in the possibilities of the camera
obscura, but he refrains from taking a definitive
stance and ends with the observation that the
‘rest of it – genius – cannot be explained’. But
is that not exactly the task that the author of a
monograph such as this must set himself?
Vermeer can be properly understood if one
considers his technique: for him painting was
to a large degree a matter of tireless recon-
figuration. It is widely known how he made
changes in many of his paintings: in Young
woman with a water pitcher (no.13) the map was
originally placed behind the head of the
woman and later to be shifted to the right; a
seat with lion heads originally placed in the
foreground was entirely painted out by the
artist. Both interventions improved the
composition: in the present composition the
woman is set to great effect against the light
surface of the wall. Just how scientific Ver-
meer’s approach to his compositions was is
demonstrated by the pioneering research of
Jørgen Wadum,4 who showed how the artist
constructed the required perspective by plac-
ing a pin or nail in the canvas at the vanishing
point, to which he attached a cord covered in
chalk. The taut cord was subsequently pulled
back against the canvas to leave a thin line that
could be traced with a pen. In many paintings
by Vermeer such a hole was discovered at the
exact vanishing point for the first time in 1949
by Karl Hultén in The art of Painting (Vienna)
and provided evidence that Vermeer used this
method. Recent conservation treatment of
Vermeer’s paintings has yielded a wealth of
new information and there are few artists
whose work is so thoroughly researched as that
of Vermeer, whose technique can hardly be
said to harbour many secrets.
Liedtke has managed to condense all this
knowledge in his readable account of the
artist’s work. The decision not to discuss the
rediscovery of the artist in the nineteenth cen-
tury, especially through the work of the French
art critic Etienne-Joseph-Théophile Thoré, is
regrettable, as it remains a compelling story that
certainly appeals to the general public.
1 L. Sheldon and N. Costaras: ‘Johannes Vermeer’s
“Young woman seated at a virginal’”, THE BURLING-
TON MAGAZINE 148 (2006), pp.89–97.
2 J. Wadum: ‘Contours of Vermeer’, in I. Gaskell, ed.:
Vermeer Studies (Studies in the History of Art, vol.55),
Washington and New Haven 1998, pp.214–19.
3 See Walter Liedtke’s review of P. Steadman: Ver-
meer’s camera: Uncovering the truth behind the masterpieces,
the burlington ma g a z i n e
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Oxford 2001, in THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 143
(2001), pp.642–43, and Jørgen Wadum’s review in
ArtMatters: Netherlands Technical Studies in Art 1 (2002),
pp.126–27.
4 Idem: ‘Vermeer in perspective’, in B. Broos and A.K.
Wheelock et al.: exh. cat. Johannes Vermeer, Washington
(National Gallery of Art) and The Hague (Mauritshuis)
1995–96, pp.66–79.
The Pushkin State Museum of Fine
Arts. Collection of Dutch Paintings
XVII–XIX Centuries. By Marina
Senenko. 504 pp. incl. 150 col. + 252
b. & w. ills. (Pushkin State Museum of Fine
Arts and Red Square Publishers, Moscow,
2009), €125. ISBN 978–5–91521–020–1.
Reviewed by MARJORIE E. WIESEMAN
THE NEW CATALOGUE of Dutch paintings in
the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts,
Moscow, the first scholarly catalogue of this
collection, is a monument to persistence, ded-
ication and triumph over adversity. Marina
Senenko, the Pushkin’s curator of Dutch
paintings, devoted nearly twenty years of her
life to this project, which was first published in
Russian in 2000.1 Almost immediately, plans
were made to translate the catalogue into
English so that it might reach an international
public. Thanks to generous funding from
various private and governmental agencies in
the Netherlands and the strong initiative of the
Foundation for Cultural Inventory (SCI) in
Amsterdam, this has now been beautifully
achieved, although sadly not before Senenko’s
death in 2006.
At times overshadowed by the Hermitage,
its grand and glorious imperial cousin in St
Petersburg, the Pushkin Museum houses a
remarkable collection of approximately 420
Dutch paintings that range from masterpieces
by Rembrandt and Van Gogh to scores of
intriguing works by the ubiquitous Dutch
‘minor masters’. That the collection exists at all
is something of a miracle – its complex history,
concisely and lucidly outlined in the cata-
logue’s introduction, echoes the tumultuous
history of Russia itself from the second half of
the nineteenth to the end of the twentieth cen-
tury.2 The first public museum opened in
Moscow in 1862, cobbled together from the
private museum established in St Petersburg by
Count Nikolai Rumyantsev, plus two hundred
Western European paintings transferred from
the Hermitage. During this same period,
wealthy middle-class Muscovites channelled
their cultural aspirations into the formation of
great art collections, often making them
available to the public: Tretyakov, Zubalov,
Brocard, Morosov, Shchukin and Trofimovich
are among the most significant names in this
regard. Following the October Revolution,
many of these private owners temporarily
stored their collections in the Rumyantsev
Museum for safekeeping, but in 1922 the
Moscow Soviet prohibited the Museum from
actually returning works to their owners. The
• cliI • february 2010 109
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Rumyantsev and other city museums also
became repositories for paintings unearthed by
the People’s Commissariats of Property and
Enlightenment in abandoned estates, banks and
pawnshops. So many artworks were gathered
during a brief span of time that eight district
(‘Proletariat’) museums sprouted up; most did
not last long, and their contents eventually
reverted either to the State Museum Fund or to
one of the more established museums. In 1923
Moscow’s vast, migratory collections were
divided into three, with the newly formed
Museum of Fine Arts (the Pushkin Museum)
to house the collection of Western European
paintings, including the core of the original
Rumyantsev collection. In the 1920s and 1930s
the Pushkin’s collection grew with additional
transfers (or purchases) from the Hermitage and
other public or private museums; but it was also
thinned by sales and transfers to other mus-
eums. The Museum was closed throughout the
Second World War, its collection evacuated to
Novosibirsk and Solikamsk, and reopened to
the public in 1946. When in 1948 Moscow’s
Museum of Modern Western Art was closed
‘for ideological reasons’, distribution of that
collection between the Hermitage and the
Pushkin added an exceptional group of nine-
teenth-century pictures to the latter, including
five paintings by Van Gogh. The Pushkin
Museum’s collection has continued to grow
throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
Senenko’s catalogue of this remarkable
collection is an enormous achievement and
an indispensable resource, but as with most
collection catalogues, some minor short-
comings are inevitable. While each painting
is illustrated with a good-sized colour or
black-and-white illustration, unfortunately
the book’s compact format does not allow
for comparative illustrations, which occa-
sionally hampers appreciation of Senenko’s
thoughtful connoisseurship. With the excep-
tion of paintings by Rembrandt, technical
information about the pictures is minimally
conveyed or altogether lacking, although
most entries include useful notes on seals and
inscriptions found on the reverse of the
paintings. Entries have been updated from
the 2000 Russian publication to take account
of subsequent research, but a handful of
important publications seem to have slipped
through the cracks (recent monographs on
Karel du Jardin and Jan Mijtens, to cite just
two examples). The reader should exercise
caution with the frequent (and otherwise
very useful) citations of comparative exam-
ples, as these references are not always
entirely accurate or up to date with regard
to owner or location. Still, the Pushkin
Museum and the Foundation for Cultural
Inventory are to be applauded for making
Senenko’s careful research of this rich collec-
tion accessible to an international audience.
1
M.S. Senenko: Gosudarstvenny muzey izobrazitelnykh
iskusstv imeni A.S. Pushkina. Sobranie zhipovisi:
Gollandiya XVII–XIX veka, Moscow 2000.
2 See also idem: ‘Late 19th-century private collections
in Moscow and their fate between 1918 and 1924’, in
L. Gorter, G. Schwartz and B. Vermet, eds.: Dutch and
Flemish Art in Russia, Amsterdam 2005, pp.10–41.
110 f e b r uary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
In Another Light. Danish Painting in
the Nineteenth Century. By Patricia
G. Berman. 272 pp. incl. 205 col. + 5
b. & w. ills. (Thames & Hudson,
London and New York, 2007), £38.
ISBN 978–0–500–23844–8.
Reviewed by JAN GORM MADSEN
OVER THE LAST twenty-five years nineteenth-
century Danish art has been presented to an
international audience in various exhibitions
which, with their accompanying catalogues,
have successfully contributed to a broader
understanding of the period. Works by the
enigmatic artist Vilhelm Hammershøi were
recently shown at the Royal Academy of Arts,
London, and at the National Museum of
Western Art, Tokyo, while an exhibition at
the Hamburger Kunsthalle and the Musée du
Louvre, Paris, devoted to Nicolai Abildgaard
(1743–1809), who taught Caspar David
Friedrich and Philipp Otto Runge, gave
French and German audiences the opportu-
nity to become acquainted with the work of
this overlooked Danish artist. In other words,
Denmark is now clearly visible on the art-his-
torical map.
Until recently the only survey exclusively
devoted to Danish art was as a short intro-
duction written by Vagn Poulsen in 1976,
commissioned by the Danish Institute for
Information about Denmark and Cultural Co-
operation with Other Nations. In the book
under review, the north American art histori-
an Patricia Gray Berman introduces to an
English-speaking audience the research that,
for the most part, has been written since then
in Danish. This in itself is a very good idea.
Berman’s book is dedicated to Kirk Varne-
doe (1946–2003) and Robert Rosenblum
(1927–2006) and the author pays tribute to the
writings of these two great ambassadors of
northern European art by resolving to study
Danish art in their spirit. The author thus
states in her introduction, which also includes
a brief historiography, that the reader should
not expect to find the nineteenth century
construed as the history of successive
avant-gardes and more or less well-defined
movements advancing from Neo-classicism
towards Post-Impressionism and abstraction.
No such distinct movements and generational
transformations are apparent in Danish art,
Berman states; instead she proposes that the
history of Danish painting is best understood
as a series of tensions between nationalism and
internationalism. No doubt it would be
refreshing to read a book about nineteenth-
century Danish art examining it from a new
angle, but as Chekhov once advised, you
should not show the audience a rifle at the
beginning of a play if no one is going to fire it
at some point in the performance.
The author has done a remarkable job of
working her way through the vast literature
thus far unavailable to a non-Danish speaking
audience and it is very conscientiously pre-
sented. Now that much of the research on the
subject has been summarised one can only
hope that it will lead others to go further. A
survey that relies exclusively on material by
others runs the risk of never reaching the
point of contributing to the understanding of
the subject itself and although the author
makes an effort, it never transcends the
rhetorical gesture. For each of the seven
chapters Berman has chosen a painting
intended to act as a springboard for the
understanding of the period or theme dealt
with, but this dramatic device only seems to
draw attention to the fact that more consid-
eration could favourably have been given to
the paintings that so richly fill the pages of the
book. Most of the text never touches on the
paintings as such, an ironic failure in light of
the fact that it is exactly the high quality of
the works of art that has surprised and won
over so many people. This aspect is all the
more relevant since the book clearly pro-
motes the collection of nineteenth-century
Danish art – the largest of its kind outside
Denmark – of John L. Loeb Jr., formerly US
Ambassador to Denmark.
Naturally a survey can omit certain things
to drive home some of its points, but when
Berman leaves out several artists and their
works which could have illustrated her idea
of looking at the tensions between national-
ism and internationalism, it is curious. One
of the best-known paintings is no doubt
the Portrait of the landscape painter Frederik
Sødring of 1832 by Christen Købke in The
Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen. This
painting, which is considered briefly in the
book, is one of many possible examples offer-
ing Berman the opportunity of leaving the
general storyline in order to look into a
specific tension between nationalism and
internationalism. Although Frederik Sødring
(1809–62) is one of many painters often left
out of accounts of nineteenth-century Danish
art, Berman does include a couple of his
paintings but says nothing about how his
works were considered too close to what was
seen as a German aesthetic and why he fell
out of favour for so long. Nevertheless
Sødring managed to build a career as a painter
in Denmark, as did many others who looked
to the German tradition for inspiration.
Another obvious example is the group of
painters who left Copenhagen to study and
work in Munich. These painters did not fit
the picture that Danish historians habitually
construed of the nineteenth century and
it is regrettable that a study published on this
subject in 1997 by Ejnar Johansson is not
considered by Berman. The picture that is
presented of the first half of the Danish nine-
teenth century is very one-sided and simpli-
fied, which is unfortunate because the very
complexity of this period is crucial for the
understanding of what happened in the later
part of the century.
Much art-historical writing in Denmark
has evolved around a very specific national
self-representation through visual culture
and thus another perspective would have
been welcome. Unfortunately Berman never
leaves the surface of things and it remains a
weakness of the book that it relies so heavily
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on questions asked by others. The problem
here, of course, is whether or not a survey
book should go further than simply present-
ing primary and secondary literature to its
readers who are assumed to be unfamiliar
with nineteenth-century Danish art. In this
particular case it would not only have been
most interesting to have the view of an art
historian from another background, but it
also remains a mystery why no questions are
raised when the title clearly creates expecta-
tions about seeing something in another light.
In spite of this promise the author presents a
very traditional story.
Florence 1900. The Quest for Arcadia.
By Bernd Roeck, translated by Stewart
Spencer. 317 pp. incl. 28 b. & w. ills. (Yale
University Press, New Haven and London,
2009), £25. ISBN 978–0–300–09515–9.
Reviewed by ALISON BROWN
T H I S B O O K ’ S N O V E L and absorbing theme is
the clash between the harsh reality of life in
Florence at the turn of the last century and
the arcadian dream of its foreign visitors.
Florence around 1900 was in the throes of a
belated modernisation process. Its popula-
tion had risen dramatically since 1860 and the
city was gradually being transformed – not
only by boulevards and grandiose squares but
also by gasometers, railway stations, sewage
systems, gas street lamps and electrically
operated trams (a subject of great controver-
sy, then as now). Yet despite the improve-
ments, an economic downturn in the last
decade of the century brought strikes and
demonstrations among a population that
registered as many as eighty thousand poor
(of a total population of 190,000) – and also
helped to make Florence a leading world
centre of suicide, one of ‘the least known
facts’, we are told, about the city at this time.
Nevertheless, this was the mecca to which
Anglo-Americans and Germans flocked, its
‘every turn [. . .] invested with poetic legend;
every hour with beauty’. Among them was
the eminent scholar Aby Warburg, the
story’s anti-hero in illustrating the angst
that mingled with the pleasures of fin de siècle
Florence.
Although the Arcadian theme is some-
what overstretched in gathering so many
diverse personalities into its embrace, Bernd
Roeck’s book’s great merit is its breadth of
approach. The Anglo-Americans – who bor-
rowed nearly half the books lent by the
Gabinetto Vieusseux’s lending library in
1897, according to its interesting register –
include familiar figures such as Herbert
Horne, Roger Fry, Vernon Lee, Bernard
Berenson and Mary Costelloe, William and
Henry James, as well as the Brownings, Trol-
lope and Dickens, who get a brief listing.
Less familiar, and given greater prominence,
are the German visitors, whose translated
diaries and letters enliven and enrich our
picture of Florence around 1900. Meeting in
salons, libraries, cafés, birrerie and restau-
rants – Doney’s, the Café Gambrinus, the
Buca Lapi – the visitors included such artists
as Arnold Böcklin and the sculptor Adolf
von Hildebrand (in whom ‘antiquity lived
on’, according to Warburg, as its ‘Dionysian’
and ‘Apollonian’ elements), Karl and Jesse
Hillebrand, with their musical salon on the
Lungarno, historians and scholars like the
‘documentarian’ Robert Davidsohn, Alfred
Doren, Henry Thode, Heinrich Brockhaus,
director of the newly founded German art-
historical Institute in Florence, Wilhelm
Bode, later general director of the Art Col-
lections in Berlin, free spirits like Isolde
Kurz, sister of the Germans’ doctor, Edgar
Kurz, and even Sigmund Freud (a bad sight-
seer, whose feet were ‘shot to pieces’), as
well as many others. The index lists them all.
Based on wide reading of archival and lit-
erary sources, newspapers and secondary
printed material, the book is well informed
about the social and economic life of Flo-
rence, as well as about other topics like art
dealing and art collecting in Florence, both
unarcadian activities in this post-unification
era that laid the basis of the national
collections of Renaissance art in London,
Washington, New York and Berlin. Only
Warburg, it seems, regarded commercial art
dealers with some suspicion, and especially
the ‘iconic’ Berenson, whom he thought
pushy and a snob. Although both men
founded libraries which – with the Kunsthis-
torisches Institut in Florence – form the
cornerstones of Renaissance studies today,
their attitude to art could not have been
more different, as Roeck says.
This raises the question of the role played
by Warburg in the book. Surprisingly, he
was its original inspiration (we are told in the
preface) and provides a sort of narrative link
as he weaves his way through its chapters. It
is well known that Warburg had a ‘troubled
psyche’ and suffered a mental breakdown
during the First World War, subsequently
being helped to return to sanity through his
self-identification with the myths and astral
images that played so important a role in his
world view and in the formation of his
library. Already in the opening mise-en-scène,
the Warburgs’ New Year’s Eve party on 31st
December 1899, he is described as ‘a little
too manic’ as he hops around singing
Schiller’s ‘Ode To Joy’ and distributing
scraps of paper with poetry and horoscopes
on them, a baby doll (the New Year) in
his arms. Valuable though Roeck’s social
approach is as a supplement to Gombrich’s
more austere ‘intellectual biography’,1 both
authors are in danger of letting Warburg’s
subjectivism detract from his achievement
instead of seeing it (as Joseph Mali has done,
in his sympathetic and balanced account of
Warburg)2 as a key for unlocking the past
and for confirming what the hard evidence
of the past’s ‘images’ had already indicated. It
was in the summer of 1900, a few months
after the New Year’s Eve party, that War-
the burlington ma g a z i n e
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burg first discussed with his brother his idea
for creating a cultural library (Bibliothek für
Kulturwissenschaft), which his family agreed
to fund by the end of the year. Established in
Hamburg, perhaps as a rival to Florence’s
German art-historical Institute, as Gombrich
suggested (it is scarcely mentioned by
Roeck), his library now survives in London
as a fitting monument to Warburg’s inspira-
tion and originality. Neither Mali nor the
English translation of Warburg’s collected
works 3 is listed in the bibliography. Both
should be read for a more balanced eval-
uation of Warburg’s legacy.
1 E.H. Gombrich: Aby Warburg: an intellectual
biography, Oxford 1970, repr. 1986.
2 J. Mali: Mythistory: the making of a modern historio-
graphy, Chicago 2003.
3 A. Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity,
Los Angeles 1999.
Edvard Munch, Complete Paintings. By
Gerd Woll. 4 vols. 1,696 pp. incl. numerous
col. + b. & w. ills. (Thames & Hudson,
London and New York, 2009), £395.
ISBN 978–0–500–09345–0.
Reviewed by JILL LLOYD
SINCE 1963, WHEN the Munch-museet
opened in Oslo to house Edvard Munch’s
bequest of his work to the city, plans have
been afoot to compile a catalogue raisonné of
the paintings. As well as cataloguing their
own works, generations of curators at the
Museum have systematically collected pho-
tographs and information about Munch’s
paintings in other private and public collec-
tions. The Museum nevertheless lacked the
funds to bring the project to fruition until
two art dealers, Kaare Berntsen and Jens
Faurschou, provided backing for a special
project group which worked intensively on
the catalogue raisonné for three years. The
result is the present publication, compiled by
Gerd Woll and her team, which provides for
the first time a complete overview of
Munch’s painted œuvre.
Besides financial constraints there are sev-
eral other reasons why the catalogue of the
paintings lagged so far behind the scholarly
attention paid to Munch’s graphic work. As
early as 1907 Gustav Schiefler published the
first volume of Munch’s prints, followed by
another in 1927 and then by an updated and
revised prints catalogue by Gerd Woll in
2001. The painted œuvre presented a more
challenging task, not least because of its sheer
scale: 1,789 paintings are included in the final
catalogue, plus a supplement of eighty-two
works where the motif is simply outlined in
charcoal or a few brushstrokes and is thus
patently ‘unfinished’. In itself the question of
finish presents a further challenge, as Munch
rarely completed paintings in a traditional
sense. He preferred the look of matt paint left
in an unfinished state, as this allowed him to
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avoid the oily, lush, overworked surfaces he
associated with academic painting. To this
end he also frequently used mixed media –
pastel, crayon and charcoal are often
combined with paint – making the actual
definition of what constitutes a ‘painting’ by
Munch controversial. On top of this, many
paintings are in an extremely fragile state.
Munch is renowned for his rough treatment
of his work: his ‘kill-or-cure’ remedy even
involved leaving his paintings outdoors,
exposed to the elements for long periods of
time. Opinion is divided over whether
this was a deliberate attempt on Munch’s part
to ‘distress’ the surfaces of his paintings or
whether it was mere carelessness. The former
argument is more convincing, but which-
ever view one takes it is undeniable that
Munch’s actions had a catastrophic effect on
the conservation of his paintings.
Dating is also an issue that has dogged
attempts to publish a scholarly overview of
Munch’s paintings. The many different
versions that the artist made of his best-
known motifs are frequently undated or ret-
rospectively and unreliably dated, which has
made establishing a systematic chronology
extremely complicated. As recently as 2001
controversy raged, for example, over the re-
dating of the Munch-museet’s version of The
scream from 1893 to 1910 (although the new
date is followed by a question mark in the
catalogue to indicate that there are still unre-
solved problems). It is now generally under-
stood that Munch painted this new version
of The scream to replace the 1893 motif that
he had sold in 1910 to Olav Schou, who
immediately donated the famous painting to
the Nasjonalgalleriet in Oslo. As Patricia
Berman points out in her interesting essay
that introduces volume four of the catalogue
(‘The Many Lives of Edvard Munch’), prag-
matic concerns like replacing an important
painting he had sold in order to guarantee
that it would still be available for exhibition
may well underlie Munch’s practice of
painting several versions of his best-known
motifs. This challenges the romantic view
that Munch obsessively repeated images
associated with the traumas of his childhood,
thus throwing radical new light on his artistic
practice – a revision that is much needed
given the plethora of romantic myths that
have grown up around him. In 1910 a new
version of The scream might also be associat-
ed with the, by then, middle-aged artist’s
dialogue with Expressionism and Fauvism, or
even viewed as a response to the emergence
of young Norwegian ‘Matisse students’. As
Berman concludes: ‘When located within a
systematic chronology, Munch’s inspiration
for what to create, and his choices of when
to do so, become clearer’.
Throughout this four-volume publi -
cation, Woll clearly intends to produce a
catalogue that is not just a convenient tool
for art dealers and collectors but also pro-
vokes art-historical reflection and debate.
Each volume has an introductory essay: first
a general meditation on ‘Munch’s Painted
Works’ by Woll, which lucidly sets out the
112 f e b r uary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
46. Puberty, by Edvard Munch. 1895. Canvas, 150 by
110 cm. (Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo).
history of the project and discusses topics
such as authentication, dating and various
categories of motif in Munch’s œuvre. In
volume two there is an essay on technical
aspects of Munch’s paintings, followed by an
essay in volume three on Munch’s mon-
umental decorations for the aula of Oslo
University. In the fourth volume we find
Berman’s essay, which might usefully have
been placed alongside Woll’s introduction
in volume one, as it provides a helpful con-
ceptual framework and guide for the non-
experts and students who will be interested
in this catalogue. Not only does Berman give
an overview of the different trends in Munch
scholarship, but she also ‘deconstructs’ the
romantic myths that have tended to equate
Munch’s life and work and ‘explain’ his
paintings by referring to the artist’s own
poetic, autobiographical prose. She points
out that Munch participated actively in the
construction of his own myth and was
indeed a relentless self-publicist. Interesting-
ly, Munch approached writing and image-
making in a similar way, endlessly returning
to his literary motifs across the years to forge
repetitions and variations so that the original
experiences he recounts become ‘veiled by
poetic recapitulation’ (p.1,288). Rather than
use these literary fragments to ‘explain’ the
paintings – a trap that many commentators
on Munch’s work have fallen into – we
should be aware that they too were often
penned with a particular promotional event
in mind such as an exhibition or a new
biography. The tendency to isolate Munch
as a towering individual and forefather of
modern art fails to address the fact that ‘his
textual experimentation, as well as his visual
expression’ needs to be contextualised within
‘the advanced literary milieu of turn-of-the-
century Scandinavia’ (p.1,289).
Beyond these areas of art-historical interest
the catalogue of paintings functions well as a
tool to assist research into Munch’s painted
œuvre. The standard of colour reproduction is
high (Fig.46), there are many interesting
documentary photographs and detailed cross-
references between individual works. The
catalogue entries are factual rather than inter-
pretative which, in the case of this particular
artist, comes as something of a relief. Despite
the vast number of paintings under discussion
most of Munch’s mature work has an exhibi-
tion history, although there are many paint-
ings from the early years that are far less well
known. The first volume of the catalogue
contains an informative biography, while the
final volume has several supplementary tools,
including archive photographs and a price list
from the Commetersche Kunsthandlung in
Hamburg dating from 1906–07 (which was
the first extensive record of Munch’s paint-
ings), a full list of exhibitions, an index of
portraits, a chronological index with thumb-
nail illustrations of all 1,789 paintings, a full
bibliography, a list of paintings in museums
and public collections and, finally, an alpha-
betical index of titles, which is reprinted at
the back of each volume. The fact that we are
dealing with four unwieldy volumes is not
made any the easier by the decision to list
catalogue and page numbers in this index but
not volume number, so that you have to be
familiar with the catalogue before you can
use this vital tool effectively.
Nevertheless, the abiding impression left
by this first catalogue raisonné of Munch’s
paintings is its impressive scholarship. As
Woll points out, it fulfils in print Munch’s
dream that his work should not, in his words,
‘disappear like a small scratch hanging on
the wall in a home where only a couple of
people can see it’, but rather be judged as a
whole, with each work resonating as part of
a larger entity.
James Ensor. The complete paintings.
By Xavier Tricot. 480 pp. incl. 845 col. +
145 b. & w. ills. (Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern,
2009), €198. ISBN 978–3–7757–2465–4.
Reviewed by PATRICK FLORIZOONE
SIXTY YEARS AFTER the death of James Ensor
(1860–1949), work on an inventory of his
varied œuvre – paintings, etchings, litho-
graphs, drawings, speeches, interviews, letters
and music scores – still continues. Five
volumes have already been devoted to his
graphic work, three of which appeared
during the artist’s lifetime. That unknown
states of his prints still emerge attests to the
fact that Ensor was anything but thorough as
a record keeper and provided authors with
inaccurate information.
The artist’s lack of thoroughness also plays a
role when compiling a catalogue of his paint-
ings. During his long and active career, from
BR.FEB.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 20/01/2010 14:53 Page 113
1873 to 1941, Ensor painted more than 850
works. Xavier Tricot, who has been studying
Ensor’s œuvre for thirty years, did not receive
a ready guide from the artist himself. On the
contrary, Ensor’s writings are not only incom-
plete but also ambiguous and imprecise. He
backdated several works and also made later
copies of his own works that nevertheless
retained the original date, while he frequent-
ly exhibited his paintings with new titles.
Then there is the problem, as with any
sought-after painter, of authenticity, and of
what exactly constitutes a ‘painting’; he made
several works on prepared panel using pencil
or watercolour and (almost) no oil. Thus are
there plenty of pitfalls before any definitive
statements can be made.
The book consists of two parts: a biography
and a catalogue, the latter also including an
extensive bibliography and list of exhibitions.
The first edition of this work dates from 1992,
which was published in two volumes with
mostly black-and-white images. The 780
pages of that edition were almost entirely
taken up by the catalogue, while the biogra-
phy was a mere eight pages. The difference
with the current edition is remarkable: one
volume with many colour illustrations and a
catalogue that takes up two hundred of the
480 pages.
Making lists of his own works was impor-
tant for Ensor, although this was the result of
practical rather than scholarly considerations.
Since he did not like to lend his works for fear
of damage, or because there was too much
work involved in the transportation, or
because a painting lacked a frame, he often
referred exhibition organisers to collectors,
sometimes putting them under pressure, for
example, by insisting on a sale with the under-
standing that the work would be available as a
loan to an exhibition.
One of those lists was made by Ensor in
1929 on the occasion of his retrospective
exhibition in Brussels. Tricot has made good
use of this list, along with correspondence
between Ensor and the organisers, as an
important source for paintings up to 1929.
After this exhibition Ensor understood the
usefulness of an inventory. When in 1929–30
he received a sketchbook as an Easter gift,
this became his ‘Liber Veritatis’ (now in
the Art Institute of Chicago). In it he record-
ed in coloured pencils, alongside some older
works, almost every new painting. These
‘miniatures’ are usually accompanied by
information concerning the dimensions,
support and, sometimes, other information,
for example the collector who acquired it.
Obviously this is a valuable, if incomplete,
source for the preparation of a catalogue
raisonné. It also points up certain lacunae;
when a painting could not be identified, the
miniature from the sketchbook takes its place
in the catalogue, which is the case for forty-
two of the 250 works for the period between
1929 and 1941. This means that some seven-
teen per cent of this part of the artist’s œuvre
is still ‘up for grabs’.
The provenance given for each work is
impressive, with exhaustive listings of auction
and exhibition catalogues, collectors and
dealers, and this goes some way in establish-
ing authenticity. The concordance with the
first edition is interesting in that respect;
thirty-two new works were added, especially
early works, but also a painting of 1896 was
rediscovered (Masques jouant aux cartes; pri-
vate collection). However, thirteen works
from the first edition have not made it into
the present catalogue, either because they are
no longer considered authentic, or that they
are no longer considered to be ‘paintings’.
The most spectacular rejection concerns a
work from the collection of the former
Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Ostend:
Fille de pêcheur of 1882 entered the Museum’s
collection during Ensor’s lifetime, but despite
much controversy in Ostend newspapers at
the time, the artist never gave his definitive
opinion on the matter.
Ensor’s paintings are difficult to reproduce;
much of the painter’s touch, subtle use of
pearly tints and nuances of colour, as well as
the texture of the paintings, is lost in photo-
graphs. Moreover, most illustrations are small
and therefore mainly useful for verification,
although a selection of some 120 works has
been reproduced on a more generous scale.
What really adds value to this book is the
biographical section. It concerns a chrono-
logical account of the wanderings of the
works themselves and includes many quota-
tions from exhibition and auction catalogues,
letters and articles. The author thus highlights
a specific facet of Ensor: by chronicling the
artist’s choices and refusals, we encounter
Ensor as both a man in doubt and as a man
who knew exactly where he was heading; he
refused to participate in some exhibitions but
could also be hurt because he had not been
invited to show in others. In such cases Ensor
sharpened his pencil to curse, for example,
someone such as Octave Maus. There is also
new light shed on the commercial activities
of art dealers and of friends. We find the ear-
liest patrons of Ensor, the Brussels Rousseau
family (some unknown photographs are
reproduced), buying and selling numerous
works by their artist-friend. Ensor follows
these developments very closely and notes
with some resentment how a painting
which he had previously sold for 300 Belgian
francs was sold a few decades later for tens
of thousands.
The biography is rich in new information,
especially in the more than four hundred
footnotes, even when the frequent and
extensive quotations from letters and articles
makes it a biography aimed at a very
specialised audience. The title of the Dutch
edition includes the words ‘Leven en Werk’
(‘Life and Work’), which covers its contents
more accurately; the emphasis is on Ensor’s
work, even in the biographical part. The
only quibble one might have is that there
is a lack of critique of Ensor’s writings, so
that the manipulative side of Ensor’s charac-
ter is not always properly understood and
exposed. However, this is an exemplary
publication that provides a solid basis for
further research.
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BOOKS
Chagall and the Artists of the Russian
Jewish Theater. Edited by Susan Tumarkin
Goodman. 226 pp. incl. 130 col. + 105
b. & w. ills. (Yale University Press,
New Haven and London, 2008), $48.
ISBN 978–0–87334–202–5.
Reviewed by CHRISTINA LODDER
SOME EXCEPTIONAL EXHIBITION catalogues
do not merely act as aide-mémoires of shows
but become important art-historical texts in
their own right. This is particularly true of
Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish
Theater. Those lucky enough to have seen the
exhibition in New York or San Francisco will
remember it as a vivid display, which used
costume and set designs, models, photographs
and even films and audio material to evoke
one of the most important theatrical exper-
iments of the twentieth century. The centre-
piece was the display of Chagall’s original
1920 decorations and murals for the State
Yiddish Theatre in Moscow. These canvases
lined the walls of the theatre; instead of paint-
ing only on the stage, the murals enclosed the
whole interior within a painting, and became
known as ‘Chagall’s Box’. They had been
miraculously preserved in Moscow’s State
Tretyakov Gallery, and were unrolled for
Chagall when he visited in 1973. In contrast
to previous displays, these were now placed
into a detailed theatrical context and accom-
panied by a plethora of theatrical designs by
other notable avant-garde Jewish artists such
as Natan Altman, Robert Falk, Aleksandr
Tyshler, Isaac Rabinovich and Ignaty Nivin-
sky. The catalogue documents these and all
the other elements of the exhibition in an
exemplary manner and is a crucial source of
information about this hitherto neglected area
of Jewish creativity, adding enormously to
our knowledge about early Soviet theatre and
theatrical design. Susan Tumarkin Goodman
provides an illuminating overview of the his-
tory of the Soviet Jewish Theatre, while Zvi
Gitelman places that history within the polit-
ical and cultural context of the Soviet Union
in the 1920s. Vladislav Ivanov probes more
deeply into the biblical nature of the Habima’s
output, while Jeffrey Veidlinger examines
the phenomenon that he calls ‘Yiddish Con-
structivism’, which is a hybrid of Expression-
ist fantasy and architectural rigour. Finally,
Benjamin Harshav provides an overview of
the designs produced for both theatres. These
scholarly articles are presented within an
exemplary apparatus. They are accompanied
by numerous illustrations of good quality,
there are shorter essays on Chagall’s murals
and each play in an illustrated chronicle; the
exhibits are listed, biographies of artists, writ-
ers, actors and creative personnel are included,
a timeline is provided, a detailed bibliography
is supplied and there is even that invaluable
tool – an index. The Jewish Museum, the
curator, Susan Tumarkin Goodman, and all
the experts involved are to be congratulated.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 over-
turned a repressive regime and for a few years
• cliI • february 2010 113
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47. Set design for
The Golem, by Ignaty
Nivinsky. 1925. Pencil,
gouache, ink and bronze
paint on paper mounted
on cardboard. (A.A.
Bakhrushin State
Central Theatre
Museum, Moscow).
offered an intoxicating vision of liberty. For
no single group in the Russian Empire was
that sense of liberty more precious than for
Jews, who had been victimised, treated as
second-class citizens and constantly subjected
to crippling restrictions. In the wake of
October 1917, independent Jewish cultural
institutions flourished. Among them were
the Moscow State Yiddish Theatre (estab-
lished in 1919) and Habima (The Stage),
which performed in Hebrew and was origi-
nally set up in 1912, but moved to Moscow
in 1918. Both of these became the scenes of
exciting and innovative theatrical experi-
mentation, with sets and costumes designed
by avant-garde artists.
The theatres became prominent expressions
of Jewish culture and identity, producing plays
based on old folk legends and contemporary
writings. Ultimately, it was precisely this
national ethos as well as the experimental
approach that aroused official disapproval.
Habima, with its more spiritual emphasis and
use of Hebrew, was less central to the Russian
Jewish experience and, in response to increas-
ing government pressure, emigrated in 1926.
the State Yiddish Theatre continued to work
until its director, Solomon Mikhoels, was
murdered on Stalin’s orders in 1948. By then it
had adjusted to the officially imposed precepts
of Socialist Realism, which sought to convey
an optimistic and collective message within a
more traditional theatrical format, although it
still performed in Yiddish. But until 1928, and
Stalin’s First Five Year Plan, the theatre
produced distinctive plays, full of vibrant ideas
and visual fun, dances, acrobatics and songs.
There is no doubt that Chagall played a
decisive role in developing the visual style of
the State Yiddish Theatre, with his outstand-
ing murals of 1920 as well as through paintings,
which took for their subject-matter the
legends, folk tales and proverbs of the Yiddish
culture of the shtetl. In the murals his playful
and poetic configurations of people, objects
and animals were dispersed across the white
grounds, regardless of anatomy, gravity and
proportion. For the set of Agents (1921), he
created a simple stage-space with abstracted
elements and multicoloured costumes. This
approach was also adopted by Altman in his
designs for Habima’s production of The
114 f e b r uary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
Dybbuk (1922), with its planar organisation of
the set and generally Cubo-Futurist style,
recalling the way in which he had encased the
Alexander Column in red and orange flames
for the first anniversary of the Revolution in
1918. Rabinovich created a more Construc-
tivist, multi-level set for the State Yiddish
Theatre’s The Sorceress (1922). Taking the
topsy-turvy world of Chagall to even more
fantastic heights are the exuberant and bizarre
combinations of highly stylised naturalistic and
abstract elements of Nivinsky’s designs for
Habima’s staging of The Golem in 1925
(Fig.47). The legend of a mystical creature
made out of clay that protects but then turns
against its people is complemented by the
extraordinary and dazzling costumes in which
colourful and grotesque heads of birds, fishes
and frogs dominate.
The catalogue’s extensive visual documen-
tation of each play provides an invaluable and
comprehensive view of the innovations in set
and costume design over this exciting period,
making this an indispensable volume for any-
one seriously interested in twentieth-century
theatrical design.
Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The
Dynamics of Portraiture. Edited by Anne
Collins Goodyear and James W. McManus,
with essays by Janine A. Mileaf, Francis M.
Naumann and Michael R. Taylor. 320 pp.
incl. 105 col. + 49 b. & w. ills. (National
Portrait Gallery, Washington DC, and
MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2009), $50.
ISBN 978–0–262–01300–0.
Reviewed by CATHERINE CRAFT
MARCEL DUCHAMP’S VISAGE is among the
most recognisable of any artist of the last
hundred years. That dozens of artists during
his lifetime and since – such as Francis Picabia,
Frederick Kiesler, Andy Warhol and Gavin
Turk – have also used portraits of him to
explore questions of individuality, creativity
and originality attests to an enduring fascina-
tion with the creative tension generated by
Duchamp’s radical revision of what it means
to be an artist. In turning to his image, artists
have followed Duchamp himself, who began
his own experiments with self-fashioning and
identity in the 1910s, in tandem with the
development of his most important works.
These early experiments initially culminated
in the creation of his notorious feminine alter
ego, Rrose Sélavy, but his subversive cultiva-
tion in later life of his image as an inactive
‘respirateur’ who had given up art was just as
carefully conceived.
Surprisingly, Inventing Duchamp: The
Dynamics of Portraiture, the exhibition curated
by Anne Collins Goodyear and James W.
McManus and shown at the National Portrait
Gallery, Washington DC, from 27th March
to 2nd August 2009, stands as the first show
devoted to the role of portraiture in relation
to Duchamp’s œuvre, his artistic identity and
his place in contemporary art. To mark the
occasion and provide information on the one
hundred works by Duchamp and other artists
included in the show, the museum published
a substantial and handsomely designed cata-
logue with detailed entries on each exhibited
work shown and a group of in-depth, schol-
arly essays: Francis M. Naumann surveys
artists’ portraits of Duchamp; Janine A.
Mileaf uses portraiture to trace Duchamp’s
friendships with several female artists;
Michael R. Taylor examines Duchamp’s
own attitudes toward portraiture in portrayals
of himself and others; McManus focuses on
the creation of Rrose Sélavy; and Goodyear
explores the role of portraiture in relation to
the mythology that developed around the
artist in his later years.
The catalogue reflects the exhibition’s
highlights as well as its weaknesses. Among
the former is a creative and flexible definition
of portraiture leading to the selection of a
varied range of works, including Kiesler’s
eight-part drawing of Duchamp in a free-
standing sculptural frame; a 1945 life mask of
Duchamp by Ettore Salvatore, accompanied
by two staged photographs of a prematurely
aged Duchamp made shortly thereafter; Brian
O’Doherty’s quiet pulses of Duchamp’s
heartbeat; and a group of rediscovered tradi-
tional likenesses of Duchamp from the 1930s
by Daniel MacMorris. These are balanced by
unfortunate omissions, such as a trio of works
from 1959 including With my tongue in my
cheek that are discussed in Taylor’s essay but
do not receive detailed catalogue entries.
More grave is the total absence from the cat-
alogue of one of Duchamp’s key works in this
context, Wayward landscape. Created in 1946
from his own ejaculate, this small work can
also be considered a self-portrait, its startling,
ludic physicality bringing an altogether dif-
ferent dimension to discussions of portraiture.
Duchamp revolutionised the practice of
portraiture, just as he did other areas of art, by
playing on its conventions to undermine
assumptions. Portraits of him and self-portraits
tend to emphasise the fluid, provisional nature
of identity, suggesting that its very formation
may be considered a creative act. Although
Duchamp exercised considerable, if often
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subtle, control over others’ images of him, so
too was his shifting identity given form and
definition through these interactions and
exchanges with others. This impression gains
support from the collaborative nature of many
of the portraits in the catalogue; while some
three-quarters of the works are portraits of
Duchamp by other artists, the dozen or so
self-portraits are matched by a similar number
where Duchamp shares credit with another
artist (usually Man Ray).
It is this element of give-and-take that is
largely missing from the portions of the exhi-
bition and catalogue concerning the persistent
role of Duchamp’s image in contemporary
art. Although some of the works featured,
such as Douglas Gordon’s Proposition for a
posthumous portrait (2004; cat. no.100), are
intriguing in their own right, other recent
efforts are rather tired and academic in their
approach, self-consciously taking Duchamp
and his work as fixed references. The effort-
less, seemingly offhand nature of many images
of Duchamp by himself, his friends and his
peers calls for a renewed consideration of the
subversive, collaborative irreverence that fed
such experiments to begin with. Nonetheless,
the multifaceted portrait of Duchamp that
emerges from this catalogue provides a richly
informative point of departure for such explo-
rations in the future.
In & Out of Amsterdam: Travels
in Conceptual Art, 1960–1976. By
Christophe Cherix, with contributions
by Rini Dippel, Christian Rattemeyer
and Phillip van den Bossche. 170 pp. incl.
46 col. + 56 b. & w. ills. (Museum of
Modern Art, New York, 2009), $38.
ISBN 978–087070–753–7.
Reviewed by TON GEERTS
I N 2007 T H E M U S E U M O F M O D E R N A R T , New
York, received a bequest of 230 works
from the collection of Conceptual art assem-
bled by Geert van Beijeren and Adriaan van
Ravesteijn, founders of the famous Amster-
dam gallery Art & Project (1968–2001). This
donation was the catalyst for an exhibition
and catalogue by Christophe Cherix, curator
at the Department of Prints and Illustrated
Books at MoMA in 2009. Initially the collec-
tion was given on loan to the Cabinet des
Estampes in Geneva, but later travelled with
Cherix to New York. Another significant
part of the collection, more than 1,200 works,
is housed in the Rijksmuseum Twenthe,
Enschede. Smaller selections are on loan to
the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rot-
terdam, the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague,
and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
Central to this publication are some 120
works by ten European and American artists:
Bas Jan Ader, Stanley Brouwn, Hanne
Darboven, Jan Dibbets, Ger van Elk, Gilbert
& George, Sol LeWitt, Charlotte Posenenske,
Allen Ruppersberg and Lawrence Weiner.
The catalogue consists of four introductory
articles, a catalogue of exhibited works, and a
full catalogue of the entire bequest. The book
investigates an underexposed aspect of the
development of Conceptual art, with Amster-
dam as the nexus. In the first contribution,
‘Greetings From Amsterdam’, Cherix outlines
how in the early 1960s Amsterdam was an
ideal breeding ground for new international
artistic developments such as Minimalism,
ZERO and Conceptual art. The Stedelijk
Museum in Amsterdam, but also Museum
Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Gemeente-
museum, the Museum Kröller-Müller in
Otterlo and the Van Abbe Museum in
Eindhoven organised high-profile exhibitions
that attracted international attention. Foreign
artists were drawn to these institutions and the
new galleries in Amsterdam, as well as to the
progressive and tolerant climate of that city
with its centuries-old tradition of emigration
and immigration, and consequently chose
Amsterdam as their domicile. By contrast,
Dutch artists such as Van Elk, Ader and
Dibbets found Amsterdam too provincial and
travelled to Britain and the United States to
broaden their artistic horizons. There they
met other Conceptual artists who brought
them into contact with Art & Project; hence
the title In & Out of Amsterdam.
There is also another dimension to this
international travelling. Cherix makes clear
that Conceptual artists made use of the infra-
structure of galleries and museums not only in
practical terms (for example by letting their
projects travel from gallery to gallery in order
to share and thus reduce costs), but that travel
itself also became the subject of their art: ‘The
act of traveling became an act of creation
itself’. Conceptual artists thus discovered new
approaches to the mobility, distribution and
ownership of the now largely dematerialised
work of art, and explored novel opportunities
to promote their works. This also applied to
the main Amsterdam gallery of the period,
Art & Project. Rini Dippel, former curator at
the Stedelijk Museum, describes in her con-
tribution how the gallery commanded a
valuable network of both Conceptual artists
and like-minded foreign galleries. Moreover,
exhibitions at Art & Project locked in seam-
lessly with numerous museum exhibitions
devoted to Conceptual art in Amsterdam and
beyond.
Van Elk in Los Angeles and Dibbets in
London introduced, among others, LeWitt,
Richard Long, Robert Ryman and Gilbert &
George to the gallery. Art & Project’s owners,
meanwhile, questioned the act of exhibiting
itself; the gallery refused to organise official
openings or send out invitations, and opening
hours were variable. The main means of
communication was the Art & Project Bulletin,
which was distributed at various locations and
was ideal in spreading Conceptual art and
ideas to an international audience. This publi-
cation was designed by the relevant artist and
in itself functioned as a work of art and an
exhibition, as, for example, the contribution
by Robert Barry in Art & Project Bulletin 17:
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BOOKS
‘During the exhibition the gallery will be
closed’.
Christian Rattemeyer demonstrates in his
contribution that a new approach to art and
its presentation was explored in two major
exhibitions in 1969: Op Losse Schroeven (Ten-
tative Connections), organised by Wim Beeren
at the Stedelijk Museum, and Live in Your
Head: When Attitudes Become Form, organised
by Harald Szeemann at the Kunsthalle, Bern.
Op Losse Schroeven has been unfairly under -
exposed in the history of Conceptual art.
Rattemeyer’s analysis of the exhibition’s
installation, in particular the use by artists such
as Weiner, Van Elk, Long and others of alter-
native spaces in and outside the Museum,
shows that Beeren (and hence Amsterdam)
was on an equal footing with his colleague
Szeemann in Bern.
In his contribution Phillip van den Bossche
shows how in the United States artists such as
William Leavitt, Ruppersberg, Ader and Van
Elk forged a relationship between the old and
new world by referring in their works to both
Amsterdam and Los Angeles. This intellectu-
al game – a kind of conceptual journey of the
mind – was characteristic of American West
Coast artists.
These concepts are very well reflected in
the excellent descriptions of the 120 works of
art here catalogued. There is a brief introduc-
tion to each artist and in the case of Dibbets,
Van Elk, Ruppersberg and Weiner interviews
have been included. The catalogue is beau-
tifully designed by the Amsterdam firm of
Mevis & Van Deursen. In & Out of Amsterdam
maps an important stage in the development
of Conceptual art.
Publications Received
Northern art
Martin Schongauer. Maler und Kupferstecher. Kunst und
Wissenschaft unter dem Primat des Sehens. By Ulrike
Heinrichs. 527 pp. incl. 60 col. + 250 b. & w. ills.
(Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich and Berlin, 2007),
€68. ISBN 978–3–422–06555–0.
The recent flurry of publications dedicated to Martin
Schongauer reflects his status as the foremost German
painter and printmaker before Dürer. Coming only
three years after the publication of Stephan Kem-
perdick’s monograph devoted to the artist, the present
study, a revised version of the author’s Habillitations-
schrift, seeks to place Schongauer’s art in the context of
contemporary ideas. The author characterises Schon-
gauer as the epitome of a ‘pictor doctus’, pointing to his
attendance of a Latin school in his native Colmar as a
precondition for his documented enrolment at the
University of Leipzig in 1465. With Schongauer’s status
as a learned artist thus established, a range of propaedeu-
tic and encyclopaedic literature is identified as the
source for Aristotelian notions of perception zin his
art. Neo-Platonic sources are equally drawn upon
when, for example, Dionysius the Areopagite’s writings
on the hierarchy of angels or negative theology are
seen reflected in Schongauer’s engraving of a censer
(Hollstein 106). In the absence of any written evidence
for the circulation of such ideas in Schongauer’s milieu,
let alone proof that the artist owned any of these texts,
the arguments appear at times highly speculative.
Nevertheless, the book provides some interesting
insights and stimulus for the study of Schongauer’s œuvre
in its cultural context.
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Das sah ich viel köstliche Dinge. Albrecht Dürers Reise in die
Niederlande. By Gerd Unverfehrt. 261 pp. incl. 42
b. & w. ills. (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen,
2007), €37.90. ISBN 978–3–525–47010–7.
In July 1520 Albrecht Dürer departed from Nurem-
berg on a year-long journey to the Netherlands,
blending his financial mission to achieve the renewal
of a privilege from the recently crowned Charles V
with his innate Wanderlust. The trip was documented
in two sketchbooks and a diary, which survives in two
copies, one from the mid-sixteenth and one from
the seventeenth century. The diary’s significance as a
primary source is undisputed: it chronicles Dürer’s
contacts in the Netherlands, his purchases, the gifts he
made and received and the festivities he witnessed.
Chiefly, however, it served as an account book, and
the resulting repetitiveness, in combination with the
difficulties posed by early modern German even to the
native speaker, can render its perusal arduous. The
author circumvents these drawbacks by selecting
excerpts in modernised German (based largely on
Thausing’s 1872 edition) and interspersing them with
extensive commentaries. The resulting dialogue
between primary source and contextualising remarks
provides an engaging read for the specialist and
general reader alike. The extensive appendix also
caters for both types of reader, providing convenient
charts of the works of art that are mentioned, as well
as explanations of early modern wages or currencies.
While this book cannot replace the study of the pri-
mary source itself, its value lies in its ability to
introduce Dürer’s diary to a larger readership.
SUSANNE MEURER
Witches’ Lust and the Fall of Man. The Strange Fantasies of
Hans Baldung Grien. By Bodo Brinkmann, with an
essay by Berthold Hinz. 272 pp. incl. 131 col. + 20
b. & w. ills. (Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg, and
Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, 2007), €29.95.
ISBN 978–3–86568–225–3.
This bilingual publication (the German title is
Hexenlust und Sündenfall. Die seltsamen Phantasien des
Hans Baldung Grien) accompanied the exhibition in 2007
of that name at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main.
Its contents expand upon the catalogue entry on Hans
Baldung’s Two witches (Städel Museum; inv. no.1123)
published in Bodo Brinkmann and Stephan Kem-
perdick’s Deutsche Gemälde im Städel 1500–1550 (Mainz
2005, pp.23–47). The Two witches, a dated work of 1523,
is one of the most famous early German paintings. How-
ever, its celebrity as an illustration of the pan-European
craze for witches has deflected attention from its specific
meaning. This publication seeks to redress the balance.
The painting’s history is unknown prior to its
appearance at Milan in 1878, when it was purchased
under the misleading title Heavenly and earthly love
from Giovanni Morelli, the inventor of the ‘Morellian
criteria’ of attribution. Hans Baldung Grien
(1484/85–1545) was untypical of early German painters
in that he came from a family of doctors and lawyers.
As a student in Dürer’s workshop in Nuremberg he
made studies from the nude and become acquainted
with the theory of human proportions. In 1509 he
settled in Strasbourg, a city with a liberal attitude to
Reformation controversy, where he prospered as an
artist and also became a town councillor.
The erotic subject-matter of the Two witches invites
comparison with other small-scale nudes by Cranach
and Conrad Meit intended for the secular milieu of the
Kunstkammer. Baldung’s earliest supernatural subject is
the chiaroscuro woodcut of The witches’ sabbath of 1510,
which was followed by several finished drawings on
coloured paper of witches in lascivious poses, dated
1514/15. A woodcut from Baldung’s workshop of
witches casting a spell was published at Strasbourg in
1516 in a volume of homilies by the theologian Johann
Gieler von Kaysersberg, who expressed scepticism at
the claims of witches that they could fly and control the
weather. In the Two witches the figure of Cupid with a
flaming torch refers to the power of love. The repre-
116 f e b r uary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
sentation of nudes seen from the front and the back may
allude to the comparison of heterosexual and homo-
sexual love in Lucian’s Erotes, a text known to Dürer’s
friend Willibald Pirckheimer. The tiny figure of the
dragon in the bottle held up by the seated witch iden-
tifies its contents as Mercury: the standard remedy for
syphilis. The Veronese physician Girolamo Fracastoro
attributed the origins of this disease to Sol’s affliction
of the shepherd Syphilus with ‘hostile rays and [. . .] a
bitter light’, which may account for the lurid confla-
gration in the background of Baldung’s painting. It
therefore seems that the Two witches alludes ironically to
the causes and remedies of venereal disease, a theme
familiar from works spanning Dürer’s woodcut of The
syphilitic of 1496–97 to Shakespeare’s sonnets 153 and
154, published in 1609.
The contemptuous sidelong glance of the standing
witch also appears in Baldung’s representations of
The fall of Man. Like his finished drawings and cabinet
paintings of Death and the maiden, these emphasise the
link between sexual desire and original sin. Bestial
sexuality is represented in Baldung’s woodcuts of Wild
horses, dated 1534, and sexual violence may be a latent
theme in his mysterious late woodcut of The bewitched
stable groom.
In two supplementary essays Berthold Hinz
contrasts the intellectual character of Dürer’s nudes
with Baldung’s humane sensuality, while Brinkmann
draws attention to the affinity between the latter’s
representation of sex and death and the writings on this
subject by the contemporary French author Michel
Houellebecq.
This publication demonstrates the strengths of
empirical object-based scholarship as well as the
limitations of the exhibition catalogue as a platform
for more fashionable, speculative modes of enquiry.
Its reinterpretation of Baldung’s Two witches consider-
ably enriches our understanding of this extraordinary
painting.
MARK EVANS
Preserving our Heritage. Conservation, Restoration and
Technical Research in the Mauritshuis. Edited by Epco
Runia. 208 pp. incl. 257 col. + 42 b. & w. ills.
(Waanders Publishers, Zwolle, 2009), €44.50. ISBN
978–90–400–8621–2.
The introduction to this book comprises a short
history of the care of the paintings in the Mauritshuis,
from the return in 1815 from Paris to The Hague of
the original core of the collection (which was confis-
cated by the French in 1795) to the present day, and
is followed by a general essay on the material com -
position and build-up of the paintings. The bulk of the
book consists of extensive descriptions of the restoration
treatment of fourteen works in the collection. Most
entries are based on research published before in the
Museum’s own periodical, Mauritshuis, in focus or the
technical journal ArtMatters, as well as in exhibition cat-
alogues, but the results are here brought together on
luxurious heavy art paper.
Die Gemäldesammlung des Städtischen Museums
Braunschweig. Vollständiges Bestandsverzeichnis und
Verlustdokumentation. By Julia M. Nauhaus, with con-
tributions by Justus Lange. 848 pp. incl. 111 col. +
2,257 b. & w. ills. (Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim,
2009), €68. ISBN 978–3–487–13942–5.
Die städtische Gemäldegalerie in Braunschweig. Ein
Beispiel bürgerlicher Sammelkultur vom 19. Jahrhundert
bis heute. Edited by Julia M. Nauhaus, with
contributions by Julia M. Nauhaus, Justus Lange,
Gilbert Holzgang and Erika Eschebach. 416
pp. incl. 73 col. + 90 b. & w. ills. (Georg
Olms Verlag, Hildesheim, 2009), €29.80. ISBN
978–3–487–14233–3.
The first book is a complete catalogue of
Braunschweig’s little-known municipal collection of
paintings, including documentation for works that were
lost during the Second World War. Some of the more
interesting works, for example Ferdinand Bol’s Mars and
Venus (c.1660), are better known as part of the perma-
nent installation at Braunschweig’s Herzog Anton
Ulrich-Museum. There are vast holdings of interesting
landscapes and figure and animal studies in oil on paper
by local painters such as Karl Friedrich Adolf Nickol
(1824–1905) and Julius Carl Hermann Schröder
(1802–1867), published here for the first time. The
second book includes a collection of essays exploring
the history of the collection.
Rembrandt in Southern California. By Anne T.
Woollett. 54 pp. incl. 26 col. ills. + 1 map.
(Getty Publications, Los Angeles, 2009), £6.99.
ISBN 978–0–89236–993–5.
This is a tiny guide to the fourteen paintings by
Rembrandt in the Hammer Museum, the J. Paul Getty
Museum and the County Museum of Art in Los
Angeles, the Norton Simon Museum of Art in
Pasadena and the Timken Museum of Art in San Diego.
Each work receives its own brief entry. There is also a
small map with museum locations for those who intend
to travel in southern California with this guide but
without a road atlas or satellite navigation.
Dutch New York. Between East & West. The World of
Margrieta van Varick. Edited by Deborah L. Krohn
and Peter N. Miller. 400 pp. incl. numerous col. +
b. & w. ills. (Bard Graduate Center and New-York
Historical Society, New York, and Yale University
Press, New Haven and London, 2009), £45. ISBN
978–0–300–15467–2.
This is the catalogue that accompanied the epony-
mous exhibition held at the Bard Graduate Center,
New York (closed 3rd January), which celebrated the
legacy of Dutch culture in New York through the per-
son of Margrieta Varick, who arrived with her husband
in New York in 1686, and whose goods were recorded
in an estate inventory made after her death in 1695,
reproduced and transcribed in this publication in an
appendix. The many exhibits – clothes, silver, porce-
lain, furniture, documents, drawings, paintings etc. –
evoke her world and the period and are accompanied by
extensive entries in a lavishly produced book that is per-
haps rather more interesting from a historical than an
art-historical perspective.
Anton Mauve 1838–1888. Edited by Saskia de Bodt and
Michiel Plomp, with contributions by Renske
Cohen Tervaert, Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Terry
van Druten, Sjraar van Heugten, Ineke de Jong-den
Hartog, Jeroen Kapelle, Jan van den Noort,
Agnes van den Noort-van Gelder, Michiel
Plomp, Emke Raassen-Kruimel, Chris Stolwijk and
Robert Verhoogt. 224 pp. incl. numerous col. +
b. & w. ills. (Uitgeverij Thoth, Bussum, 2009),
€34.50. ISBN 978–90–6868–521–3.
This is the catalogue accompanying the exhibition
devoted to Anton Mauve held at both the Teylers
Museum, Haarlem, and the Singer Museum, Laren
(closed 17th January). Mauve is perhaps best known for
having taught Van Gogh, although he was in his life-
time very popular with American collectors, the subject
of an essay in this publication by Petra ten-Doesschate
Chu, and one of his most impressive works can indeed
be found in the Philadelphia Museum of Art: the very
large Return of the flock (c.1886–87). His best-known
image is probably the superb Morning ride on the beach
(1876; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). There are some
very charming early works, for example the Studio of
Pieter Frederik van Os of c.1855–56 in oil on paper
(Rijksmuseum), and occasionally his later works are
very fresh and engaging, especially the Kitchen garden of
1885 (Rijksmuseum) and another painting of the same
subject in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen,
Rotterdam (c.1887). However, the Laren leg of the
exhibition demonstrated that for each of these rather
impressive works there is a host of lesser paintings,
indicating that Mauve belongs to those artists who are
better not seen in extenso. The catalogue nevertheless
serves as a useful monograph on the artist.
B.C.
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EXHIBITIONS

Exhibitions

David Hockney
Nottingham

by MARINA VAIZEY

THE CONCEPT OF the Kunsthalle – an organ-

isation housed in a building devoted to chang-
ing exhibitions, generally of contemporary
art, but which does not own a collection of
its own – is a familiar one on the Continent,
in Germany above all, as well as in the
United States. In Britain, particularly when
housed in purpose-built premises, it is rela-
tively rare. Nottingham Contemporary,
which opened on 14th November last year, is
the latest addition to the select handful of
Kunsthalles in Britain, London’s Whitechapel
Gallery, founded in 1901, being the most suc-
cessful and long-lived precursor of them all.
The building in the centre of Nottingham
has several levels of spacious and beautifully 48. We 2 boys together clinging, by David Hockney. 1961. Panel, 121.9 by 152.4 cm. (Arts Council Collection,
London; exh. Nottingham Contemporary).
lit galleries, and the now usual incorporation
of spaces for film, video, lectures and work-
shops, not to mention a café and a small and of Art, his peer group there (R.B. Kitaj and Angeles. The anthology made an especially
elegant research area. The architectural press Peter Blake among them) and the ‘swinging poignant impact now that Hockney, in his
has warmly welcomed the design by the sixties’, and then by his entry into the earthly seventies, while still retaining studios in
practice of Caruso St John (also responsible garden of Eden, replete with snakes and London and Los Angeles, seems to be based
for, among other art spaces, the excellent demons too, of southern California and Los in the seaside town of Bridlington, East
New Art Gallery, Walsall, and the various
Gagosian galleries in London, including the
magnificent premises at Britannia Street,
King’s Cross). The building is functional
and exhilarating, looks marvellous at night
and subtly grand by day; a witty touch is the
lace pattern in honour of Nottingham’s
industrial and cultural history, which is
incised into the metal decoration and over-
hang on the façade.
The tone – contemporary, adventurous,
but not off-putting or wilfully obscure – was
complemented by the pair of inaugural exhi-
bitions. The star show was David Hockney
1960–1968: A Marriage of Styles (closed 24th
January).1 This constituted a contribution to
art history as well as a revelatory and enjoyable
experience. The other show was of work by
the witty California-born artist Frances Stark,
her first in a public British gallery, and was of
work from the past eight years.2 Nottingham
Contemporary also picked up on the sensible
Tate and Serpentine Gallery notion of artists’
offerings by selling a reasonably priced limited
edition print by Stark which is a visual riff on
David Hockney.
The Hockney exhibition reminded us once
more of what an innovative, energetic and
imaginative artist he has been. With canny
intelligence, Hockney was able to capitalise,
whether consciously or not, on the stability of
his Bradford background and familial affection
which seems to have stood him in good stead, 49. The first marriage (A marriage of styles I), by David Hockney. 1962. Canvas, 189.2 by 220.8 cm. (Tate, London;
dazzlingly modified first by the Royal College exh. Nottingham Contemporary).

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EXHIBITIONS

Yorkshire, and painting the Yorkshire land-

scape on a vast scale.
In the 1960s Hockney was obsessed with
painting, drawing and printmaking, and was
able to range among many sources, including
photography, as a basis for work in other media
(his absorption in making photography as an
art in its own right was to begin in the follow-
ing decade). The early images are consciously
artful but there is no attempt to hide their
joyous naivety. Perhaps typical is a very early
etching, Myself and my heroes (1961), with the
bespectacled artist depicted next to the slightly
larger figures of the bespectacled Mahatma
Gandhi and the bearded Walt Whitman.
In his early work Hockney turned his dis-
advantages into advantages; his lack of interest
and even skill in imitative, mimetic, academ-
ic drawing was replaced by his enthusiasm,
witty subject-matter, sublimated sensuality
and an almost childlike embrace of controver-
sial alliances. We 2 boys together clinging (1961;
Fig.48) is a piece of cheerful, slightly sinister
graffiti, before graffiti became fashionable, and
embraces the new post-Wolfenden freedom
(the liberating Report was published in 1957).
Writing on the painting was also a happy
device, simultaneously childlike and sophisti-
cated. My bonnie lies over the ocean (1962) was
prescient: a miniature drawing of a figure
identified as ‘DH’ is holding up an American
flag. It was to be in America that Hockney –
in common with many a young Englishman
who headed West in the 1960s – seems to
have become truly liberated, calling on all the
conventions and idioms understood from his
extensive visual education. He was a visiting
teacher throughout the 1960s in the US,
working for varying periods at the universities
of Iowa, Colorado and California.
The brilliant blue of the south-western
American sky and its blazing sun initiated
and then enhanced a hitherto unexplored
beguiling sense of colour, freed from the
duns, ochres and general mud which has so
often characterised the English palette.
Moreover, exploiting a passion for drawing,
he discovered an energised ability to deploy a
stylised but highly intelligible shorthand,
most brilliantly seen in the ripples and splash-
es of water on the surface of a Californian
swimming pool in the now acknowledged
masterpiece A bigger splash (1967; Tate). The
splashes were painstakingly worked on,
inspired by a photograph. Ever enthusiastic
about innovation, Hockney by the mid-
1960s was also using acrylic rather than oil
paint, signalled in this exhibition by several
other masterly images such as Man taking a
shower in Beverley Hills (1964), typically start-
ed in Santa Monica and completed in Iowa
City, which had also involved photography
as a starting point, and Peter getting out
of Nick’s pool (1966; Walker Art Gallery,
Liverpool), which won first prize at the
John Moores Liverpool Competition and
Exhibition in 1967.
Some of the undoubted charm, occasion-
ally verging on whimsy, but often agreeably
50. A Rake’s Progress, 3. The start of the spending spree and the door opening for a blonde, by David Hockney. 1961–63.
Etching and aquatint on paper, 30 by 40 cm. (British Council; exh. Nottingham Contemporary).
never far from Hockney’s work, which has
always focused on personal incident, a circle
of close friends and the emotions they
engender. His use of his travels in the 1960s is
seductive for the viewer because of the exu-
berance and enthusiasm with which Hockney
transformed what he saw and experienced
into an intelligible visual shorthand.
If travel, from Berlin and Egypt to France
and perhaps, above all, to the US both
expanded Hockney’s personal experiences
and sharpened his visual imagination, he also
increasingly responded to texts. Among the
many pleasures of the Nottingham compila-
tion was the chance to see the illustrations for
the contemporary A Rake’s Progress (1961–63;
Fig.50) and those for the Fourteen Poems from C
P Cavafy (1966), a modern, witty and affecting
complement to Cavafy’s intense and sensual
poetry. The etchings and aquatints on zinc
and on copper exist as prints in their own
right alongside the books published by the
legendary Editions Alecto.
The exhibition took its title from the paint-
ing The first marriage (A marriage of styles I)
(1962; Fig.49), in which a formally dressed
Western groom stands in profile next to his
seated Egyptian goddess bride, with the verti-
cal flare of a palm tree, alarmingly like an
oversized feather duster, indicating an imag-
ined exotic setting. This was actually painted
from drawings made in Berlin, the marriage of
styles a reflection of the contrast between the
Western museum visitor and the Egyptian
contents of one of Berlin’s great museums.
It neatly summarises, perhaps, Hockney’s
continuing preoccupation with the history of
art, visible public collections and a generally
art, which irradiates the intensely personal
quality of his imagery.
Curiously, however, although the dates for
the survey were given as 1960–68, what we
did not see were the conversation pieces,
single and double portraits in domestic set-
tings and landscapes made from 1967 onwards
in a photorealist style, abandoning complete-
ly for a while the sketchy and apparently
improvised characteristics of the Hockneys
that first caught the public imagination.
Nevertheless, the exhibition as a whole is a
tribute to Hockney’s formidable gifts, undi-
luted by the sentimentality and crudeness of
colour and execution that has affected some of
his later work (notably evident in the early
twenty-first-century paintings shown in the
2006 travelling exhibition of his portraits).
Here is an artist at the beginning of a long
career already capable of expanding and
changing the visual language of his day, not
only engaged in serious debate among his
contemporaries, but also successfully reaching
out and even enlightening that proverbial
creature, the general public.
1 Catalogue: David Hockney 1960–1968: A Marriage of
Styles. By Alex Farquharson and Andrew Brighton. 88
pp. incl. numerous col. + b. & w. ills. (Nottingham
Contemporary, 2009), £12. ISBN 978–1–907421–00–6.
The two essays, by Alex Farquharson, curator of the
exhibition and director of Nottingham Contemporary,
and Andrew Brighton, are succinctly energetic. In
particular, Farquharson is good on Hockney’s work in
relation to his contemporaries and juniors, especially on
shared homoerotic themes. Unfortunately, there are no
catalogue numbers and the essays are irritatingly printed
on baby pink and baby blue coloured paper.
2 The Frances Stark exhibition is at CCA Glasgow

sinewy, is the element of autobiography, omnivorous appetite for variations on art into from 13th February to 3rd April.

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Matisse and Rodin
Nice and Paris
by CATHERINE LAMPERT
THE PERIOD IN which Henri Matisse cast his
eye on a still active and controversial master is
the focus of the exhibition Matisse et Rodin
at the Musée Rodin, Paris (to 28th Feb -
ruary),1 seen in 2009 at the Musée Matisse,
Nice. The story begins in July 1899 when
the younger artist acquired from Ambroise
Vollard the plaster bust of Henri Rochefort
(the copy that Rodin had given to Manet’s
widow) as well as a small painting, Les
Trois baigneuses, by Cézanne and a head by
Gauguin. The probable contact continues to
when the two artists were briefly neighbours
(for a year from autumn 1908 when Rodin
was at the Hôtel Biron and the Académie
Matisse was around the corner on boulevard
des Invalides). Within the exhibition, themes
that pair works (‘l’approche du modèle’) are
overtaken by the electric sparks of their
distinct sensibilities seen in proximity.
Working with clay, Matisse tended to
pinch and twist the material, arching the sub-
ject’s back so the buttocks and breasts jut out,
sometimes using his modelling tools to define
abrupt facets that catch the light. When a
photograph from the magazine Mes Modèles
(Figs.51 and 54) was his inspiration, the forms
seem more organically grown, like a gourd or
vine, such as those of La Serpentine (1909;
Fig.53) and Nu appuyé sur les mains (1905;
Fig.52). Rodin’s figures, many originating in
the early 1880s in the context of figure groups
for The gates of Hell, suggest abandonment and
transgression, via Baudelaire and Dante, while
also conveying shame and life-like emotion.
What we know about Matisse’s attitude to
Rodin has often hinged on the advice he
received when he took his drawings to the
sculptor’s studio on rue de l’Université in
1900. In Matisse’s memory the experience was
painful and, at least later, educative. André
51. Photograph, Mes Modèles. See I. Monod-Fontaine: exh. cat. The Sculpture of
Henri Mattise, London (Arts Council of Great Britain) 1984, p.16; and A. Boulton
et al.: exh. cat. Matisse: Painter as Sculptor, Dallas (Museum of Art) 2007.
Gide’s journal for 1906 contains an entry that
tells the story via Maurice Denis, Matisse
quoting Rodin’s advice that he should add
detail to his drawings and come back to show
him the results. His words, recalled in 1941,
were something like: ‘Il faut faire des dessins
extrêmement travaillés, pignochés meme, avec le plus
de détails possibles’.2 In French the informal
meaning of the verb pignocher is to paint with
small strokes using painstaking and polished
effort, and is hardly as dismissive as the fre-
quently translated recommendation ‘to fuss’.
By 1941 Matisse remembered the encounter as
a significant opportunity for him to better
understand his own method: ‘Je me disais que
lorsque j’aurais fait des dessins ainsi détaillés je
n’aurais pas besoin de personne pour me conseiller,
car ma méthode naturelle consistait à travailler du
simple au composé, et qu’ajouter un détail à un
ensemble me demandait un effort d’ordre très dur et
que presque chaque détail qui n’avait pas été prévu
dans la conception de mon dessin me demandait une
reprise de l’ensemble pour l’y incorporer’.3
Antoinette Le Normand-Romain, in the
exhibition’s accompanying catalogue, consid-
ers the relevance of this statement in 1900,
reminding us that Rodin’s inclination at that
very time was to reconsider existing works
and to simplify their forms without sacrificing
the cohesion of the whole, the experience in
the round. This tendency was prominent
in the exhibition Rodin mounted in the
Pavillon de l’Alma, his self-created retrospec-
tive located on the borders of that year’s
Exposition Universelle, which Matisse almost
certainly saw (he later remarked on Eugène
Druet’s photographs which hung on the
walls). At the entrance stood a naked Pierre de
Wiessant, hands and head removed; inside
full-length figures like The inner voice (also
called Meditation) (c.1894; Fig.55) and Cybele
had been turned into fragments by the
removal of parts. Set on a slender two-metre
column was the plaster Study for St John,
probably derived from studies for the large
standing figure of 1877, a by-then dried and
cracked torso and a set of well-preserved legs
joined roughly at a curiously dynamic angle.
52. Nu appuyé sur les mains, by Henri Matisse. 1905. Bronze, 12.4 cm. high. (Musée
Matisse, Nice; exh. Musée Rodin, Paris).
the burlington ma g a z i n e
EXHIBITIONS
This strange work, with its echoes of an
antique fragment, was christened The walking
man by Rodin’s founders. Matisse’s hard-won
sculpture The serf (1900–03) is often seen as a
deliberate response to Rodin’s realism. The
standing figure had long arms when shown in
1904 but through accident or intent (or both),
when it was cast in 1908 they were cut off and
the boxer-like physique lightened. Compar-
ison between the sculptures was nurtured by
the belief that the model Bevilaqua who posed
for Matisse was one and the same person as
Pignatelli (born 1845), the professional model
from the Abruzzi who inspired Rodin’s orig-
inal St John the Baptist, the bronze cast of
which was acquired by the State in 1884 and
long displayed in a dark corner of the Musée
du Luxembourg.
A timely account in the catalogue by Hélène
Pinet, the curator responsible for the archives at
the Musée Rodin, details how the myth began.
Art historians from Alfred Barr to Raymond
Escholier and Herbert Read compared the
sculptures and the descriptions of the models:
Bevilaqua was called an anthropoid type more
hideous than an Aboriginal, and Pignatelli, a
rough, hairy man who expressed violence in
his being, ‘fruste, hirsute’.4 Albert Elsen, writing
on Matisse’s sculpture in 1972, asserted that the
men were one and the same person: ‘the model
for Matisse, known in 1900 under the name of
Bevilaqua was in fact the peasant from Abruzzi
called Pignatelli’.5 Of course, blame for perpet-
uating this unlikely coincidence should rest on
subsequent writers who ignored the physical
discrepancies between the two men despite
ample documents, paintings and drawings of
both models, as well as photographs.6
Rodin’s milieu was the sculpture studio and
a business, populated by assistants, models,
would-be collectors and critics. By the end of
the nineteenth century, essentially the whole
of his œuvre was preserved in plaster casts like
stock for new products. Needing an activity
that could be practised in solitude and without
recourse to outside judgment (the 1890s were
the fraught years of the Balzac and Victor Hugo
commissions and the break with Camille
• cliI • february 2010 119
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EXHIBITIONS
53. La serpentine, by Henri Matisse. 1909. Bronze, 54.6
by 29.2 by 191 cm. (Musée Matisse, Nice; exh. Musée
Rodin, Paris).
Claudel), Rodin engaged in daily sessions of
drawing from the female model. He preferred
to keep his eyes on the nearby figure (and
often their eyes on him), his hand registering
in graphite their contours, sheet after sheet,
afternoon after afternoon, culminating in
more than six thousand ‘late drawings’ in total.
Rodin was open to a variety of female types
among the hired models, sometimes recalling
details of their appearance. ‘Elle avait sur tout le
corps de petit poils follets qui, sous l’éclat du jour,
l’entouraient de rayonnements dorés: un eût dit
qu’elle était vêtue de lumière’.7 Even in two
dimensions he could not help but convey his
subjects’ corporeality, their distortions under-
pinned by an assured grasp of the ample
female body as weight is redistributed by
motion and gravity. When Rodin returned to
individual drawings to add gouache and
annotations, the sheets become flatter images,
closer to poetry and Symbolism, the women
given vase-like torsos and names like Psyche.
The young Matisse, allegedly inspired by
Rodin’s relaxed distortions, tried sketching
from life observed on the street.8 In the
studio, however, the model helped him travel
inwards, literally to gain access to his inner feel-
ings: ‘Le modèle pour les autres, c’est un renseigne-
ment. Moi, c’est quelque chose qui m’arrête. C’est le
foyer de mon énergie’.9 Matisse’s state of mind in
his own maturity shifted, particularly between
1921 and 1926, and this epoch is the subject of
Isabelle Monod-Fontaine’s well-focused cata-
logue essay. She describes how his rapport with
one model, the intelligent, beautiful ex-dancer
Henriette Darricarrère, led to Matisse using
her favoured reclining pose (‘dont je me rends
esclave’) to realise an extraordinary celebration
120 f e b r uary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
54. Photograph, Mes Modèles. See I. Monod-Fontaine:
exh. cat. The Sculpture of Henri Mattise, London
(Arts Council of Great Britain) 1984, p.15; and
A. Boulton et al.: exh. cat. Matisse: Painter as
Sculptor, Dallas (Museum of Art) 2007.
of beauty in every medium.10 As Monod-
Fontaine puts it in the catalogue (p.74), when
the living model was absent from the studio,
the clay and plaster versions of Grand nu assis,
bras levés (1922–29) replaced her feminine
influence, ‘un “alter ego’”.
The curators of this exhibition, Marie-
Thérèse Pulvenis de Seligny and Nadine
Lehni, have chosen well and the casts are of the
first order. However, the display of the exhi-
bition itself (with its barrier of vitrines) lacks
something very modern that Matisse and
Rodin shared, the radical projection of the
studio ambience, the ensemble underpinning
the state of reverie. Rodin arranged his framed
drawings in a grid, a sequence sometimes
appearing like the shutter clicks of a camera.
Photographers were encouraged to record a
mise-en-scène between works using atmos-
pheric natural light, for instance in the
confrontation of the Bust of Victor Hugo and
two casts of The inner voice. The installation that
can never be bettered, and is well known from
photographs, is that of Matisse’s first Nice
apartment at no.1 place Charles-Félix, into
which he moved in September 1921. Here
were the changing arrangement of fabric hang-
ings; paintings whose subjects were sculptures
seen against decorative grounds; and reminders
of the model: ‘the violin, the upright piano, the
white ballet dress were not “props”, in any the-
atrical sense. They were natural to Henriette’.11
1 Catalogue: Matisse et Rodin. By Claude Duthuit,
Nadine Lehni, Marie-Thérèse Pulvenis de Seligny,
Antoinette Le Normand-Romain, Isabelle Monod-
Fontaine and Hélène Pinet. 160 pp. incl. 135 col. ills.
(Musée Rodin/Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris,
2009), €35. ISBN 978–2–7118–5612–1.
55. The inner voice (or Meditation), by Auguste Rodin.
c.1894. Plaster, 54 by 18.8 by 15.9 cm. (Musée Rodin,
Paris).
2 A. Gide: Journals, London 1947, I, p.174 (entry for
16th March 1906), it became: ‘Fuss over it, fuss over it.
When you have fussed over it two weeks more, come
back and show it to me again’. The fuller account,
quoted here, is from an interview transcript with
Pierre Courthion (16th April 1941); Paris/Nice,
Archives Henri Matisse, published in Duthuit et al.,
op. cit. (note 1), p.62.
3 The exhibition Matisse. Painter as Sculptor, Dallas
(Museum of Art) 2007, and Matisse’s writings updated
by Dominique Fourcade (Paris 2005), have added to the
accuracy of his quoted remarks.
4 Jean Biette in J. Puy: exh. cat. Retrospective Jean Puy,
Roanne (Musée Déchelette) 1985, p.19; and R. Butler:
Rodin. The Shape of Genius, New Haven and London
1993, p.116.
5 A. Elsen: The Sculpture of Matisse, New York 1972,
p.28. The name Bevilaqua, sculptor, appears on a
calling card in the Musée Rodin archives; Duthuit et al.,
op. cit. (note 1), p.87, and was also the name of someone
working at the foundry used by Rodin.
6 Among the documents is a photograph, recently
acquired by the Musée Rodin, dating from the time in
question (c.1900) and shows Pignatelli again in the
famous pose of St John, his curved posture, long legs
and grey beard hardly reconcilable with the sturdy,
wide-shouldered, short-legged Serf. Writers such as
Michael Mezzatesta in Henri Matisse. Sculptor/Painter,
Fort Worth 1984, used the supposed connection to
argue how Matisse surpassed Rodin’s ‘mimetic surface’
and ‘reformulated the anatomy of Bevilacqua [sic]
according to his own feeling’ (p.38).
7 H. Dujardin-Beaumetz: Entretiens avec Rodin,
Paris/Bagneux 1992, p.64.
8 Jacques Guenne, writing in 1925, quoted in Duthuit
et al., op. cit. (note 1), p.64.
9 Matisse speaking to Louis Aragon in 1939, in
D. Fourcade: Henri Matisse. Ecrits et propos sur l’art, Paris
1972, p.162.
10 Ibid.
11 J. Russell: Matisse. Father & Son, New York 1999,
p.59.
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EXHIBITIONS

arisen from a longstanding habit of attribut-

ing to him any painting with a turquerie
Jean Baptiste Vanmour theme. Well-chosen comparisons between
Valenciennes original works and studio productions show
the latter to be very pedestrian.
by YURIKO JACKALL The paintings are elegantly displayed on
walls painted in shades such as dark crimson,
which effectively evokes the hushed splen-
THE EXHIBITION Jean Baptiste Vanmour dour of the interiors of the city dubbed ‘la
1671–1737, Peintre de la Sublime Porte at the nouvelle Rome’. The multicoloured cushions
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes (to strewn upon the floor before a large screen
7th February), is the first in France devoted to with a changing display of engravings drawn
this intriguing painter who in 1699 accom- from the Recueil de cent estampes représentant
panied the French ambassador Charles différentes nations du Levant, or Recueil Ferriol –
Ferriol, baron d’Argental, to Constantinople. an exceptional collection of one hundred
Vanmour subsequently settled in the fabled engravings after paintings of Turkish costumes
capital of the Ottoman Empire, where he – also provides a tacit, if not somewhat
lived out his remaining thirty-eight years. The hackneyed, evocation of eighteenth-century
show coincides with the ‘Saison de la Turquie conceptions of exoticism and the Orient.
en France’ and, as the title implies – ‘Sublime Notwithstanding these atmospheric
Porte’ refers to the Bâbıâli, or gate protecting touches, it is to be regretted that the exhi-
the principal state departments in Con - bition is not more instructive. Some prof-
stantinople – the emphasis is on Vanmour’s 56. The Grand Vizir Nevsehirli Damat Ibrahim Pasha, itable themes – Vanmour’s involvement
lengthy foreign sojourn. by Jean Baptiste Vanmour. Canvas, 33.5 by 27 cm. with Constantinople’s international commu-
(Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; exh. Musée des
Indeed, it would have been impossible Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes). nities, for instance – are skimmed over, as are
to do otherwise: nothing has surfaced of individual paintings that would have benefit-
Vanmour’s œuvre before his arrival in ed from more extensive commentary. The
Constantinople. Yet he was born in 1671 in portrait of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu with
Valenciennes, was raised in a prosperous and her son, Edward Wortley Montagu (cat. no.205)
artistic milieu and apparently had already colour combinations perhaps intended to might have lent itself variously to discourses
trained as a painter in 1690, the year in which underscore the exotic subject-matter. At the on the construction of femininity or national
he squabbled with the local art guild, the same time, the presence of a shimmering identity, particularly as it hung near an
Confrérie Saint-Luc. It is also thought that bindalli, or bridal outfit, from the Musée du engraving of a Persian woman after Van-
Vanmour may have practised in Paris at Quai Branly serves as a reminder that Van- mour by Gérard Jean-Baptiste Scotin the
some point between 1693 and 1699, but this mour’s observations were based on first-hand Elder. The same could be said of the final
remains unsubstantiated. experience and were not conjured up by a room devoted to the question of Vanmour’s
Neither is Vanmour’s surviving Turkish romantic imagination. Vanmour’s skill as a place in the development of eighteenth-
œuvre particularly extensive. The show is colourist is underlined by a useful discussion century turquerie. Clearly numerous artists
organised in concert with the Rijksmuseum, of attributions: considerable confusion has derived inspiration from the Recueil Ferriol, as
Amsterdam, which holds the largest collec-
tion of works by Vanmour – sixty-five
paintings, the bequest of the Dutch ambas-
sador to Constantinople Cornelis Calkoen
(1696–1764). Calkoen acquired not only
Vanmour’s rather stiff depictions of official
court life but also many of his portraits and
genre scenes, presumably to act as souvenirs
of contemporary Turkish life. These are
depictions of local dignitaries, such as the
study of the white-clad Grand Vizir Nevsehirli
Damat Ibrahim Pasha (Fig.56), and of customs,
such as Greek men and women dancing the khorra
(Fig.57). Aside from their evident anthropo-
logical interest, these are the liveliest and most
whimsical of the works shown. Certain com-
positions, including the dance scene, recall the
fête galante tradition, not least for their themes
of mysterious and exclusive rites; one might
wish that the curators had explored connec-
tions between Vanmour and his valenciennois
confrères more deeply.
The rather cramped temporary exhibition
space is provided with an orientalising
decor; excellent lighting promotes the
careful examination of the cabinet-sized
pictures, and Vanmour’s paintings come
off considerably better in life than in the
accompanying catalogue’s rather dim, albeit
abundant, reproductions: the palettes are 57. Greek men and women dancing the khorra, by Jean Baptiste Vanmour. Canvas, 44.5 by 58 cm. (Rijksmuseum,
luminous, punctuated with unexpected Amsterdam; exh. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes).

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EXHIBITIONS
shown by the formal comparisons between
these engravings after Vanmour’s paintings
and works by subsequent artists (unfor-
tunately, Ingres, the most notable protago-
nist of French Orientalism in the early
nineteenth century, is palpably absent here,
although he owned an edition of the Recueil
Ferriol and makes an appearance in the
exhibition catalogue). At the same time, it
seems insufficient to attach the importance of
engravings after Vanmour to their sole
function as sources of compositional and
iconographic inspiration or artistic copy-
book, so to speak. In this same vein, the
exhibition ends, fittingly, with the Woman
with a tambourine in Turkish dress (no.191) by
Jean-Etienne Liotard, the other eighteenth-
century European artist to famously frequent
the East, but does not take the opportunity
to explore the diffuse processes of emulation,
appropriation and substitution implied
by Liotard’s work.  However, it seems that
something has begun to shift in the time
elapsed between the two painters: Van-
mour’s anthropological scenes are firmly tied
to quotidian reality.  In contrast, Liotard’s
subject is no longer forthrightly designated as
a ‘Turkish woman’, suitably clad as such.
Rather, she wears a prototypical costume
that may easily be discarded for another.
In the catalogue1 Seth Gopin presents
excellent new archival material on Van-
mour’s French origins and early life and a
detailed, chronologically ordered investiga-
tion into the painter’s influence; and Eveline
Sint Nicolaas, curator at the Rijksmuseum,
has contributed a substantial essay on Van-
mour’s collectors. It is, in the end, Gopin’s
commentary – instead of the exhibition itself
– that argues for Vanmour’s contemporary
relevance and invites us to consider anew a
painter who, long before globalisation, pro-
vided glimpses of a society far from home.
1 Catalogue: Jean Baptiste Vanmour 1671–1737, Peintre
de la Sublime Porte. By Seth Gopin and Eveline
Sint Nicolaas. 216 pp. incl. 194 col. + 24 b. & w. ills.
(Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes, 2009), €33.
ISBN 978–2–912241–17–7.
Hendrick Avercamp
Amsterdam and Washington
by QUENTIN BUVELOT
IN NO OTHER European country do people
get so excited about the winter season as in the
Netherlands, especially because it involves
skating on natural ice. Foreigners are amused
by the collective madness, or ‘ice fever’, that
takes hold of the population during the so-
called Elfstedentocht (journey of eleven towns),
when droves of people embark on a two hun-
dred-kilometre race on the frozen waterways
of Friesland. The fact that the last one was
held in 1997 is perhaps another indication of
122 f e b r uary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
58. On the ice, by Hendrick Avercamp. c.1609. Panel, 36 by 71 cm. (Mauritshuis, The Hague; exh. Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam).
climate change. However, devotees of the
season were able to get their fill on the
annual ice rink situated in front of the
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, which this
time takes on special significance because of
the exhibition in the Museum: Hendrick Aver-
camp (1585–1634): The Little Ice Age (to 15th
February; then at the National Gallery of
Art, Washington; 21st March to 5th July). It
is the first exhibition exclusively devoted to
the artist,1 who was the first to specialise in
winter landscapes and the activities associated
with the season, part of a general trend among
artists in early seventeenth-century Holland to
focus on specific genres to make themselves
stand out in a competitive free market for
paintings.
There is a direct relationship between the
popularity of this particular genre and the
exceptional climatic conditions of the period.
From c.1550 to 1850 north-west Europe went
through a period of extremely cold winters
and relatively cool summers, also known as
‘the little ice age’. In the Netherlands two
thirds of the winters between 1600 and 1700
were so cold that the country would be in the
grip of prolonged periods of frost and snow,
with thick ice covering the waterways, so
important for transport, thus bringing much
of public life to a standstill. Indeed, precisely
in the period when Avercamp was active, the
country endured its harshest winters.
A master at depicting the effects of snow
and ice on the intensity of light and colours,
Avercamp managed to capture the atmos-
phere of winter without ever venturing to
paint actual snowfall. The early work of the
Amsterdam-born Avercamp who, after an
apprenticeship in that city with Pieter Isaacsz
(1568–1625) and probably also Gillis van
Coninxloo (1544–1607), moved to the more
remote town of Kampen, displays the
unmistakable influence of the Flemish land-
scape tradition as it had developed in
Antwerp, beginning with Pieter Bruegel the
Elder, and which enjoyed a final flowering in
the northern Netherlands – especially in
Amsterdam – after the arrival of Flemish
immigrants around 1600. Characteristic of
these early works is the presence of large
trees in the foreground acting as a repoussoir;
the theatrical construction of the landscape
by placing the horizon high; the localised
colour accents; and the anecdotal character
of the scene. Gradually Avercamp lowered
the horizon to create a more natural space
and limited the number of figures, as can be
seen in this exhibition in a painting dated
1609 from a private collection and in an
undated work from the Mauritshuis, The
Hague (Fig.58). The chronology within
Avercamp’s œuvre is difficult to determine
because he dated very few works, the earliest
being 1608. The signatures provide no
guidance either because Avercamp almost
always signed with the monogram ‘HA’. On
the basis of style and composition an attempt
has been made to establish a chronology, but
the artist’s development proved to be more
erratic than expected, if only because certain
motifs constantly recur, which also hampers
the dating of works in which the architecture
or costumes might have provided some indi-
cation. In the exhibition catalogue this and
many other topics are explored in depth.2
This comprehensive and richly illustrated
publication is an extremely important addi-
tion to the literature on the painter, especially
because the last monograph devoted to
Avercamp is now very much outdated.3
Despite the restricted subject-matter – a
few summer landscapes such as that in the
Frits Lugt Collection, Paris, as well as a few
drawings, form the exceptions to the rule –
the exhibition is an uplifting feast for the eye.
These works bear careful scrutiny as numer-
ous details are discovered only upon closer
inspection, while a knowledge of iconogra-
phy is hardly essential to understand what is
depicted. With great attention to anecdotal
details, Avercamp paints figures, young and
old, whose meticulously rendered costumes
make clear that they come from all walks of
life. Indeed, contemporaries commented on
how activities on ice brought down social
barriers, although the various groups in
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EXHIBITIONS

Avercamp’s scenes do not seem to engage

with each other very much; couples glide
hand in hand over the ice, colf is being played
(a forerunner of modern ice hockey; in one
painting (private collection) the players keep
the score in the ice, which the artist has
indicated by scratching in the wet paint); a
woman does the laundry in a hole in the ice
where a half-sunken boat is stranded; and
wood is chopped. We find amusing details
such as the bare buttocks visible under the
skirt of a woman who has just fallen over.
Avercamp shows not only the pleasures of
winter in a public space, but also has an eye
for the possible risks, such as a horse-drawn
sledge that has fallen through the ice, horses
and all, or an injured skater who is bleeding.
Here the treacherous nature of the ice may
symbolise life’s unpredictability, a compar-
ison made in contemporary literature. We
also see in several paintings bodies dangling
from the gallows, an everyday reality that
60. Skaters outside the walls of Kampen, by Hendrick Avercamp. c.1613–15. Panel, 44.5 by 72.5 cm. (Private
does not necessarily have a deeper meaning.
collection; exh. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).
Bystanders, at any rate, do not appear
distracted by it.
The drawings provide the major surprise of
the exhibition. Not only do they display an Collection that underpins the composition initiative to provide a programme for deaf and
unexpected diversity in subject-matter – in (Fig.59), or through the juxtaposition of hearing-impaired visitors. In co-operation
addition to winter and summer landscapes we figure studies with paintings in which these with the Dutch Centre for Sign Language,
find a night piece and a seascape, from which figures reappear.4 Avercamp made use of a signs for more than 150 words dealing with
we may conclude that Avercamp did not shun fixed repertory of motifs from which to draw museums and looking at art have been devel-
experiment – but they are also of high quality. but avoided repetition by always putting his oped, while there are tours in sign language
It is striking how Avercamp blurs the bound- figures into a different context. Recent tech- and a special educational programme for the
ary between drawing and painting; some nical examination at the Rijksmuseum by Ige deaf has been initiated.
paintings lie somewhere between a coloured Verslype and Arie Wallert has demonstrated
drawing and a drawn painting, while he that Avercamp did not adhere to a clear-cut 1 In 1948 the Mauritshuis showed twenty-two
employs a remarkably linear technique to preliminary design but invented parts of the Avercamp drawings from the Royal Collection in
indicate the shadows of skating figures. In composition as he went along. In addition to London; see A.B. de Vries and A. Blunt: exh. cat.
addition to ‘drawing with paint’, Avercamp departing from the underdrawing, he made Masterpieces of the Dutch School from the Collection of H.M.
does indeed seem to have used a dry medium several adjustments while painting, which the King of England on the Occasion of the 50-Year Reign of
on top of the paint layer. explains the lack of underdrawing for some of Queen Wilhelmina, The Hague (Mauritshuis) 1948,
The Rijksmuseum’s choice of showing the the figures. The technical examination by nos.11–33. In 1982 a selection of paintings by Hendrick
paintings and drawings together is welcome Verslype and Wallert also found that the and Barent Avercamp was seen in Amsterdam and
for various reasons. Not only does it prevent painter made clever use of the optical proper- Zwolle; see A. Blankert et al.: exh. cat. Frozen Silence:
a too-monotonous presentation, but one can ties of certain pigments to convey the wet, Hendrick Avercamp (1585–1634) – Barent Avercamp
(1612–1679), paintings from museums and private collections,
easily understand Avercamp’s working pro- icy cold. Amsterdam (K. & V. Waterman Gallery) and Zwolle
cedure, for example through the combina- Seventeenth-century sources inform us that (Provinciehuis) 1982. More recently, works by
tion of his Skaters outside the walls of Kampen Avercamp was deaf and mute (hence his nick- Hendrick were also shown in a general survey of win-
(Fig.60) – his only painting to show a correct name ‘the Stomme van Kampen’: ‘the mute ter landscapes at The Hague; see A. van Suchtelen et al.:
representation of a town – with the drawn from Kampen’), and it is thus particularly Holland frozen in time: The Dutch winter landscape in the
profile of Kampen from the English Royal sympathetic that the Museum has taken the Golden Age, The Hague (Mauritshuis) 2001–02.
2 Catalogue: Hendrick Avercamp: de meester van het

ijsgezicht. By Pieter Roelofs, with contributions by

Jonathan Bikker, Adriaan de Kraker, Bianca du
Mortier, Marijn Schapelhouman, Ige Verslype and
Arie Wallert. 224 pp. incl. 175 col. ills. (Nieuw
Amsterdam Publishers, Amsterdam, 2009), €24.95.
ISBN 978–90–8689–0569 (Dutch edition); ISBN
978–90–8689–059–0 (English edition). Unfortunately,
the list of works exhibited on pp.175–79 has no
catalogue numbers, which makes it difficult to refer to.
3 C.J. Welcker, revised and edited by D.J. Hensbroek-

van der Poel: Hendrick Avercamp (1585–1634) bijgenaamd

‘De Stomme van Campen’ en Barent Avercamp (1612–79):
‘Schilders tot Campen’, Doornspijk 1979.
4 The organisers chose not to exhibit works by

Hendrick’s nephew Barent Avercamp (1612/13–79),

who possibly was a pupil of Hendrick but did not match
his talent. In Barent’s work, just as in that of another
follower, Arent Arentsz Cabel (1585/86–1631), motifs
59. View of Kampen, by Hendrick Avercamp. c.1613–15. Pen and brown ink, wash over graphite, 12.2 by 31 cm. found in the work of Hendrick Avercamp suggest that
(Royal Collection, London; exh. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). both had access to Hendrick’s drawings.

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EXHIBITIONS
Beyond the Dutch
Utrecht
by TONY GODFREY
D E S P I T E I N D O N E S I A H A V I N G the fourth largest
population in the world and a thriving arts
scene, the country’s art, other than tourist
batiks, is rarely seen in the West. It is noted in
the catalogue for the exhibition Beyond the
Dutch: Indonesia, the Netherlands and the Visual
Arts, from 1900 until now at the Centraal
Museum, Utrecht (closed 10th January),1
that symptomatically between 1945 and 1995
the only time Indonesia was represented at an
International event was at the São Paulo
Biennale in 1955. This exhibition, therefore,
was welcome but, as the subtitle suggests, it
presented Indonesian art within a particular
framework: its relationship to the Nether-
lands. Whereas for Indonesians the declara-
tion of independence from their Dutch
overlords in 1945 was liberating and the
subsequent war with the Dutch was the event
that, above all, unified an archipelago of
disparate islands, for the Dutch this was
traumatic: Queen Juliana famously cried
when in 1949 she had to sign the granting of
independence. The expulsion of all Dutch
nationals in 1957 marked both a low point in
subsequent relations and a formal caesura in
cultural links. Nevertheless, as the catalogue
points out, one in ten people in the Nether-
lands have links to Indonesia by their family
history. This exhibition can be said to have
had a therapeutic role for a Dutch audience,
reuniting them, as it were, with a ‘lost child’.
The exhibition was in two parts: the first
gave a chronological survey of Indonesian art,
the second a selection of Dutch art that had
Indonesia as its subject-matter. There was an
obvious mismatch here for, apart from the
earliest section of the Indonesian part which
contained beautiful Javan landscapes (the
famous mooi Indië paintings) made by Indone-
sian artists such as Abdullah for consumption
by exclusively Dutch clients, there was little
or no relationship to Dutch art. Although Van
Gogh was a probable influence on key expres-
sionist artists such as Affandi (1907–90) and
Hendra Gunawan (1918–83) who sought to
make a national art, it was, above all, more an
opposition to mooi Indië as colonial kitsch that
united them.
As a selection of Indonesian post-War art
this was inevitably too small (twenty-six
large works plus some drawings) to give any
real sense of the complexity of the last sixty
years. Missing, for example, even though
there was an article specifically about it in the
catalogue, was Jim Supangkat’s conceptual
piece Ken Dedes (1975), which is often taken
to symbolise the shift from modernism to a
more confrontational form of contemporary
art. Nor was there anything from the
Bandung School or from Bali, but, rather, a
narrow concentration on the more expres-
sionist art associated with the art school and
124 f e b r uary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
61. Guerilla combatants, by Hendra Gunawan. 1949.
Canvas, 185 by 125 cm. (Wereldmuseum, Rotterdam;
exh. Centraal Museum, Utrecht).
scene in Yogyakarta. Even within that there
were curious omissions – I Nyoman Masriadi,
currently the most famous artist there, being
one. Nevertheless there were some excellent
pieces such as Hendra’s Guerilla combatants
(Fig.61), Jompet’s War of Java, Do you
remember? #3 (Fig.63) and Agus Suwage’s
Pressure and pleasure.
Hendra had been a participant in the
rebellion and records this in his typically
eclectic style – a mixture of journalese and
Gauguin. Both Jompet’s and Suwage’s
recent pieces were political although difficult
to simplify as allegory: Jompet’s work,
which featured a film and a noisy sound-
track of drumming, referenced the partly
Europeanised uniforms of the Sultan of
Yogyakarta’s army but only as a ghostly and
carnivalesque spectacle; Suwage’s work,
made at the time when Suharto’s govern-
ment was collapsing, evokes the fears and
desires of that period – a military tent is cov-
ered inside with paintings of soft-porn films
and images of Suwage himself. The sound-
track, of hysterical radio broadcasts of the
period, did not seem particularly relevant.
An installation piece by Mella Jaarsma,
The square body (Fig.62), was given a central
position. As a Dutch woman who has lived in
Yogyakarta for many years and has helped
co-found the Cemeti art space there, she is
presented here as having symbolically bridged
the divide between the nations – a fearful
responsibility to put on an artist! Nevertheless
it was a beautiful piece: at the opening three
women wore square dresses with lights
attached projecting the shadows of old wayang
(Javan puppets) figures. Subsequently the
dresses alone and videos of the performance
filled the space.
Small though it was, the Indonesian section
was far more impressive than the Dutch part
of the exhibition. Sadly, Fiona Tan – the
most famous living Dutch artist with Indone-
sian connections – was represented only by a
slight work. Other recent examples were
interesting rather than compelling. As the
chief curator, Meta Knol, laments in her
catalogue essay ‘many Dutch artists are still
clinging to the images from before the 1949
break’. Certainly much of the older Dutch art
on show here were evocations of a sunny
Javanese landscape replete with contented
peasants.
One place where there was a continuing
post-War influence of the Dutch on Indone-
sia was the art school at Bandung where artists
such as Ries Mulder taught. But although
several paintings by Mulder were shown –
very competent cubistic landscapes in the style
of Jacques Villon – oddly there were no
examples of his Indonesian followers, such as
Ahmad Sadali.
However, for all one’s cavils about the
exhibition, there is no gainsaying the useful-
ness and quality of the catalogue, which
describes itself as a book, and which puts an
acknowledged emphasis on Indonesian art
because it ‘is still virtually unknown among
the Dutch museumgoing public’. Many
62. The square
body, by Mella
Jaarsma. 2009.
Fabric, stainless
steel, lamps,
batteries,
electricity
cables and
leather, 180 by
180 by 160
cm. (Cemeti
Art House,
Yogyakarta;
exh. Centraal
Museum,
Utrecht).
ER.FEB.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 19/01/2010 11:38 Page 125
63. War of Java, Do you remember? #3, by Jompet
Kuswidananto. 2008. Electronic installation, two fake
rifles, four drums, four lights, an LCD monitor, six
pairs of boots, six hats and two flags, 300 by 400 by
300 cm. (Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta; exh.
Centraal Museum, Utrecht).
works not in the exhibition – by Ahmad
Sadali for instance – are illustrated in it. Some
essays look at aspects omitted from the
exhibition: the voracious collecting of the
first president, Sukarno, the importance of
Wayang, the instability caused by the lack of
a museum culture in Indonesia and the
current dominance of a market chiefly led
by the auction house. Remco Raben’s essay
is especially useful in attacking many of
the normal romanticised assumptions about
Indonesian art: he points out that many of
the first generation of artists were children of
civil servants and hence allowed a Western
style education. They looked to Western
modernism – not specifically Dutch – as a
way of making a new national art, of, so to
speak, ‘cutting their clothes from the mas-
ter’s wardrobe’. He throws doubt on the
avowed revolutionary character of the artists
of this generation and points out how keen
they were to go abroad. Another function of
this book is, as the Indonesian co-curator,
Enin Suprianto, puts it, to offset the Indone-
sian lack of historical awareness. Without
doubt this is a major contribution to the
as yet underdeveloped study of Indonesian
art history.
1 Catalogue: Beyond the Dutch: Indonesia, the Nether-
lands and the Visual Arts, from 1900 until now. Edited by
Meta Knol, Remco Raben and Kitty Zijlmans. 200 pp.
incl. 113 col. ills. (Centraal Museum, Utrecht, 2009),
€24.50. ISBN 978–94–6022–059–3. Available in Dutch
and English. The publication contains twenty-seven
essays by the editors and other authors.
Philips Wouwerman
Kassel and The Hague
by LUUK PIJL
PHILIPS WOUWERMAN’S PAINTINGS of equine
subjects were highly appreciated during his
lifetime, but they became immensely popular,
especially in Germany and France, after his
premature death in 1668. Their skilful and
varied depiction of horses, elegantly rendered
trees and beautifully observed skies are among
the best that seventeenth-century Dutch
painting has to offer. In the eighteenth century
his elaborate hunting scenes full of human
incident fetched enormous prices. As a result,
there emerged around 1700 a whole legion of
followers and imitators working in his style.
Fakes, often carrying Wouwerman’s signature,
as well as works in his manner, were produced
in large quantities: the well-informed collector
Caroline Louise von Baden, anxious to pur-
chase first-rate Dutch works, is reported to
have exclaimed around 1760: ‘I fear these
Wouwerman copies like fire’. In addition to
the many paintings inspired by the master,
numerous print series after his designs were
produced throughout Europe in order to cater
to the appetite for Wouwerman’s inventions.
It comes as no surprise that the first
catalogue of Wouwerman’s paintings, printed
in 1829, was compiled by the art dealer John
Smith, whose initial intention was to promote
and consolidate the market for his chosen
artist. Every picture listed by Smith ends with
a valuation and as such his volumes can be
considered as price guides. Smith listed 522
paintings by Wouwerman, a figure that was
doubled by Cornelis Hofstede Groot in 1908.
The catalogue raisonné of his paintings by
Birgit Schumacher, published in 2006, con-
siders 571 works as autograph.1 Before Schu-
macher’s book, recent art historians had paid
the burlington ma g a z i n e
EXHIBITIONS
little attention to Wouwerman, in spite of his
strong showing on the art market. Although
good examples of his paintings have been
included in general exhibitions on Dutch
art, he has never received the honour of
a one-man show. The curators of the
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Kassel, and
the Mauritshuis, The Hague, both collec-
tions with important examples by Wouwer-
man, must have felt it was time to present his
work to a new and broader audience and
this they have done with On Horseback! The
World of Philips Wouwerman, currently at the
Mauritshuis (to 28th February).
Every writer on Wouwerman, starting with
Arnold Houbraken, reflects on his high output
in combination with his originality: indeed it
is remarkable what a sustained level of accom-
plishment he maintained compared with, for
example, a similar master like Nicolaes
Berchem, whose œuvre is much more uneven.
As far as Wouwerman’s subjects are con-
cerned, he was not a truly great innovator but
he perfected the subject-matter of masters of
earlier generations. The evident influence of
Pieter van Laer, who returned to Haarlem
from Rome in 1639, is generally acknowl-
edged and Wouwerman is reported to have
owned drawings by Van Laer, who died in or
after 1642. Until now the possible impact of
Paulus Potter on Wouwerman’s work has
been little discussed. Potter, a true prodigy,
made use of similar subjects and motifs. Scenes
with blacksmiths are found in both masters’
works, and certain motifs, such as a strongly lit
willow tree besides an animal or two, are in the
same spirit. Given Wouwerman’s great skill in
painting horses, it is somewhat surprising that
no equestrian portrait by him is known.
Equestrian portraits were not common in the
Republic, but there are a few famous examples
by Rembrandt, Paulus Potter, Thomas de
Keyser and a few masters of lesser merit.
From an œuvre of over six hundred paint-
ings, the selection of works on view was
64. Hunters near a
cistern, by Philips
Wouwerman. 1656.
Canvas, 98 by 111 cm.
(Private collection;
exh. Mauritshuis,
The Hague).
• cliI • february 2010 125
ER.FEB.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 19/01/2010 11:38 Page 126
EXHIBITIONS
65. Cavalry battle, by Philips Wouwerman. c.1655–60. Canvas, 127 by 245 cm. (Mauritshuis, The Hague).
deliberately restricted. In The Hague thirty-
three paintings are on display, thirty-one of
which are described in the catalogue, with
two recently restored stable scenes from the
Mauritshuis’s own collection being included
hors catalogue. The rather weak Soldiers on the
march (cat. no.29; shown in Kassel), has luck-
ily been replaced by a comparable, but much
stronger work (Schumacher A283). The
paintings are complemented by a selection of
ten fine drawings from the holdings of the
Teylers Museum, Haarlem, the British Mus-
eum, London, and the Fodor collection in the
Amsterdams Historisch Museum. An interest-
ing feature of Wouwerman’s rare drawings is
that the sheets are sometimes folded, which
probably means that they were sent to patrons
to gain approval for a planned work in oil.
Owing to the severe selection, the hang at
the Mauritshuis is spacious, doing full justice
to individual paintings. Several aspects of
Wouwerman’s output are well presented: fine
panoramic landscapes, rural scenes, stable
interiors, hunting parties, winter landscapes, a
stormy sea, an allegory and a scene from Ovid.
In the larger and more elaborate paintings the
figures, horses and other animals are often
rendered on a similar scale to those in the
smaller works. Thus, it is a surprise when
Wouwerman sets up a composition on a more
monumental scale. The star of the show,
Hunters near a cistern (no.20; Fig.64), demon-
strates how capable he was of working on a
large scale. Here the vibrant execution certain-
ly adds to the suggested movement of the
figures and animals. Another highlight of the
show is Wouwerman’s largest extant painting,
the Cavalry battle from the Mauritshuis (no.18;
Fig.65). It was purchased in 1764 by Willliam
V for the, at the time, astronomical sum of
4,575 guilders. Both monumental paintings
were executed during the second half of the
1650s and they illustrate that during that peri-
od Wouwerman was at the peak of his powers.
In spite of the rather limited number of
works on show, the richness and variety of
Wouwerman’s output is well represented.
However, certain aspects of his œuvre could
126 f e b r uary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
have been more strongly in evidence. For
example, in his beach scenes he reaches a very
high level in the rendition of the beautifully
atmospheric silvery light. This scene is repre-
sented in the excellent painting from the
National Gallery, London (no.15), but the
actual beach in that painting occupies only a
quarter of the horizon. Wouwerman’s paint-
ings on copper supports are, due to his highly
finished technique and their mint condition,
among his most enjoyable paintings. There is
one superb example on this support, The stag
hunt from the De Mol van Otterloo collection
(no.22), but one or two more examples, such
as the very beautiful works in the Städel,
Frankfurt, or the Louvre (Schumacher A25
and A155) would have strengthened the
representation of Wouwerman’s achieve-
ments in this particular medium. It seems that
the organisers were shy of repetition, but the
showing of the National Gallery’s Stable scene
(no.19) next to two similar works from the
Mauritshuis is indeed instructive of how
Wouwerman chose different groupings of fig-
ures and of how his work developed.
The very well-designed catalogue2 con-
tains three introductory essays: Frederik
Duparc on Wouwerman’s stylistic develop-
ment; Kathrin Bürger on his influence and the
reception of his work; and Gerdien Wuest-
man on prints made after Wouwerman. The
catalogue entries by Quentin Buvelot are
exemplary and the illustrations, often with
details, are of very fine quality. The organisers
should be congratulated on their highly suc-
cessful attempt to present the work of Wouw-
erman at its finest. The balanced display in the
intimate and cleverly lit spaces of the Maurits -
huis does full justice to his qualities.
1 B. Schumacher: Philips Wouwerman. The Horse Painter
of the Golden Age, Doornspijk 2006; it was reviewed by
the present writer in this Magazine, 149 (2007),
pp.113–14.
2 Catalogue: Philips Wouwerman 1619–1668. By Fre-
derik Duparc and Quentin Buvelot, with contributions
by Kathrin Bürger, Gerdien Wuestman and others. 207
pp. incl. 167 col. + b. & w. ills. (Waanders Publishers,
Zwolle, 2009), €29.90. ISBN 978–90–4008–5925.
Botticelli
Frankfurt
by SCOTT NETHERSOLE
FEW PAINTERS HAVE BEEN more consistently
presented as the embodiment of the spirit of
late fifteenth-century Florence than Botticelli.
The current exhibition at the Städel Mus-
eum, Frankfurt (to 28th February), which
serendipitously marks the quincentennial of
the artist’s death, is no different. The show
does not seek to portray the entirety of
Botticelli’s output, a goal which would be
misguided and fruitless anywhere but at the
Uffizi. It aims instead to contextualise the
Städel’s Idealised female portrait, the so-called
Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci as a nymph
(cat. no.1; Fig.66) firmly within a culture of
myth-making, commemoration and festival;
within the various thematic preoccupations of
his art; and in relation to the art and concerns
of his contemporaries. Judged in these terms,
it is a resounding success. The assembled array
of paintings, drawings, engravings, books,
tapestries, relief sculpture, medals, armour and
cameos is truly impressive, their display sen-
sitive and the relationships between them
thought-provoking and considered.
The exhibition is arranged in three sec-
tions: likeness, myth and devotion. The first
two are introduced by pairing, as thematic
pendants, the ‘Simonetta’ with the posthumous
portrait of Giuliano de’ Medici from Wash-
ington (no.5). Simonetta – the regina della
bellezza of Giuliano’s joust in 1475 – died
prematurely in 1476, only a few years before
Giuliano’s assassination. The tragic turn of
events, and the political machinations that
followed the Pazzi Conspiracy of April 1478,
set the stage for their transformation into cult
figures, a process in which portraiture played
a seminal role. The game of identifying
Simonetta, ‘this sweet Florentine maiden, this
unsmirched beauty of the Medici court’, pre-
occupied Victorian and Edwardian scholars.1
In recent years it has again become fashion-
able, but rather than seek her actual likeness,
art historians are content to find her in images
of ideal beauty. On balance, the arguments
which are advanced in the accompanying
catalogue in favour of the Frankfurt picture
are convincing, but they should not be taken
as conclusive.2 Nonetheless, that the panel
shows an idealised, perhaps even mythol-
ogised, beauty can hardly be doubted and so it
perfectly introduces the twin concerns of
‘likeness’ and ‘myth’ that unify the first part of
the exhibition on the lower floor.
The show is characterised by several
rewarding juxtapositions, the first of which is
the Washington portrait of Giuliano with the
version that once belonged to Giovanni
Morelli (no.6; Accademia Carrara, Bergamo).
Botticelli’s elegant shorthand for suggesting a
hidden cheek by a brief contour line that rises
from behind the philtrum is misunderstood
and botched in the Bergamo picture, which is
ER.FEB.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 19/01/2010 11:38 Page 127
66. Idealised female portrait, known as Portrait of Simonetta
Vespucci as a nymph, by Sandro Botticelli. Early 1480s.
Panel, 81.8 by 54 cm. (Städel Museum, Frankfurt).
rightly given to his workshop. The proximity
of the Berlin and Turin canvases of Venus
(nos.34 and 35) is another stimulating com-
parison that comes quickly on its heels. They
are evidently by different hands within the
bottega, with only the Berlin version bearing
the gilded hair that is encountered in both
autograph and shop products. Along with
other exhibits, they act as a reminder of the
great fluctuations in quality in the Botticelli
shop and of the work which still needs to be
done in distinguishing these anonymous, and
sometimes maladroit, hands.
The section dedicated to portraits is com-
prehensive and reveals Botticelli’s flowering
as a quasi-abstract linear designer. Even so,
caution might have been advisable in the
attributions of the women from Altenburg
67. The life and miracles of St Zenobius, by Sandro Botticelli. Probably late 1490s. Panel, 66 by 182 cm. (Gemäldegalerie, Dresden; exh. Städel Museum, Frankfurt).
EXHIBITIONS
(no.15) and a private collection (no.13), while
Riggisberg’s St Thomas Aquinas (no.22)
should probably be removed from his circle
altogether. By contrast, the Pitti’s Portrait of a
lady (no.14; Fig.68) shines as a fully autograph
work of the 1480s, despite the questions that
have traditionally been raised over the attribu-
tion. In decent lighting, the pentiments in the
architecture (the removal of the window sill
and the cyma moulding to the architrave)
show a desire to eradicate all superfluous detail
in creating a simplified composition, matched
by the change in the profile of the neck and
shoulder, such that a single line descends
through the centre of the cloth headpiece,
down the back of the neck, across the single
band of the necklace and around the curve of
the breast. Such a developed linear conscious-
ness is surely the hallmark of Botticelli’s art,
particularly from the early 1480s onwards.
Upstairs, the rooms are given over to works
on a sacred theme, initiated by a display of
several ideals of womanhood, from Verroc-
chio’s black-chalk drawing from Christ
Church, Oxford (no.48), to various images of
the Virgin, both sculpted and painted. With
68. Portrait of a lady, by Sandro Botticelli. 1480s. Panel,
the exception of the S. Martino alla Scala 61 by 40 cm. (Palazzo Pitti, Florence; exh. Städel
Annunciation (no.49) which, at over five and a Museum, Frankfurt).
half metres in width, dominates the space,
the presence of Verrocchio is strongly felt
here, whether because Botticelli may have quickly passes to the rare nude studies (nos.57
frequented his workshop in the late 1460s or and 58), before arriving at the true highlight of
because of his dominant cultural presence in the show in the next room: the four spalliera
Florence during the 1470s. Although each panels showing the life and miracles of St
attribution has the weight of received wisdom Zenobius (nos.62–65), assembled for the
behind it, this section is bound to provoke first time since they were together in the
debate given the near impossibility of Rondinelli Collection in Florence. While
reconstructing Verrocchio’s work as a painter. their differences in size and figure scale have
In the opinion of the present reviewer, for long been known, stylistic distinctions
example, the Madonna del mare (no.47; Accad- between the London and New York panels
emia, Florence) is closer to Filippino Lippi on the one hand, and the Dresden example
than Verrocchio, with his characteristic hes- on the other, have perhaps not been fully
itancy of touch, silverine palette and a demure appreciated. The latter is more tightly organ-
Virgin of slight and delicate proportions. ised and painted with a greater attention to
The subsequent section is encircled by detail. Compare, for example, the grotesques
tondi, a form in which the Botticelli shop in the pilasters, which in the Dresden version
seems to have specialised. It suffers from a lack (Fig.67) are complete with masks and
of high-quality examples, but the visitor chimerae en grisaille, reduced in the London
the burlington ma g a z i n e • cliI • february 2010 127
ER.FEB.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 19/01/2010 11:38 Page 128
EXHIBITIONS
picture to simple rinceau. Similar points could
be made about the treatment of drapery and
the complete eradication of charming obser-
vations such as the keyhole on the chest below
the bed, or the still life resting on the bedhead.
It is difficult to account for these changes,
which seem to imply an increased speed of
execution. It is possible that they were intend-
ed for different spaces in the room, but it is
also conceivable that the Dresden picture was
painted earlier than its London and New York
counterparts. Although it represents the final
scenes in the narrative, it contains the all-
important event of the miracle of the dead
boy (which had previously been represented
on the saint’s reliquary by Lorenzo Ghiberti),
along with Zenobius’ own death. If the
patron had originally only planned one scene,
then this would have been it.
The exhibition concludes with Botticelli’s
most pious works. It centres on the Wemyss
Adoration of the Christ Child (no.66) and the
Pitti’s Virgin and Child with the young St John
(no.70), two large, vertical-format paintings.
The room thus spans the artist’s career, from
the 1480s to the early sixteenth century, and –
as elsewhere in the show – presents Botticelli
as acutely sensitive to the artistic develop-
ments around him, carefully assimilating the
lessons of others, whether in the expressions
of piety that overtook Florentine art in the
1490s (see the two versions of the Man of sor-
rows; nos.77 and 78, whose attributions should
be swapped on qualitative grounds), or the
stylistic monumentality of the new century.
The Pitti canvas, however idiosyncratic,
could be read as representing the elderly
painter’s response to Michelangelo, whom he
is documented as knowing.
The exhibition’s main fault lies in inconsis-
tent and erratic attributions. To choose but
one example, the Blaffer Foundation tondo of
the Adoration of the Christ Child (no.53), with
its ‘frog-like’ child, is surely a workshop
product. It must be close in date to the Pitti
Virgin and Child with the young St John, but lacks
its monumental linearity and complex play of
drapery. The yellow cloak of Joseph in the
tondo is globular and crudely modelled. It
would also have been useful to date the
exhibits, if only to guard against the sense that
the succession from pagan mythologies to
sacred paintings reflected a chronological
movement from Laurentian to Savonarolan
Florence. But with few documented works
and an abundance of opinions, dating
Botticelli is problematic.
The catalogue strikes a good balance
between succinct summaries of current schol-
arship and new research, albeit somewhat
hastily edited. Of particular note is Lorenza
Melli’s essay, which includes the remarkable
discovery that the British Museum Head of a
youth (inv. no.1895,0915.450; not exhibited)
is in fact a study for Mercury in the Primavera,
an observation so obvious now that it has been
pointed out that one wonders why it has taken
so long to realise.
In 1488 the humanist Ugolino Verino
compared Botticelli to the ancient painter
128 f e b r uary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
Apelles, for ‘his name is now known every-
where’.3 This has not, as is well known,
always been the case. But to judge from the
weekend queues both inside and outside the
Städel Museum, it is as true today as it was in
the late fifteenth century. The curators of that
institution are to be congratulated for bravely
presenting an artist whose works can seldom
travel, whose linear style can be an acquired
taste and whose intellectual context is often
too recondite to be popular.
1 D. Clayton Calthrop: ‘La bella Simonetta: The spring
of the Italian renaissance’, The Connoisseur 8/4
(Jan/April 1904), p.202.
2 Catalogue: Botticelli: Likeness, myth, devotion. Edited
by A. Schumacher. 372 pp. incl. 132 col. + 25 b. & w.
ills. (Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2009), €39.90. ISBN
978–3–7757–2481–4. The catalogue is also published in
German under the title Botticelli: Bildnis, Mythos,
Andacht. ISBN 978–3–7757–2480–7. The reviewer
consulted the English-language edition.
3 ‘. . . iam notum est nomen ubique suum’, cited and
translated in R. Lightbown: Sandro Botticelli: Life and
Work, London 1989, p.235.
Johann Heinrich Schönfeld
Friedrichshafen
by OLIVER TOSTMANN
EXHIBITIONS DEVOTED TO German Baroque
painters are rare, so it is particularly enjoyable
to visit a show entirely devoted to Johann
Heinrich Schönfeld (1609–84). Little known
in Britain, his works are scattered throughout
collections in Germany, Italy, Austria and the
Czech Republic, a dispersal that reflects the
artist’s errant life, wandering from Swabia to
Rome and to Naples, where he spent seven-
teen years from 1633 to 1651, returning to
southern Germany via Venice in the spring of
1651 and dying in Augsburg in 1684. Schön-
feld’s style was dependent on late Mannerist
models and is characterised by slender,
elongated figures, refined and graceful if
somewhat asexual, with small puppet-like
heads, often placed in fantastic architectural
landscapes.
Johann Heinrich Schönfeld. Welt der Götter,
Heiligen und Heldenmythen at the Zeppelin
Museum, Friedrichshafen (to 7th Feb -
ruary), includes approximately fifty paintings,
drawings and prints spanning the artist’s entire
career.1 As the title indicates, the exhibition
focuses mainly on various themes in the
artist’s œuvre, and in this respect it breaks new
ground, since the last show, held in Ulm in
1967, was concerned more with establishing
Schönfeld’s œuvre.2 The present, relatively
small exhibition of history paintings, allegories
and genre scenes largely confirms Joachim
von Sandrart’s elegantly phrased praise of
Schönfeld’s inventiveness as an ‘Uberfluss
wolaufgeraumter Gedanken’ (‘superabundance
of judicious thoughts’). The curators attempt-
ed to flesh out Schönfeld’s artistic profile
by careful comparisons and combinations,
without, however, including works by other
artists. Yet the emphasis on subject-matter
affects the clarity and chronological
coherence of the show: in the course of his
extensive travels, Schönfeld altered his style
several times and, for the present reviewer, it
was not always easy to follow his develop-
ment. The first gallery is intended to sum up
the artist’s œuvre, with works ranging from the
1630s to 1680; it is followed by five galleries
devoted to specific themes.
Cupid handing his wings to Time (cat. no.1;
Fig.69) dates from 1637–38 when Schönfeld
was living in Rome. Peculiarly for this period,
a cold blue light envelops the antique ruins,
the only colour being provided by the bright
red and deep blue of the protagonists’ cloaks.
Schönfeld took care over details: for example
the papers lying beside Time incorporate
images of flying men, and an antique relief
directly above him glimmers in the semi-
darkness, animating the scene beneath it. The
bizarre character of Schönfeld’s paintings was
69. Cupid hand-
ing his wings to
Time, by Johann
Heinrich
Schönfeld.
c.1637–38.
Canvas, 94 by
129 cm.
(Galleria
Nazionale
d’Arte Antica,
Palazzo
Barberini,
Rome; exh.
Zeppelin
Museum,
Friedrichshafen).
ER.FEB.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 19/01/2010 11:38 Page 129
70. Christ on the Mount of Olives, by Johann Heinrich
Schönfeld. c.1670–75. Copper, 26.1 by 21 cm. (Kunst-
historisches Museum, Vienna; exh. Zeppelin Museum,
Friedrichshafen).
admired by sophisticated collectors such as
Flavio Chigi, the notorious nephew of Pope
Alexander VII, who owned this work.
Unfortunately, its pendant, also in Palazzo
Barberini, its subject so obscure that it has
yet to be identified, was not lent to
Friedrichshafen. In this context, the pendant
from the Sanminiatelli-Odescalchi Collection
in Rome was also sadly missing.
The juxtaposition of the Triumph of Venus
(no.23) and the larger Triumph of David
(no.25) is felicitous. Painted in Naples in
1640–42, the David shows how much
Schönfeld’s palette opened up to warmer,
earthy colours in these years. Rather than
exalting the virtues or martial prowess of the
victors, Schönfeld’s triumphs resemble
courtly scenes from a ballet depicted in a
musical, fairy-tale mood.
Schönfeld’s later Neapolitan period is well
represented by the Ecce Homo (c.1644–45;
no.30). Combining influences from Titian
and contemporaries such as Castiglione and
Cavallino, Schönfeld produced a monumen-
tal composition yet was sensitive to the
drama of the scene and, for the first time,
used a wide range of colours accented with
light touches.
After he returned north of the Alps in 1651,
Schönfeld was expected to fill his compo-
sitions with larger figures, which was difficult
for him, as is evident from the Christ the
Saviour (1670s; no.40) and the Martyrdom of St
Laurence (1681; no.31). Whereas the compo -
sitions in his Italian years were often over-
loaded, he now simplified them, achieving
greater immediacy and abstraction. His brush
got bolder, which gave paintings like the
Donation of the keys to St Peter (c.1670–75;
no.29) an almost expressionistic simplicity. It
is startling to compare it with the small copper
painting of Christ on the Mount of Olives
(no.37; Fig.70), painted at the same time,
which refers back to the refinement of his
early Italian period. Unfortunately the two
works are not shown together so that it is
difficult to grasp the artistic range mastered by
Schönfeld in this late period.
The thematic arrangement is not always
successful; in the case of the scenes of tomb
robbers, some of the pictures were of dubi-
ous attribution, others were only minor
works, and the most important painting of
this group, in Stuttgart, was not lent. But the
juxtaposition of four different versions of
Gideon choosing his soldiers, a rare subject
inspired by Callot and Tempesta with dates
ranging from 1637 to 1653, reveals Schön-
feld’s approach to the subject changing over
time. A comparison of the early versions from
Vienna (1637–42; no.44) and Potsdam
(1637/38; no.46) with the latest piece from
Kremsier (1653; no.47), a highlight of the
show, demonstrates how much Schönfeld’s
works lost delicacy even as they gained in
expressive vigour after his return to Germany.
The great merit of this exhibition is the
chance it provides to study Schönfeld’s
changes in style and adaptability to his often-
ambiguous subject-matter, and to re-examine
his undervalued late style; it will provide an
excellent starting point for future research.
1 An exhibition, Johann Heinrich Schönfeld – Zeichnungen
und Druckgraphik, dedicated to Schönfeld’s drawings
and prints, is on show at the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart (to
7th March). Catalogue (serving both exhibitions):
Johann Heinrich Schönfeld. Welt der Götter, Heiligen und
Heldenmythen. Edited by Ursula Zeller and Maren
Waike. 280 pp. incl. 114 col. + 9 b. & w. ills. (Du
Mont Buchverlag, Cologne, 2009), €39.95. ISBN
978–3–8321–9243–3.
2 H. Pée, ed.: exh. cat. Johann Heinrich Schönfeld, Bilder,
Zeichnungen, Graphik, Ulm (Museum) 1967.
Contemporary art in Munich
Munich
by CATHERINE CRAFT
THE COMPLETION OF the Pinakothek der
Moderne in 2002 provided Munich with a
long-needed home for its collections of
modern and contemporary art.1 Last May, the
opening of the Museum Brandhorst across
the street further raised the city’s profile as a
destination for contemporary art. Housed in a
large two-part structure sheathed in a dazzling
multicoloured façade of ceramic rods
designed by the Berlin firm Sauerbruch and
Hutton, Udo and Anette Brandhorst’s
international collection focuses on large-scale
masterworks by such well-established artists as
Damien Hirst, Alex Katz, Andy Warhol and
Franz West. The Museum’s upstairs galleries
have been given over to the display of the
most extensive holdings of Cy Twombly’s
œuvre outside the United States.
Despite the significance of the Brandhorst
Museum’s debut, the attention accorded it
has somewhat obscured the existence of a
the burlington ma g a z i n e
EXHIBITIONS
well-established scene for contemporary art
in Munich. As 2009 drew to a close, several
exhibitions by regional and international
artists offered a stimulating cross section of
recent trends. The most significant of these
was held in what is perhaps Munich’s most
notorious exhibition space, the Haus der
Kunst. A prominent example of Nazi archi-
tecture and the site of the 1937 Entartete
Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition, the Haus
der Kunst is today given over to temporary
exhibitions, usually of contemporary art.
The building’s dark history and grand interi-
or spaces are inevitably an issue for curators
and artists, the most recent response being So
Sorry, a retrospective of the Chinese artist Ai
Weiwei’s probing, critical examinations of
politics, history and identity.2 The exhibition
(closed 17th January) included new site-
specific works. The most prominent of these,
Remembering, covered the museum’s façade
with nine thousand brightly coloured
children’s backpacks. The exhibition’s title
So Sorry refers to the political tactic of using
repeated, empty apologies as a way to avoid
accountability, a strategy Ai associated
particularly with the Chinese government’s
response to the 2008 earthquake in
Szechuan, where thousands of children died
when their schools collapsed. Ai is an
outspoken critic of the government’s failure
to give a full account of what occurred, and
the backpacks of Remembering form Chinese
characters reading ‘she lived happily for
seven years in this world’, a comment made
by one victim’s mother. While Ai’s inten-
tions are beyond reproach, Remembering’s
jarringly bright colours and spectacular
emphasis on sheer numbers fell short of
conveying the impact of this loss. Two
71. Worldhater’s sculpture garden, by Bo Christian
Larsson. 2009. Mixed media, approx. 280 by 280
by 80 cm. (Exh. Steinle Contemporary, Munich).
• cliI • february 2010 129
ER.FEB.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 19/01/2010 11:38 Page 130
EXHIBITIONS
photographs shown in the exhibition of the
actual disaster, with a few battered backpacks
strewn among the wreckage, proved far
more powerful.
Ai’s confrontations with Chinese attitudes
toward the cycles of destruction and regener-
ation that have characterised his country’s long
history were more convincing. An early series
of photographs (1995) show him dispassionate-
ly dropping a Han Dynasty urn, allowing it to
shatter; many of his sculptures and installations
use antique furniture and fragments of
architectural elements from old buildings
demolished during China’s recent economic
expansion. Such works call to mind Mao’s
Cultural Revolution, which sought to destroy
the past in the name of progress, but in the
Haus der Kunst – given the Nazi regime’s
responsibility for the Holocaust and subse-
quent generations’ determination never to for-
get what occurred – such works take on a more
complex resonance. In one of the building’s
most imposing galleries, Rooted upon (2009;
Fig.73), a forest-like installation of ancient tree
trunks, rested upon Soft ground (2009), a carpet
specially woven in China to mimic the Haus
der Kunst’s floor of large travertine marble
tiles, with every irregularity, crack and chip
carefully reproduced. The pattern of the floor
tiles and of the placement of the tree trunks is
echoed by the wallpaper lining the hall, a pho-
tographic grid showing the 1,001 Chinese who
visited the 2007 documenta as part of Ai’s Fairy-
tale project. The overall effect was powerful yet
poetic, a mingling of German Romanticism
with Chinese traditions of landscape painting
that brings both nature and humanity into an
otherwise dauntingly chilly space.
Like the Museum Brandhorst, a private
museum provides the raison d’être for the
Sammlung Goetz, which shows selections
from Ingvild Goetz’s holdings of contem-
porary art in a sleekly compact building
designed by Herzog and de Meuron. Open to
72. Fat convertible, by Erwin Wurm. 2004. Resin and varnish, 34 by 63 by 105 cm. (Exh. Lenbachhaus, Munich).
130 f e b r uary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
73. Rooted upon, by Ai Weiwei. 2009. One hundred tree trunks, dimensions variable. Soft ground, by Ai Weiwei.
2009. Wool carpet, 3,560 by 1,060 cm. Fairytale, by Ai Weiwei. 2007. Wallpaper made from digital photographs,
dimensions variable. (Exh. Haus der Kunst, Munich).
the public since 1993, the Sammlung Goetz
usually presents exhibitions by individual
artists whom Goetz collects in depth, such as
Mike Kelley, Richard Prince and Rosemary
Trockel. The current exhibition of works by
the Munich-born Andreas Hofer (to 1st April)
continues this general trend.3 The show offers
a concentrated overview of Hofer’s ‘multi-
verse’ of humans, robots and fantastic crea-
tures taken from comic books, pulp fiction
and B-movies. Hofer’s drawings, collages and
paintings suggest worlds poised between
intensely private dreams and sensationalist
marketing appeals to lovers of science fiction.
Despite the resultant professions of impend-
ing doom, Hofer’s drawings and collages often
have an almost naive character. The spidery
quality of his line and his penchant for cutting
and tearing appropriated book illustrations and
covers suggest an art rooted in childhood
obsessions. In general, Hofer’s small canvases,
such as Una (2006) or Forever monster (2004),
convey the claustrophobic intensity of his
vision more effectively than his forays into
large-scale painting. He often combines and
recombines these smaller works in installations
such as Infinity crisis (2009), where the sheer
accretion of imagery generates the impression
of a dizzyingly complex personal mythology.
The import of these banal yet evocative images
is intensified by Hofer’s use of the pseudonym
‘Andy Hope 1930’, an anglicisation of the
artist’s name and a reference to the year of the
Nazi Party’s first election victories. Themes of
dystopia, alienation and the threat of technol-
ogy accordingly take on more sinister histor-
ical undertones, yet Hofer’s art, while often
unsettling, is rarely truly disturbing.
Hofer’s art came to Goetz’s attention in a
2005 exhibition at the Lenbachhaus, which is
currently closed for renovations. However,
the museum’s Kunstbau, a smaller exhibition
space in the U-bahn station next to the
Lenbachhaus, will continue to present exhibi-
tions until the museum reopens in 2012.
Recently, the Kunstbau showed sculptures,
photographs and videos made over the past
two decades by the Austrian artist Erwin
Wurm (closed 31st January).4 Wurm has
defined sculpture as being ‘work on volumes’,
a concept that encompasses the human body:
for him, losing or gaining weight, for exam-
ple, can be a sculptural act. As a result, many
of Wurm’s sculptures attain presence through
adiposity: distended, swelling forms, often
sheathed in stretchy knitwear; ‘fat cars’
(Fig.72) whose sleek lines are obscured by
bulging protuberances; and human figures
ER.FEB.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 19/01/2010 11:38 Page 131
whose ‘stress bumps’ and ‘anger bumps’ push
against the constraints of their clothing.
The body’s potential as a site for sculpture
extends to the role of the viewer in Wurm’s
One Minute Sculptures, documented in
videos and photographs and in the form of do-
it-yourself instructional drawings. The body
becomes the site of intervention and intrusion,
with pens, bananas, chairs, bicycles and other
objects stuck into orifices, tucked under arms
and between legs and balanced on the head or
shoulders. In addition to their absurdist wit,
such works not infrequently suggest an ele-
ment of aggressiveness that counteracts their
potential whimsy. A photograph of a One
Minute Sculpture showing a young woman
with the leg of a chair resting on her clenched-
shut eye is particularly unsettling. (Unfor-
tunately, the slightly unpleasant edge to such
works is largely absent from Wurm’s recent,
high-fashion reprise of the sculptures, using
model Claudia Schiffer, in German Vogue.)
In 2008 the Kunstbau presented Favoriten, a
group exhibition dedicated to emerging artists
who lived or exhibited in Munich. At the end
of 2009, two of the featured artists had shows
at local galleries, allowing visitors to assess
their development over the past year. At
Steinle Contemporary, the Swedish artist
Bo Christian Larsson presented works on
paper and sculptures that have resulted from
his work as a performance artist (closed 31st
December).5 Larsson has developed a complex
family of personae, such as ‘Shadow’ and
‘Worldhater’, who execute sculptures in
the context of performances whose darkly
compelling, often violent imagery draws on
Nordic myth, fairytales and the musical genre
of death metal. As with the work shown in the
Lenbachhaus exhibition, Larsson’s generative
drawings at Steinle rendered archetypal
imagery, such as snakes, flames and forest
scenes, by combining broadly painted passages
with a finely detailed sense of line. The result-
ing process of performance could be sensed
in the three-dimensional works, although
individual pieces appeared somewhat bereft
when removed from the intensity of their per-
formative milieu. We are all chained to the world
(2009), a large plywood armature flanked with
chains, resembled a stage set, while a group of
sculptures created by Worldhater – including a
valise punctured by a small wooden door and
a pair of boots filled with knives – conjured
associations with Surrealist objets (Fig.71).
Drawing is also crucial to the work of Justin
Almquist, whose show at Norwood Fine
Arts was his solo debut (closed 12th Decem-
ber).6 As with his presentation in Favoriten,
drawings worked in a variety of media
showed facility, wit and imagination. Con-
trary to their installation in the Lenbachhaus
in two vitrines, which suggested a program-
matic element in their variety, the drawings in
the gallery were presented as individual
works, creating an impression of diversity,
with no single approach or style dominant.
Almquist’s roving imagination takes in tabloid
photography, dream imagery, pornography
and mundane occurrences from everyday life,
74. Junkie fruit (with seeds), by Justin Almquist. 2009.
Acrylic, papier mâché and balloons on canvas on
wooden board, 62 by 53 cm. (Exh. Norwood Fine
Arts, Munich).
combining them in situations that are at once
amusing, disturbing and frequently moving:
an eruption of papier collé intrudes on our
glimpse of a woman undressing; a ‘sick’ letter
of the alphabet stretches across the page to
infect its ‘healthy’ companion; two fractured,
gleaming crystals converge on a dazed and
frightened man’s head, ostensibly to heal
him. Often, artists with a talent for drawing
have difficulty moving into painting, but
Almquist’s new paintings showed a pro-
nounced change from the somewhat tentative
canvases exhibited at the Lenbachhaus.
Richly, almost hallucinogenically layered and
spotted with fragments of yarn, paper towels
and in one case two papier-mâché balloons,
his Junky fruit paintings (2009; Fig.74) suggest-
ed a lurid transformative decay capable of
eliciting fevered visions of other worlds.
1 Reviewed by the present writer in this Magazine,
145 (2003), pp.71–72.
2 Catalogue: Ai Weiwei: So Sorry. With essays by Mark
Siemons and Ai Weiwei. 128 pp. incl. 81 col. + 44 b. &
w. ills. (Prestel Verlag, Munich, 2009), €19.95. ISBN
978–3–7913–5014–1.
3 Catalogue: Andreas Hofer: Andy Hope 1930. With
essays by Ingvild Goetz, Stephan Urbaschek and John
C. Welchman. 192 pp. incl. 90 col. ills. (Kunstverlag
Ingvild Goetz, Hamburg, 2009), €35. ISBN
978–3–939894–13–1.
4 Catalogue: Erwin Wurm. With essays by Stephan
Berg, Helmut Friedel, Gertrud Koch, Friederike
Mayröcker, Franz Schuh, Kirsten Claudia Vogt and an
interview with the artist by Jérôme Sans. 336 pp. incl.
337 col. + 1 b. & w. ills. (DuMont Buchverlag,
Cologne, 2009), €43. ISBN 978–3–8321–9241–9.
5 Catalogue: Bo Christian Larsson: On and On is
How We Are. With essays by Adina Popescu, Caroline
Dowling and an interview with the artist by Birgit
Sonna. 73 pp. incl. 70 col. + 13 b. & w. ills. (Argobooks,
Berlin, 2009), €25. ISBN 978–3–941560–17–8.
6 Catalogue: Justin Almquist: Selected Drawings
2002–2009. With introductory text by Alfred Kren. 78
pp. incl. 59 col. ills. (Alfred Kren for Norwood Fine
Arts, Munich, 2009), €20. ISBN 978–3–00–029235–4.
the burlington ma g a z i n e
EXHIBITIONS
Dutch and Flemish paintings in
Geneva
Geneva
by JESSICA STEVENS-CAMPOS
IN THE CURRENT economic downturn, many
museums see their endowments reduced and
have to rethink their exhibitions programme.
The current exhibition at the Musée d’art et
d’histoire, Geneva, L’Art et ses marchés: La
Peinture Flamande et Hollandaise XVIIe et
XVIIIe siècles (to 29th August), which explores
the richness of the Museum’s collection of
Dutch and Flemish paintings, might be rec-
ommended as a model to follow for the way it
reassesses part of the Museum’s permanent
collection.1
The factual approach evident in this show
has produced many new discoveries and
demonstrates that academic art history has not
necessarily set aside all object-based consider-
ations in favour of purely theoretical ones and
provides a refreshing return to the work of art
as artefact. Half of the total of 237 works in
Geneva have received new attributions, while
eighty-five paintings were restored and a
selection of 113 is currently on display, care-
fully arranged by the various genres that were
so much in demand in the seventeenth centu-
ry (hence the choice of the title of the show).
In addition to being introduced to many new
discoveries, visitors also have a chance to see
some better-known works such as Jan van
Ravesteyn’s Portrait of Pieter van Veen, his son
Cornelis and his clerk Hendrick Borsman (cat.
no.10) and Karel Dujardin’s Crucifixion
(no.70). Works by a number of well-known
Dutch and Flemish artists such as Caspar
Netscher, Gerrit Dou, Philips Wouwerman,
Jan Weenix, Isaac van Ostade, Abraham van
Calraet, David Teniers the Younger and Jan
van Os are also on display.
75. Portrait of François Le Fort, by Michiel van
Musscher. 1698. Canvas, 71.8 by 61.7 cm. (Musée
d’art et d’histoire, Geneva).
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EXHIBITIONS
76. The rest of Diana, by Peter Paul Rubens. c.1616. Canvas, 241 by 326.5 cm. (Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva).
The exhibition is the result of four years of
collaborative research by the University of
Geneva, the restoration studio of the Museum,
and the Netherlands Institute for Art History
(RKD), The Hague. The catalogue presents
data from the technical examination of
works during conservation treatment, archival
research on provenance and extensive research
on iconography, a full bibliography for each
work and the opinion of leading specialists.
No doubt some attributions will change in
the future and certain anonymous works will
find a name, but evidently the catalogue is
the result of rigorous study. The exhibition
illustrates why empirical groundwork remains
necessary before one can even make a start
exploring broader social and cultural ques-
tions. As such it serves as a salutary corrective
to art historians too steeped in theory.
The current reappraisal follows a long period
of neglect. Many works in the show have not
been on display since the 1930s. About ninety
per cent of the collection is the result of private
donations, the most significant from Gustave
Revilliod (1817–90), whose gift in 1890
accounts for nearly half of the Dutch and Flem-
ish paintings. Only ten per cent were Museum
purchases, most importantly the Rest of Diana
(no.41; Fig.76), bought in 1852 in Paris. Over
the last two centuries this painting has experi-
enced a roller-coaster of attributions: in 1839 it
was attributed to Rubens with the participation
of Frans Snyders, but by the end of the century
it was demoted to a studio work. After a series
of attributions and de-attributions, it was
catalogued as Flemish school and later as a
seventeenth-century French copy. But recent
technical examination has enabled the work to
go full circle and offers a better understanding
of Rubens, his studio and Snyders. The meas-
urements of the painting are based on the
132 f e b r uary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
Antwerp yardstick and analysis of the stratigra-
phy of the paint layer confirmed that the tech-
nique is typical of Rubens’s studio, as is the
application of paint. It is usefully compared to
its ‘twin’ painting in the Royal Collection, and
both works should be dated to c.1616.
As for the portraits, the recent cleaning of
the Portrait of a man (no.25) previously attrib-
uted to Bartholomeus van der Helst, revealed
the original monogram ‘JAB’ in the top right-
hand corner. This enabled the painting to be
newly ascribed to Jacob Adriaensz Backer. An
X-ray of an endearing family portrait by
Nicolaes Maes (no.32) revealed an inscription
masked by the relining of the canvas that gives
77. View of Geneva, by Frans de Momper. c.1650–60. Panel, 77.3 by 118 cm. (Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva).
the name François van den Brandelaer, a
nobleman and captain of a company of civil
guards in Dordrecht. This allowed the
remaining sitters to be identified as members
of his family. The sitter in Michiel van
Musscher’s Portrait of François Le Fort (no.39;
Fig.75), arguably one of the finest in his œuvre,
was only recently identified on the basis of the
coat of arms painted on the curtain in the
background, allowing it to be recognised as
the portrait of François Le Fort mentioned in
the inventory made after Musscher’s death.
Born in Geneva, François Le Fort (1656–99)
embarked on a military career that brought
him to Marseille, Amsterdam and Moscow,
where he eventually became an adviser to
Peter the Great. We learn in the entry on
this painting how the family coat of arms,
the oriental tablecloth and the sitter’s Mus-
covite dress act as visual mementos of the
sitter’s peripatetic life as a diplomat. Such
information tells us about the relations
Musscher had with his patrons and the inter-
national network in which he operated.
This empirical approach also allows a deep-
er understanding of the function of paintings.
We learn from the scientific analysis of Barent
Graat’s Bacchus and Ariadne (no.73), for exam-
ple, that for a while the painting served as a
model for students in the private academy run
by Graat, before it was properly finished. The
discovery of two preparatory drawings by
Willem van Herp for two paintings on copper
representing The multiplication of bread (no.54),
also by Herp, and Christ among the doctors, by
David III Rijckaert (no.55), showed that
although Herp designed the compositions, he
delegated much of the final work to his
colleague Rijckaert. Their collaboration is
not documented, but supported by stylistic
comparison of their treatment of landscapes.
Visitors new to the city of Geneva will also be
struck by Frans de Momper’s View of Geneva
(no.153; Fig.77), made after an engraving by
ER.FEB.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 19/01/2010 11:38 Page 133
the Swiss engraver Matthäus Merian based
on material provided by the architect and
engineer Claude de Chastillon.
To appreciate the full scope of this show,
the catalogue, which also serves as a catalogue
raisonné (unfortunately available only in
French), is a necessary work of reference. It
complements the earlier exhibition (2005–06)
and catalogue La naissance des genres,2 which
documented the Dutch and Flemish paintings
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and
like that one will be of value well beyond the
time-span of the exhibition.
The only quibble one might have is that in
light of the international importance of the
collection, it would have been useful had the
exhibition been pitched to a slightly wider
audience, in which respect an English edition
of the catalogue would have been desirable.
The exhibition labels, also only in French, talk
at length about provenance before touching
on more engaging matters. Such layering of
information does not do justice to the discov-
eries that ultimately make this exhibition so
captivating.
1 Catalogue: L’Art et ses marchés: La Peinture Flamande
et Hollandaise (XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles) au Musée d’art et
d’histoire de Genève. Edited by Frédéric Elsig. 398 pp.
incl. 550 col. + b. & w. ills. (Somogy, Paris, 2009), €47.
ISBN 978–2–7572–02500.
2 F. Elsig, ed.: exh. cat. La naissance des genres: la
peinture des anciens Pays-Bas (avant 1620) au Musée d’art et
d’histoire de Genève, Geneva (Musée d’art et d’histoire)
2005–06.
Juan Bautista Maíno
Madrid
by PETER CHERRY
LETICIA RUIZ GÓMEZ, the organiser of the
exhibition Juan Bautista Maíno 1581–1649 at
the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
(closed 17th January), the first dedicated to
this artist, should be congratulated for having
brought together most of Maíno’s known
easel paintings. The Prado possesses more of
his pictures than any other museum, the core
being those for the high altar of the church of
the Dominican monastery of S. Pedro Mártir
el Real, Toledo, where the artist professed as
a friar in 1613. It showed that Maíno’s reputa-
tion as one of the leading painters at the court
of Philip IV of Spain was richly deserved.
Maíno worked in a wide range of pictorial
formats. The show opened with a group of
small-scale pictures. His paintings on copper
were a revelation: of particular beauty was an
unpublished pair of St John Baptist (cat. no.1;
Fig.78) and St Mary Magdalene (no.2) showing
the saints in rich, deep landscapes. Their
juxtaposition with Elsheimer’s Tobias and the
angel (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copen-
hagen) showed Maíno’s vision of landscape, as
well as his interest in copper supports, to be
rooted in his experience of painting in Rome.
EXHIBITIONS
Cathedral) was particularly apposite since this
was part of a commission from the archbishop
Bernardo Sandoval y Rojas made before 1614.4
Most of all Maíno fell under the spell of Orazio
Gentileschi, yet, while this is stressed in the cat-
alogue, the artist was represented by only two
paintings. His Sybil (Museum of Fine Arts,
Houston) would seem to have little in com-
mon with Maíno’s painting of the Dominican
mystic St Catherine of Siena (no.22) with which
it was paired and, while the juxtaposition of
Maíno’s Recapture of Bahía (no.34) with Gen-
tileschi’s Finding of Moses (Museo del Prado),
both large-scale paintings of a similar date,
did reveal similarities, the works are from late
in their careers and were shown in the last
room. As it is, the exhibition demonstrated that
Maíno’s paintings are far more than the sum of
his Roman experiences, and the quality and
originality of his painting was highlighted by
the comparison with other artists’ work. The
mix included paintings by Spanish contempo-
78. St John the Baptist in a landscape, by Juan Bautista
Maíno. Before 1613. Copper, 23 by 18.5 cm. (Private raries said to exemplify an ‘early naturalism’,
collection; exh. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid). such as Bartolomé González, Eugenio Cajés,
Luis Tristán, Antonio de Lanchares and Pedro
Núñez del Valle. Although the latter four artists
The Crucifixion (no.5) did not appear to the are reported to have travelled to Italy, they
present writer to be by the same hand as evidently took much less from the experience
Maíno’s Resurrection from Dresden (no.4). than Maíno, and their presence only empha-
Although it is suggested that the inscription sised his superior skills. This reviewer found
‘NP.’ at the foot of the Cross signifies ‘Pater the larger works rather obtrusive on the wall;5
Nostri’, signatures were frequently placed in placing them in a separate space might have
that position, particularly when the painting disencumbered the show.
had votive associations.1 The exhibition layout did not follow the
The key event in Maíno’s artistic life was his sequence of the catalogue. Maíno’s paintings
residence in Rome, where he is documented for the S. Pedro Mártir altarpiece, discussed as
between 1605 and 1610. His association with an ensemble in the catalogue, were separated
Annibale Carracci and Guido Reni, reported
in Spanish sources, was explored in the show
through examples of their works and in the
catalogue essay by Gabriele Finaldi.2 Maíno’s
work constitutes a fascinating example of
the first-hand response of a Spanish artist to
Caravaggism,3 illustrated in the exhibition
through the inclusion of comparative paint-
ings. Caravaggio’s Ecstasy of St Francis (c.1595;
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford), although a
nocturne, was comparable with Maíno’s work
in the clear, smooth flesh of the angel and
detailed observation of nature. Ironically,
however, it was the similarity of Caravaggio’s
later David and Goliath (Museo del Prado,
Madrid) to the St John the Baptist from Basel
(no.11) which made the attribution of the lat-
ter to Maíno unconvincing; the pronounced
chiaroscuro, opaque shadows and cold flesh
tints are untypical of him, and the relatively
literal transcription of the left shoulder and
elbow in an otherwise quite generalised treat-
ment of the body is quite different from
Maíno’s more rounded treatment of anatom-
ical features. The ‘Spanish’ iconography of the
playful sheep, noted in the catalogue (p.105),
may also have a source in Caravaggio’s St John
the Baptist (Musei Capitolini, Rome) and the
works of his ‘school’.
Maíno was shown to have more in common
with the Italian followers of Caravaggio than 79. Resurrection of Christ, by Juan Bautista Maíno.
with the master himself. The choice of Carlo 1612–14. Canvas, 295 by 174 cm. (Museo Nacional
Saraceni’s Martyrdom of St Eugene (Toledo del Prado, Madrid).
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EXHIBITIONS
80. Pentecost, by Juan Bautista Maíno. 1615–20.
Canvas, 324 by 246 cm. (Museo Nacional del Prado,
Madrid).
between three rooms in the show. Two medi-
um-sized paintings of the Adoration of the shep-
herds (nos.27 and 29) hung on different walls,
albeit in the same room. Two versions of the
Miracle of Soriano were divided between differ-
ent rooms and the Prado version (c.1629) was,
strangely, the very last picture in the show.6
One of the high points at the Prado was
the selection of portraits by Maíno, which
corroborated his reputation in this field
among his contemporaries. This was an excel-
lent opportunity to test attributions, and
Maíno’s only known signed portrait, of an
unidentified gentleman (no.36), is an impor-
tant benchmark. Two of the best pictures in
the show, the Ashmolean’s Portrait of a monk
(no.41) and a miniature of an unknown sitter
(no.38), were entirely plausible as autograph.
A portrait of Bishop José de Melo (no.35),
however, was found seriously wanting, and
one of Fray Alonso de Santo Tomás (no.44)
also appeared remote from Maíno’s style,
being closer to that of Alonso Cano
(1601–67), of whom the sitter, if this is he, was
a patron. St Agabus(?) (no.26; Bowes Mus-
eum) was even more anomalous; perhaps its
former attribution to Juan Martín Cabezalero
(1633–73) should be revisited. The portrait of
Philip IV attributed to Gaspar de Crayer
(fig.34.8) is closely related to a miniature of
the king convincingly given to Maíno (no.37)
and to his portrait in the Recapture of Bahía.
The excellent scholarly catalogue7 is based
on a synthesis of previous scholarship and a
great deal of new research, including a detailed
reconstruction of the artist’s life and work and
a documentary appendix. Of particular inter-
est is the discussion of Maíno as a Dominican
painter by María Cruz de Carlos Varona and
Fernando Marías. The entries offer some
intriguing commentary on Maíno’s technique,
based on scientific analysis undertaken for this
show. Maíno was not really a tenebrist painter,
for the luminosity of his painting would appear
134 f e b r uary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
to be partly achieved by the use of light
grounds. The relative clarity of contours and
lucid modelling of forms allies him with clas-
sical painters such as Annibale Carracci and
Reni; he may have been among the first to
appreciate the legibility of Carracci’s Assump-
tion over Caravaggio’s paintings of Sts Peter
and Paul, all in S. Maria del Popolo, Rome.
Maíno was drawing-master to the Infante
Philip (later Philip IV), but his drawings have
yet to be identified. X-rays have shown a high
degree of improvisation in some of his easel
pictures (nos.13 and 27). The practice of paint-
ing from live models would have obviated the
need for preparatory drawings, although draw-
ings and cartoons would have been necessary
for his frescos (nos.23 and 24), which were
painted in an unorthodox technique of oil on
plaster. Maíno’s figures show signs of being
individually painted in studio lighting, with a
resultant disunity in the overall illumination.
Other consequences of the use of models can
be seen in the Resurrection (no.15; Fig.79), in
the relative separateness of figures and their
inconsistency of scale, as well as a still-life
painter’s attention to details of costume, arms
and armour. Maíno may have made drawings
for details, such as hands, since he appears to
understand their structure. In contrast, the
hands of Christ in Caravaggio’s Taking of Christ
(National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) are
expressive, but badly drawn. The Madonna in
Maíno’s powerful Pentecost (no.28; Fig.80) is
conventionally idealised in the manner of
Reni and classical sculpture, whereas the
show-stopping Magdalene has been impro-
vised from the life. Like Gentileschi, he
evidently improved his models as he painted,
seeking a verisimilitude based on observation,
not the unleavened naturalism of Caravaggio.
1 A Crucifixion painted on an actual wooden cross by
Pedro Núñez del Valle, an associate of Maíno, is signed
and dated at the foot of the cross (‘Pº Nuñez. Fat /
1627’), where the redeeming blood of the Saviour runs
down towards his name; see D. Angulo Íñiguez and
A.E. Pérez Sánchez: Historia de la pintura española. Escue-
la madrileña del primer tercio del siglo XVII, Madrid 1969,
p.332, no.8.
2 While it was speculated in the catalogue (p.58) that
Maíno intended a homage in the manner of El Greco
to these artists in two portraits in his Adoration of the
shepherds (no.27), these are more likely to represent
donors; both wear shepherds’ sheepskin jerkins
(compare them to the jerkin in no.8).
3 Caravaggio and Spain has been treated in two recent
exhibitions in the country, J. Milicua and M.M. Cuyàs,
eds.: Caravaggio y la pintura realista europea, Barcelona
(Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya) 2005–06; reviewed
in this Magazine, 148 (2006), pp.144–46; and A.E. Pérez
Sánchez and B. Navarrete Prieto, eds.: exh. cat. De
Herrera a Velázquez. El primer naturalismo en Seville,
Seville (Fundación Focus-Abengoa) and Bilbao (Museo
de Bellas Artes) 2005–06.
4 Surprisingly, no mention was made of the St John
Baptist, also long in the collection of Toledo Cathedral,
as by Bartolomeo Cavarozzi, who was in Spain in
1617–19, and is now widely accepted as its author.
5 Thirty-five paintings attributed to Maíno in the
show were supplemented by twenty-nine by other
artists, eighteen of which were from the Prado itself.
The exhibited works that were not illustrated in the
catalogue were: Bartolomeo Cavarozzi’s Holy Family
with St Catherine, Pedro Núñez del Valle’s Adoration
of the kings, Guido Reni’s St Catherine, Diego
Velázquez’s Portrait of Francisco Pacheco and Guido
Reni’s St Apollonia in prayer. The three works in the
exhibition omitted from the catalogue checklist
(pp.213–14) were Guido Reni’s St Apollonia in prayer
and the Martyrdom of St Apollonia, and Eugenio Cajés’s
Virgin and Child.
6 Sergio Benedetti suggested in conversation that an
attribution to Maíno of another version of this subject in
the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, not mentioned
in the catalogue, would repay further investigation.
7 Catalogue: Juan Bautista Maíno 1581–1649. Edited by
Leticia Ruiz Gómez, with contributions by María Cruz
de Carlos Varona, Maria Margarita Cuyàs, Javier
Docampo Capilla, Gabriele Finaldi, Fernando Marías,
José Milicua, Alfonso Rodríguez G. de Ceballos and
Leticia Ruiz Gómez. 315 pp. incl. 131 col. + 22 b. & w.
ills. (Museo Nacional del Prado/El Viso, Madrid, 2009),
€45. ISBN 978–84–8480–190–0.
Gabriel Orozco
New York
by MORGAN FALCONER
HAVING HAD THE PRESCIENCE to grant
Gabriel Orozco one of his very first solo exhi-
bitions back in 1993, the Museum of Mod-
ern Art, New York, can be proud of having
also originated a mid-career touring survey of
his work (to 1st March).1 Although brief –
given the prolific variety of Orozco’s output –
it affords an ample overview of an artist who,
although only in his late forties, has attracted
more serious critical attention than any of his
peers. And, joining this – and indicating the
extent of the artist’s standing among leading
critics – there is a new collection of essays
devoted to him, edited by Yve-Alain Bois, in
October magazine’s excellent Files series.2
Benjamin Buchloh is surely the artist’s most
prominent supporter; he champions few
contemporary artists, and yet he contributes
no less than three essays and an interview to
the volume, and adds another essay to
MoMA’s exhibition catalogue.3 He makes
extraordinary claims for Orozco, likening his
emergence to the consequential arrival of
Brancusi in Paris in 1903. The parallel is based
on Buchloh’s contention that the last decade
or so has seen the waning of sculpture, largely
due to the exhaustion of the central discourses
of the 1960s (Minimalism, Post-minimalism
and Arte Povera). Into this desert Orozco
has arrived, Buchloh suggests, and liberated
sculptural processes and materials from the
medium’s traditional objects. He synthesises
various possibilities for the medium: working
with common and uncommon materials, as
well as found objects and photographs; using
both artisanal modes of production and recent
technology; and holding in consideration both
the conditions of globalisation (a sensitivity
encouraged by his nomadic existence), and the
regional specificity of his Mexican upbringing.
The artist eschews any posture of sculptural
mastery and, similarly, avoids suggestions that
ER.FEB.pg.proof.corrs:Layout 1 19/01/2010 11:38 Page 135
his work might supply privileged experience.
In other words Orozco’s work is radically
democratic. Indeed, as the exhibition’s cura-
tor, Ann Temkin, argues in her own catalogue
essay, his approach advances on the post-
studio practices of the 1960s, replacing such
models as the factory, the laboratory and the
office with the commonplace notion of the
apartment or the home. The result of all these
alleged achievements, Buchloh concludes, is a
practice that revives the viewer’s sculptural
experience of the everyday world, and helps
mend our destroyed – or endlessly mediated –
relationship to material objects.
Catalogue essays (which are the basis of
much of the material in the new Files book) are
ever the source of indiscriminate praise, but
rarely are their assertions as robustly supported
as they are in these essays. Unfortunately, we
cannot really look to MoMA’s exhibition to
verify those assertions, since a monographic
survey cannot make the necessary historical
comparisons. MoMA, of course, enjoys grand
claims, and the installation in the Marron
Atrium is in that vein: the very eye-catching
Mobile matrix (2006), employs the skeleton of a
grey whale divided by geometric lines. But
Orozco himself has a quieter personality, and
it is characteristic of him that the exhibition
opens with Empty shoe box (1993), a sly
humbling of the Museum’s claim to serve as a
definitive historical archive and not as some
private, subjective scrap-album.
The exhibition only really takes off with
works from the series My hands are my heart
(1991; Fig.82): two photographs of the naked
torso of a man moulding a piece of clay,
alongside the heart-shaped fired clay itself, still
impressed with the man’s hand-prints. It
delivers – as indeed Buchloh argues – a
startling reassertion of the value of tactile,
sculptural processes, and one which does not
elicit an object demonstrative of sculptural
mastery. Neither is Orozco wedded to tradi-
81. Kytes tree, by Gabriel
Orozco. 2005. Synthetic
polymer on canvas, 200 by
200 cm. (Museum of
Modern Art, New York).
82. My hands are my heart, by Gabriel Orozco. 1991.
Two chromogenic colour prints, each 23.2 by 31.8
cm. (Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman
Gallery; exh. Museum of Modern Art, New York).
tional artisanal materials: Spume fin (2003) is a
sleek mobile fabricated from polyurethane
foam, yet, in a similar vein to My hands are my
heart, its smoother, more sculpted areas often
give way to ragged parts which speak of the
act of making. The show also confirms critics’
contentions that Orozco is engaged by the
Duchampian readymade as a commodity
form: La DS (1993) is a Citroën DS, modified
so that the centre of the car has been sliced out
and the two sides rejoined to create a sym-
metrical effect: the object becomes a phan-
tasmic image of desire for modernity. Similar
in conception, if not intention, is Four bicycles
(There is always one direction) (1994), in which
the parts have been fused together into an
the burlington ma g a z i n e
EXHIBITIONS
eccentric three-dimensional form. The show
also reveals that other important influence
on Orozco, John Cage’s notion of art as a
commonplace event. It includes many photo-
graphs of performance-based sculptures that
Orozco has made in the street, including
Extension of reflection (1992), in which the artist
rode a bicycle in circles between two puddles
to spread a trail of watery tyre marks.
Buchloh’s eagerness to comprehend Oroz-
co’s work in terms of the history of sculptural
media tends to apprehend it as an endeavour on
many fronts. Orozco himself seems to feel
more impelled by a single governing idea of
form, a single metaphor being more com-
pelling than a scattered history. That governing
idea makes its debut in a series of drawings, First
was the spitting (1993), in which the artist spat
toothpaste onto sheets of graph paper and, from
the edges of the white pools, elaborated
patterns like rudimentary scientific sketches of
cell groups. But that organic metaphor has
since morphed into one based on the more
rule-bound notion of the game (although
Orozco’s use of it still has recourse to the con-
cept of growth). And he is now well known for
his networks of disc motifs, complexes which
appear to build out from a centre according to
a game-like scheme of steps and rotations. The
motifs overlay news photographs of sporting
events in the Atomist series (1996), suggesting
underlying order, and more recently they have
also begun to appear alone in paintings such as
Kytes tree (2005; Fig.81). Glossing the ideas
underlying these works, however, is difficult,
just as it is difficult to draw connections
between them and Orozco’s sculptural output,
and MoMA’s show sheds no new light.
Some of Orozco’s supporters have
expressed disappointment about his move
into painting, seeing it as regressive; had they
been curating the show they might have
excised it. Critical consensus might also have
excised his preoccupation with organicism,
since this is the province of his more eccentric
ideas about ‘tantric abstraction’. But this is a
show that observes the totality of Orozco’s
work – as a mid-career retrospective should –
and while that makes it difficult to adequately
weigh the validity of the claims made for
Orozco, it still delivers a marvellously rich
show. It will take time, historical survey
shows and, probably, the trace of influence on
younger artists, for those claims to be tested.
1 After New York, the exhibition travels to the
Kunstmuseum, Basel (18th April to 10th August); the
Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges
Pompidou, Paris (15th September to 3rd January
2011); and Tate Modern, London (19th January to
25th April 2011).
2 Gabriel Orozco. Edited by Yve-Alain Bois. 240
pp. incl. 59 b. & w. ills. (October Files, MIT Press,
Cambridge MA, 2009), $38/£28.95 (HB). ISBN
978–0–262–01318–5; $18.95/£14.95 (PB). ISBN
978–0–262–51301–2.
3 Catalogue: Gabriel Orozco. Edited by Ann Temkin,
with contributions by Ann Temkin, Briony Fer,
Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Paulina Pobocha and Anne
Byrd. 256 pp. incl. 500 col. ills. (Museum of Modern
Art, New York, 2009), $55. ISBN 978–0–87070–762–9.
• cliI • february 2010 135
CAL.FEB.pg.proof:Layout 1 19/01/2010 16:21 Page 136
Calendar
London
Alan Cristea. Gillian Ayres at 80: New Paintings and
Works on Paper is on view at  and  Cork Street
from 3rd February to 13th March.
Alison Jacques. Works by Ryan Mosley are on view
to 13th February.
Barbican. The first major survey in Britain of work by
the designer Ron Arad is on view here from 18th
February to 16th May.
A new commission by the French artist Céleste
Boursier-Mougenot can be seen in The Curve from
27th February to 23rd May.
British Library. Points of View: Capturing the 19th Cen-
tury in Photographs; to 7th March; to be reviewed.
British Museum. An exhibition examining printmaking
in Mexico in the first half of the twentieth century; to
5th April; to be reviewed.
Camden Arts Centre. A solo exhibition of work by
Eva Hesse is on view here to 7th March.
Chisenhale Gallery. Work by Florian Hecker, com-
prising four computer-generated sound pieces; 12th
February to 28th March.
Courtauld Gallery. Michelangelo’s Dream explores the
making and meaning of the celebrated drawing of this
name in the permanent collection through related
works by Michelangelo and his contemporaries; 18th
February to 16th May; to be reviewed.
Dulwich Picture Gallery. Paintings, watercolours
and drawings by Paul Nash spanning his entire career
comprise an exhibition running from 10th February
to 9th May.
Estorick Collection. An exhibition exploring the
representation and analysis of movement in the visual
arts and science; to 18th April.
Fleming Collection. Paintings by the Scottish
Colourists from the Collection are here to 1st April.
Gagosian Gallery. At Davies St., work by Arshile
Gorky is on view from 10th February to 1st April.
At Britannia St. an exhibition following from last
year’s exhibition of Pop Art and its legacy, titled
Crash, runs from 11th February to 1st April.
Haunch of Venison. Video, sculpture, installations
and photographs by the Indian artist Jitish Kallat,
reflecting on the urban environment of Mumbai, are
on view here from 15th February to 27th March.
Works by the Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota are
displayed from 19th February to 27th March.
Hauser & Wirth. Paintings by the Chinese artist
Zhang Enli are on view to 27th February.
Helly Nahmad. An exhibition of works by Monet
from all periods and mostly from private collections
runs here to 26th February.
Karsten Schubert. New paintings by Dan Perfect from
the ‘Dæmonology’ series are on display to 5th March.
Marlborough Fine Art. Works by Thérèse Oulton
are on view from 10th February to 13th March.
National Gallery. An exhibition here focuses on the
Gallery’s famous painting of the Execution of Lady Jane
Grey by Paul Delaroche; 24th February to 23rd May.
In Room 1 is the concurrent display A Masterpiece
Recovered: Delaroche’s Charles I Insulted.
Parasol Unit. A group show of work by Cecily
Brown, Hans Josephsohn, Shaun McDowell, Katy
Moran and Maaike Schoorel; to 7th February.
A major solo exhibition of works by Eija-Liisa
Ahtila includes three video installations not seen
before in Britain; 25th February to 25th April.
Pilar Corrias. Works by Charles Avery run from 12th
February to 31st March.
Purdy Hicks. New paintings by the Irish artist Claire
Kerr (Fig.83) are on view here from 26th February to
20th March.
Queen’s Gallery. The exhibition tracing the history of
the ‘conversation piece’, seen previously in Edin-
burgh and reviewed in the October issue, is on view
here to 14th February.
136 F e b r uary 2010 • clII • the burlington magazine
Raven Row. An exhibition of film projections by the
German artist Harun Farocki; to 7th February.
Royal Academy. A landmark exhibition of work by
Van Gogh, the first in London for over forty years,
centres on the artist’s letters, some 35 of which will
be on display; to 18th April.
An exhibition documenting the work of the archi-
tect Richard MacCormac; to 17th March.
Sadie Coles. New drawings by Matthew Barney are on
view at  South Audley St.; to 6th March.
Serpentine Gallery. Design Real looks at industrial,
scientific and domestic design; to 7th February.
Simon Lee. Paintings by Bernard Frize can be seen
here from 10th February to 24th March.
South London Gallery. An installation by Michael
Landy in which people can apply to discard failed
works of art in a giant bin runs here to 14th March.
Stephen Friedman. Works by Cornelius Quabeck are
on view to 5th March.
Tate Britain. A major exhibition of work by Henry
Moore brings together the most comprehensive
selection of his work for a generation; 24th February
to 15th August; to be reviewed.
A major survey of paintings by Chris Ofili is on
view here to 16th May; to be reviewed.
83. Monument, by Claire Kerr. 2009. Oil on linen
mounted on wood, 16 by 12 cm. (Exh. Purdy Hicks,
London).
Tate Modern. Seen earlier in Leiden, the exhibition
Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde: Con-
structing a New World presents works by the Dutch
artist in the context of his time; 4th February to 16th
May; to be reviewed.
The exhibition of works by Arshile Gorky, previ-
ously in Philadelphia, is here from 10th February to
3rd May (see also Gagosian Gallery); to be
reviewed.
Timothy Taylor. Works on paper by Philip Guston
can be seen to 20th February.
Waddington. A group show of 20th- century artists
includes works by Turnbull, Flanagan and Caulfield;
to 27th February.
Wallace Collection. During refurbishment of the
west gallery of the museum, a sizeable selection of
nineteenth-century paintings is temporarily on view
in the exhibition space in the basement.
Whitechapel. An exhibition of photography from
1840 to the present from India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh is on view to 11th April.
White Cube. At Mason’s Yard, paintings by Franz
Ackermann are on view from 10th February to
1st April; works by Candice Breitz are on view in
Hoxton Square; 12th February to 20th March.
Great Britain and Ireland
Belfast, Ulster Museum. Constantinople or the Sensual
Concealed: The Imagery of Sean Scully is on view here
to 14th February.
Birmingham, Barber Institute of Fine Arts. 17th-
century Dutch paintings from the Holburne
Museum of Art, Bath, are shown alongside Dutch
paintings from the Barber; to 28th February.
Birmingham, Ikon Gallery. The first UK exhibition
of works by the American artist Clare Rojas (b.1976),
whose work is inspired by folk art; and an exhibition
of work by the Portuguese duo João Maria Gusmão
and Pedro Paiva; both to 21st March.
Birmingham, Museum and Art Gallery. Works by
Bridget Riley from the collection of the Arts Council
are on view in the exhibition Flashback, running from
6th February to 23rd May.
Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum. A collection-
based exhibition explores the work of Sargent, Sickert
and Spencer; to 5th April.
Cambridge, Kettle’s Yard. The first in a series of
exhibitions reflecting on ‘Modern Times’ is curated
by the artist Lutz Becker and reflects on the theme of
chaos; to 14th March.
Cardiff, National Museum. Rembrandt’s Portrait of
Catrina Hooghsaet is on loan here from Penrhyn Castle;
to 21st March.
Dublin, Hugh Lane Gallery. On the centenary of the
birth of Francis Bacon, the exhibition Francis Bacon:
A Terrible Beauty, which was reviewed in the January
issue, provides an overview of and new insights into
Bacon’s work; to 7th March (then in Compton
Verney).
Dublin, Irish Museum of Modern Art. Works by
the Jorge Pardo and Anne Tallentire are on display
here from 17th February to 3rd May.
Works by the Belgian artist Francis Alÿs from the
on-going series Le Temps du Sommeil, are on display in
an exhibition running from 26th February to 23rd May.
The work will travel to Tate Modern, London, for a
retrospective of Alÿs’s work opening in summer 2010.
Edinburgh, Dean Gallery. Seen earlier in London,
the BP Portrait Award 2009 is on view here while the
Portrait Gallery is closed for refurbishment; to 21st
February.
Edinburgh, Fruitmarket Gallery. Paintings, reliefs
and constructions by Toby Paterson; to 28th March.
Edinburgh, Inverleith House. An exhibition of
sculptures by Karla Black is here to 14th February.
Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland. The
exhibition devoted to Paul Sandby, already seen in
Nottingham and reviewed in the November issue, is
here to 7th February (then in London).
An exhibition exploring Peter Lely’s enormous
collection of paintings, drawings and prints runs here
to 14th February.
Edinburgh, Queen’s Gallery. An exhibition of photo-
graphs by Herbert George Ponting and Frank Hurley
of Scott and Shackleton in the Antarctic mark the
centenary of Scott’s ill-fated journey to the South
Pole; to 11th April.
Kendal, Abbot Hall Art Gallery. Paintings by Basil
Beattie are on view to 6th March.
Leeds, Temple Newsam House. Wonderwall: 300
Years of Wallpaper; to 9th May.
Liverpool, Tate. Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black
Atlantic traces in depth the impact of different black
cultures from around the Atlantic on art from the
early twentieth century to the present; to 25th April.
Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery. An exhibition of
paintings by Aubrey Williams reflects on the meeting
of Atlantic and black Atlantic cultures in Europe, the
Caribbean, North and South America; to 11th April.
Manchester Art Gallery. An exhibition of works by
Ron Mueck; 4th February to 11th April.
Middlesbrough, Institute of Modern Art. An exhi-
bition of drawings by Ellsworth Kelly is on view here
to 21st February.
Milton Keynes Gallery. The first survey exhibition of
work by Marcus Coates in a public gallery in Britain,
runs here to 4th April.
CAL.FEB.pg.proof:Layout 1 19/01/2010 16:21 Page 137
Nottingham Contemporary. Star City. The future
under communism features work by a generation of
artists who grew up in Eastern Bloc countries before
the fall of Communism; 13th February to 17th April
(then in Warsaw).
Norwich, Sainsbury Centre. Seen earlier in Compton
Verney and reviewed in the January issue, The Artist’s
Studio is here from 9th February to 16th May.
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum. The Museum has
reopened after a major redevelopment.
Oxford, Christ Church Picture Gallery. After
Michelangelo brings together 35 drawings from the
permanent collection to trace Michelangelo’s genius
through his followers, imitators and admirers; 16th
February to 16th May.
Oxford, Museum of Modern Art. A survey of video
works by Mirosław Balka and an installation by Pawel
Althamer are both on view to 7th March.
Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery. Sir Joshua
Reynolds: The Acquisition of Genius is the curious
title of a monographic loan exhibition devoted to
the Plympton-born artist; to 20th February; to
be reviewed.
St Ives, Tate. The first major survey of paintings by
Dexter Dalwood; to 3rd May.
Sheffield, Graves Gallery. An exhibition of photo-
graphs by Robert Mapplethorpe; to 27th March.
Southampton, City Art Gallery. An exhibition of
prints by Howard Hodgkin, seen recently in London,
is on view here to 14th February.
Windsor, Windsor Castle, Drawings Gallery. An
exhibition marking the 500th anniversary of Henry
VIII’s accession to the throne includes works by
Holbein; to 18th April.
York Art Gallery. 100 Years of Gifts: the Centenary of the
Contemporary Art Society; 6th February to 9th May.
Europe
Amelia, Complesso ex-Collegio Boccarini di
Amelia. Piermatteo d’Amelia is celebrated in exhi-
bitions here and at Terni; to 2nd May.
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. The survey of winter
landscapes by Hendrick Avercamp, reviewed on
p.122 above, runs here to 15th February (then in
Washington).
Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum. Seen earlier in
Cleveland, Paul Gauguin. The Breakthrough to Modernity
examines the artist’s Volopini suite set of lithographs;
19th February to 6th June.
Antwerp, Rubenshuis. Room for Art in 17th-century
Antwerp explores art collecting in 17th-century
Antwerp through three paintings by Willem van
Haecht depicting the art collection of Cornelis van
der Geest; to 28th February (then in The Hague).
Baden-Baden, Museum Frieder Burda. Georg
Baselitz. 50 Years of Painting runs here to 14th March.
Barcelona, Museu d’Art Contemporani. A survey
exhibition of works by Rodney Graham is on view
here to 18th May (then in Basel and Hamburg).
Seen earlier in London, the John Baldessari exhibi-
tion is on view here from 11th February to 25th April.
Basel, Fondation Beyeler. Work by Günther Förg is
on view here to 28th February.
An exhibition marking the centenary of the death
of Henri Rousseau comprises some 40 works; 7th
February to 9th May.
Basel, Kunstmuseum. Works by the Swiss artist
Albert Müller; 6th February to 9th May.
Bassano del Grappa, Museo Civico. While the exact
birthdate of Jacopo Bassano is uncertain, his home
town is celebrating his 500th birthday with a major
exhibition of his and his family’s work; to 3rd May;
to be reviewed.
Bergamo, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contempo-
ranea. The exhibition The Great Game: Form in Ital-
ian art from 1947 to 1989 is on view here from 24th
February to 9th May (see also at Lissone and Milan).
Berlin, Akademie der Künste. An exhibition of
work by George Grosz draws on the Academy’s
extensive holdings; to 5th April.
Berlin, Brücke-Museum. An exhibition focusing on
the work of Fritz Bleyl runs here to 25th April.
Berlin, Deutsche Guggenheim. An exhibition
examining the concept of utopia from the Nazarenes
to the Bauhaus; to 11th April.
Bern, Kunstmuseum. Paintings by Giovanni
Giacometti; to 21st February; to be reviewed.
Bielefeld, Kunsthalle. The survey exhibition of
German Impressionism runs here to 28th February.
Bilbao, Guggenheim Museum. Seen earlier in New
York, the exhibition devoted to the life and work of
Frank Lloyd Wright, reviewed in the September
issue, is on view here to 14th February.
Bregenz, Kunsthaus. A retrospective of works by
Candice Breitz; 6th February to 11th April.
Brescia, Museo di Santa Giulia. The exhibitions Inca
and Beyond Baroque: Signs of Identity in Latin American
art document the Pre- and Post-Columbian civilisa-
tions in Peru; to 27th June.
Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts. An exhibition
drawn from the collections of the Museo del Greco
and the Museo de Santa Cruz in Toledo explores the
work of El Greco; 4th February to 9th May.
Brussels, Wells Contemporary Art Centre. A sur-
vey exhibition of works by Felix Gonzalez-Torres is
here to 25th April (then in Basel and Frankfurt).
84. Judith with the head of Holofernes, by Salomon de
Bray. 1636. Panel, 89 by 71 cm. (Museo del Prado,
Madrid).
Budapest, Hungarian National Gallery. Late
Baroque Impressions: Franz Anton Maulbertsch and
Joseph Winterhalter; to 28th February.
Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts. From Botticelli to
Titian: Masterpieces of Two Centuries of Italian Art
includes some 80 loans from international collections;
to 14th February.
The Alchemy of Beauty: Parmigianino – Drawings and
Prints runs to 15th March.
Castelfranco Veneto, Museo Casa Giorgione. On
the 500th anniversary of his death, Giorgione is being
celebrated in his home town with an exhibition of
‘about half his works’, together with a generous
selection of works by Bellini, Cima, Sebastiano,
Titian et al.; to 11th April; to be reviewed.
Catania, Fondazione Puglisi Cosentino, Palazzo
Valle. Burri e Fontana: Materia e Spazio confronts the
work of these two artists; to 14th March.
Catanzaro, Museo Marca. Antoni Tàpies Materia
focuses on the artist’s large-scale work over the last
three decades; to 14th March.
Cologne, Museum für Angewandte Kunst. Com-
memorating the 300th anniversary of the inauguration
by Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of
Poland, of the Meissen manufactory, an exhibition here
explores the history of porcelain; to 25th April.
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Cologne, Museum Ludwig. An exhibition of works
by the Austrian artist Franz West; to 14th March.
Drawings and prints by Mary Heilmann are on
view to 11th April.
The exhibition Ways to Abstraction and Back Again:
Kasimir Malevich and his Circle draws on the Museum’s
extensive holding of works by the Ukrainian-born
artist; 5th February to 22nd August.
Conegliano, Palazzo Sarcinelli. A major mono-
graphic exhibition commemorates the 500th
anniversary of Cima da Conegliano’s death in 1510;
26th February to 22nd June; to be reviewed.
Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst. Works
by Christian Lemmerz are on view to 6th March.
Dresden, Semperbau. An exhibition of works by
Georg Baselitz reflects on the artist’s relationship with
Dresden; to 28th February.
Duisburg, Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum. A major
exhibition of works by Alberto Giacometti comprises
some 120 of the sculptor’s works; to 18th April.
Eindhoven, Van Abbemuseum. An ambitious, three-
part exhibition examining the work of El Lissitzky; to
5th September.
Florence, Palazzo Strozzi. Giorgio de Chirico’s
metaphysical paintings are shown with works by
Magritte, Balthus, Ernst, Carrà and Morandi; 26th
February to 18th July.
Florence, Uffizi. The recent refurbishment and
arrangement of the Tribuna is the focus of a show
running to 30th June.
At the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, themes of
calumny, envy and truth in Federico Zuccari’s work
are explored; to 28th February.
Forlì, Musei di San Domenico. Flowers: Nature and
Symbol from the Seicento to Van Gogh; to 20th June.
Frankfurt, Liebieghaus. An international loan exhi-
bition explores the work of Houdon and his contem-
poraries; to 28th February (then in Montpellier).
Frankfurt, Schirn Kunsthalle. The exhibition of
works by Seurat, recently on view in Zürich, is on
display here from 5th February to 9th May.
Frankfurt, Städel Museum. A monographic show
devoted to Botticelli, reviewed on p.126 above, runs
here to 28th February.
Fratta Polesine, Villa Badoer. An exhibition of
porcelain and maiolica from the collections of the
Musei Civici of Treviso is on show to 13th June.
Geneva, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire. Art and its mar-
kets: Flemish and Dutch painting of the 17th and 18th cen-
tury, reviewed on p.131 above, runs to 29th August.
Geneva, Musée Rath. A selection of works by Alberto
Giacometti focuses on his work made during the mid-
1940s; to 21st February.
Genoa, Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Rosso.
Francesco Hayez’s The kiss is shown with other
works alluding to the Risorgimento; to 31st May.
Genoa, Palazzo Ducale. An exhibition devoted
to work in all media by the Bauhaus artist Otto
Hofmann (1907–96) runs to 14th February.
Genoa, Wolfsoniana. An exhibition of Futurist
ceramics and graphic work runs here to 11th April.
Gorizia, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Gorizia.
Here and at the Castello di Gorizia, an exhibition
examines the importance for Marinetti of the frontier
region of Venezia Giulia; to 28th February.
Graz, Kunsthaus. Works by Tatiana Trouvé are on
view here to 16th May.
Groningen, Groninger Museum. Highlights from
the collection of the Brücke Museum in Berlin are on
display in the Ploeg Pavilion; to 11th April.
Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum. A small display
focusing on Judith Leyster’s Self-portrait from
Washington includes additional loans of works by
the artist; to 9th May.
The Hague, Gemeentemuseum. The first large
retrospective of works by artists associated with the
Blaue Reiter artists’ group; 6th February to 24th May.
A retrospective of works by Georges Vantongerloo,
is on display to 16th May.
An exhibition exploring the world of Haute
Couture including the latest creations of Dior,
Lacroix and Gaultier is on view to 6th June.
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The Hague, Mauritshuis. The exhibition devoted
to Philips Wouwerman, seen previously in Kassel
and reviewed on p.125 above, runs here to 28th
February.
Hamburg, Bucerius Kunst Forum. Deceptively real:
the art of trompe l’œil; 13th February to 24th May.
Hamburg, Kunsthalle. Seen earlier in London, the
controversial exhibition Pop Life, tracing the influ-
ence of Pop art and the cult of celebrity, is on view
here from 12th February to 9th May.
Humlebaek, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.
The video installation Homo Sapiens Sapiens by Pipi-
lotti Rist is on view here to 25th April.
Colour in Art is drawn from the collection of Werner
and Gabrielle Merzbacher, and contains works by
Kandinsky, Nolde, Matisse, Miró, Hockney, Kusama
and others; 5th February to 13th June.
Istanbul, Sakip Sabanci Museum. To celebrate
Istanbul’s year as Cultural Capital of Europe, an
exhibition entitled Venice and Istanbul in the Ottoman
era shows works of art from the two cities spanning
Gentile Bellini to Ippolito Caffi; to 28th February.
Lausanne, Fondation de l’Hermitage. Some 100
paintings spanning Corot to Beckmann are on loan
here from the Städel Museum, Frankfurt; 5th February
to 24th May.
Lille, Roubaix, La Piscine. The first exhibition in
France to examine the influence of the Bloomsbury
Group ranges works by Bell, Grant and Fry alongside
French associates such as Derain, Bussy, Henri
Doucet and Jean Marchand; to 28th February.
Lisbon, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The
first instalment of a two-part loan exhibition devoted
to European still life brings together 71 17th- and
18th-century paintings; 12th February to 2nd May.
Lisbon, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Centro
de Arte Moderna. A survey of works by Jane and
Louise Wilson is on view here to 18th April.
Lisbon, Museu Colecção Berardo. Seen earlier in
Nice, a survey exhibition of work by Robert Longo
is displayed here from 15th February to 25th April.
Lissone, Museo d’arte contemporanea. Italian works
of art dating from 1947 to 1958, part of the exhibition
The Great Game also at Bergamo and Milan, are on
show here from 24th February to 9th May.
Madrid, Museo del Prado. Dutch Painters in the
Prado brings together a sizeable group of the
most important Dutch paintings (Fig.84) from the
permanent collection on the occasion of the publi-
cation of the first catalogue of this part of the Muse-
um’s holdings, largely unknown to the wider
public; to 15th April.
The Rijksmuseum’s Company of Captain Reinier
Reael, better known as the ‘Meagre Company’, by Frans
Hals and Pieter Codde is on loan here to 28th February.
Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina
Sofía. Seen last year in London, and reviewed in
the April issue, the exhibition Rodchenko and Popova.
Defining constructivism, is here to 22nd February.
A major retrospective of works by Thomas
Schütte is on view from 9th February to 17th May.
Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Monet y la
Abstracción; 23rd February to 30th May.
Málaga, Museo Picasso. Seen earlier in Barcelona,
the exhibition of works by Frantisek Kupka, drawn
from the collection of the Centre Pompidou, runs
here from 15th February to 15th April.
Mantua, Casa del Mantegna. Futurism and Dada: from
Marinetti to Tzara; to 28th February.
Milan, Galleria Gruppo Credito Valtellinese
(Palazzo delle Stelline). An exhibition devoted to
the work of Maurice Henry runs here to 14th March.
Milan, Museo Poldi Pezzoli. The exhibition
Seta, Oro, Cremisi illustrates the technological
innovations in silk production promoted in Milan by
the Visconti and Sforza families; to 21st February; to
be reviewed.
Milan, Palazzo Reale. The exhibition Japan: Power
and Splendour, 1568–1868, runs to 8th March.
Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera. Crivelli and the Brera
concentrates on the artist’s great pale of the 1480s; to
28th March.
138 F e b r uary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
85. The tax collectors, by Quentin Metsys. Panel, 86.4
by 71.2 cm. (Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna).
Milan, Rotonda di via Basana. Italian works of art
dating from 1959 to 1972, part of the exhibition The
Great Game also at Bergamo and Lissone, are on
show here from 24th February to 9th May.
Milan, Triennale di Milano. Roy Lichtenstein: Medita-
tions on art; to 30th May.
Montpellier, Musée Fabre. An exhibition devoted to
Jean Raoux; to 14th April; to be reviewed.
Munich, Alte Pinakothek. Rubens challenges the Old
Masters: Inspiration and Reinvention examines the
copies Rubens made of the work of other painters; to
7th February.
The Art of the Frame: Exploring the Holdings of the
Alte Pinakothek; to 18th April.
Munich, Haus der Kunst. Seen earlier in London,
and reviewed in the January issue, the exhibition of
paintings by Ed Ruscha is on view here from 12th
February to 2nd May.
Munich, Neue Pinakothek. Johann Georg von Dillis
(1759–1841): Painter and Gallery Director; to 22nd March.
Naples, Museo d’arte contemporanea Donnaregina
(MADRE). Barok: arte, Scienza, Fede e Tecnologia
nell’età contemporanea draws parallels between artists of
the seicento and the present day and includes Hirst’s
Heaven; to 5th April.
An exhibition devoted to Cindy Sherman runs to
31st May.
Naples, Museo di Capodimonte. Here and at the
Certosa di S. Martino, the Castel S. Elmo, the
Museo Duca di Martina, the Museo Pignatelli
and the Palazzo Reale, Return to the Baroque: from
Caravaggio to Vanvitelli, curated by Nicola Spinosa,
surveys arts in all media in an international loan exhi-
bition; to 11th April; to be reviewed.
Nîmes, Carré d’Art. Seen earlier in London, the
exhibition of paintings by Michael Raedecker runs
here to 18th April. Concurrently, an exhibition of
textile works by Isa Melsheimer.
Padua, Civici Musei agli Eremitani. A loan exhibition
of paintings from the Fondazione Longhi, Florence,
runs to 28th March.
Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou. The work of
Pierre Soulages is celebrated in an exhibition running
to 8th March.
Paris, Galerie des Gobelins. Trésors des Habsbourgs
d’Espagne, chefs-d’œuvre de la tapisserie de la Renaissance;
to 7th March.
Paris, Grand Palais. Turner and the Masters, reviewed
at its London showing in the December issue, runs
here from 24th February to 24th May.
Following displays by Anselm Kiefer and Richard
Serra, the third edition of ‘Monumenta’ features a
gigantic work by Christian Boltanski titled Personnes;
to 21st February.
Paris, Institut Néerlandais. Previously in New York,
Watteau to Degas: French Drawings from the Frits Lugt
Collection runs here from 11th February to 11th April.
Paris, Jeu de Paume. Exhibitions of work by Lisette
Model, Esther Shalev-Gerz and Mathilde Rosier are
on view from 9th February to 6th June.
Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
An exhibition of work by Elaine Sturtevant is on
display from 5th February to 25th April.
Exhibitions of work by the Dutch artist Charley
Toorop and by Jan Dibbets are on display here from
19th February to 9th May.
Paris, Musée du Louvre. An exhibition devoted to
drawings by Battista Franco runs to 22nd February.
La collection Georges Pébereau: Maîtres du dessin
européen du XVIe au XXe siècle; to 22nd February.
Paris, Musée Eugène Delacroix. Une passion pour
Delacroix: la collection Karen B. Cohen; to 5th April.
Paris, Musée Rodin. The first exhibition exploring
the relationship between Matisse and Rodin, previ-
ously in Nice, runs to 28th February; it is reviwed on
p.119.
Paris, Palais de Tokyo. Work by the German
painter Charlotte Posenenske; 18th February to
15th May.
Paris, Pinacothèque. An exhibition of work by
Edvard Munch; 19th February to 18th July.
Passariano, Villa Manin. The age of Courbet and
Manet: the spread of realism and Impressionism through
central and eastern Europe; to 7th March.
Piacenza, Galleria d’arte moderna Ricci Oddi. An
exhibition devoted to small-scale paintings by the
Macchiaioli and post-Macchiaioli; to 2nd May.
Pont-Aven, Musée. An exhibition of paintings by
Serge Poliakoff is on view here to 30th May.
Ravenna, Museo d’Arte della Città. The 15th-
century Pre-Raphaelites – Fra Angelico, Perugino et al.
– are shown together with their 19th-century
admirers in The Pre-Raphaelites and the Italian Dream;
28th February to 6th June (then in Oxford).
Rimini, Castel Sismondo. Paintings spanning
Rembrandt to Picasso from the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston, are on loan here to 14th March.
Rome, Complesso del Vittoriano. The form of the
Renaissance: Donatello, Andrea Bregno, Michelangelo and
sculpture in Rome in the 15th century; to 9th May.
Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e con-
temporanea. A retrospective devoted to Sandro
Chia runs to 28th February.
Rome, MACRO. An exhibition of works by Urs
Lüthi is on view here to 21st March.
Rome, Musei Capitolini, Palazzo dei Conservatori.
An exhibition devoted to Michelangelo’s drawings
for his architectural projects in Rome, reviewed in
the January issue, runs to 7th February.
Rome, Museo del Corso. Previously in Milan, the
exhibition devoted to Edward Hopper runs here
from 16th February to 13th June.
Rome, Museo Mario Praz. An exhibition of the
Roman drawings of Lancelot-Théodore Turpin de
Crissé (1782–1859) from the collection of the Louvre
is on show here to 13th February.
Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni. A large exhibition
of works by Alexander Calder; to 14th February.
Rome, Scuderie Papali al Quirinale. The 400th
anniversary of Caravaggio’s death is commemorated
in a plethora of exhibitions; the first runs here from
18th February to 17th June; to be reviewed.
Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.
A display compares the Museum’s St Jerome with angel
by Anthony van Dyck with a second version in the
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; to 14th February.
Rovereto, Museo d’Arte moderna e contempo-
ranea. Previously in Marseille and later moving to
Toronto, the exhibition From the stage to painting
explores the links between the two arts in the 18th and
19th centuries from David to Vuillard; 6th February
to 23rd May; to be reviewed.
Rovigo, Museo dei Grandi Fiumi. One hundred
paintings from historic houses of the Veneto, dating
from the 13th century (Guariento) to the 18th
(Tiepolo et al.), are on show here to 13th June.
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Rovigo, Palazzo Roverella. Easel paintings by the
Venetian Mattia Bortoloni (1696–1750) are shown
with those by contemporaries such as Tiepolo,
Piazzetta and Balestra and others; to 13th June.
Salzburg, Museum der Moderne. A survey exhibition
of work by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner; to 14th February.
Seville, Museo de Bellas Artes. Previously in Bilbao,
the exhibition devoted to the early work of Murillo is
here from 18th February to 30th May; to be reviewed.
Stockholm, Bonniers Konsthall. Tomás Saraceno’s
room-size spider’s web, made from black elastic in
collaboration with arachnologists and astrophysicists,
was shown at the Venice Biennale to great acclaim. It
is reinstalled here in an exhibition running from 17th
February to 15th June (then in Gateshead).
Stockholm, Moderna Museet. A retrospective sur-
vey of works by Lee Lozano runs here from 13th
February to 25th April.
Stockholm, Nationalmuseum. The in-focus show 2
x Caravaggio juxtaposes two versions of St Francis, one
from the S. Maria della Concezione, Rome, the
other from the Carpineto Romano, and argues that
the latter is by Caravaggio himself; to 14th March.
Also on show are a number loans from museums
in Europe and the United States to put the
Nationalmuseum’s own collection of Flemish
paintings into context; 25th February to 23rd May.
Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie. The first monographic
exhibition in Germany devoted to the work of
Edward Burne-Jones; to 7th February.
An exhibition devoted to the prints and drawings
of Johann Heinrich Schönfeld (1609–82/83) runs
here to 7th March.
Terni, Centro Per le Arti Opificio Siri (CAOS).
Piermatteo d’Amelia is celebrated in exhibitions here
and at Amelia; to 2nd May.
Toulouse, Les Abattoirs. Early works by Miquel
Barceló; to 28th February.
Trento, MART, Palazzo delle Albere. Eugenio Prati
(1842–1907), between Scapigliatura and Symbolism runs
to 25th April.
Trento, Museo Diocesano Tridentino. Padre
Andea Pozzo’s early work is celebrated in an exhibi-
tion running to 5th April.
Valenciennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts. Jean Baptiste
Vanmour: a painter from Valenciennes in Constantinople,
reviewed on p.121 above, runs to 7th February.
Venice, Museo Correr. 19th-century drawings of
Venice, many hitherto unpublished, and including
works by Giacomo Guardi and Ippolito Caffi, are on
show here to 11th April.
Venice, Palazzo Grassi. Mapping the Studio: Artists
from the Pinault collection runs to 6th June.
Verona, Galleria d’Arte Moderna Palazzo Forti.
Drawings and models of Leonardo’s machines are on
show until 28th February.
Verona, Palazzo della Gran Guardia. The idea that
Corot can be seen as the ‘father’ of modern art is
explored here in an exhibition of 115 works spanning
Poussin to Picasso; to 7th March.
Vienna, Belvedere. An exhibition here focuses on
Prince Eugene of Savoy ‘as philosopher and art
lover’; 11th February to 6th June.
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum. After having
clocked up countless air miles over the last decade,
Vermeer’s Art of Painting is enjoying time at home at
the Museum in a display with loans that puts it into
context; to 25th April.
Vienna, Liechtenstein Museum. An exhibition here
presents recent acquisitions, including Metsys’s Tax
Collectors, (Fig.85); 12th February to 24th August.
Vienna, MUMOK. The exhibition Gender Check.
Femininity and Masculinity in Eastern European Art is on
view here to 14th February.
A major survey exhibition of works by Zoe
Leonard (b.1961) is on view here to 21st February.
Zaragoza, Museo de Zaragoza. Valencia, The Splen-
dour of the Renaissance in Aragon, previously in Bilbao
and Valenica, runs here to 31st May; to be reviewed.
Zürich, Kunsthaus. A loan exhibition from the
Bührle collection of paintings spanning Frans Hals to
Picasso runs here from 12th February to 16th May.
New York
Brooklyn Museum. A unique, site-specific installa-
tion by Kiki Smith is on view from 12th February to
12th September.
Gagosian. At Madison Avenue, works by Damien
Hirst and by Elisa Sighicelli are on view to 6th March.
At W. th St., works on paper by Philip Taafe
are on view to 20th February.
Jewish Museum. An exhibition examining how Man
Ray’s work was shaped by his turn-of-the-century
American-Jewish immigrant experience runs here to
14th March.
Marian Goodman. Film works by Steve McQueen
are on view to 6th March.
Matthew Marks. At  W. th St., photographs by
Robert Adams; at  W. nd St., sculptures by
Ken Price; both to 17th April.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. An exhibition devoted
to Bronzino’s drawings; to 18th April; to be reviewed.
Moretti Fine Art. From the Gothic to the Early Renais-
sance; to 12th February.
Morgan Library. The Library’s Hours of Catherine of
Cleves, disbound for the occasion so that more than
100 pages can be viewed separately, is on show in an
exhibition seen earlier in Nijmegen; to 2nd May.
There is a concurrent display of Flemish manuscripts
from the Morgan.
16th-century drawings from the permanent col-
lection are on display to 9th May.
Museum of Modern Art. A display of six late paint-
ings by Monet, made at Giverny, including four from
the collection, are on show for the first time since the
Museum’s reopening in 2004; to 12th April; it was
reviewed in the November issue.
Works by Gabriel Orozco are here to 1st March
(then in Basel and Paris); it is reviewed on p.134.
Neue Galerie. From Klimt to Klee: Masterworks from the
Serge Sabarsky Collection honours the life and work of
the museum’s co-founder; to 15th February.
Onassis Cultural Center. The Origins of El Greco:
Icon Painting in Venetian Crete traces the influences of
Byzantine and Renaissance art on artist’s workshops
in 15th- and 16th-century Crete; to 27th February.
Pace Wildenstein. At  W. nd St., new work by
Stirling Ruby (5th February to 20th March); at  E.
th St., thirty new paintings by Robert Ryman
(19th February to 27th March).
Solomon Guggenheim Museum. A newly commis-
sioned work by Anish Kapoor, Memory, is on display
to 28th March.
Organised as part of the Museum’s 50th anniversary
celebrations, two major projects by Tino Sehgal
involving interactive performances within the rotunda,
run to 10th March.
Whitney Museum of American Art. The 75th
Whitney Biennial, a ‘panoramic survey of the latest
American art’ including works by 55 artists, runs here
from 25th February to 30th May.
North America
Atlanta, High Museum of Art. Leonardo da Vinci:
Hand of the Genius comprises some 50 works,
including more than 20 sketches and studies by
Leonardo, some of which will be on view in the
United States for the first time; to 21st February.
Baltimore, Museum of Art. Seen earlier in New
Jersey, the first exhibition to examine Cézanne’s
influence on American artists such as Marsden
Hartley, Arshile Gorky and Man Ray is on view here
from 14th February to 23rd May.
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts. The monographic
show devoted to Luis Meléndez, previously in
Washington and Los Angeles, runs here from 2nd
February to 9th May.
Cincinnati, Taft Museum of Art. Dutch Utopia:
American Artists in Holland, 1880–1914 includes some
70 works by artists such as William Merritt Chase,
John Singer Sargent, John Twachtman and others;
5th February to 2nd May.
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Chicago, Art Institute. William Eggleston: Democratic
Camera, Photographs and Video 1958–2008 is on view
here from 20th February to 16th May.
Chicago, Smart Museum. Seen earlier in Los Angeles
and Washington, the exhibition The Darker Side of
Light: Arts of Privacy 1850–1900 examines the prints,
drawings and small sculptures kept in private collec-
tions by amateurs in late-nineteenth century Paris;
11th February to 13th June.
Columbus, Wexner Center for the Arts. A survey
exhibition of photographs and video by Cyprien
Gaillard is on view here to 11th April.
Dallas Museum of Art. Seen earlier in Michigan, an
exhibition exploring the response of Impressionist
painting to photography focusing on works made on
the coast of Normandy from 1850 to 1874 (Fig.86)
runs here from 21st February to 23rd May.
Evanstone, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art.
The exhibition A Room of Their Own: The Bloomsbury
Artists in American Collections is on view here to 14th
March.
Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum. From the Private
Collections of Texas: European Art, Ancient to Modern;
to 21st March.
Fort Worth, Modern Art Museum. Andy Warhol:
The Last Decade runs from 14th February to 16th May.
Houston, Menil Collection. An exhibition exploring
the fragmented human body in art spanning late
medieval to the 20th century; to 28th February.
An exhibition of works by Maurizio Cattelan is on
view from 12th February to 15th August.
Houston, Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibition
Sargent and the Sea runs here from 14th February to
23rd May (then in London).
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Seen earlier in
Paris, Renoir in the 20th Century runs here from 14th
February to 9th May.
The exhibition American Stories: Paintings of Everyday
Life, 1765–1915 is on view here from 28th February to
23rd May.
Los Angeles, Hammer Museum. The first museum
exhibition of drawings by Rachel Whiteread offers a
comprehensive survey of her work in this medium,
complemented by a number of sculptures; to 25th
April (then in Dallas and London).
Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum. Drawings by
Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference, a time-
honoured exercise in connoisseurship, explores the
differences between Rembrandt’s drawings and those
of more than 14 pupils and followers; to 28th February.
There is a concurrent display of Dutch drawings from
the Getty collections.
Montreal, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal.
Separate exhibitions of work by the contemporary
artists Luanne Martineau, Etienne Zack and
Marcel Dzama are on view here from 5th February to
30th April.
New Haven, Yale Center for British Art. The exhi-
bition Varieties of Romantic Experience: Drawings from
the Collection of Charles Ryskamp is on view here from
4th February to 25th April.
Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada. Maurice Denis:
Journeys examines the artist’s work as a book illustrator;
to 30th April.
Philadelphia, Museum of Art. Picasso and the Avant-
Garde in Paris surveys the artist’s work during the
period 1905 to 1945; 24th February to 25th April; to
be reviewed.
A sound work by Bruce Nauman presented at the
Venice Biennale last year is on view here to 4th April.
Saint Louis, Art Museum. Yinka Shonibare: Mother
and Father worked hard so I can play runs here to 14th
March.
San Francisco, Museum of Modern Art. An exhibi-
tion of paintings by Luc Tuymans is on view here
from 6th February to 2nd May.
Seattle Art Museum. Michelangelo Public and Private:
Drawings for the Sistine Chapel and Other Treasures from
the Casa Buonarroti is on view here to 11th April.
Vancouver Art Gallery. Leonardo da Vinci: The
Mechanics of Man is an exhibition of drawings from
the Royal Collection; 6th February to 2nd May.
• clii • February 2010 139
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CALENDAR
Venice, L.A. Louvre. 3 x 3 is an exhibition of paint-
ings by Imi Knoebel, Robert Mangold and Jason
Martin; and sculptures by Richard Deacon, Joel
Shapiro and Peter Shelton; to 13th February.
Washington, Corcoran Gallery of Art. Previously
in Syracuse, Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the
Davies Collection, National Museum Wales is on view
here to 25th April (then in Albuquerque).
Washington, National Gallery of Art. The exhibi-
tion The Sacred Made Real, reviewed at its London
showing in the January issue, is on view here from
28th February to 31st May.
The exhibition From Impressionism to Modernism:
The Chester Dale Collection comprises French and
American late nineteenth- and early twentieth-
century paintings, bequeathed in 1962; to 31st July.
45 proofs for lithographs, etchings and screenprints
by Jasper Johns are on display here in an exhibition
running to 4th April.
Washington, Phillips Collection. Seen earlier in
New York, and reviewed in the January issue, the
exhibition of works by Georgia O’Keeffe, focusing
on the artist’s abstract works, is on view here from 6th
February to 9th May (then in Santa Fe).
West Palm Beach, Norton Museum of Art. The
travelling exhibition of reclaimed paintings from the
Goudstikker collection is here from 13th February to
9th May.
Williamstown, Sterling and Francine Clark Art
Institute. The Boldini exhibition, reviewed at its
Ferrara showing in the December issue, runs here
from 14th February to 25th April.
Rest of the world
Adelaide, Art Gallery of South Australia. The 2010
Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art runs here from
26th February to 2nd May.
Brisbane, Queensland Art Gallery. The Sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art is on view
here to 5th April.
Canberra, National Gallery of Australia. Master-
pieces from Paris is a loan exhibition of works from the
Musée d’Orsay, Paris, by artists such as Van Gogh,
Gauguin, Cézanne, Seurat, Bonnard, Monet, Denis
and Vuillard; to 5th April.
Gurgaon, Devi Art Foundation. An exhibition of
contemporary art from Pakistan is on view here to
2nd May.
Kanazawa, st Century Museum of Contemporary
Art. A large exhibition of works by Olafur Eliasson is
on view to 22nd March.
Melbourne, Heide Museum of Modern Art. The
exhibition Cubism and Australian Art is on display
here to 8th April.
São Paulo, Museu de Arte Moderna. An exhibition
of works by Gordon Matta-Clark is on view here
from 25th February to 4th April.
Singapore, Art Museum. The exhibition In the Eye of
Modernity: Philippine Neo-Realist Masterworks from the
Ateneo Art Gallery traces the development of ‘Neo-
Realism’ in the Philippines during the 1950s and
1960s, in the work of artists such as Arturo Luz and
Cesar Legaspi; to 14th March.
Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art. The
exhibition Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson is on
view here to 11th April.
Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art. The
first exhibition in Japan of paintings by the Welsh
painter Frank Brangwyn (1867–1956) centres on his
relationship with the collector Matsukata Kojiro;
23rd February to 30th May.
February sales
London, Christie’s. The art of the surreal (2nd);
Impressionist and modern art (2nd and 3rd); Post-
War and contemporary art (11th and 12th).
London, Sotheby’s. Impressionist and modern art
(3rd and 4th); Contemporary art (10th and 11th).
140 F e b r uary 2010 • cliI • the burlington magazine
86. Hôtel des Roches Noires, Trouville, by Claude
Monet. Canvas, 81 by 58.5 cm. (Musée d’Orsay,
Paris; exh. Dallas Museum of Art).
Forthcoming fairs
London, / International Art Fair; 18th to 21st
February.
London, BADA Antiques and Fine Art Fair; 17th
to 23rd March.
London, Watercolours and Drawings Fair; 3rd to
7th February.
Madrid, Almoneda, Art and Antiques Fair; 10th to
18th April.
Madrid, ARCO; 17th to 21st February.
Maastricht, TEFAF; 12th to 21st March.
New York, The Armory Show; 4th to 7th March.
New York, Works on Paper; 19th to 21st February.
New York, Sculpture, Objects and Functional Art
(SOFA); 16th to 19th April.
Palm Beach, American International Fine Art Fair
(AIFAF); 3rd to 8th February.
Paris, Salon du Dessin; 23rd to 29th March.
Announcements
American Art History Symposium, Yale Univer-
sity, 10th April. Proposals are solicited from graduate
students whose work exemplifies creative modes of
inquiry and breaks with established critical approaches
to the study of American art. Abstracts of approx-
imately 500 words for papers not to exceed 20 minutes
in length should be received, along with a CV, by 22nd
February. Please e-mail material to <americanist.sym-
posium@gmail.com>; for details contact Elizabeth
Athens <elizabeth.athens@yale.edu> or Xiao Situ
<xiao.situ@yale.edu>.
The lent term Graduate Seminars in the Department of
History of Art, University of Cambridge, focus on
aspects of collecting and include Piers Barker-Bates on
Emperor Charles V (10th February), Alastair Laing on
Bankes’s Spanish pictures, Kingston Lacy (3rd March)
and a discussion on Horace Walpole (10th March). Con-
tact Jonathan Yarker <jonnyarker@googlemail.com>.
March issue
The March issue is devoted to art in Siena and artists
including Taddeo Bartolo, Gentile da Fabriano, Sassetta,
Vecchietta and Mattia Preti. See the Editorial on p.75
above.
Notes on contributors
Till-Holger Borchert is Chief Curator at the
Groeningemuseum, Bruges.
Alison Brown is Professor Emerita of Italian Renaissance
History at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Quentin Buvelot is Senior Curator at the Mauritshuis,
The Hague.
Lorne Campbell is the George Beaumont Senior
Research Curator at the National Gallery, London.
Peter Cherry is Head of the History of Art and Archi-
tecture Department at Trinity College, Dublin.
Herman Th. Colenbrander is an independent art
historian.
Catherine Craft is an independent art historian.
Xander van Eck is Associate Professor of Art History
at Izmir University of Economics.
Mark Evans is Senior Curator of Paintings at the
Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Morgan Falconer is a critic and journalist.
Jan Piet Filedt Kok is a former Curator and Director
of Collections at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
Patrick Florizoone is the Archivist of the James Ensor
Archives, Ghent.
Ton Geerts is Curator of Modern and Contemporary
Art at the Netherlands Institute for Art History, The
Hague.
Tony Godfrey is Programme Director for the MA in
Contemporary Art course at Sotheby’s Institute,
Singapore.
Yuriko Jackall is completing her doctorate on Jean-
Baptiste Greuze at the Université Lumière Lyon 2.
David Jaffé is a Senior Curator at the National Gallery,
London.
Catherine Lampert is a Visiting Professor at the
University of the Arts, London.
Jill Lloyd is an independent art historian specialising in
German and Austrian 20th-century art.
Christina Lodder is a Fellow of the University of
Edinburgh.
Jan Gorm Madsen is Curator at the Hirschsprung
Collection, Copenhagen.
Mark Meadow is Professor at Leiden University and
Associate Professor of History of Art at the University
of California, Santa Barbara.
Scott Nethersole is the Harry M. Weinrebe Curatorial
Assistant at the National Gallery, London.
Luuk Pijl is an independent art historian.
Hugo Platt is Senior Paintings Conservator at Kiffy
Stainer-Hutchins & Co., Houghton.
Kiffy Stainer-Hutchins is Chief Paintings Conservator
at Kiffy Stainer-Hutchins & Co., Houghton.
Jessica Stevens-Campos is Gallery Manager at Moatti
Fine Arts, London.
Oliver Tostmann is the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial
Fellow in the Department of Italian Paintings at the
National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Marina Vaizey is former editor of Art Quarterly and
The Review for the National Art Collections Fund.
Simon Watney is an independent scholar and the
Conservation Cases Recorder for the Church
Monuments Society.
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. is Curator of Northern
Baroque Painting at the National Gallery of Art,
Washington.
Majorie E. Wieseman is Curator of Dutch Paintings
at the National Gallery, London.
Corrections
In John Elderfield’s article ‘Alfred H. Barr, Jr.’s
“Matisse. His Art and His Public”, 1951’, in the January
2010 issue, the citation in footnote 14 should have read:
A.H. Barr, Jr.: ‘Modern Art Makes History, Too’, Col-
lege Art Journal 1/1 (November 1941), pp.3–6, and not
January 1941, as published.
In Alvar Gonzáles-Palacios’s review of Carlos IV
Mecenas y Coleccionista (October 2009, pp.714–15) the
name of José-Luis Sanchez, co-curator of the exhibi-
tion, was unfortunately omitted from the authors of
the catalogue.