De op- en neergang van het menselijk leven in een schilderijenreeks van Adriaen van de Venne

Abstract

It was in or before 1630 that Adriaen van de Venne (1589-1662) came up with the idea for a series of paintings consisting of five consecutive scenes, each accompanied by a saying: Armoe' soeckt list (Poverty leads to Cunning), List soeckt rijckdom (Cunning leads to Wealth), Rijckdom soeckt weelde (Wealth leads to Luxury), Weelde soeckt ellende (Luxury leads to Misery) and Ellend' soeckt de doot (Misery leads to Death). Each scene shows two main figures walking, dancing or stumbling through a sketchily rendered landscape. In Poverty leads to they are two old, blind musicians, the man playing a hurdy-gurdy and the woman a rumbling-pot. In Cunning leads to Wealth an old fisherman is lugging a large fish while a young woman beside him has a basket of small fish on her head.Wealth leads to is illustrated with a young, elegantly dressed couple, the man holding a purse and the woman raising a glass of wine. Her sister in opulence recurs in Luxury leads to Misery, but now accompanied by a crippled beggar. Finally, Mysery leads to Death shows an old beggar woman with a small child on her back being led away by a skeleton with an hourglass. Occasionally there are minor figures in the left or right background. The inscriptions are written on curling banderoles floating in the sky or lying on the ground. The desings for this complex series undoubtedly cost the artist a great deal of time and thought. In order to make the most efficient use of that investment he painted not one but several series of the scenes. Close comparison of the surviving illustrations of the different sayings makes it possible to reconstruct at least five versions wholly or in part (see Appendix). The earliest one dates from 1630, so Van de Venne must have had the idea for the series in or shortly before taht year. The next dated series is form 1632 but the other versions have no dates, so it is unclear how long production lasted. Although details of the different versions can vary, little change was made to the overall design or content. There are, though, variations in format, use of colour (grisaille or polychrome) and execution. The latter can be detected with the aid of infrared research. Some of the versions are clearly autograph, but studio assistants appear to have been at work in others. Unfortunately, nothing is known about the sums paid for series of this kind, but it seems only logical that the differences in execution would be reflected in the price, allowing different segments of the market to be targeted. The series as a whole is an illustration of the ascent and decline of human life. Van de Venne, the painter-poet, had already toyed with the subject in a poetry anthology of 1623, and he was to return to it later at greater length in his wide-ranging book Tafereel van de Belacchende Werelt of 1635. He took the idea from the literary and pictorial tradition of the progress of human life, which had been depicted in the sixteenth century in several print series by Cornelisz Anthonisz and Jacob de Gheyn II, among others. Van de Venne bases his suites of paintings on print series of that kind but gave them his own, highly personal twist. Even in the individual scenes he embroidered on the existing pictorial conventions, making inventive use of sixteenth and early seventeenth-century prints. The phity inscriptions in the banderoles are not so much an explanation of the scenes as cues for further thought, the scope of which depended on the viewer' sliterary and pictorial knowledge. Many of the ideas, expressions and associations conjured up by the combinations of word and image can also be found in the Tafereel van de Belacchende Werelt. That, Van de Venne´s main literary work, embodied his world of ideas, as it were, making it an indispensable guide in any search for the deeper layers of meaning in his paintings.