Over Jan van Scorel in Venetië en het vroege werk van Lambert Sustris

Abstract

AbstractThe information we have about Jan van Scorel's presence, work and contacts in Venice around 1520-21 comes from Karel van Mander and a number of paintings, some of them dated. Of the van Scorel paintings in Venetian collections mentioned by Marcantonio Michiel, this article places the recently found Crossing of the Red Sea chronologically in the artist's 'Venetian' oeuvre. The painting is reminiscent of the triptych in Obervellach, dated 15 19. In terms of technique, colouring and figuration it is less dependent on Venetian painting than Tobias and the Angel in Düsseldorf, dated 1521. With regard to a number of compositional and iconographical elements, on the other hand, Scorel's Crossing seems to draw on Titian's large woodcut of the same subject. The Amsterdam painter Lambert Sustris went to Venice about fifteen years after van Scorel. In the 1540s he settled in Padua. Sustris is chiefly known for his portraits and for his landscapes with religious and mythological themes, some of which are of outstanding quality. They unite the northern and Venetian, notably Titian, traditions in a suggestive manner, often featuring antiquary and Raphaclesque elements. In this article new arguments are presented in favour of Peltzer's assumption that Sustris was a pupil of van Scorel's, probably around 1530. In that connection the Sermon of John the Baptist (Utrecht, Centraal Museum), formerly regarded as van Scorel's work and bearing a signature commencing with the letter L and otherwise illegible, is attributed here to Sustris. Sustris may also have designed two frieze-like prints with hunting representations, which exhibit Scorelian traits in the landscape and elsewhere. The powerful influences of classical art and Raphael on the figures and composition apparently stem from Sustris' sojourn in Rome. In view of the fact that these prints are clearly devoid of the 'venetianized' style on which Sustris embarked shortly before 1540, the artist's designs probably predate his move to the Venetian Republic.