De Lairesse Research Articles

Martwa natura Philippa Sauerlanda i narodziny nowoczesnej podmiotowości

The Allegory of Transience by Philipp Sauerland (Gdańsk 1677 – Wrocław 1762), an artist specializing in still life and animal painting, was purchased in 2015 by the National Museum in Gdańsk. The painting allows us to deepen our knowledge of Sauerland’s artistic roots, as well as the interpretation of the painting in the socio-cultural context of the development of Europe in the early 18th century.
 In the paper a thesis is put forward about the Leiden sources of Sauerland’s work, which are connected with the painting tradition of the so-called fijnschilders, especially the work of Willem van Mieris. In the first decade of the 18th century, Sauerland painted The Young Woman in the Kitchen Interior, surrounded by perfectly rendered victuals, showing a similar gesture as in the famous painting by Van Mieris The Mouse Trap. In the signed painting from a private collection in New York, Sauerland chose historical themes. He presented a rare scene of David Giving Uriah a Letter to Joab. The painting refers to two famous works by Pieter Lastmann, but it is placed in an architectural set design analogous to Van Mieris’s paintings. An important element of the Allegory of Transience, in turn, is the relief visible by sliding down a carpet. This motif is also taken from the work of Van Mieries, but the iconography of the sculptural representation refers to Gerard de Lairesse’s print showing Chronos prevented by Prudence from destroying the statues. Sauerland is therefore close to the artists from Leiden in terms of the choice of themes, motifs, and the way they are painted. He also usually used a similar format of paintings. Like Van Mieris, the artist from Gdańsk signed his works with longer inscriptions. Although references to the Leydians are obvious in Sauerland’s early works, he does not make copies of their works, but focusing on the still life genre, he transforms them in his own style.
 The second thesis of our essay is related to the transformation of vanitas motifs, which in Sauerland’s work reveal their secularized character. The traditional symbolism of transience, which draws on religion, is replaced by the ideas of rationalism, accompanied by the idea of reason that opens a possibility of overcoming sensual and emotional limitations. The work becomes an expression of emancipatory processes that take place at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries in European culture. Referring to the philosophical work of Baruch Spinoza (notion of knowledge), we interpret Sauerland’s work as an expression of the emerging modern ideal of freedom, which was based on a rationalistic paradigm. It is thanks to wisdom (sapientia) that the subject is able to transcend the reality of the sensual guise.
 In the last part of the text we point to the important role of practical wisdom (prudentia) and art (ars) in the process of liberalization that accompanied the social changes of the time. Using illusionism, Sauerland proposes an interpretative key to the viewer: the meaning of life is complemented by art: by making art, understanding art, or collecting artworks, the rational man can free himself from the fear of his own finiteness. The function of this still life is not to remind us of death, but to point out that contemplation of art is an intellectual and spiritual exercise that allows us to find the right attitude to life.

The Infancy of Jesus and Religious Painting by Gerard de Lairesse

The Infancy of Jesus and Religious Painting by Gerard de Lairesse

Pen and Paint: The Painting Technique in Gerard de Lairesse’s Bacchus and Ariadne as Compared to the Principles Expounded in His Groot Schilderboek

Pen and Paint: The Painting Technique in Gerard de Lairesse’s Bacchus and Ariadne as Compared to the Principles Expounded in His Groot Schilderboek

On Gerard de Lairesse’s “Frenchness,” His Liège Roots, and His Artistic Integration in Amsterdam

On Gerard de Lairesse’s “Frenchness,” His Liège Roots, and His Artistic Integration in Amsterdam

On Gerard de Lairesse’s “Frenchness,” His Liège Roots, and His Artistic Integration in Amsterdam

On Gerard de Lairesse’s “Frenchness,” His Liège Roots, and His Artistic Integration in Amsterdam

Pen and Paint: The Painting Technique in Gerard de Lairesse’s Bacchus and Ariadne as Compared to the Principles Expounded in His Groot Schilderboek

Pen and Paint: The Painting Technique in Gerard de Lairesse’s Bacchus and Ariadne as Compared to the Principles Expounded in His Groot Schilderboek

The Infancy of Jesus and Religious Painting by Gerard de Lairesse

The Infancy of Jesus and Religious Painting by Gerard de Lairesse

Gerard de Lairesse in Portuguese: The Groot schilderboek in Lisbon and Rio

Through the adoption and endorsement of the ‘antique’, that was “followed by the most polite nations”, Gerard de Lairesse (1641-1711) aspired to reach out beyond the borders of the Northern Netherlands. His success with the grand and important elsewhere would eventually put contemporary Dutch art on the artistic map of Europe – or so he hoped. In that respect, the Groot schilderboek (1707) had an important role to play, and it was to do so marvelously well. It is little known, though, that De Lairesse’s encyclopedic treatise on art was translated into Portuguese in 1801. This job was entrusted to the Brazilian friar and botanist Jose Mariano da Conceicao Veloso, who was at the time the director of the Arco do Cego – the most important printing center to introduce new techniques to the Portuguese printing scene, that could accommodate ever-growing print runs. De Lairesse’s writings, however, not only contributed to the modernisation of printing industry in Portugal. In 1808 the Grande livro dos pintores crossed the ocean and landed in Brazil, where it played a significant role in (re)starting the printing industry. This article will trace the fascinating journey of the Groot schilderboek from Portugal to Brazil and assess its place in the modernisation of printing business in these two countries. In order to demonstrate the significance of De Lairesse’s musings in this process, the author will briefly scrutinise the Portuguese printing scene of the long eighteenth century (1683-1808), discuss the printing enthusiasts who stood behind the translation and various Portuguese editions of the Groot schilderboek, as well as the role of De Lairesse’s treatise in the training programme of aspiring print makers associated with the Arco do Cego. I will ultimately follow its crossing to Brazil, all in hope of shedding additional light on the purely practical side of the Groot schilderboek that has oftentimes gone unnoticed.

Art for the Court: A new interpretation of Gerard de Lairesse’s paintings for the Court of Appeal of Holland (1688-1689)

Art for the Court: A new interpretation of Gerard de Lairesse’s paintings for the Court of Appeal of Holland (1688-1689)

Blemished noses in the art of three masters: Ghirlandaio, Rembrandt, and Warhol

Blemished noses are portrayed in the paintings of such noted artists as Ghirlandaio, Rembrandt, and Andy Warhol. Sometimes, the deformity results from a skin disorder such as rhinophyma as in Ghirlandaio’s An Old Man and his Grandson or a saddle nose deformity from congenital syphilis as in Rembrandt’s Portrait of Gerard de Lairesse. Andy Warhol’s Before and After portrays a large nose before and after cosmetic surgery. This contribution explores some of the lessons that can be learned, both artistically and medically, from these famous works of art.

Una nueva obra de Johannes de Lairesse: La Alegoría del Dibujo.

En este artículo se identifica a Johannes de Lairesse como autor de la Alegoría del Dibujo anteriormente catalogada a nombre de su padre, Gérard de Lairesse. Se estudia igualmente la compleja iconografía de la obra, confundida con Aquiles descubierto entre las hijas de Licómedes.

Bidloo’s and De Lairesse’s early illustrations of the anatomy of the arm (1690): a successful collaboration between a prominent physician and a talented artist

Govard Bidloo (1649-1713) was trained as a surgeon at the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons, and later in his career, he became a professor of anatomy in The Hague and Leiden. At the end of the 17th century, he performed dissections on the corpses of executed criminals to teach and study anatomy. Based on his findings, he published a magnificent anatomical atlas in 1690, entitled Ontleding des Menschelijken Lichaams (Dissection of the Human Body). The talented painter Gerard De Lairesse, a pupil of Rembrandt, made the drawings of the anatomical dissections for the atlas in close collaboration with the dissector. The drawings of Bidloo and De Lairesse represent, in a unique and artistic way, an early series of anatomical preparations of the arm and hand from more than 300 years ago.

Amor neemt de gedaante van Ascanius aan: een ‘nieuwe’ interpretatie van een schilderij van Nicolaas Verkolje

In 2011 the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede organised the exhibition Nicolaas Verkolje (1673-1746). Defluwelen hand / The velvet touch. One of the masterpieces in the show was a painting from the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Carcassonne which, as we know from auction catalogues, has been called Venus and the sleeping Cupid since the late eighteenth century (fig. 1). Respecting the tradition, that title and interpretation were adopted in the exhibition and catalogue. However, when a classics teacher at the Stedelijk Gymnasium in Nijmegen saw the painting illustrated in the catalogue he discussed the subject with his pupils. Together they concluded that the painting actually shows Cupid disguised as Ascanius, which is based on the story of Dido and Aeneas in book 1 of Virgil's Aeneid. The sleeping boy is not Cupid, but Ascanius; the standing child is Cupid who is being groomed by the Graces. Some anomalies in the painting now fell into place. The subject is exceptional in Dutch art history. Some 40 years before Verkolje, Gerard Hoet depicted the subject in his series of paintings of the love story of Dido and Aeneas in Slangenburg Castle near Doetinchem (fig. 2), and he may have used Vondel's translation, in which some details were added to the original story. Verkolje must have known Hoet's work, or a drawing based on it, and probably elaborated on Hoet's scene even further. The only other known depiction of the subject is a print by Gerard de Lairesse (fig. 3) from a slightly earlier date than Hoet's paintings. Lairesse, though, chose a completely different solution and stayed much closer to Virgil's version of the story.

L’inspiration musicale du peintre : motifs, fictions et stratégies dans les Vies de Gérard de Lairesse

The Painter’s Inspiration and Virtuosity : Patterns, Fictions and Strategies in the Lives of Gérard de Lairesse. In 1721, Arnold Houbraken published the third and last volume of the Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en schilderessen, inspired by the historiographical model of Vasari’s Vitae, in order to defend the merits of the Dutch school. Gérard de Lairesse is described in this work as a hero, embodying the genius of Dutch painting. With few sources available, very little is in fact known of the life of the painter. Thus, his youth and training is passed over in favor of a more colorful anecdote on Lairesse’s decisive meeting with the famous Amsterdam art dealer Gerrit van Uylenburg. Fictitious but nonetheless enlightening, this anecdote sketches an idealistic portrait of Lairesse, forged from two intelligible motifs of the theologies of revelation (virtuosity and musical inspiration), in accordance with a clearly deliberated strategy : to remove any suggestion of labor from the painter’s work, to lend a poetic energy to the painterly gesture, and to establish the artist’s genius by using the same means by which saints are glorified.

Gerard de Lairesse and the Semantic Development of the Concept of Haltung in German

Gerard de Lairesse and the Semantic Development of the Concept of Haltung in German

Browning's Painters

This essay examines all Browning's poems about paintings in order to explore his (not always consistent) view of art history, particularly of the importance of Greek sculpture and mythology in later centuries, and of how medieval painting changed into that of the Renaissance. Discussion of Pictor Ignotus and (especially) of Andrea de Sarto has often been influenced by psychoanalytic thinking, but the problems in applying psychoanalysis to poems have not always been recognized. Finally, a discussion of One Word More enables us to explore Browning's (or his wife's) uneasiness with the dramatic monologue. Gerard de Lairesse was a seventeenth-century Dutch painter who went blind and then wrote a large book, The Art of Painting in all its Branches, translated from Dutch into English in 1778. Browning, like posterity, was unimpressed by his paintings, but claimed that as a child he had read Gerard's Art of Painting more often than any other book. Gerard was a fanatical disciple of Greek classicism, painted nothing but mythological scenes, and dismissed those Dutch painters we now admire, considering them incapable of nobility because of the ordinariness of their subjects. In the poem in which he parleys with Gerard, Browning imagines himself taking one of the imaginary 'Walks' which Gerard took through the Dutch landscape, turning Holland into Dreamland. He imagines himself seeing the mythological episodes that Gerard favoured and tried to paint: Jove's eagle pouncing on its prey, a vision of Artemis, a satyr at noon consumed with longing for a nymph, and Alexander in battle with Darius. The noon landscape in which the satyr's longing is described is a set piece of verbal scene-painting that does not often occur in Browning: Noon is the conqueror,--not a spray, nor leaf, Nor herb, nor blossom but has rendered up Its morning dew; the valley seemed one cup Of cloud-smoke, but the vapour's reign was brief, Sun-smitten, see, it hangs, the filmy haze-- Grey-garmenting the herbless mountain-side, To soothe the day's sharp glare: while far and wide Above unclouded burns the sky, one blaze With fierce immitigable blue, no bird Ventures to spot by passage [...]. (With Gerard de Lairesse, ll. 262-71) (1) The poet not only accompanies Gerard on his walk, he sees with Gerard's eyes, turning the dull Dutch landscape into vivid classical myths. It is a surprise, then, to read on and find that the poem is an attack on Gerard's mythologizing habit: Let things be-not seem, I counsel rather,-do, and nowise dream! Earth's young significance is all to learn: The dead Greek lore lies buried in the urn Where who seeks fire finds ashes. (ll. 389-93) The moral of the poem is that instead of revelling in mythology we should live firmly and realistically in the present; past modes of seeing are left behind as humanity progresses: 'Nothing has been which shall not bettered be Here | after' (ll. 371-72). And so the poem ends with a brief un mythological nature poem : 'rhyme | Such as one makes now' (ll. 421-22). To begin a discussion of Browning's painters with Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day is no doubt eccentric but has certain advantages. The Parleyings appeared in 1887, only two years before Browning's death, and like many of the other late poems is now read by no one except a few specialists. The syntax, as is usual in late Browning, is tortured to the point of bewilderment, leading us to wonder if he should be regarded as a proto-modernist--though comparison with, say, Pound or Hart Crane soon returns him to the Victorian age where he belongs. And the opinions are often as eccentric as the syntax. Two of these poems deal with painters, the other being a Parleying with the equally forgotten Francis Furini, who painted nudes until he gave up art to become a very conscientious parish priest. …

Gerard de Lairesse: genius among the treponemes

Throughout history many an eminent career has ended in syphilis, but the brilliant career of Gerard de Lairesse (1641-1711) began in syphilis.

Written Paintings: Real and Imaginary Works of Art in De Lairesse's Schilderboek

The aim of De Lairesse's Groot Schilderboek (1707) was to translate the laws of international classicism into practical rules for studio use. Its text is interspersed with descriptions of imaginary paintings, meant as inspiring examples for young artists. These written paintings are of the author's own invention. In two cases, however, a Roman sculpture can be recognized as the source of inspiration. In the process, the emotional content of the mythological figures was changed drastically. De Lairesse campaigned for the improvement of genre painting. One of his imaginary examples was a tea party. Willem van Mieris illustrated this subject in one of his works without, however, closely following the Schilderboek's text. De Lairesse's most elaborate “written painting” is meant to emulate Jan Steen's topsy-turvy families. He tried to create perfect genre paintings by combining the best elements from the work of his predecessors, while eliminating their shortcomings.

The complete critical guide to Robert Browning

Acknowledgments. Abbreviations and referencing. Introduction Part I - LIFE AND CONTEXTS a. The Early Years: 1812-1832 - Childhood Adolescent Rehabilitation b. The Young Writer: 1832-1846 - First Works The Theatre: a dead end? First Journeys to Italy Courtship Elizabeth Barrett c. The Italian Years: 1846-1861 - 'Italy...my University' Italy, Creativity, and Love d. Widowerhood and Old Age: 1861-1889 - Recognition at Last The 'Saturated, Sane' Public Man Interpretations. Further Reading. Part II - WORK a. Early Long Poems - Pauline Paracelsus Sordello Conclusions. Further Readings b. The Dramatic Monologue. Further Readings c. Dramatic lyrics and Dramatic Romances and Lyrics - My Last Duchess Pictor Ignotus Porphyria's Lover Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, The Bishop Orders his Tomb Count Gismond The Lost Leader. Further Reading d. Men and Women and Dramatis Personae - Poems about Art Poems of Religion Poems of Love. Further Reading e. The Ring and the Book - Basic Considerations Characters and Moral Formations Pompilia and Caponsacchi. Further Reading f. The Late Poetry - Red Cotton Night-Cap Country Ivan Ivanovitch The Parleying with Gerard de Lairesse Beatrice Signorini. Further Reading Part III - CRITICSM a. In and Out of the Canon: 1889-1979 b. Responses to the Early Long Poems - Pauline paracelsus Sordello c. The Early Monologues: A Variety of Approaches - Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister: 'Indeterminacy of Interpretation' Towards Feminist Readings of Porphyria's Lover and My Last Duchess Artist in the Marketplace-A Marxist View of Pictor Ignotus Rescuing Andromeda: Ironic and Heroic Readings of Count Gimond d. The Middle-Period Work - A Toccata of Galuppi's vs Historical Readings Historical Readings of Fra Lippo Lippi Childe Roland: Psychoanalytic vs Historical Readings The Heretic's Tragedy and the Grotesque e. The Ring and the Book: a Novel Poem. Further Reading Chronology. Bibliography. Index

Ascanius Survives

ABSTRACTAllegory of Amsterdam may be the last painting by Domenicus van Wijnen (1661-ca. 1700), called Ascanius, who was active in the Schildersbent in Rome before returning to the Netherlands around 1690. Its recent reappearance is opportunity for reexamining the artist, best known from works in Dublin and Budapest, and late seventeenth-century Dutch painting.The central figure in Van Wijnen's classical Allegory is an artist, poised to draw, who receives inspiration from the Maid of Amsterdam. Other figures on the ground, water, and in the sky, hold attributes and objects that attest to Amsterdam's supremacy in commerce, culture and politics. Van Wijnen's personal circumstances offered reasons for self-identifying with the artist whose ideal of his home city was an enlightened civic patronage that is the equal, indeed the rival, of European princely magnificence.Ascendant, too, are the arts, which classicism enabled to represent this apotheosis. Van Wijnen openly refers to the architecture of Jacob van Campen and the sculpture of Artus Quellinus, and to the gesamtkunstwerk of the Amsterdam Town Hall. His most conspicuous allusions, however, are to Gerard de Lairesse; Allegory revises two of De Lairesse's late paintings, making the revisions part of the meaning. The poetry of Vondel is also evoked for comparison of the painting with a tableau vivant in the Amsterdam Schouwburg. In the poetic allusion, Van Wijnen represents himself as the Dutch Ascanius, spiritual descendant of Vondel's Dutch Aeneas, Gijsbrecht van Amstel, returned to a glorious city that has replaced classical Rome.