Van Scorel Research Articles

Rasuta frankapanska baština – Dürerov nepoznati muškarac i van Scorelov plemeniti Mlečanin

Since 1753, the British Museum has housed Albrecht Dürer’s Portrait of an Unknown Man (The British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, inv. no. SL 5218.22), which was bequeathed to the museum by Sir Hans Sloane. After the death of the German collector Johann Gottlob von Quandt in 1859, the Portrait of a Venetian Nobleman by Jan van Scorel was initially sold to a private collection in Oldenburg (Grossherzögliche Gemäldegalerie) in 1868, and later acquired by the Oldenburg State Museum (Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Oldenburg, inv. no. LMO 15.567) in 1922. Art historians have been studying these works since the 19th century and have successfully attributed the portraits. However, they have been unable to identify the sitter. Furthermore, the two portraits have not been compared or linked, despite depicting the same individual.

Mapping the wet land

Although the well-documented cartographic involvement of painters has received some partial academic interest, this essay makes a contextual and comparative analysis of the phenomenon of the painter-cartographer in the Low Countries between 1480 and 1550. Contrary to a previous generation of painters, these artists’ involvement in cartographic mapping projects exceeded a mere chorographic visual input. As their familiarity with geometrical principles and trigonometry increased, so did their involvement shift from a purely aesthetic role towards an active input on the technical and scientific design process. By combining art historical archival research with architectural history and the history of mapmaking, this paper explores new perspectives on what united art and science during the early sixteenth century. It is argued that painters’ cartographical endeavors were never considered a side-business next to their more regular painting commissions, but rather that their cartographic involvement aided artists such as Lanceloot Blondeel, Pieter Pourbus, and Jan van Scorel to elevate their social position by their display of geometrical knowledge and their expertise as ingenious geometers.

Exploring Benzyl Alcohol Derivatives and Related Compounds in the Cleaning of Oil Paintings

ABSTRACT This study examines five benzyl alcohol derivatives and three chemically similar compounds and compares them against benzyl alcohol in gelled emulsions for the removal of overpaint during cleaning of oil paintings. Comparative cleaning tests using xanthan gels, Pemulen® TR-2 gels, and neat solvent were made on overpaint on fragments of a seventeenth-century test painting. This approach demonstrated that molecular changes to a benzyl alcohol core resulted in enhanced control during the cleaning process. In some cases a benzyl alcohol derivative enabled selective removal of non-original material, when benzyl alcohol appeared to affect the original paint. Select derivatives were also tested in an area of overpaint on a sixteenth-century oil on panel painting by Jan van Scorel in the Rijksmuseum Collection through modifying the chemical activity of benzyl alcohol. Finally, two GC-MS-based methods were used to monitor benzyl alcohol retention and possible oxidation in paint layers post-treatment.

A New Attribution to Jan van Scorel

This article posits a new attribution to Jan van Scorel of the imposing, frontal portrait of Joost Aemsz van der Burch (c. 1490-1570), Antwerp, The Phoebus Foundation, especially as compared with Scorel’s portrayal of Reinoud III van Brederode (1492-1556), Lord of Vianen, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Other portraits by Jan van Scorel that are related in terms of patronage are also discussed, including Portrait of Janus Secundus (1511-1536), The Hague, Haags Historisch Museum; Portrait of a Man in a private collection in England; Portrait of Jean II de Carondelet (1469-1545), Brussels, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique; Portrait of Joris van Egmond (1504-1559), Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum; and Portrait of a Man, Antwerp, The Phoebus Foundation. These provide insights into Scorel’s development of portraiture on amore monumental scale, his distinction as a portraitist from his contemporary, Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen, and his clientele at courts in Breda, Mechelen and Brussels.

De schilderijenverzameling van baron Willem Vincent van Wyttenhorst

De schilderijenverzameling van baron Willem Vincent van Wyttenhorst

Catalogus Van Nog Bestaande Schilderijen

Catalogus Van Nog Bestaande Schilderijen

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

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.

Painted Immortality: Portraits of Jerusalem Pilgrims by Antonis Mor and Jan van Scorel

Painted Immortality: Portraits of Jerusalem Pilgrims by Antonis Mor and Jan van Scorel

Hercules belegerd door de Pygmeeën, schilderijen van Jan van Scorel en Frans Floris naar een Icon van Philostratus

Hercules belegerd door de Pygmeeën, schilderijen van Jan van Scorel en Frans Floris naar een Icon van Philostratus

Het grafmonument van Jan van Scorel

AbstractJan van Scorel was the only one of the painters of note of the I6th ard I7th centuries to whom an imposing monument was erected. He owed this not to his fame as a painter, but to his capacity as Canon of the Chapter of St. Mary's, Utrecht, an office conferred on him by Pope Adriaen vl in I628. The monument was already lost during the first stage of the demolition of the church in I712 and was known only from descriptions by Arnold Buchelius, notably that in his Monumenta of I592 (Note I), while the inscriptions on it are also mentioned by Van Mander (Note 2). The description in Buchelius' Monumenta is accompanied by a rough sketch (Fig. I), in the centre of which appears an empty tondo, where there is said once to have been a portrait of Scorel by Antonie Mor, the surround of which was in Bentheim stone. One of the texts is said to have been carved on the wall, the others on the floor. Carel van Mander also speaks of a portrait of Scorel painted by Mor in I560, two years before his death, and records the inscription on it. It is generally agreed that the portrait is that by Mor now in the Society of Antiquaries in London (Fig.2, Note 5). This still bears part of the text cited by Van Mander, while examination by infrared reflectography in 1977 revealed a further part ofit, the remainder presumably appearing on the frame (Note 6) . This examination also reavealed the date 1559. In I984 three fragments of Namur stone were unearthed from the garden of the Old Catholic Almoner's House on Mariahoek (Fig.3) . The fragmentary inscriptions on these proved them to be part of Scorel's tombstone, namely two pieces from the left side and one from the top right corner (Fig. 4). This find also proved that the interpretations of Buchelius' description as a wall monument in the Italian style with a sarcophagus under the portrait (Notes 7, 8), were incorrect and that it actually comprised a combination of a wall monument in Bentheim stone and a tombstone in Namur stone. Carved on the latter in low relief is a sarcophagus with vases at the corners and pilaster legs, which has an inscription between garlands at the top and gadrooning below. The sarcophagus rests on a base with a long inscription between two pilasters decorated with grotesques and on either side a putto with an inverted torch. The find proves that Buchelius' drawing is only a rough sketch and certainly not correct in every detail and the same must be true oj the surround of the tondo.

Over de betekenis van het werk van Jan van Scorel omstreeks 1530 voor oudere en jongere tijdgenoten (4)

Over de betekenis van het werk van Jan van Scorel omstreeks 1530 voor oudere en jongere tijdgenoten (4)

Over de betekenis van het werk van Jan van Scorel omstreeks I539 voor oudere en jongere tijdgenoten (3)

AbstractSince 1931 Jan Vermeyen's teacher has been thought to have been Jan Gossaert rather than Jan van Scorel. Yet the Holy Family in Haarlem (Fig. I), which may claim to be his earliest known work, clearly shows the influence of both these artists. The main obstacle to the acceptance of a close relationship between Vermeyen and Scorel was a problem of chronology: Scorel returned from Rome to settle in Utrecht in I524, while Vermeyen was supposed already to have entered the service of Margaret of Austria as a court painter in I525. However, the documentary evidence available allows of a somewhat different interpretation. It is likely that Vermeyen did not get his official appointment until May I529 and that he moved from Utrecht to Malines during the course of I527, possibly at the same time as Jan van Scorel left for Haarlem and because of the same unrest in Utrecht. A petition handed in by Vermeyen after the death of Margaret of Austria on 27 November I530 mentions a number of works that must have been executed before that date. These include not only two portraits of Erard de la Marck, Bishop of Liege (cf.Fig. 2), but also one of a certain Jean Denis, which is stated in the inventory of the princess's estate to have been done by candlelight. In view of the description of this lost work, the Marriage at Cana recently acquired by the Rijksmuseum (Figs. 4 and 5) may well be a relatively early work. A date in the early I530's would be in keeping with the costume of the lute player (a portrait?) shown there, while the style of painting is close to that of the portrait dated I53 I of Felipe de Guevara (see Note 6) . Also very similar in style, particularly in the use of chiaroscuro, is a Head of a Woman, a fragment in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (Fig. 6) which is attributed to Jan van Scorel, but differs from his work precisely in the greater contribution the chiaroscuro makes to the suggestion of plasticity. A Holy Family by the Fire in Vienna (see Note I9), though also dealing with the effect of artificial lighting, would seem to represent a somewhat later phase in that the modelling of the figures lends them a relief-like character. There has been a tendency to date this phase around I545, i.e. in the proximity of Vermeyen's etchings on which the date, if there is one, is invariably I545 or I546. Some of the etchings do bear a close resemblance to the Holy Family by the Fire, but it should be borne in mind that they may well reproduce much earlier works, as is demonstrably the case in quite afew instances: a portrait of before I530 (Note 3), a type of woman already found in the early Holy Family in Haarlem (Note II) and motifs that Vermeyen must have recorded during his visits to Tunis in I534-5 and Spain in I539 (Note 25) . Since the etchings are not, therefore, reliable documents for dating other works in a similar style, a painted copy of a lost work from the Tunisian campaign takes on an added significance. This is Rubens' copy of the portrait of Mulay Ahmed, now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (Fig. g) . Although Rubens' interpretation of Vermeyen's original no doubt contributes to the powerful qualities of his copy, something of the firm plasticity and colourful appearance of the sitter must be due to the protoope and may be taken as typical of Vermeyen's style of the mid-I530's. Thus like Maerten van Heemskerck, though superior to him as a painter, Vermeyen seems to have broken away from Jan van Scorel's influence in the course of the I530's.

Over de betekenis van het werk van Jan van Scorel omstreeks 1530 voor oudere en jongere tijdgenoten (I)

AbstractIn 1966 (Note 3) the writer tentatively identified the author of a small group of paintings, done between 1515 and around 1525 (Fig. 1), as the Haarlem painter Cornelis Willemsz., who according to Van Mander was the first teacher of both Jan van Scorel and Maerten van Heemskerck, probably around 1510. Confirmation of this hypothesis can hardly be expected to come from stylistic similarities between the works of the older artist and those produced by Scorel and Heemskerck around 1530, influenced as these latter are by contemporary Italian art. To the works of'Cornelis Willemsz.' may now be added two altar-wings and a St. Mary Magdalene (Figs. 2 and 4, present whereabouts of both unknown) dating from the years around 1530 and clearly exhibiting different phases of the influence of the St. Mary Magdalene Jan van Scorel executed in Haarlem when he worked there in 1527 and subsequent years (Fig.3). These pictures clearly demonstrate that the new style Scorel introduced in Haarlem had its impact not only on young artists of his own generation - such as Maerten van Heemskerck - but also on an older artist, who had possibly been his teacher. The latter's St. Mary Magdalene, clumsy as it is, must have won a certain appreciation among younger artists (cf. Figs. 5 and 6, Notes 10 and II).

A woodcut of the Flood re-attributed to Jan van Scorel

A woodcut of the Flood re-attributed to Jan van Scorel

Over de betekenis van het werk van Jan van Scorel omstreeks 1530 voor oudere en jongere tijdgenoten (2)

AbstractThe Portrait of a 42 year-old Man in the Von Wied Collection (Fig. 2, Notes 3 and 5) has repeatedly been associated with Maerten van Heemskerck's Portrait of a 34 year-old Man (traditionally identified as Pieter Bicker) in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (Fig. I, Notes 1 and 2) and attributed to the same artist. However, in view of the inconsistencies and weaknesses in the former, the undeniable similarities that exist between the two pictures should be interpreted as evidence that this painting was based on the one in Amsterdam and was done by an imitator of Heemskerck. A small number o f other works, known in the original or from copies, may be attributed to the same hand, mainly on the basis of a peculiar deformity that mars the depiction of the hands (Fig. 3-6). One of them is a portrait (known from two copies, Figs. 5 and 6) of a member of a prominent family in Alkmaar which leads one to think that the artist was active in that city. The predominance of Heemskerck's influence over that of Jan van Scorel, as seen in the work of the Pseudo-Heemskerck, appears to illustrate a certain amount of competition between Jan van Scorel and his assistant and junior by a few years, Maerten van Heemskerck. It lends credibility to Carel van Mander's story (in his biography of Heemskerck) according to which Scorel allowed Heemskerck to leave his workshop because he was jealous of the latter's success.

Rubens and Van Scorel

Rubens and Van Scorel

Research during the "Jan van Scorel in Utrecht" Exhibition: A Report

Research during the "Jan van Scorel in Utrecht" Exhibition: A Report

Underdrawings in the workshop production of Jan van Scorel - A study with infrared reflectography

Underdrawings in the workshop production of Jan van Scorel - A study with infrared reflectography

Jan van Scorel, Additional Documents from the Church Records of Utrecht

Jan van Scorel, Additional Documents from the Church Records of Utrecht

A Polyptych by Jan Van Scorel painted for Marchiennes Abbey

A Polyptych by Jan Van Scorel painted for Marchiennes Abbey