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Lot Essay
Karel van Mander is best known as the author of Het Schilderboeck (The Painter's Book), published in Haarlem in 1604. Modelled on Vasari's Lives of the Artists, Het Schilderboeck is the first extensive account of the lives of the major Northern European artists, and also contains Van Mander's views concerning the theory and practice of painting. A gifted artist himself, Van Mander was the oldest member of the group of Dutch painters called the Haarlem Mannerists, and his work formed an important link between late sixteenth-century Netherlandish art and the seventeenth-century Dutch school.
Van Mander was born in Meulenbeke, a small town in western Flanders. After a short period of study with the poet-painter Lucas de Heere, Van Mander became a pupil of Pieter Vlerick (1568-69). Between 1573 and 1577, Van Mander travelled around Italy, spending most of his time in Rome, where he sketched ancient ruins with his fellow artist Bartholomeus Spranger. After working briefly in Meulenbeke, Courtrai and Bruges, van Mander settled in Haarlem in 1583. There, along with Hendrick Goltzius and Cornelis van Haarlem, he founded the so-called 'Haarlem Academy', an informal school for young artists in which van Mander's theories were put into practice. Van Mander moved to Amsterdam in 1604, where he died two years later.
The present work is one of four known representations of The Adoration of the Shepherds painted by Van Mander in the 1590s, and is, according to Marjolein Leesberg, one of his finest works. The first version, which dates from the early part of the decade, is in the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. A second version, signed and dated 1596, is in the Národní Gallery in Prague, and although smaller in scale is closest to the present painting in format and compositional arrangement. The horizontal version now in the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem was painted in the same year as our picture, but shows a greater stillness and simplicity of conception.
In all four paintings, the nocturnal scene is set within the ancient ruins of the Forum, which van Mander had sketched during his stay in Rome nearly twenty years earlier. These architectural ruins probably symbolize the Old Dispensation, or the era 'under Law' which, according to Christian tradition, preceded the era 'under Grace' initiated by the birth of Christ. The huge column prominently placed on the right of the composition is another recurring feature in Netherlandish Nativity scenes, and alludes both to the column on which the Virgin was said to have supported herself 'when the hour of giving birth had come' and to the column to which Christ would be tied when suffering the Flagellation. Similarly, the hollow or grotto-like opening in the foreground may symbolize the cave in Bethlehem where, according to ancient tradition, the birth of Jesus actually occurred.
Leesberg has pointed out that although certain aspects of the composition--such as the motif of the dog curled up in the foreground and the angels in the heavenly light above--may have been inspired by Vasari's Adoration of the Shepherds of 1553 (Borghese Gallery, Rome), the most important source for the picture is an engraving by Philips Galle after Frans Floris of The Adoration of the Shepherds, dated 1564 (see Carl van de Velde, Frans Floris, Leven en Werken, Brussels, 1975, 2, fig. 175). From this print, van Mander seems to have borrowed the kneeling woman at the foot of the diagonally-placed crib of the Christ Child, the large arches of the ruins in the background, and the semi-circular arrangement of the figures around the Christ Child.
The present picture may have been one of the 'two Christmas Nights' painted by van Mander for the Amsterdam art dealer Jacques Razet, cited in the appendix of the 1618 edition of Het Schilderboeck.
Van Mander was born in Meulenbeke, a small town in western Flanders. After a short period of study with the poet-painter Lucas de Heere, Van Mander became a pupil of Pieter Vlerick (1568-69). Between 1573 and 1577, Van Mander travelled around Italy, spending most of his time in Rome, where he sketched ancient ruins with his fellow artist Bartholomeus Spranger. After working briefly in Meulenbeke, Courtrai and Bruges, van Mander settled in Haarlem in 1583. There, along with Hendrick Goltzius and Cornelis van Haarlem, he founded the so-called 'Haarlem Academy', an informal school for young artists in which van Mander's theories were put into practice. Van Mander moved to Amsterdam in 1604, where he died two years later.
The present work is one of four known representations of The Adoration of the Shepherds painted by Van Mander in the 1590s, and is, according to Marjolein Leesberg, one of his finest works. The first version, which dates from the early part of the decade, is in the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. A second version, signed and dated 1596, is in the Národní Gallery in Prague, and although smaller in scale is closest to the present painting in format and compositional arrangement. The horizontal version now in the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem was painted in the same year as our picture, but shows a greater stillness and simplicity of conception.
In all four paintings, the nocturnal scene is set within the ancient ruins of the Forum, which van Mander had sketched during his stay in Rome nearly twenty years earlier. These architectural ruins probably symbolize the Old Dispensation, or the era 'under Law' which, according to Christian tradition, preceded the era 'under Grace' initiated by the birth of Christ. The huge column prominently placed on the right of the composition is another recurring feature in Netherlandish Nativity scenes, and alludes both to the column on which the Virgin was said to have supported herself 'when the hour of giving birth had come' and to the column to which Christ would be tied when suffering the Flagellation. Similarly, the hollow or grotto-like opening in the foreground may symbolize the cave in Bethlehem where, according to ancient tradition, the birth of Jesus actually occurred.
Leesberg has pointed out that although certain aspects of the composition--such as the motif of the dog curled up in the foreground and the angels in the heavenly light above--may have been inspired by Vasari's Adoration of the Shepherds of 1553 (Borghese Gallery, Rome), the most important source for the picture is an engraving by Philips Galle after Frans Floris of The Adoration of the Shepherds, dated 1564 (see Carl van de Velde, Frans Floris, Leven en Werken, Brussels, 1975, 2, fig. 175). From this print, van Mander seems to have borrowed the kneeling woman at the foot of the diagonally-placed crib of the Christ Child, the large arches of the ruins in the background, and the semi-circular arrangement of the figures around the Christ Child.
The present picture may have been one of the 'two Christmas Nights' painted by van Mander for the Amsterdam art dealer Jacques Razet, cited in the appendix of the 1618 edition of Het Schilderboeck.