Standing Man in Oriental Dress, Seen From the Front

1603

Object data

pen and brown ink, with brown and blue wash, over traces of black chalk; framing lines in the artist's hand with pen and brown ink

height 271 mm × width 173 mm

Inscriptions

dated: lower centre, in brown ink, 1603. (reinforced with dark-brown ink)
inscribed: left of lower centre, by Gerard ter Borch I, in brown ink, P. Lasman.
inscribed on verso: upper centre, in pencil, 348; right of centre, in pencil, 267 and 170 ; lower centre, in pencil, Pieter Lastman ; lower right, in blue chalk, 448
stamped on verso: below centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: none

Provenance

…; possibly acquired by Gerard ter Borch I (1582-1662) during his stay in Italy, where Lastman was staying at the time; studio estate of the Ter Borch family, Zwolle; by descent to Lambertus Theodorus Zebinden (1809-86), Zwolle; his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 15 June 1886 sqq., in no. 309 (770 drawings and prints), to the Vereniging Rembrandt; from whom, to the museum (L. 2228), 1887

Object number: RP-T-1887-A-1165

The artist

Pieter Lastman (Amsterdam c. 1583 - Amsterdam 1633)

He was born in Amsterdam around 1583 into a well-to-do Catholic family. His father, Pieter Segersz (1548-1602?), worked as a messenger for the city of Amsterdam and the orphans’ court until he was removed from office after the Alteration of 26 May 1578 because of his religious beliefs. Lastman’s mother, Barbara Jacobsdr (1549-1624), was an official appraiser and second-hand dealer, undoubtedly of art works among other items. Her career and that of one of Lastman’s uncles, who was a goldsmith, probably influenced Lastman’s own choice of career.
According to Van Mander, he was apprenticed as a youth to Gerrit Pietersz (1566-afer 1612), a pupil of Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem (1562-1638). Lastman’s three earliest dated works, all drawings – Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness of 1601 in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (inv. no. (1961.64.6), ¹ and two in the Rijksmuseum (inv. nos. RP-T-1887-A-1165 and RP-T-1887-A-1166)² – are clearly indebted to Pietersz’s Mannerist style.

Van Mander also informs us that Lastman was in Italy at the time he was writing his Schilder-boeck, that is around 1600-03. Financially freed by an inheritance from his father, who had his last will drawn up in June 1602, Lastman probably left for Italy not long thereafter. According to Houbraken, in 1605 he was in Italy, where he would have been influenced by the brightly coloured, small-sized cabinet pictures of Adam Elsheimer (1578-1610), the naturalistic rendering of figures and compositions of Caravaggio (1571-1610) and the monumental frescoes of Raphael (1483-1520) and his school. Lastman’s sojourn in Italy is documented by three drawings. Two are topographical views in Rome, both inscribed and dated 1606: a View of the Palatine,), which in 2001 was in a private collection, Cologne;³ and the Rijksmuseum’s View of the Forum of Nerva from the Temple of Minera (inv. no. RP-T-2012-22).⁴ The third Italian-period drawing by Lastman is a copy, now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (inv. no. PD. 445-1963),⁵ of the Adoration of the Shepherds by Veronese (1528-1588) now in SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Venice (but then in the city’s Crociferi). Lastman probably executed his copy on his journey back to Amsterdam in late 1606 or early 1607.

By 1 March 1607 he had returned to Amsterdam, where he is recorded as one of the buyers at the sale of Gillis van Coninxloo II (1544-1606). His first dated painting, an Adoration of the Magi, in the National Gallery, Prague (inv. no. DO 4563),⁶ is from the following year, 1608. From that year onwards he lived at Amsterdam’s Sint Anthonisbreestraat 59. Lastman was the foremost artist of the group of painters who have come to be known as the Pre-Rembrandtists. His history paintings, featuring subjects taken from the Bible, secular history and mythology, a great number of which had never previously been depicted – or if so only in the graphic arts – often formed the starting point for the artists in his immediate circle. His most well-known pupils were Jan Lievens (1607-1674) and Rembrandt (1606-1669), who trained with him in 1619 and 1624 respectively. Only two commissions of works from Lastman are known: the design, preserved in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 3793),⁷ for a window in the Zuiderkerk in Amsterdam from the goldsmiths’ guild, executed in 1611, and three paintings (destr.) executed in 1619 for the private chapel of Christian IV of Denmark (1577-1648) in Frederiksborg Castle. Lastman was buried a bachelor in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam on 8 April 1633.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007/Jane Shoaf Turner, 2025

References
K. van Mander, Het schilder-boeck waer in voor eerst de leerlustighe iueght den grondt der edel vry schilderconst in verscheyden deelen wort voorghedraghen, Haarlem 1604, fol. 207v; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, I (1718), pp. 11, 97-102, 132, 214, 254. 296; A. Welcker, 'Pieter Lastman als teekenaar van landschap en figuur', Oud-Holland 62 (1947), pp. 165-76; K. Bauch, 'Entwurf und Komposition bei Pieter Lastman', Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst 6 (1955), pp. 213-21; K. Bauch, 'Handzeichnungen Pieter Lastmans', Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst 3-4 (1952-53), pp. 220-32; S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, 'Waar woonde en werkte Pieter Lastman (1583-1633)?', Maandblad Amstelodamum 62 (1975), pp. 31-36; W. Sumowski, 'Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Lastman-Zeichnungen', Pantheon 38 (1980), pp. 58-64; S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, 'De familie van de schilder Pieter Lastman (1583-1633)', Jaarboek Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie 45 (1991), pp. 110-32; S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, 'Pieter Lastman (1583-1633). Een schilder in de Sint Anthonisbreestraat', De Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis 2 (1991), pp. 2-15; A. Tümpel and P. Schatborn et al., Pieter Lastman. Leermeester van Rembrandt/Pieter Lastman: The Man Who Taught Rembrandt, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 1991-92; J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., London/New York 1996, XVIII, pp. 817-20 (text by B. Broos); S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, 'Pieter Lastman (1583-1633). Een katholiek schilder in de Sint Anthonisbreestraat', in idem, De jonge Rembrandt onder tijdgenoten. Godsdienst en schilderkunst in Leiden en Amsterdam Nijmegen 2006 (PhD diss., University of Nijmegen), pp. 53-123; M. Sitt (ed.), Pieter Lastman: In Rembrandts Schatten?, exh. cat. Hamburg (Hamburger Kunsthalle) 2006; C.T. Seifert, Pieter Lastman: Studien zu Leben und Werk mit einem kritischen Verzeichnis der Werke mit Themen aus der antiken Mythologie und Historie, Petersberg 2011; A. Golahny, 'Pieter Lastman: Moments of Recognition', Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art 60 (2010), pp. 179-201; RKD artists https://rkd.nl/artists/48209

Entry

The date 1603, which is two years after Lastman's earliest dated drawing, Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (inv. no. (1961.64.6), ⁸ is written in Lastman’s own hand, as it is also on the museum’s companion drawing, Standing Figure with Turban (inv. no. RP-T-1887-A-1166. The artist's name, however, was added by Gerard ter Borch I (1582-1662), one of the previous owners. These early drawings reflect the Mannerist style of Lastman's teacher, Gerrit Pietersz (1566-1612), with whom he studied around 1600. The watermark on the other sheet suggests that Lastman made the drawing before he left for Italy, where he was while Van Mander was writing his Schilder-Boeck between 1600 and 1603⁹ It is also possible, of course, that he took the paper with him, and that Ter Borch, who arrived in Italy around 1601/02, could have received the drawings from Lastman personally. It is thought that Lastman left for Italy shortly after his father’s will of June 1602 provided financial independence.

Until the appearance in 2012 of the museum’s _View of the Forum of Nerva from the Temple of Minera (inv. no. RP-T-2012-22),¹⁰ only two sheets were known from the artist's Italian period, and both are less Mannerist in style. One is another topographical view of Rome, the View of the Palatine,), which in 2001 was in a private collection, Cologne.¹¹ The other is a copy, preserved in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (inv. no. PD. 445-1963),¹² of the Adoration of the Shepherds by Paolo Veronese (1528-1588), now in SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Venice (then in the city’s Crociferi).

The Rijksmuseum’s pair of drawings from 1603 both contain small figures in shadow in the middle ground, with ships and figures beyond. Large figures in a landscape of this kind resemble etchings after Lastman's designs of people wearing Italian dress in the borders of a map of Italy that Willem Jansz Blaeu (1571-1638) published between 1608 and 1617 after a map by Antonio Magini (1555-1617).¹³

Marijn Schapelhouman, 1998/Jane Shoaf Turner, 2025

Literature

Amsterdamse Courant, 19 October 1882; A. Bredius, ‘Tine Ter Borch-Sammlung’, Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst 18 (1883), p. 409; E.W. Moes, ‘Gerard ter Borch en zijne Familie’, Oud Holland 3/4 (1886), p. 147; K. Freise,Pieter Lastman, seine Leben und seine Kunst. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der holländ. Malerei im XVII. Jahrh., Leipzig 1911, pp. 99-100, 189 (no. 47), 199-202, fig. 2; C. Müller, ‘Studien zu Lastman und Rembrandt’, Jahrbuch der Preuszischen Kunstsammlungen 50 (1929), p. 46, fig. 1; A. Welcker, ‘Pieter Lastman als teekenaar van landschap en figuur. Mede naar aanleiding van eenige nog niet gepubliceerde teekeningen’, Oud-Holland 62 (1947), pp. 166-67, fig. 5; K. Bauch, ‘Handzeichnungen Pieter Lastmans’, Münchner Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst 3 (1952/53), p. 221; E. Haverkamp-Begemann and A.-M.S. Logan, European Drawings and Watercolors in the Yale University Art Gallery, 1500-1900, 2 vols., coll. cat. New Haven 1970 , I, p. 210, under no. 390; A. Tümpel, ‘Claes Cornelisz. Moeyaert’, Oud Holland 88 (1974), nos. 1-2, p. 36, fig. 36; A. Tümpel et al., The Pre-Rembrandtists, exh. cat. Sacramento (E.B. Crocker Art Gallery) 1974, pp. 16, 19, fig. 1; W. Sumowski, ‘Zeichnungen von Lastman un aus dem Lastman-Kreis’ Giessener Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 3 (1975), p. 152, n. 4a; Peter Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, p. 138, under no. 62; A. McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate, 2 vols., coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1988, II, p. 772, no. 33; A. Tümpel and P. Schatborn et al., _Pieter Lastman. Leermeester van Rembrandt/Pieter Lastman: The Man Who Taught Rembrandt, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 1991-92, p. 144, no. 25; M. Schapelhouman and P. Schatborn, Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: Artists Born between 1580 and 1600, 2 vols., coll. cat. Amsterdam 1998, no. 224; C.T. Seifert, Pieter Lastman: Studien zu Leben und Werk, mit einem kritischen Verzeichnis der Werke mit Themen aus der antiken Mythologie und Historie, Petersberg 2011, p. 26, fig. 5

Citation

M. Schapelhouman, 1998, 'Pieter Lastman, Standing Man in Oriental Dress, Seen From the Front, 1603', in J. Turner (ed.), (under construction) Drawings 2, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200141569

(accessed 7 December 2025 00:57:29).