View of the Forum of Nerva from the Temple of Minerva, Rome

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