Vanitas Still Life

c. 1660 - c. 1665

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 63.5 cm × width 73 cm
outer size: depth 7 cm (support incl. SK-L-6432)

Inscriptions

signature, centre left, on the base of the column (A and B ligated): AB vander Schoor

Technical notes

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been preserved and there is a selvedge at the bottom.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends up to the tacking edges. The first, thick, orange layer consists of orange, red and a few yellow and tiny black pigment particles. The second, thin, warm grey layer contains white, black and minute orange pigment particles.
Underdrawing Infrared reflectography faintly revealed fine lines of underdrawing in the skulls, describing their contours and indicating some elements, most clearly the eye sockets of the skull in the centre foreground. Several short, horizontal lines mark the separate parts of the candlestick.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the tacking edges. Two tones were used to block in the basic forms: a coarse white underpaint for the skulls and bones, and a finely ground beige one for the flowers and leaves. The background and architecture were brought up to and slightly over these forms, leaving them as reserves. The shapes were refined by working back and forth between the background and the objects. Addition and modelling of the shadows and highlights further defined the objects and only partially covered the underpaint, which serves as a mid-tone. The flowers and leaves were clearly completed over the reserved underpaint and the background. The seals, candle, paper and books were all placed wet in wet over the completed background. In the final stage the small shadows and details of the skulls were applied, with the highlights of the skull in the centre foreground added as the finishing touch. The cover of the book leaning against two others was first a light sandy brown colour and was later changed to red.
Laurent Sozzani, 2024

Scientific examination and reports

paint samples: L. Sozzani, RMA, nos. SK-A-1342/1-2, 8 July 2008
technical report: L. Sozzani / N. Baadj, RMA, 23 July 2008
infrared reflectography: G. de Vivo / I. van Vliet, RMA, 31 October 2022

Condition

Good. Small nail holes along the perimeter on the front are the result of stretching after a previous lining. The varnish is oxidized and discoloured.

Conservation

H. Plagge, 1964: treated

Provenance

…; ? anonymous sale [section Rotteveel], Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 26 January 1869 sqq., no. 213 (‘Doodshoofden’), fl. 5.25, to Hopman;¹ sale, Jan Hendrick Cremer (1813-1885, Arnhem and Ixelles), Amsterdam (F. Muller et al.), 26 October 1886, no. 81, fl. 149.50, to R.W.P. de Vries, for the museum²

Object number: SK-A-1342

The artist

Aelbert Jansz van der Schoor (Utrecht in or before 1603 - ? Utrecht in or after 1672)

The earliest archival reference to Aelbert van der Schoor, the son of a coppersmith from Utrecht, indicates that he had reached adulthood in 1621. Under local law one was considered an adult at the age of 18, so he must have been born in or before 1603. There is no mention of him in Utrecht between 1621 and 1641, when a deed places him in the city once again. Based on his earliest known work, a 1642 portrait of a woman pointing at a skull,³ Van der Schoor presumably began painting around this date. He may have pursued a different profession prior to that. Although his name is absent from guild records and there is no information on who his teacher was, it has been suggested that he was a pupil of Abraham Bloemaert based on similarities in style and working method. Van der Schoor’s tendency to sign paintings with numerous variations of his name resulted in his being misidentified as Abraham van der Schoor for many years. It was only after the discovery of his full signature, ‘Ailbart van der Schoor’, on a will drawn up in Utrecht in 1648 that his true identity was revealed. In 1652 Van der Schoor was listed with Elisabeth de Blom of Dordrecht in the marriage register of that city. The union was annulled before it was consummated, though, because of the bride’s fear that he was only after her money. After a two-year court battle, Van der Schoor was awarded financial compensation for his claim that she was in breach of contract. In 1666, he was sent to a house of correction in Utrecht and shortly thereafter to a local asylum. His whereabouts after 31 September 1672, the date of the last payment made to that institution on his behalf, are unknown.

Van der Schoor’s oeuvre, which currently consists of about 30 works, most of which are signed, comprises portraits, Caravaggesque musical companies and histories, and fish and vanitas still lifes. His genre and history paintings, characterized by vibrant colours and animated, sharply lit figures, are indebted both stylistically and compositionally to such Utrecht artists as Abraham Bloemaert, Dirck van Baburen and Jan Gerritsz van Bronckhorst, among others. The fact that the only two sitters who have been identified in his portraits were not from Utrecht implies that he had established a reputation outside his native city. Van der Schoor turned from figure to still-life painting in the late 1650s and focused almost exclusively on fish and vanitas scenes from then on. This shift in subject matter may have been prompted by the death in 1653 of Jan de Bont, the foremost practitioner of the fish still life in Utrecht. Van der Schoor’s last dated picture is a vanitas still life with a bust of 1662.⁴

Nadia Baadj, 2024

References
A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, II, Leipzig/Vienna 1910, p. 583; U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXX, Leipzig 1936, p. 257; P. van den Brink, ‘Aelbert Jansz. van der Schoor, een Utrechts schilder en zijn werk’, Oud Holland 108 (1994), pp. 37-58; M.J. Bok, ‘Het leven van de schilder Aelbert van der Schoor (Utrecht voor 1603?-Utrecht? na 1672)’, Jaarboek Oud-Utrecht 1998, pp. 169-77; P. van den Brink, ‘Aelbert Jansz. van der Schoor, een Utrechts schilder en zijn werk’, Jaarboek Oud-Utrecht 1998, pp. 139-68; A. van der Willigen and F.G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-Life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725, Leiden 2003, pp. 178-79; Heise in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, CII, Munich/Leipzig 2019, p. 181

Entry

This depiction of six skulls arranged so as to be seen from multiple angles represents a virtuoso tour de force within this otherwise conventional vanitas still life by Aelbert van der Schoor. While the hourglass, roses, candle, books and documents constitute typical vanitas iconography, there is no known parallel in seventeenth-century Dutch painting to Van der Schoor’s complex configuration of human skulls and bones.⁵ Very few vanitas scenes were painted in Utrecht. An exception is one by Abraham Bloemaert with a skull, bones and hourglass,⁶ which was reproduced in an engraving and may have influenced Van der Schoor’s decision to explore this genre.⁷

The present composition contains many of the same objects that feature in Van der Schoor’s only other extant vanitas, which is from 1662 and shows, unlike here, a bust.⁸ They include an hourglass, roses and the two large red seals. The latter, displayed prominently in both of his works, are unusual among contemporary still lifes. It has been suggested that they are official Utrecht seals, although there is no evidence for this.⁹ While the clearly visible coat of arms on the left-hand one in the 1662 picture may represent the city of Utrecht, the seal on the left in this vanitas has a more ambiguous architectural structure that has yet to be identified. The compositional sophistication of the Rijksmuseum scene compared to Van der Schoor’s earliest still life of 1657,¹⁰ as well as its similarities to his 1662 vanitas with a bust, suggest that it probably also dates from the very end of his career. A painting of multiple skulls by Van der Schoor listed in an 1869 sale catalogue may be the present canvas.¹¹

It has been suggested that the intricate configuration of skulls and bones was inspired by Barthel Beham’s memento mori engravings from the first half of the sixteenth century.¹² Van der Schoor’s limited palette and close attention to the interplay of light and shadow on each individual skull translate Beham’s prints effectively into another medium. Strikingly similar in composition, Van der Schoor’s painting and Beham’s engravings underscore the virtuosity of the artist by tackling the difficult rendering of a skull seen from below. Another device adopted by both of them is the intersection of skulls and other bones, such as femurs, at various angles. In the Rijksmuseum work there is an added trompe l’oeil effect where the bones and flowers project illusionistically over the edge of the table. Van der Schoor also used this motif in his 1657 painting of a young boy with fish as well as in his 1662 vanitas with a bust, and it can be traced back to Bloemaert’s aforementioned still life with a skull, bones and hourglass. The artist’s ambitious composition is also reminiscent of vanitas scenes by the Spanish painter Antonio de Pereda (1611-1678), who frequently employed highly detailed and complex arrangements of skulls.¹³ It cannot be demonstrated, though, that Van der Schoor knew Pereda’s work, so it is more plausible that both of them were influenced by Beham’s sixteenth-century precedent.¹⁴

Nadia Baadj, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

Tapié in A. Tapié (ed.), Les vanités dans la peinture au XVIIe siècle: Méditations sur la richesse, le dénuement et la rédemption, exh. cat. Caen (Musée des Beaux-Arts)/Paris (Musée du Petit Palais) 1990-91, pp. 280-81; P. van den Brink, ‘Aelbert Jansz. van der Schoor, een Utrechts schilder en zijn werk’, Oud Holland 108 (1994), pp. 37-58, esp. p. 57, no. 31; P. van den Brink, ‘Aelbert Jansz. van der Schoor, een Utrechts schilder en zijn werk’, Jaarboek Oud-Utrecht 1998, pp. 139-68, esp. p. 162, no. 34; A. Chong, ‘Contained under the Name of Still Life: The Associations of Still-Life Painting’, in A. Chong and W.T. Kloek (eds.), Still-Life Paintings from the Netherlands 1550-1720, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Cleveland (The Cleveland Museum of Art) 1999-2000, pp. 11-37, esp. pp. 13-15, 30

Collection catalogues

1887, p. 155, no. 1312; 1903, p. 243, no. 2165; 1976, p. 507, no. A 1342

Citation

Nadia Baadj, 2024, 'Aelbert Jansz. van der Schoor, Vanitas Still Life, c. 1660 - c. 1665', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5422

(accessed 19 September 2024 03:37:59).