Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 66.2 cm × width 82.6 cm
Jan Both
Street Scene with Roman Ruins
c. 1642 - c. 1644
Inscriptions
- signature, lower right, on a stone (J and B ligated): JBoth .
Technical notes
Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been preserved. Some cusping is visible at the bottom.
Preparatory layers The triple ground extends up to the tacking edges. The first, off-white layer contains white pigment particles with a minute addition of black and earth pigments. The thin, second ground consists of a transparent brownish matrix with a minute addition of coarse white and tiny black pigment particles. The third, beige-grey layer contains white and black pigment particles varying in size, and earth pigments. Brushstrokes are visible throughout the paint surface.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the tacking edges. The first lay-in was indicated with a translucent greyish-brown paint, which has remained visible in the brown and red parts of the figures’ clothing in particular, giving them shape. The landscape was defined first, wet in wet in shades of brown and white, leaving reserves for the figures and architecture. While it was basically left in that stage in the background, more details were added in the middle and foreground in shades of green and dark brown. The sky was painted opaquely wet in wet with little contrast, except for a few lighter impasted brushstrokes giving some contour to the clouds. Later adjustments of the contours of the architecture and details such as plants were applied on top of it. The paint layer is smooth except for a few visible brushstrokes in the sky, grass and stone in the foreground.
Anna Krekeler, 2022
Scientific examination and reports
- infrared photography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 13 September 2010
- paint samples: A. Krekeler, RMA, nos. SK-A-1938/1-2, 13 September 2010
- technical report: A. Krekeler, RMA, 13 September 2010
Condition
Fair. The paint surface is abraded, especially in the figures and the darker areas. Retouching is visible in the foreground. The varnish has yellowed somewhat and has a greyish haze in the darker areas.
Provenance
…; the dealer Martin Colnaghi, London, 1894;1 from whom, £ 66, to Gijsbert de Clercq (1850-1911), Amsterdam, 1894;2 his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 1 June 1897, no. 9, fl. 875, to the Vereniging Rembrandt; from which, fl. 400, to the museum, March 1901; on loan to the Musée de la Chartreuse, Douai, since 1992
Object number: SK-A-1938
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Jan Both (Utrecht c. 1615 - Utrecht 1652)
Not everything reported by Joachim von Sandrart, Jan Both’s first biographer, is backed by the scarce documentary sources about the artist. What is beyond doubt is that Jan was a younger brother of Andries Both and was therefore born in Utrecht as a son of the glass painter Dirk Joriaensz Both. Von Sandrart could have seen the brothers when he was studying with Gerard van Honthorst in Utrecht in 1625-27. According to him they were apprenticed to Abraham Bloemaert in those days. It is far from certain, though, that the tuition fees that their father paid in 1634-37 to an unnamed master for an unnamed child actually related to Jan as Bloemaert’s pupil.
It seems unlikely that the brothers travelled to Rome together, as Von Sandrart stated, because Jan is not recorded in the city until 12 June 1638, when he attended a meeting of the Accademia di San Luca. The two of them were registered as living in a house in Strada Vittoria in 1639 and 1641. It was around this time that Jan received a commission from King Philip IV of Spain for six large landscapes to be installed in one or more galleries in Buen Retiro palace in Madrid.3 Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin, Gaspar Dughet, Herman van Swanevelt and Jean Lemaire were also involved in this, the largest landscape painting project in seventeenth-century Europe. The prestigious contract suggests that Jan Both was probably older than 20, which would place his year of birth around 1615.
He was still in Rome on 29 April 1642, when Cardinal Antonio Barberini paid him 60 scudi for two paintings. He returned to Utrecht soon afterwards, where he took on pupils like Hendrick Verschuring (1627-1690) and the virtually unknown Barend Bispinck (c. 1625-after 1658). He was certainly in Utrecht in 1644, when he executed the background in a portrait of the Utrecht collector Baron Willem Vincent van Wyttenhorst.4 Cornelis van Poelenburch, Jacob Duck and Bartholomeus van der Helst also worked on it. Van Poelenburch painted Jan Both’s likeness in 1648 and presented it to the baron.5 In 1649 Jan was one of the senior officials of the Guild of St Luke in Utrecht. He died in the city on 9 August 1652, still a bachelor, and was buried in the Buurkerk.
Jan Both specialized in Italianate landscapes. His only dated picture is the Landscape with Mercury and Argus of 1650.6 Only a few of his paintings contain mythological staffage, which was added by other artists like Cornelis van Poelenburch. His street scenes with genre-like figures mainly date from his time in Rome and shortly afterwards. He only developed his characteristic Italianate style after returning to Utrecht. His landscapes were so popular during his lifetime that they gave rise to copies and works done in his style, or ‘in the Bothian manner’ as it was put at the time.
Richard Harmanni, 2022
References
C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vrij schilder const, inhoudende den lof vande vermarste schilders, architecte, beldthowers ende plaetsnijders van deze eeuw, Antwerp 1662, pp. 156-58; J. von Sandrart, Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675: Leben der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. A.R. Peltzer, Munich 1925 (ed. princ. Nuremberg 1675), pp. 184-85; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, p. 114; F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis: Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers [enz.], II, Rotterdam 1879-80, p. 82; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, I, Leipzig/Vienna 1906, pp. 156-57; Moes in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, IV, Leipzig 1910, pp. 410-11; G.J. Hoogewerff, Bescheiden in Italië omtrent Nederlandsche kunstenaars en geleerden, II, The Hague 1913, p. 53; G.J. Hoogewerff, Nederlandsche kunstenaars te Rome (1600-1725): Uittreksels uit de parochiale archieven, The Hague 1942, pp. 108, 110; L. de Bruyn, ‘Het geboortejaar van Jan Both’, Oud Holland 67 (1952), pp. 110-12; M.R. Waddingham, ‘Andries and Jan Both in France and Italy’, Paragone, no. 171 (1964), pp. 13-43, esp. pp. 13-16, 25-28; Blankert in A. Blankert, H.J. de Smedt and M.E. Houtzager, Nederlandse 17e eeuwse Italianiserende landschapschilders, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum) 1965, pp. 112-15; M.A. Lavin, Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents and Inventories of Art, New York 1975, p. 8; J.D. Burke, Jan Both: Paintings, Drawings and Prints, New York/London 1976, pp. 34-39; Chong in P.C. Sutton et al., Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Painting, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Boston (Museum of Fine Arts)/Philadelphia (Philadelphia Museum of Art) 1987-88, pp. 276-77; Blankert in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XIII, Munich/Leipzig 1996, pp. 241-42; Bok in J.A. Spicer and L.F. Orr (eds.), Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht during the Golden Age, exh. cat. San Francisco (Fine Arts Museum)/Baltimore (The Walters Art Gallery)/London (The National Gallery) 1997-98, pp. 377-78
Entry
Blankert was the first to point out that this picture by Jan Both must be the companion piece to the Landscape with a Ruined Temple and Card Players in Munich (fig. a).7 Not only are the dimensions almost the same but the compositions and the placement of the figures are each other’s mirror image. Burke went a step further and proposed that the two paintings represent different times of the day. The warmly lit Rijksmuseum scene seems to be illuminated by the evening sun, while the cooler tonality of the Munich canvas suggests the light of morning.8 This led Salerno to assume that the pendants were the same as the ones that Joachim von Sandrart reported as being in his own collection.9 However, there is no firm evidence of this. If the two scenes were indeed intended to be a pair, which is by no means certain, they were separated a long time ago. The one in Munich was already in the Kurfürstliche Sammlung there in the eighteenth century,10 while the one in Amsterdam only emerged on the art market in London in 1894.
The composition of the landscape has an interesting sense of recession into depth thanks to the prominent classical ruins. The one in the right foreground could be that of the Temple of Antonius and Faustina in the Forum Romanum. It has been suggested that the triumphal arch in the centre is that of Titus.11 It too stands in the Forum, and before it was restored in the eighteenth century it had a sloping side. That feature would not rule out the Arch of Drusus either; in fact the broken column just to the left of the opening makes that even more likely. In any event, there is a close correspondence, albeit reversed left for right, with the arch depicted by the artist in the painting now in the Duke of Devonshire’s collection at Chatsworth.12 The building vaguely visible in the background is based on the Colosseum. The architecture in this cityscape is a free interpretation and compilation of classical ruins to be seen in Rome, so this is a true capriccio.
The scene is dominated by men in large hats in the bambocciante style popularized in Rome by Pieter van Laer.13 Von Sandrart’s statement that the Both brothers collaborated on paintings has led to the suggestion that the figures in this cityscape are by Andries.14 In contrast to those in the Munich canvas, which were definitely by him, Blankert felt that there was an absence of the liveliness and caricatural found in that work, which rightly convinced him that the Amsterdam picture must be by Jan alone.15 Since the latter produced street scenes of this kind while he was living in Rome, and given the attribution of the staffage to him, this canvas was probably executed shortly after Andries’s death in 1642.
Richard Harmanni, 2022
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
Artists in 17th Century Rome, dealer cat. London (Wildenstein & Co. Ltd) 1955, pp. 13-14, no. 11; J.D. Burke, Jan Both: Paintings, Drawings and Prints, New York/London 1976, pp. 184-85, no. 7; F.J. Duparc and L.L. Graif, Italian Recollections: Dutch Painters of the Golden Age, exh. cat. Montreal (Museum of Fine Arts) 1990, pp. 80-81, no. 49, with earlier literature; De Meyere in D.A. Levine and E. Mai (eds.), I Bamboccianti: Niederländische Malerrebellen im Rom des Barock, exh. cat. Cologne (Wallraf-Richartz-Museum)/Utrecht (Centraal Museum) 1991-92, p. 134
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 61, no. 597; 1934, p. 59, no. 597; 1960, p. 53, no. 597; 1976, p. 137, no. A 1938
Citation
Richard Harmanni, 2022, 'Jan Both, Street Scene with Roman Ruins, c. 1642 - c. 1644', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6198
(accessed 22 November 2024 17:04:02).