Amorous Couple

c. 1650 - c. 1655

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 54.2 cm × width 42.7 cm
outer size: depth 7 cm (support incl. SK-L-4261)

Technical notes

Support The fine, plain-weave canvas has been glue lined. All tacking edges have been removed. Cusping is present on the left. The other sides have probably been trimmed, after which strips of a fine, plain-weave canvas were added at the top and bottom and on the right (approx. 5 x 37.7, 2.2 x 37.7 and 54.5 x 5 cm). The rebate of the current frame covers these later additions.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends up to the current edges of the canvas. The first, red layer contains some fine black pigment particles. The second, yellowish-brown layer consists of coarse white, some large brown and a few fine black and earth pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared reflectography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the canvas. The figures were left in reserve in the background. Cross-sections show a multi-layered structure. The blue cloth, for instance, was built up in six layers: orangey brown, dark brown, light brown, orange, white and finally a blue glaze. The transitions of the different colour passages are smooth, especially in the woman’s opaque flesh colours. Cool light blues and greys for the shadows and warm yellows and pinks for the lit areas have been blended evenly with the light pinkish flesh tones. The reflected light at the outlines of the undersides of the limbs was indicated with rather bright yellow and pink hues. Some contours of the bodies and faces were strengthened with a reddish-brown paint in what appear to be long, single brushstrokes. These are also apparent in the draperies, where several lighter and dark brushstrokes were added on top of a basic modelling enhancing the forms of the folds. Slight impasto is visible in the white garment and some brushwork in the blue. Infrared reflectography and X-radiography revealed numerous changes to the composition. The woman’s left hand was painted over the blue drapery. Her right arm, also done on top of the blue, was initially planned higher up with her hand just above the man’s navel lifting the cloth from his lap. The position of the man’s limbs was extensively changed, and his thumb at first lay against the woman’s right cheek. The white garment originally extended up to her right foot but was later reduced in size. In addition, the contours of the figures were adjusted in several places with the background colour. The background itself was also modified. X-radiography revealed long brushstrokes, suggesting drapery, in the upper right underneath the trees, and foliage in the upper left, now painted out with the purple background. A cross-section from this purple area shows two dark green layers, probably of the leaves, followed by respectively a thin brown, a thin orange and a bright red layer, covered by a purple glaze. The paint layers are thick and smooth and the paint surface reveals almost nothing of these changes.
Ige Verslype, 2024

Scientific examination and reports

X-radiography: RMA, nos. 1793/1-4, 20 December 2006
infrared reflectography: I. Verslype, RMA, 6 January 2010
paint samples: I. Verslype, RMA, nos. SK-A-2116/1-4, 6 January 2010
technical report: I. Verslype / T. Žakula, RMA, 6 January 2010
paint samples: I. Verslype, RMA, no. SK-A-2116/5, 17 February 2010

Condition

Fair. The ground and paint layers have two losses in the man’s stomach and several quite large ones in the left background. The surface of the blue cloth is abraded, exposing the white underlayer, and abounds with small, craterlike holes, some filled with a glassy substance, probably due to the formation and migration of metal soaps. The paint on the added strips is somewhat dull.

Provenance

….; donated by Jonkheer Victor de Stuers (1843-1916), Amsterdam, to the museum, as Caesar van Everdingen, 1903

Object number: SK-A-2116

Credit line: Gift of Jonkheer V. de Stuers

The artist

Jacob van Loo (Sluis 1614 - Paris 1670)

A baptismal record for Jacob van Loo has not survived, but his age and place of birth are consistently stated in a number of documents, including his wedding banns, according to which he was born in the small town of Sluis in the province of Zeeland in 1614. His father was a notary and both of his parents were active as real estate brokers. In addition to Sluis, Van Loo spent his childhood in Vlissingen and Middelburg. Nothing is known about his training but, because his earliest works are portraits, he may have received instruction from a portraitist in Middelburg, such as Salomon Mesdach (active 1617-32), or perhaps one in nearby Antwerp, such as Cornelis Willemsz Eversdijck (1583-1649).

The first mention of Van Loo is a contract that the Amsterdam merchant and art lover Marten Kretzer drew up in 1635 for two tulip bulbs and 180 guilders in exchange for ten pictures by or obtained from one Jacob van Loo. It is not certain whether this was the artist from Sluis. By 1642, however, he had definitely moved to Amsterdam, for a document of that year records his encounter with a 15-year-old prostitute, who falsely claimed that she acted as his model. In 1643 Van Loo married Anna Lengele from The Hague, herself a painter and sister of the portraitist Marten Lengele.

Van Loo’s earliest signed and dated painting is a 1644 portrait of a family, traditionally identified as that of Rutger van Weert and his wife Maria Beels.¹ A depiction of Christ’s Apostles sleeping in the Garden of Gethsemane from the first half of the 1630s, which recalls the styles of Lambert Jacobsz and Jacob Pynas, has been attributed to Van Loo,² and there are a number of genre scenes in the manner of Anthonie Palamedesz and Pieter Codde that must also be from before 1644. Around 1650, Van Loo, together with Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, introduced a new, very elegant form of the conversation piece, often with sensual and erotic overtones. He also transformed his portrait style from one reflecting the manner of Thomas de Keyser to the graceful Van Dyckian mode that was also practised by his wife’s cousin Jan Mijtens in The Hague. Van Loo’s earliest signed and dated history is Diana with her Nymphs of 1648,³ but he probably tried his hand at mythological subjects well before then, for in 1647 or 1648 Constantijn Huygens placed him on a list of artists worthy of decorating the Oranjezaal (Orange Hall) in Huis ten Bosch in The Hague. Van Loo and Jacob Backer were the only two Amsterdam painters considered by Huygens, but ultimately neither participated in the project. In the first half of the 1650s Van Loo concentrated on mythological scenes featuring nude figures in a style indebted to that of Jacob van Campen and Jacob Backer. The latter’s work also informed his tronies in this period. In 1652 Van Loo acquired Amsterdam citizenship in the hope of receiving a commission for the new Town Hall that was being built at the time. It was not forthcoming, however. Jan Vos included him among the 15 most important artists in Amsterdam in his 1654 poem Zeege der Schilderkunst (Triumph of Painting). In 1658 and 1659 Van Loo executed group portraits of the regents and regentesses of the Alms, Poor and Work House in Haarlem.⁴

In the autumn of 1660 Van Loo was involved in a fight with a belligerent wine merchant named Hendrik Breda, whom he fatally stabbed in the stomach. The artist was twice summoned to appear before the Amsterdam city sheriff, but failed to show up. On 7 July 1661 he was sentenced in absentia to exile for life from the provinces of Holland and West Friesland and his belongings there were confiscated. His sizeable possessions in Zeeland, which he had inherited from his parents, were spared, however. Van Loo fled to Paris, where he was admitted to the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1663, and concentrated on portraiture, now influenced by the work of Philippe de Champaigne and Claude Lefèbvre. Despite his banishment, he received numerous portrait commissions from compatriots connected to the embassy of the Dutch Republic in Paris. His clientele also included members of Parisian high society and the French court. A portrait of Louis XIV and his family is now known only from a copy.⁵ Another group portrait, of Paris city councillors, was probably destroyed during the Revolution. Van Loo never took French citizenship. He died in Paris on 26 November 1670 and was buried in the Protestant cemetery of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

Van Loo’s eclectic oeuvre consists of around 150 works. According to Houbraken, Eglon van der Neer (1635/36-1703) was apprenticed to him in Amsterdam. Van Loo also undoubtedly taught his sons Abraham (Louis) Vanloo (1652-1712) and Johannes (Jean) Vanloo (1654-?), both of whom established themselves as painters in France. Abraham’s sons and grandsons were among the leading eighteenth-century French artists.

Jonathan Bikker, 2024

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, III, Amsterdam 1721, p. 172; P. Scheltema, Rembrand: Redevoering over het leven en de verdiensten van Rembrand van Rijn, met eene menigte geschiedkundige bijlagen meerendeels uit echter bronnen geput, Amsterdam 1853, p. 69; A. Bredius, ‘Waarom Jacob van Loo in 1660 Amsterdam verliet’, Oud-Holland 34 (1916), pp. 47-52; U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXIII, Leipzig 1929, pp. 363-64; J.G.C.A. Briels, Vlaamse schilders en de dageraad van Hollands Gouden Eeuw 1585-1630, Antwerp 1997, p. 354; D. Mandrella, Jacob van Loo 1614-1670, Paris 2011, pp. 21-42, 237-46 (documents); J. Noorman, ‘A Fugitive’s Success Story: Jacob van Loo in Paris (1661-1670)’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 63 (2013), pp. 302-23; Römer in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, LXXXV, Munich/Leipzig 2015, p. 254; E.J. Sluijter, Rembrandt’s Rivals: History Painting in Amsterdam 1630-1650, Amsterdam/Philadelphia 2015, pp. 374-79

Entry

This depiction of a nude couple embracing was long ascribed to the Haarlem classicist Caesar van Everdingen. Sturla Gudlaugsson was the first scholar to recognize Jacob van Loo’s hand in the painting, and this attribution has been universally accepted.⁶ Mandrella has cogently argued the case for Van Loo in his 2011 monograph on the artist.⁷ The figure types and their smooth and detailed rendering are consistent with Van Loo’s secure oeuvre, as is the creased drapery, colour scheme and subtle chiaroscuro. The canvas can be dated to the first half of the 1650s, the period in which Van Loo executed most of his mythological scenes featuring nudes.

Although Van Loo painted a few erotically charged genre pieces with clothed couples,⁸ the present picture is highly unusual in that the pair are nude, the woman’s right hand, which was initially shown higher up, is placed very close to her lover’s groin, and there are no attributes to give the scene a mythological gloss. The canvas, however, has been cut down on all sides except the left, and is therefore most likely a fragment of a larger composition.⁹ The frankly sexual nature of the work makes Mandrella’s suggestion that the original painting could have been a bacchanal – one of Van Loo’s favourite subjects – thoroughly convincing.¹⁰

It was depictions like this for which Van Loo would be remembered. Houbraken, who did not devote a life to the artist but mentions him only as the teacher of Eglon van der Neer, stated that he ‘excelled in painting nudes, women in particular’.¹¹

Jonathan Bikker, 2024¹²

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

De Jongh in E. de Jongh and G. Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life: Genreprints in the Netherlands 1550-1700, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1997, p. 282; Giltaij in A. Blankert et al., Dutch Classicism in Seventeenth-Century Painting, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen)/Frankfurt (Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie) 1999-2000, p. 164; P. Huys Janssen, Caesar van Everdingen 1616/17-1678: Monograph and Catalogue Raisonné, Doornspijk 2002, p. 140, no. R 14, with earlier literature; D. Mandrella, Jacob van Loo 1614-1670, Paris 2011, p. 154, no. P. 59

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 97, no. 913 (as Caesar van Everdingen); 1976, p. 222, no. A 2116 (as Caesar van Everdingen); 1992, p. 64, no. A 2116

Citation

Jonathan Bikker, 2024, 'Jacob van Loo, Amorous Couple, c. 1650 - c. 1655', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8398

(accessed 10 November 2024 00:48:36).