Portrait of a Man

Haarlem, 1529

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 48.5 cm × width 34.5 cm

Inscriptions

inscription, bottom transverse of the frame, on the cartellino: A[nn]o m d xxix // [A]Etate vero xlvi

Technical notes

The support is a single vertically grained oak panel, 0.6-1.1 cm thick. Thin strips of wood, 0.4-0.8 cm, have been added on each vertical side, and the panel has been bevelled along the bottom edge. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1488. The panel could have been ready for use by 1499, but a date in or after 1513 is more likely. Both the panel and frame have a white ground, which in the panel has been applied up to the edges. Two samples taken for comparison do not show the same paint continuing from the background of the panel onto the frame. The edges of the panel have been retouched. Underdrawn contours, some appearing dry to the naked eye, can be revealed by infrared reflectography in the face, brown fur lining and hand, although the mantle and baret remain opaque (fig. a). In the face, infrared reflectography shows streaking of a grey intermediate layer, and X-ray reveals this layer to the left of the portrait. In some areas of the brown background, a dark grey underlies the surface paint. The paint in the face has been applied in one layer, with the highlights added on top in the forehead, under the eyes, on the tip of the nose and in the cheeks on both sides of the nostrils. These impasto areas register strongly in X-ray. The mouth is defined by a red glaze on top of the basic flesh colour, and there are original highlights in the eyes. Brushstrokes are noticeable in the texture of the fur.

Scientific examination and reports

X-radiography: RMA, no. 598, 1952
paint samples: J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer, with the investigator, nos. A 118/1-2, 11 August 1978
infrared reflectography: J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer, RKD, nos. AB 271:1-16, 20 December 1979
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 14 May 2004
infrared reflectography: M. Wolters / M. Faries [2], RKD/RMA, no. RKDG319, 4 October 2004
condition report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 25 July 2005

Condition

Good. The painting is slightly abraded and retouched, and has several layers of discoloured varnish. Small retouchings are visible in the face.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1950: flaking paint consolidated and revarnished
L. Kuiper, 1978

Original framing

The frame has a segmental arch and is made of oak (fig. a). A cross-section of the profile shows a fillet, a cove, a jump, a wide tenia, a cove, a bead, a quirk, a scotia and a cove at the sight edge (fig. b). The sill begins with the same fillet, cove, jump and tenia, but ends in a bevelled sight edge (fig. c). The outside and the outer fillet are painted black, the first cove is gilded, the tenia and the small bevel are painted black, and the rest of the profiles are gilded up to the sight edge. The sight edge is gilded and has traces of paint which matches the paint on the panel itself. Both the top and the bottom connections of the frame are stub mortise and tenon joints secured with the original dowels (fig. d), (fig. e). The painting is attached in the open rebate of the frame with forged, square nails. The bevel on the sill is painted black like the tenia. There is a painted trompe l’oeil note with a red wax seal on the tenia of the sill. Discolouration of the wood on the reverse of the segmental arch indicates the presence of a former wooden block. There are also ‘nostrils’ at the top of the arch on which the frame could be hung with a string. Carpenter’s marks indicating the sight size and rebate size, were scratched into the reverse of the frame.

Provenance

…; by descent to Jonkheer Pieter van Foreest (1845-1922), Huis de Nijenburg, Heiloo, as anonymous;¹ transferred to N.V. ‘Nyenburgh’, Heiloo, 1913;² from which, fl. 30,000, to the museum, 1953

Object number: SK-A-3853

The artist

Jan van Scorel (Schoorl 1495 - Utrecht 1562)

Jan van Scorel was born in 1495, according to Karel van Mander, in the village of Schoorl northwest of Alkmaar, the natural son of a priest, Andries Ouckeyn, and Dieuwer Aertsdr. He died in Utrecht in 1562 and was buried in the Mariakerk, where a funerary monument was erected that contained a portrait of Scorel by his pupil, Antonio Moro. Van Mander praised Scorel for having visited Italy, returning with a new and more beautiful manner of painting; and the artist is still recognised today for the widespread influence that his Italianate style had in the northern Netherlands.

Jan van Scorel was not only a painter but also a canon. His church office in the Mariakerk, Utrecht, prohibited him from marrying, but his will (1537) tells us that he lived with Agatha van Schoonhoven as his common-law wife; the date 1529 on Scorel’s portrait of her must mark the period when the two met.³ One of the couple’s six children, Peter (c. 1530-1622) became a painter. Van Mander’s remark that Scorel ‘was very familiar with and liked by all the great lords of the Netherlands,’ is almost an understatement. The artist built up an influential network among the clergy, beginning with Pope Adrian VI, the artist’s protector when he arrived in Rome around 1522, and including Herman van Lokhorst, dean of Oudmunster (St Saviour), Scorel’s first, important patron in Utrecht, and other fellow ecclesiastics. In addition, Scorel had high court connections. In the negotiations surrounding his canonry, Scorel’s sponsors were none other than the stadholders Henry III of Nassau-Breda and Floris of Egmond, the most powerful nobles at the Court of Holland at the time. In c. 1532-33, Scorel visited the courts at Breda and Mechelen, where he met the neo-Latin poet, Janus Secundus, and was at the court in Brussels around 1552. Scorel also worked for the municipality of Utrecht and received payments from the city for his activities associated with the triumphal entries into Utrecht of Charles V (1540) and Philip II (1549).

Early sources suggest Scorel began his training as an apprentice in Alkmaar or Haarlem, but neither suggestions have been substantiated. Van Mander’s account is more credible when it comes to the second step in Scorel’s training: after attending the Latin School in Alkmaar, Scorel moved to Amsterdam around 1512, where he became an assistant in Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen’s workshop. Van Mander also reports that Scorel studied briefly with Jan Gossart, who came to Utrecht after his protector, Philip of Burgundy, had been elected bishop in 1517. By 1518-19 Scorel left the Netherlands on a long journey whose route was described in detail by Karel van Mander, eventually taking the painter to Venice, the Holy Land and Rome.

Scorel’s stays in both Venice and Rome can be construed as a continuation of his training, for he was profoundly influenced by his new surroundings. After returning to Venice from his pilgrimage to Jerusalem around 1520, Scorel painted a number of portraits and landscapes, and he may have ventured on to Rome after the Utrecht native, Adriaan Florisz Boeyens, was elected pope in January 1522. According to Van Mander, Scorel not only had access to antique statuary as overseer of the Vatican collections in the Belvedere, an appointment he received from Pope Adrian VI, he was also able to make drawings after Raphael, Michelangelo and the works of other Italian masters. Adrian VI’s promise to Scorel of a canonry in Utrecht led the artist to settle there in 1524 after his return from Rome.

Van Mander’s life of Jan van Scorel is the primary source for the reconstruction of the painter’s oeuvre. He knew, for instance, that during his early travels, the painter worked for nobility in Carinthia (Austria), where Scorel’s first signed and dated painting, the 1519 Holy Kinship altarpiece, can still be seen today.⁴ The major touchstone of Scorel’s first years in Utrecht, the Triptych with the Entry of Christ into Jerusalem painted as a memorial for members of the Lokhorst family around 1526,⁵ is described at length by Van Mander. When Jan van Scorel moved to Haarlem (1527-30), Van Mander tells us that he was received by Simon van Sanen, Commander of the Knights of St John. Both Van Mander’s account and the inventories of the order mention a number of key works that Scorel completed during this period: The Baptism of Christ, Adam and Eve⁶ and Mary Magdalen (SK-A-372). Scorel’s Haarlem period was an extremely critical and productive one: he established his basic repertoire of subjects, received more prestigious commissions, such as the Crucifixion Altarpiece for the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam (now lost), rented a house and took on students, among them Maarten van Heemskerck, and expanded and standardised the operations of his workshop.

Scorel’s ‘most flourishing period’, according to Karel van Mander, followed upon the artist’s return to Utrecht by September 1530. Unfortunately, many of the works Van Mander describes from this period have been lost. The Finding of the True Cross triptych, probably commissioned by Henry III of Nassau-Breda in the mid-1530s, has survived, although in poor condition.⁷ Some remarkable discoveries were made in the late 20th century of altarpieces executed by Scorel and his shop around 1540 for the abbey of Marchiennes in what is now northern France. Fragments survive from an Altarpiece with St Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins, and the Polyptych with Sts James the Greater and Stephen lacks only one wing.⁸ These works, along with the Landscape with Bathsheba of c. 1540-45 (SK-A-670), provide us with a better understanding of Scorel’s late style. His oeuvre consists of some 60 extant paintings, between 20 and 25 drawings, and 6 designs for prints.

In addition to Maarten van Heemskerck, Antonio Moro and Scorel’s son Peter were apprentices in Scorel’s shop. Others, such as Lambert Sustris, may have had brief contact with his workshop as assistants. Van Mander describes Scorel as the typical uomo universale of his time. He was skilled in languages, wrote poetry as well as songs, acted as an amateur archaeologist and marine engineer, and participated in an ambitious land development scheme, the reclamation of the Zijpe in north Holland.

References
Lampsonius 1572 (1956), no. 17; Buchelius 1583-1639 (1928), pp. 21, 26-30, 52, 63-64; Van Mander 1604, fols. 234r-36v; Muller 1880; Justi 1881, pp. 193-210; Scheibler/Bode 1881, pp. 211-14; Hoogewerff 1923a; Friedländer XII, 1935, pp. 118-56; Hoogewerff in Thieme/Becker XXX, 1936, pp. 401-04; Hoogewerff IV, 1941-42, pp. 23-191; ENP XII, 1975, pp. 65-81; Faries 1970, pp. 2-24 (documents); Faries 1972; Faries in Amsterdam 1986a, pp. 179-80; Miedema III, 1996, pp. 268-90; Faries in Turner 1996, XXVIII, pp. 215-29; Faries 1997, pp. 107-16; Van Thiel-Stroman in coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 303-04; Faries in coll. cat. Utrecht 2011, pp. 167-69

M. Faries, 2010
Updated by the author, 2016

Entry

The sitter is shown bust-length, strongly silhouetted against a reddish-brown background. He wears a black tabbaard gown with a brown fur lining that is also visible at the ends of the sleeves. Near the panel’s bottom edge, he rests his proper right hand on one side of the robe’s wide black collar. He looks out to the viewer, with his black baret shading the upper part of his forehead. The portrait is still in its original frame, which in this case was grounded and painted separately. Once the panel was painted, it was placed in the frame against a rebate. This frame type appears after c. 1520 in the Netherlands, and it is not unusual for the upper curved portion to be a separate piece.⁹ Except for the mouldings, this frame is identical in construction to another original: the frame around the portrait of Agatha van Schoonhoven, Scorel’s life-long companion, which Scorel signed and dated the same year, 1529.¹⁰ On the bottom transverse of the Rijksmuseum frame there is a fictive sheet of paper or parchment attached to the wood with a fictive red wax seal, a device Scorel used in other portraits. Similar cartellinos with inscriptions appear under Scorel’s portraits of Jerusalem pilgrims in Utrecht and Haarlem, although they occur on the panel itself, not the frame, and are painted much more thinly.¹¹ The sheet here is painted with a heavy impasto.

Since the date 1529 appears on the frame, the portrait must have been executed during Scorel’s Haarlem period, 1527-30. Although it is known that he provided works for the order of St John in that city, it is unlikely that the sitter is a member of that order since there is no white Maltese cross on his robe.¹² Likewise, Hoogewerff’s suggestion that the sitter is Simon van Sanen, commander of the order of St John in Haarlem, has found no support.¹³ According to several authors, in 1529 Simon van Sanen would have been older than 46, the age of the sitter given in the inscription.¹⁴ To Bruyn, the costume is more indicative of a scholar or cleric than a member of the nobility.¹⁵ Perhaps the painting’s provenance will eventually help in identifying the person portrayed here.

The painting shows all the characteristics of Scorel’s portraiture. It has an abstract character, deriving from Scorel’s planar conception of volumes and rendering of surfaces. A strong pattern develops in the folds of the dark garment, and in the silhouetted shapes of the sitter’s shoulders and hat. The modelling in the face reveals Scorel’s typical approach: impasto highlights and thin glazes bringing out the geometric structure of the head.¹⁶ As often typifies Scorel’s works, the painter made subtle changes during the course of execution. Both infrared reflectography and X-rays show that the baret has been made smaller on the left and larger on the right, making the two sides more symmetrical. Interestingly, the mouth was changed from a smiling shape in the underdrawing to a straight line (fig. a). The sitter’s more serious final expression is enhanced by the knit brow, reminiscent of the frown in Scorel’s Portrait of a Man in Berlin, which was also done during the artist’s Haarlem period.¹⁷ There are zigzags in the underdrawing of the cheek to localise the dark shadow. These compare with underdrawn shading in the jaw of Scorel’s Portrait of a Cleric in Princeton,¹⁸ where zigzags serve the same function. The Rijksmuseum portrait is distinguished by its somewhat cramped format, with the frame impinging on the baret, cutting off one shoulder, and emphasising the disproportionate relationship between the smaller shoulders and larger head. These features carry over from portraits Scorel executed previously in Utrecht, the Princeton portrait mentioned above and Scorel’s two group portraits of Twelve Members of the Utrecht Brotherhood of Jerusalem Pilgrims, c. 1525-27.¹⁹

M. Faries, 2010
Literature updated, 2016

Literature

Rotterdam 1936, p. 52, no. 116; Friedländer XIV, 1937, p. 129; Hoogewerff IV, 1941-42, p. 104; Amsterdam 1952, p. 75, no. 154; Bruyn 1954, pp. 57-58; Utrecht 1955, p. 48, no. 33, with earlier literature; ENP XII, 1975, p. 132, no. supp. 415; Van Bueren 1993, p. 393, note 391

Download Bibliography (PDF)

Collection catalogues

1956, p. 189, no. 2196 A3; 1960, p. 284, no. 2196 A3; 1976, p. 512, no. A 3853, with earlier literature

Citation

M. Faries, 2009, 'Jan van Scorel, Portrait of a Man, Haarlem, 1529', in J.P. Filedt Kok and M. Ubl (eds.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5445

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