Object data
oil on panel
support: height 63.7 cm × width 92 cm
depth 11.5 cm
Maarten van Heemskerck (circle of)
The Baptism of Christ
c. 1560 - c. 1565
Technical notes
The support consists of three horizontally grained oak planks (25.8, 12.5 and 25.7 cm), 1.0-1.5 cm thick. The top and bottom of the reverse are slightly bevelled. The panel was later extended with a narrow strip at the bottom. On the reverse there are traces left by a crosscut saw, and grooves for attachment in the frame with dowels, which do not correspond to the actual frame. There are open glued joins, and on the reverse there were two dovetails across the joins which have now been removed. Dendrochronology has shown that all three planks came from the same tree, and that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1516. The panel could have been ready for use by 1527, but a date in or after 1541 is more likely. The white ground extends up to the edges. No underdrawing is visible with the naked eye. Infrared reflectography partially revealed an underdrawing in a dry medium (probably black chalk), roughly indicating the contour lines. The figures were reserved, and the paint was applied rather thinly and smoothly in greenish and flesh tones with white highlights.
Scientific examination and reports
- infrared reflectography: M. Wolters / M. Leeflang [2], RKD/RMA, no. RKDG432, 15 January 2007
- condition report: E. Smeenk-Metz, RMA, 15 January 2007
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 15 March 2007
Condition
Fair. The painting is slightly abraded and has discoloured fillings and retouchings along the joins. The copper resinate greens have discoloured and are now brown. The varnish is severely discoloured and dirty.
Original framing
The painting is mounted in a tabernacle frame with round fluted columns, Corinthian capitals and a plain cornice (![fig. c][fig. c]). The round columns are extended below the sill in the form of flat fluted columns. The frame is made of oak stained to a dark brown colour. At the earliest this frame may have been made in the second half of the 16th century, but a later date is also possible.
Provenance
…; sale, Property taken from the Town Hall of the City of Delft et al. [section Town Hall, Delft], Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 24 April 1860 sqq., no. 6, as ‘Antiek’ (‘Johannes doopende in de Jordaan, in gebeeldhouwd eikenhouten lijst. Hoog 64, breed 90 cm’), fl. 16, to Jonkheer Dr Jan Pieter Six (1824-99);1 by whom donated to the museum, 1892; on loan to the Stedelijk Museum, Alkmaar, since December 2000
Object number: SK-A-4284
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Maarten van Heemskerck (Heemskerk 1498 - Haarlem 1574), circle of
Maarten van Heemskerck was born in 1498 in the small village of Heemskerk, a few miles north of Haarlem, as the son of the farmer Jacob Willemsz van Veen. Sometime between 1527 and 1530 he worked in Haarlem as an assistant in the workshop of Jan van Scorel, who had returned from Italy in 1524. In 1532, Heemskerck joined the Haarlem Guild of St Luke. Soon after 23 May 1532, he left Haarlem for Rome, arriving there before mid-July. At the end of 1536, or possibly the beginning of 1537, he returned to Haarlem, where he spent the rest of his life with the exception of a short stay in Amsterdam during the siege of Haarlem of 1572-73. Heemskerck was a wealthy man and was acquainted with many influential people in Haarlem, such as the magistrate and burgomaster Jan van Zuren, and the Van Berensteyn family. In Delft he had good connections with the humanist prior Cornelis Musius, whom he befriended soon after his return from Rome. Heemskerck’s first wife, Marie Jacobs Coningsdr, whom he probably married at the end of 1543, died in childbirth on 25 October 1544. Around 1550 he married his second wife, Marytgen Gerritsdr (?-1582), the daughter of former burgomaster Gerrit Adamz. She was a fairly wealthy woman and they lived in a large house on Donkere Spaarne in Haarlem between 1559 and 1567. Heemskerck remained childless. From 1551 to 1552 he was the warden of the Guild of St Luke in Haarlem, and was its dean in 1553-54. In 1553 he became a churchwarden of St Bavo’s in Haarlem, which he remained until his death. Heemskerck was a member of the city council from early 1562 until 22 August 1572. In 1570 he was relieved of paying municipal tax in recognition of his graphic work. He died on 1 October 1574 at the age of 76 and was buried in the Nieuwe- or Kerstkapel on the north side of St Bavo’s.
Not much is known about Heemskerck’s training before 1527. Van Mander tells us that his first teacher was Cornelis Willemsz of Haarlem. According to archival documents, Willemsz was a relatively successful painter, and was Jan van Scorel’s master as well. All we know of the second teacher Van Mander mentions, Jan Lukasz of Delft, is that he was the dean of the Delft Guild of St Luke in 1541.
An extremely productive artist, Heemskerck’s extant oeuvre consists of more than 100 paintings, two albums with Roman drawings and sketches, and around 600 print designs. No works are known from his time with Willemsz and Lukasz. Close similarities between Scorel and Heemskerck’s early work stand in the way of determining the latter’s earliest oeuvre. His Rijksmuseum Portrait of a man, possibly Pieter Gerritsz Bicker and Portrait of a Woman, possibly Anna Codde of 1529 (SK-A-3518 and SK-A-3519) are generally considered to be his earliest extant paintings. Heemskerck started to sign and date his paintings from 1531 onwards. His monumental 1532 St Luke painting the Virgin in the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem was painted as a farewell gift to his fellow guild members upon his departure for Rome.2 Apart from the two Roman sketchbooks, four paintings survive from his period there, of which the 1535 Landscape with the Abduction of Helen in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore is the most monumental.3
Heemskerck was particularly active as a painter during the 1540s. Major commissions included the large 1538-42 St Lawrence Altarpiece for the Laurenskerk in Alkmaar, now in the Domkyrka in Linköping, Sweden,4 and the 1546 wings of the Drapers’ Altarpiece for the St Bavokerk in Haarlem, now in the Frans Hals Museum.5 Throughout his career he painted works for various religious institutions in Delft, of which the monumental 1559-60 Haarlem Ecce homo6 and the Brussels Entombment triptychs are important examples.7 At the same time Heemskerck executed many portraits of distinguished citizens, and painted numerous allegorical, biblical and mythological scenes. In 1548 he started his grand production of print designs that were brought into prints by professional engravers like Philips Galle, Cornelis Cort and D.V. Coornhert. From 1552 onwards Heemskerck became associated with the influential Antwerp printmaker and publisher Hieronymus Cock. His last paintings are dated 1567. He still remained active as a print designer after that date.
Little is known about Heemskerck’s workshop. The earliest reference to a pupil is a payment record of 1538 in which a 'servant of Master Maerten’ is mentioned in connection with the St Lawrence Altarpiece. Van Mander names three pupils: Jacob Rauwaert, who became an art dealer and collector and housed Heemskerck during the siege of Haarlem in 1572, Cornelis van Gouda, and Symon Jansz Kies of Amsterdam.
References
Van Mander 1604, fols. 244v-47r; Van der Willigen 1866, pp. 126-31; Preibisz 1911, pp. 3-55; Hoogewerff in Thieme/Becker XVI, 1923, pp. 227-29; Friedländer XIII, 1936, pp. 71-83; Hoogewerff IV, 1941-42, pp. 290-386; ENP XIII, 1975, pp. 40-45; Veldman 1977, pp. 11-18; Grosshans 1980, pp. 18-27; Veldman in Amsterdam 1986a, p. 190; Harrison 1987, pp. 2-99; Miedema I, 1994, pp. 236-49; Veldman in Turner 1996, XIV, pp. 291-94; Van Thiel-Stroman in coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 197-201
(Ilona van Tuinen)
Entry
In the centre foreground St John the Baptist, who is wearing his distinctive camel-hair tunic and leather belt, is baptising Christ on the bank of the river Jordan (Matthew 3:13-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-22; John 1:32-34). The prominent tree behind Christ, a possible reference to the tree of life,8 separates the picture into two parts. On both sides of Christ people awaiting their baptism are getting undressed on the banks of the river. The dove of the Holy Ghost, revealing Christ’s divinity, is flying down towards him from an opening in the sky.
Since its arrival in the Rijksmuseum this painting has been associated with the workshop of Jan van Scorel. Indeed, its composition has considerable similarities to Scorel’s Baptism of Christ of c. 1527-30, now in the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem (fig. a). In the Haarlem painting, Scorel, inspired by Italian iconography, introduced certain pictorial innovations, replacing, for instance, the traditional angels present at the baptism with figures undressing similar to those in the Rijksmuseum painting.9 In the Amsterdam Baptism, however, the figure group of Christ and St John stands out much more than in Scorel’s composition, and is depicted in reverse order to the right of the tree. This connects it even more closely to Maarten van Heemskerck’s depictions of this biblical episode, especially to his 1563 Baptism in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Braunschweig (fig. b). Heemskerck, who must have seen the Haarlem Baptism while working in Scorel’s workshop during the time of its execution, used Scorel’s composition as his main source of imagery for the Baptism throughout his career, starting with the 1531 Berlin Baptism,10 but modified it each time.11 Apart from the resemblance to the Braunschweig picture, small details of the Amsterdam painting are similar to other depictions of the Baptism by Heemskerck. For instance, St John’s bearded face is almost identical to the one in an undated Heemskerck drawing of The Baptism in the British Museum,12 which is undoubtedly connected to Philips Galle’s engraving of 1564.13 The crossed arms of Christ in the Amsterdam painting also appear in Heemskerck’s Warsaw Baptism,14 which is generally dated around 1565.15
The figures in the Amsterdam painting are rather awkward compared to what one would expect from Heemskerck, and the painting technique lacks his refinement. This would suggest that this is a workshop painting that was probably made around the same time as the 1563 Braunschweig Baptism.
Even though Dirck van Bleyswijck did not mention this painting in his 1667 description of the Town Hall of Delft, it was auctioned in 1860 together with other paintings from the Town Hall, such as Maarten van Heemskerck’s Portrait of Johannes Colmannus (SK-C-507) and the wing with the Erythraean Sibyl (SK-A-1910). It can therefore be assumed that it was brought to the Town Hall from one of Delft’s religious institutions during or shortly after the 1566 iconoclasm. If this was indeed the case, and if it was executed around the mid-1560s, the painting did not hang in its original setting for long.
(Ilona van Tuinen)
Literature
Hoogewerff IV, 1941-42, p. 124, note 1; Lemmens 1979, p. 147
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 246, no. 2197 (as circle of Jan van Scorel); 1934, p. 263, no. 2197 (as circle of Jan van Scorel); 1960, p. 284, no. 2197 (as school of Jan van Scorel); 1976, p. 512, no. A 4284 (as school of Jan van Scorel)
Citation
I. van Tuinen, 2010, 'circle of Maarten van Heemskerck, The Baptism of Christ, c. 1560 - c. 1565', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5448
(accessed 22 November 2024 22:07:49).