All works in Early Netherlandish Paintings

Jan van Scorel

Portrait of Joris van Egmond (1504-1559)

? Utrecht, c. 1535 - c. 1540

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 57.2 cm × width 80.8 cm
frame: height 79 cm × width 101.5 cm × thickness 5.8 cm

Inscriptions

inscription, top and bottom transverse of the frame: R[everendissimus] AC ILL[ustrissimus] D[ominus] GEORGIUS DE EGMONT EPISCOPUS TRAIECTENSIS ETC.

Technical notes

The support consists of two horizontally grained oak planks (26.8 and 29.9 cm). The planks have been joined along their thickest edges, at approx. 1.4 cm, and taper to a thickness of approx. 0.8 cm on their thinnest sides at the top and bottom of the panel. A strip 0.5 cm wide has been added along the bottom edge. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1523. The panel could have been ready for use by 1534, but a date in or after 1548 is more likely. The panel has been grounded and painted up to the edges, where some of the white ground can be seen. The underdrawing is visible to the naked eye in the hands, neck and cuffs. It can also be revealed in these areas by infrared reflectography, as well as in the face and brown fur, although the other parts of the costume and the cushion remain opaque (fig. a). Infrared reflectography shows that the outer edge of the proper right sleeve was slightly reduced in size. The underdrawing was executed in a dry medium, probably black chalk. With the exception of some sketchy lines in the hair and neck and zigzags in the cheek, the layout is restricted to contour lines. During the painting process, the figure was left in reserve; the face was painted wet in wet. Brushstrokes are noticeable in the green background.

Scientific examination and reports

infrared reflectography: J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer, RKD, nos. AB 109:13-22a, 8 March 1977
infrared reflectography: M. Faries, RKD, 14 October 2005
condition report: Z. Benders, RMA, 13 February 2007
infrared reflectography: M. Wolters / M. Leeflang [2], RKD/RMA, no. RKDG448, 16 February 2007
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 15 March 2007

Condition

Good. Retouching is evident along the join between the two planks. The varnish has only slightly yellowed.

Conservation

Schuuring & Adama, 1940: complete restoration

Original framing

The painting is mounted in an oak entablature frame with a plain frieze. A cross-section of the profile shows a fillet, a jump, a fillet, a reverse ogee, a fillet, a cove, a jump, a frieze, a jump, a fillet, a jump, a fillet, an ovolo, a fillet, a jump, an ogee, a jump, a fillet and a jump at the sight edge (fig. b). The members are connected by through mortise and tenon joints, held with original dowels (fig. c). The frame has an open rebate. There are scratch lines on the back meant to mark the sight size. The mouldings are gilded and the frieze is painted black and has a gilded inscription. In the middle of the lintel there are ‘nostrils’ for hanging the painting by a cord, and also a twisted iron bar shaped into a loop as a hanging device.

Provenance

…; collection Leopold Graaf van Limburg Stirum (1882-1943), huis Offem, Noordwijk, by 1923;¹ his daughter, Mathilda Elisabeth Barones van Tuyll van Serooskerken - Gravin van Limburg Stirum (1920-), Velzen-Zuid; from whom on loan to the museum, 1987-97 (inv. no. SK-C-1618); from whom purchased by two private collectors, 1997;² from whom on loan to the museum, since 1997

Object number: SK-C-1618

Credit line: On loan from private collectors

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 in this unusual oblong painting can be identified by the inscription on the frame as Joris van Egmond, Bishop of Utrecht from 1534 to 1559. He wears a black tabbaard gown lined with brown fur over a black doublet and a white shirt with a ruffled collar and cuffs, and has a black baret on his head.⁹ He is portrayed life-sized, turned slightly into three-quarter view against an undifferentiated green background. Joris rests his hands on the rounded form of a dark red, patterned cushion which can be seen in the lower left corner. In contrast to other portraits by Scorel in which the sitter makes eye contact with the beholder, Joris appears here distant and contemplative. His aristocratic appearance and formal pose are enhanced by the format, which emphasises the width of the shoulders and the expansive, silky surfaces of the costume.

Joris van Egmond, the son of Magdalena van Werdenborgh and Jan I, Count of Egmond (for their portraits, see SK-A-1547, SK-A-1548), was a member of a family that was successively raised in political importance by the Habsburgs in the late 15th and 16th centuries. Joris had met the emperor, Charles V, when he was a student at Louvain in 1520; and Charles later sponsored Joris for church posts, securing for him first a canonry in Liège (1525) and, after some negotiations lasting from 1525 to 1532, the office of commendatory abbot of St Amand. In 1534, Charles V nominated Joris Bishop of Utrecht, and his consecration took place the following year. Joris was considered a wise church administrator in Utrecht, and was admired for his piety and learning.¹⁰ He was a generous patron of the arts with gifts of stained glass (in Utrecht, Haarlem, Gouda and The Hague), paintings, and additions to the bishop’s residence at Wijk bij Duurstede, which Charles V granted Joris in 1545.¹¹

Although no one has doubted the attribution of this portrait to Scorel, there are various possibilities for its date. Some have assumed Scorel and Joris van Egmond were already in contact by c. 1530-31 and that the Rijksmuseum portrait dates from this period. Hoogewerff was the first to note this possible connection, basing his observation on a 1531 poem dedicated to Joris which praises an image of Christ by Scorel that the Egmond family owned.¹² Another possibility for the date is c. 1533, when Scorel is known to have visited the court in Mechelen and presumably met the important cleric, Jean II Carondelet, whom Scorel depicted in a portrait that is remarkably similar in size and composition.¹³ With its green background and near “scalping” of Joris van Egmond’s head, the format of the painting is similar to Scorel’s portraits of Utrecht Jerusalem pilgrims. The greater space on each side of Joris’s figure, however, more closely parallels the spacing in the group portrait in the Utrecht series that is dated c. 1535.¹⁴ Although Scorel’s portrait layouts are routinely contour in type, the underdrawing of Joris’s head (fig. a) is similar to those portraits in the series of Jerusalem pilgrims that date from c. 1535 to c. 1541.¹⁵ It is most likely, then, that the Rijksmuseum painting depicts Joris van Egmond after he assumed the office of Bishop of Utrecht in 1534, or somewhat later, as is also implied by the dendrochronology. At that time Joris would have been in his 30s, and his lean face shows no signs of age. The overall style of the portrait with its strong illumination, opaque, flat painting in the flesh areas, and sense of pattern comes close to tendencies in Scorel’s later work around 1540. Moreover, in the underdrawing of the Rijksmuseum painting, Joris wears a ring - possibly a bishop’s ring.¹⁶

Although the artist often used an oblong format in his works, his adoption of it for a portrait is exceptional. There are only a few precedents. Several of Lucas van Leyden’s portrait drawings of the early 1520s use a wide, horizontal format, as do the portrait drawings in Dürer’s sketchbook made during his journey to the Netherlands in 1520-21.¹⁷ Friedländer made the interesting suggestion that these examples by Lucas and Scorel recalled the portrait busts by the German sculptor Conrad Meit,¹⁸ whose works would have been known at the court in Mechelen. With its strong horizontal presentation and more schematised portrayal of the sitter, the Portrait of Joris van Egmond represents Scorel’s venture into the realm of official portraiture.

M. Faries, 2010
Literature updated, 2016

Literature

Utrecht 1913, Suppl., p. 25, no. 191; Hoogewerff 1923a, pp. 64-70; Friedländer XII, 1935, p. 230, no. 356; Hoogewerff IV, 1941-42, pp. 107-08; Amsterdam 1952, p. 76, no. 155; Utrecht 1955, pp. 49-50, no. 35, with earlier literature; Wescher 1957, pp. 259-61; ENP XII, 1975, p. 126, no. 356; Faries 1975, p. 208, notes 51-52; Utrecht 1977, pp. 68-69, no. 18; Faries in Amsterdam 1986a, p. 187, no. 66; Faries in coll. cat. Utrecht 2011, no. 27; Schindler 2014, pp. 176, 183, note 46

Download Bibliography (PDF)

Collection catalogues

1992, p. 84, no. C 1618

Citation

M. Faries, 2010, 'Jan van Scorel, Portrait of Joris van Egmond (1504-1559), Utrecht, c. 1535 - c. 1540', in J.P. Filedt Kok and M. Ubl (eds.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5441

(accessed 10 November 2024 06:38:04).

Figures

fig. a Detail of the infrared reflectogram assembly of SK-C-1618, showing the sitter’s head (© Stichting RKD)

fig. b Rendering of the profile of the frame (width 10.5 mm)

fig. c Diagram of the construction of the frame