Mary Praying

c. 1650 - c. 1661

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 32.4 cm × width 28.2 cm
outer size: depth 8.3 cm (support incl. SK-L-3947)

Technical notes

Support The single, vertically grained, quarter-sawn oak plank is approx. 0.8 cm thick on the left and approx. 1.3 cm on the right. It has a marked, wavy grain as well as subtle dents and dips. The reverse is bevelled at the top and bottom and on the left, and has a few gouge marks and rough surface features. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1641. The panel could have been ready for use by 1650, but a date in or after 1660 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, smooth, warm beige ground extends partially over the edges of the support. It consists of white, bright orange and earth pigment particles.
Underdrawing Infrared photography revealed faint, cursory lines at the contours beneath the flesh tones.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The composition was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light, reserving the figure. The undermodelling of the flesh tones appears to have been executed in various earth colours such as ochre and umber. The latter was used to indicate the deepest shadows of the eyes, nose, lower lip, cheek and jawbone, and was sometimes left visible, for instance in the shadow under the hands. These dark, transparent areas glow as a result of the light ground shimmering through. Creamy flesh tones in the face were applied with unusually thick impasto around the woman’s left eye, across the bridge of the nose to her right eyebrow, along the nose to the highlight on its tip, and to the right of the mouth. There is a loose, pastose, zigzag stroke at the centre of the sloping side of the nose. A cool, light optical grey was created where flesh tones cover the dark undermodelling, as can be seen in the nose bridge. A thin, red glaze gives colour to the upper lip and to the centre of the lower one, emphasizing the fall of light on the latter. Strategically placed and carefully blended accents of cool greys and ochre colours were added to form mid-tones, as can be noticed along the shaded sides of both forearms and in the dab of grey that models the slope of the middle finger. A cool grey accent can also be found in the strongly lit jawline, where it suggests a secondary reflection from the light skin of the chest. It also serves to demarcate an otherwise vague distinction between the head and neck. Transparent deep brown glazes were applied to emphasize the shadows of the flesh colours. Cursory, linear accents in a red glaze lend extra definition to the cavity between the lips, to the wing of the nostril, and to the folds of the upper eyelids. A peach-coloured undermodelling was used for the lit folds of the cloak, a glimpse of which can be found at the inside of her right sleeve, and subsequently covered by an opaque red. The shadows in the folds were undermodelled in umber colour, on top of which a transparent deep red glaze was placed. A small stretch of the beige ground was left exposed at the bottom of the woman’s right sleeve, underscoring the edge of the white cuff. The background was executed loosely and thinly, with only the darker area on the right being thicker and more opaque. Late additions to the composition are the lit, turned-back section of the red cloak which was applied over the chest, and the outermost expanse of the cloak on the left which was painted over the background.
Gwen Tauber, 2024

Scientific examination and reports

dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 1 July 2005
infrared photography: G. Tauber, RMA, 19 May 2010
paint samples: G. Tauber, RMA, nos. SK-C-310/1-2, 19 May 2010
technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 19 May 2010

Condition

Fair. The paint surface is abraded in the impasted passages. Small, discoloured retouchings are present throughout the flesh tones, particularly in the face. Woodworm holes and related wood loss are evident in the top right corner and on the right edge.

Provenance

…; collection Dirk Versteegh (1751-1822), Amsterdam, 1814, as anonymous Italian master;¹…; purchased by Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam, before 1822;² by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam, with 223 other paintings, 1854;³ from which on loan to the museum, as Anonymous (Godefridus Schalcken ?), since 30 June 1885⁴

Object number: SK-C-310

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)

The artist

Caesar van Everdingen (Alkmaar 1616/17 - Alkmaar 1678)

Caesar van Everdingen’s year of birth has been deduced from statements of his age in two documents. He was the eldest son born of the second marriage of the Alkmaar notary and attorney Pieter van Everdingen to the town midwife Aechje Claesdr Moer. Since Van Everdingen was already recorded as a painter’s apprentice in Alkmaar in 1628, when he was around 12, he was probably training with a local artist, possibly Claes Jacobsz van der Heck. In 1632, barely 16 years old, he became a member of the Guild of St Luke, which Van der Heck had helped to establish. His earliest dated pictures are two companion portraits of his father and mother from 1636.⁵ According to Houbraken, he was also taught by the Utrecht artist Jan van Bronckhorst, and the latter’s influence is indeed noticeable in some of Van Everdingen’s earliest paintings. He might have rounded off his studies with him in Utrecht around 1639, as well as with Jan van Bijlert.

In 1641 Van Everdingen was awarded the prestigious commission for a group portrait of the officers of Alkmaar’s Old Civic Guard.⁶ From 1641 to 1644 he was involved in a major project that probably came his way through the architect and artist Jacob van Campen. It was to paint the shutters of the new organ for the Grote Kerk in Alkmaar, for which he received 2,150 guilders. He carried out preparatory work for it on a scale model of the instrument in 1642-43 under the supervision of Van Campen, at whose country house near Amersfoort, Huis Beekhoven in Randenbroek, he lived for a year and a half. Van Everdingen may have gone on a trip to France in the months leading up to his wedding to Helena van Oosthoorn at the end of 1646. Shortly afterwards he was invited to contribute five paintings for the decoration of the Oranjezaal (Orange Hall) in Amalia van Solms’s newly built residence Huis ten Bosch in The Hague, for which he was paid 2,700 guilders. It was probably in connection with that commission that he moved to Haarlem at the end of 1647 or early 1648, becoming a member of its Old Civic Guard in the latter year. He probably lodged with his younger brother, the landscapist Allaert van Everdingen. It was only in 1651 that he registered with the city’s Guild of St Luke, which he later served in various official functions. After his relocation to Haarlem he was asked to produce two group portraits of the Alkmaar Young and Old Civic Guards, both of which he finished in 1657.⁷ There are various documents that show that Van Everdingen was living in Amsterdam in 1661, but the following year he and his wife were back in Alkmaar, when he was paid for a picture for the renovated Prinsenzaal (Princes’ Hall) in its Town Hall.⁸ His last dated works are two pendant portraits of Willem Baert and Elisabeth Kessels of 1671.⁹ However, there is documentary evidence that Van Everdingen painted a likeness of Wollebrand Geleynsz de Jongh in 1674.¹⁰ The artist died in 1678 and was buried in the Grote Kerk in Alkmaar on 13 October.

Van Everdingen was comfortably off all his life, and regularly lent money to various people in the 1650s and later. Oddly enough, no writers praised him while he was alive. Houbraken lists his pupils as his brother-in-law Laurens van Oosthoorn (?-1680), Hendrik Graauw (c. 1627-1693), Arien Warmenhuyzen (dates unknown) and Adriaan Dekker (dates unknown). Thomas Heeremans (1641-1695) is also occasionally mentioned as his apprentice. With the exception of a single drawn preliminary study, all of Van Everdingen’s works are either paintings or painted interior pieces, mainly histories and portraits. Exceptions to these genres are two still lifes and the decoration of a model ship. His painted oeuvre runs to 67 pictures, all of them meticulously and smoothly executed, with his hallmark of a chiaroscuro with gentle transitions from light to dark. He convincingly imitated the texture of the materials of his draperies and clothing. Van Everdingen is regarded as a classicist, and although he did idealize the bodies of his figures, their faces are often very portrait-like.

Eddy Schavemaker, 2024

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, II, Amsterdam 1719, p. 94; A. van der Willigen, Geschiedkundige aanteekeningen over Haarlemsche schilders en andere beoefenaren van de beeldende kunsten, voorafgegaan door eene korte geschiedenis van het schilders- of St. Lucas Gild aldaar, Haarlem 1866, pp. 107-08; C.W. Bruinvis, ‘De Van Everdingens’, Oud Holland 17 (1899), pp. 216-22; Plietzsch in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XI, Leipzig 1915, p. 107; N.J.M. Dresch, ‘Caesar van Everdingen’s nalatenschap’, Oud Holland 52 (1935), pp. 41-48; P. Huys Janssen, Caesar van Everdingen 1616/17-1678: Monograph and Catalogue Raisonné, Doornspijk 2002, pp. 25-56, 153-92 (documents); Huys Janssen in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XXXV, Munich/Leipzig 2003, p. 406; I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘Biographies 15th-17th Century’, in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 99-363, esp. pp. 151-53; C. Klinkert and Y. Bleyerveld (eds.), Painting Beauty: Caesar van Everdingen (1616/1617-1678), exh. cat. Alkmaar (Stedelijk Museum)/Helsinki (Finnish National Gallery) 2016-17

Entry

The figure in this scene is always described in neutral terms, but the contemporary viewer would have understood this woman with her head covered and hands joined in prayer to be the Virgin Mary, Christ’s mother and the most depicted female character from the Bible. She is clad in a red garment and a tight, white cap that completely conceals her forehead and hair, which recalls the wimple that Mary wears in fifteenth and sixteenth-century images of the Lamentation and the Crucifixion. Folded hands could express prayer, worship, penitence or sorrow. The artist probably based the image on earlier examples in paintings or prints of Mary, such as the Mater Dolorosa.¹¹

The austere classicist style makes it difficult to suggest an attribution. Cornelis Kruseman, who copied the composition in a watercolour of 1814,¹² even thought that it was by an Italian artist, and Théophile Thoré, too, described it as a ‘copy after an Italian master’ after a visit to Museum Van der Hoop in Amsterdam.¹³ On its arrival in the Rijksmuseum in 1885 the painting was listed in the inventory register as an anonymous work but with the suggestion of Godefridus Schalcken, probably because he executed many small pictures of heads. In the collection catalogue of 1976 it was regarded as a Jan van Bijlert, and even after that was rejected by Huys Janssen in 1998 it was still being placed in his orbit in later literature.¹⁴ In 2002 Huys Janssen compared it to two unsigned versions of another painting of a woman with her hands joined, possibly intended to be Mary Magdalen, which he rightly attributed to Caesar van Everdingen.¹⁵ He then assigned this small panel to Pieter de Grebber.¹⁶ Sutton dismissed that with the argument that De Grebber did not get so close to his subjects and worked more with ‘veils of colour’, and saw greater correspondences with Van Everdingen.¹⁷ According to Blankert, the similarities are such that it could be by the master himself, which was agreed on by Klinkert.¹⁸ The modelling, with careful transitions from bright light to deep shadows in the face, the earth tints in the flesh tones, and the sensitive reflections in the shaded passages are indeed typical of Van Everdingen, and the elongated nails can also be seen in many of his figures. In any event, the dendrochronological analysis provided a date that does not rule him out. The panel could have been ready for use by 1650, suggesting an execution in Van Everdingen’s period in Haarlem, where he settled in late 1647 or early 1648. The only doubt preventing a definitive attribution is the drapery, which is harsh, and the modelling of the face and hands appears to be less refined after close comparison with secured works by the artist. The spontaneous rendering makes it unlikely that this is a copy after an unknown original.¹⁹ If it is by Van Everdingen, it is his smallest surviving painting.

Eddy Schavemaker, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

P. Huys Janssen, Jan van Bijlert 1597/98-1671: Catalogue Raisonné, Amsterdam 1998, p. 198, no. R25; P. Huys Janssen, Caesar van Everdingen 1616/17-1678: Monograph and Catalogue Raisonné, Doornspijk 2002, p. 86

Collection catalogues

1887, p. 75, no. 629 (as Anonymous Dutch School, Study of a Woman’s Head); 1903, p. 12, no. 110 (as Anonymous Dutch School); 1976, p. 159, no. C 310 (as attributed to Jan van Bijlert)

Citation

Eddy Schavemaker, 2024, 'attributed to Caesar Boëtius van Everdingen, Mary Praying, c. 1650 - c. 1661', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.10693

(accessed 20 September 2024 19:54:48).