Christ as the Man of Sorrows

c. 1545 - c. 1550

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 99 cm × width 77.5 cm
depth 7.5 cm

Technical notes

The support consists of three vertically grained oak planks (23, 23.5 and 28.5 cm), 1.1-1.8 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides to a thickness of 0.6-1.0 cm, although this is less visible on the left and right sides. On the back of the support there are two scratched (gouge) marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1522. The panel could have been ready for use by 1533, but a date in or after 1547 is more likely. The white ground and the paint were applied up to the edges of the panel. On top of the ground the artist probably applied a white priming with broad brushstrokes, which are visible through the paint layers, especially in Christ’s left arm. The underdrawing is visible to the naked eye in the hands, for example, and the body consists of fine contour lines and short hatchings for shading and volume. Some loosely sketched lines are visible in the landscape, and the diagonal line for the left cross in the background continues through the crucified man. The layout in the figure of Christ becomes transparent with infrared reflectography. The painted figure of Christ was reserved. The paint layers are thin and smooth, except for the leaves in the background landscape, for which the artist used impasto. Christ’s body and face were painted wet in wet. There is a 'pentimento' in the hair of Christ on the right side of the face. An extra string of hair was first painted, and later covered by blue paint for the sky. The two figures in the background on the left became almost entirely transparent over time. The landscape was probably originally green but has discoloured to brown. Some fingerprints are visible in this area.

Scientific examination and reports

condition report: I. Verslype, RMA, 1 March 2006
infrared reflectography: M. Wolters / M. Leeflang [2], RKD/RMA, no. RKDG386, 18 April 2006
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 16 September 2006

Condition

Fair. There are discoloured retouchings, especially on Christ’s right shoulder (along the left join). The discoloured varnish has been partially removed.

Conservation

W. Hesterman, 1972: loose paint fixed; varnish regenerated

Original framing

The painting is mounted in a deep oak entablature frame with a plain frieze (fig. e). A cross-section of the profile shows a tenia, reverse ogee, three fillets and jumps, an ovolo, a small fillet and jump, frieze, fillet, an ogee and a jump at the sight edge (fig. c). The frame has an open rebate and the members are joined by through mortise and tenon joints held together with dowels, with mitred corners on the front. The sides of the frame each consist of two pieces of wood which together form the profile – the outer parts nailed onto the inner, concealing the joints on the outside of the frame (fig. d). The frame has been stripped of its finish and only minimal traces of white ground are left behind. Traces of a hanging device are still visible at the bottom of the back of the frame, suggesting that the panel is now upside down in its frame. On the back of the frame there are cabinetmaker’s marks scribed into the wood indicating the sight size and the width of the tenons.

Provenance

…. ; ? Jacob Wuytiers [Woutiers] (c. 1613-79), Herengracht 214, Amsterdam;¹ ? bequeathed to his nephew, Dirck Wuytiers, 14 April 1679 (‘een Ecce homo van Heemskerck’);² ? his nephew and brother-in-law, Jacob Cromhout (1651-1708), Lord of Nieuwkercke, Herengracht 364;³ ? his sale, including some pieces from the cabinet of Jasper Loskert (†), Amsterdam, sold on the premises (J.P. Zomer), 7 May 1709 sqq., no. 38, as Maerten van Heemskerck (‘dito, met de Doorne-kroon van de zelve’);⁴ ...; sale, Dirk Margarethus Alewijn (1816-85, Hoorn and Medemblik), Amsterdam (C.F. Roos), 16 December 1885, no. 1, as Dutch school, 15th century, fl. 200, to the dealer Frederik Muller;⁵ purchased by the museum for fl. 230, 1886⁶

Object number: SK-A-1306

The artist

Maarten van Heemskerck (Heemskerk 1498 - Haarlem 1574), workshop 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.⁷ 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.⁸

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,⁹ and the 1546 wings of the Drapers’ Altarpiece for the St Bavokerk in Haarlem, now in the Frans Hals Museum.¹⁰ Throughout his career he painted works for various religious institutions in Delft, of which the monumental 1559-60 Haarlem Ecce homo¹¹ and the Brussels Entombment triptychs are important examples.¹² 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

Christ is depicted three-quarter length displaying his wounds. His torso is naked and his legs are partially covered by a loincloth. His head with an elaborate crown of thorns and accentuated by a colourful halo forms the central part of the upper half of the painting. In the background on the right we see Calvary with its three crosses and two crucified thieves, to the left a valley with Jerusalem and mountains in the distance.

The theme of the Man of Sorrows presents Christ neither dead nor alive, but rather as a timeless figure. It was imported into Italy from Byzantium in the late 13th century, and its development in devotional art during the centuries thereafter, both in Italy and in northern Europe, created various iconographic possibilities, either with or without other figures.¹³

The Rijksmuseum panel is related to a few half-length devotional paintings depicting Christ as the Man of Sorrows, without other figures, executed by Heemskerck and his workshop in the 1540s, which ultimately seem to be based on his 1532 Ghent Man of Sorrows,¹⁴ in which Christ is presented by angels, a primarily north European motif.¹⁵ One of these paintings, Heemskerck’s Man of Sorrows in the Kister Collection in Kreuzlingen (fig. a), convincingly dated in the mid-1540s by Harrison,¹⁶ is particularly close to the Rijksmuseum panel, especially in the position and contours of Christ’s torso, his left arm and the presence of a bright halo. More than anything, the Amsterdam panel seems connected to Heemskerck’s Turin Lamentation (fig. b), dated around 1545,¹⁷ a workshop version of which is in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.¹⁸ As Harrison noted, Christ’s right arm in the Amsterdam panel seems a direct copy of his right arm in the one in Turin, and the image of Calvary in the Rijksmuseum could well have been taken from the Turin painting as well.¹⁹ Within the series of half-length Christ as the Man of Sorrows, the Amsterdam painting is the only one with background scenery.²⁰

Scholars are not sure whether to regard this as a work by Heemskerck or his assistants. Preibisz included it in his 1911 monograph as wrongly attributed to the master, whereas Hoogewerff placed it at the end of Heemskerck’s career, seeing in it the artist’s lack of inspiration after the Iconoclasm.²¹ Veldman suggested that it might be a copy after Heemskerck’s Kister and Ghent Man of Sorrows.²² Grosshans recognised Heemskerck’s hand in the composition and execution.²³ Harrison suggested that the work was painted by Heemskerck’s ‘abler shop assistants’, soon after the master’s Turin Lamentation and the Kister Man of Sorrows.²⁴

After a close analysis of the Amsterdam painting, the Rijksmuseum also proposes an attribution to Heemskerck’s workshop. The hatchings in the underdrawing, visible to the naked eye especially in between Christ’s right phalanxes and on his left wrist, are unusual for Heemskerck. In addition, the scenery in the background, especially the foliage, is executed in a more detailed and precise manner than one would expect from the artist. After a close examination of both the Amsterdam panel and the Rotterdam copy of the Turin Lamentation, it seems that the Rijksmuseum painting was executed by a different workshop assistant from the one who painted the Boijmans Van Beuningen panel. The execution of Christ’s loincloth, for example, is cruder in the Amsterdam painting, which is especially visible in the darker tones.

(Ilona van Tuinen)

Literature

Preibisz 1911, p. 79; Hoogewerff IV, 1941-42, pp. 383-84 (as Heemskerck); Veldman 1977, p. 26, note 23; Grosshans 1980, pp. 186-87, no. 66 (as Heemskerck), with earlier literature; Harrison 1987, pp. 560-63, no. 59, with earlier literature

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Collection catalogues

1887, p. 58, no. 463 (as Ecce homo); 1903, p. 120, no. 1129 (as The Resurrection); 1934, p. 123, no. 1129 (as Heemskerck,The Resurrection); 1960, p. 126, no. 1129 (as Heemskerck); 1976, p. 265, no. A 1306 (as Heemskerck)

Citation

I. van Tuinen, 2010, 'workshop of Maarten van Heemskerck, Christ as the Man of Sorrows, c. 1545 - c. 1550', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8645

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