The Lute Player

Jan van Bijlert (Utrecht c. 1597/98 - Utrecht 1671)

Jan van Bijlert was probably born in 1597 or 1598, as he stated that he was 27 years old in a prenuptial agreement drawn up in May 1625. His father, Herman Beerntsz van Bijlert (c. 1566-before 1615), was an Utrecht glass-painter and most likely his son’s first teacher. According to Von Sandrart, Van Bijlert was apprenticed to Abraham Bloemaert. Von Sandrart also reports that he travelled to France and Italy. Van Bijlert probably embarked on this voyage in 1616 or 1617, while the first documentary evidence for his stay in Rome dates from 1621, at which point he was living in the parish of Sta. Maria del Popolo. In Rome, he was most probably a member of the Schildersbent (Band of Painters), going under the nickname ‘Aeneas’. There are no extant paintings from this period. Van Bijlert returned to his native city in 1624, as evidenced by his earliest dated painting, St Sebastian Attended by Irene,³ a work that was very probably painted there. He married Margrieta Kemings the following year. On the basis of his religious paintings with an explicit, Catholic iconography, it has sometimes been assumed that Van Bijlert was a Catholic. However, although he was recorded as communicato (i.e. Catholic) in Rome in 1621, his 1625 marriage took place in the Reformed Church, his children were baptized in the Reformed Church, and he himself became a member of the Reformed Church in 1630. It was only in 1630 that Van Bijlert joined the Guild of St Luke in Utrecht, serving as dean between 1632 and 1637, again in 1654, and as warden in 1655. Between 1667 and 1670, he served alternately in both capacities. Before 1630, he had probably been a member of the glass-painters’ guild. In 1634, Van Bijlert became a regent of the confraternity that ran St Job’s Hospice, a hospital treating patients with venereal diseases and an almshouse for old men. Later, in 1642, he became the principal of this charitable organization. After the death of his first wife in 1657, he remarried Cecilia van Gelove in 1660. Van Bijlert became active in the paint-selling business she took over from her first husband. Jan van Bijlert died in Utrecht in November 1671.

Van Bijlert executed history and genre paintings and was, after Gerard van Honthorst’s move to The Hague in 1637 and Paulus Moreelse’s death in 1638, the principal portraitist in Utrecht. His Caravaggesque style of the 1620s gradually gave way to a more classicizing style with a brighter palette, clear lighting and sharp modelling. In the 1630s he also painted genre scenes with small figures, influenced by the work of Jacob Duck, while Van Poelenburch’s style is evident in a few of his history paintings with small figures. His known oeuvre comprises approximately 200 works, only 14 of which are dated. Among his patrons were Utrecht burgomasters and nobles, such as the Strick van Linschoten family. Works from his hand had entered the collections of Stadholder Frederik Hendrik and the Winter King, Frederick V, in the early 1630s. His pupils included Bertram de Fouchier (1609-73), Abraham Willaerts (c. 1613-69), Ludolf de Jongh (1616-79) and Mattheus Wytmans (c. 1650-89).

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

References
De Bie 1661, p. 118; Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), p. 177; Houbraken I, 1718, p. 235; Muller 1880, pp. 24, 149; Van Eelde 1897; Moes in Thieme/Becker V, 1911, p. 315; Bredius 1935d; Hoogewerff 1965, pp. 3-5; Bok 1984, pp. 31-42; Bok in Utrecht-Braunschweig 1986, pp. 194-96; Wegener in Saur X, 1995, pp. 636-37; Huys Janssen 1998, pp. 35-52, 205-17 (documents)