A Scholar in his Study

Entry

The theme of the secular scholar in his study was developed in Leiden in the 1630s by Rembrandt, Jan Lievens, Gerrit Dou and their circle.² There are no fewer than six pictures of this subject by or attributed to Jacob van Spreeuwen, some of which include elaborate still lifes derived from Dou’s example.³ Van Spreeuwen, however, never achieved the latter’s level of detail, his thinly painted, sketchy compositions being more akin to those of another Leiden artist, Quiringh van Brekelenkam.

As Bauch was the first to point out, the pose of Van Spreeuwen’s scholar is based on Rembrandt’s 1629 An Old Man Asleep.⁴ Both their figures have one hand tucked into their mantle or shirt and rest their weary heads on the other. Indicative of Van Spreeuwen’s limited talent is the clumsy way in which he arranged the man’s legs so that the position of his left one is unclear and the right one appears to dangle in the air. The inclusion of books and a globe also changes the iconography of Rembrandt’s elder, which was likely meant as a personification of sloth, one of the seven deadly sins. Based on the Old Testament proverb, ‘A slothful man hideth his hand in his bosom, and will not so much as bring it to his mouth again’ (Proverbs 19:24), the gesture of the hand placed within a cloak became connected with idleness since around 1200.⁵ The same association goes for the way Rembrandt’s figure, his eyes shut, supports his head with his other hand. Van Spreeuwen’s greybeard may be depicted as lazy, therefore, but this pose was also used to symbolize melancholy, an affliction suffered by many a scholar in seventeenth-century Dutch paintings and prints. However, the fact that Van Spreeuwen’s old man is staring ahead, so not sleeping, favours an interpretation of him as a Melancholic rather than slothful.⁶

The subject of the scholar in his study originated with medieval depictions of St Jerome in his cell.⁷ He is shown in the same melancholic pose as Van Spreeuwen’s figure in a number of sixteenth and seventeenth-century paintings and prints.⁸ Like St Jerome in those works, Van Spreeuwen’s greybeard may be contemplating the transience of earthly existence, which is symbolized here by the globe on the table. Its presence and the scholar’s dejected air, however, would also have reminded the contemporary viewer of the classical philosopher Heraclitus, who wept at the follies of the world. Usually accompanied by his laughing colleague Democritus, Heraclitus was almost invariably depicted with a globe in seventeenth-century Dutch paintings, and in several of them Heraclitus rests his weary head in his hand in order to express his melancholic state.⁹

Van Spreeuwen’s Scholar in his Study is probably identical with the ‘Philosopher in an interior, sitting at a table upon which is a globe and a book resting against it’ at an auction in Middelburg in 1779.¹⁰ In addition to that description, the date, measurements and support recorded in the catalogue for that sale match the Rijksmuseum panel. It also listed a pendant in the form of ‘a woman with a spinning wheel and a book on her lap’.¹¹ Unfortunately, no such picture can be found in Van Spreeuwen’s extant oeuvre, but the likelihood that it was a true companion piece to the ‘Philosopher’ seems distinct, given the fact that Van Spreeuwen combined a scholar and a woman spinning in another painting.¹²

Jonathan Bikker, 2023

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements