Object data
oil on panel
support: height 64.3 cm × width 48.9 cm
thickness 1.2 cm
depth 4.5 cm
Jan van Scorel (copy after)
Portrait of Willem van Lokhorst (1514-1564)
1554
Inscriptions
- date, upper left: AN[NO] 1554
- inscription, upper right: ETATIS 40
Technical notes
The support consists of two vertically grained oak planks (26.1 and 22.8 cm), 0.4-0.7 cm thick. The panel has been bevelled along the top and bottom edges. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1524. The panel could have been ready for use by 1535, but a date in or after 1549 is more likely. The white ground and paint extend to the edges. A reddish priming was applied in broad brushstrokes on top of the ground and shows through the paint in the face. The underdrawing, consisting of some loosely sketched contour lines, is visible to the naked eye in the sitter’s left hand. It can also be revealed by infrared reflectography. The figure is delimited by the background colour and is painted wet in wet.
Scientific examination and reports
- condition report: B. Schoonhoven, RMA, 15 March 2006
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 17 August 2006
- infrared reflectography: M. Wolters / M. Leeflang [2], RMA/RKD, no. RKDG505, 10 January 2008
Condition
Fair. There is a vertical split extending the height of the panel, which is irregular and open in places. There is overpainting in the mantle and discoloured retouching, as well as raised paint along the split and in the dark robe in the lower right corner. The thick varnish is heavily discoloured.
Conservation
- M. Bijl, 1982: flaking paint consolidated
Provenance
…; ? collection Van Wassenaer family;1 …; sale, widow of P. Overgauw-Beetz (†) (The Hague) et al. [section Prof. Joseph Albert Alberdingk Thijm (1820-89, Amsterdam)], Amsterdam (F. Muller) 24 April 1900 sqq. (hors de catalogue), as Dutch school, first half 16th century, fl. 306, to the museum2
Object number: SK-A-1855
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Jan van Scorel (Schoorl 1495 - Utrecht 1562), copy after
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
Portrayed half-length, Willem van Lokhorst, Lord of Lokhorst, stands before a greenish-grey background, wearing a black baret and cloak over a black garment whose appearance is somewhat difficult to make out due to the painting’s condition. As he looks out at the viewer, Willem’s right hand rests on his hip while the left grasps the hilt of a sword. The identification of the sitter was made by Hoogewerff, who noted the similarity to the portrait of Willem van Lokhorst in Münster.9 The Münster portrait’s identification derives from the Lokhorst coat of arms in the upper right corner and a description of the painting in a 17th-century inventory as ‘tconterfeytsel van Heer Wilm van Lockhorst Heere van Lockhorst Heemsteede Slijdrecht etc’ (portrait of Sir Wil[le]m van Lockhorst, Lord of Lochorst, Heemstede, Slijdrecht, etc.).10
It is well known that Jan van Scorel had close connections to members of the Lokhorst family, particularly the Utrecht clerics, Herman van Lokhorst, Dean of Oldminster (St Saviour’s) and his natural son, Willem, who was one of Scorel’s fellow canons in the Utrecht Mariakerk. Scorel and Willem probably met in Rome, where both stayed on for a while after the untimely death of the Dutch pope, Adrian VI, in September 1523. It was probably through Willem that Scorel met Herman van Lokhorst, who became the artist’s important benefactor and patron upon his return to Utrecht from Italy.11
The sitter in this portrait, however, is a member of the knightly branch of the Lokhorst family. He is Willem, the son of Gerrit van Lokhorst, Lord of Lokhorst, whom some believe is the knight portrayed on the outer wings of Jan van Scorel’s Lokhorst Triptych in Utrecht.12 Willem belonged to the branch of the family that settled in Leiden, where he was not only a burgomaster but also a member of the town council and the polder board (‘hoogheemraad’) of Rijnland.13 In 1549, Willem inherited the title, Lord of Lokhorst, which later passed to his brother, Vincent, along with the seigniories of Heemstede, Lievendael, Slydrecht and others. Upon Vincent’s death in 1595, this branch of the Lokhorst family died out.14
Comparison of the Rijksmuseum painting with the portrait of Willem van Lokhorst in Münster reveals telling similarities and differences. It was not until 1997 that the Münster portrait was associated with Jan van Scorel by Faries.15 Before that it had usually been considered a work by Maarten van Heemskerck, because it was described as such in the 1651 inventory.16 Only De Vries deviated from the general opinion and made reference to Antonio Moro.17 In 1980, Grosshans rightly de-attributed the work, noting the lack of any stylistic similarities to Heemskerck’s portraiture.18 Without question, the modelling in Willem’s face in Münster follows Scorel’s portrait method: there is an impasto build-up in the forehead and around the eyes, while the nose and cheek are painted more thinly, bringing out the planar structure of the head.19 The steady gaze out at the viewer, in this case of Willem’s blue-grey eyes, is a typical feature of Scorel’s portraits. The technique is also similar, for although only a little underdrawing could be revealed in the face, long, undulating contours - probably in black chalk - were detected in the hands.20
The features in the Amsterdam portrait are identical to those in Münster: the shape of the head, fleshy mouth, nose, angled, upper eyelids, and prominent cheekbone are exactly the same. A computer overlay of the two heads yielded an almost exact match in every detail.21 The painting technique differs, however, since the Amsterdam portrait lacks texture and is modelled in a flatter, more schematic manner, as might be expected of a copy. The 1554 date accords well with the dendrochronological estimate. Although these dates still fall in Jan van Scorel’s lifetime, there are no obvious aspects of technique or execution that would allow us to consider the Rijksmuseum portrait a product of Scorel’s workshop. Since the two paintings must nonetheless be related, it is likely that the Amsterdam painting was based on the Münster portrait or a model common to both.
M. Faries, 2010
Literature updated, 2016
Literature
Hoogewerff III, 1939, p. 503 (as Cornelis Teunisz); De Meyere 1978, p. 186 (attributions to both Cornelis Teunisz and school of Scorel unconvincing; not by a Utrecht painter)
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 15, no. 151 (as Dutch school, first half 16th century, Portrait of Andries, Bastard of Wassenaer ?); 1934, p. 14, no. 151 (as Dutch school, second half 16th century, but attributed in the entry to Scorel); 1960, p. 284, no. 2196 A2 (as Scorel); 1976, pp. 512-13, no. A 1855 (as school of Scorel)
Citation
M. Faries, 2010, 'copy after Jan van Scorel, Portrait of Willem van Lokhorst (1514-1564), 1554', in J.P. Filedt Kok and M. Ubl (eds.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5449
(accessed 25 November 2024 21:42:23).