Hercules Destroying the Centaur Nessus

Maarten van Heemskerck (Heemskerk 1498 - Haarlem 1574)

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.¹ 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.²

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,³ and the 1546 wings of the Drapers’ Altarpiece for the St Bavokerk in Haarlem, now in the Frans Hals Museum.⁴ Throughout his career he painted works for various religious institutions in Delft, of which the monumental 1559-60 Haarlem Ecce homo⁵ and the Brussels Entombment triptychs are important examples.⁶ 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)