Portrait of Pompejus Occo (1483-1537)

Entry

Standing against the backdrop of a mountainous landscape with an unidentifiable city on the left is Pompejus Occo (1483-1537), shown half-length behind a marble ledge. He is resting his left hand on a skull (without a jawbone), which stands for the fleeting nature of life, and between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand he holds a red carnation, the symbol of resurrection and the hope of eternal life.⁷ The carnation could also represent marital fidelity if this portrait had a companion piece showing Occo’s wife, but it is not known whether it ever did.⁸ Hanging from the tree on the right is the family coat of arms. Occo is wearing a black bonnet, a dark brown jerkin over a white shirt, and over everything a gown with a broad fur collar, probably lynx. This may be the same as the gown listed in his estate inventory as a ‘black gown trimmed with leopard [or lynx]’.⁹

Sterck identified the sitter as Pompejus Occo in the 1920s on the basis of a comparison with his portrait on the left wing of Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen’s Triptych with the Virgin and Child dated 1515 (fig. a).¹⁰ According to the inscription there, he was the 32-year-old donor of the triptych, in which he is accompanied by St Sebastian. On the right wing is his wife Gerberich Claesdr (1491-1558/59). A later copy of the Amsterdam portrait painted by Isaac Claesz van Swanenburg (fig. b) bears Occo’s personal motto, ‘In Melius Singula’ (Remarkable in goodness).¹¹ That copy has the date 1551 and an inscription stating that the sitter was 48 years old at the time, which does not square with the inscription on the triptych stating that he was 32 in 1515. The date on the copy should read 1531. It can be assumed that the inscription on the copy was based on information on the original frame of the present painting, which is lost, and that the date there was wrongly read and transcribed as 1551. The Amsterdam portrait is usually dated to 1531, the year that should be read on the copy.¹² The streaks of grey in the sitter’s hair, his slightly loose skin and the wrinkles around his eyes confirm the suspicion that the man is 48 years old. The coat of arms that Occo was granted by Emperor Maximilian I in Augsburg on 20 October 1504 is depicted in both the left wing of the triptych and the Amsterdam portrait.¹³

Poppe or Poppius Ockezoon (c. 1483-1537), who called himself Pompejus Occo, came from an east Frisian family, grew up in Augsburg, and settled in Amsterdam in 1511 as the representative of the Augsburg mercantile and banking house of the Fuggers. As a merchant and banker he made loans to Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands, and to the city of Amsterdam, and maintained ties with the Danish king, Christian II.¹⁴ He was one of the richest residents of Amsterdam in his day, and lived in a house called ‘Het Paradijs’ (Paradise) in Kalverstraat (now no. 13), which housed the library of the humanist Rudolph Agricola. Pompejus Occo played an important part in the religious, humanist and cultural life of the city, among other things as a patron of artists like Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen. Between 1513 and 1519 he was churchwarden of the Heilige Stede pilgrims’ chapel, and from 1521 to 1526 of the Nieuwe Kerk. He was particularly active in embellishing the Heilige Stede with numerous works of art, and he also commissioned prayer books like the Passio Domini nostri Jesu Christi of 1523 with texts by the humanist Alardus of Amsterdam (1494/95-1544) and woodcuts by Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen.¹⁵

The attribution of the Amsterdam portrait to Dirck Jacobsz has never been called into question since it was made by Friedländer in 1926.¹⁶ The earliest signed and dated civic guard group portrait by the artist, of 1529, now in the possession of the City of Amsterdam, shows a closely related manner of painting the faces and hands.¹⁷ Attention has also been drawn to the correspondence between the landscape in the present painting and that in the background of the Triptych with the Virgin and Child in Stuttgart, the centre panel of which bears the monogram of Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen and the date 1526, while the wings are dated 1530.¹⁸ It seems likely that Dirck Jacobsz painted much of that triptych in his father’s workshop.¹⁹ There is a similarly lively landscape in the Jacob Cornelisz Painting his Wife by Dirck Jacobsz in Toledo.²⁰ Neither these stylistic similarities nor the dendrochronology are at odds with the traditional dating of 1531 outlined above, and it has been retained here.

The painting, in which the sitter directs his self-assured and penetrating gaze at the viewer, is often described as the first Amsterdam Renaissance portrait. Painted with a broad brush and flair, it is among the best of Dirck Jacobsz’s individual portraits. As in the civic guard piece of 1529 (SK-C-402), the hands play an important part in the composition. While he was painting the portrait, Jacobsz had to search for a convincing position for the sitter’s left hand, which now rests on the skull. Interestingly, that skull was only inserted at a late stage. Initially Occo’s hand rested on the stone ledge (fig. c).

(Jan Piet Filedt Kok)