An Italianate Landscape with an Unidentified Subject from the Old Testament

c. 1620 - c. 1627

Object data

oil on copper

support: height 22 cm × width 33.4 cm
outer size: depth 3 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, lower left, on a rock, with monogram: C·P·F

Technical notes

The support is a copper plate prepared with a tin coating. The paint is thin and in places transparent, applied over an even white ground.

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 5 December 2002

Condition

Fair. Abrasion throughout has caused the white ground to show in the sky, and the landscape to show through some of the figures and animals.

Provenance

...; sale, Marguerite Helen, Countess Nelson, née O’Sullivan (?-1969), London (Sotheby’s), 30 April 1958, no. 61, as Joseph Relating his Dreams to the Shepherds, £ 60, to Thornton;...; anonymous sale (†), London (Phillips), 10 May 1983, no. 67, as The Young David Meeting with Isaiah and Saul, £ 6,500, to S. Nystad Oude Kunst, The Hague; from whom, fl. 125,000, to the museum, 1983

Object number: SK-A-4825

The artist

Cornelis van Poelenburch (Utrecht 1594/95 - Utrecht 1667)

Van Poelenburch’s date of birth can be established on the basis of a document dated 21 January 1601 stating that he was six years old at the time. He was the son of Simon van Poelenburch (d. 1596), a Roman Catholic canon of Utrecht Cathedral. According to Von Sandrart, Van Poelenburch trained with Abraham Bloemaert. By 1617 he was in Rome, where he signed a poem in the album amicorum of Wybrand de Geest. He was one of the founding members of the Schildersbent (Band of Painters) where he adopted the sobriquet ‘Satiro’, evidently bestowed on him because of the subjects of many of his pictures. Van Poelenburch’s earliest known works are two drawings dated 1619, which according to their inscription ‘te tievele’, were drawn in the Tiburtine hills.¹ His first dated painting, the View of the Campo Vaccino is from 1620.² According to Von Sandrart, Van Poelenburch was also in Florence, where he was employed by Cosimo II, Grand Duke of Tuscany. He is recorded in Rome in 1622, but it is not known how long he remained in Italy. On 6 April 1627 he is recorded for the first time back in Utrecht, where he negotiated the purchase of one of his pictures, the Banquet of the Gods, by the States of Utrecht.³ Two years later he married Jacomina van Steenre. According to an inscription on a drawing of the Bastille he was in Paris in 1631.⁴ He lived in London from 1637 to 1641, returning to Utrecht at least once in 1638. Later in his career he held prominent positions in the Utrecht Guild of St Luke (warden in 1656, dean in 1657-58 and 1664). He was buried in the city’s Magdalena Kerk on 12 August 1667.

Van Poelenburch received commissions from important patrons, amongst whom Frederick V, Elector of the Palatinate, and Charles I of England. Together with Abraham Bloemaert, Herman Saftleven and Dirck van der Lisse, he worked on four scenes from Guarini’s Il pastor fido for Stadholder Frederik Hendrik at Honselaarsdijk (c. 1633), and Frederik Hendrik owned 12 paintings by him, the largest number by a single artist. His most important patron was fellow townsman Willem Vincent, Baron van Wyttenhorst, for whom he painted at least 55 cabinet pieces.

Van Poelenburch is considered to be one of the first Italianate painters and his work had a profound influence on the generation that came after him. Throughout his career he painted cabinet pieces of Italianate landscapes with mythological or religious subjects, or populated with pastoral figures and bathers. Almost exclusively on copper or panel, their painted surfaces have a porcelain smoothness. Several portraits by his hand are known, also in a small format. On several occasions Van Poelenburch painted the figures in the work of other artists, such as Alexander Keirincx, Jan Both, Bartholomeus van Bassen, Dirck van Delen and Hendrik Steenwijck II.

Houbraken is the first to record Van Poelenburch’s pupils: Dirck van der Lisse (1607-69), Daniel Vertangen (1598-1681/84), Johan van Haensbergen (1642-1705), Toussaint Gelton (c. 1630-80), François Verwilt (c. 1620-91), Warnard van Rysen (c. 1625-after 1665) and the otherwise unknown Willem van Steenree. Their work is often so close to that of their master that it is hard to tell apart, particularly when signed with Van Poelenburch’s monogram. Jan Gerritsz van Bronckhorst (c. 1603-61) made a number of prints after Van Poelenburch’s designs.

Taco Dibbits, 2007

References
De Bie 1661, pp. 256-57; Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), p. 175; Houbraken I, 1718, pp. 128-30; Sluijter-Seijffert 1984, pp. 25-36, 249-58 (documents); Bok 1985; Chong 1987, pp. 3-14; Schatborn in Amsterdam 2001, pp. 57-65; Boers 2004 (with transcribed inventory of the collection of Willem Vincent, Baron van Wyttenhorst)

Entry

Notwithstanding the apparent narrative and archaic dress that seem to suggest a story from the Old Testament, there has been no convincing identification of the subject of this painting. When it appeared at auction in 1958 it was identified as Joseph Relating his Dreams to the Shepherds (read: ‘to his brothers’; Genesis 37:6-9). However, the young Joseph is traditionally depicted surrounded by his brothers to whom he tells his dreams; in this painting the figure is only addressing a man and a boy, and he is much older than Joseph was in the story. When the painting was acquired by the museum, another identification was proposed: Joseph Searching for his Brothers (Genesis 37:15-17). This can be discarded, because the story says that Joseph set out into the wilderness on his own, and met only one man who told him where to find his brothers.⁵ Against the third and most recent reading of the subject suggested when at auction with Phillips as Jesse Presenting his Son David to the Prophet Samuel (I Samuel 16:11-12) is the fact that there is no sign of Jesse’s other seven sons whom he had introduced to Samuel before David, nor of the horn of oil with which Samuel was about to anoint David. Furthermore, the figure who should be Jesse does not fit the description of an ‘old man’ given in the Bible (I Samuel 16:12).

This painting is characteristic of Van Poelenburch’s easel pictures produced in Italy between c. 1620 and 1627: forums or open fields structured by a sequence of light and dark areas that recede into the distance. The foreground is populated by small figures and cattle, and a classical building stands on the edge of the field.⁶ Another characteristic of the early works is the contrast between the bright dress of the figures and the cool grey, almost silvery tones that dominate the landscape.⁷ Most of the 60 or so paintings known from Van Poelenburch’s Italian period depict views reminiscent of Roman forums populated with small figures. They show the influence that the small, brightly coloured landscapes on copper by Adam Elsheimer must have had on the young artist when he arrived in Rome, and of those by Filippo Napoletano who was active in Florence at the time Van Poelenburch stayed there.

It is difficult to establish a chronology of these cabinet pieces produced by Van Poelenburch in Italy, as only eight of them are dated. In an attempt to discern stylistic development, Sluijter-Seijffert suggested that those from around 1620 show landscapes with relatively small agile figures, as for example Van Poelenburch’s earliest dated picture, the View of the Campo Vaccino of 1620,⁸ where as those produced in Italy a few years later have larger figures, such as The Flight into Egypt dated 1625.⁹ In that case the present picture should date from early in Van Poelenburch’s stay in Italy, around 1620.

The dating of this painting to early in Van Poelenburch’s career in Italy is also supported by the tin coating with which the copper plate is prepared, which seems to occur only in Italy.¹⁰ Furthermore, the thinly applied, sometimes transparent paint is typical for Van Poelenburch’s early works; later paintings show more opaque paint layers that completely cover the light ground layer.

Taco Dibbits, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 240.

Literature

Sluijter-Seijffert 1984, p. 229, no. 53 (as Jesse Presenting his Son David to the Prophet Samuel)

Collection catalogues

1992, p. 74, no. A 4825 (as Jesse Presenting his Son David to the Prophet Samuel); 2007, no. 240

Citation

T. Dibbits, 2007, 'Cornelis van Poelenburch, An Italianate Landscape with an Unidentified Subject from the Old Testament, c. 1620 - c. 1627', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5062

(accessed 21 September 2024 16:10:00).