Object data
oil on panel
support: height 100.4 cm × width 203.9 cm
frame: height 222.8 cm × width 121 cm × thickness 6.5 cm
Jan van Scorel
Landscape with Bathsheba
Utrecht, c. 1540 - c. 1545
Technical notes
The panel consists of four horizontally grained oak planks (29.5-28.8, 29-19.4, 12.1 and 29.7 cm), 0.9-1.8 cm thick, all of which are half-lap joined. All sides show slight bevelling. There are notches on the two vertical sides, probably for dowels or nails that once secured the panel in a frame. The reverse shows the marks of a scrub plane, used for reducing the thickness of the planks. There are two gouge marks on the bottom plank that are of the type now usually interpreted as cargo marks (fig. c). Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1521. The panel could have been ready for use by 1532, but a date in or after 1546 is more likely. At the top and bottom the paint layer extends to the edges. At the left and right side there are unpainted edges of approximately 0.5-1.2 cm. Underdrawing in a dry medium can be seen with the naked eye in various areas in the painting, and infrared reflectography reveals a fully worked-up compositional layout of varying appearance, from assured, flowing contour lines in the statues in the lower left, to heavy diagonal shading in the foliage in the middle ground, and exacting outlines in the palace complex on the right (fig. a, fig. b). The figures in the middle ground were not predicted in the underdrawing and were painted on top of the background colour; the two walking women stand out because of their dense, lead-tin yellow highlights. Cross-sections show the white priming on the ground that is typical of Scorel’s works, and as is usual, the underdrawing lies on this layer. The ground has been identified as chalk.1 The pigment smalt could be identified in the background mountains and sky, based on its characteristic appearance as greyish, splinter-like particles in cross-sections. This colour could not have been added by a later artist, since smalt was also found underneath an original green leaf. Delicate white highlights can easily be observed in the fountain figures. There are colour and pigment shifts in the landscape, from a dark green with green and yellow highlights in the foliage, to an azurite blue with blue highlights, to the far distance where smalt occurs. X-rays show a fluid application of paint, although there are more noticeable brushstrokes in the sky.
Scientific examination and reports
- paint samples: J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer, 9 November 1980
- paint samples: J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer, with the investigator, nos. A 97/1-8, 1 October 1976
- infrared reflectography: J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer, RKD, nos. AB 131:0-136:24, 14 July 1977
- infrared reflectography: J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer, RKD, nos. AB 271:17-272:6, AB 1141:34, 20 December 1979
- X-radiography: RMA, nos. 1569/0-20, 4 July 1983
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 27 October 1995
- infrared reflectography: M. Wolters / M. Leeflang [2], RKD/RMA, no. RKDG443, 14 February 2007
- condition report: A. Krekeler, RMA, 14 July 2008
Literature scientific examination and reports
Faries 1975, pp. 118, 192-95; Faries 1987, pp. 94-96
Condition
Fair. The panel exhibits three short old cracks, which have been glued and stabilised during a former restoration. The paint surface shows overall slight abrasion. The rocks and trees on the left side behind Bathsheba are strongly abraded. Here the ground layer shows through. The leaves of the trees behind Bathsheba which in the past must have been more greenish in colour now appear brown.
Conservation
- W.A. Hopman, 1880: complete restoration; a brownish oil layer that covered the painting removed
- J.A. Hesterman & Zn, 1906: loose paint consolidated; varnish regenerated and revarnished
- L. Kuiper, 1978 - 1981: complete restoration
- M. Zeldenrust, 1978 - 1981
Provenance
…; found in the attic of the Gouvernementsgebouw (Provincial Capitol), Groningen, 1878;2 transferred from the Gouvernementsgebouw to the museum, with SK-A-669, May 1879; on loan to the Centraal Museum, Utrecht, 2004-10
Object number: SK-A-670
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Jan van Scorel (Schoorl 1495 - Utrecht 1562)
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, 2009
Updated by the author, 2016
Entry
This painting by Jan van Scorel depicts Bathsheba in her bath on the left and King David in his palace on the right, two scenes from the Old Testament book of 2 Samuel (11:2 and 3-4). Looking from his rooftop, David was seduced by Bathsheba’s beauty, and later not only committed adultery with her but also arranged for her husband’s demise. The low, oblong shape of the panel is well suited to the broad landscape setting, and is a format often seen in Scorel’s works. Bathsheba occupies the space of the lower left foreground, stretching her feet into the water of a fountain adorned by statues of a water nymph and a dolphin-like creature. Nearby a male statue reminiscent of a river god serves as a water spout. A cluster of bushes and trees at the centre of the painting not only divides foreground from background, where David’s palace can be seen in the far distance, but also establishes a strong diagonal movement to the right. The meandering figures in this part of the composition accomplish the transition into depth as they gradually diminish in size and lead our eye into the background, where the tiny figure of David leans out from a loggia to hand his fateful letter to a messenger. Some of the hybrid forms of David’s palace relate to other paintings by Scorel. The tall structures sheared off on one side can be traced back to Scorel’s earliest works (1519-21), while other 'classicising' buildings recall compositions from Scorel’s Haarlem years (1527-30) and architectural motifs in the Sts James and Stephen polyptych of c. 1540.9
The iconography in this painting is more complicated than usual for Scorel. The erotic overtones of the subject were common by the time the Landscape with Bathsheba was completed,10 and Scorel accomplishes this by associating the female nudes in the painting with Venus figures. One of Venus’s attributes is a dolphin (known, for instance, from the famous Medici Venus), and Bathsheba’s pose, including the motif of her hand on her hair, recalls the so-called ‘Venus Anadyomene’ type - Venus born of the foam of the sea.11 On the pedestal just below the water nymph, a decorative cartouche can be seen with a crane-like bird standing on the right side with one foot raised. Whether such an ornamental motif could have symbolic meaning is debatable, except that the nymph seems to be pointing down directly at the bird. While cranes often stand for vigilance,12 the ibis was known for its filthy habits and aversion to clean water.13 The vomiting male statue seems to participate in the latter symbolism, since his action contaminates the water of Bathsheba’s bath.14 The fountain, thus designated as polluted, warns against the temptations of the flesh.
Comparison of the underdrawn layout of the Landscape with Bathsheba with the finalised image discloses a number of calculated changes. Although modelled carefully with bands of short, diagonal dashes, Bathsheba’s hand and abdomen were lowered in position, along with the ledge on which she is seated. The surface decorations on her fountain hide underdrawn construction lines, some for the wall around the pool and others for the male statue’s couch, which originally had a block-like shape (fig. a). The orthogonals in this part of the painting relate to the perspective of the steps leading from the ground to the loggia of David’s palace (fig. b). The painted stairs, following two underdrawn diagonals laid in with a straight edge, are lower and wider than those originally planned. The final perspective converges just off the right side of the panel at about the level of the middle of the arcade. Several conclusions may be drawn from the artist’s working method: first, he carefully manipulated forms so that a low vantage point is ultimately imposed on the viewer, and secondly, he intentionally laid out the perspective across space so that the compositional elements on both sides of the painting would be linked in a unified spatial construction.
In the background, much of the underdrawing can be seen with the naked eye. This led earlier scholars to assume that the Landscape with Bathsheba was unfinished,15 but this is not the case. The sky and background mountains were painted with the blue pigment smalt, which has now increased in transparency and discoloured to the present brownish-grey.16 Originally, the Bathsheba would have exhibited a transition in colour from dark green to a cool blue, following the formula for landscape that Scorel developed during his Haarlem years (1527-30) and can be seen in his Baptism of Christ in Haarlem.17 The use of smalt provides information about the date of the Bathsheba, since this pigment does not appear regularly in northern Netherlandish painting until the late 1530s.18
Although the attribution to Scorel has never been doubted, earlier scholars consistently dated the Landscape with Bathsheba rather early in Scorel’s career, c. 1527 or c. 1530, based on perceived resemblances to the Lokhorst Triptych or to works from Scorel’s Haarlem period.19 Faries was the first to suggest a date as late as c. 1540, referring to similarities in the underdrawing of works around this date and to the more stratified construction of the landscape as indicative of Scorel’s late style.20 Dendrochronology now confirms the later dating;21 in addition, the dendrochronological estimates for the Bathsheba exactly match those for another painting in the Scorel group, the St Sebastian in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, which is dated 1542.22 The decorative cartouche mentioned above provides further evidence for a later date, since it includes a type of ornament known as strapwork. Developed first in Antwerp in the early 1540s, strapwork appears in prints by Cornelis Bos, the artist who is credited with the importation of this type of design into the northern Netherlands. Some of his first ornamental prints, a few of which are almost identical to the decorative cartouche in the Bathsheba, date from around 1545.23
The_ Landscape with Bathsheba_ and Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, also in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-669), have always been assumed to be pendants.24 Since they were found together,25 some scholars have assumed that the two paintings functioned as a pair and comprised a programme of Good and Bad Government.26
M. Faries, 2009
Literature updated, 2016
Literature
Scheibler/Bode 1881, p. 211; Friedländer XII, 1935, pp. 139, 200, no. 310; De Jonge 1940, p. 22; Hoogewerff IV, 1941-42, pp. 120-22; Utrecht 1955, pp. 38-39, no. 18, with earlier literature; Kunoth-Leifels 1962, pp. 54-57; ENP XII, 1975, p. 121, no. 310; Faries 1975, pp. 118, 193; Faries in Amsterdam 1986a, pp. 234-35, no. 115; Faries ‘et al.’ 1987, pp. 94-96; Faries in coll. cat. Utrecht 2011, no. 28
Collection catalogues
1880, p. 431, no. 512 (as Flemish school); 1887, p. 158, no. 1334; 1903, p. 245, no. 2191; 1934, p. 263, no. 2191; 1960, p. 283, no. 2191; 1976, p. 511, no. A 670, with earlier literature
Citation
M. Faries, 2010, 'Jan van Scorel, Landscape with Bathsheba, Utrecht, c. 1540 - c. 1545', in M. Ubl (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5443
(accessed 20 September 2024 00:06:20).Figures
fig. c Reverse of the panel, with two gouge marks
fig. a Detail of the infrared reflectogram assembly of SK-A-670, showing Bathsheba’s fountain (© Stichting RKD)
fig. b Detail of the infrared reflectogram assembly of SK-A-670, showing the steps leading to King David’s palace (© Stichting RKD)
fig. a Detail of the infrared reflectogram assembly of SK-A-670, showing Bathsheba’s fountain (© Stichting RKD)
fig. b Detail of the infrared reflectogram assembly of SK-A-670, showing the steps leading to King David’s palace (© Stichting RKD)