Pashur Smiting Jeremiah in the Temple (Jeremiah 20:2)

Leonaert Bramer (Delft 1596 - Delft 1674)

According to Van Bleyswijck, Leonaert Bramer was born on Christmas Eve 1596. It is likely that he received his first training from his father, the little-known Hendrick Bramer, one of whose paintings Leonaert copied. Bramer’s biographer, Cornelis de Bie, records that he set off on a journey through France to Italy when he was 18, that is to say in 1614. By 15 February 1616 he was in Aix-en-Provence, where he wrote a dedicatory poem in the album amicorum of his compatriot and fellow artist Wybrand de Geest. In 1620 he was recorded as sharing a house in Rome with the Gouda artist Wouter Crabeth, though he might have already arrived in the city as early as 1616. He was one of the founding members of the Schildersbent (Band of Painters) in Rome, where he was given the nickname ‘Nestelghat’ (Fidget). Although only two dated paintings are known from his Italian period, his work is often mentioned in Italian inventories of important collectors, such as Marquis Vincenzo Giustiniani and Don Camillo Pamphili. De Bie claims that Bramer travelled extensively in Italy, and from the inscription accompanying his engraved portrait in Johannes Meyssens’s 1649 Image de divers hommes desprit sublime it is known that he also worked at the court of Prince Mario Farnese in Parma. A reported brawl in Rome in 1627 in which Bramer was the chief participant might have been the reason for his return to Delft in 1628, where he joined the Guild of St Luke in 1629 and the civic guard in 1639. He served as warden of the Delft guild in 1654, 1655, 1660, 1664 and 1665. He received important commissions, not only from public institutions in Delft and neighbouring towns between 1630 and 1670, but also from Stadholder Frederik Hendrik and his nephew Prince Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen for their palaces in The Hague, Rijswijk and Honselaarsdijk. The most ambitious of the civic commissions was the decoration of the main hall of the Prinsenhof in Delft (1667-69). Bramer lived with his sister in a substantial house in the centre of Delft, and he was buried a bachelor in the Nieuwe Kerk on 10 February 1674.

Bramer’s large painted oeuvre consists mainly of history scenes. Although the Caravaggesque painters, and Adam Elsheimer and Agostino Tassi in particular, must have made a considerable impression on him, he developed a distinctive style of his own. He painted mainly nocturnal scenes with a strong chiaroscuro that gained him the nickname ‘Leonardo delle Notti’. Although on a small scale, they are painted with free brushstrokes and visible impasto, reminiscent of the work of Domenico Fetti.

Not only was Bramer a prolific painter, he also left a large oeuvre of drawings from after 1635. Many of them form large cycles illustrating books; only a few relate to his paintings. It has been suggested that Johannes Vermeer was trained by Bramer. Documents show that both artists knew each other, but there is no evidence to suggest that Vermeer was his pupil, let alone that Bramer had any pupils. His paintings had little direct influence, apart from on the work of the Delft painter Pieter Vromans.

Taco Dibbits, 2007

References
Meyssens 1649, unpag.; De Bie 1661, pp. 252-53; Van Bleyswijck 1667, II, p. 859; Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), p. 190; Houbraken I, 1718, p. 164; Wichmann 1923, pp. 1-76; Huys Janssen 1994b (documents); Plomp/Ten Brink Goldsmith 1994