HEEMSKERCK, Maerten van

In 1546 Maerten van Heemskerck was commissioned by the Drapers Guild (the guild of wool tradesmen) to make two painted “doors” representing the Annunciation for the guild’s altar in the St Bavo Church in Haarlem. The doors were added to an existing central piece that got lost.

This drawing is one of many studies for a series of etchings. A common feature of Heemskerck’s narrative drawings is the fact that they depict a dramatic culmination intensified by the stylistic transition from the Italian High Renaissance to the Northern European Mannerist style. Many of the muscular backs, bearded prophet-like figures and voluptuous Sibyls are taken directly from Michelangelo.

This is the central panel of the Crucifixion Triptych. The side panels represent the donor and his family with patron saints.

The triptych is a modified version of the altarpiece which was executed by the artist in 1540 for the St Lawrence church at Alkmaar (presently in Cathedral in Link�ping, Sweden). The painting was strongly modified in the 17-18th centuries.

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The picture shows a detail of the right wing of the triptych.

Jesus stands between the governor of Judaea, Pilate, and two executioners. Pilate displays Jesus to the people of Jerusalem with the words “Here is the man” (Latin: Ecce homo). The people demanded his crucifixion; Pilate let them have their way and Jesus was crucified on Golgotha.

This painting of a family is one of the most important works of portraiture in 16th-century Netherlandish art. It also provides an exemplary illustration of the possibilities offered by the combination of Early Netherlandish tradition, Italian influences and creative talent.

A respectably dressed family is gathered around a table whose white damask cloth is spread with food. The father, looking out at the viewer, has a large purse hanging from his belt; his right hand holds out a wine-glass in an inviting gesture, while the left hand with its signet ring rests on his daughter’s shoulder. The youngest child in the mother’s lap holds out to the viewer the crucifix that hangs from her rosary. The signet ring identifies the father as Peter Jan Foppeszoon, a wealthy burgher, town councillor and church warden of St Bavo in Harlem. By 1530, his wife Alijdt Mathijsdr. had given birth to three children, Jan, then around five years old, Cornelia, about three, and Pieter, born around 1530. The birth, or perhaps christening, of the youngest child may have been the occasion for the commissioning of this family portrait.

The clear compositional structure, stabilized by its “corner posts” of father and mother yet with no sense of rigidity, reflects both the influences with which Heemskerck was confronted in Rome and his own endeavours to lend plastic conviction to his figures and objects. The richly decked table, on the other hand, with its carefully executed tableware and food, takes up the love of detail so characteristic of Early Netherlandish painting. It is but a short step from here to the emergence of the still-life as a genre in its own right.

While the different ages of the three children are accurately characterized, the figures nevertheless remain coolly distanced from the spectator. The inner world of the painting remains hermetically sealed, an impression reinforced by the technique employed for the background, whereby the paint is applied in thin, smooth layers in pale forms which seem to be abstracted from clouds.

Heemskerck’s Family Portrait, one of his greatest works, was for a long time attributed to his fellow Dutchman Jan van Scorel.

Maerten van Heemskerck stayed in Rome over three years between 1532 and 1536. He sketched everything from distant views of the Roman ruins and medieval monuments to details of objects and Renaissance compositions. These sketches are fortunately preserved in part in two copious sketchbooks in the print cabinet in Berlin.

The engraving depicts the garden of the banker and humanist Jacopo Galli in Rome. Among the antique statues and fragments Michelangelo’s Bacchus can be seen. The Bacchus was commissioned by Cardinal Riario, and it was purchased by the banker when Riario refused to pay for it.

Van Heemskerck’s drawing shows the Hercules of the Forum Boarium, a larger-than-life statue in gilded bronze, discovered at the end of the fifteenth century on the Forum Boarium in Rome. Soon after it was taken to the Palazzo dei Conservatori, where it remains. The statue was placed on a high pedestal at the right side of the courtyard, as recorded by van Heemskerck. The drawing also represents fragments of the Colossus of Constantine on the Capitoline.

The painting was executed a few years after the artist’s journey in Italy, and it shows the influence of Michelangelo. However, the Netherlandish painter, true to his heritage, is unable to resist the allure of the innumerable minor details.

The painting is a late work of the artist manifesting a northern Mannerist style. The elongated figures, the metallic colours follow Italian examples, however, the traditional dramatic Flemish realism of Van deer Goes or Massys is also present.

The design of this dynamic composition was inspired by Luca Signorelli’s fresco cycle in Orvieto.

This is one of the earliest known works by Heemskerck. The expressive nature of the subject of Christ as the Man of Sorrows lent itself well to Heemskerck’s own brand of Mannerism and he treated it on several further occasions throughout the course of his career.

The painting is signed and dated on a cartellino upper right: MARTINVS HEEMSKERIC INVENIT/ ANNO MDXXV.

The Man of Sorrows displays the delicate lines and marvellous colouring of which the artist was capable.

The painting is monogrammed and dated upper centre on the cartouche: M 1532 H.

The painting is signed and dated on a cartellino upper right: MARTINVS HEEMSKERIC INVENIT/ ANNO MDXXV and inscribed:

NE FLVXVS IRRITVS SIT NOSTRI CRVORIS O(LIM) QVO SANO VVLNVS GENVS BEOQVE LAPS(VM) FOSSVM CATVT TOT A SPINIS MANVS HIAN (=INANES) LATVS PEDES APER(TI) COR FEREVM MOVE(ANT)

(‘In order that our blood may not have flowed in vain, with which I am able to heal wounds and make the fallen human race happy, may the head which was pierced by so many thorns, the poor hands, the side, and the pierced feet all move a hardened heart’.)

Momus is the Greek deity of mockery, faultfinding, scoff and (un)fair criticism. He is also the patron of writers and poets. He found fault with the man made by Hephaestus for not having little doors in his breast through which his secret thoughts might be seen, and with Aphrodite for talking too much and because her sandals creaked (although he could find no fault with her naked body). This and other mocking and criticism of the gods led to his downfall and he was banished from the Olympus.

The companion-piece of this painting, the portrait of Pieter Bicker Gerritsz. is also in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

The traditional identification of the couple is probably incorrect, the two portraits represent a young and hard-working couple, they were painted probably to mark their betrothal.

The companion-piece of this painting, the portrait of Anna Codde is also in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

The traditional identification of the couple is probably incorrect, the two portraits represent a young and hard-working couple, they were painted probably to mark their betrothal.

The portrait combines sobriety with an interest in detail, setting the scene with only the most necessary elements, all of which relate to the main subject of the painting. Hanging on a bare wall is a shield which identifies the sitter, while the bobbin on the left and the sewing basket on the right refer to the woman’s task. The spinning wheel is prominent in the foreground. Behind the distaff, the woman’s arms are emphasized by her ample white sleeves which light up the middleground.

This is one of Heemskerck’s earliest paintings, executed in the period when he was the apprentice of Jan van Scorel in Haarlem. Its style is very close to that of van Scorel’s. The pose and treatment of the Virgin’s head, her hairstyle, and costume are all remarkably similar to Scorel.

Van Heemskerck travelled to Rome in 1532 and remained in Italy for four or five years. Dozens of his Roman drawings survive, including sixty-three in two sketchbooks today in Berlin. During his stay, Van Heemskerck visited the Casa Sassi, a noted private collection. His drawing depicts the courtyard arrayed with antique statues on pedestals and in niches. Years later, back in Haarlem, Van Heemskerck adapted this drawing for the background of his St Luke Painting the Virgin.

In fact the painting is a double self-portrait in addition to the portrait of the mature artist we can see the small figure of the young artist who, twenty years before, made drawings of the immense ruins of the Colosseum.

Due to the fame of Rogier van der Weyden’s St Luke Painting the Virgin, dozens of artists painted this subject over the next century, especially in the Low Countries and Germany. The composition and its content evolved over time as attitudes about art changed. Van Heemskerk created his version possibly as an altarpiece for Delft’s St Luke’s guild. The apparent influence of Michelangelo and the inclusion of antique sculptures indicates the stay of the artist in Rome. The painting harks back to Jan Gossart’s St Luke Painting the Virgin in Prague, but now the background reflects his visits to courtyards in Rome that were full of recently unearthed antiquities.

St Luke was the patron saint of artists’ professional associations, the guilds of St Luke. Van Heemskerk painted this picture for the Haarlem Guild of St Luke. The painting hung high above the guild’s altar in the Church of St Bavo.

Heemskerck’s interpretation of this theme is remarkably different from those of his predecessors, Rogier van der Weyden or Jan Gossart. The setting is barren, with a blank wall behind the evenly placed figures as if they were part of a deeply cut frieze. Even more surprising, St Luke executes his icon at night with an internal torchlight providing the only illumination.

In the years following the Sack of Rome (1527-28), the architectural activity of the Vatican state reached an all-time low. St. Peter’s was particularly affected by this. Though taxes had been raised yet again, the German-speaking countries, in particular, refused to pay them. The progress of the work on St. Peter’s, which was directed for a long period by Antonio da Sangallo, was correspondingly slow. The sketch drawn by Maerten van Heemskerck in 1535 shows that the building site of St. Peter’s was effectively a ruin. The wooden model Antonio da Sangallo produced was neither simple nor monumental. Michelangelo, who after Sangallo’s death took over the commission, strongly criticised the model, and developed a new plan.

The Vatican loggias were based in one of Bramante’s projects, left unfinished at his death. The plan was to build three levels of superimposed walkways above the ground floor, with the external sides open to interact with the garden that it overlooked. The project was ultimately completed after the mid-sixteenth century under Pope Paul IV. The harmonious structure was conceived as an elegant fa�ade to mask the jumble of older buildings behind it, as seen in Van Heemskerck’s drawing from the 1530s.

The Belvedere Torso is a marble fragment showing the torso and upper legs of a powerful male figure seated on a rock. It is now in the Vatican Museums and named after the Belvedere Court in the Vatican in which it was once displayed. It is signed by a Greek sculptor ‘Apollonius, son of Nestor, Athenian’, about whom nothing is known, and there is scholarly debate as to whether it is an original Hellenistic work from the 1st century B.C. or a Roman copy.

Heemskerck’s drawings of Roman ruins and Renaissance works provide us with important information about the appearance of Rome in the 1530s. When he saw the Belvedere Torso it was still lying on its back.

The Crucifixion by Maerten van Heemskerck comes from the convent of the Rich Clares in Ghent. Various aspects of the Passion have been brought together here in one scene. The crucified Christ hangs high above the crowd, between the good and the bad murderers. One soldier raises up a sponge soaked in vinegar to quench Jesus thirst, while another looks up in awe at the dying man. In the right foreground soldiers cast dice for Jesus clothes. On the left we see Mary swoon in the arms of the apostle John. At the foot of the cross, Mary Magdalene is overcome with grief as she gazes up at the Messiah. The donor, wearing a priests surplice, kneels in the foreground on the left. His identity is not known. The beautifully executed horses in the background are not based on nature studies but on sketches Maerten van Heemskerck made of classical sculptures when he visited Italy from 1532 to 1535.

This work illustrates the influence exerted in the Low Countries by the Italian Renaissance. A variety of artists made the journey to Italy in the 16th century, where they absorbed new artistic ideas. Their work brought an entirely new approach to religious painting compared to the pious, inward-looking art of the 15th century. Novel elements included brilliant compositions and above all the heightened attention to the human body - a focus that led to frequent exaggeration.

Many of the paintings produced by the Haarlem artist Maerten van Heemskerck, who spent the years 1532-35 in Italy, stand out for their somewhat contrived poses and their element of theatricality. His Crucifixion, with its atmosphere of torment, heightened by the use of colour is a striking example of the Mannerist approach.

The painting is signed and dated bottom left: M. HEMSKERCK /fecit/ 1543.

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This drawing was a design for a print, the fifth in a series of six that was engraved by Philip Galle in 1563. The six prints are composed in such a way that when placed side by side they can be read as a running frieze consisting of a long procession of allegorical and historical figures.

The number of prints after designs by Heemskerck is impressive: around 600 in all.

The altarpiece, representing scenes from the Passion of Christ, once stood on the altar of the St Lawrence Church in Alkmaar. Through the ruling of the Calvinists, statues and altars from the catholic period were removed and entrusted to the city council. Maerten van Heemskerck’s triptych had survived the iconoclast. It was sold via the city council to the king of Sweden. To get the painting to its new home, it was placed on a ship heading along the Swedish coast, where it had an unfortunate accident. The triptych was rescued and bestowed by the king to the cathedral of Link�ping. Presently a giant printed reproduction of the triptych can be seen in the Alkmaar church.

Maerten van Heemskerck probably produced this imposing triptych for a church in Delft. It is a mature work, and one of the artist’s most accomplished paintings. The central panel represents the entombment according to a traditional pattern, with Christ’s gnarled body, placed on a brilliant white winding cloth, taking up alone almost the entire foreground. It is supported by Joseph of Arimathea to the right and by Nicodemus and Mary Magdalene to the left. The Saviour’s face is ghastly pale and carries the marks of the crown of thorns, that now lies at the foot of the tomb. However, the promise of his forthcoming resurrection figures on the bas-relief of the sarcophagus, which illustrates the story of Jonah, whose three days in the belly of the whale are considered as prefiguring Christ’s three days in the tomb. Around the central group we find the usual protagonists, St John and the Virgin, Mary Salome and Mary Cleophas, to the far right, a servant carries a vase of perfume for embalming Christ’s body. Their gestures are tense, their faces distorted with grief.

A similar sense of sadness marks their holy patrons Peter and Mary Magdalene who accompany the donors in prayer on the wings. The reverse sides of the wings are decorated with the majestic figures of the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah.

The triptych illustrates profusely how much Van Heemskerck was marked by his stay in Italy, where he lived in Rome from 1532 to 1536-37 and was constantly drawing antique monuments, ruins and sculptures. Joseph of Arimathea’s face picks up the expression of the famous Laocoon, of whom the artist has left us a sketch, whilst the sarcophagus is inspired directly from Roman models. Christ’s monumental figure, with its powerful muscles, also betrays clear influences of Michelangelo and the Italian mannerists.

The Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem conserves a triptych by Van Heemskerck, the central panel of which shows the Mocking of Christ, another episode of the Passion, probably intended for the same chapel as the Brussels altarpiece. Indeed the work carries the same dates and is of identical shape and size. In addition, the backs of the wings depict the prophets Ezekiel and Daniel, who, together with Isaiah and Jeremiah, prefigure the four evangelists.

Maerten van Heemskerck probably produced this imposing triptych for a church in Delft. It is a mature work, and one of the artist’s most accomplished paintings.

The reverse sides of the wings are decorated with the majestic figures of the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah.

Soon after returning to Haarlem from Italy, Van Heemskerck created his Triumphal Procession of Bacchus, a fascinating amalgam of the art seen in Italy woven into a novel composition. Inspired loosely by Roman sarcophagi and by engravings after Mantegna, the composition is a living frieze. The figures are packed into the foreground as they progress through a ruined triumphal arch towards the temple of Bacchus. Bacchus, the god of wine, can scarcely sit up. The satyr supporting him playfully tweaks his breast and, with tongue wagging, stares lustily at the viewer. Two children hold up a mirror so the viewer can see an inebriated man who, having lost all decorum, defecates. Despite such moralizations, Van Heemskerck’s intention was to devise a bacchanal, a modern counterpart to the scenes described in Roman literature. He delighted in showing off his talents at rendering the human body in motion. Some celebrants stand or stride, other do somersaults and walk on stilts. The horn player in the foreground conveys the artist’s knowledge of anatomy and contrapposto.

The painting is a pastiche of Roman sources. The standing man on the right was inspired by the Apollo in the de Sassi’s collection. Raphael’s Triumph of Galatea in the Farnesina and Michelangelo’s paintings provided the sources for several figures. Van Heemskerck borrowed from his own drawings of the portico ofOctavia for the colossal foot, of the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli for the Temple of Bacchus behind, and of Michelangelo’s Bacchus (now in the Bargello, Florence) which when in the Casa Galli was believed to be antique, for the cult statue within.

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This painting was executed in the international Mannerist style.

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