LEYDEN, Lucas van

Abraham and Isaac is among Lucas van Leyden’s most successful prints, one of the more than 20 woodcuts of his oeuvre. It has a delicate balance between line and tone. The figures are set in a broad landscape that is convincingly built up in several planes and recedes into the distance, thus making clever use of the expressive potential of the woodcut technique.

In his late engravings Lucas turned more and more to the study of the male and female nude, both the pagan, Mars and Venus, and the biblical, Adam and Eve. He tried to display his virtuosity in rendering the volumetric solidity, the sensuous contrapposto, and the heroic proportions in his large nude figures.

D�rer’s Adam and Eve, with its emphasis on human beauty rather than mortal sin, caused a sensation. Available soon across the continent, the engraving became the definitive depiction of this theme. Artists from Lucas van Leyden and Jan Gossaert in the Netherlands to Raphael and Raimondi in Italy responded to it. Some merely replicated the scene while others consciously sought to devise their own alternatives.

Pictures of everyday secular life, known as genre painting, were a Dutch specialty. The game played with gold coins for high stakes is an early form of poker.

This painting is a good example of the combination of Italian Renaissance tendencies with the artist’s native Flemish inheritance.

It is assumed that the subject of the painting may not be the obvious one of card players, but may in fact refer to a secret political alliance at the highest level. In this case the figure on the left would be Emperor Charles V and on the right Cardinal Wolsey, and both would be entering into a secret agreement between Spain and England against Francis I of France. The woman in the centre would be Margaret of Austria, sister of Charles V and regent of the Netherlands.

Lucas van Leyden are often praised for his accomplishments in the graphic arts. However, his paintings also have merits of their own. The earliest paintings are half-length compositions of card or chess players and a few unusual biblical themes. At the end of the earlier painted series of half-length pieces comes the version of the Card Players in the Wilton House. Like the others, this painting has all the marks of that frivolous genre of the Prodigal Son and other “loose living” compositions, with half-length figures of men and women in contemporary dress gathered around a table.

The painting was probably executed for the hospital of Leiden. Originally it was a triptych, however, at the beginning of the 17th century the central panel and the side wings were joined.

The combination of rigid, engraving-like drawing and efforts to convey the figures’ complex natural movements points to the influence of German art, above all D�rer.

In this large panoramic Crucifixion, the Calvary group is set off to the left on a high hill in the middle distance. The Crucifixion group follows the traditional historiated type, with the mourners to the left of the cross, the centurion Longinus plunging his lance into Christ’s side, the Magdalen clutching the foot of the cross, and two thieves to the sides. The other actors in the drama have been scattered down the hillside among the townspeople.

The Dance of Mary Magdalen is one of Lucas’s most famous engravings. In this print the setting is the familiar garden of love, with numerous amorous couples lying about and seated on the grasses of a woodland park, some embracing, others singing or drinking. Two musicians provide the music as the Magdalen and her partner perform a stately dance.

In this print Lucas presents two large figures in a cramped throne room. He selected an unusual moment to illustrate the story of the mad king about to cast his lance at David, who plays his harp to soothe Saul’s melancholy. The actual violence is not depicted, but rather the moment before the hurling of the lance, when Saul is brooding over his jealousy of the youth.

In this famous engraving, Lucas van Leyden indicated that the event - Pontius Pilate showing Christ to the people - had taken place in a foreign land, many years in the past. He imagined how people might have dressed in those days, and gave the buildings in his imaginary Jerusalem an old-fashioned look.

In this famous engraving, Lucas van Leyden indicated that the event - Pontius Pilate showing Christ to the people - had taken place in a foreign land, many years in the past. He imagined how people might have dressed in those days, and gave the buildings in his imaginary Jerusalem an old-fashioned look.

Lucas van Leyden and Jan Gossart were at work at a stimulating moment in the printmaking in Europe, where printmakers were experimenting with the technique of etching. The small group of etched plates that they created in 1520 were the first dated etchings produced in the Netherlands.

Images of David kneeling in prayer with the Lord appearing overhead in the clouds were popular in illustrated bibles in the 16th century. Lucas also illustrated the choice that God demanded of David in a print dated 1520 but with an angel appearing in the clouds holding three arrows. In the next century the most common way of depicting the theme of David’s choice was with a scourge or whip for famine, a sword for war, and a skull for pestilence.

The story of the destruction of Sodom, Lot’s escape, and his subsequent seduction by his two daughters is told in Genesis. Lot and his family were allowed to leave the city on condition that they did not look back. Lot’s wife disobeyed the instruction and was turned into a pillar of salt. Lot continued on with his daughters. Since their husbands had not fled with them, the daughters said to each other: “Our father is old and there is not a man in the country to come to us in the usual way. Come now, let us make our father drink wine and then lie with him and in this way keep the family alive through our father.” The sons born of this union subsequently founded the tribes of the Moabites and the Ammonites.

Both as a strongly erotic group painting and as a history painting, the subject was a popular one in the 16th and 17th century. This painting, whose attribution to van Leyden - said to have executed his first commission at the age of twelve - is not altogether certain, falls into the second category. Alongside the group in the foreground, the destruction of Sodom seen in the left-hand background establishes a second point of focus. Influenced by Patenier, the painter portrays a kind of “global landscape” extending from the front left-hand corner into the depths of the composition. He thereby devotes particular care to the execution of the landscape details.

Lucretia, the virtuous wife of Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, committed suicide, as she could not endure the shame of being raped by Sextus Tarquinius, as Livy related. This deed secured the legendary Roman lady a place in the series of exemplary females that in European painting, particularly in court circles, were depicted as examples of virtue.

Lucas van Leyden borrowed the figure of Lucretia from a print by Marcantonio Raimondi, made a few years earlier.

This drawing is from an album inscribed Lucas Teeckeninge 1637.

In his late engravings Lucas turned more and more to the study of the male and female nude, both the pagan, Mars and Venus, and the biblical, Adam and Eve. He tried to display his virtuosity in rendering the volumetric solidity, the sensuous contrapposto, and the heroic proportions in his large nude figures.

In the present engraving, Lucas van Leyden has depicted Mars, Venus and Cupid in an austere, rectangular composition, which emphatically draws the viewer’s attention to the two naked main characters.

Germany produced the majority of the leading printmakers of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In France and in the Low Countries, printmaking evolved more slowly and without the concentration of talented practitioners found in Germany. However, D�rer had a skilled Netherlandish rival: Lucas van Leyden. The two artists met in Antwerp in June 1521, when Lucas hosted D�rer who, in turn made a silverpoint portrait of the younger Dutch artist.

The everyday subject of the Milkmaid belies Lucas van Leyden’s technical sophistication. He imbued the animals and the young couple with a tactile presence that anchors the entire composition. The interplay of light and shadow defines the various forms, while the proximity of the figures and the strong horizontal format situate the viewer nearby. One watches almost voyeuristically as the awkward young man stares intently at the young maiden. She looks shyly away. Regardless of its erotic undercurrent, this prints presents a remarkable glimpse of country life. The prominent cartellino in the lower centre derives from D�rer.

Lucas van Leyden’s prints are soft and silvery, with subtle shading creating a remarkably painterly quality that differs from the hard lines and schematic techniques of other engravings, including D�rer’s. It is not only technique and style that distinguish the prints of Lucas from others, however. His range of thematic materials was vastly different from that of D�rer or the Italians, his choice of narrative moment is original, and often puzzling.

His first dated print, the Mohammed and the Monk Sergius, has an unusual subject which has yet to be explained adequately.

This drawing shows the influence of Albrecht D�rer. The artist signed it with his initial.

This woodcut comes from The Large Power of Women series.

It can be seen in the woodcut that Lucas van Leyden’s success as a designer of woodcuts was due to his ability to emulate D�rer. However, the shading lines and cross-hatching are uneven, and the subtleties of his silvery tones are all but lost in the coarser contours and dense shading in his woodcuts.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 10 minutes):

Camille Saint-Saens: Samson et Delila, Delila’s aria

It can be seen in this woodcut that Lucas van Leyden’s success as a designer of woodcuts was due to his ability to emulate D�rer. However, the shading lines and cross-hatching are uneven, and the subtleties of his silvery tones are all but lost in the coarser contours and dense shading in his woodcuts.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 10 minutes):

Camille Saint-Saens: Samson et Delila, Delila’s aria

Lucas was reported to have been extremely precocious, a competent painter at fifteen. He spent most of his time in Leyden. He died fairly young and believed himself to have been poised by his rivals whom he avoided by working in bed. There are few paintings, but his output of woodcuts was large enough to suggest that he was a busy though not prolific artist.

St Jerome was a popular Renaissance subject; the Church Father’s role as translator of the Bible endeared him to scholars of most stripes. While his master’s penitence appealed to the devout, Jerome’s scrawny lion is unable to witness so painful a sight, so Lucas show him slinking off into the desert.

Lucas van Leyden, a child prodigy took a strikingly original approach to the subjects of his early prints. In this engraving, in the foreground, hidden behind a rocky outcrop and some trees, the elders spy on the bathing Susanna, who is a small figure in the distance. The focus is on the evil-doers, whose faces, gestures and poses betray their furtive and lustful intentions.

For some time this unusually large woodcut has been identified as the Prodigal Son, but that seems uncertain since it conforms more to the general category known as “loose living.” The large format with two blocks printed on four sheets of paper approximates a painting.

The theme of the dentist or tooth-puller in art has Northern European roots. The iconography of this conventional theme was fixed with Lucas van Leyden’s famous engraving dated 1523. This early engraving already contains all the motifs emphasized in later representations: the ostensibly expert dentist and the gullible, bumpkin patient who is relieved of his purse by the dentist’s accomplice.

Chess was a popular medieval allegory for power struggles on most levels, including the battle of the sexes. Here the lady proves a winner in every sense. Several versions of Lucas’s popular painting survive.

The triptych is probably identical with the commission of 1526-27 by the van Swieten family for a memorial in the Pieterskerk, Leiden.

During the iconoclastic riots of 1566, Lucas van Leyden’s Last Judgment, his most famous painting, was saved from destruction by the city of Leiden. It was moved in stages from the Pieterskerk to the burgomasters’ chamber in the town hall, where it could be seen by visitors for nearly three hundred years. In 1602 the township added to the glory of the painting by turning down a very generous offer for it from Emperor Rudolf II. The man who moved the painting to the town hall was an artist who served important positions in the Leiden city government for half a century, Isaac Claesz. van Swanenburg (1537-1614), the father of Rembrandt’s first master, Jacob Isaacsz. van Swanenburg.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 8 minutes):

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Requiem K 626: Dies irae

The picture shows the central panel of the Last Judgment Triptych.

The outside wings of the Last Judgment Triptych represent Sts Peter and Paul.

This late drawing by Lucas van Leyden was probably a design for a stained-glass window.

This engraving is based in part on D�rer’s famous engraving, the Knight, Death and the Devil.

This print inverts the normal practice of placing the main subject in the foreground. The victim, the first-century BC poet Virgil, is the small melancholic figure seated in the basket behind. Accordding to a late medieval French fable, the Roman poet fell in love with the daughter of Emperor Augustus. Thinking that she shares his passion, he arranged to meet her. On the appointed night, she lowered a basket from her bedroom, but she hoisted him up only halfway and mocked his folly. With morning’s light, Virgil’s plight was revealed to the Romans.

The solidity and immediacy of the figures in the engraving are impressive. Lucas van Leyden favoured a cooler tonality and a narrower range of chiaroscuro contrasts than D�rer.

It is assumed by some scholars that the central figure in the engraving is a likeness of the painter Jan Gossart, who traveled with Lucas in 1526-27. One of Lucas’s most elaborate prints, this engraving certainly shows the influence of Gossart’s types in the foreground.

This engraving was inspired by D�rer’s Madonna and Child by a Tree.

Around 1520 Lucas’ style was very close to that of the Nuremberg master Albrecht D�rer, as illustrated by this painting.

This painting is one of the rare dated paintings of the artist therefore it serves as a point of reference in the reconstruction of the chronology of his oeuvre.

This well-preserved triptych was intended for domestic use for an unknown patron. The interlocking composition shows the people of Israel disobeying God’s commandment by setting up a golden calf in the desert of Sinai and giving themselves over to dissipation. This took place after the long absence of their leader Moses, who was communing with God on Mount Sinai. When he returned after 40 days and 40 nights bearing the stone tables of the law on which God had written the Ten Commandments, he found the people dancing in a frenzy around the idolatrous image.

Moses is depicted twice in the central panel. First he appears as a minuscule figure kneeling on a rocky overhang surrounded by black clouds, and then he is seen slightly lower down the mountain, this time accompanied by his servant, discovering the idolatry of the people and throwing down the stone tablets in fury. Below that in the middle, still in the background, is a small orchestra on the left, elated couples dancing around the calf, and on the right a group among the trees engaged in a round dance. The festive Israelites are scattered across the foreground of all three panels.

The painting is the central panel of a triptych and it represents the mature period of the artist.

Moses is depicted twice in the central panel. First he appears as a minuscule figure kneeling on a rocky overhang surrounded by black clouds, and then he is seen slightly lower down the mountain, this time accompanied by his servant, discovering the idolatry of the people and throwing down the stone tablets in fury. Below that in the middle, still in the background, is a small orchestra on the left, elated couples dancing around the calf, and on the right a group among the trees engaged in a round dance.