LIEMAKER, Nicolaas de
(b. 1601 Gent, d. 1646 Gent)
Flemish painter. He became independent painter in 1625, and seems to have taken Van den Heuvel’s version of Ghent Caravaggism as his starting point. In his later work, Rubens’s monumentality and motifs played a significant role. From about 1635 he wanted to increase the effect of movement, and for this sixteenth-century Mannerism must have seemed more suitable than the contemporary dynamic of High Baroque.
Liemaker found a market for his mainly religious paintings principally in and around Ghent. His Madonnas, with their stereotyped doll’s faces must have been much in fashion. He was able to portray moments of religious ecstasy differently from his contemporaries in Ghent, using an appropriate softly sentimental style, rather like Barocci.
