The Early Haarlem School of Painting
1960; College Art Association; Volume: 42; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00043079.1960.11409080
ISSN1559-6478
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Influence and Diplomacy
ResumoAt the present time there are about fourteen paintings that can be attributed to Geertgen tot Sint Jans.1 None of these paintings bears a signature or a date, but the authorship of two panels in Vienna is attested by reliable documents of the early seventeenth century. These two paintings, the Lamentation and the Legend of the Relics of St. John the Baptist (Figs. 1 and 2)—the front and back sides of the right wing of Geertgen's altarpiece for the Knights of St. John in Haarlem—are, therefore, the key works in a study of the artist's style or a recovery of his oeuvre. The Lamentation was a very famous composition in Haarlem. It was copied several times. The sixteenth century painter Jan Mostaert was commissioned to paint portraits of the Haarlem burgher Speyart van Woerden and his wife on the wings of a triptych with a copy of Geertgen's Lamentation as a central panel. A fine wooden sculpture group from the late fifteenth century, now in the Rijksmuseum, repeats the figures of Christ, Mary, and Mary Salome. Sometime between 1621 and 1630 Theodore Matham made an engraved copy of Geertgen's painting and dedicated it to Jacob van Campen: “omnium bonarum Artium Summo Admiratori, Amatori ac Cultori, hanc celeberrimi Pictoris Gerardi Leydani.”2 It is the only work that van Mander discusses at length, remarking that “most artists of this time are astonished by it and highly praise it.”3
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