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Artistic innovation in Maarten van Heemskerck’s portraits after 1537 and new identifications in the light of his social network

2021; Brill; Volume: 134; Issue: 2-3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1163/18750176-1340203002

1875-0176

Ilja M. Veldman,

Financial Crisis of the 21st Century

Maarten van Heemskerck's painting style underwent an enormous development thanks to his introduction to antiquity and the Italian High Renaissance. His views on portraiture also changed considerably. Shortly after his return from Rome, he painted three life-size portraits of Alkmaar patricians in an Italian-aristocratic style (figs. 3, 8a-b). Understanding of Heemskerck's autonomous portraiture is, however, blurred by incorrect attributions and dates. A careful analysis of style and dates is employed here to establish the authenticity of the few autograph portraits that have survived, and as a means of identifying the persons depicted. The identification of the Alkmaar portraits has never presented problems, because they bear family coats of arms. Heemskerck's portraits of a woman in Antwerp and Haarlem and his portrait of a man in Rotterdam, however, were not provided with coats of arms. They are presently known by names that have been wrongly attached to the subject. Thanks to research into the painter's social network and family ties, the portrait in Haarlem (fig. 12) can now be identified as Heemskerck's wife Marie Jacobsdr de Coninck, while the Rotterdam portrait (fig. 14) appears to represent the Haarlem scholar and alderman Cornelis van Beresteyn. Heemskerk's portrait of the Haarlem printer Jan van Zuren has been lost. The artist's preference for portraits of his own circle of friends and relatives corresponds to the practice prior to his Italian journey: cf. the portrait of Heemskerck's father, and that of the family of Pieter Jan Foppesz, with whom he lived for a while (figs. 1-2). A career as a portraitist of prominent people became unlikely in the course of the 1540s. Heemskerck probably faced too much competition from both Jan van Scorel and Anthonie Moro, whose connections enabled them to become the favourite portraitists of the elite. While Heemskerck continued to demonstrate his talent in portraits of donors on altarpieces (figs. 7, 18), he seems to have chosen at an early stage to apply his new spectacular style, formed in Italy, to devotional and biblical subjects and classical history. For him, as it would later be for Karel van Mander, history painting was probably the highest form of art, and the one best suited to display his imagination and compositional skills.