EVOLUTION AND AMBITION IN THE CAREER OF JAN LIEVENS

296 Pages·2006·2.82 MB·English

ABSTRACT

Title: EVOLUTION AND AMBITION IN THE
CAREER OF JAN LIEVENS (1607-1674)

Lloyd DeWitt, Ph.D., 2006

Directed By: Prof. Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr.
Department of Art History and Archaeology

The Dutch artist Jan Lievens (1607-1674) was viewed by his contemporaries as
one of the most important artists of his age. Ambitious and self-confident, Lievens
assimilated leading trends from Haarlem, Utrecht and Antwerp into a bold and
monumental style that he refined during the late 1620s through close artistic interaction
with Rembrandt van Rijn in Leiden, climaxing in a competition for a court commission.
Lievens’s early Job on the Dung Heap and Raising of Lazarus demonstrate his careful
adaptation of style and iconography to both theological and political conditions of his
time. This much-discussed phase of Lievens’s life came to an end in 1631when
Rembrandt left Leiden. Around 1631-1632 Lievens was transformed by his encounter
with Anthony van Dyck, and his ambition to be a court artist led him to follow Van Dyck
to London in the spring of 1632. His output of independent works in London was modest
and entirely connected to Van Dyck and the English court, thus Lievens almost certainly
worked in Van Dyck’s studio.
In 1635, Lievens moved to Antwerp and returned to history painting, executing
commissions for the Jesuits, and he also broadened his artistic vocabulary by mastering
woodcut prints and landscape paintings. After a short and successful stay in Leiden in
1639, Lievens moved to Amsterdam permanently in 1644, and from 1648 until the end of
his career was engaged in a string of important and prestigious civic and princely
commissions in which he continued to demonstrate his aptitude for adapting to and
assimilating the most current style of his day to his own somber monumentality.
Lievens’s roving and acquisitive character expressed itself in his dynamic
Flemish-style landscape drawings after 1660. These much-vaunted works have drawn
attention away from how Lievens systematically fulfilled his ambitions as a history
painter. This dissertation seeks to address the imbalanced view of Lievens’s later career
by examining his character and ambitions and success in light of the language his early
patrons and biographers used to discuss his talent and self-confidence.
EVOLUTION AND AMBITION IN THE CAREER OF JAN LIEVENS (1607-1674)

By

Lloyd DeWitt

Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the of the Graduate School of the
University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
2006

Advisory Committee:
Professor Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Chair
Professor Meredith Gill
Professor Anthony Colantuono
Professor William Pressly
Professor Philip Soergel
Professor Marjorie Venit
©Copyright by
Lloyd DeWitt
Doctor of Philosophy
Acknowledgements
Iam deeply grateful for the aid and interest of many people and institutions. First
of all my thanks goes to my advisor Arthur Wheelock, for his patient support and
guidance in this dissertation. The support of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in the form
of a Travel Fellowship in 2003 was crucial to my research, as was the help of the
Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland for a 2002-
2003 Museum Fellowship that allowed me to work for Katie Luber and Joe Rishel of the
Department of European Painting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I thank them and
Carl Strehlke, John Zarobell, Jennifer Thompson and Jennifer Otte Vanim for their
comments, understanding, support and good cheer. Thanks also to Ernst van de
Wetering, Peter Schatborn, Volker Manuth and Rudi Ekkart for their conversations and
insights, and to Alfred and Isabel Bader, to whom Lievens continues to mean so much.
Many thanks to Jack Horn and Craig Harbison who helped guide the earliest iterations of
a Lievens project and give it great impetus and direction. My gratitude especially to
Dave and Franziska, for whom Lievens has also become another family member, but
above all to Christine, for her complete and unwavering support, help and love through
these many years of Lievens.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements...........................................................................................................ii

Introduction.......................................................................................................................1

Chapter 1: Jan Lievens in Leiden, 1607-1632..............................................................24
Lievens’s parents in Leiden..........................................................................................24
The life of Jan Lievens..................................................................................................25
Lievens’s siblings..........................................................................................................30
Lievens’s training..........................................................................................................32
Joris van Schooten....................................................................................................32
Pieter Lastman..........................................................................................................33
The question of training in Antwerp c. 1620............................................................38
Lievens’s beginnings in Leiden....................................................................................41
Constantijn Huygens and Lievens............................................................................51
Anoble painter..........................................................................................................58
Lievens’s personality................................................................................................63
Huygens, Orlers and Angel......................................................................................67
Lievens’s self-portraits..................................................................................................70
Self-portrait in a Gorget, Profile self-portrait and Self-portrait looking right........71
Self-portrait in a Yellow Cloak.................................................................................74
Lievens’s tronies...........................................................................................................76
The origins and style of Lievens’s tronies................................................................79
Lievens’s genre and Still Life Paintings of the Leiden period......................................81
The Five Senses.........................................................................................................81
Allegory of Fire.........................................................................................................82
Vanitas......................................................................................................................84
Boy studying Drawings.............................................................................................86
History Painting............................................................................................................89
Feast of Esther..........................................................................................................91
Samson and Delilah..................................................................................................93
Christ on the Cross...................................................................................................96
Raising of Lazarus..................................................................................................100
Job on the Dung Heap............................................................................................106
St. Peter Penitent....................................................................................................109
Portraits historiés.......................................................................................................110
“Soothsayer”..........................................................................................................110
The Getty double Portrait........................................................................................112

Chapter 2: Lievens in England, 1632-1635.................................................................116
Netherlandish Artists in England................................................................................119
Gerrit van Honthorst...............................................................................................119
Daniël Mijtens and Adriaen Hanneman..................................................................121
Anthony van Dyck..................................................................................................122
Lievens’s works in England........................................................................................124
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Van der Doort’s catalogue......................................................................................124
The King’s Giant Porter.........................................................................................126
Portraits on paper........................................................................................................128
“Robert South”........................................................................................................129
Jacques Gaultier......................................................................................................131
Nicolas Lanier.........................................................................................................133
The Turin drawing of Charles I..............................................................................135
The Düsseldorf portrait drawings of English Courtiers..........................................138
The Drawings of London and Westminster................................................................141
The fate of the English period works..........................................................................143
Conclusion..................................................................................................................144

Chapter 3: Antwerp Period, 1635-1644......................................................................146
Lievens in the Brouwer circle.....................................................................................149
History Paintings.........................................................................................................152
The Sacrifice of Isaac..............................................................................................153
Work for the Jesuits....................................................................................................160
Visitation.....................................................................................................................160
The Problem of the Holy Family in Antwerp.........................................................162
Visit to Leiden in 1639...............................................................................................164
Portraits in Leiden...................................................................................................165
Continence of Scipio...............................................................................................167
The Finding of Erichthonius...................................................................................169
Horizontal Format Biblical Paintings.........................................................................171
Moses trampling the Crown of Pharaoh.................................................................172
Jacob receives Joseph’s Bloody Coat.....................................................................173
Pietá........................................................................................................................175
Genre works around 1638: Dance of Death...............................................................177
Miserly Couple and Death......................................................................................178
Fighting Card Players and Death...........................................................................178
Landscape paintings....................................................................................................180
Portraits of the Antwerp period...................................................................................184
Petrus Egidius de Morillon.....................................................................................185
Lievens’s Iconographia..............................................................................................186
Jan Davidsz de Heem..............................................................................................188
Adriaen Brouwer.....................................................................................................188
Daniel Seghers........................................................................................................189
Lucas Vorsterman...................................................................................................190
Paulus Pontius........................................................................................................191
Hieronymous de Bran and Thomas Howard...........................................................192
Woodcut prints: Rubens, Jegher and Goltzius............................................................193
Leaving Antwerp in 1644...........................................................................................196

Chapter 4: Amsterdam, 1644-1674.............................................................................198
From Antwerp to the Oranjezaal (1644-1650)...........................................................204
Oranjezaal, The Five Muses....................................................................................205
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Triumph of Peace....................................................................................................210
Schloß Oranienburg, in Bützow, 1653-1655..............................................................212
Mars and Venus......................................................................................................213
Diana at the Hunt....................................................................................................214
Patricians and Republicans in Amsterdam: works for the new Town Hall................216
Quintus Fabius Maxiumus dismounts before his Son.............................................217
Brinio raised on a Shield........................................................................................221
Christ and the Centurion 1657...............................................................................227
Mars, 1663-1664.........................................................................................................229
Paintings for the Hoogheemraadschap Rijnland.........................................................233
Lievens’s portraiture in Amsterdam...........................................................................237
London Self-Portrait and Krakow Portrait of a Young Man..................................238
Adriaan Trip and other Amsterdam sitters for paintings........................................240
Portrait drawings.........................................................................................................244
Vos and Vondel.......................................................................................................246
Landscape paintings and drawings.............................................................................251
The Final Years 1669-1674........................................................................................255

Conclusion.....................................................................................................................258

Works Cited...................................................................................................................261

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The dissertation document that follows has had referenced material removed in respect
for the owner’s copyright. A complete version of this document, which includes said
referenced material, resides in the University of Maryland, College Park’s library
Collection.
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List of Illustrations

1. Lucas Vorsterman after Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Jan Lievens (Hollstein
XLIII, Nr. 174/iv),c. 1631-32.
2. Lucas Vorsterman after Anthony Van Dyck, Portrait of Jan Lievens (Holl. 175/i),
etching, c. 1631-32.
3. Peter Paul Rubens, Head of a Bearded Man,c. 1618, Prince of Liechtenstein,
Vienna.

4. Head of a Bearded Man, after Peter Paul Rubens (Sum. D 1638x), pen and brown
ink drawing with brown wash, c. 1625, location unknown.

5. Head of a Bearded Man (Hollstein XI, 74), etching, c. 1628.

6. Old Woman reading (Sum. 1214), c. 1621-23, John G. Johnson Collection,
Philadelphia Museum of Art.

7. Reading Prophetess (Sum. 1222), c. 1625, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

8. Penitent Magdalene (Sum. 1221), c. 1621-23, Musée de la Chartreuse, Douai.

9. Five Senses (Sum. 1179), c. 1623, formerly Taylor Collection, Chicago.
10. Youth embracing a Young Woman,c. 1623, formerly Duke of Arentburg
Collection, Brussels.

11. The Backgammon Players (Sum. 1178), c. 1623, Spier Collection, Cape Town.
12. Rembrandt van Rijn, The Three Singers: the Sense of Hearing (Bredius 421),
c. 1623/24, W. Baron van Dedem Collection.

13. Pilate washing his Hands (Sum. 1180), c. 1625, Stedelijk Museum het Lakenhal,
Leiden.
14. The Feast of Esther (Sum. 1181), c. 1625, North Carolina Museum of Art,
Raleigh.
15. The Feast of Esther (Sum. D 1630x), drawing, c. 1625, Kupferstichkabinett,
Dresden.
16. The Four Evangelists: Matthew (Sum. 1230), c. 1626-27, Residenzgalerie,
Bamberg.
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