Saturday, October 1, 2016

Heemskerck's Portraits and Religious Tableaux

Maarten van Heemskerck
Portraits of a couple
1529
oil on panel
Rijksmuseum

Maarten van Heemskerck
Portraits of a couple
1529
oil on panel
Rijksmuseum

Maarten van Heemskerck
Portrait of a woman spinning
ca. 1531
oil on panel
Museo Thyssen Bornemisza, Madrid

Maarten van Heemskerck
Rest on the Flight into Egypt
ca. 1530
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Maarten van Heemskerck
Man of Sorrows
1532
oil on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent

The paintings above were created in the Netherlands by young Maarten van Heemskerck before his momentous study-period in Rome during the middle 1530s. Those below were made in the longer period after his return. Recent Italian influence obviously predominates in the Bacchanal immediately below, executed before the decade was over. Yet the bread and butter of Heemskerck's career back at home in the north remained the traditional, formal, religious tableau. He dutifully produced these, but inflected them with his new, more ambitious, Roman-style nudes.

Maarten van Heemskerck
Triumphal Procession of Bacchus
ca. 1537-38
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Maarten van Heemskerck
Crucifixion
ca. 1536-42
oil on canvas mounted on panel
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Maarten van Heemskerck
Triptych with Crucifixion
16th century
oil on panel
Linköping Cathedral, Sweden

Maarten van Heemskerck
St Luke painting the Virgin
ca. 1550-53
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes
 
Maarten van Heemskerck
St Luke painting the Virgin
1532
oil on panel
Frans Halsmuseum, Haarlem

Maarten van Heemskerck
Annunciation
1546
oil on panel
Frans Halsmuseum, Haarlem

Maarten van Heemskercke
Crucifixion
1543
oil on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent

Maarten van Heemskerck
Lamentation
1566
oil on panel
Stedelijk Museum het Prinsenhof, Delft

Maarten van Heemskerck
Triptych of the Entombment
1559-60
oil on panel
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels