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. ii 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 i ii 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 i v 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 v 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. v i 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. v ii