ART “4”
“2”-DAY 11 October
v.8.90 |
| DEATHS:
1523 MONTAGNA |
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Born on 11 October 1803: Barend Cornelis Koekkoek
[pronounced "quack, quack"?], Dutch painter who died on 05 April
1862. — He received his first lessons from his father, Johannes Hermanus Koekkoek [1778–1851], and also studied at the Tekenacademie in Middelburg. Subsequently he became a student at the Amsterdam Rijksakademie under Jean Augustin Daiwaille [1786–1850]. He first participated in an exhibition in 1820. Between 1826 and 1834 he traveled constantly, visiting the Harz Mountains, the Rhine and the Ruhr. His first great success came in 1829 when he won the gold medal of the Amsterdam society Felix Meritis with Landscape with a Rainstorm Threatening. The painting is notable for its accurate and sober study of nature; it marked Koekkoek’s commitment to a style of landscape divorced both from the predominantly topographical approach of the 18th century and from the flat and decorative manner of contemporary mural painting. In 1834 he moved permanently to Cleve in Germany, where he developed into one of the most important landscape painters of his generation and achieved international fame. — Paul Joseph Constantin Gabriël and Johannes Tavenraat were students of Koekkoek. — LINKS — Winter Landscape (1838) — Heuvellandschap met rustend boerenvolk onder een eik paneel (38x52cm) — View of a Park (1835) |
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Died on 11 October 1523: Bartolomeo Cincani
“Montagna”, Italian
painter and draftsman born in 1450. — Bartolomeo Cincani, who used the pseudonym Montagna, was from the Brescia region. His initial training was presumably under Domenico Morone in Verona. He was subject to a distinctly Venetian influence, probably in the studio of Giovanni Bellini. He may also have adopted the Mantegnesque severity. His occasional obsession with detail is reminiscent of Carpaccio. Montagna was active in Venice (Scuola di San Marco) and in Verona, mainly however in Vicenza. Powerful use of color (zinc plating), symmetrical picture composition, and marked light-dark contrasts are his distinguishing characteristics. The Friulian School (Pellegrino and Pordenone) is indebted to him — He was the leading painter in Vicenza during the last quarter of the 15th century and the first quarter of the 16th. His son Benedetto Montagna [1480-1557], who continued his father’s style of painting, is more significant for his engravings. Bartolomeo Montagna is first documented in 1459 in Vicenza, near which he was born, as a minor and, still a minor, in 1467. In 1469 he is recorded as a resident of Venice. In 1474 he was living in Vicenza where, in 1476 and 1478, he was commissioned to paint altarpieces (now lost). He has variously been thought to have been a student of Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, Antonello da Messina, Alvise Vivarini, Domenico Morone, and Vittore Carpaccio. While none of these artists, except Carpaccio, was irrelevant to Montagna’s stylistic formation, Giovanni Bellini was the primary influence on his art. Montagna may have worked in Bellini’s shop around 1470. Several of Montagna’s paintings of the Virgin and Child in which the influence of Antonello da Messina is especially marked are likely to be close in date to Antonello’s sojourn in Venice (1475–1476); they are therefore best considered Montagna’s earliest extant works rather than as an unexplained parenthesis about 1485 between two Bellinesque phases. These early paintings appear to be followed by others in which the geometrically rounded forms derived from Antonello become more slender and sharper-edged. Their figures are imbued with a deeply felt, individual humanity, sometimes austere and minatory, sometimes tender. Among them are some larger-scale works, for example the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Nicholas and Lucy and a Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Ansanus, Anthony Abbot, Francis, and Jerome (often but wrongly attributed to Carpaccio). This group also includes a fresco fragment depicting the Virgin and Child, the modern frame of which is inscribed, ‘Painted 1481 in the choir of the church of Magrč near Schio-Vicenza’. The date seems plausible on stylistic grounds, and the work thus provides a chronological point of reference for the rest of the group. In 1482, again in Venice, Montagna undertook to paint canvases of The Flood and the Creation for the Scuola di San Marco; the former was completed in 1485–1486 by Benedetto Diana, and both were subsequently destroyed by fire. — The students of Montagna included Francesco Bassano, Giovanni Buonconsiglio, Cima da Conegliano, Marcello Fogolino. — LINKS –- Saint Bernardino and a Holy Bishop (1492, 64x69cm; 977x1056pix, 80kb _ .ZOOM to 1956x2118pix, 551kb) — Saint Jerome (1500, 51x58cm; 851x950pix, 150kb) _ The most striking aspect of this picture is the fabulous landscape on the right, which seems to be only partially invented. The Veronese provenance of the work suggests the interesting theory that it was painted for the convent of Saint Jerome at the Roman theater. The topographical features of Verona recur here, though in altered form: the river, the ruins, the double staircase cut into the tufa, the church and the convent. Bartolomeo's main inspiration seems to have stemmed from a reality that he returned to a state of nature, converting the townscape he knew into a rustic landscape. — Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Andrew, Monica, Ursula, Sigismund, and angel musicians (1498, 410x260cm; 1068x670pix, 144kb) _ detail: the angel musicians (770x1116pix, 159kb) _ Signed and dated on the step: "OPVS/BARTHOLOMEI/MONTA/GNA MCCCCLX- XXXVIIII." The large capitals in the background frieze are the initials of the Latin phrase meaning: "Implore God's grace for us." The medallion on the left portrays Matteo de' Pasti's profile plaque of Christ. Another Latin inscription on the step records a 1715 restoration, which does not seem to have much altered the painting. Preliminary drawings for this work have survived. Trained in Venice, Bartolomeo interpreted the great Venetian models in an archaizing vein, as did all the contemporary artists of the mainland. His prodigiously skillful draftsmanship defined lapidary forms that may be splintered or flaked but are always pure and as resonant as crystal. His strict sense of order is open, however, to an aristocratic feeling for nature, which is shown in pungently descriptive passages. In this altarpiece, the noble figures are displayed within a purely Lombard architectural setting. The composition is also architectonic, and its precedents go back through Antonello da Messina to Piero della Francesca, whose device of a pendant ostrich egg has been adopted here. The brown and silvery harmonies of the Lombard palette add a note of elegant austerity. — Ecce Homo (80kb) —(061010) |
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Born on 11 October 1629: Vincent Laurenszoon
van der Vinne, Haarlem Flemish Mennonite painter and draftsman,
best known for his travel diaries and sketches, who died on 26 July 1702.
He had three artist sons: Jan Vincentszoon van der Vinne [03 Feb 1663 –
01 Mar 1721], Izaak Vincentszoon van der Vinne [1665–1740], and Laurens
Vincentszoon van der Vinne [1658–1729] who may be the author of some of
the drawings attributed to his father. Three of Laurens’s children worked
as painters and engravers: Vincent Laurenszoon van der Vinne (1686–1742),
Jacob Laurenszoon van der Vinne (1688–1737) and Jan Laurenszoon van der
Vinne (1699–1753). In the next generation Jacob’s son Laurens Jacobszoon
van der Vinne (1712–42) became a flower painter, and two of Jan’s children,
Jan Janszoon van der Vinne (1734–1805) and Vincent Janszoon van der Vinne
(1736–1811), seem to have been the last artists active in the family. — Vincent Laurenszoon van der Vinne was trained at a weaving mill. Then, when he was 18, he spent nine months as the student of Frans Hals (who later painted his portrait in 1660), and in 1649 he joined the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke. From 1652 to 1655 van der Vinne traveled through Germany, Switzerland, and France, accompanied some of the time by Guillam Dubois [1610–1680], Dirck Helmbreker, and Cornelis Bega. During the trip van der Vinne kept an illustrated diary and on his return worked this up in a second volume, copying his drawings and adding topographical prints by Matthäus Merian the elder and Jean Boisseau. He also filled a sketchbook with Rhineland landscapes. The year after he returned from this trip he married Anneke Jansdr de Gaver [–1668], and six months after her death he married Catalijntje Boekaert. Besides the drawings from his 1652–1655 travels, he produced a number of townscapes in pen and ink with gray wash, some on a journey through the Netherlands in 1680. He also made drawings in black and red chalk depicting the city gates of Haarlem and ruins found in the surrounding countryside. He received commissions for ceiling paintings, signboards, landscapes, portraits and other works, but his known painted work is confined to a few vanitas still-lifes, such as Vanitas Still-life with a Royal Cromn and a Print of Charles I of England, beheaded in 1649 (>1649, 95x69cm), leçon de vanité, allusive aux fragiles occupations humaines (du berger au savant, du roi au musicien, etc...). On lit en haut «Denckt op t'ent» (pense ŕ la fin) et, en bas, sous le portrait du roi: «t'kan verkeren» (cela peut changer). Contre-note optimiste, l'espérance signifiée par la gourde du pčlerin, lequel chemine vers Dieu. — Memento Mori (1656; 450x423pix, 36kb) _ Exquisite vanitas still lifes like this were widely popular in seventeenth-century Europe. They were meant to exhort the viewer to prepare for death. Vanitas still lifes are based on a biblical passage from Ecclesiastes, "Vanity of vanities, ... all is vanity," that urges the reader to remember that saving one's soul is more important than wordly gains. All objects in this painting have symbolic meaning intended to remind the viewer that wealth, power and knowledge acquired in this world are unimportant in the face of inevitable death. The watch and hourglass give notice of the passage of time. The plumed helmet, sword and gun refer to soldierly activities; the globe, maps and the money bags to worldly knowledge and material possessions. Books indicate scholarly pursuits, but warn as well against conceited pride that comes with learning. The overturned goblet cautions against overindulgence, but also symbolizes the Sense of Taste. The musical instruments refer to the Sense of Hearing, to Music — one of the Seven Liberal Arts — and, in case of the lute and flute, to carnal love. Since they wither and die, the cut flowers in a vase allude to the transience of life, as does the skull, a particularly stark reminder of death. But the ivy crowning the skull offers hope because it is a symbol for immortality. Apart from its allegorical meaning, the painting is a pleasure for the eye in its masterful representation of different materials, its color, and the organization of these diverse elements. — Vanitas with a Royal Crown and the portrait of Charles I King of England Decapitated in 1649 (95x69cm; 797x573pix, 54kb) _ Vincent van de Vinne is best known for his still-lifes. Beside Pieter van Roestraten, a genre and still-life painter (and the son-in-law of Frans Hals) Vinne is the only documented student of Hals, though not a trace of their contact with him is evident in their works. Leçon de vanité, allusive aux fragiles occupations humaines (du berger au savant, du roi au musicien, etc...). On lit en haut «Denckt op t'ent» (pense ŕ la fin) et, en bas, sous le portrait du roi : «t'kan verkeren» (cela peut changer). Contre-note optimiste, l'espérance signifiée par la gourde du pčlerin, lequel chemine vers Dieu. |
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