Maarten van Heemskerck

Maarten van Heemskerck (born Maerten Jacobsz van Veen; 1 June 1498 – 1 October 1574), also known as Marten Jacobsz Heemskerk van Veen, was a Dutch portrait and religious painter, who spent most of his career in Haarlem. He was a pupil of Jan van Scorel, and adopted his teacher's Italian-influenced style. He spent the years 1532–1536 in Italy. He produced many designs for engravers, and is especially known for his depictions of the Wonders of the World.

Biography Early life

Heemskerck was born in the village of Heemskerk, North Holland, halfway between Alkmaar and Haarlem. He was the son of a farmer called Jacob Willemsz. van Veen, later buried in the village churchyard. According to his biography by Karel van Mander, he began his artistic training with the painter Cornelius Willemsz in Haarlem, but was recalled to Heemskerk by his father to work on the family farm. However, having contrived an argument with his father he left again, this time for Delft, where he studied under Jan Lucasz, before moving on to Haarlem, where he became a pupil of Jan van Scorel, learning to paint in his teacher's innovative Italian-influenced style.

Heemskerck then went to lodge at the home of the wealthy curate of the Sint-Bavokerk, Pieter Jan Foppesz (whose name van Mander writes as Pieter Ian Fopsen). They knew each other because Foppesz owned land in Heemskerk. The artist painted him in a now famous family portrait, considered the first of its kind in a long line of Dutch family paintings. His other works for Foppesz included two life size figures symbolising the Sun and the Moon on a bedstead, and a picture of Adam and Eve "rather smaller but (it is said) after living models".

Italy He travelled around the whole of northern and central Italy, stopping at Rome, where he had letters of introduction from van Scorel to the influential Dutch cardinal William of Enckenvoirt.

It is evident of the facility with which he acquired the rapid execution of a scene-painter that he was selected to collaborate with Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Battista Franco and Francesco de' Rossi (Il Salviati) on the redecoration of the Porta San Sebastiano at Rome as a triumphal arch (5 April 1536) in honour of Charles V. Among these are the Capitoline Brutus, van Heemskerck being the first known artist to make a sketch of this now famous bust.

A hypothesis put forward in 2021 and explained in 2024 stating that the drawings in the two Berlin scrapbooks were not executed by Maarten van Heemskerck and the Anonimi A and B, but with a few exceptions entirely by the sculptor Cornelis Floris II and dated between 1535/36 and 1538, was not taken up by archaeological and art-historical research and was refuted by several contributions to the Berlin exhibition catalog “The Allure of Rome. Maarten van Heemskerck draws the city."

Not only the provenance history of the Roman sketchbook, but above all stylistic and handwritten comparisons confirm Van Heemskerck's authorship. In addition, Van Heemskerck often reused Roman motifs from his drawings in later works, which would not have been possible if Cornelis Floris, who worked in Antwerp, had been the author. The results of the art technological examination of 2024 also contradict the hypothesis, as the ink of the drawings in the Roman sketchbook has the same composition as the undoubtedly autograph sheets of larger format, some of which are signed and dated.

Later career On his return to the Netherlands in 1536, he settled back at Haarlem, where he became president of the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke (in 1540), This lucrative and high-profile work in Delft earned Heemskerck a commission for an altarpiece in the Nieuwe Kerk (Delft) for their Guild of St. Luke. In 1553 he became curate of the Sint-Bavokerk, where he served for 22 years (until the Protestant Reformation). In 1572 he left Haarlem for Amsterdam, to avoid the siege of Haarlem which the Spaniards laid to the place. They were engraved by Philip Galle and published in 1572.

Paintings Detail of Ecce Homo Altarpiece (1544), National Museum, Warsaw. Exaggerated expressions and robust musculature created with relatively little paint are prime characteristics of Heemskerck's style.

Painting by van Heemskerck depicting the abduction of Helen, queen of the Greek city-state Sparta, by Paris. The Walters Art Museum

Many works by van Heemskerck survive. Adam and Eve and St. Luke painting the Likeness of the Virgin and Child in presence of a poet crowned with ivy leaves, and a parrot in a cage – an altar-piece in the gallery of Haarlem, and the Ecce Homo in the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, are characteristic works of the period preceding van Heemskerck's visit to Italy.

Death In Amsterdam he made a will, which has been preserved. It shows that he had lived long enough and prosperously enough to make a fortune. At his death, he left money and land in trust to the orphanage of Haarlem, with interest to be paid yearly to any couple who should be willing to perform the marriage ceremony on the slab of his tomb in the cathedral of Haarlem. It was a superstition in Catholic Holland that a marriage so celebrated would secure the peace of the dead within the tomb.

Reputation Heemskerck was widely respected in his own lifetime and was a strong influence on the painters of Haarlem in particular. He is known (along with his teacher Jan van Scorel) for his introduction of Italian art to the Northern Netherlands, especially for his series on the wonders of the world, that were subsequently spread as prints. Karel van Mander devoted six pages to his biography in his Schilder-boeck.

Public collections Courtauld Institute of Art Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa Rijksmuseum Amsterdam Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg University of Michigan Museum of Art Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Juan B. Castagnino, Rosario