Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder

Portrait of Elizabeth I of England, 1578 (c. 1520 – c. 1590) was a Flemish painter, draughtsman, print designer and etcher who was active in his native Flanders and in England. He practised in many genres, including portraits, religious paintings, landscapes and architectural themes. He designed heraldic designs and decorations for tombs. He is known for his creation of a print depicting a map of his native town Bruges and the illustrations for a Dutch-language publication recounting stories from Aesop's Fables. His attention to naturalistic detail and his practice of drawing animals from life for his prints had an important influence on European book illustration. His son Marcus the Younger became a prominent court painter at the English court.

Life Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder was born in Bruges, Flanders, as the son of Egbert Gheeraerts and his wife Antonine Vander Weerde. Egbert Gheeraerts was a painter who had moved from an unknown location to Bruges. Some scholars believe that Gheeraerts' patronymic indicates that he likely came from the Northern Netherlands. His wife Antonine, on the other hand, was a native of Bruges. Egbert became a master of the Guild of Saint Luke of Bruges on 20 January 1516. c. 1560s

Gheeraerts was further commissioned in 1561 to make a print depicting a map of his hometown. He completed the work in one year. The map is one of the earliest examples of a perspective city map that is correctly displayed. Inside the gaping mouth a diabolical mass is celebrated. On the pâté of the head sits a pope-like figure under a canopy on a throne surrounded by bishops and monks. Indulgences and rosaries are pinned up on the staves and various rituals and processions take place and are labelled with letters. In the foreground Protestant iconoclasts are smashing altarpieces, religious sculptures, other church-related items and hurling them into a fire. The print is a condemnation of Catholic idolatry in all its forms and shows the Calvinists as cleansing the world of this perceived evil.

Fearing that he would be condemned to death in the criminal proceedings against him, Gheeraerts fled in 1568 to England with his son Marcus and his workshop assistant Philipus de la Valla. His wife and daughter remained in Bruges. The verdict in his case was pronounced at the end of 1568. He was convicted and the punishment was permanent banishment and forfeiture of his entire fortune.

Gheeraerts took up residence in London upon his arrival in England in 1568. He was joined by his daughter in May 1571 likely after her mother had died. After the death of his wife in Bruges, the artist married in England his second wife, Sussanah de Critz. His wife was a sister of Queen Elizabeth I's serjeant-painter, John de Critz, another Flemish painter who had fled to England. The couple had two daughters and one son. The only child surviving into adulthood, Sarah, later married the famous French-born English limner Isaac Oliver. Just as before in Bruges, Gheeraerts made drawings and etchings and continued his painting activities. As there was a keen demand for portrait paintings in England, Gheeraerts started to paint portraits, which he had not done while still in Flanders.

Paintings Very few paintings have been attributed to Gheeraerts with much certainty. He did not sign any of his paintings. It is documented that he finished the triptych of the Passion of Christ that had been commenced by the prominent painter Bernard van Orley. The triptych was later damaged during the period of Iconoclasm and largely repainted in 1589 by Frans Pourbus the Younger during restoration work. It is not clear from the current state of the work, which parts were painted by which painter. It has been suggested that Bernard van Orley started the centre of the panel and that Marcus Gheeraerts completed the outer areas. A replica of the scene of The lamentation of Christ appeared on the art market (Hampel Fine Art sale of 27 June 2019, lot 551) and was attributed to Gheeraerts. Another version of the Lamentation also attributed to Gheeraerts is in the Saint Amands Church of Geel.

The panel of the Triumphant Christ (Memling museum in Old St. John's Hospital in Bruges) has been attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts. The Lazarus and the rich man (Catharijneconvent Museum in Utrecht) has been attributed to Gheeraerts but this attribution is not uncontested. An inscription on the first painting indicates it was painted on commission by the Flemish merchant Jacob Hoefnagel, a brother of Joris Hoefnagel and a resident of London. The inscription also mentions that Jacob Hoefnagel wanted the picture to depict all the fashions that could be seen in England. Gheeraerts followed this instruction by depicting the figures in costumes from England, France, Venice and other European countries. These costumes were based on a publication depicting various costumes compiled and illustrated by Flemish émigré artist Lucas de Heere. It is believed both paintings depict marriage celebrations. The location of the Fête is the river bank of the Thames while the Festival is placed in an imaginary landscape. In both paintings, a procession is moving from right to left headed by two men carrying large oval cakes, two violinists and a man bearing a vase with rosemary tied with ribbons. The faces of the figures are rendered with precision and are likely portraits of members of the Flemish community in England. The paintings may have been intended to showcase the dignity and piety of the Flemish émigré community in England and to assert their proper place in their adopted country. It is believed that the man looking at the viewer appearing in both paintings is a self-portrait of the artist Gheeraerts.

De warachtighe fabulen der dieren

This book was published in 1567 in Bruges by Pieter de Clerck. Marcus Gheeraerts etched the title page and the 107 illustrations for each fable that his friend, Edewaerd de Dene, had written in his local Flemish verse. Gheeraerts initiated and financed the publication, which was printed to the highest standards of its time as a luxurious object with three different fonts. Each fable takes up two facing pages: on the left-hand side the illustration is displayed headed with a proverb or saying and some verse underneath it while on the right-hand the fable and its moral are told. It was the first emblematic fable book and set a trend for similar books.

The principal source of the text in the book were Les fables du très ancien Ésope written by the French humanist Gilles Corrozet and published in Paris in 1542. A second source was the Aesopi Phrygis et aliorum fabulae, a collection of fables in Latin that was published on the Antwerp printing presses of Christophe Plantin in various editions from 1660. A third source for the fables writings of natural history such as Der Naturen Bloeme (The Flower (i.e. choice) of Nature), a Middle Dutch natural history encyclopedia, written in the thirteenth century by the Flemish writer Jacob van Maerlant and the Dutch-language natural history compilation Der Dieren Palleys (The palace of the Animals), published in Antwerp in 1520. A final source for the fables are contemporary emblemata books such as the Emblemata of Andrea Alciato and an emblem of Joannes Sambucus. Illustrations made by Bernard Salomon for an edition of Aesop's fables published in Lyon in 1547 and a German edition with prints by Virgil Solis published in Frankfurt in 1566 were the basis for the motifs of Gheeraerts. He gave his subjects greater naturalism than these artists. About 30 images were Gheeraerts' own invention.

Gheeraerts added another 18 illustrations and a new title page for a French version of the Fabulen that was published in 1578 under the title Esbatement moral des animaux. A Latin version, Mythologia ethica, was published in the following year with a title page likely based on a drawing by Gheeraerts. The copper plates were used in books well into the 18th Century and the fable series was copied by artists all over Europe. Gheeraerts also etched a second series of 65 illustrations for the fable book Apologi Creaturarum, which was published in Antwerp in 1584. However, the etchings were smaller than those of the first series and this book never achieved the same popularity as the original one. Gheeraerts' images were also used in publications until the 18th century in the Dutch Republic, Germany, France and Bohemia.