Object data
oil on panel
support: height 48 cm × width 37.7 cm × height 47.4 cm (painted surface) × width 37.2 cm (painted surface)
Aertgen Claesz van Leyden (attributed to)
St Jerome in his Study by Candlelight
Leiden, c. 1520 - c. 1530
Inscriptions
- inscription, upper left on a cartouche under the mirror: IC (or IG)
- inscription, piece of paper on the table: Respice fin[e]m
Technical notes
The support is a single vertically grained oak plank, approx. 0.5-1.0 cm thick, which may have been trimmed at the top, bottom and left. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1490. The panel could have been ready for use by 1501, but a date in or after 1515 is more likely. The white ground was applied up to the edges of the support, and is visible along the edges. The paint layers were not applied up to the edges at the top and on the right (painted surface: 47.4 x 37.2 cm). Underdrawing is not visible with the naked eye or with infrared reflectography. The figure and the curtain were reserved. Slight adjustments were made to the contours
Scientific examination and reports
- X-radiography: RMA, 1075, 6 April 1960
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 16 August 1995
- infrared reflectography: M. Wolters / M. Leeflang [2], RKD/RMA, no. RKDG365, 3 April 2006
- condition report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 4 April 2006
Condition
Poor. There are many paint losses and discoloured retouchings. The varnish is also discoloured.
Provenance
Inv.; ….; ? estate inventory, Duke of Lauderdale, Ham House, near London, late 17th century (‘St. Gerome by Lucas van Leyda’);1 …; Lord Dysart;2 …; the dealer P. de Boer, Amsterdam, 1955;3 from whom, fl. 13,600, to the museum, 1956
Object number: SK-A-3903
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Aertgen Claesz van Leyden (Leiden c. 1498 - Leiden c. 1564), attributed to
According to Van Mander, Aert Claesz, better known as Aertgen van Leyden, was born in 1498 as the son of a Leiden fuller, and drowned in Volkersgracht in Leiden in 1564. He initially took up his father’s trade, but in 1516 he was apprenticed to the painter Cornelis Engelbrechtsz. He is documented in August 1521 as ‘Aernt Claesz, painter’ in connection with a debt that he owed to the Guild of St Luke, and he appears in the tax registers as ‘Aertgen, painter’ in 1561 and 1564, when he was living at the address on Zijdegracht recorded by Van Mander.
The latter relates that Aertgen followed the style of his teacher when he became a master painter, before being influenced by Jan van Scorel and later by Maarten van Heemskerck. This evident lack of an individual, recognisable style went hand in hand with a ‘shoddy and unpleasing’ manner of painting, although Van Mander does praise his compositions as being ‘very clever and lively’. He also reports that Aertgen made many designs for glass painters and other artists. Van Mander had himself seen several of Aertgen’s works, among them a Nativity belonging to the widow of the Leiden burgomaster Joan van Wassenaer, and a Triptych with the Last Judgement in the home of Jan Diricksz van Montfoort. Aertgen’s paintings must have been quite popular in the 17th century, judging by the frequent mentions of them in leading collections. Rubens, for example, had a Nativity of his, and the inventory of Rembrandt’s possessions drawn up in 1656 lists several works by him.
Attempts were made to reconstruct Aertgen’s oeuvre in the early decades of the 20th century on the basis of Van Mander’s description of the various influences and styles in his work. Two groups of drawings which Wescher had assigned in 1928 to the Master of 1527 and the Master of the Miracles of the Apostles were attributed to Aertgen van Leyden by Hoogewerff and Van Regteren Altena in 1939, together with a Cologne Nativity and several other paintings. In 1960, Bruyn added a few more paintings and drawings to this large and varied group of works, the core one being The Sermon in the Church (now The Calling of St Antony, SK-A-1691) in Amsterdam, which until then had been given to Lucas van Leyden.
The rediscovery in Valenciennes in 1972 of the 1555 Triptych with the Last Judgement with the Montfoort Family described by Van Mander defines the parameters of the artist’s late style, with elongated figures in the manner of Maarten van Heemskerck.4 This late triptych could be tied in with five other paintings, but had little if any connection with the oeuvre previously assigned to Aertgen, which as a result was reattributed in the 1986_ Art Before the Iconoclasm_ exhibition to various masters with ad hoc names, such as the Master of the Sermon in the Church.
For the present catalogue, however, it was decided to restore those works to him, because they match Van Mander’s description of his oeuvre. Moreover, to date there have been no convincing reattributions of them to other artists. In addition, there are sufficient points of interrelationship between the various groups of paintings and drawings attributed to Aertgen to justify placing them under one name. It should be noted, though, that there were practical reasons for adopting this approach, and not personal art-historical convictions, for it is still conceivable that several artists were responsible for the oeuvre attributed to Aertgen van Leyden, the more so because there were many artists active in Leiden in this period whose works are at present unknown.
References
Van Mander 1604, fols. 236v-38r; Cohen in Thieme/Becker VII, 1912, pp. 35-36; Wescher 1928; Hoogewerff III, 1939, pp. 388-419; Van Regteren Altena 1939; Bruyn 1960; Bangs 1979, pp. 136-37; coll. cat. Leiden 1983, pp. 92-93, nos. 252-54; Scholten in Amsterdam 1986a, pp. 328-30; Filedt Kok in Turner 1996, I, pp. 166-68; Miedema IV, 1997, pp. 1-10; Feurer in Saur XIX, 1998, pp. 350-51; Ekkart 2000, pp. 125-29; Filedt Kok in exh. cat. Leiden 2011, pp. 201-02
(Menno Balm/Jan Piet Filedt Kok)
Entry
St Jerome (c. 347-c. 420), one of the four Church Fathers, was responsible for the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible. He was frequently depicted in early Netherlandish and Italian art, often as here, seated in his study, meditating on death.5
This panel shows him behind his desk, leaning on his right hand and holding a skull in the other one, in a room illuminated by a candle. His pose, with his eyes half or fully closed, expresses melancholy. Lying on the desk before him are a small illuminated book, writing implements and a note with the words ‘Respice fin[e]m’ (Consider the end). They, together with the burning candle, hourglass and skull, underline the idea of vanitas. Hanging on the wall in the right background is St Jerome’s red cardinal’s hat, with a brush (the symbol of purity) and a rosary below it. The round mirror partly concealed by a curtain can be interpreted as a symbol of self-knowledge.6 Hanging below it is a garland with a cartouche containing a barely legible monogram. The bits of it that can be made out have been read as IC, EC or IG, or those combinations in a different order. Pelinck associated the monogram with Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen.7 However, comparison with that artist’s Calling of St John during the Marriage at Cana SK-A-4820 reveals clear differences in technique and style.
It is rightly assumed that this painting was executed in Leiden in the early decades of the 16th century.8 St Jerome was similarly depicted by Lucas van Leyden in a drawing of 1521 now in Oxford (fig. a).9 Another reference to the Leiden origins of the panel is the stylistic affinity with a nocturne of The Nativity (fig. b), several versions of which are listed in 17th-century inventories as being by Aertgen van Leyden.10 The way in which the figures are illuminated in the dark space, the soft modelling and the facial types are related in both paintings.11
Since none of the versions of The Nativity can securely be identified as the autograph prototype,12 it is impossible to compare the manner of painting with the Rijksmuseum’s St Jerome Stylistically, though, the similarities in the special lighting effects, the smooth modelling and the palette are striking. There are also many points of correspondence with the drawings of the Master of 1527, whom Van Regteren Altena identified as Aertgen van Leyden.13 Those similarities, as well as a resemblance to a Lucas van Leyden drawing of 1521, suggest a date of c. 1520-30.
It is possible that the Amsterdam painting, as a supposed Lucas van Leyden, was part of the gift from the Dutch States-General to King Charles I of England in 1636. The king’s inventory describes a painting of St Jerome which exactly matches this scene. If that is the case, it was probably first bought by the States of Holland from the former property of the Knights of St John.14
(Menno Balm/Jan Piet Filedt Kok)
Literature
Bruyn 1960, pp. 79, 93; Pelinck 1960 (as Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen); Bruyn/Millar 1962; Pelinck 1962 (as Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen)
Collection catalogues
1956, p. 113, no. 1433 H 1 (as Leiden school, first half 16th century); 1960, p. 169, no. 1433 H1 (as Leiden school, first half 16th century); 1976, p. 345, no. A 3903
Citation
M. Balm, 2010, 'attributed to Aertgen Claesz. van Leyden, St Jerome in his Study by Candlelight, Leiden, c. 1520 - c. 1530', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8889
(accessed 7 June 2024 07:38:44).Figures
fig. a Lucas van Leyden, St Jerome, 1521. Pen and brush over black chalk, 376 x 281 mm. Oxford, The Ashmolean Museum of Art & Archaeology
fig. b Aertgen van Leyden (?), The Nativity, c. 1525. Oil on panel, 44 x 58 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre (Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre) / Daniel Arnaudet)