ASSELYN, Jan

This canvas is one of the rare ‘Bambocciata’ paintings by Asselyn, painted during trips through Rome with Jan Both between 1638 and 1640. (Bambocciata: genre scene of popular life in the suburbs of Rome made popular by the Netherlandish painter Pieter van Laer, known in Italy as Il Bamboccio.) it depicts one of the many limekilns in Rome, where antique fragments were utilised to make Baroque building material. Beggars and homeless people are playing morra and warming themselves on the roof of the kiln.

This signed and dated painting is an early work that already reveals the mastership of the young Asselyn, who is rightly considered one of the most important landscapists active during the first half of the 17th century. The natural environment and the topographical situation are suppressed here in favour of the battle scene. Asselyn assigns to the spectator the role of an eyewitness amidst the Netherlandish Wars of Independence. Later on, the artist became famous for his landscapes of the Campagna, which date from his sojourn in Italy.

This coastal scene shows the painter’s familiar compositional style. Pictorial depth is created out of the contrast between close-up and distant views, between the anecdotal and comical observation of the resting riders disputing over which route to take next and the soft forms of the remote mountains beyond the bay.

The artist painted the early Christian basilica after his drawing (now in the Albertina, Vienna), while the landscape is imaginary.

Asselijn studied for some time in France and Rome. On his return to Amsterdam, he specialized in painting animals and Italianate landscapes, which occupied a firm place in Dutch painting. Motifs of the Roman Campagna, ruins, rocks and castles generally dominate his settings peopled with riders and herdsmen. Yet his works owe less to real landscapes than to painterly tradition. Some typical features of the work by this Italianate Dutch artist are the way he bathes his landscapes in atmospherically “romantic” golden hues influenced by Claude Lorrain’s handling of light, or adopts picturesque motifs in the manner of Salvator Rosa.

Italianate as they may be, these paintings are nevertheless easily identifiable as the work of a Dutch artist, for the genre generally lacks the pathos formula of the Baroque and the antique ruins tend to blend into the rest of the landscape like elements in a srill-life. The genre components can be found in the procession of mules, their riders and the figures on the bridge.

Like a piece of broken bread or a cracked earthenware jug, the ruins unfurl their melancholy beauty in the tranquil evening light, recalling the transcience of earthly life in a highly aesthetic way.

Jan Asselyn was in Italy from the end of 1635 until ¹⁶⁴⁴⁄₅, when he travelled back to The Netherlands, which he reached by 1647. The painting reflects the influence of Claude Lorrain.

Jan Asselyn was Jan Both’s exact contemporary, but he had a much wider repertoire than Both. He made his mark with exquisite Italianate landscapes bathed in a luminous light in which large-scale ruins often play a dominant role.

The painting is a depiction of hunters in a timeless atmosphere that pass by the viewer and a peasant who greets them and finally vanish through a dilapidated arch. This is a typical image of the South seen by a Dutch painter.

Asselyn painted his Italian landscapes from memory after returning to the Netherlands. The Mountainous Landscape with Traveling Herdsmen he synthesized his image of Italy without including any details that otherwise introduce an Italian mood into his pictures.

Asselyn probably stayed in Rome from 1636 to 1644. After returning to Amsterdam he continued to paint Italian landscapes such as the River Bank with Herdsmen painted around 1650.

This is a painted record of a dramatic historical event. On the night of 5-6 March 1651, strong north-westerly winds and a high spring tide caused the Sint Anthonisdijk to rupture in two places, flooding much of the city of Amsterdam. For the Italianate painter Jan Asselyn, this most Dutch of subjects is a great rarity.

Asselyn’s early works, dated 1634 and 1635, are little views of ferocious cavalry skirmishes which suggest he was apprenticed to Jan Marsten the Younger, a Haarlem battle painter who was a pupil and follower of Esaias van de Velde. Soon afterwards he was said to have travelled to Rome and remained there until about 1643-44. No painting can be documented to his Roman sojourn but on the basis of stylistic evidence a sufficient number establish he was there, and had close contact with the Bamboccianti as well as an opportunity to take a hard look at Claude’s landscapes. Additionally, he made drawings, often animated with wash, of the grand and modest sights of Rome.

Asselyn returned to the Netherlands via France where he married in Lyon in 1644-45. Then he moved to Paris where he worked with Swanevelt. By 1647 he was in Amsterdam where he spent the remaining five years of his life. During the brief period he specialized in Italian views saturated with silvery and golden atmospheric effect; he was one of the first to bring Claude’s pure and light way of painting landscapes to Holland. He also painted winter and night scenes and views of his native land, and pictures of animals and birds as well. His Threatened Swan depicts a life-size swan defending its nest against a dog swimming towards it.

With menacingly outspread wings, the swan is vigorously defending its nest against the dog swimming up from the left. The scattered feathers and the low angle from which the bird is viewed emphasize its fury.

The painting was transformed at a later date into an allegory on the vigilance of the Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt by inscriptions added by an unknown hand: under the swan ‘De Raad-Pensionarie’ (the Grand Pensionary); on one of the eggs in the nest ‘Holland’; and above the dog, ‘de viand van de Staat’ (the enemy of the State). Thus the swan was meant to represent the Grand Pensionary protecting Holland. The enemy was presumably De Witt’s adversary, England.