CONINXLOO, Gillis van

(b. 1544 Antwerpen, d. 1607 Amsterdam)

Painter, draughtsman and collector, part of a Flemish family of artists whose members of at least six generations were artists, active from the late 15th century to the 17th. The family was foinded by Jan van Coninxloo I ( fl 1490). Gillis van Coninxloo (in fact Gillis van Coninxloo III) was the son of Jan van Coninxloo II. Van Mander, a contemporary of Gillis van Coninxloo III, wrote in 1604: ‘He is, as far as I know, the best landscape painter of his time; his style is now frequently imitated in Holland.’ His works works show the transition from Mannerist to early Baroque landscape.

Coninxloo studied under, among others, Pieter Coecke van Aelst, a painter of the Antwerp school of Mannerism. After a period of travel in France, he returned to Antwerp in 1570 and was made a member of the painters’ guild. He left his home again in 1585 to escape religious persecution and stayed at Frankenthal in the Palatinate until 1595, when he settled in Amsterdam. InFrankenthal he had a decisive influence on a group of emigré Flemish landscape painters now known as the Frankenthal school. Among its most important exponents are Pieter Schoubroeck and Anthonie Mirou.

The development of Coninxloo’s style is often described in three periods that somewhat correspond with his residence in Antwerp (1570-88), Frankenthal (1588-95), and Amsterdam (1595-1606). His earlier works are deliberately composed landscape fantasies reflecting the influence of the Italianate Flemish landscapist Paul Bril. Coninxloo’s later landscapes are more naturalistic and are characterized by their blending of colour into a harmonious atmospheric tone.

Gillis’s contributions to the development of Dutch and Flemish landscape painting were of decisive importance. More than any other artist, he represented the heroic landscape, an interpretation of nature based on reality but with a tendency to idealize the scenery, thus making the whole sublime. While his predecessors painted vast panoramic landscapes, Gillis III rendered self-contained glimpses of nature and created a sense of unity between man and nature as well as between the landscape and the viewer. A similar notion was being developed simultaneously in Italy by such artists of Netherlandish origin as Lodewijk Toeput and Paolo Fiammingo. Van Coninxloo, who never actually visited Italy, probably came to know this new style through prints by Cornelis Cort after Girolamo Muziano, which were then circulating throughout the Netherlands. Other northern artists such as Jan Brueghel the Elder and Paul Bril achieved similar results at the same time or even before. Their contribution to the development of forest landscapes may therefore be considered to be at least as important as that of Gillis van Coninxloo, if not more so.

Forest Landscape

This carefully composed landscape presents a close-up view of a dense forest. Through its accentuated handling of light, the forest landscape becomes highly atmospheric and seems to be positively charged with emotion.

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Landscape

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Landscape with Leto and Peasants of Lykia

The main subject of the painting is the landscape. The scene in the foreground is only a decoration; it depicts a story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses: the peasants are changed to frogs because they did not give water to Leko.

The figures of the scene were painted by Hendrick de Clerck.

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Mountain Landscape with River Valley and the Prophet Hosea

The subject of this landscape is a moralistic one with a reference to a passage from the Bible, more specifically the Old Testament book of Hosea. The drawing is believed to have been done in Frankenthal, a small town in the Pfalz mountains where an important artists’ colony sprang up after the fall of Antwerp to the Spanish in 1585. Many of the artists who settled there were Flemings sympathetic to the Reformation, who had been forced into exile because of their Protestant faith. Some years later, a number of them, including Gillis van Coninxloo, moved to Amsterdam. Protestant artists worked in Frankenthal in a reformed environment, which was naturally reflected in the subjects they chose to paint. That is certainly the case with this drawing. The Prophet Hosea opposed what he saw as abuses in the field of worship, making him a symbolic precursor of early Protestant leaders.

Gillis van Coninxloo is viewed as an innovator in Flemish landscape painting. Above all, he represents the transition from the Mannerist to the Baroque landscape. The watercolour of the prophet Hosea is still done entirely in his early Mannerist style. Van Coninxloo went on to master and develop a variety of styles in his life. His influence on his contemporaries was crucial, and was felt by both Flemish and Dutch painters. In many ways, he helped Northern Netherlandish art embark on its search for a new, distinct identity.

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