CORNELIS VAN HAARLEM

There are several copies of this painting attesting its popularity.

During the 1590s Cornelis van Haarlem produced a number of paintings based around compositions comprised of three half-length figures. Numerous versions of his allegorical paintings on the choice between young and old illustrate his interest in exploring the dynamic between a trio of figures.

In this depiction of Bathsheba not only is she completely nude, but so are two of her attendants. This painter’s sinuous figures are close to those painted in his Haarlem Academy, in Prague, and in the Loire Valley. Theirs is a figure style derived from the later painters of Fontainebleau.

In this obscure interior, Mary is standing beside a table with a rug and cushion. She is shielding and protecting her naked infant. Christ is receiving a pear from his mother - or perhaps she from him. The pear represents Christ’s love for humanity.

When Jesus was born and King Herod heard that the infant was the King of the Jews, he ordered that all boy children in Bethlehem under two years of age should be put to death. Meanwhile, however, Mary and Joseph had fled to safety with their baby. The senseless slaughter of the innocents is an example of ruthless tyranny. The painting was probably commissioned on behalf of Prince Maurits, whose task as commander-in-chief of the army was to rid the Netherlands of Spanish tyranny.

A second version of this subject was made one year later for the city of Haarlem.

Commissioned by the Haarlem Magistrate for the decoration of the Prinsenhof, the Massacre of the Innocents replaced a lost scene of the altarpiece of the Drapers’ Guild in the St Bavo Church. The outer wings survived and were painted by Van Heemskerck.

Cornelis van Haarlem was a member of a group of Dutch painters called the Haarlem Mannerists. (The label is not a very good one because none of them were exclusively Mannerist.) They accepted the notion promulgated by Italian Mannerist theorists (Vasari, Lomazzo, Armenini, Federico Zuccaro) that nature must be studied but never slavishly copied.

The violent contortions and foreshortenings of the Herculean nudes, the exaggerated tension, and the forced perspective in Cornelis van Haarlem’s life-size Massacre of the Innocents are all characteristic of late-sixteenth-century Dutch Mannerism.

This painting depicts the scene when Perseus washing his hands after liberating Andromeda and placing the head of Medusa on a bed of leaves and sea weed.

This allegory dedicated to Temperance shows a group of predominantly nude figures partying in a glade, personifications of the best of both worlds - Eros and Virtus. The painter obviously picked up many a trick from the suave School of Fontainebleau, where so many northern artists flourished in their association with sophisticated Italian and French colleagues.

This is the earliest example of the 15 known versions of this subject by the artist.

In the 1580s, Cornelis van Haarlem, together with the poet, painter and art theorist, Karel van Mander, and the painter and engraver, Hendrick Goltzius, was one of the principal exponents of the Mannerist style which enjoyed a brief but intense flowering in Haarlem.

In the 1580s, Cornelis van Haarlem was one of the principal exponents of the Mannerist style which enjoyed a brief but intense flowering in Haarlem. By the mid 1590s, however, when the present picture was painted, Cornelis’s work was shifting towards a more temperate approach. The violent contortions and exaggeratedly muscular nudes which typified his earlier style, gave way in favour of more restful poses and figure types, more akin to classical ideals of proportion and harmony.

Cornelis van Haarlem completed this painting in 1592 for the Prinsenhof in Haarlem, the stadholder’s quarter in the city. D�rer’s engraving served as a model for the composition, but Cornelis modified those idealised figures to make them fit the taste of his own day.

The animals are carefully arranged. The monkey embracing the cat, the dog and the fox, the slug and the owl all have connotations that comment on the story. Those who knew the meaning of these symbols and their combined effect could delve deeper into the picture.

The Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses relate the story of a reigning race of gods consisting of the titans, the cyclopes, and the giants who were challenged to a cosmic battle by the Olympian gods headed by Zeus.

The fierce battle, the so-called titanomachia, ended with the defeat of the titans whom Zeus cast down into Tartaros, the underworld, from where they cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

In this Mannerist painting the figures appear in a stage like setting. The three seated female figures on the right may be identified with the three Graces of Venus’ entourage. On the left we see Minerva with her back to the viewer, separate from the central group, getting dressed with the pose of an antique sculpture.

The painting is signed and dated on the stone serving Paris as a seat.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 3 minutes):

Cristoph Willibald Gluck: Paride ed Elena, Paris’ aria

In the present painting, the artist has depicted Hercules, the son of Zeus and the mortal woman Alcmene, gesturing towards the heavens while standing amidst the bodies of several of the great creatures that he has slain or captured as part of his twelve labours. These bodies are those of the Nemean Lion, the Erymanthian Boar, and the Lernaean Hydra.

The painting is a study of the idealised male nude, epitomised by this demi-god. Hercules’s powerful nude body, seen from behind, entirely dominates the canvas. The image of the male nude from behind is a recurring motif throughout Cornelis van Haarlem’s paintings and drawings.

The Haarlem government commissioned this painting to decorate a guesthouse for the Orange family and other dignitaries. The painting’s reference to the beginnings of the Trojan War presented an impressive reminder that even trivial discord causes devastating wars. This was a topical message in Haarlem, which had suffered debilitating defeat in a Spanish siege of 1573. The work also showcased Haarlem’s patronage of sophisticated international history painting.

In this painting, depicting events leading up to the Trojan War, Cornelis van Haarlem represented the assembled gods as naked muscle-men and soft-skinned women, in endlessly varied poses. Their idealized, heroic bodies befit their immortality and the ominous event they witness. These figures were clearly based on drawings after the nude which Cornelis could have made in the small academy in Haarlem. His grand style would have reminded knowledgeable viewers of the history painting of the Italian Renaissance, specifically of Michelangelo and his followers, and of the praise for idealized nudity and difficult poses in sophisticated art theory.

At the wedding of the sea-goddess Thetis and the human Peleus, all the gods were invited except Eris, the goddess of discord. In revenge she threw a golden apple (of discord) “for the most beautiful” of the goddesses present. The shepherd Paris was asked to choose among them.

Cornelis made several paintings of Unequal Lovers, all showing large figures, usually in half-length set against a nearly empty background. It was a format he used for many of his genre subjects to bring the viewer closer to the scene.

The panel is signed with the monogram and dated upper centre: CH. 1619.