Description
PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF P.R.W. MCKERGOW ESQ.
THE CRUCIFIXION
measurements note
67 by 117.5 cm.; 26 1/2 by 46 1/4 in.
signed and dated lower centre: Kvmander/1599 (KvM in monogram)
oil on oak panel
PROVENANCE
Possibly Jan Pietersz. van Gils;
His sale, Delft, 5 March 1622, lot 1, where estimated at 200 Guilders;
Possibly Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem (1562-1638), Haarlem, in whose 6th will, dated 20 November 1631 there is a bequest to Cornelisz Claesz. van Wieringen (c.1575-1633) "synen goeden vrunt , ... er een stuck schilderiye wesende een Crucifix gemaect by Mr Karel Vermander" ("his good friend, [bequeathed] to him one painting being a Crucifixion made by Karel van Mander");
Estate of Cornelis Cornelisz. van Harleem, Haarlem, deceased, Inventory 2 March 1639, inv. no. 1: "Het wel geordineerde kruis van Karel Vermander";
Possibly Gerard Uylenburg, Amsterdam, Inventory 1674, inv. no. 111: "Een cruysie van Carel ver Mander", estimated at 60 Florins;
Probably acquired by Robert McKergow, Dunkeld House, Burgess Hill, between 1870 and his death in 1897;
By descent to his son Lieutentant Colonel R.W. McKergow (died 1947), Twineham Grange, Sussex;
By descent to his son P.R.W. McKergow, Risby Manor, Bury St. Edmonds, Suffolk.
LITERATURE
(Possibly) Archiefdienst voor Kennemerland, Haarlem, W. van Triere 102, fol. 147r-147r, dated 20/11/1631;
(Possibly) Archiefdienst voor Kennemerland, Haarlem, restant Enschede, box 46, temporary number XVII- 564;
A. Bredius (ed.), Künstlerinventare-Urkunden zur Geschichte der Holländischen Kunst des 16., 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, The Hague 1918-21, vol. V (1918), pp. 1670, 1751, vol. VII (1921), Appendix, pp. 77 and 93;
E.K.J. Reznicek, "Der Kalvarienberg im Schnee", in G. Kauffmann (ed.), Die Kunst des 16. Jahrhunderts. Propyläen Kunstgeschichte, vol. VIII, Berlin 1970, pp. 201-202, reproduced fig. 87;
E.K.J. Reznicek, "Het leerdicht van Karel van Mander en de acribie van Hessel Miedema", in Oud Holland, vol. 89, 1975, p. 112, note 33;
Possibly S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, "Het schilderhuis van Govaert Flinck en de kunsthandel van Uylenburgh aan den Lauriergracht te Amsterdam", in Jaarboek Amstelodamum, vol. 74, Amsterdam 1982, p. 85;
C. ter Haar, "Das Goldene Zeitalter der Literatur in den Niederlanden", in Propyläen Geschichte der Literatur, vol. 3, reproduced p. 383;
M. Leesberg, "Karel van Mander as a Painter", in Simiolus. Netherlands quarterly from the history of art, vol. 22, 1993/94, no. 1-2, p. 50, no. 18, p. 28, reproduced fig. 16;
H. Miedema (ed.), Karel Van Mander: The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, Doornspijk 1995, vol. II, Appendix, p. 109, cat. no. P14, reproduced, and possibly p. 76;
Possibly P.J.J. van Thiel, Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem 1562-1638- a Monograph and Catalogue Raisonné, Doornspijk 1999, pp. 44, 51, 247, 258 (all are references to a Crucifixion by Van Mander; not necessarily the present work).
NOTE
Karel van Mander was an art theorist and historian, playwright and poet as well as a painter and draftsman. He is best known to us today for his Het Schilderboeck published in Haarlem in 1604. Modelled on Vasari's Lives of the Artists, it remains today the prime source of information about the lives of the artists of his time and before in The Netherlands, as well as providing a fascinating insight into Van Mander's own views on the theory and practice of painting. He is less well-known to us as a painter, although he was one of the leading artists in Haarlem in the years around 1600, well before it ceded to Amsterdam its reputation as the leading centre for painting and drawing in The Netherlands. He was a close contemporary of both Goltzius and Cornelis van Haarlem, and his paintings and drawings share their Mannerist exuberance in the use of line and colour. Like Spranger, whom he had met in Rome, Van Mander, who subsequently worked in Switzerland and Austria was an important conduit for Mannerist ideas into The Netherlands, where the style first took root in Haarlem.
The rarity of Van Mander's paintings, and his fame as an historian of art, explain why he is so little known as a painter. He was more prolific as a draftsman, and his designs are far better known from engravings made from his drawings than from his paintings. As with so much of the art produced around 1600 in Holland, this picture is a synthesis of earlier, predominantly Flemish traditions, and new ideas. Van Mander will have known Pieter Bruegel the Elder's depiction of the Crucifixion, in which the event is shown in the distance, on top of the hill of Calvary, and he would have been well versed in the Bruegelian tradition of depicting New Testament events such as the Census at Bethlehem, the Nativity and the Massacre of the Innocents in a snowy Netherlandish winter.
Van Mander loosely based the present composition from an engraving of this subject made in 1517 by Lucas van Leyden (B.17; see fig. 1). We know he admired this engraving, since he singled it out in his biography of Lucas as one of his finest.1 The idea is broadly similar: scattered groups of diverse figures: soldiers, hawkers and tradesmen, beggars and the well-off; are assembled across a broad hillside, with the eye led up to the Crucifixion in the distance on top of the hill. However, in adapting Lucas' compositional idea for his painting, Van Mander borrowed no part of it.2 Entirely original too is the dark brooding atmosphere, with dark clouds gathering in the distance immediately behind the Crucifixion, and a strong wind blowing across the foreground from left to right. So dark is the sky that it is in fact impossible to say whether the scene is set at night or by day. Van Mander probably had in mind the description of the Crucifixion of Christ in the Gospel of Saint Luke, Chapter 23, verses 44-5: "And it was about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst" (St. Mark's description is similar). The rending of the veil of the temple may be implied by the explosion of dark cloud or smoke emerging from behind Calvary, where Van Mander has situated the town of Jerusalem. The menacing, stormy dark mise-en-scène of this picture is most unusual in the work of Van Mander (though something similar is to be found in his Christ carrying the Cross, in a private collection in Vienna),3 whose pictures are usually full of strong colours. The figure group to the lower left is the most conventional part of the picture, and the most typical of the artist. The group of six figures in the centre foreground, including the quacksalver, the ratcatcher and the very flamboyantly dressed youth, together with the stonemason beyond them, are painted in soft colours reminiscent of watercolour. They are most unusual for Van Mander, and one might ask if in their colour and their delicate precise draftsmanship, Van Mander might not have been influenced by the drawings of Jacques de Gheyn.
Emil Reznicek has suggested that Van Mander might also have been inspired by Jan Brueghel the Elder's Calvary now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, which was painted one year earlier in 1598.4 It is not that likely that Van Mander would have known Jan Brueghel's composition, which is only generically similar to his own, and it is more likely that both artists were seeking ways to bring up to date a traditional manner of depicting the subject. Reznicek also suggested that a drawing by Van Mander of two figures, in the Amsterdam Historisch Museum, Fodor collection, should be a study for the women in the lower left corner of the present painting. They seem however, to be unrelated.
Van Mander records in his autobiography that he portrayed himself and Hendrick Goltzius in a Crucifixion: "een Cruycinghe Christi/daer hy/ ende Goltzius nae't leven in zijn ghedaen/ en is sonderlinghe net en suphertjes ghehandelt" ("a Crucifixion of Christ in which he and Goltzius are portrayed from life, an exceptionally delicate and purely painted work").5 There are no obvious portraits in the present work, nor are there any likenesses of Van Mander or Goltzius. The picture referred to by Van Mander must be another, which suggests that he painted at least two, and this means that early references to Crucifixions in the wills and inventories of Van Gils, Cornelis van Haarlem, Uylenburgh etc., cannot be assumed to refer to the present painting.
1. Cited by Leesberg, under Literature, p. 28; see Miedema's edited Van Mander under Literature, vol. I, pp. 108-9, fol. 212v.
2. Leesberg claims that Van Mander took the cripple directly from Lucas van Leyden's print, but the figures are quite different.
3. See E.K. Grootes, "Anacht voor Van Mander", in Oud Holland, vol. 89, 1975, reproduced fig. 3.
4. See Reznicek, under Literature, 1970.
5. See Miedema, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 26-7, fol. S2r.
