Maarten van Heemskerck; a double portrait separated and united by the shadows
-
- Maarten van Heemskerck “Self-Portrait in Rome with the Colosseum” (1553), Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum
-
- Maarten van Heemskerck “St. Luke painting the Virgin (1532), Frans Hals Museum Haarlem
-
- Maarten van Heemskerck “Bullfighting” (1552), From the collection of Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lille, France
-
- Maarten van Heemskerck “Panorama with the Abduction of Helen Amidst the Wonders of the Ancient World”, The Walters Art Museum
-
- Maarten van Heemskerck “Allegory of the Holy Roman Empire under Emperor Charles V” (ca 1556), German Historical Museum
-
- Maarten van Heemskerck “The Crucifixion” (1543), Museum voor Schone Kunsten (Ghent, Belgium)
-
- The Triumph of Death Print by Philip Galle ca 1565 Painting by Maarten van Heemskerck
Maarten van Heemskerck (Heemskerck 1498 – Haarlem 1574) was a Dutch painter and etcher. He lived in Rome, Italy, from 1532 to 1536. This city had a great influence on him as evident in many of his works (Michelangelo and Raphael as examples, and the Roman monuments – at times realistic, other times as sources of inspiration).
Approaching his painting through a conceptual point of view, allows us to grasp not only the painter’s inclination for mysterious symbols or allegorical compositions, but above all his reflections on the medium of painting. This latter aspect is particularly evident in his self portrait of 1553, now housed in Cambridge.
Looking closely, in fact, you can see that the character in the foreground casts its shadow on the little card which is at the center of the bottom edge of the picture. And that card, in turn, casts its shadow on the painting behind it. Therefore, the composition consists of three separate conceptual plans. In addition to this, the work is also to be understood as a double portrait, the painter with paintbrush and easel, in fact, is the same Maarten van Heemskerck in the foreground. And the painter seems to turn to us in order to draw our attention to the farther himself, in the act of painting. The work is, in short, a conceptual self-portrait, which includes the painter both outside and inside the painting, in a solution made by successive planes which are, at the same time, joined and separated from the almost imperceptible shadows they cast.
July 18, 2015
