Wednesday, February 15, 2017

17th-century Canvases from the Netherlands

Jacob van Ruisdael
View of grain-fields with distant town
ca. 1670
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Gerrit van Honthorst
Childhood of Christ
ca. 1620
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

"Back in the seventeenth century, when alchemy was being practiced in every little town, painters and alchemists shared many substances  linseed oil, spirits, brilliant minerals for colors  and painters' manuals sometimes used the language of alchemy, calling for alchemical ingredients such as vitriol, sal ammoniac, and blood. Realgar and Orpiment are pigments that can be found in Renaissance paintings (they are bright orange and warm yellow) and they were also favorite alchemical ingredients because they yield arsenic and sulfur. . . . Artists have made paints from a pretty red mineral called cinnabar, which is usually found in an impure state, 'admixed with rocky gangue' as one author says. Because it is hard to purify, it is more common to make red paint out of Vermilion, which is the same chemical synthesized from mercury and sulfur. Mercury and sulfur are the two principal substances in alchemy, and even the method for making Vermilion has its alchemical connections. In the Dutch technique, mercury and melted sulfur were mashed together to make a black clotted substance called Ethiops mineral or Moor. When the Moor was put in an oven and heated, it gave off vapor that condensed onto the surface of clay tablets. The Moor is black, but its condensed vapor is bright red  a typical piece of alchemical magic  and it could be scraped off and ground into Vermilion for paint. So Vermilion is an artist's pigment, composed of two of the most important alchemical materials, and synthesized according to a method that was used by Greek alchemists."  

 from What Painting Is by James Elkins (Routledge, 1999)

Samuel van Hoogstraten
Boy looking through a window
ca. 1645-50
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Jan de Baen
Portrait of a Lady
17th century
oil on canvas
private collection

Jacob Adriaensz Backer
Granida and Daifilo
ca. 1635
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Jacob Adriaensz Backer
Diana and Nymphs at rest
1649
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Rembrandt
Abraham and the Three Angels
ca. 1635-45
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Gerbrand van den Eeckhout
Abraham and the Three Angels
1656
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Emanuel De Witte
Capriccio - Rome
1664
canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Anthonie de Lorme and Ludolf de Jongh
Church interior at night
1660
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Ludolf Backhuyssen
Ships in distress in a raging storm
ca. 1690
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Pieter Wouwerman
Landscape with deer hunt
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Willem van Aelst
Hunting Still-life
ca. 1665
oil on canvas
private collection

Jan van der Heyden
Crossroads in a wood
1660s
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid