Pieter Pietersz. Lastman
Dutch, 1583 - 1633
Dutch painter and draughtsman. He was the son of the goldsmith Pieter Segersz. His older brother Seeger Pietersz. [Coninck] became a goldsmith like his father, while his younger brother Claes Lastman became an engraver and painter. Pieter trained as a painter under the Mannerist artist Gerrit Pietersz., brother of the composer Jan Pietersz. Sweelinck. In June 1602 Lastman travelled to Rome, like so many of his contemporaries. Van Mander, in his biography of Gerrit Pietersz., mentioned his pupil ‘Pieter Lasman [sic] who shows great promise, being presently in Italy’. While there, Lastman made two drawings of an Oriental in a Landscape (both 1603; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), which betray his continuing stylistic dependence on his master (as can also be seen in three drawings made before his trip to Italy). Related to the drawings made in Italy is a series of 12 prints after designs by Lastman of figures in Italian costumes (Hollstein, nos 11–22). Lastman also visited Venice, as is documented by a drawing (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam) after Veronese’s Adoration of the Shepherds in the church of SS Giovanni e Paolo. Lastman was apparently in Italy until March 1607 but thereafter spent the rest of his life in Amsterdam. About 1619 he took on Jan Lievens of Leiden as a pupil, and for six months in 1624 he trained Lievens’s fellow townsman Rembrandt.
The personal style that Lastman gradually developed after his trip to Italy was greatly admired and imitated by his contemporaries, including the group of Amsterdam history painters known by the slightly derogatory term Pre-rembrandtists. As this name suggests, the subsequent fame of Lastman’s pupil overshadowed that of his teacher and his teacher’s colleagues and fellow travellers to Rome (including his brother Claes Lastman, his brother-in-law François Venant (1591/2–1636), Jan Tengnagel, Tengnagel’s brothers-in-law Jan and Jacob Pynas, and Claes Moeyaert). Nevertheless, Lastman was one of the most important artists of his day. One of his outstanding skills was his ability to translate successfully the allure of large Italian frescoes into small-sized cabinet pictures in the manner of Adam Elsheimer, who had made a profound impression on him in Italy. Characteristic of Lastman was his predilection for small, multi-figured history paintings, with subjects from the Bible, secular history or mythology, many of which had previously been depicted only in the graphic arts, if at all.
1. Life and painted work.
Lastman’s earliest, though undated, painting is thought to be the Massacre of the Innocents (Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Mus.), which is partly based on a work by Hans Rottenhammer, who worked in Venice until 1606. A good example of Lastman’s Italian style is provided by his earliest dated painting, the Adoration of the Magi (1606; Prague, N.G., Šternberk Pal.), in which the rather bright palette reflects the influence of Elsheimer’s meticulously executed oil paintings on copper. It became particularly evident in Lastman’s later career that in Italy he had also studied the monumental compositions of Raphael and his followers.
Particularly striking is the linear quality of Lastman’s painted figures, his predilection for representing animals and ornately decorated objects and his settings of wooded landscapes with Classical buildings or ruins. The influence of Elsheimer is evident not only in his bright, vivid palette, but also in the landscape settings of many of his history paintings. Landscape plays a significant part, for instance, in the small Elsheimer-like panel depicting the Flight into Egypt (1608; Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen), and there is an extensive, detailed landscape in the Baptism of the Eunuch (Berlin, Gemäldegal.) of the same year. Lastman painted similar highly decorative landscape backgrounds in Odysseus and Nausicaa (1609; Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Mus.) and a Pastoral Scene (?‘Angelica and Medoro’, 1610; Rotterdam, priv. col.). Although these last two themes were a novelty in the Netherlands at that date, pastoral scenes became commonplace there ten years later through the influence of the Utrecht Caravaggisti.
After 1610 Lastman placed less emphasis in his paintings on landscape settings and more on the principal figures, either deploying them in the foreground and letting them fill the entire picture plane, as in David and Uriah (1611; Detroit, MI, Inst. A.) and The Entombment (1612; Lille, Mus. B.-A.), or isolating them from their surroundings, as in the Expulsion of Hagar (1612; Hamburg, Ksthalle). He continued, however, to paint multi-figured compositions, such as Joseph Distributing Grain in Egypt (1612; Dublin, N.G.), in which the buildings and obelisk in the background are a reminder of his stay in Rome. The Eternal City is also recalled in his most daring tour de force, a large canvas depicting the Battle of Constantine and Maxentius (1613; Bremen, Ksthalle), inspired by Raphael’s frescoes in the Sala di Costantino in the Vatican. Lastman used an Italian form of his name in the signature Pietro Lastman fecit A° 1614 on SS Paul and Barnabas at Lystra (Warsaw, N. Mus.), the figures in which are borrowed from the tapestry series after Raphael’s design in the Sistine Chapel. The signature Pietro Lastman is also found on two other pictures of 1614: Orestes and Pylades Disputing at the Altar (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), the profane variant of, and possibly the pendant to, the SS Paul and Barnabas; and God Appearing to Abraham on the Road to Sichem (St Petersburg, Hermitage). It appears again on other Italianate works, including the later version of SS Paul and Barnabas (1617; Amsterdam, Hist. Mus.) and Juno Discovering Jupiter with Io (1618; London, N.G.), both characterized by profuse detail (e.g. expensive cloth, luxury objects in silver and gold, flowers, animals etc), which was particularly admired during the 17th century.
Only a few of Lastman’s history paintings are of traditional subjects, for example the Crucifixion (1616; Amsterdam, Rembrandthuis) and the Annunciation (1618; St Petersburg, Hermitage). Lastman was a powerful narrator with a penchant for drama, and he expressed himself most fully within the realm of the anecdotal: in Jephthah and his Daughter (c. 1610; The Hague, S. Nystad priv. col.; see 1992 exh. cat.), for example, the tragedy of the story is enhanced by the introduction of a number of ‘historically accurate’ details. Recurrent themes in his work are confrontations between man and God, or between the powerful and their subordinates, as in Abraham Receiving the Angels (1616; Hannover, Niedersächs. Landesmus.), Christ and the Woman of Canaan (1617; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) and David and Uriah (1619; Groningen, Groninger Mus.). Lastman apparently chose his subjects himself, for few of his patrons are known. The most notable was Christian IV, King of Denmark (reg 1588–1648), for whom he executed three biblical scenes on copper (1619; destr. 1859) for the King’s private chapel at Frederiksborg Palace (a drawn copy exists of the panel depicting Christ Blessing the Children).
In 1619 Lastman was asked to authenticate a painting by Caravaggio, an artist whose realism, with its emphasis on the human figure, was another source of inspiration. Two years earlier Caravaggio’s Madonna of the Rosary (Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.) had been in the gallery of the Amsterdam art dealer Abraham Vinck, and the work must have provided a new artistic stimulus for Lastman, for the composition, the grouping and gestures of the figures, the handling of light and even some of the details in another version of Odysseus and Nausicaa (1619; Munich, Alte Pin.) are derived from Caravaggio’s example.
In 1628 Lastman began to amend his will annually, suggesting that he no longer enjoyed good health. He ceased to produce paintings with the regularity that had characterized his output of 1615–25, a period that included several masterpieces such as Coriolanus and the Roman Women (1625; Dublin, Trinity Coll.). It was only in 1630 that he made amother multi-figured history painting along the lines of these masterpieces: the Sacrifice of Juno (Stockholm, Nmus.), one of his many works with borrowings from Raphael. The quality of his last dated painting, the Triumph of Joseph (1631; San Francisco, CA, de Young Mem. Mus.), hardly commends it as the culmination of his career: it is overcrowded, the figures and gestures are overdramatic and the composition lacks elegance. Lastman died a bachelor. In his house on the St Anthoniesbreestraat he left a sizeable art collection.
2. Drawings.
Lastman made drawings in red chalk on tinted paper as preliminary studies for figures in his paintings, several of which survive: the Study of a Reclining Woman (Oxford, Ashmolean) for the figure of Rachel in Laban Seeking his Idols (1622; Boulogne, Mus. Mun.), and two figure studies (before c. 1622; Hamburg, Ksthalle; Hannover, Kestner-Mus.) for Coriolanus and the Roman Women. These studies became part of his studio repertory and were repeatedly consulted and revised, so that a permanent vocabulary of gestures and attitudes became one of the most characteristic elements of Lastman’s painted work. Comparable studies in red chalk are in Amsterdam (J. Q. van Regteren Altena priv. col., and Rijksmus.), London (J. Byam Shaw priv. col.) and Rotterdam (Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen). In 1656 Rembrandt owned several such red-chalk drawings by his teacher, as well as a good number of pen-and-ink sketches. It is difficult to determine which pen drawings Rembrandt may have had in his possession, for the remainder of Lastman’s drawn oeuvre consists of doubtful attributions. Authentic pen-and-ink sheets are rare. The very early date of 1600 appears on a pen-and-wash drawing of Hagar and the Angel in the Desert (New Haven, CT, Yale U. A.G.), the style of which is wholly that of Gerrit Pietersz. Dating from 1611 is a design for a stained-glass window in the Zuiderkerk, Amsterdam, representing King Cyrus Returning the Treasures from the Temple to the Jews (Berlin, Kupferstichkab.). There is also a drawn portrait of Nicolaas Lastman (Paris, Fond. Custodia, Inst. Néer.), which is dated 16 Oktober 1613.
3. Influence and posthumous reputation.
Rembrandt’s first biographer, Jan Orlers, in his description of Leiden (Beschrijvinge der stadt Leyden, 1641), stated that Rembrandt went to Amsterdam to continue his education with ‘the famous painter P. Lasman [sic]’; this was undoubtedly because Rembrandt wished to specialize in history painting. Lastman’s history paintings such as Coriolanus and the Roman Women, the composition of which is borrowed from the Vision of Constantine by Giulio Romano after Raphael’s design in the Sala di Costantino in the Vatican, made a lasting impression on his pupil. The rules Rembrandt applied to his early History Piece (1626; Leiden, Stedel. Mus. Lakenhal)—the use of repoussoirs, groups deployed at various levels, with one central figure—are Lastman’s, practised according to the best theoretical directives in the Coriolanus. The same year Rembrandt painted a Baptism of the Eunuch (1626; Utrecht, Catharijneconvent), in which the subject, palette and composition were inspired by Lastman’s representations of the same subject, of which at least four are known: of 1608 (Berlin, Gemäldegal.), 1616 (Paris, Fond. Custodia, Inst. Néer.), 1620 (Munich, Alte Pin.) and 1623 (Karlsruhe, Staatl. Ksthalle). From this last work in particular Rembrandt borrowed many details.
As a draughtsman Lastman also had a profound effect on his most famous pupil and, through him, on a whole generation of artists. Two years after Lastman’s death, as a sort of in memoriam, Rembrandt made drawn copies (Bayonne, Mus. Bonnat; Berlin, Kupferstichkab.; Vienna, Albertina) after paintings by his former teacher: the Expulsion of Hagar and Joseph Distributing Grain in Egypt (both 1612) and two of 1614, Susanna and the Elders (Berlin, Gemäldegal.) and SS Paul and Barnabas at Lystra (Warsaw, N. Mus.).
Lastman’s fame was extensive during his own lifetime, confirmed by the high prices commanded by his pictures at auction and by the mention of his name as one of the most important painters in Amsterdam in Rodenburgh’s hymn to the city of 1618. Thirty years later Rembrandt’s friend, Jan Six, who once owned the Warsaw SS Paul and Barnabas, commissioned Joost van den Vondel to write a poem about it. Vondel praised, above all, its ‘richness and variety [of detail]’; both concepts (copia and varietas) were considered by Italian art theoreticians as essential requisites for the proper composition of a historical piece, and throughout his career Lastman showed himself to have been well-educated, both theoretically and practically. Indicative of the esteem in which Lastman continued to be held after his death is that Rembrandt’s pupils, especially Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, were often inspired by his work.
B. P. J. Broos. "Lastman, Pieter." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T049471 (accessed May 8, 2012).
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