Jacob Matham
Dutch, 1571 - 1631
Dutch engraver, draughtsman and painter. When the pre-eminent engraver Hendrick Goltzius married Matham’s mother in 1579, he took Jacob on as an apprentice. Matham worked more closely with Goltzius than others of his circle, engraving many of the master’s drawings and paintings and closely imitating his teacher’s manner. Despite Matham’s prolific output, his artistic personality does not emerge clearly, and the oeuvres of both engravers contain unsigned works, which deserve reattribution.
Matham’s early engravings from c. 1588 reflect the impact on the Haarlem Mannerists of drawings by Bartholomeus Spranger and Jan Speeckaert. His series of the Standing Virtues and Vices (b. 264–77) and the Four Elements (b. 278–85) capture the strong chiaroscuro, as well as the abrupt, hooked contours of limbs and musculature and frozen swags of drapery in these artists’ figure drawings. Matham’s most ambitious work is his Tablet of Cebes, after a Goltzius design (1592; b. 139) re-creating an ancient painting described by Plato. In the richly detailed image, pilgrims move along a twisting path leading from past temptations to the domain of virtue. In this print, made from three folio-sized plates, Matham shows a more fluent and subtle burin technique. Even here, however, he does not fully master the device of building up secondary patterns and textures, such as the reflective surface of satin, with crosshatching.
After his stepfather’s return from Italy, Matham himself went there between 1593 and 1597, working mainly in Venice and Rome in the company of the painter Frans Badens (1571–1618). Several prints after Tintoretto, Palma Giovane, Taddeo Zuccaro and other Italian painters occupied him for decades afterwards, as did engravings after Abraham Bloemaert and the revered earlier masters Pieter Aertsen and Albrecht Dürer. He became dean of the Guild of St Luke, Haarlem, in 1605, and the signature on his engraving of Moses and Aaron (Hollstein, XI, no. 5) indicates that he was court engraver in The Hague one year before his death.
A systematic catalogue of Matham’s drawings has not been attempted. However, a small group of signed and dated drawings reveals the influence of Goltzius and Spranger on both his pen and chalk techniques. Some pen drawings of mythological or fantastic figures (e.g. Head of a Man with a Peaked Cap, Edinburgh, N.G.; Fantastic Portrait, U. London, Courtauld Inst. Gals) show his interest in the bold, burin-like use of the pen as developed by Goltzius and Jacques de Gheyn II. Matham displayed his virtuosity as a draughtsman in the remarkable ‘pen painting’ of the Brewery and Country House of Jan Claesz. Loo (1627; Haarlem, Frans Halsmus.). This imaginary scene, juxtaposing Loo’s country and city properties, is the precursor of a group of works that created the same effects of a linear painting on a gessoed panel by counterproofing a print. While there is no evidence that Matham also painted extensively, one still-life by this master is now in a Dutch private collection.
Jacob Matham trained his sons to engrave according to techniques learnt from Goltzius’s shop. Adriaen Matham (b Haarlem, c. 1599; d The Hague, 23 Nov 1660) recorded a diplomatic trip to Morocco in drawings and engravings and engraved political events at the Hague court. Jan Matham (b Haarlem, Jan 1600; d Haarlem, July 1648) made prints of genre scenes after Adriaen Brouwer and other artists and was a still-life painter. Theodor Matham (b Haarlem, 1605/6; d Amsterdam, 1676) engraved numerous figural scenes and portraits and participated in large projects for reproducing in prints the Giustiniani sculpture gallery in Rome and the art collection of Gerrit and Jan Reynst in Amsterdam.
Dorothy Limouze. "Matham, Jacob." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T055928 (accessed March 6, 2012).
Person TypeIndividual
Flemish, 1575 - 1632
