Lucas van Leyden
Dutch, 1494 - 1533
North Netherlandish printmaker, draughtsman and painter, son of hugo Jacobsz. He was the first Dutch artist to establish an international reputation for himself as an engraver while he was still alive. His prolific output as a printmaker—c. 200 prints—shows the whole of his development; dated engravings survive from practically every year between 1508 and 1530. His early prints hark back to those of his slightly older German contemporary, Albrecht Dürer; later on, his work was clearly meant to compete with that of Dürer, while from 1525 onwards it was influenced mainly by examples from the Italian Renaissance, which reached Lucas through the prints by Marcantonio Raimondi and the work of Jan Gossart, the first to bring this new style to the north. Less international in outlook than his graphic work—but at least as important for the development of north Netherlandish art—is the rather small group of paintings (c. 15) attributable to the artist. Lucas was also an exceptionally talented draughtsman, as can be seen in the underdrawings that have been revealed in his paintings. Despite the small number of independent drawings that have been preserved (c. 30), they give a good impression of the quality and range of his work in this field.
1. Life and career.
The main source of biographical information about Lucas van Leyden is still van Mander’s extensive account of 1604, which has been supplemented to some extent by details from archival records. According to van Mander, Lucas was born in late May or early June 1494, but this has long been questioned, especially since his father, a painter, remarried late in 1494, which suggests that his mother died earlier that year or before. For van Mander’s date to be correct, it must be assumed that Lucas’s mother died either in childbirth or shortly thereafter. In any case, van Mander’s description of Lucas as a prodigy cannot be far from the truth. Lucas’s earliest dated engraving, Mehmed and the Monk Sergius (1508; b. 126), shows him as an accomplished engraver who seems to have already been through several years of training. Since Leiden had no engraving tradition, Lucas may have first learnt the technique from a goldsmith or an engraver of arms, as van Mander supposed, or through stained-glass painting, which was then highly popular in Leiden. Technically and artistically, however, the prime example for Lucas must have been the engravings of Dürer. Those engravings by Lucas that, although undated, stylistically precede the print of Mehmed show how gradually he learnt to make use of the technical possibilities of engraving.
According to van Mander, Lucas was initially a pupil of his father and afterwards of the painter Cornelis Engebrechtsz. The parallels between the paintings of the father and the work of the son are primarily restricted to the figure types and the way in which landscape is structured. Engebrechtsz.’s influence is more obvious and can be seen in Lucas’s prints and early paintings from 1509 onwards. It does seem likely that once Lucas had mastered the art of engraving, he took up painting, possibly as a pupil of Engebrechtsz. The latter’s influence on the early paintings by Lucas is mainly a matter of technique; the choice of subjects and the general approach are highly original and closely linked with Lucas’s prints.
Quite a lot is known about Lucas van Leyden’s social position; from 1500 onwards his name occurs regularly in the Leiden records. As late as between 1526 and 1528 he married Lysbeth van Boshuysen, daughter of a magistrate. The marriage remained childless, although Lucas did have an illegitimate daughter from a previous affair; she married in 1532, and her two sons, also painters, may have been the source of van Mander’s biography of Lucas. As the husband of a magistrate’s daughter and a member successively of two militia companies, Lucas must have been among the prosperous citizens of Leiden. During a visit to Antwerp he met Dürer, who recorded their encounter in his journal of his tour of the Netherlands; Dürer drew Lucas’s portrait on the occasion (Lille, Mus. B.-A.), and the two artists exchanged prints.
According to van Mander, when Lucas was approximately 33 years old, he made a tour of the provinces of Zeeland, Flanders and Brabant, travelling in the company of Jan Gossart from Middelburg. He is said to have entertained his colleagues royally on this occasion. Van Mander also claimed that Lucas fell ill after this journey and remained confined to his bed thereafter, either as a result of an attempt to poison him, as van Mander suspected, or of lung disease. It seems unlikely that Lucas was suffering from any illness before 1531, for between 1526 and 1531 he produced several large, important paintings (see §2(ii) below). From 1528 to 1530 he was also very active as an engraver. After 1530, however, even his production of prints seems to have been curtailed. The unfinished print with Pallas Athena (b. 139), on which van Mander said he was working on his deathbed, must actually have been made at this time. Burial records of the Pieterskerk in Leiden have confirmed van Mander’s statement that Lucas died in 1533.
2. Work.
(i) Prints.
Prints, mostly engravings, form the nucleus of Lucas van Leyden’s oeuvre: within a period of less than 30 years he made at least 168 engravings, nearly always signed with the initial l and often dated, at least from 1508 onwards. In 1520 he experimented with the recently introduced technique of etching, producing some six works. There are also 30 separate woodcuts and almost 100 book illustrations, which are thought, on stylistic grounds, to have been designed by Lucas. The woodcuts bear neither the initial l nor a date. It remains uncertain whether they were cut by a specialized craftsman after designs by Lucas or whether he actually cut some of them himself.
Unlike Dürer’s prints, the early graphic works by Lucas van Leyden do not conform to current tradition; technically as well as iconographically they are distinct. Surprisingly difficult to interpret is the Young Boy with a Trumpet (c. 1507; b. 152), which has all the characteristics of an allegorical satyr scene, except that the main figure has neither horns nor hooves. Conventional biblical themes such as the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (b. 38; unique impression, Vienna, Albertina) and David and Abigail (both c. 1507; b. 24) are also presented in an unusual manner. Lucas chose strange and seldomly depicted dramatic moments from the biblical stories, emphasizing their narrative character. This also applies to the earliest dated work, Mehmed and the Monk Sergius (see fig.), depicting a scene taken from one of the 14th-century travel works of Jean de Mandeville. The story relates how the prophet Mehmed met the Christian hermit Sergius on one of his journeys and subsequently became so fascinated by his sermons that, despite his servants’ annoyance, he stayed out late at night to listen to the monk preach. One night, after a lot of wine, Mehmed fell asleep while listening, and his servants seized the opportunity to murder Sergius. When he woke, the servants showed him his blood-stained sword and persuaded him that he had slain the hermit while drunk. Very subtly, Lucas depicted the moment of Mehmed’s deception. Psychologically, as well as spatially, the event is presented in a convincing way.
The prints of the following years show even greater variety of subjects; at the same time the choices tend to be more conventional. The Round Passion series (1509; b. 57–65), which reveals the influence of Engebrechtsz. in the elongated slim figures, follows current tradition. Apart from the smaller, rather intimate prints made between 1509 and 1519, there are some five engravings with a large folio format representing biblical scenes with numerous figures. The Ecce homo (1510; b. 71) shows one of these broad compositions on a market square; the buildings form a screen, and Christ, who is exposed to the grumbling people, is pushed into the background. The emphasis falls on the spectators and their reactions rather than on the event itself. Other outstanding examples of this are the Return of the Prodigal Son (c. 1510; b. 78), the Triumph of Mordecai (1515; b. 32), Golgotha (1517; b. 74) and the Dance of Mary Magdalene (1519; b. 122). More conventional religious series include Christ and the Twelve Apostles (c. 1510; b. 86–99) and the Four Evangelists (1518; b. 100–103), as well as separate small prints of the Virgin and saints. Lucas’s profane subjects are less common and more complicated to interpret. Amorous couples, soldiers and beggars are grounded in the older tradition of German printmaking. The curious Woman Picking Fleas from a Dog (1511; b. 154) is presumably intended as a personification of sloth. The Milkmaid (1510; b. 158), long regarded as a simple scene from everyday life, contains obviously erotic allusions. The Young Man with a Skull (c. 1519; b. 174) seems to be a vanitas warning: the feathered hat symbolizes his loose way of life, while the skull refers to the pointlessness of it all.
By 1520 Dürer’s stylistic influence had become stronger, and Lucas began to develop a new sober and severe style. A number of his prints, including the Small Passion series (1521; b. 43–56), are very close to Dürer’s example. Yet there was no direct borrowing, as Lucas transformed Dürer’s work into his own individual style and idiom. After 1523 Dürer’s influence suddenly decreased, and the sober style of the preceding years was replaced with a livelier and more expressive formal language. One of the best examples illustrating this development is Lucas’s Virgil Suspended in a Basket (1525; b. 136), which reveals Gossart’s influence in the figures and the drapery. Lucas’s absorption of elements from Gossart not only injected his engravings with a new dynamism but also introduced a new concept of the human form related to the ideals of the Renaissance.
In the prints made between 1528 and 1530 an important part is played by nudes represented according to Classical ideals of beauty. With the example of other printmakers, notably Raimondi’s work after Raphael, Lucas developed his own new language of form. The series of six engravings with the Story of Adam and Eve (1529; b. 1–6) shows the human body in various poses. In Lucas’s prints from 1530 onwards, among them the Fall of Man (b. 10), Mars, Venus and Cupid (b. 137) and Lot and his Daughters (b. 16), the nudes are more solid and the landscape is subordinated to the now monumental figures. The unambiguous way in which these prints show female sensuality indicates that these prints were intended as a warning against the power that women can exert over men. At one time this later style of Lucas met with unfavourable criticism, as he was thought to have lost his individual character through the assimilation of Renaissance influences. However, there has since been a greater recognition of Lucas’s newly found ability to depict character and emotion in these works. During this late period he also produced a number of decorative prints with Renaissance motifs.
Among Lucas van Leyden’s most important woodcut designs are his two series, each of six sheets, of the Power of Women: the first, larger series has been dated c. 1514 and the second c. 1517. They represent examples of historical moments, mostly from the Bible, at which men were ridiculed, betrayed or ruined by women, such as the Fall of Man (Hollstein, nos 1 and 2), Samson and Delilah (Hollstein, nos 5 and 6) and the Idolatry of Solomon (Hollstein, nos 8 and 9). Standing apart from these two series is the splendid single woodcut of Aristotle and Phyllis (unique impression, Paris, Bib. N.), depicting the story of the wise Aristotle, who, blinded by love, allowed the courtesan Phyllis to ride on his back.
(ii) Paintings.
Until the late 19th century Lucas van Leyden’s name was associated with hundreds of paintings of rather varied quality; by 1940 the number had been reduced to c. 35, and later some of the remaining paintings were reattributed to Lucas’s contemporaries, for example the Church Sermon (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), which has since been assigned to Aertgen van Leyden. Lucas’s painted oeuvre is now reduced to a core of c. 15 paintings, 4 of which were described by van Mander and are still considered among his most important pictures: the Virgin and Child with St Mary Magdalene and a Donor (1522; Munich, Alte Pin.), the triptych with the Last Judgement (1526–7; Leiden, Stedel. Mus. Lakenhal; see fig. below), the triptych with the Worship of the Golden Calf (c. 1530; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) and the Healing of the Blind Man of Jericho (1531; St Petersburg, Hermitage). These paintings form the basis for further attributions, but since all four are middle or late works, it is necessary to depend largely on the prints for the stylistic analysis of the early paintings.
The paintings of the earliest period, from between c. 1508 and 1518, are all small in format; these include the Chess-players (c. 1508; Berlin, Gemäldegal.), Potiphar’s Wife Showing Joseph’s Robe to her Husband (c. 1512; Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen) and the Card-players (c. 1517; Wilton House, Wilts). There is a moralizing element to all of these scenes, in which women are seen playing a central role. The stress lies on the gestures, facial expression and pose of what are usually half-length figures. Within the series there is a stylistic development towards a stronger sense of three-dimensional space, a greater plasticity in the modelling of figures and more elegance in the movements and clothing. The colours are lively and quite bright in places, and the paint is applied to the panel thickly, yet in a somewhat linear (draughtsmanlike) manner.
The central piece of the middle period is Lucas’s first dated painting, the panel of the Virgin and Child with St Mary Magdalene and a Donor (1522), which originally formed a diptych. Early in the 17th century the two halves were joined and the donor changed into the figure of St Joseph; later, the Annunciation (Munich, Alte Pin.), which decorated the outside of the diptych, was sawn off. Also dating from the early 1520s are several other depictions of the Virgin and Child (e.g. Berlin, Gemäldegal.; Oslo, N.G.) and a few portraits (e.g. London, N.G.; Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Mus.).
Lucas’s most monumental work is the triptych with the Last Judgement , which was commissioned in 1526–7 for the Pieterskerk as a memorial for the lumber merchant Claes Dircksz. van Swieten. Iconographically, the representation of the Last Judgement, which runs over all three panels, is traditional. The innovative aspect of the painting is its style: the lucid composition, structured according to various levels of perspective, the idealized nudes and the unexpectedly bright and strong colour. Impressively monumental, but darker in colour, are the outer sides of the wings, in which St Peter and St Paul are depicted, as if engaged in conversation, against a landscape with a rough sea in the distance. Of the few north Netherlandish altarpieces to have survived the iconoclastic outbreak of 1566, this is undoubtedly the most important.
On a smaller scale, but no less complicated in structure, are the other, late pictures of biblical events, usually showing a wealth of figures set against a landscape. Lucas’s representation of his subjects and his strong feeling for the narrative demonstrate his thorough knowledge of the Bible, which at that time had just been made more accessible to the public in a Dutch translation. Moses Striking Water from the Rock (1527; Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.) is the earliest painting in this later group, and within Lucas’s oeuvre it is the only known example of a painting in tempera on canvas. As is the case in the triptych with the Worship of the Golden Calf (c. 1530), the image is about the Law of Moses and how he (dis)obeyed God. The Healing of the Blind Man of Jericho (former date of 1531 now removed) stresses the contrast between the scribes who stubbornly adhere to the old faith and those open to Christ’s message. In the 18th century the triptych was made into one panel and later transferred on to canvas; at the same time the outer wings with Shield-bearers (St Petersburg, Hermitage) were sawn off and displayed separately. These three late monumental paintings, of which the Worship of the Golden Calf is the best preserved, show a great variety of richly coloured and freely painted figures.
(iii) Drawings.
Van Leyden’s drawings are rare: there is a group of six portraits, all in an oblong format (all 1521; Leiden, Stedel., Mus. Lakenhal; Paris, Louvre; Stockholm, Nmus.; Weimar, Schlossmus.), which were probably made under the influence of Dürer. Besides black chalk, which was used only in the portraits, Lucas worked in silverpoint, pen and ink or fine brush and wash, sometimes combined with chalk. Some of the drawings were intended as preparatory studies for prints, in one case (the Virgin and Child; London, BM) even a painting (Oslo, N.G.), and a few of the more elaborate drawings, for instance Jael Killing Sisera (c. 1520; Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen), were presumably designs for stained-glass windows.
3. Working methods and technique.
(i) Prints.
Lucas seems to have mastered the language of form and the technique of engraving step by step, at first producing only small works, which still show numerous shortcomings in the technical application of the medium, anatomy and the use of space. Nevertheless, the early prints have an expressive force and directness that are lost when technical perfection is achieved in the later work. In such works as Mehmed and the Monk Sergius, he used extremely fine lines to produce subtly modelled forms, alternating shadows with highlights, and at the same time achieving a very convincing suggestion of depth. The prints made in the following years show greater technical variety: in some prints the manner of engraving is very fine and detailed, while in others the lines are very bold. In the best impressions of the early prints, the shadows are pitch black, whereas the best impressions of the later engravings are occasionally printed in delicate grey tones.
(ii) Paintings.
The majority of Lucas’s paintings have been examined by means of infrared reflectography, and in several cases this has revealed surprisingly elaborate underdrawings. In the early works these are executed in black paint with a fine brush and are much more elaborate than anything found beneath the works of his contemporaries. Lucas seems to have included more details than were strictly necessary for a painting, perhaps the result of his activity as a printmaker and draughtsman. In a later work such as the Virgin and Child with St Mary Magdalene and a Donor, the underdrawing in the interior panels, which were painted first, is still carried out with a fine brush and shows a graceful precision, but the preparation for the less delicately painted Annunciation on the outer wings consists of no more than a few outlines in chalk. A similar contrast can be seen in the underdrawings on the inner and outer panels of the triptych with the Last Judgement: on the outer wings the figures of St Peter and St Paul are painted over sketchy outlines in black chalk, while the underdrawing on the inner panels consists of an exceptionally beautiful pen-and-ink wash drawing in which the nude figures are carefully modelled. A wash underdrawing such as this has so far proved exceptional in early Dutch painting; in fact, in his later work Lucas himself used only the more schematic drawings in chalk.
(iii) Workshop.
Although Lucas had a profound influence on his contemporaries and his work was copied a great deal, his manner of painting was never directly imitated. It seems questionable, therefore, whether Lucas ever painted with the help of assistants; certainly, within the oeuvre there is no evidence that he did. Equally, there are no records to suggest that Lucas employed apprentices in his print workshop.
4. Critical reception and posthumous reputation.
Lucas was successful and well-regarded during his lifetime; his prints sold well, not just in the Netherlands, but also in Germany, and contemporary artists recognized his genius (Dürer recorded his purchase of Lucas’s complete graphic oeuvre in 1521). The copperplates passed to his heirs, who reissued his prints; they were later in the possession of Martini Petri (1500–c. 1565) in Antwerp, who reworked them. Throughout the 16th century copies of Lucas’s most popular prints continued to appear, executed by such artists as Jan Muller and Hendrick Hondius the elder. Lucas’s work had considerable influence, most notably on Hendrick Goltzius, Jacques de Gheyn II and Rembrandt, who owned a number of his prints, but also in Italy, where Andrea del Sarto and Pontormo knew his work. By 1550 Vasari had included a lengthy biography of Lucas in his Vite, praising the artist for his ability to handle perspective, and in 1604 van Mander’s detailed biography of him appeared.
Although Lucas van Leyden has always been appreciated as a great artist, his graphic work has all too frequently been assessed in the context of that of Dürer, and it was not until the late 20th century that attempts were being made to formulate a more satisfactory framework in which to study his oeuvre.
J. P. Filedt Kok. "Lucas van Leyden." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T052281 (accessed May 8, 2012).
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