Jan van der Straet
Born Bruges, 1523; Died Florence, 3 Nov 1605.
Flemish painter and draughtsman, active in Italy. The traces of his Flemish artistic heritage were much appreciated in the refined Mannerist circle, led by Vasari, in which he was active in Florence. He was especially skilled as a designer of tapestry cycles.
1. Early life and training: Flanders, 1523–45.
According to Borghini, who knew his subject personally, Stradanus’s first teacher was his father, Jan van der Straet (d 1535), an otherwise unknown painter in Bruges. After his father’s death, he was apprenticed for two years to Maximilian Franck (1490–1547). From 1537 to 1540 Stradanus trained in Antwerp under Pieter Aertsen. According to van Mander, Stradanus became a master in Antwerp c. 1545. In the same year he left for Italy, having heard of the excellence of the Italian painters. He travelled by way of Lyon, where he worked with Corneille de Lyon.
Although no works can be ascribed to Stradanus with any certainty before his arrival in Italy, Van Puyvelde dated the following works before 1546: the triptych with the Presentation in the Temple, the Birth of the Virgin and the Marriage of the Virgin (Bruges, St Sauveur); the Good Samaritan (Bruges, St Janshosp.); and a series of 17 drawings of scenes from the Life of the Virgin (all Windsor Castle, Berks, Royal Lib.), which served as designs for the title-page and plates engraved by Adriaen Collaert in Antwerp. However, it is possible that Stradanus executed both the triptych and the Good Samaritan in Italy, and Thiem has dated the series of drawings c. 1580 on the basis of their style.
2. Established career: Italy, 1546–75.
After leaving Lyon, Stradanus travelled to Florence via Venice, where he remained for six months. During his first stay in Florence (1546–50), he designed tapestry cartoons for Cosimo de’ Medici’s tapestry factory, the Arazzeria Medicea. According to Borghini, he also left the city during this period to paint frescoes in the palace in Reggio Emilia of one of the pope’s commissaries (though this has been disputed). From 1550 to 1553 Stradanus probably stayed in Rome, where he certainly collaborated with Daniele da Volterra in the Belvedere (1550–51), even though his precise contribution can no longer be determined, nor can his duties as assistant to Francesco Salviati, with whom he also worked for several months. What is certain is that Salviati’s work deeply influenced the development of Stradanus’s own style. The series of black chalk drawings (Florence, Uffizi, F 17325–32), after Michelangelo’s Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel, Rome, probably date from this period.
On his return to Florence, Stradanus made a few independent tapestry cartoons, but from 1557 onwards he worked under Vasari’s supervision on the decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio (see Florence, §IV, 8), producing both frescoes and at least 132 tapestry cartoons. He painted frescoes, for instance, with Vasari of Allegories of Female Virtues (1561–2) in the Quartiere di Eleonora di Toledo (in situ), and provided two panels for the subsequent decoration of the studiolo of Francesco I, including The Alchemists (signed and dated Ioannes Stratensis Flandrus 1570; in situ), which reveals his Flemish training under Aertsen.
In 1563 Stradanus was an officer of the Accademia del Disegno, a post he occupied again in 1586 and 1591. He contributed a painting to a project organized by the Accademia in 1564 in honour of Michelangelo’s obsequies: Michelangelo Welcomed in Venice in 1529 by a Deputation in the Name of the Doge and the Senate (untraced). The following year he assisted in the decoration for the Triumphal Entry of Joanna of Austria into Florence, making an arch over the Canto de’ Tornaquinci. Between 1567 and 1577, while still working on the decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio, Stradanus produced a series of cartoons of Hunting Scenes (dispersed) for tapestries (Florence, Pal. Vecchio) originally intended to decorate 20 rooms of Cosimo’s villa at Poggio a Caiano. The success of the Poggio a Caiano project probably encouraged Stradanus to design a further two series of Hunting Scenes, this time to be engraved. Both series, consisting of 44 and 61 prints respectively, were engraved by Philip Galle and others (Antwerp, 1578; Hollstein, iv, nos 528–67), and they were later combined into a single series of 104 prints published by Galle under the title Venationes, ferrarum, arium, piscium, pugnae (c. 1596; Hollstein, nos 571–678).
Stradanus also painted altarpieces for several Florentine churches, for instance the Ascension in the Arsini Chapel of Santa Croce (1569; in situ), part of the cycle of altarpieces in the minor chapels of Santa Croce, begun in 1568 under Vasari’s supervision. As part of the same project, Stradanus painted the Baptism in the Baccelli Chapel of S Maria Novella (c. 1572; in situ), of which Galle also made an engraving. Stradanus’s signed and dated altarpiece of the Crucifixion for the chapel of the Crocifissione of SS Annunziata (1569; in situ) is flanked by frescoes ascribed to him of Isaiah and Habakkuk. A signed and dated autograph copy of the altarpiece (1581; Arezzo, Mus. Casa Vasari) was originally in the main hospital of S Maria Nuova, Florence. Galle also made an engraving of this work.
From 1571 onwards, Stradanus apparently worked on his own, to judge from a letter from Vasari to Francesco de’ Medici: ‘Of Maestro Giovanni Strada Fiamingo I prefer not to speak, for he has not been in my painters’ shop for a long time’. In 1574 Stradanus bought a house in the Via Colonna, Florence. His altarpiece of Christ Driving the Money-changers from the Temple for the chapel of the Cambi Settimana in Santo Spirito, Florence (in situ), must have been painted between 1571 and 1576, in what was by then a new and wholly independent style.
3. Later years: Flanders and Italy, 1576 and after.
According to Borghini, Stradanus went to Naples in 1576 at the request of John of Austria. He is supposed to have accompanied him on a journey to Flanders and remained there until John’s death in 1578. No works are known from this presumed period in Flanders. After a short stay back in Florence, Stradanus apparently returned to Naples. There he frescoed a chapel in the monastery of Monte Oliveto with the Mysteries of the Virgin and the Miracles of Christ. He also produced an oil painting of the Ascension for the monastery (in situ) and started decorating a chapel above the dormitory. This work was finished by his son Scipione Stradanus ( fl until 1612). According to Colnaghi, Joannes Stradanus also painted four canvases in oil during his stay in Naples: Rebecca, Bathsheba, Susanna and Venus with the Three Graces (all untraced).
In 1583 Girolamo de’ Pazzi commissioned Stradanus to decorate the chapel of his villa in Parugiano near Montemurlo in Prato. For Cardinal Alessandro de’ Medici, Stradanus painted two altarpieces for the chapel of the Palazzo della Gherardesca in Florence, the Adoration of the Shepherds (1586) and the Adoration of the Magi (1587; both Lucca, priv. col., see Sasse van IJsselt, 1981, figs 15–16); these were originally part of a decorative programme of frescoes in the chapel. The frescoes and those in the interior court have also been attributed to Stradanus and dated c. 1585–7 (see Sasse van IJsselt, 1981). Shortly afterwards (1587–8) Stradanus was commissioned by Luigi Alamanni to illustrate Dante’s Inferno as well as a few episodes from the Purgatorio; facsimile reproductions of the watercolours from the manuscript (Florence, Bib. Medicea-Laurenziana) were published in 1893 by G. Biagi. In 1602 Stradanus was relieved of his responsibilities at the Accademia del Disegno on account of his advanced age. After his death, his son Scipione erected a tomb for him in the chapel of St Barbara in SS Annunziata, the chapel of the Flemish Compagnia di S Barbara, of which both Stradanus father and son were members.
K. M. Rutgers. "Stradanus, Joannes." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T081708 (accessed March 8, 2012).
