Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen
Encyclopedia
Oostzaan
Oostzaan is a municipality and a town in the Zaanstreek, Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. The town has a population of 9.104 inhabitats in december 2010. Oostzaan has got 11.49 km² land and 4.64 km² water....
, North Holland
North Holland
North Holland |West Frisian]]: Noard-Holland) is a province situated on the North Sea in the northwest part of the Netherlands. The provincial capital is Haarlem and its largest city is Amsterdam.-Geography:...
– 1533) was a Northern Netherlandish designer of woodcuts and painter. He was one of the first important artists working in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
, at a time when it was a flourishing provincial town.
Biography
Little is known about Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen's life. Historians rely mostly on the biographical sketch of him written by Karel van Mander, the archives of Amsterdam, and the archives of Egmond Abbey, that commissioned works by him. His name indicates he was from Oostsanen, east of the river ZaanZaan
The Zaan is a small river in the province of North-Holland in The Netherlands and the name of the district through which it runs. The river was originally a side arm of the IJ bay and travels 10 kilometers through the municipality of Zaanstad north of Amsterdam, from West-Knollendam in the north...
, north of Amsterdam. His family managed land in that area. A good impression of life there in those times can be had by a visit to the Zaanse Schans
Zaanse Schans
Zaanse Schans is a neighbourhood of Zaandam, near Zaandijk in the municipality ofZaanstad in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It has a collection...
. His entire family were painters. Cornelis Buys I, also known as Master of Alkmaar
Master of Alkmaar
The Master of Alkmaar was a Dutch painter active around Alkmaar at the beginning of the sixteenth century. His name is derived from a series of panel paintings from the church of Saint Lawrence in that city, dated to 1504 and showing the Seven Works of Mercy; they are currently in the Rijksmuseum...
, was his brother, as was Cornelis Buys II. His sons Cornelis Jacobz and Dirk Jacobsz became portrait painters, as did his grandsons Cornelis Anthonisz
Cornelis Anthonisz
Cornelis Anthonisz., Anthonisz. also spelled Anthonissen or Teunissen , was a Dutch painter, engraver, and mapmaker.-Biography:...
and Jacob Dirksz. As birth or baptism dates have been lost, all of their birth dates have been approximated from other archival evidence such as death dates of other family members. Similar to the archival evidence surrounding Frans Hals
Frans Hals
Frans Hals was a Dutch Golden Age painter. He is notable for his loose painterly brushwork, and helped introduce this lively style of painting into Dutch art. Hals was also instrumental in the evolution of 17th century group portraiture.-Biography:Hals was born in 1580 or 1581, in Antwerp...
, the first known commissions for Jacob Cornelisz were from when he was at least 35 years of age. It is assumed that he worked in a painters's workshop before that, and judging from his close copies of Haarlem painting techniques, this was possibly in Haarlem
Haarlem
Haarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland, the northern half of Holland, which at one time was the most powerful of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic...
.
He bought his first house in Amsterdam in 1500, in the Kalverstraat. Twenty years later he bought the neighboring house. For this reason he is sometimes called Jacob Cornelisz van Amsterdam. His wife is called a widow in archives for the first time in 1533. The last payments made to him according to the Egmond Abbey archives were in 1526-1528 for a retable
Retable
A retable is a framed altarpiece, raised slightly above the back of the altar or communion table, on which are placed the cross, ceremonial candlesticks and other ornaments....
(lost during the troubles of the Protestant Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
).
Career
In his earlier years Jacob Cornelisz was under the influence of Haarlem painter Geertgen tot Sint JansGeertgen tot Sint Jans
Geertgen tot Sint Jans , also known as Geertgen van Haarlem, Gerrit van Haarlem, Gerrit Gerritsz, Gheertgen, Geerrit, Gheerrit, or any other diminutive form of Gerald, was an Early Netherlandish painter from the northern Low Countries in the Holy Roman Empire...
. The colors and techniques suggest that he learned his craft in Haarlem
Haarlem
Haarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland, the northern half of Holland, which at one time was the most powerful of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic...
. His later influence then became painter Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...
. He may have gone to visit him in Antwerp in the 1520s.The painting patterns of his earlier works suggest he was trained as a woodcut designer or goldsmith.
There are about 200 known woodcuts and 27 paintings by Cornelisz. His prints are traditional north Netherlandish small-scale book illustrations. Writings are used to present the narrative with actions placed in the foreground.
Throughout his artistic career Cornelisz's painting style changed. At first he started as a late Gothic craftsman under the influence of the Haarlem school and then ended with a style presented by the painting Saul and the Witch of Endor. In this particular painting the details are simple, elongated proportions and a looser stroke of paint. Though he excelled as a technical painter, he was not a good leader. He progressed at presenting contemporary trends in subject-matter and style.
Cornelisz's symbolism was also conservative as well. He painted mostly sacred themes with traditional iconography in old and new combinations in response to an event, such as Reformation. Some of his works such as Christ as the Man of Sorrows (1510) was used by biblical humanists and the Amsterdam oligraphy. They wanted to defend Catholic orthodoxy against the claims of early Reformers. The painting represented Roman Catholic beliefs in an easily understood format. Other paintings such as The Nativity (1512) and Saul and the Witch of Endor were visually similar to what the Catholic essays patrons were writing.
Later in his life Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen ran a workshop with pupils, like his son Dirk Jacobsz and Jan van Scorel
Jan van Scorel
Jan van Scorel was an influential Dutch painter credited with the introduction of High Italian Renaissance art to the Netherlands.-Biography:He was born in Schoorl, north of Alkmaar and close to Egmond Abbey...
did after him. In the workshop his assistants helped him design book illustrations, woodcuts and stain-glass windows. After 1526 Jacob produced only one known painting, Self Portrait (1533). Scholars were led to believe this was the year of his death, but according to Dutch historian I.H van Eeghen there was a seven-year gap between paintings, which was unusual. He suggested it could have been his son that produced the Self Portrait (1533).
Some regard him as the last of the Flemish painters not to show an Italian influence.
Source
- Grove Dictionary of ArtGrove Dictionary of ArtGrove Art Online, formerly The Dictionary of Art but usually known as The Grove Dictionary of Art, is a large encyclopedia of art, now part of the online reference publications of Oxford University Press, and previously a 34-volume printed encyclopedia when last published on paper in 1996...
- Karel van Mander's Schilder-boeck on the lives of Dutch painters (1604)