Leonaert/Leonard Bramer alias
Nestelghat (24 December 1596,
DelftSee also: Delft, Cape Town, Delft IslandDelft is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland , the Netherlands...
- buried 10 February 1674, Delft) was a
DutchThe Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east...
painter, best known for probably being one of the teachers of
Johannes VermeerJohannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch Baroque painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime...
, although there is no similarity between their work. Bramer's dark and exotic style is unlike Vermeer's style. Bramer was primarily a
genreGenre works, also called genre scenes or genre views, are pictorial representations in any of various media that represent scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or...
and history painter, but also made some unique
frescoFresco is any of several related painting types, done on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Italian word affresco which derives from the adjective fresco , which has Latin origins...
s, not very often found north of the Alps.
Leonaert/Leonard Bramer alias
Nestelghat (24 December 1596,
DelftSee also: Delft, Cape Town, Delft IslandDelft is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland , the Netherlands...
- buried 10 February 1674, Delft) was a
DutchThe Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east...
painter, best known for probably being one of the teachers of
Johannes VermeerJohannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch Baroque painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime...
, although there is no similarity between their work. Bramer's dark and exotic style is unlike Vermeer's style. Bramer was primarily a
genreGenre works, also called genre scenes or genre views, are pictorial representations in any of various media that represent scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or...
and history painter, but also made some unique
frescoFresco is any of several related painting types, done on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Italian word affresco which derives from the adjective fresco , which has Latin origins...
s, not very often found north of the Alps. Leonaert Bramer is one of the most intriguing personalities in seventeenth-century Dutch art. He was a talented and diligent draughtsman, evidently Catholic and a life long bachelor.
Life
In 1614, at the age of 18, he left on a long trip eventually reaching
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
in 1616, via Atrecht,
AmiensAmiens is a city and commune in northern France, north of Paris. It is the capital of the Somme department in Picardie.-History:The Paleolithic culture named Acheulean was named for its first identified site, in Saint-Acheul, a suburb of Amiens...
,
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
,
AixAix , or Aix-en-Provence to distinguish it from other cities built over hot springs, is a city in southern France, some north of Marseille...
(February 1616),
MarseilleMarseille , formerly known as Massalia , is the 2nd most populous French city as well as the oldest city in France...
,
GenoaGenoa is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria. The city has a population of about 610,000 and the urban area has a population of about 900,000...
, and
LivornoLivorno or until recently in English Leghorn , is a port city on the Ligurian Sea on the western edge of Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno and the third-largest port on the western coast of Italy, having a population of approximately 170,000 residents as of the year...
. In Rome he was one of the founders of the
BentvueghelsThe Bentvueghels were a society of mostly Dutch and Flemish artists active in Rome from about 1620 to 1720. They are also known as the Schildersbent .-Activities:...
group of Northern artists. He lived with Wouter Crabeth and got into a fight with Claude Lorraine. He dedicated a poem to
Wybrand de GeestWybrand Simonsz. de Geest was a Dutch painter of the Golden Age. He specialized in portraits....
. Bramer remained on and off in Rome until October 1627, visiting
MantuaMantua is a city in Lombardy, Italy and capital of the province of the same name.Mantua is surrounded on three sides by artificial lakes created during the 12th century. These receive the waters from the Mincio, which descend from Lake Garda...
and
VeniceVenice is a city in northern Italy, the capital of the region Veneto, a population of 271,367 . Together with Padua, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area . The city historically was an independent nation...
, often for deliveries and to meet
Domenico FettiDomenico Fetti was an Italian Baroque painter active mainly in Rome, Mantua and Venice.-Biography:Born in Rome to a little-known painter, Pietro Fetti, Domenico is said to have apprenticed initially under Ludovico Cigoli, or his pupil Andrea Commodi in Rome from circa 1604-1613...
. In Italy Bramer was nicknamed Leonardo della Notte ("Leonardo of the night"). In 1648 he went to Rome for a second time.
By 1628 he was back in Delft, where he joined the
Guild of Saint LukeThe Guild of Saint Luke was the most common name for a city guild for painters and other artists in early modern Europe, especially in the Low Countries. They were named in honor of the Evangelist Luke, the patron saint of artists, who was identified by John of Damascus as having painted the...
in 1629 and the
schutterijA Schutterij , literally "shooters" was a voluntary city guard or citizen militia in the medieval and early modern Netherlands, intended to protect the town or city from attack and act in case of revolt or fire...
. Among his many patrons were members of the House of Orange, but local
burgomasterBurgomaster is the English form, rendering various terms in or derived from the German language word for the chief magistrate and/or chairman of the executive council of a sub-national level of administration All contemporary titles...
s and
schepenA schepen is a Dutch word referring to a municipal civic office in Dutch-speaking countries. The term is still in use in Belgium, but it has been replaced by wethouder in the Netherlands. The closest English terms are alderman, member of the municipal executive, councillor and magistrate,...
also bought his paintings in great numbers. He was a many sided artist, designing for
tapestryTapestry is a form of textile art, woven on a vertical loom. It is composed of two sets of interlaced threads, those running parallel to the length and those parallel to the width ; the warp threads are set up under tension on a loom, and the weft thread is passed back and forth across part or...
firms in Delft, painting murals and ceilings, some of which are illusionistic in style. He painted real frescos in the Civic Guard house, the nearby stadholder's palaces in
HonselersdijkHonselersdijk is a town in the Dutch province of South Holland. It is a part of the municipality of Westland, and lies about 8 km southwest of The Hague.The village of "Honselersdijk" has a population of around 5180....
,
Rijswijk[ɹɾɛijsvɛik] is a town and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. It is a suburb of The Hague and covers an area of 14.48 km² ....
, the Communal Land Housde and the
PrinsenhofThe Prinsenhof in Delft in The Netherlands is an urban palace built in the Middle Ages as a monastery. Later it served as a residence for William the Silent . The building still exists and now houses the municipal museum...
in Delft. Due to the Dutch climate they no longer survive.
He evidently knew the greatest of his Delft contemporaries, Johannes Vermeer, as he came to the latter's defence when his future mother-in-law was trying to prevent him from marrying her daughter.
Bramer remained very productive until his death in 1674. His style is nervous, but his technique, painting the reflection of light, is very good. His famous "Album Bramer" (drawn between 1642-1654, now in
LeidenLeiden is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland in the Netherlands and has 118,000 inhabitants. It forms a single urban area with Oegstgeest, Leiderdorp, Voorschoten, Valkenburg, Rijnsburg and Katwijk, with 254,000 inhabitants. It is located on the Old Rhine, close to the cities...
) contains many sketches after paintings in Delft collections. He was influenced by
Adam ElsheimerAdam Elsheimer was a German artist working in Rome who died at only thirty-two, but was very influential in the early 17th century. His relatively few paintings were small scale, nearly all painted on copper plates, of the type often known as cabinet paintings. They include a variety of light...
,
Agostino TassiAgostino Tassi was an Italian painter, mostly of landscapes and seascapes.Because he aspired to nobility he modified the details of his early life. Though he was born in Perugia he claimed to have been born in Rome. His family name was Buonamici, but Agostino adopted the surname Tassi to give...
, a fresco painter. From his inventory it is clear that
Gaspar RoomerGaspar Roomer was a prominent Flemish merchant and art patron of the early 17th century. Born in Antwerp, he lived for at least four decades in Naples. He became very wealthy from shipping enterprises, mainly to the Flemish and Dutch provinces and from banking. he owned Palazzo della Stella in...
owned 1500 drawings. Among his drawings, probably the most puzzling set are those he titled "Straatwerken," meaning "street works."
Sources
- Haak, B. (2003) Hollandse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw, p. 324.
- BRINK GOLDSMITH, JANE TEN A.O. Leonaert Bramer. 1596-1674. Ingenious painter and draughtsman in Rome and Delft. Zwolle, 1994.
- Liedtke, W. (2007) Dutch paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 87-89.
External links to his works