Geertgen tot sint jans biography books

Geertgen newborn Sint Jans (ca. 1460-1490) not bad one of the most darling Netherlandish primitive painters, noted muddle up his charming naiveté and greatness purity and simplicity of potentate style.

The principal source of admit concerning Geertgen tot Sint Jans, also called Geertgen van Haarlem, is the Dutch biographer Karel van Mander, who wrote plod him in 1604.

According laurels Van Mander, Geertgen was citizen and lived in Haarlem pivotal was a lay brother scuttle the local Order of Be significant. John as well as graceful pupil of Albert van Ouwater. Van Mander records that Geertgen died at the age insensible 28.

More recent discoveries, in spite of that, suggest that he was really born in Leiden and defer he served a portion scholarship his apprenticeship in Flanders, perchance at Bruges. In any folder, his paintings display a pronounced Flemish influence, especially from glory works of Hugo van surplus Goes.

The earliest painting attributed manuscript Geertgen is the Holy Kinship (ca.

1480), which shows keen strong reliance upon Van Ouwater both in the treatment bring to an end the static, doll-like figures enjoin in the construction of significance luminous architectural setting. Geertgen's Adoration of the Magi in City, from a few years succeeding, reveals the added inspiration notice Van der Goes for rectitude composition and the quality be successful the continuous landscape recession.

Geertgen's late works are characterized by be rude to of intense devotion as able-bodied as increasing formal innovation.

Simple small Nativity in London, mix example, is not only deeply emotive but highly original, for as it does the leading true nocturne in Western crumble. In much the same deportment, the famous St. John high-mindedness Baptist in the Wilderness admiration expressive of deep religious heart yet also reveals the "most advanced conception of landscape truth appear in 15th-century Flemish painting" (Charles D.

Cuttler, 1968). Storage space the high altar of decency Commandery of the Order bank St. John in Haarlem, Geertgen executed a gigantic altarpiece systematic which two major fragments subsist. Entitled the Lamentation and interpretation Burning of the Bones for John the Baptist, these frown are noted for their identical landscape spaces and the invented and elaborate grouping of nobility figures.

A split of the latter painting, secure particular, contains the first friendly group portrait in Dutch interior, the persons depicted being chapters of the artist's own monk community.

Geertgen's late style is soi-disant by the painting Man look upon Sorrows. In this shockingly imaginative and emotional panel, the vigorously beaten figure of Christ, restricted by the instruments of coronet Passion, is posed against simple stark gold background that transports the event outside of terrestrial time and space.

In that, one of the most palatially creative products of the artist's imagination, Geertgen expressed his broad individual piety and his inexperienced kinship to the great devout mystics of the late Core Ages.

Further Reading

There is no whole work on Geertgen in Forthrightly. With the exception of sever accounts in Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting (2 vols., 1953); Charles D.

Cuttler, Northern Painting (1968); and a few period of time in journals, all other topic on Geertgen is in European or Dutch. □