5 MOLLY FARIES A woodcut of the Flood re-attributed to Jan van Scorel* It was most likely in the summer of 1520 that Jan van Scorel returned to Venice from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The young Dutchrnan then visited several other Italian cities, as Carel van Mander tells us, before travelling on to Rome where he became curator of the Belvedere collection under Adrian VI. To Van Mander and subsequent art historians, Scorel's contact with Italian art during the early 1520s was of fundamental importance, for it established the painter as the major proponent of Italianate style in the north-Netherlands after his return to Utrecht in 1524. Italian influence is an often-considered topic in Scorel litera- turc : although outright copies of Italian works are infrequent in Scorel's career, the artist clearly knew Venetian and Roman works, especially Raphael's logí?ie, and compositions by Giulio Romano and Pcruzzi.1 Additions to Scorel's ()el4lr(, have been made steadily since the monographic studies early in this century, 2 but it is not surprising that somc of Jan van Scorel's compositions should have remained unrecognized, especially if long mistaken as Italian. The Flood (fig. 1) has usually been considered Venetian, perhaps executed by one of Titian's woodblock cuttcrs, Nicolo Holdrini.3 It is here re-attributed to Jan van Scorcl. The Flood is a large woodcut in two shccts. Copies in reverse and in the original direction also exist, some bearing the monograrn of the later 16th century Italian publisher and printer, Andrea Andreani. Although the two versions of the print differ slightly in size, the borders are original, even if retouched as they were in the examples I was able to study. The Metropolitan's example of the original has also been tinted in imitation of a chiaroscuro woodcut, but the print was certainly planned without any additions in color.4 The Andreani copy undoubtedly contributed to the basic categorization of the woodcut as Italian, yet the proble- matic nature of its style was conceded when it was included in the 1976/77 exhibition, Titan and the Venetian Woodcut. The attribution of the design to either Titian or Palma Vecchio (perhaps because of his bathing scenes) has never been fully accepted. The catalogue entry, in addition, alludes to the print's northern S aspects: it evokes 'a different world, that of Durcr.' The scene depicted is the deluge described in Genesis 8:6. Couples and nude figures cling to a narrow tonguc of land in the foreground while across the water tiny figures clambor up a distant shorc to try to reach the top of a pyramid standing before other ancient ruins. Throughout the composition many of the distraught and frightened turn to glance or gesture towards the ark floating on the water which will eventually inundate the entire setting. The rising water has already claimed a number of victims, including a dog and a horse, and it stretches upward on a diagonal to a wide expanse near the horizon. The Flood has often been interpreted as the symbolic parallel for the Baptism of Christ, and the ark seen as a prcfiguration of F.cclesia; but Scorcl's vision recalls 6 the eschatalogical sense of the verses of Matthew 24:37-39: '...and they did not know until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.' Like another slightly earlier northern European interpretation of the Flood, Hans Baldung Grien's painting of 1516 (fig. 2), Scorcl's composi- tion stresses the unrelenting obliteration of earthly life over any hope of salva- tion. In the interesting subject of Mankind Before the Flood that develops slightly later in the Netherlands in the 16th century, the warning of impending doom continues to be the basic thcine.6 Rather than thc combination of the events of the deluge and the recession of the water which sometimcs occurs in Italian versions,7 the subject of Scorel's Flood seems to be the mornent when the damned recognize that the ark will forever be inaccessible to them. A painting in the Prado of the same subject has in fact been attributed to Jan van Scorel (fig. 3). The large panel has never been accepted as an autograph work, but perhaps it should now be regarded as the work of a followcr, reflecting Jan van Scorel's concern with this subject.8 A number of motifs lI1 the woodcut of the Flood recur, however, in other paintings which arc more secure attribu- tions. The hand-on-thc-hcad gesture is seen again in Jan van Scorcl's Bathsheba in the Rijksmuseum. The antique-inspired ark is similar to any number of ships in Scorel's versions of the Martyrdom of St. Ursula. Moreover, the combination of the pyramid of Caius Sextus with an obelisk, gate, and columns like those from the temple of Saturn is repeated almost exactly in two paintings in Jan van Scorel's circle.9 Compositionally, in the figure types and groupings, and in the handling of the 7 1 Woodcut after Jan van Scorcl, The Flood, New York City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1935 (35. 19a-b). 2 Hans Baldung Grien, The Flood, panel dated 1516, Bam- berg, Staatsgalerie. landscape, the Flood relates most directly to Scorcl's Baptisnz (fig. 4), implying a common date during the artist's Haarlcm period (1527-30) for the two works.l° In both compositions figures assume contrived poscs near the water's edge in the foreground while diminutive forms arc used as a space-crcating de- vice in the background. Like the Jordan river in the Baptism, the flood waters follow a strong diagonal into depth. The shapes of tree trunks and foliage, including Scorel's characteristic 'dripping' limbs, distant cityscapes and moun- tains are similar in the two works. Italian motifs abound in both the Flood and the Baptism, and in some cases, the artist referred to the same models. Scorel certainly knew Michelangelo's most famous works, for his Entry c f Clvrist into Jerusalem obviously derives from Michelangelo's Deluge on the Sistine Ceiling." The Cascina cartoon, though weakly reflected in the Flood as the 1976/77 catalogue states, exerted a stronger influence on the Baptism, as evidenced in the background figures in particular. 12 Nonetheless, the influence of Raphael may be more pervasive. Raphael's Mirac- ulous Draught of Fisyies is certainly the ultimate source for the bending male figures in both the Flood and the Baptism.13 The female figures and facial types, which in the Baptism were described by Van Mander as (flracelUcke Raphaelsche tronikens 14 (graceful Raphaelesque faces) belong to the same family of forms. The woman who holds her hair out to one side in the Flood is in fact in the same pose (although seen from behind) as Scorel's Lucretia, a painting which also dates from the Haarlem period and derives in turn from a Rairnondi print after 15 a design by Raphael. The pose of the male figure near the middle of the Flood, also seen from behind, is similar to one of the executioners in Raphael's Judgment of Solomon, and the xvonian with outstretched arms in the tniddleground seems likely to have been taken from Raphael's Fire in the Borgo.16 Aside from the possible reference to dying gladiator poses and the influence of several of Jacopo 8 de Barbari's prints (which might account for some of the Italo-Germanic refer- ences in the Flood), the figure style in this woodcut seems to rely more heavily on Raphael's idiom. It is now known that the Baptism established the landscape formula used by Scorel throughout the rest of his career and that it (and thus the Flood, too) was a rcworking of the earlier Tobias and the Angel (d. 1521, fig. 5), a painting exc- cuted during or just after Scorel's stay in Venice. 17 In the compositions from the Haarlem period Scorel retained the overlapping, and alternately light and 9 3 Follower ofJan van Scorel?, The Flood, Madrid, The Prado. 4 Jan van Scorel, The Baptis1rlof Christ, Haarlem, Frans Halsmu- seum. 5 Jan van Scorel, Tobias and the Angel, panel dated 1521, on loan to Diisseldorf, Kunstl11u- seum. dark landscape strata to create depth, but they were coordinated along one dominant rcceding diagonal. The Baptism and the Flood may also revive (and express more overtly) the figure types Scorel was formulating for the first time in the Tobias and the Angel. The kneeling and seated male nudes in the lower right corner of the Flood are similar to the poses of Tobias and the angcl. In parti- cular, the figure in the lower right corner of the Flood (as well as one of the boys in the tree), and the angel, betray as their model the famous Belvedere Tor- so, or one of its many painted and printed Renaissance reconstructions. 18 Exa- mination of the Tobias and tlze Angel with infrared light has also revealed that the angel was underdrawn as a nude and that the legs and torso were much morc carefully formed than the arms or the head (fig. 6).19 This indicates not only that Scorcl was assimilating standard Renaissance poses by 1521 but also that he was acquainted with Italian methods of drawing the unclothed figure in preli- minary studies, then draping it as appropriate for the subject of the painting. This interesting insight into Scorel's painting procedure clearly indicates how the artist's studies in Italy continued to influence the more nature figural compo- sitions of his Haarlem years.