NYSTAI) in their 121styear 1862-1983 PrnrEn LesruAN Jephthah'sdaughter Jo* LrEvBxs Thtfour elements Christchained to thecolumn textile workers,who fled north about 1580to vlIAn LigUenS wasborn in the city or Leiden on October 24.1607.He camehom escapethe Spanish terror in their land. A great good stock: Mr. Lieven Henricxsz., an able deal of what we think of as Dutch culture was embroiderer, and Machtelt Jansdr. van actually brought to the northern Netherlands Noortzant. When he was about eight years old, by theserefugees, who were on the whole his father, noticing how strongly attracted he better educated and more sophisticatedthan was to painting, brought him toJoris van the Hollanders. Schooten, quite a good painter, who taught him When Orlers tells us thatJoris van Schooten the basicsof drawing as well aspaintingl was 'quite a good painter] he was not just being This account ofJan Lievens'sbackground and polite. \/a.nSchooten (ca. |587-1652/53) may beginnings as an artist was written by a man not have been a high flyer, but he was a serious who knew what he was talking about:Jan Orlers, and dedicated painter who was well regarded town historian and former burgomaster oÍ' in Leiden.The city of Lievens'syouth was kiden and across-the-streetneighbor of the dominated by textile merchants and professors, Lievenses.I{is lead enabled researchersin the and neither group was really interested in the Leiden archives to locate the registration of the latest innovations in art. Haarlem and Utrecht marriage of Lievens's parents, in which Lieven were the placesto go for the newest Henricxsz.declared that he was born in Ghent, developmentsin Dutch painting in 1615. in the southernNetherlands. This meansthat Van Schooten'spainstaking style of portraiture he was probably one of the thousandsof was old-fashioned next to the works of the Flemish Protestants,many of them skilled Haarlemmer FransHals, but that appealedto 1 Pieter Lastman (l 5 83- 1633),Je p htha h's daughterwelcoming her father homefrom the battlefield.Ca. i610. Panel,123 x 200 cm. most Leideners.The major commissionsfor oppression in Ghent. Neither did this prevent group portraits of the civic guard went in Lievens's parents from placing their boy with Leiden to van Schooten. Lastman. Professional,not family background, Fortunately for Lievens, his first teacher was seemsto have tipped the scales. not a provincial of the spirit. As an apprentice, Lastman had been to Italy and back before van Schooten had wanted to finish his training Lievens was born, and he had a knowledge of abroad,but the idea made his mother so Italian art that was rare in Holland at the time. unhappy that he stayed at home. He seemsto Carel van Mander himself. in his immofial Book have had the same ambition for Lievens, and a ofpainters (1604), had written of the then similar problem. After only two years with van twentv-vear-old artist: A certain Pieter Schooten, the precocious Lievens was ready to Lastman, of whom good things are expected, is move on. But he was only ten years old, and at present in Italy3 Lastman achieved a fair there could be no question of sendinghim to measureof local successin his lifetime, but by Italy. The choice of the new master - Pieter 1657the poetJoachim Oudaen, in an ode to a Lastman(1583-1633) - seemsto have beena Lastman painting: wrote that 'the name of this compromise. It cannot have been family famous artist has been submerged in oblivionl background that attracted the Lievensesto This remained true until our century but today Lastman. His father had been an Amsterdam an increasing number of art historians would civil servant who lost his position on account of say that he fulfilled van Mander's expectations his adherence to Catholicism around the time after all. that Lieven Henricxsz. fled from Catholic When the ten-year-old Lievens came to 2 Detail of fig. L Lastman'sstudio in 1617or '18, one of the 1615Abraham de Koning published his master's earlier paintings he might have seen tragedy Jephthah and his only daughterl after wasJephthah'sdaughter welcoming her fother home it had been performed an unknown number of of the more fromthe battlefield(figs.1-2). The painting shows times. De Koning was one the climax of a story told inJudges 11. prominent Amsterdam playwrights of those followed with interest. Jephthah the Gilead (scholarswere not sure at vears.and his work was the time whether or not he was aJew) promised berbrant Bredero wrote a poem of praise for the God that if he were victorious in driving the play in which he said that de Koning's'Jephthah' Ammonites out of the land of Israel,he would was the talk of Amsterdam. The illusion of the sacrifice the first creature to greet him upon his sacrifice scenewas so perfect, he said, that part return home. He was victorious, and the first of the audience truly believed that a girl had creature to greet him was his only daughter. been beheadedbefore their eyes.(Around 1640, After two months,Jephthah carried out his vow. when Tèngnagel'spoet son Mattheus published Lastman's spectacular painting ofJephthah's a rhymed roll-list of 150Dutch poets,he called triumph turned to tragedy was the largest work de Koning'Jephthah's father'.) he ever made, and it must have been As it happens,one of the few documents conspicuousfor other reasonsas well. Painted concerning Lastman links him to Bredero in around 1610,it treated a subject that had 1615.In thatyear the painter was involved in a strong topical appeal, as we shall see.Lastman's lawsuit with Bredero's father and sisteq painting inspired another treatment of the apparently concerning marriage plans that did theme byJan Tengnagelaround 1611.And in not go through. Lastman nearly married into 3 Jan Lievens, Fire. Ca.1624.Panel, 83.5x 60 cm. the circle of the Amsterdam playwrights. In any For good measure, de Koning points out the case,he was close enough to them so that we resemblanceofJephthah's daughter to may assumethat hisJephthahwas related in Abraham's son Isaac, both 'mirrors of true meaning to theirs. childlike obedience to God and parentsl Lastman's painting is certainly a dramatic flewish Bible commentators, by the way, production in itself. (It certainly is not a explain away the ugly - and pagan - side of the depiction of an actual performance of de story by saying thatJephthah merely banished Koning's play. The title print of that work is his daughter, and did not sacrifice her.)Joost much closer to the rather static composition by van den Vondel, in a poem on his colleague's Tengnagel.) play, compares her to lphigenia, whose bloody In his preface to the play, de Koning calls death had recently graced the Amsterdam Jephthah 'a living painting of the inconstancy stage. of this deceitful worldl At the top of his good One of the intriguing aspectsof the matter is fortune,Jephthah is plunged into deepest that Abraham de Koning was not just a despair.De Koning also applies the drama to playwright but also a publisher, printseller and the political situation of the moment. In 1609 art dealer. Could it be that he was somehow Holland signed the Twelve Year Thucewith behind the creation of Lastman's monumental Spain, and was feeling triumphant. But de parrel?If he was, thentheJephthahmayhave Koning waÍns: United land, beware: when been first offered for sale from his premises in Fortune smiles the broadest / The Maid of the New Exchange, acrossthe Dam from the Freedom may despair of her young life. Nieuwe Kerk. Í t T I I 4 JanLievens, Air. Ca. 1624.Panel, 83.5x 60 cm. Another ten-year-old with no formal education arnazed,finding it hard to believe that such would have bóen overwhelmed by all of this. works had been made by a boy of twelve or What kind of profession was littleJan Lievens little morel getting himself into? His master not only was Now Orlers was speaking from even more ( called upon to tackle a vast composition with direct knowledge. He himself was one of those I major N eight and twenty minor figures dressed 'with an understanding of art'who were I ï in a mixture of ancient, oriental and modem impressed by the young Lievens. The inventory costume, six horses and an elephant; but he of the former burgomaster's goods, drawn up also had to take account of the work of twenty years later, included nine paintings by piaywrights, chambers of rhetoric, poets; shades Lievens, more than by other artist: two still of intelpretation in Biblical studies; moralizing lifes, two vanitas paintings,^y a tavern sceneand religious associations;classical allusions; hot 'the four evangelists made from life, on four political issuesland the necessityto get it all panels3 right in order to sell one's work. Lievens's very first paintings have so far But not Lievens.'Leavingthe above-mentioned remained unidentified. He was unfortunately Lastman... after about two years of great lax about signing and dating, giving the art progress...,he took no other master after him. historian an almost impossible task, especially He moved in with his father, and filled his time with regard to the works of an unformed youth. industriously painting a variety of different Probably the earliest works that can be given subjects from life. He did this so well that many to him with a great measure of certainty, and people with an understanding of axt were which are certainly not those of a beginner, are 5 Jan Lievens, Earth. Ca.1624.Panel, 83.5x 60 cm.