Karel van Mander

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Not to be confused with Karel van Mander the Younger or Karel van Mander III.
Karel van Mander

Portrait of Karel van Mander from his book

Born May 1548
Meulebeke
Died September 2, 1606 (aged 58)
Amsterdam
Education Lucas de Heere and Pieter Vlerick
Known for Painting, poetry, writing
Notable work Schilder-boeck, several paintings
Movement Mannerism
Patron(s) Haarlem city council
Karel van Mander (I) or Carel van Mander I[1][2] (May 1548 � 2 September 1606) was
a Flemish painter, poet, art historian and art theoretician, who established
himself in the Dutch Republic in the latter part of his life. He is mainly
remembered as a biographer of Early Netherlandish painters and Northern Renaissance
artists in his Schilder-boeck. As an artist and art theoretician he played a
significant role in the spread and development of Northern Mannerism in the Dutch
Republic.[3]

Contents
1 Life
2 Haarlem Mannerists
3 Writings
4 Schilder-boeck
5 Legacy
6 Public Collections
7 Literary works
8 References
9 Further reading
10 External links
Life
Most of the information about Karel van Mander's life is based on a brief and
anonymous biographical sketch included in the posthumous second edition of the
Schilder-boeck published in 1618 by Jacob Pietersz Wachter. It is not certain who
wrote this biographical sketch and various candidates have been proposed. Most
recently it has been argued that it was written by his son Karel van Mander the
Younger. His son would have relied on biographical information that Karel van
Mander had written himself as well as on his own recollections and notes. The
information in the biographical sketch is not entirely reliable but is still
regarded as the best source of information on van Mander's life.[4]

Van Mander was born into a noble family in Meulebeke, in the County of Flanders. He
studied under Lucas de Heere in Ghent, and in 1568-1569 under Pieter Vlerick in
Kortrijk. The next five years he devoted to the writing of religious plays for
which he also painted the scenery. Then followed three years in Rome (1574�1577).
His biographical sketch refers to van Mander as the discoverer of 'caves' in Rome.
This may be a reference to the Catacombs of Rome although the exact meaning of the
reference is unclear. In Rome he may also have come into contact with fellow
Fleming Bartholomeus Spranger, who left Rome in 1575 for Vienna to enter into the
service of the emperor. His patrons in Rome included several cardinals. On his
return journey he passed through Vienna, where, together with Spranger and the
sculptor Hans Mont, he made the triumphal arch for the royal entry of the emperor
Rudolf II.

Van Mander settled in Meulebeke in 1578 where he was active as a painter and
writer. He married an 18-year-old local girl, with whom he had a son. In 1580 he
left for Kortrijk due to religious troubles caused by Catholic zealots in
Meulebeke.[4] Karel van Mander had at some point become a Mennonite and was
therefore a possible target of these zealots.[5] In Kortrijk he got a commission
for an altar piece. In Kortrijk another son was born. He left Kortrijk for Bruges
in 1582 because of an outbreak of the plague and other reasons. In Bruges, he
worked with the painter Paul Weyts. Because of the threat of religious troubles and
the plague, Karel fled with his family and his mother-in-law by ship to the Dutch
Republic where he settled in Haarlem in the province of Holland in 1583.[4]

Here he worked for 20 years on a commission by the Haarlem city fathers to

inventory "their" art collection. The city of Haarlem had confiscated all Catholic
religious art after the satisfactie van Haarlem, which gave Catholics equal rights
to Protestants, had been overturned in 1578. Van Mander used his work on the
commission in his "Schilder-boeck". While in Haarlem he continued to paint,
concentrating his energy on his favourite genre: historical allegories. In 1603 he
rented a fortified manor ("het Huis te Zevenbergen"), later renamed Kasteel
Marquette in Heemskerk to proofread his book that was published in 1604. He died
soon after it was published in Amsterdam at the age of 58.

Haarlem Mannerists

Garden of Love, 1602, Hermitage Museum

Karel van Mander was the founder, together with Hubertus Goltzius and Cornelis van
Haarlem, of an 'academy to study after life'. It is not entirely clear what this
academy did but it is believed it was an informal discussion group which may have
organised drawing classes with life models. It has also been claimed that the
nature of the academy was more of a literary nature.[4]

He had an important impact on art in the Dutch Republic when in 1585 he showed his
friend Hendrick Goltzius drawings by Bartholomeus Spranger. Spranger was then the
leading artist of Northern Mannerism and was based in Prague as the court artist of
emperor Rudolf II. These drawings had a galvanising effect on Goltzius whose style
was influenced by them. Goltzius made engravings of the drawings which were
important in disseminating the Mannerist style. Van Mander, Goltzius and Cornelis
van Haarlem became known as the "Haarlem Mannerists" and artists from other towns
joined the movement. Their pictorial language was characterised by a strong
awareness of style and cultivated elegance. They strived for artful ingenuity
rather than naturalism. They also had a preference for depicting exaggeratedly
brawny musclemen, violent drama, wild fantasy and a heightened richness of detail.
The dissemination of the engravings of Goltzius went hand in hand with the new
practice of art theorisation that was new to the 16th century and in which Karel
van Mander played an important role.[6]

He received budding artists in his home for evenings of communal drawing and study
of classical mythology. After the iconoclasm of the Calvinists, religious themes
had gone out of fashion and mythology had become popular. However, few painters
could afford a trip to Italy such as the one that van Mander had undertaken. His
purpose was to educate young painters in the proper artistic techniques. He was a
firm believer in the hierarchy of genres. It was his firm belief that only through
proper study of existing works it was possible to realize true-to-life historical
allegories.

His own works included mannerist mythological subjects, but also portraits and
genre paintings influenced by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, such as the Kermis in the
Hermitage Museum. Relatively few paintings by him survive.
Writings

Landscape with snow and the Crucifixion, 1599, Private Collection

As a writer van Mander worked in various genres: drama, poetry, songs, biography
and art theory. He also translated classical literature. His literary production
reflects the two sides of his intellectual and spiritual interests: the humanism of
the Renaissance and the religious convictions of a pious mennonite.[7] His earliest
works were biblical plays that he wrote while still in Flanders. These have not
been preserved. His first spiritual writings are contained in De Gulden Harpe,
published in 1597. This poetry volume consists of rather longwinded versification
of biblical stories that were intended to educate readers with biblical words. His
style developed under the influence of his translation (from the French) of
classical literature such as the Iliad and, in particular, the Bucolica en Georgica
of Virgil. He abandoned the heavy style of the rhetoricians for the jambs of Virgil
in his bundle of spiritual songs published in 1613 after his death under the title
Bethlehem dat is het Broodhuys.[8]

Schilder-boeck
Main article: Schilder-boeck

The Continence of Scipio, 1600, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Karel van Mander's Schilder-boeck, written in 17th century Dutch and published in
Haarlem in 1604 by Passchier van Wesbusch, describes the life and work of more than
250 painters, both historical and contemporary, and explains contemporary art
theory for aspiring painters. During his travels and stay in Italy, van Mander had
read and was influenced by Giorgio Vasari's famous biographical accounts of
painters in his book Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and
Architects, often referred to as the Vite. It was published in 1550 and republished
in 1568 with woodcuts, which is the version van Mander probably studied. He set
about translating this work into Dutch and it was during this project that he was
offered the commission to inventory Haarlem's art collection, a job that resulted
in the chapters of his book on Early Netherlandish painters. In both books, the
lives of the painters are told in the standard "Vita di ..." manner of Catholic
saints, extolling the virtues of the painters one by one in several chapters. In
van Mander's book many entries on Italian painters were simply translated or
adapted from the Italian Vite, but the biographical details on early Netherlandish
painters and, in particular the Haarlem painters, are unique and gathered during
van Mander's commission.

Karel van Mander's book also contains an interpretation of the stories in Ovid's
Metamorphoses. This was meant as an aid to artists who wished to paint mythological
themes rather than religious ones. Symbolism was very important in painting at the
time, and the use of Ovid's characters, combined with the proper use of artistic
symbolism allowed the artist to tell a specific story. The last chapter of the
Schilder-Boeck describes the meaning of animals and other figures.

Legacy

The Adoration of the Shepherds, National Gallery in Prague

Van Mander was the master of Frans Hals. Frans Hals appears not to have shared van
Mander's view that history painting was the highest in the hierarchy of genres
since Frans Hals produced almost solely portrait paintings.

Het Schilder-Boeck introduced Dutch artists to Italian art and encouraged them to
travel, if not follow the book's instructions on Italian painting methods. Aside
from his son Karel van Mander the Younger and Frans Hals, his registered pupils
were Cornelis Engelsz, Everard Crynsz van der Maes, Jacobus Martens (landscape
painter and father of the painter Jan Martszen de Jonge), Jacob Martsen (genre
painter), Jacob van Musscher, Hendrik Gerritsz Pot and Fran�ois Venant.[2]

Van Mander was further influential on art writing in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Cornelis de Bie (Gulden Cabinet, 1662), Joachim von Sandrart (Teutsche
Akademie, 1675), Filippo Baldinucci (Notizie de' Professori, 1681), and Arnold
Houbraken (Schouburg, 1720) are some of the early biographers who used material
from his Schilder-boeck for their biographical sketches of Netherlandish painters.
His book is still the most-cited primary source in biographical accounts of the
lives of many artists he included. Of most interest to art historians is his
criticism of the work of these artists, especially when he describes the location
and owner of the paintings, thus becoming a valuable source for art provenance. The
Schilder-boeck is part of the Basic Library of the dbnl (Canon of Dutch Literature)
which contains the 1000 most important works in Dutch literature from the Middle
Ages to today.[9]

Public Collections
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam[10]
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam[11]
Literary works
De harpe, oft des herten snarenspel (?)
Het Herder Pijpken (?)
Dat hooghe liedt Salomo, met noch andere gheestelycke liedekens (1595)
Bucolica en Georgica, dat is, Ossen-stal en Landt-werck (1597)
De harpe, oft des herten snarenspel (1599)
De kerck der deucht (1600)
Een schriftuerlijck Liedeken van Jephtah. Op de wijse (1600)
History-Lied van den Ouden Tobias. Op de wijse Venus der minnen Godinnen (1600)
Het Herder Pijpken (1603)
Het schilder-boeck (1604)
Olijfbergh ofte po�ma van den laetsten dagh (1609)
Den Nederduytschen Helicon (1610)
De eerste XII boecken vande Ilyadas (1611)
Bethlehem dat is het Broodhuys (1613)
De gulden harpe, inhoudende al de geestelijcke liedekens (1613)
Bethlehem dat is het Broodhuys (1627)
De gulden harpe, inhoudende al de liedekens, die voor desen by K.V.M. gemaeckt,
ende in verscheyden Boecxkens uyt-ghegaen zijn (1627)
References
Alternative name spellings: Carel van Mandere, Karel Van Mander and Carel Van
Mander
Karel van Mander at the Netherlands Institute for Art History (in Dutch)
Painting in the Dutch Golden Age - A Profile of the Seventeenth Century, National
Gallery of Art, 2007, p. 119
H. Duits, 'Het leven van Karel van Mander. Kunstenaarsleven of
schrijversbiografie?', De zeventiende eeuw 9 (1993), nr. 2, p. 117-136
David A. Shank, 'Karel Van Mander's Mennonite Roots in Flanders', Mennonite
Quarterly Review , Vol. 79, No. 2
The artful image: the Haarlem mannerists 1580-1600 on Codart
Karel van Mander in: Marijke Spies, Ton van Strien and Henk Duits, 'Amsterdam
University Press Rhetoric Rhetoricians and Poets, Studies in Renaissance Poetry and
Poetics, 1999, p. 93-97
Karel van Mander in: K. ter Laan, 'Letterkundig woordenboek voor Noord en Zuid',
G.B. van Goor Zonen's Uitgeversmaatschappij, Den Haag / Djakarta 1952 (tweede
druk), p. 329-330
Website of the Basic Library of the dbnl, the section on the Golden Age (in Dutch)
Collection Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Collection Rijksmuseum
Further reading
Walter S. Melion, Shaping the Netherlandish Canon: Karel Van Mander's Schilder-
Boeck, University of Chicago Press, 1991
Hessel Miedema, The Lives of the illustrious Netherlandish and German painters,
from the first edition of the Schilder-boeck (1603�1604), preceded by the lineage,
circumstances and place of birth, life and ..., from the second edition of the
Schilder-boeck (1616�1618), Soest: Davaco, 1994-1997.
Seymour Slive, Dutch Painting, 1600-1800, Yale UP, 1995,ISBN 0-300-07451-4
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Karel van Mander (I).
The Schilderboeck in the Digitale Bibliotheek der Nederlandse Letteren (DBNL,
"Digital Library of Dutch Literature")
Authority control
WorldCat Identities BNE: XX1421289 BNF: cb124104295 (data) BPN: 47540926 GND:
118781529 ISNI: 0000 0001 2033 5172 LCCN: n82115325 LNB: 000112180 NDL: 001166137
NLA: 35325253 NSK: 000237484 RKD: 52262 SELIBR: 246445 SUDOC: 033215456 ULAN:
500010579 VIAF: 121932539
Categories: 1548 births1606 deathsFlemish paintersFlemish artists (before
1830)Dutch art criticsMannerist paintersDutch biographersMale biographersDutch male
writersDutch art historiansDutch Golden Age paintersDutch male paintersBurials at
the Oude Kerk (Amsterdam)People from MeulebekeArtist authorsScholars of Dutch
artScholars of Netherlandish art
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