Lucas van Leyden or Lucas of Leiden, also called Lucas Huighensz or Lucas Jacobsz, was a Dutch painter and engraver born in 1494 in Leiden where he died on August 8, 1533.
The master Lucas of Leiden has been for several centuries placed among the first Dutch genre painters, essential in the first third of the 16th century. His popular scenes The Beggar, The Spy, The Milkmaid are pieces of Dutch and Flemish painting.
He is also, barely two decades after his death, considered one of the best engravers in the history of art, and the originator of the practical invention of chiaroscuro in this art. In the 19th century, Lucas was famous for the fresh colors of his female figures and the airy perspective of his engravings, already appreciated by Albrecht Dürer.
Lucas van Leyden's Biography
Carel van Mander, who interviewed his grandson, places his birth in 1494, a date disputed by some, who prefer to put it back to 1489 to put him in the same generation as Pieter Cornelisz, known as Kunst.
Born and living mainly in Leiden, he was first a pupil of his father Hugo Jacobsz, of whom no work is known. He left his father's workshop in 1508 to join the nearby workshop of Cornelis Engebrechtsz.
This second master trainer is considered the last great representative of Gothic Mannerism, an art movement that inherited from Franco-Flemish primitive painting and was already open to German and Italian drawing techniques, in particular the Italianate graphic rhythm.
The eldest son of the master Pieter Cornelisz was destined to be a glass painter. Under his wing, Lucas begins to paint genre scenes and especially small forms. The influences of his two excellent and technically versatile workshops, living mainly on concrete commissions, are :
- the tradition of Germanic painting and Italian mannerism, especially for the laying of colors ;
- the art of Jerome Bosch for the inimitable way of adding details;
- the art of Quentin Metsys for the realization of genre scenes, as shown in Lucas' later works, The Card Players and The Chess Players;
- Joachim Patinier's mastery of composition, particularly as applied to landscapes.
Some art critics assumed that, since his first teachers were obscure painters, it was not known where the young Lucas had learned the craft of engraving. It was a mystery of early genius that Lucas excelled above all and was indeed known for his engravings.
The master Cornelis Engebrechtsz, trained in the archaizing school, was strict about the rules of art, but once he had mastered the technique, he allowed the originality, the deep and dramatic spirituality of his pupils to develop. Thus Lucas can express freely the intensity of his feelings [precision necessary].
All testimonies agree that he was a gifted pupil and a precocious artist, very skilled in engraving and painting. According to legend, at the age of nine he was already practicing etching on copper plates.
At the age of 12, he painted in tempera and on canvas The Legend of Saint Hubert, in the form of a large series, to fulfill a commission from Van Lochhorst.
His first known engraving Mohammed and the Murdered Monk dates from 1508. Although he was only fourteen years old, he shows no trace of immaturity in technique or inspiration. The drawing is precise, clean. The colors of the best preserved paintings are splendid and harmonious.
At the age of 15, the Temptation of Saint Anthony shows a mastery of engraving worthy of the works of Jacques Callot. From 1510 to 1517, under these active hands, a peak in engraving began, which influenced Brueghel the Elder with works such as The Prodigal Son and Ecce Homo.
At the age of 18, he would be considered the first painter of the Flemish school and the most skilled engraver of his time. At least during this prolific period, he seems to have traveled little to perfect his art.
The craftsman, a citizen of his native town, was listed as a harquebusier in Leiden in 1514, 1515 and 1519, and was registered as a master in the painters' guild in 1514. In 1515 he married a noblewoman, Elisabeth van Boschuyzen, who had already given birth to their first child in 1514. His name, in the form of Lucas de Hollandere, appears in the Liggeren.
The young painter's studio seems to be flourishing, for he begins to travel in 1522, eager for themes and meetings.
In Antwerp, in 1521, he had a memorable meeting with Albrecht Dürer, who bought all his engraved work - a flattering tribute from an elder who had already made a great impression on him and who knew how to be an interested patron -, then he visited the Southern Netherlands in 1522 with his elder Jan Gossaert, known as Jan Mabuse.
The riches of Ghent, Mechelen and Antwerp were explored by the two companions.
Exhilarated by the discoveries of landscapes and hierophanies, habitats and people, in love with what was not yet called the Franco-Flemish religious and artistic heritage, the fragile workshop man did not take care of his health. At the end of his travels, he returns suffering and tired. Now long sick and bedridden, he found the strength to paint Jesus Healing the Blind Man of Jericho in 1531 and died at the age of 39, in 1533.
The ailing painter was able to rejoice in the marriage of his eldest daughter to the painter Hoey as well as in the birth of his grandson, Lukas Dammesz van Hoey around 1532. In 1604, when the latter, also a painter, was dying, we know that a younger brother, Jan Dammesz van Hoey, was a painter at the French court.
A few years later, as his fame spread to the city of Leiden, the family and urban legend of a precocious genius was born, battling with fiercely jealous rival artists to gain recognition. The latter, unable to hinder the process of his dazzling success, are said to have poisoned him on the way, causing his physical decline and his rapid disappearance after his return.
The reality can also be more trivial. A fragile child, he would have become an apprentice in his father's workshop, at first confined to drawing and slow, delicate finishing tasks. Having learned a great deal through his companionship in the Engebrechtsz workshop, meetings and visits of passing companions, the modest master craftsman would have become aware of his talent and decided to complete his training through observation and study trips.
He came back from this trip undermined by illness, condemning his small family to an inexorable social decline despite the dignified status of his wife, who came from an impoverished noble family.
After his death, his growing reputation forced both the town councillors, unaware of his true creative life, and his family, saddened by his decline, to place him in the pantheon of famous artists from his adolescence and during his short, laborious life.
The painted work
The preserved paintings are delicate to identify and rare. Museums have preserved only a few of the artist's paintings, about fifteen that have been identified for a long time. In 1860, the Louvre possessed only three paintings.
In the Netherlands
- The Woman of Putiphar, circa 1510, Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
- Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1520, Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
- Dance around the golden calf in Leiden.
- The Last Judgment in the Leiden Town Hall.
- The triptych of the Last Judgment, circa 1526-27, in the Leiden Museum, a votive painting painted in memory of Claes Dirck Van Swieten for St. Peter's Church in Leiden and carefully preserved from the iconoclastic disturbances of the sixteenth century by the Leydens.
- Paradise - with Saint Peter on the reverse - and Hell - with Saint Paul on the reverse - frame the scene of the Last Judgment
- Portrait of a man or Portrait of a man in Leyden
- Altarpiece of the Adoration of the Golden Calf, triptych, 1530, wood, center panel 93 × 67 cm in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam
- The Sermon in Amsterdam
In Belgium
- The Adoration of the Magi at the Antwerp Museum
- The Temptation of Saint Anthony in Brussels
In Germany
- Susanna before the Judge around 1510 in the Bremen Museum, disappeared in 1945
- Susanna before the judges in Berlin
- The Woman of Putiphar around 1510 in Berlin
- The Chess Game around 1508 in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin
- Card Player in Berlin
- The Virgin, the Child Jesus and the Angels in Berlin
- Saint Jerome in Berlin
- 1522, diptych of the Virgin and Child with St. Magdalene and a donor in the Alte Pinacothek in Munich
- Annunciation in Munich
- The Virgin in Munich
- Last Supper and Triptych in Aachen
- Adoration of the Magi in Bonn
- Self-portrait of Brunswick in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum
- Daniel Rendering Justice Kunsthalle Bremen
- Saint Andrew in Karlsruhe
In France
- The Adoration of the Shepherds at Notre-Dame de Tournai.
- The Card Reader, 1508-1510, wood, 47 × 41 cm, Musée du Louvre
- The Bride and Groom, ca. 1519, in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg
- Lot and his Daughters, c.1520, oil on wood, 48 × 34 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre
- Crucifixion at La Fère
- The Passion of Christ in Nancy
- The Surgeon in Aix-en-Provence
Other museums
- The Card Players, 1526, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid
- Moses Striking the Rock or Gushing Water from the Rock, 1527, in Boston, M.F.A,
- The Healing of the Blind of Jericho in 1531, in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg
- Portrait of a Man or Portrait of a Man, at the National Gallery in London, at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation in Madrid and in Genoa.
- Jesus Crowned with Thorns in Florence
- The Author or Self-Portrait in Florence
- A Young Man in Florence
- The Temptation of Saint Anthony and Maximilian I in Vienna
- The Virgin with Grapes at the Ariana in Geneva
- The Rest in Egypt at the Doria-Pamphilj Gallery in Rome
- Saint Sebastian at the Carrara Academy in Bergamo.
- The Musicians in Glasgow
- Madonna in Oslo
There is also :
- The Return of the Prodigal Son ;
- an Ecce homo
- the Dance of the Magdalene
Lucas van Leyden's The engraved work
His engraved work consists of 172 plates.
His effigy can be found in Dominique Lampson's Les effigies des peintres célèbres des Pays-Bas.
- in 1508, he engraved on copper the Drunkenness of Mahomet and the monk Sergius
- in 1509, a series of nine copper engravings of round shape representing the Passion of Christ, as well as The Woman and the Hind.
- Between 1511 and 1515, he illustrated the Garden of the Soul and decorated the Missale ad verum cathedralis ecclesiae Traiectensis ritum, published by Jan Seversz in Leiden, with forty-two vignettes representing saints.
- In 1513-14, he produced a series of seven woodcuts, known as the "great series of women" (Adam and Eve, Samson and Delilah, the Feast of Herodias, Virgil hanging in a basket, Solomon worshipping the idols, the Queen of Sheba before Solomon, Aristotle and Phyllis).
- in 1510, The Standard Bearer, inspired by Albrecht Dürer's The Ensign, which he knew from prints,
- in 1512, a series of five engravings telling the Story of Jacob,
- around 1512, a series of thirteen engravings representing Christ and the apostles.
- The Triumph of Mordecai, 1515
- Esther before Ahasuerus, 1518 and The Evangelists.
- 1520, etching made at the same time as the Portrait of Emperor Maximilian I, a copy of Dürer's 1519 woodcut, The Emperor Maximilian I.
- in 1521, a series of 14 prints known as "The Little Passion", inspired by the suite that Dürer executed from 1507 to 1513, as well as Saint Jerome in his study.
- In 1529, he engraved on copper six plates from the History of Adam and Eve.
- Venus and Cupid, 1528.