- 3
Karel van Mander the Elder
Description
- Karel van Mander the Elder
- a crouching male figure
- Pen and brown and grey ink;
signed with monogram and dated in brown ink, lower centre: KVM Juny 1596, and numbered, upper right: No 42;
bears attribution and date in pencil: Passarotti 1656 11
Condition
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."
Catalogue Note
Karel van Mander has a distinguished reputation as a painter, draughtsman, poet and biographer, but perhaps his greatest claim to fame of all is that it was he who was the prime initiator of the distinctive and original Mannerist style that developed in Haarlem during the last decade and a half of the sixteenth century.
During the course of a four-year stay in Italy, between 1573 and 1577, Van Mander met Bartholomeus Spranger, who subsequently invited his fellow Fleming to join him in Vienna, where both artists worked together on the creation of a triumphal arch for the emperor Rudolf II. After returning to the Netherlands, Van Mander's pro-reformation beliefs caused him to leave his native Flanders and settle in Haarlem, where he lived from 1583 until 1604. In Haarlem, Van Mander befriended the slightly younger artists Hendrick Goltzius and Cornelis Cornelisz. (Cornelis van Haarlem), and showed them drawings by Spranger that he had brought back from his travels. Inspired by these works, and feeding off their own close artistic interaction, the three artists rapidly developed a powerful and highly innovative Haarlem Mannerist style, which had a profound and lasting influence on Dutch art.
In many of Van Mander's most characteristic drawings (such as, for example the superb design for a print illustrating a popular proverb, formerly in the Klaver Collection1), the conception and subject matter are utterly Dutch, but in the present drawing the pose of the figure does hint at the more international, even Italianate, origins of Van Mander's Mannerism. Though the drawing was executed in 1596, long after Van Mander had returned to the Netherlands, the influence of Spranger in particular remained long in evidence, and this was also the high point of Van Mander's artistic dialogue with Goltzius, who had himself visited Italy in 1590-91. Additionally, both artists were accomplished and prolific printmakers, and the highly calligraphic yet precisely controlled use of line seen in many of their drawings of the 1590s reflects to some extent the visual effects of their prints. Characterised by extraordinary power and energy, the drawings of the Haarlem Mannerist triumvirate – Goltzius, Cornelis van Haarlem and Van Mander – include some of the greatest of all Dutch drawings. The present work, which is previously unrecorded, is one of the most imposing and ambitious drawings by the founding father of the group, Karel van Mander.
1. Sold, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 10 May 1994, lot 6