Maarten van Heemskerck’s career as an artist began with a milk pail he dropped after walking into a branch. Milk was spilt, and he walked away from life as a farmer’s son, aged 12.
The story is apocryphal, but gives a sense of the temperament of one of the Netherlands’ most celebrated painters. Against his father’s wishes, Heemskerck (1498-1574) left his family’s farm in Heemskerk – note the slightly different spelling – to get to Haarlem, around 17km away.
His life then changed from carrying milk and mucking out cows to painting portraits. The expression on the face of his father, Jacob Willemsz van Veen, when Heemskerck painted him at the age of 75, in 1532, does not reveal if he was forgiven.
In Haarlem Heemskerck landed an apprenticeship with Cornelis Willemsz, for whom he worked from around 1510-1514. He was talented, and followed up with a second apprenticeship in Delft with Jan Lucasz and a period as a journeyman in the southern Netherlands.
By May 1527 he was in Haarlem, assisting the painter Jan van Scorel, three years his senior. And then to Amsterdam, before registering as a Master with the Guild of St Luke in Haarlem in 1530.
Three exhibitions – two in Haarlem and one in Alkmaar – are marking 450 years since the death of Heemskerck in 1574. The curators of this first-ever Heemskerck retrospective show exactly why he deserves attention.
He died in Haarlem where his apprenticeship began, a wealthy man and a revered painter praised by his biographers, the Florentine Giorgio Vasari, who had met Heemskerck in Rome, and Karel van Mander. The exhibitions take place at the Frans Hals and Teylers museums in Haarlem, and the Stedelijk Museum in Alkmaar. Heemskerck, a painter, draughtsman and designer of prints, worked in both cities.
The shows present more than 130 works, including 49 by Heemskerck. At the Frans Hals Museum, the early work is presented with those of his contemporaries and tutors up until 1532, when he left for Rome.
During five years of planning, the conservators have restored Heemskerck’s St Luke painting the Madonna, 1532, a highlight of the retrospective. It was in poor condition, having suffered during the Spanish siege of Haarlem (1572-73).
In fact it is not one painting, but two. The panels were joined together by a vertical piece of wood in the late 16th century. The background had been overpainted in the 17th century. These have now been removed.
The paintings are masterpieces of realism, inspired on many levels. St Luke – patron saint of painters and physicians – sits in his studio with the Madonna and child seated in front of him. It is an informal portrait.
She concentrates on the infant child as a small spider climbs up the side of a platform. St Luke leans forward, dabbing paint on the panel.
Standing behind him, as a personified god of inspiration, is Heemskerck – in a self-portrait –guiding St Luke’s paintbrush.
Heemskerck presented it to Haarlem’s Guild of St Luke as a memento for their chapel in the Gothic Grote Kerk of St Bavo before leaving for Rome. In the same year, Heemskerck painted the portrait of his father. It was a farewell portrait; Jacob died in 1535, while Heemskerck was in Rome.
A few minutes’ walk from the Frans Hals Museum is the Teylers Museum, famous for its scientific collection and prints. Here, the exhibition space displays Heemskerck’s prints from Rome, where he lived from 1532-36.
It is clear he had a commercial incentive, creating prints with popular biblical, classical and domestic themes in separate series for sale to publishers, pilgrims and tourists.
Perhaps the series that underlines his commercial skill as an art dealer is one of eight prints depicting the seven wonders of the ancient world. Heemskerck added an eighth wonder, the Colosseum in Rome.
In the Teylers display the architecture and sculpture of ancient Rome feature strongly. Heemskerck networked, visiting the Sistine Chapel at the time Michelangelo was painting The Last Judgement.
Special letters of introduction probably would have allowed Heemskerck to see Raphael’s frescoes in the Apostolic Palace, too. He revered the art of Michelangelo and Raphael and the sculpture of antiquity.
At the Stedelijk Museum in Alkmaar the diversity of his work is presented. For the first time in 75 years, 12 panels from an uncommon series of works have been reunited. The Strong Men 1555 series depicts ancient heroes and biblical giants.
The show includes Self-Portrait with the Colosseum, 1553, a landscape-portrait of Heemskerck looking directly at the viewer. Today it could be his business card, for within the landscape is Heemskerck again, seated, painting or sketching the Colosseum. He is working en plein air, 330 years before the French impressionists.
Maarten van Heemskerck: Three Museums, One Exhibition runs until January 19
