Juan van der Hamen y León and the Court of Madrid (review)

Juan van der Hamen y León (1596-1631) is the most influential Spanish still life painter of the seventeenth century. His still life paintings manifest the progression from a calculated reduced representation of objects mainly in their natural state and in rural settings, such as the one created by Juan Sanchez Cotan (1560-1627) around 1600, to an introduction of a rich and diverse range of motifs in which fruits, vegetables, flowers, and pastries, along with magnificent jugs imply the royal court of Madrid.

Although there also exists in Van der Hamen's still life paintings allusions toward Antiquity, pursued by early artists and elitist collectors of such works of art, it is precisely the variety of motifs and the great number of paintings that determine the creation of a genuine market for this new genre of painting. In the 1620's, this market was completely dominated by Van der Hamen and continued to be strongly influenced by him well up to mid-seventeenth century.

Forty years after having shown to a specialized, thus limited, audience his extensive knowledge of the painter through his doctoral thesis (published only in microfilm), William B. Jordan with this monograph which has accompanied both in English and Spanish versions Van der Hamen's exhibitions in Madrid (Palacio Real, October, 2005 to January, 2006) and Dallas (Meadows Museum, February to May, 2006), organized likewise by Jordan, presents the greatest compilation of information regarding this painter of Flemish roots, who died at the age of 35. However, the author not only limits himself to the still life output, a facet of Van der Hamen's works praised by many contemporaries of the period such as Francisco Pacheco or Lope de Vega, but he also aims to represent the artist in the complete extent of his artistic output and place him amongst the most important painters of the Spanish Baroque. For this reason, portrait and religious painting take up an important part of the book.

The extraordinary talent of Van der Hamen as a portrait painter is proven by the fact that there were no other painters during his lifetime as praised as he was by his contemporaries for his portraits. In this sense, it is very revealing that Cardinal Francesco Barberini preferred his portrait painted by Van der Hamen to the one Velazquez painted of him. Interesting also is that amongst the twenty portraits that are listed in the painter's inventory, carried out in 1631, portraits of intellectuals as well known as Lope de Vega, Francisco de Quevedo, and Luis de Gongora can be found.

For the patronage in Spain, extremely interesting is the identification—presumed by other historians but here explicitly mentioned for the first time—of a noblemen such as Jean de Croÿ, II Comte de Solre (Plate 28, private collection). The great vertical couple Still Life with Vase of Flowers and a Dog (Plate 29) and Still Life with Vase of Flowers and a Puppy (Plate 30), currently in the Prado Museum, can be found amidst the works carried out by Van der Hamen for this captain of the Royal Guard of Archers.

The San Isidro (Plate 1, Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland) painted in the context of the beatification (1620) and the canonization (1622) of the patron saint of Madrid and the recently rediscovered Saint John the Baptist in Prayer (Plate 2, Madrid, private collection), are early examples of religious paintings in Van der Hamen's work. Only a few years later, between 1624 and 1625, paintings of the barefooted Augustinian nuns were completed for the Convent of the Incarnation, located in the immediate proximity of the Alcázar. The Adoration of the Apocalyptic Lamb (Plate 17) is worthy of mention as it reflects the exegesis of the Revelation of Saint John by the brother of the painter, the theologian Lorenzo van der Hamen. The painting that...