| Called the artistic heir of Maerten van Heemskerck, Cornelisz van Haarlem was an important influence in Haarlem artistic developments; his career parallels that of Goltzius.* A fairly extensive oeuvre survives (some 250 paintings), though few drawings have been attributed to him. He also produced two print designs between 1588 and 1602. He never abandoned mannerism and his oeuvre demonstrates his consistently mannerist approach: numerous figures, often nude on some pretext, artfully arranged, often in fanciful landscape settings. A pupil of Pieter Pieiersz, Cornells later studied with Gillis Coignet in Antwerp. After a trip which took him to France and the southern Netherlands in 1579, Cornelisz moved to Haarlem, settling there probably in 1580/1, although he is not documented there until 1583 (his first official commission for a militia group portrait). He was one of the founders (together with Goltzius and Karel van Mander) of the Haarlem Academy, which flourished between 1588 and 1590. Although he was never in Italy, Cornelisz*s approach was strongly influenced by Italian mannerism, which he must have encountered during his French travels, as well as through the work of van Heemskerk. Between 1590 and 1593 he was commissioned for four paintings for the Prinsenhof; in 1599 he received a commission from the civic guard; in 1617 and 1624 he obtained commissions from the commanders of the Order of St. John; the Stadtholder's court engaged him in 1622, and the Heilige Geesthuis Hospital in 1633. He was also an active citizen; from 1613 to 1619 he was a regent of the Old Men's Home. From 1626 to 1629 documents record his membership in the Catholic St. Jacob's Guild. He helped produce new regulations for the St. Luke's Guild in 1630. His marriage to a burgomaster's daughter, Maritgen Arentsdr Deyman, took place between 1593 and 1603. They had no children and she died in 1606. He had a liaison with Margriet Pouwelsdr, which produced a daughter, Maria Cornelisdr; she married the silversmith Pieter Jansz Bagijn in 1630, and bore the painter Cornelis Bega* in 1631/2. Cornelisz's earliest works include the Charity of around 1585 (Valenciennes, MusCe des Beaux-Arts), which earned high praise from van Mander and shows his study of the School of Fontainebleau. By the early 1590s Cornelis had responded to the mannerist style of Bartholomew Spranger (1546-1611), whose attenuated figures and exaggerated poses added a tense, if artificial, note to Cornelisz's ouevre. One of his finest efforts from that period, as part of his commission for paintings to decorate the Prinsenhof in Haarlem, is Massacre of the Innocents (dated 1591, Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum) in which nude soldiers are portrayed in diverse poses, engaged in violent and shocking actions. His Monk and a Nun (dated 1591, Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum), Fall of Man (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), and Marriage of Peleus and Thetis (Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum) were all pan of that decorative program. The latter two paintings demonstrate his use of nudes principally for decorative purposes rather than for narrative clarity. In Monk and a Nun, however, satire is smoothly blended to the eroticism of the story. Between about 1595 and 1600, Cornelis began to change his approach, calming down his narratives, reducing the scale of his figures relative to the picture size, and substituting a meditative calm for a charged, often tempestuous sensuality. One of his finest efforts from this period is St. John the Baptist Preaching (dated 1602, London, National Gallery), in which the landscape and atmosphere, as well as the naturally posed figures, strike a new and fascinating note. A genrelike flavor is added to his narratives on many occasions, for example. The World before the Flood (dated 1615, Toulouse, Mus6e des August ins). |
