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헤릿 반 혼토르스트 Gerrit van Honthorst
Biography
헤릿 반 혼토르스트 Gerrit van Honthorst, Dutch painter (b. 1590, Utrecht, d. 1656, Utrecht)
1590 네덜란드 위트레흐트~1656 네덜란드 위트레흐트
네덜란드의 위트레흐트에서 태어난 혼토르스트는 이탈리아에 가서야 화가가 되겠다는 결심을 하게 되는데, 고향에 돌아와서 그린 그의 작품들은 그가 카라바조로부터 지대한 영향을 받았음을 알 수 있게한다. 특히 카라바조의 키아로스쿠로chiaroscuro 즉, 빛과 어둠을 교차시키는 명암법에 푹 빠졌던 것으로 보이는데, 그래서 이탈리아에서 그는 게라르도 델레 노티 -밤의 헤릿이라는 뜻-로 불렸다. 다른 사람들의 영향에 쉽게 좌우되곤 했던 혼토르스트는 말년에는 반 다이크의 궁정적인 스타일을 받아들이기도 했다. 찰스 1세와 왕비 헨리에타 마리아의 초상화를 그리기도 했으며, 1637년에서 1652년까지 헤이그의 궁정화가를 역임하였다.
Dutch painter (byname Gherardo della Notte), a leading member of the Utrecht school influenced by the Italian painter Caravaggio.
Like his slightly older contemporary Hendrik Terbrugghen, Honthorst first studied under Abraham Bloemaert in Utrecht. In about 1610 he moved to Italy, where he had leading nobles as patrons and assimilated Caravaggio's realism and dramatic use of artificial light into a personal idiom. Notable works of his Italian sojourn include The Beheading of St John the Baptist (S. Maria delle Scala, Rome), Christ Before the High Priest (c. 1617, National Gallery, London), and the Supper Party (1620, Uffizi, Florence), all nocturnal scenes.
Returning to the Netherlands in 1620, Honthorst stayed in Utrecht until 1627, the year of Rubens' visit to his home. He was dean of the Utrecht Guild of St. Luke in 1625-26, and in 1628 he worked at the court of Charles I in London. The rest of his life was spent primarily in The Hague and, after 1652, at Utrecht.
Although Honthorst accepted commissions for decorative cycles and painted at least one illusionistic ceiling, his most significant contribution to Dutch painting was his joint leadership, with Terbrugghen, of the Utrecht followers of Caravaggio. Rembrandt's use of Caravaggesque devices in his early works derives in large part from his knowledge of Honthorst's paintings. Honthorst's brother Willem van Honthorst (1594-1666), who was also an accomplished painter, sometimes worked with him.
Adoration of the Child (detail)
c. 1620
Oil on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Adoration of the Shepherds
1622
Oil on canvas, 164 x 190 cm
Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne
This painting probably came from the Stadtholder's collection and during the 18th century hung in the Carthusian church of St Barbara in Cologne. Honthorst was one of the Stadtholder's court artists who had studied in Italy and worked in the Baroque style.
Childhood of Christ
1620
Oil on canvas
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg
Using a single candle light in the center of the picture is a characteristic feature of Honthorst's paintings.
Christ before the High Priest
c. 1617
Oil on canvas, 272 x 183 cm
National Gallery, London
Honthorst, like Ter Brugghen, was a pupil of the history painter Abraham Bloemaert in Utrecht and also went to Rome. Unlike Ter Brugghen, however, he there achieved an international reputation, working for nobles and princes of the Church. The Italians called him Gherardo delle Notti, - Gerard of the Nocturnes - and this painting, made for the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani in whose palace Honthorst stayed, explains why. On his return north of the Alps Honthorst was so famous that he was invited to England by Charles I, for whom he painted mythological subjects and many portraits. He continued to receive commissions from royalty in Holland, executing portraits and allegorical decorations for Prince Frederik Hendrik of Orange, and in 1635 he sent the first of a long series of historical and mythological narratives to Christian IV of Denmark. The exiled Queen of Bohemia, Elisabeth Stuart and her daughters were among his many pupils in The Hague.
Where Ter Brugghen in the Concert uses candlelight to create a scene of dreamlike enchantment, Honthorst employ it to lend veracity and dramatic tension to a biblical story (Matthew 26:57-64). After his capture on the night of the Agony in the Garden, Jesus is taken for interrogation and trial before the High Priest Caiaphas, where two false witnesses - the shifty-looking men behind Caiaphas - speak against him. Within the vast composition - in scale and format like an altarpiece but never intended for one - the visibility of the life-size figures depends entirely on that single candle flame. Its gleam unifies the whole, by giving the impression of illuminating the entire room with evenly decreasing intensity until its force is spent in the dark, and by justifying the reddish cast of all the colours. It allows the two principal characters to stand out more solidly in relief and in greater detail than the others. It focuses attention on their poses, gestures and expressions. It picks out the few significant accessories, notably the books of the Law and the rope by which Christ is tied, and it creates the solemn and threatening atmosphere of a night-time interrogation.
Through his mastery of the physical effects of illumination from a single source, Honthorst is also able to make symbolic points. Christ's white robe, torn from his shoulder when he was made prisoner, reflects more light than the priest's furred cloak - so that light seems to radiate from him. Though submissive, Christ is without question the main subject of the painting, the Light of the World and the Son of God.
Christ before the High Priest (detail)
c. 1617
Oil on canvas
National Gallery, London
Concert on a Balcony
1624
Oil on canvas, 168 x 178 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Besides religious and mythological scenes Honthors painted in the 1620s in Utrecht at least one illusionistic ceiling, the Musical Group on a Balcony, which was done for his own house in Utrecht. The painting is the earliest existing Dutch illusionistic painted ceiling.
Equally innovative for Holland is his illusionistic Concert on a Balcony. The 'trompe-l'oeil' picture, which decorated the Palace of Nordeinde, shows, in steep perspective, life-size musicians and their companions in an architectural setting, but this one was intended as illusionistic wall not a ceiling. The prototype for Dutch illusionistic fields of walls and ceilings is found in decorative schemes executed for high-placed patrons in Italy. The unmistakable source for Honthorst's illusionistic paintings is Orazio Gentileschi and Agostino Tassi's life-size trompe-l'oeil frescoes, painted in 1611-12 for Cardinal Scipione Borghese's garden 'Casino of the Muses', now part of the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi in Rome. Honthorst had ample opportunity to study them when he worked for the Cardinal.
The Dentist
1622
Oil on canvas, 147 x 219 cm
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden
The Incredulity of St Thomas
c. 1620
Oil on canvas, 125 x 99 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid
Margareta Maria de Roodere and Her Parents
1652
Oil on canvas, 140 x 170 cm
Centraal Museum, Utrecht
The social status of the painters in the Dutch Republic varied from day labourers through independent masters to well-rewarded court artists such as Michiel van Miereveld and Gerrit van Honthorst, who specialized in portraiture of high officials. In one such portrait, van Honthorst represented yet another type of painter: a well-to-do amateur who painted for pleasure. Several women became accomplished painters in this way. Most master was men, but more than a dozen women are recorded as having attained master's status, most famously Judith Leyster (1609-1660).
Musical Group on a Balcony
1622
Fresco
Private collection
Honthorst was born in Utrecht; there he was Abraham Bloemaert's pupil. He is said to have been in Rome as early as 1610-12, but he is not documented there until 1616. Nothing is known about his artistic activity until the last year of the decade, and not a work painted before he went to south has been discovered. He became the best-known Dutch follower of Caravaggio. A typical example of his religious paintings executed in Italy is the Christ before the High Priest (National Gallery, London).
Though Honthorst continued to depict scenes from the Scripture after his return to Utrecht in 1620, the religious pictures he made in Rome are from many points of view the climax of his work as a painter of biblical themes. During the 1620s he painted works in the arcadian mode which shows that he had looked at the Carracci as well as the Caravaggio while in Italy. Besides religious and mythological scenes he painted at least one illusionistic ceiling, Musical Group on a Balcony, which was done for his own house in Utrecht. The painting, only partially preserved, is the earliest existing Dutch illusionistic painted ceiling.
The Prodigal Son
1622
Oil on wood, 130 x 196 cm
Alte Pinakothek, Munich
The Prodigal Son
1623
Oil on canvas, 125 x 157 cm
Staatsgalerie, Schleissheim
Samson and Delilah
c. 1615
Oil on canvas, 129 x 94 cm
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland
The emergence of previously unknown Italian-period pictures by Gerrit van Honthorst, two representing the Mocking of Christ (Private collection and Los Angeles County Museum of Art), and a third, Christ Crowned with Thorns (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles), has altered our view of the chronology of this Utrecht artist's early Roman production. It is now possible to suggest that Samson and Delilah should be dated as c. 1615. These new works help us to account for the rapid growth of Honthorst's reputation in Italy and his Italian nickname, 'Gherardo delle Notti'. Although the composition might be his initial response to such works as Caravaggio's Taking of Christ (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin), Honthorst rarely repeated such compact arrangements of figures either in Rome or after he returned to the North.
It is difficult to know exactly what encouraged or inspired Honthorst to specialise in the use of artificial light sources since the idea already appears fully developed in what must be one of his earliest pictures. Among the possible sources is Rubens's c. 1609 nocturnal Samson and Delilah (National Gallery, London), in which an unusually sensitive investigation of artificial light is introduced into a popular Old Testament story (Judges 16: 19). Also new is Rubens's moralising physiognomic contrast between Delilah and her accomplice, an old servant woman. Since Honthorst uses both elements, although set into a very different composition, he may have known Rubens's picture through J. Matham's c. 1613 engraving. In Rome, Honthorst must have been aware of candlelit works such as Adam Elsheimer's Judith Beheading Holofernes (Victoria and Albert Museum, London). Indeed, it is likely that he was already acquainted with Elsheimer's work since Hendrick Goudt had brought a number of them to Utrecht. It is also of some significance that Karel van Mander lavished praise upon a series of nocturnal passion scenes painted on slate by Jacopo Bassano that he had seen in Rome.
One of the most striking elements in Samson and Delilah is Honthorst's utilisation of physiognomic contrasts. This device was popularised by Caravaggio in his Judith Beheading Holofernes (Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome), although without the moralising attitude which Rubens later added. For Caravaggio, the device was a way of accentuating Judith's beauty. Honthorst later used a similar contrast in his Tavern Scene with a Lute Player (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence), in which the old woman appears for the first time as a procuress.
Supper Party
c. 1619
Oil on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Honthorst's genre pictures of light-hearted gatherings had a great impact in Utrecht. He made such pictures while he was still in Italy. His Supper Party, painted during his last months in Italy, set a precedent for similar scenes done in the 1620s at Utrecht where artists favoured the erotic as well as the ascetic side of Baroque art. This is already evident in Honthorst's Supper Party where the person who covers the light has the effect of 'repoussoir': the large dark figure in the foreground causes, by contrast, the merrymakers behind him to recede in space, and thus enhances the illusion of depth. The second advantage is the vivid reflection of light thrown on the figures and, in particular, on their faces, which are painted in reddish-yellow colours. This helps Honthorst to overcome the harshness found in the work of other Caravaggio followers.
Young Drinker
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Oil on canvas
Residenzgalerie, Salzburg
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Albrecht ALTDORFER