Joachim Wtewael

He trained with the Haarlem Mannerist Joos de Beer, who also trained Abraham Bloemaert, also from Utrecht and born the same year as Wtewael. Bloemaert's later career in Utrecht contrasted strongly with Wtewael's in that he was an important teacher, with whom most of the Utrecht Caravaggisti trained at least for a while. He also changed his style significantly, reflecting newer influences from Italy and the Netherlands itself.[3] In contrast, apart from his son Peter, Wtewael had only three recorded painting apprentices, and was without any assistance for long intervals. They were probably little help in producing his small works on copper, and none of them become well-known.[22] Wtewael was thus one of the founding generation of Utrecht painting; previously the city had been a centre for sculpture, as befitted a city governed by its bishop, but not known for painting. While Wtewael's reputation may have been beneficial to other Utrecht painters, his own style remained too retardataire for him to have much influence on them.[23]

Wtewael's style remained largely unchanged, although his colours shifted from the acidic pastels of his earlier work to stronger shades after about 1615, and some influence from the style of Caravaggio can be detected in later works.[22] The shift in his style can be seen in his largest painting, The Raising of Lazarus (158 x 208 cm) in Lille (illustrated in the gallery below), which though bought as a Spranger in 1900, shows a movement away from the more extreme poses and colours of the 1590s, and even from the drawing which may have been its modello. In the painting he have moved away from the small heads and over-long legs typical of Mannerism in both its Italian and Northern manifestations.[24]

In contrast, his few portraits are almost all of his family and are in a conventional and more realist style comparable to that of the leading Utrecht portraitist of his day, Paulus Moreelse (1571–1638), whose works must have been very familiar to Wtewael. The appearance of the whole family is only recorded in single formal portraits by Wtewael.[25] He also painted a few half-length imaginary paintings of saints or gods, singly or in small groups, such as a set of the Four Evangelists that are now dispersed in various collections. The Bacchus in the gallery section was paired with a Ceres, and perhaps a now lost Venus; these may have been his last works, and show some influence from the Caravaggisti in the single large figures placed as though very close to the viewer.[7]

His biography by Carel van Mander says regretfully that his flax business occupied much of his time, and records examples of his pictures in the collections of two wealthy Dutch collectors.[26] Many of Bloemaert's religious paintings were produced for the Catholic semi-secret schuilkerk hidden churches of Utrecht, which had a large Catholic population who were not able to worship in public. There is no evidence, or suggestion by scholars, that Wtewael's religious paintings were produced for this market; instead they are assumed to have been for the houses of the wealthy, like his other works. Among his religious subjects, the Raising of Lazarus, which he painted at least twice, was given a specifically Protestant interpretation by contemporary Protestants, as demonstrating the efficacy of sola gratia, as well as sola fide or "justification by faith alone", since Jesus' action in restoring Lazarus to life is presented in the Gospels as unrelated to anything Lazarus has done to deserve this.[27]

Perseus and Andromeda, 1611, 180 × 150 cm (70.9 × 59.1 in), Louvre

The eroticism of his mythological works was daring for the time, and some of the small paintings were probably not displayed publicly, by their original collectors as much as later by museums. Two of the preparatory drawings for different painted versions of Mars and Venus Surprised were mutilated by later owners to remove parts of the lovers' bodies,[28] and the Mauritshuis version, part of the founding royal gift, was not displayed in the 1920s, the contemporary explanation being that this was "to protect an immature public from itself". It remained in storage, and rather dirty, until the 1980s, when, after the Getty Museum acquired their version of the subject, it was cleaned and placed on display, soon joining touring selections of "masterworks" from the museum.[29]

The Getty version was itself kept in private collections in ways that meant it was not normally visible, which may partly explain its immaculate condition. Other works by Wtewael have also been changed by overpainting to hide erotic anatomical details.[30] Wtewael had other means of creating a sensuous atmosphere, such as the suggestive pink mouths of large shells that often lie on the ground below nude females, as in the Louvre Andromeda or the National Gallery Judgement of Paris.[29]

His depiction of erotic subjects are not simply tittilating, but like many such Dutch paintings, depicted subjects that allowed for moralistic interpretations. Anne Lowenthal, the most dedicated scholar of Wtewael, has analysed his several depictions of Lot and his Daughters, dating from several periods of his career, and proposes that his treatments are designed to allude to various different possible interpretations of the biblical story, and to pose a "moral dilemma" for the viewer.[31] His favourite subjects had all been used previously, especially in Mannerism, but his choices seem to show a deliberate avoidance of the most familiar, as in his preference for the Adoration of the Shepherds over the more common Adoration of the Magi.[12]

The Golden Age, 1605, once owned by Emperor Rudolf II

The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis, 1612, adapted from a famous drawing by Spranger, made into a print by Goltzius

About 30% of his paintings are of mythological subjects, historically an unusually large proportion even within Northern Mannerism, perhaps not exceeded before Nicolas Poussin.[32] His treatments are not without realist elements; the furniture, metalware, and other props are often carefully depicted versions of the luxury products of his own day,[33] and the faces of his Olympians often un-idealized and very Dutch-looking, so that the viewer "often has the sense of seeing flesh and blood figures in bizarre circumstances rather than fantasies tinged by observations from life".[8] Dutch art theory of the day recognised two "pictorial modes": "'realist' depiction naer het leven (from the life) and 'ideal' imitation uyt den geest (from the spirit or intellect)." These were respectively associated with "low" subjects and history painting, but it was a characteristic feature of Wtewael's work to combine both in a single picture.[34]

Among his favourite subjects, the Feast of the Gods, typically particularized as either the wedding of Cupid and Psyche or that of Peleus and Thetis, sometimes appeared in Italian Renaissance art, but became especially popular in Northern Mannerist painting. This seems to spring from a large engraving of 1587 by Hendrik Goltzius in Haarlem of a drawing by Bartholomeus Spranger (now Rijksmuseum) that Carel van Mander had brought back from Prague, where Spranger was court painter to Emperor Rudolf II. The Feast of the Gods at the Marriage of Cupid and Psyche was so large, at 16 7/8 x 33 5/8 in. (43 x 85.4 cm), that it was printed from three different plates. More than 80 figures are shown, placed up in the clouds over a world landscape that can be glimpsed below. The composition borrows from both Raphael and Giulio Romano's versions.[35] Among several other compositions of Feasts, Wtewael produced a painted version of this, much smaller than the print or drawing, but still with dozens of figures (illustrated left).[36]

Mars and Venus Surprised came from Ovid, and was usually one of the scenes shown in illustrated editions.[37] Wtewael's approach to this subject too can be traced back to Spranger and Goltzius, and a drawing of 1585 by the latter (now in the Getty Museum) is close to Wtewael's several compositions, with a scrum of figures hovering over an elaborate bed. Drawings by Bloemaert may also have had an influence.[38]