Chapter 1: “Exhortation, or Admonition to up and coming young Painters”

¹ In claiming that schilder-const (art of painting) is a noble art, Van Mander identifies it as a mode of applied learning, distinct from more mundane artisanal practices requiring lesser skills. This is to say, as becomes evident throughout the Grondt and the Schilder-Boeck, that it combines dexterity of both hand and mind. In Cornelis Kiliaan, Etymologicum teutonicae linguae sive dictionarium Teutonico-latinum (Antwerp: Jan Moretus, 1599), 341, oeffeninghe is defined as cultura (cultivation), exercitium (exercise), and studium (study, application, applied learning). In “Life of Pieter Vlerick,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 252r, Van Mander rails against those guilds that lump schilders amongst the common herd of ordinary craftsmen: “Now at last you have become a guild, in the company of horse harness-making, tin casting, kettle-mending, glass-making, and old-clothes-selling: which princes, lords, and civic administrators not only tolerate but affirm, to your shame and dishonor, O noble Pictura.”

² Throughout the Grondt, Van Mander utilizes minimal punctuation, relying mainly on forward slashes within the stanzas to mark metrical caesurae. Since my translation, though it retains Van Mander’s division of each stanza into eight lines, is rendered in prose, I have converted the slashes into commas or semicolons only when they coincide with a pause in the phrasing of a thought. The one exception to Van Mander’s usage is his somewhat idiosyncratic reliance on the colon to subjoin a coordinating clause crucial to his argument. I have consistently retained this device, even when it contravenes standard English usage. Van Mander also ends every stanza with a period even when a sentence continues into the following stanza; in the cases where a sentence bridges two stanzas, I have omitted the period and either inserted a comma at the close of the final line or, in one instance, left the line unpunctuated.

³ In Book V of the Schilder-Boeck, Wtlegghingh op den Metamorphosis Pub. Ovidij Nasonis (Commentary on the Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidius Naso), fol. 87r, Van Mander identifies Hebe as the daughter of Juno, consort of Hercules, goddess of youth and immortality, and former cupbearer to the gods. That she lost her position as cupbearer due to “misfortune” (ongeluck) perhaps speaks to the circumstances of Van Mander’s purported audience of aspiring young schilders, who must seize the opportunities he here musters if they are to make their way in the world. His account, here and elsewhere in the Grondt, derives from such mythographic treatises as Giovanni Boccaccio’s Genealogia deorum gentilium (Genealogy of the Pagan Gods) (Venice: Giacomo Sansovino, 1569, and reprinted frequently throughout the sixteenth century), Lilio Gregorio Giraldi’s De deis gentium varia et multiplex historia (Varied and Manifold History of the Pagan Gods) (ed. prin. Basel: Johannes Oporinus, 1548), Vincenzo Cartari’s Le imagini con la spositione de i dei de gli antichi (Images with Exposition of the Ancient Gods) (ed. prin. Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1556), and especially Natale Conti’s Mythologiae, sive explicationum fabularum libri decem (Mythologies, or Ten Books of Explanations of the Fables) (Venice: n.p., 1568). On Hebe, see ibid., fol. 45r–v. As K.A.E. Enenkel points out in “The Making of 16th-Century Mythography: Giraldi’s Syntagma de Musis (1507, 1511 and 1539), De deis gentium historia (ca. 1500–1548) and Julien de Havrech’s De cognominibus deorum gentilium (1541),” Humanistica Lovaniensia 51 (2002): 9–53, Giraldi’s treatise, unlike Catari’s and Conti’s, was primarily aimed at serious readers of Greek and Roman literature, rather than amateurs with a practical interest in classical mythology.

⁴ The term Scholieren (scholars) situates the aspiring schilder (picturer, painter) on a continuum with other types of literate student whose education was advanced by means of practical exercises. The spectrum of schools that embraced practica extended from schrijfscholen (writing schools), where the rudiments of reading and writing were inculcated, to French Schools favored by merchants-in-training, to humanist-run Latin Schools that placed a premium on skill-based learning of the trivium—grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. The local chambers of rhetoric were likewise construed as schools: at their monthly meetings, members learned the art of poetry through a process of mutual instruction and performance in camera that then formed the basis for public performances staged at festivals; by this route the rederijkers (poet-rhetoricians) secured their place in elite civic society, displaying their mastery of the forms and figures of prosody and persuasive allegory. Van Mander was fully conversant with this network of workshop-like “schools” in which men such as the poet-prelate Matthijs de Castelein and the town secretary of Nieuwerkerk, Job Gommersz., had been educated. He rose through the ranks of the chambers in Flanders and, after immigrating to Haarlem, designed blazons (emblematic devices) for two of the city’s chambers, De wijngaardranken (The Vine Tendrils) and De witte angieren (The White Carnations), the latter of which he may have co-founded. In referring to young schilders as Scholieren, he most likely alludes not to the model of an academy or university but to that of a chamber wherein a refined “habitus” could be cultivated; on chambers as educational institutions and sources of practical wisdom, see A. van Dixhoorn, “Writing Poetry as Intellectual Training: Chambers of Rhetoric and the Development of Vernacular Intellectual Life in the Low Countries between 1480 and 1600,” in K Goudriaan, J. van Moolenbroek, and A. Tervoort, eds., Education and Learning in the Netherlands, 1400–1600: Essays in Honour of Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 123 (Leiden and Boston: 2004), 201–222, esp. 205 on the Amsterdam chapter De Eglentier’s (The Eglantine) definition of itself as a “school using the country’s common language.” Also see on the kinds of rhetorical instruction available to a chamber’s members, who gained exposure to the rules of both première rhétorique (the art of versification) and seconde rhétorique (rhetoric in the classical sense), B. Ramakers, “Between Aea and Golgotha: The Education and Scholarship of Matthijs de Castelein (c. 1485–1550),” in ibid., 179–199. On Van Mander’s blazons, see M. Leesberg, comp., H. Leeflang and C. Schuckman, eds., The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts 1450–1700 (Rotterdam and Amsterdam: 1999), xxxviii–xxxix, 184–187; on his involvement with the Flemish chamber of Haarlem, De witte angieren, see J.C.G.A. Briels, “ ‘Reyn Geneucht’: Zuidnederlandse kamers van rhetorica in Noordnederland 1585–1630,” Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis 57 (1974), 28–31.

⁵ On Van Mander’s use of term Schilder, see section 4.a., “Schilder,” of my “Introduction,” supra.

⁶ In line 8, Van Mander uses the term aenvoeren, which signifies “to bear,” “to support,” in the dual sense of sustaining and carrying.

⁷ Slappen (repose) is corrected to stappen (step) on the erratum page that follows Book IV; see “Errata op’t Schilder-boeck, welcke den Leser sal believen aldus te verbeteren” (Errata to the Schilder-Boeck, which it shall please the reader thus to emend), in Schilder-Boeck, fol. [Pp ix] recto.

⁸ Van Mander, as Hessel Miedema speculates, in Karel van Mander, Den grondt der edel vry schilder-const, 2 vols. (Utrecht: 1973), 2:358, may be alluding to the popular allegory of life’s journey, known as the Tabula Cebetis, wherein children emerge, still unformed, from nature’s subterranean chambers and receive various gifts—traits and abilities—from the Genius of Nature, endowments they proceed either to cultivate or squander as they mature; see Cebetis des Thebaenschen philosoophs tafereel, waerinne na philosophische wijse claerlyck geleert wort, wat smenschen leven aldersalichts maect (Antwerp: Marcus Antonies Gillis, 1564). Van Mander’s close friend Hendrick Goltzius designed an elaborate three-part print based on the Cebetan ekphrasis that he converted into an allegory of the visual arts, specifically of the art of engraving (artis chacographiae), on which, see T. Weddigen, “Italienreise als Tugendweg: Hendrich Goltzius’s Tabula Cebetis,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 54 (2003): 91–139. Inborn ability, vouchsafed by Nature, predisposes would-be schilders to take up and master the tools and materials of schilderconst, as Van Mander repeatedly emphasizes in Books III and IV of the Schilder-Boeck, the Italian and Northern Lives. Characteristic is the exordium to the “Life of Hendrick Goltzius, excellent Painter, Engraver, and Glass-Engraver / -Painter from Mulbracht,” fol. 281v: “Magnificent Nature effects so to drive and powerfully to advance those youths whom she wholly predisposes and selects for the art of picturing, that she leaves none of the seeds hidden which she implanted in their bosoms, but ever bountiful causes them to grow and bear fruit, to come forth very early, and openly to gather strength.” As Jürgen Müller observes, in Concordia Pragensis: Karel van Manders Kunsttheorie im Schilder-Boeck: Ein Beitrag zur Rhetorisierung von Kunst und Leben am Beispiel der rudolfinischen Hofkünstler, Veröffentlichungen des Collegium Carolinum 77 (Munich: 1993), 174, Van Mander occasionally treats technical mastery as if it were a direct function of natural ability, requiring neither prior instruction nor studious practice; in “Life of Bartholomeus Sprangher, excellent Painter of Antwerp,” for example, the young artist is said perfectly to have executed for the pope a Passion series en grisaille in pen and ink on blue paper, even though he had formerly drawn only in coal or chalk. This signal accomplishment testifies to Sprangher’s surfeit of inborn skill, explicitly heralded in the opening line of the Life; see Miedema, ed., Karel van Mander, Lives, 1:330–333: “Since Nature occasionally (though rarely), through the particular assistance of a profuse heavenly outpouring, gives some spirits such perfect stature and strength in our profession that they apparently without effort, and gratefully, bear such fine, noble fruits whereas others, although working laboriously, hurt our eyes with nothing but deformed and onerous things; it therefore appears and is evident that only those who are born natural heirs inherit the kingdom of our art of painting.” On this passage and its relation to notions of grazia (grace) and sprezzatura (apparent ease, nonchalance) codified by Baldassare Castiglione in Il Cortegiano (Venice: Aldo Romano and Andrea d’Asola, 1528), see ibid., 5:87. On Van Mander’s equation of natural ability with nobility of blood in the “Life of Sprangher,” see Müller, Concordia Pragensis, 191; and, on Sprangher’s singular status as a courtly artist who paints for his pleasure and that of the emperor, and concomitantly refuses to trade in the courtier’s usual currencies of power and wealth, see ibid., 183–184.

⁹ Book III of the Republic concerns the selection of youths best equipped to become guardians of Plato’s ideal city-state, due to their aptitude for moral virtue and disinclination to imitate anything base, such as the words and deeds of smiths and other craftsmen; see Res publica III.396, 412, 413 (Plato’s Republic, trans. and ed. C. Emlyn-Jones and W. Preddy, 2 vols. [Cambridge, MA: 2013], 1:260–269, 320–329). Van Mander takes from Plato the simple point that parents should be alert to the innate abilities and dispositions of children. He offers a counterexample in “Life of Jooris Hoefgnaghel, Painter and Poet of Antwerp,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 262v, which recounts how Hoefnaghel’s wealthy parents, keen to see their son become a merchant, forbade him from following the dictates of “Mother Nature” (“Moeder nature”), ultimately to no avail. Beguiled by schilderconst, Jooris surreptitiously fills the family attic with drawings, finally prompting his exasperated father to relent.

¹⁰ Van Mander here uses the proverbial saying “To fall through a basket,” on which see F.A. Stoett, Nederlandsche spreekwoorden, spreekwijzen, uitdrukkingen en gezegden, 2 vols. (Zutphen: 1923–1925), 2:9–11.

¹¹ On these deeds and labors of Hercules, see “On Hercules,” in Wtlegghingh, fols. 75v–76r.

¹² Van Mander’s term for “Graphic Arts” is Graphidis Consten (Arts of the drawing-pencil or sketching-pen). Graphis is a Latin transliteration from the Greek.

¹³ The Thesaurus Theutonicae linguae. Schat der Neder-duytscher spraken, ed. A.  Maldoets, C.  Kiliaan, Q. Steenhart, and A. van Hasselt (Antwerp: Christopher Plantin, 1573), fol. P3 recto, defines g[h]eest as esprit in French and spiritus in Latin. Sin (mind) signifies power of thought, but in certain contexts it can also mean heart, in the sense of “I am of a mind to do something.” The Thesaurus, fol. Aa1 verso, defines sin as “sens, entendement, intention, pensée” in French, “mens, sensus, sententia animi” in Latin. (Latin mens can mean “mind, heart, soul” but is often used to refer to the ratiocinative faculties; sensus refers to the capacity to perceive and feel but also to one’s frame of mind; sententia animi might best be rendered “way of thinking.”) Gheneghen, which I have translated “affection,” in the sense of affective inclination, is defined in the Thesaurus, fol. Q3 verso, by reference to the adjective geneycht: enclin or addoné in French, “inclinatus, proclivis, propensus, or pronus” in Latin. For a fuller account of gheest and its relation to the term aerdigh (subtle, artful), see chapter 10, note 14 infra.

¹⁴ “Shooting the parrot” refers to the annual contests held by civic militia companies, at which the target was a bird tethered to a high pole. The winner would sometimes be awarded with a staff crowned with the gilded effigy of a bird; for one such example, see the silver gilt bird trophy, ca. 1500–ca. 1599, of the Hulst civic guard, in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (BK-NM-9331). Also cf. the shooting match taking place in the left background of Joannes and Lucas van Doetecum’s engraving after Pieter Bruegel, Kermis of St. George, ca. 1558, on which, see M. Bassens, in Bassens and J. van Grieken, Bruegel in zwart en wit: Het complete grafische werk [exh. cat., Royal Library, Brussels] (Brussels: 2019), 204–205.

¹⁵ The reference is to the great Christian moralist Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert; he was also a philosopher, theologian, political thinker, dramatist, and self-taught Latinist who translated Cicero, Seneca, and Boethius into Dutch, along with the first twelve books of Homer’s Odyssey. Active as a printmaker between the later 1540s and the late 1570s, he taught the art of engraving to Van Mander’s esteemed friend Hendrick Goltzius On the close relation between Coornhert’s literary and pictorial works, see I.M. Veldman, De Wereld tussen Goed en Kwaad: Late prenten van Coornhert [exh. cat., Het Stedelijk Museum het Catharina Gasthuis, Gouda] (The Hague: 1990).

¹⁷ Van Mander may have in mind an image such as the print Young Drunkard from the Consequences of Drink series, in which the eponymous young man simultaneously drinks from a goblet and a beaker, various discarded objects, including an hourglass, a moneybag, and a couple of books, strewn at his feet; see M. Leesberg (comp.) and H. Leeflang (ed.), The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts 1450–1700: Hendrick Goltzius, 4 vols. (Ouderkerk aan den Ijssel: 2012), 4:128–129.

¹⁶ Kolf was an antecedent of golf, played in the Low Countries from about the thirteenth century, on which see C. Gehring, “Material Culture in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Colonial Manuscripts,” in R.H. Blackburn and N.A. Kelley, eds., New World Dutch Studies: Dutch Arts and Culture in Colonial America, 1609–1776 (Albany: 1987), 43–50, esp. 44.

¹⁸ The first three lines of stanza 22 continue the thread of thought enunciated in stanza 21.

¹⁹ That is to say, “may be forgotten” and the name of Art be held in higher repute.

²⁰ Van Mander laments the ignominious reputation suffered by the whole of schilderconst, the art of picturing, due to its practitioners’ dissolute behavior.

²¹ On the term schilderachtig (painter-like) and its connotations of civility, moderation, and restraint, both here and in stanza 29, see B. Bakker, “Schilderachtig: Discussion of a Seventeenth-Century Term and Concept,” Simiolus 23 (1995): 147–162, esp.149. Also see “Life of Abraham Bloemaert, Excellent Painter of Gorcum,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 298r, where Van Mander, punning on Bloemaert’s name, commends the “schilderachtigen bloem-aerdt” (painterly floral quality) of his character and temperament, traits that have charmed Pictura, the art of painting, into bestowing on him all her favor and friendship. In Grondt, chapter 5, stanza 62, Van Mander implicitly connects the term schilderachtig to pictorial handling, using it to characterize the painterly effect of the poet Jacopo Sannazzaro’s manner of pastoral landscape in his Arcadia.

²² Miedema, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:376, directs attention to Van Mander’s terminology in line 2: nederlegghen (set, lay, place, deposit, but also put aside, dispel, drive away; cf. Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonicae linguae, 334: deponere, deposit, deiicere, cast down or aside, drive out or away, dislodge), slechten / slichten (smoothen, but also nullify; cf. ibid., 490, 492: planare, make level, smooth, extricare, remove, extricate, dirimere, dissolvere, dissolve, discharge, annul, refute, nullify), and verdrijven (diffuse, spread out, but also scatter, chase away; cf. ibid. 585, discutere, diffuse, disperse, disseminate, spread abroad, pellere, fugare, put to flight, scatter, drive out or chase away). All three terms can thus be read as double entendres that jointly refer to the casting out of discord and, implicitly, to the technical means whereby this may be accomplished, through pigments applied with a stylus or brush in a manner both diffusive and burnishing. On nederlegghen, slechten, and verdrijven as terms connected to workshop practice, see Miedema, Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:376; on the use of verdrijven to describe “light, sweeping” brushstrokes that effect “delicate transitions,” see A.-S. Lehmann, “Fleshing Out the Body: The ‘Colours of the Naked’ in Workshop Practice and Art Theory, 1400–1600,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 58 (2008): 87–109, esp. 94–96, 107 notes 52 and 55. In “Life of Michel Janssen Miereveldt, Painter of Delft,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 281r, Van Mander uses the term verdreven to mean “soft polishing with a sable-brush or a feather”; see Miedema, ed., Karel van Mander, Lives, 1:382 and 5:170. On the vis-pinseel (literally, “fish brush,” i.e., a brush made from sable-, otter-, or seal-fur), usually with a fan-shaped head, see Lehmann, “Fleshing Out the Body,” 96. As Lehmann further explains (107, note 55), Van Mander equates verdrijven with a specific kind of brushwork, which he characterizes as swaddrigh (swaying); see “Life of Anthonis Montfoort, called Blocklandt,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 254r.

²³ The quarrelsome behavior of fishwives was proverbial; see P.J. Harrebomée, Spreekwoordenboek der Nederlandsche taal, of verzameling van Nederlandsche spreekwoorden en spreekwoordelijke uitdrukkngen van vroegeren en lateren tijd, 3 vols. (Utrecht: 1856–1870; reprint ed., Hoevelaken: 1990), 2:67.

²⁴ In “Van Pamphilus, Schilder van Macedonien” (On Pamphilus, Painter of Macedonia), in Book II of the Schilder-Boeck, Het Leven Der oude Antijcke doorluchtighe Schilders, soo wel Egyptenaren, Griecken als Romeynen (Lives of the Ancient Illustrious Painters, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman), fol. 72r, Van Mander reports that this learned master, whose art was based in arithmetic and geometry, brought painting into such esteem that her practitioners came to include members of the nobility; moreover, by eternal edict common folk and anyone not freeborn were forbidden to practice the art. Van Mander ruefully concludes: “How great was the repute of the Art which many persons now thoughtlessly scorn and denigrate, yea blindly judge to be idle and nugatory. Yet let the art of Painting pass this by as unconscionable and untrue, unremarked and unavenged, considering it sufficient that such as they continue to be punished by the hapless affliction of their ignorance, like Sisyphus with the heavy stone or Ixion with his lamentable wheel; and let her content herself (as knowledgeable writers opine) to be a loving mother and wetnurse to all honorable arts and sciences, constantly smiling with affection upon all her devoted lovers, adorning here churches, there their princely palaces, cabinets, and pleasure gardens, elsewhere their civic housefronts, antechambers, and chambers, whereby she, being estimably seen with great wonder and pleasure, makes human vision, the chiefest of the senses, party to happy, sweet nourishment.”

²⁵ In chapter 4 of Plutarch’s “Life of Aemilius Paulus,” in Vitae parallelae, Aemilius Paulus is said to have educated his children not only after the Roman model but also the Greek, seeing to it that they were trained in grammar, oratory, and philosophy as well as sculpture and painting. As Miedema notes in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:645, Van Mander, who likely had no Greek, may have consulted one of the numerous Latin editions of the Parallel Lives, in addition to the French translation of Jacques Amyot (Paris: Michel Vascosan, 1559).

²⁶ In “Van Appelles, Prince der Schilders” (On Appeles, Prince of Painters), in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fols. 78v–79r, Van Mander states that Apelles’s sweet demeanor and eloquence so pleased Alexander that he visited his workshop on more than one occasion to hear him confabulate. When the king would discourse on art, as laymen are sometimes wont to do, the artist would gently and amiably correct him, so agreeably in fact that Alexander, who was famously short-tempered, allowed him this indulgence.

²⁷ Namely, in “Van Protogenes, van Caunus, Schilder” (On Protogenes of Caunus, Painter), in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fols. 82r–83v.

²⁸ On Raphael’s legendary courtesy toward the fellow artists who gravitated to him in large numbers, and toward liefhebbers (lovers of art), see “Het leven van Raphael Sanzio van Urbijn, Schilder, en Bouwmeester” (Life of Raphael Sanzio of Urbino, Painter, and Architect), in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 117r, where Van Mander describes his Florentine entourage of young painters, and patrons such as Taddeo Taddei, who cultivated his company at home and at table. On the large community of fellow masters with whom Raphael peaceably collaborated on projects such as the Vatican Loggie, including the specialist in grotisschen and beesten nae[r] t’leven (grotesques and animals after the life), Giovanni da Udine, and the figure painters Giulio Romano, Giovan Francesco Penni, Perino del Vaga, et al., see fol. 120v.

²⁹ Van Mander’s allegorical interpretation of the Lethe, the river of oblivion, in chapter 10 of the Wtlegghingh, complements by antithesis his call for courtesy, modesty, and liberality, undergirded by freedom from envy, in stanzas 32–35 supra: there the Lethe stands for enslavement to contingent bodily passions as opposed to the joy to be had from the soul’s knowledge of and participation in heavenly things. The Lethe is construed as a Neo-Platonic antitype; see fol. 83r: “But the Platonists consider the damned to inhabit the world where they suffer all the pain and distress of the soul and of temperament; the soul enters hell when it comes to dwell in the mortal body, wherein it encounters the river Lethe, because here they forget and lose every joy that they possessed from the knowledge of glorious, heavenly things, and thus, inwardly sighing, themselves bring forth and produce sad rivers of tears, bitter Cocytuses and Styxes, and fiery Phlegetons of scorching impulses, of rage and suchlike that torment us so long as we live in the hell of this body.”

³⁰ The key verses are stanzas 87–92 of Canto 34 and 11–23 of Canto 35.

³¹ As Miedema points out in Karel van Mander, Den grondt, 2:386, Van Mander grants less freedom of choice to the swans, whom he identifies as history writers and poets in stanza 41: whereas in Ariosto they preserve the names of whomever they wish, here they pluck the few plaques inscribed with the names of renowned men, that lie on the shore, resistant to the ministrations of the old man, Time. The implication is that these men, through their worthy deeds, are partially the agents of the immortality conferred on them by the arts. In ibid., 2:382 and 2:387, Miedema interprets Van Mander’s reference to geesten (spirits) as an allusion to Federico Zuccaro’s personification of Spirito, who mediates access to the heavenly temples of Virtue and Honor in a pair of drawings (respectively, former Janos Scholz collection and Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin), but this appears unlikely since Van Mander’s emphasis falls not on geest as an heavenly principle that facilitates the transcendence of terrestrial concerns but on the part it plays in maintaining civility amongst artists and in the efficient running of a peaceable workshop.

³² An alternative reading would be “that bears that lofty image.” Whereas Ariosto refers to an actual image hanging from the column, onto which the slips of paper with their names are attached, Van Mander, by referring to “that image,” conflates name and image, as if he were construing the written name as itself an image. The “soet singhende Swanen” (sweet-singing Swans) are surely an allusion to Van Mander himself, whose Schilder-Boeck immortalizes ancient, Italian, and Northern painters, and whose heraldic device was a neck-crowned swan, as witness the paired swans atop the frontispiece Portrait of Karel van Mander by Jan Saenredam (Fig. 2).

³³ Van Mander plays on the pun goedt, which signifies both “goodness” and “goods” in the sense of possessions.

³⁴ The term listen (skill[s]), in Van Mander’s time and today, also connotes subtlety and artisanal cunning.

³⁵ The opening couplet paraphrases the parable of the two paths, one narrow and laborious, leading to eternal reward, the other wide and effortless, leading to eternal perdition, in Matthew 7:13–15.

³⁶ Van Mander imagines that the sentient sheet of paper gladly awaits the many marks and strokes with which the young artist will cover it.

³⁷ In Latin, the name Rapiamus signifies “Let us seize, snatch, plunder,” with the further implication that this should be done hastily.

³⁸ Van Mander puns on the homonymic relation between the Latin verb rapere (to seize, transport, carry off), the Dutch verb rapen (take up, gather, bring together), and the Dutch noun raap (turnip). The things you imitate must not only be seized but also integrated seamlessly, as if they had been cooked into a well-blended stew. Implicit is an allusion to Seneca the Younger’s “Moral Letter to Lucilius” LXXXIV.5–8, in which the philosopher urges his friend fully to digest the ideas he imitates, so that they fuel his power of inventive thought (ingenium) rather than merely sitting in memory; see Seneca, Epistles, trans. R.M. Gummere, 3 vols, (Cambridge, MA: 1920), 2:280–281. Van Mander counsels the aspiring draughtsman to integrate into a whole figure the body parts he has discretely drawn. The term rapen figures in the rebus-motto devised by Maarten van Heemskerck for the “young” Haarlem chamber of rhetoric known as De wijngaardranken (The Vine Tendrils): “Deur der druiven soetheiht rapen wij soelaas” (We seize comfort from the sweetness of the grapes). Van Mander incorporated this rebus into the New Year’s blazon he designed for the chamber, which was engraved by Jacob Matham in 1600; see Leesberg, ed., New Hollstein: Karel van Mander, xxxviii, 185–186, no. 162. Distantly related to Van Mander’s use of rapen is the Latin term rapiaria, which refers to collections of passages gathered from Scripture and from exegetical and spiritual works, for the purpose of personal devotion and edification; see A. Deblaere, “Preghiera tra le beguine e nella ‘Devotio moderna,’ ” in idem, Albert Deblaere (1916–1994): Essays on Mystical Literature, ed. R. Faesen, S.J. (Leuven: 2004), 317–370; T. Mertens, “Lezen met de pen: Ontwikkelingen in het laatmiddeleeuws geestelijk proze,” in F. van Oostrom and F. Willaert, eds., De studie van de Middelnederlandse letterkunde: Stand en toekomst (Hilversum: 1989), 187–200; and R. Faesen, S.J., “ ‘Individualization” and ‘Personalization’ in Late Medieval Thought,” in R. Hofman, C. Caspers, et al., eds., Inwardness, Individualization, and Religious Agency in the Late Medieval Low Countries, Medieval Church Studies 43 (Turnhout: 2020), 35–50, esp. 43–44.

³⁹ Van Mander equates poetry and rhetoric in the manner typical of the rederijkers, the rhetor-poets of his time, as witness Matthijs de Castelein’s theoretical poem De const van rhetoriken (The Art of Rhetoric) of 1555, which is in fact a treatise on poetics. On De Castelein’s poem, see G. Stuiveling, “Schaken met De Castelein,” Spiegel der Letteren 7 (1963–1964): 161–184; S.A.P.J.H. Iansen, “Speurtocht naar het leven van Matthijs Castelein. Archivalia en onzekerheden”, Verslagen en mededelingen der koninklijke Vlaamse academie voor taal- en letterkunde (nieuwe reeks) (1970): 321–446; D. Coigneau, “Matthijs de Castelein (1485?–1550),” Jaarboek De Fonteine (1985–1986): 7–13; and M. Spies, Rhetoric, Rhetoricians, and Poets: Studies in Renaissance Poetry and Poetics, ed. H. Duits and T. van Strien (Amsterdam: 1999), 40–44. Rhetorica in this context refers to the so-called arts de seconde rhétorique—not the formal and structural principles of argumentation but rather the techniques of prosody, especially rhyme, rhythm, equisonance, and, of course, colorful elocution.

⁴⁰ Stanzas 45–47, in focusing on the business of art, recall P.C. Ketel’s emphasis on the commercial profit to be gained from the practice of schilderconst, in his “Workshop-Song for Young Painters, after the wise: ‘The Lovely May, etc.,’ ” supra, stanza 1 of which ends by asserting, “Our wish, our desire and hope is to sell.” Also see Advantage’s promise “to increase your pounds-weight of coin all round,” in Ketel’s “New Year’s Song, to be sung by six personages—Order, Art, Time, Advantage, Pictura, and Reason. After the wise: ‘Rejoice / in virtue / you Rhetorical Youth,’ ” translated supra. Ketel was responding to the practical strain that runs through Van Mander’s poem.

⁴¹ Smalt is a pigment containing ground blue potassium glass. Ash refers to the gray residue left over after ultramarine has been extracted from lapis lazuli. As Miedema notes in Karel van Mander, Den grondt, 2:391, a fundamental rule of the painter’s workshop was that these blues not be mixed, i.e., tempered, with an excess of binding agent, in order to prevent discoloration.

⁴² In “Van Pallas, oft Minerva” (On Pallas, or Minerva), in Schilder-Boeck, Book V, fol. 42v, Van Mander praises the goddess for combining wise counsel and good judgment, with technical ingenuity and artisanal skill: “She was also nicknamed Tritonia, after the number three […] because three things are necessary for a person to be wise, that is, sure counsel, true judgment, and right action. […] As Ovid, Ausonius, Virgil, Cicero, Homer, Papinius, Lucian, and Polydor Virgil testify, she discovered sewing, spinning of silk and linen, weaving of wool, the manufacture of wagons, the building of houses and cities, the utility of olive oil, metrical singing and flute-playing, and waging war.” In stanza 49, he implicitly adjures young schilders to imbibe these qualities and accomplishments like nurslings. On Minerva’s wisdom and technical ingenuity, see Conti, Mythologiae, fols. 93v–95v.

⁴³ The verb rapen (seize upon) returns to the theme of judicious appropriation introduced by the personification of Rapiamus in stanza 46.

⁴⁴ The allusion is to the famous anecdote in Pliny’s Naturalis historia (Natural History), trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: 1938–1963), XXXV.xxxvi.84–85. As Van Mander tells it, embellishing on Pliny, Apelles, being “attentive and observant in all things,” did not scorn to consult the common man’s judgment, which he considered a “touchstone of reason.” He would display newly finished works in a kind of gallery attached to his home, and eavesdrop on the public’s comments, taking note of any faults they should find and “sometimes rating their opinion above his own.” In adverting to Pliny, Van Mander certainly consulted Antoine du Pinet, L’histoire du monde de C. Pline Second, 2 vols. (Lyon: Antoine Tardif, 1584).

⁴⁵ Van Mander impugns Midas’s retrograde judgment in Schilder-Boeck, Book V, fol. 89v, where he is criticized for rating low, “earthly things” (“aerdtsche dinghen”) above high, “heavenly ones” (“hemelsche”).

⁴⁶ The Dutch humanist Hadrianus Junius offers a lengthy description of Momus, the god of mockery and reproach, in his Emblemata (Antwerp: Christopher Plantin, 1565), 69, where he visualizes him for the benefit of painters, leaving no detail to chance, as he avers in the book’s dedication. As Ilja Veldman demonstrates in “Maarten van Heemskerck and Hadrianus Juius: The Relationship between a Painter and a Humanist,” Simiolus 7 (1974): 35–54, esp. 42, in their designs for the Emblemata, Geoffroy Ballain and Pieter Huys, and the woodcutters Gerard van Kampen and Arnold Nicolaï, followed Junius’s instructions to the letter, codifying the image of Momus that Van Mander likely had in mind.

⁴⁷ Van Mander derives his novel personification Placebo from the Latin future verb placebo (I shall please).

⁴⁸ On the term slecht (low, modest, ordinary) and its relation to quaet (poor, worn out, in a bad condition), see I. Sturtewagen, “Clothing Rubens’s Antwerp: Everyday Urban Dress in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,” in A.D. Newman and L. Nijkamp, eds., Undressing Rubens: Fashion and Painting in Seventeenth-Century Antwerp (Turnhout: 2019), 7–30, esp. 16–17.

⁴⁹ The term vijsevasen can also signify “conceits,” but since this term is ambiguous and can be read either positively or negatively, I have chosen the more pejorative “trifles” to translate it.

⁵⁰ In Schilder-Boeck, Book V, fol. 45r, Van Mander characterizes the Pierides, the nine daughters of Pierus, as poetasters, hedgerow-poets, and would-be Muses: though they claim to have drunk from the poets’ source, the Hippocrene, their empty verses, since they mimic the form but lack the substance of true poetry, resemble nothing more than the idle chitter-chatter of magpies. Indeed, in Ovid, Metamorphoses V.671–678, the Pierides are transformed into clamorous magpies.

⁵¹ The “Horse’s fountain” is the Hippocrene, source of poetic inspiration, which first flowed from the hoofbeats of Pegasus.

⁵² The Satyr is Marsyas whose story, as recounted by Van Mander in Schilder-Boeck, Book V, fol. 54r, derives from Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica (Library of History), 3:59. Presumptuous Marsyas challenges Apollo to a musical contest requiring “that each of them show by manipulation of the fingers alone his practiced skilled in the Art” (“alleenlijck met den vingheren bewese zijn ervarentheyt in der Const te handelen”), the satyr on the double-flute, the god on the lyre. Apollo wins by instead competing on dual fronts, “two Arts against one” (“tweederley Consten teghen een eenighe”): he not only plays but also sings. He then exacts his revenge on prideful Marsyas by flaying him. On Marsyas, see Conti, Mythologiae, fol. 299r.

⁵³ Like Marsyas, overconfident Arachne challenges a god to a contest of skill, this time Minerva in the art of weaving images, and for her pains is turned into a spider. The moral of this story, states Van Mander in Schilder-Boeck, Book V, fol. 49v, is that inborn gifts, such as an aptitude for the arts or sciences, since they come from God alone should be no cause of undue pride: compared to divine grace and mercy, they are like the merest “cobwebs” (spinnewebben). Implicit in this admonition is the distinction, fundamental to the Grondt, between innate ability and practiced skill. On Arachne, see Conti, Mythologiae, fol. 299r.

⁵⁴ Van Mander illustrates this admonition against overweening pride in his exegetical Allegory of the Transitoriness of Life, engraved and published by Jacob Matham in 1599, for which see M. Leesberg, comp., H. Leeflang and C. Schuckman, eds., The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, 1450–1700 (Rotterdam and Amsterdam: 1999), 101. The emblematic image exhibits his mastery of the verscheydenheden (varieties of pictorial subject)—human figures, landscape, still life, calligraphy—even as it counsels the viewer to remain ever aware of scriptural teachings about the imminence of death.

⁵⁵ The term maghen signifies both “relatives” and “bellies” and thus implicitly alludes to Matthew 25:35–35: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat.”

⁵⁶ Van Mander imagines Cupid’s assaults on the heart as wily military expeditions. In Schilder-Boeck, Book V, fol. 8v, he states that the boy carries arms to portend the great pain and distress he generally inflicts on foolish lovers. Citing Xenophon, he compares Erotes to bowmen since beautiful persons, even when seen from afar, shoot their beholders with torturous desire; and citing Servius, he describes Cupid’s darts as weapons of regret and oppression. On Cupidinis vis (the power of Cupid), see Conti, Mythologiae, fols. 126v–127r.

⁵⁷ In Schilder-Boeck, Book V, fol. 22 v, Van Mander enumerates some of the ways in which the hunter Actaeon can be seen to epitomize sundering distraction: for example, whereas Ovid, in Metamorphoses III.232–252, recounts how Actaeon was turned into a stag and devoured by hounds as punishment for having seen the goddess Diana naked, Plutarch, in Amatoriae narrationes (Amorous Stories) 2, has him torn to bits by competing forces. The enamored Archias, founder of Syracuse, tries to abduct the boy, pulling him one way, while his father and friends pull him another, with disastrous consequences. In this allegory, he is “pulled at cross purposes” (“weersijden getrocken”). Van Mander also gives the Greek names of some of Actaeon’s hounds, which likewise allude to the notion of scattering: “Follow-spoor,” “Round-the-slope,” and “Storm-wracked” (“volge-speur,” “berghe-swerf,” and “onweder”). On Actaeon and his dogs, see Conti, Mythologiae, fol. 200v.

⁵⁸ In Schilder-Boeck, Book V, fol. 92r, Van Mander juxtaposes the story of the Judgment of Paris, taken from Apuleius, Metamorphoses 10:30–33, with the story of Hecuba’s dream, taken from Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca (Library of Myths) 3:12.5. Seduced by Venus’s promise of a wife as beautiful as she—namely, Helen of Troy—Paris judges her more beautiful than her competitors Juno and Minerva and awards her the golden apple of Eris. When she then assists him to abduct Helen from the house of her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta, the Trojan war is launched. While pregnant with Paris, Hecuba prophesies the destruction of Troy at his hands, dreaming that she would give birth to a burning torch from which all Asia would be set afire. On Paris’s corrupted judgment swayed by the goddess’s bribes, see Conti, Mythologiae, fol. 198v; on his abduction of Helen, see ibid., fol. 199v.

⁵⁹ As Miedema observes in Karel van Mander, Den grondt 2:402–403, stanza 63 closes with a proverb, “Van vroeg ontbijten en laat huwen kwam nooit hoofdpijn” (Never did a headache come from breakfasting early and marrying late), on which see Harrebomée, Spreekwoordenboek der Nederlandsche taal, 1:329 and Bijlage 3:232.

⁶⁰ Van Mander paraphrases from the Dutch edition of Pedro Mexía’s popular treatise on morals, Silva de varia lección (Miscellany of Various Lessons); see De verscheyden lessen Petri Messiae … waer inne beschreven worden de weerdichste geschiedenissen alder keyseren, coninghen, ende loflijcker mannen (The Various Lessons of Petrus Messia … in which are described the most worthy histories of every emperor, king, and praiseworthy man) (Leiden: Jan Paedts Jacobsz. and Jan Bouwensz., 1587), 236: “I do not say that a man ought to be much older, but upon consideration, ten years were sufficient: namely, the man twenty-five years old, the woman sixteen or seventeen at the most, in view of the ages and life spans of our times.”

⁶¹ Van Mander paraphrases from Ludovico Ariosto’s Satira quinta (Fifth Satire), vv. 187–189, addressed to Annibale Malaguzzo; see The Satires of Ludovico Ariosto, trans. H---n (London: A. Millar, 1759), 116–117: “In point of years I fancy ‘twould be best, / Yours should exceed by ten or twelve at least: / With one that equals or surmounts your age.”

⁶² In Grondt, chapter 5, stanza 82, Van Mander calls Rome “De Stadt der Pictoriael Academen” (The City of Academies of the Pictorial Arts). He concludes “Het leven van Ioan Schoorel, Schilder” (Life of Jan van Scorel, Painter), in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 236v, with a poem that portrays Rome as a school of art; translated from Domenicus Lampsonius, Pictorum aliquot celebrium Germaniae Inferioris effigies (Antwerp: Sub intersignio Quatuor Ventorum, 1572), the sexain, delivered in Van Scorel’s voice, reads: “I was ever famed as the first who showed / Netherlanders that he who would be a Painter / Must go to visit Rome and bring back / A thousand brushes and as many colors, and beyond these, / Many prized works painted worthily in this school, / Before they may honorably be esteemed an Artist.” The current stanza, however, warns against Rome’s many blandishments and forms a complement to the earlier warning against wine, women, and song in stanzas 18–23 supra. Van Mander’s vignette of licentious Rome as a nest of prodigals brings to mind the initiation rituals of the Schildersbent (Painters’ Crew), celebrated by Dutch and Flemish painters in Rome throughout the seventeenth century; featuring mock didactic tableaux vivants, these festivities or, better, “mock baptisms” played upon the city’s reputation for encouraging Bacchic revelry. On these revels, see T. Kren, “ ‘Chi non vuol Baccho’: Roeland van Laer’s Burlesque Painting about Dutch Artists in Rome,” Simiolus 11 (1980): 63–80; D. Levine, “Pieter van Laer’s Artists’ Tavern: An Ironic Commentary on Art,” in H. Bock and T.W. Gaehtgens, eds., Jahrbuch Preußischer Kulturbesitz Sonderband 4: Holländische Genremalerei im 17. Jahrhundert (Berlin: 1987), 169–171; and idem, “The Bentvueghels: ‘Bande Académique,’ ” in M. Lavin, ed., Essays Honoring Irving Lavin on his Sixtieth Birthday (New York: 1990), 207–219.

⁶³ Van Mander refers to Petrarch’s three sonnets against the corruption of Rome (written, in fact, to rebuke the papal court at Avignon), in which the poet rails against the debauchery of the Roman Babylon; see Le rime di M. Francesco Petrarca (Venice: Giuseppe Bortoli, 1739), 133–134 (Sonnette 136–138). In Sonnet 136, v. 2, Petrarch animadverts that Rome is a “traitorous nest where the evil spread everywhere in the world hatches.”

⁶⁴ The Italians, open in what they say but closed as to what they do, are analogized to Janus whom Van Mander describes, in Schilder-Boeck, Book V, fol. 113v, as two-faced and whose temple, accordingly, likewise shows two aspects: its doors are open during times of war when one must frankly assess and ameliorate the bad things that led to present conflict, but closed in peacetime when, freed from care, one shuts out thoughts of the past or future.

⁶⁵ This is undoubtedly an allusion to syphilis, which the Dutch termed the “Spanish pox,” and the Italians the “French disease.”

⁶⁶ Van Mander’s phrase, “t’ghesicht te missen,” more literally translates “to let sight go missing” (i.e., “to blindfold the eyes”).

⁶⁷ In Schilder-Boeck, Book V, fol. 111v, the enchantress Circe, daughter of Hyperion and Asterope, is described, with reference to the Orphica Argonautica, vv. 1218–1228, as “perfect in beauty” (“volcomelijck schoon”), with a face so charmingly radiant that upon revealing herself to the Argonauts’ eyes, she immediately “dispossessed them of their hearts” (“t’hert ontroovende”). On Circe’s irresistible beauty, see Conti, Mythologiae, fol. 173v.

⁶⁸ As the anonymous author of Van Mander’s life states in “tGeslacht, de geboort, plaets, tydt, leven, ende wercken van Karel van Mander, Schilder, en Poeet” (The Lineage, birth, place, time, life, and works of Karel van Mander, Painter and Poet), in Schilder-Boeck (Amsterdam: Jacob Pietersz. Wachter, 1618), fol. R3r–v, he spent much of his time in Rome (1574–1577), recording “rediscovered subterranean grotesques” (“de grotten wederomme gevonden”). However, Book IV of the Schilder-Boeck for the most part ignores the Grotissen painted by his compatriots during their study tours of Rome. His motive was probably to emphasize their wide-ranging accomplishments, not only as designers of figures and landscapes, but also as practitioners of the full range of verscheydenheden, on which see the peroration of “Preface on the foundation of the noble, free Art of Painting” and note 41 supra. “Dedicatory Prefaces…,” notes 67, 76, and 77 supra.

⁶⁹ Many of the northern lives in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV mention landscapes painted by the respective masters during their time in Italy, either on commission or for the open market; typical is this remark about Sprangher, in “Het leven van Bartholomeus Sprangher, uytnemende Schilder van Antwerpen” (Life of Bartholomeus Sprangher, excellent Painter from Antwerp), fol. 270v: “He was with [Michiel Gioncoy in Rome] about six months and made some little landscapes (for he worked there for himself), and amongst other things [made] an ingenious scene of witchery in a ruin like the Colosseum, with women flying on broomsticks and suchlike spookeries, as if at night.”

⁷⁰ Miedema duly observes in Karel van Mander, Den grondt 2:411, that these three materials allude to painting, sculpture, and copperplate engraving as well as to painting on canvas, stone, or copper.

⁷¹ The French wars of religion between Catholics and Huguenots, and between supporters of the House of Guise and House of Condé, raged between 1562 and 1598.

⁷² Van Mander refers to gold and silver imported from the New World and to the ensuing coinage struck from these metals.

⁷³ The term alloys (alloys) can refer to the mixed composition of gold and silver coinage.

⁷⁴ The phrase “teyckenen zedich” (fine manner of drawing) might also be rendered “well-ordered, apt, or pliable drawing.”

⁷⁵ Van Mander distinguishes between teyckenen (drawing, i.e., disegno, the art of drawn invention) which, following the argument of Vasari’s Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori (Lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors, and architects) (Florence: Giunti, 1568), he celebrates as the highest achievement of the Roman school, and wel schilderen (painting well, i.e., colorito, coloring, chiaroscuro, and paint handling) which, following Lodovico Dolce’s Dialogo della pittura, intitolato l’Aretino (Dialogue on painting, entitled the Aretino) (Venice: Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1557), he instead ascribes to the Venetian school whose praises he sings in Book III of the Schilder-Boeck, Het leven der moderne, oft dees-tijtsche doorluchtighe Italiaensche Schilders (Lives of the Modern or Contemporary Illustrious Italian Painters).

⁷⁶ The maxim, “Roma quanta fuit ipsa ruina docet” (How great Rome was, its very ruins tell), derives from Francesco Albertinus’s Opusculum de mirabilibus novae et veteris urbis Romae (Little Work on the wonders of the new and old city of Rome) (Rome: Jacobus Mazochius, 1510; reprint ed. Lyons: P. Ioã. Mariõ., 1520), fol. 47v. Van Mander probably knew it from the frontispiece to Book 3 of Sebastiano Serlio’s Il terzo libro … nel qual si figurano, e discrivono le antiquita di Roma (The third book … in which are figured and described the antiquities of Rome) (Venice: Francesco Marcolino da Forli, 1540).

⁷⁷ Circe’s mountain is Monte Circeo; on this and other sights visited by Van Mander during his Italian sojourn, from Cicero’s villa at Tusculum to Cisterna di Littória by way of the Via Appia, thence to Monte Circeo, see Miedema, Karel van Mander, Den grondt, 2:418.

⁷⁸ The Padus is the river Po.

⁷⁹ In Schilder-Boeck, Book V, fol. 13r–v, Van Mander recounts the story of Phaëton, son of the Titaness Clymene, whose inability to manage the chariot of his father the Sun leads to his untimely death. He also cites the poets’ euhemeristic reading of this fable, which takes Phaëton for a hapless prince struck dead by lightning when he leads his overheated army to the river Po.

⁸⁰ On the blinding of Hannibal who loses an eye while crossing Tuscan marshlands flooded by the river Arno, see Livy’s Ab urbe condita (From the Founding of the City) 22:2.

⁸¹ In Livy’s Ab urbe condita 21:54–56, the Roman consul Tiberius Sempronius Longus is defeated by Hannibal beside the river Trebbia.

⁸² The Mare majus (Great Sea) is either the Black Sea or the Sea of Marmara.

Chapter 2: “On drawing, or the Art of Delineating”

⁸³ Here schilderen could be translated either as “painting” or, more expansively, “picturing.” Personified as a pater familias in stanza 1, teyckenconst becomes a wet nurse in stanza 2 where she is described by reference to Natalis Comes’s mythographic treatise, the Mythologiae, in which he calls pictura an alumna, on which see note 2 infra. The appellation “Father of painting” may derive from Giorgio Vasari, who designates disegno (drawing) the Father of painting, as well as of painting’s sister arts sculpture and architecture, in the Vite (Lives); see Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, scritte da M. Giorgio Vasari Pittore e Architetto, ed. G. Milanesi, 9 vols. (Florence: Giunti, 1568; reprint ed., Sansoni, 1981), 1:168–169. Van Mander’s reference to teyckenconst as the door opening onto “many arts,” in line 4 of stanza 1, is more wide-ranging; moreover, in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, he focuses on drawing, engraving, painting and, as a subset of the latter, glass-engraving / -painting, excluding sculpture and architecture from his discussion of schilderconst. Following Van Mander, Jacob Matham depicts the three sister arts of painting, drawing / calligraphy, and engraving in his engraved Portrait Epitaph of Hendrick Goltzius, issued to commemorate his stepfather and former master, who had just died; figures personifying Goltzius’s spirito (gheest, spirit, i.e., ready wit) and disegno (teyckenconst) flank his portrait, over which the three Graces, their hands linked preside. The Grace at left, who displays painters’ implements, personifies Painting; her sister at right, holding a pair of quills, personifies calligraphy, which Van Mander designates a nursling of teyckenconst in stanza 4 infra; and their sister, standing between them, with engravers’ tools hanging from her waist, personifies Engraving. On this print, see J.-P. Filedt Kok, “Artists Portrayed by their Friends: Goltzius and his Circle,” Simiolus 65 (1996): 161–181, esp. 179. Jürgen Müller, in Concordia Pragensis: Karel van Manders Kunsttheorie im Schilder-Boeck, Veröffentlichungen des Collegium Carolinum 77 (Munich: 1993), 132–133, purports to see a contradiction between Van Mander’s assertion that teyckenconst is father to painting and his statement in chapter 12, stanza 1 infra, that teyckenconst is “like the body, various and commensurate,” whereas painting, “which brings drawing’s dead strokes to life,” is comparable to the life-giving “Spirit or the Soul.” For Müller, this deliberate mismatch forms part of an overarching or, better, underlying argument that permeates the Schilder-Boeck, whereby teyckenconst refers to the technical production of an image, and schilderconst (namely, the art of painting) refers to the visualization of purified, perfected, and, in this sense, godly images of nature, for which painting qua painting is an allegorical figure. I would argue that Van Mander is making a gendered distinction between drawing that sires all pictorial forms and painting that like a good mother nurtures and nourishes what has been engendered, bringing these forms fully and mimetically to life. Viewed through this lens, teyckenconst and schilderconst are functionally incremental rather than mutually contradictory.

⁸⁴ According to Miedema, Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:425, the relevant passage first appeared in the Frankfurt edition of Natalis Comes’s Mythologiae of 1581. It comes from the chapter on the master artisan Daedalus and forms part of an encomium on the imitative properties of painting, which then leads to a discussion of the most accomplished ancient practitioners of the art, starting with Pamphilus. Although Comes talks about pictura rather than graphis proper (design, drawing), Van Mander tellingly draws on his account to characterize teyckenconst’s relation to nature, the visual arts, and the liberal arts. However, Comes, unlike Van Mander, ambiguates the nature of this relation, using the term alumna to refer to pictura as the “pupil / nursling” or “nurse / educator of all honorable arts” (alumna covers both meanings). Van Mander instead converts teyckenconst into the universal custodian of every art, not least the liberal arts. Since Comes’s conception of pictura as a mimetic principle and practice underlies Van Mander’s definition of teyckenconst, I here quote the full excerpt from Natalis Comitis Mythologiae sive explicationis fabularum libri decem (Padua: Petruspaulus Tozzius, 1616), 409: “Since indeed there is one sole art of painting, which differs not at all from the disciplines called liberal. For who would dare sever that selfsame pictura, nursling / nurse of all honorable arts and (as one might say) ape of nature, from those disciplines. For this sole art, like silent history, imitates deeds and bodily forms and colors more diligently than could be expressed by oratory, and delivers them into the hands of posterity. Familiar to Greece, nourisher of all the best arts, this art in former times approached to nature in thus imitating plants and animals whenever it issued from the studied works of the more powerful [masters], so as even to presume to vie with nature herself, since it miraculously portrays every wonder of nature in all of nature’s operations. That [art] having become thoroughly known in Greece, it was justly ordained by common-law usage that the first beginnings of noble youths should be to depict the lineaments of bodies, knowledge of which by the authority and advice of Pamphilus was imbibed by boys together with the liberal arts, while being absolutely unknown and forbidden to servants. But indeed the excellence of painting was so marvelous in certain [artists] that not only did they represent the lineaments of the body, and both figures and colors, but also from their physiognomy how much each had lived or was going to live, which Apelles was the first to achieve; and what appears more wondrous, every motion of the spirit was made known in the picture, as expressed by that same master when he fashioned the Athenian people in such a form that all this might be recognized in them.”

⁸⁵ The erratum (fol. [Pp ix] recto) changes ghehooght (raised) to ghesooght (suckled). The verb that follows, ghewassen (raised, in the sense of brought up, reared), can also signify “bring to full development, ripen”; see Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonicae linguae, 654: wassen = adolescere (bring to maturity), incrementum recipere (receive an increase, i.e., be promoted in growth).

⁸⁶ On this account, teyckenconst enables the practice of writing whereby the rules of grammar are promulgated; on Pictura and Schirijf-const (art of calligraphy) as sister arts, see the dedicatory preface to Book III of the Schilder-Boeck, fol. 59r–v, in which Van Mander lauds Jacques Razet, secretary of the Amsterdam Fleet, for his joint devotion to both arts.

⁸⁷ Another translation for “ghesont verstandt,” in line 2, would be “common sense,” although the repetition of verstandt, in line 3, would suggest that “understanding” is an appropriate choice in both instances.

⁸⁸ Stanza 3 appears closely to align with Vasari’s conception of disegno, which derives, as Karen-Edis Barzman has shown in The Florentine Academy of the Early Modern State: The Discipline of Disegno (Cambridge, New York, et al.: 2000), 1–12, 143–180, from Benedetto Varchi’s Aristotelian definition of painting and sculpture as cognitive expressions of the Universal Reason, the superior, speculative part of which produces the sciences that search after wisdom, whereas the inferior, practical part produces the arts—painting, sculpture, architecture, and medicine—which are complementary to prudence. In the Introduction to the 1568 edition of the Vite, Vasari defines disegno as an operation of thought that correlates to the hand’s ability to draw what the mind conceives. Through a process of abstraction, thought converts sensory perceptions into universal forms purged of their accidental qualities, and these abstracted forms, which Vasari calls a “universal judgment similar to a form or idea of all the things of nature” (168), constitute the conceptual images that the trained hand then represents in a graphic medium. As Vasari puts it: “This disegno, once it has drawn from judgment the invention of some thing, requires that the hand, made quick and ready through study and exercise over many years, draw and express well with pen, stylus, charcoal, chalk, or something else, whatever nature has created; because the intellect, when with judgment it sends forth concepts that have been purged, imparts through those hands exercised for many years in disegno knowledge of the perfection and excellence of the arts along with knowledge of the artist” (169). Drawing after nature, after the human model in particular, not only instigates the process leading to the sublimation of universal form from particular substances, but also prepares the hand accurately to portray the images that this process ultimately generates. Vasari’s doctrine of the relation between mind and hand, or, more precisely, amongst thought, judgment, and the practice of drawing, was enshrined in the state-sanctioned curriculum of the Florentine Accademia del Disegno. As becomes evident in stanzas 14 and 15 infra, Van Mander diverges from Vasari in grounding teyckenconst more fully in nature, the imitation of which he construes as the fountainhead of schilderconst but also its chief objective. Stanza 4 lays the groundwork for this assertion of the importance of drawing after nature, by claiming that the draftsman bears witness to his intention by delineating whatsoever is comprised by nature. Although Van Mander states in stanza 3 that “good judgment” (“goet oordeel”) must accompany “sound understanding” (“ghesont verstandt”) and “practice” (oeffeningh), he unlike Vasari does not instrumentalize teyckenconst, presenting it as a source, indeed the chief source of judgment. Vasari shored up this claim in the 1568 edition of the Vite, where he advanced three versions of the relation between disegno and giudizio, as R. Williams explains in Art, Theory, and Culture in Sixteenth-Century Italy: From Techne to Metatechne (Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: 1997), 33–46, esp. 45. First, in the so-called Technical Preface, he states that disegno, since it proceeds from the intellect, not only cognizes but also evaluates the things of nature, forming in the mind a universal idea or judgment of them, which then finds material expression through the skilled operation of the hands whenever any particular thing is portrayed. Second, in the proem to Part III on the third age of art, he designates judgment the fourth of five distinctive qualities that characterize that age, along with rule, order, measure, and manner (maniera). Above all, this type of judgment allows the painter to transcend precise measurement and the strict application of rule, substituting for them a harmonious non so che (I know not what) that confers a “grace surpassing measure” (Vite, ed. Milanesi, 4:9: “una grazia che ecedesse la misura”). Finally, again in respect of the third age, judgment is specifically associated with the ability to combine the body’s limbs in such a way as to enliven, vary, and soften them, making them consonant, so that the most beautiful parts are subsumed into a whole more beautiful than its constituent elements, regardless of whether men, women, or children are being shown. This third kind of judgment, like the first and second, involves subordinating the part to the whole. In stanza 13 infra, Van Mander highlights the quality of lively grace, which he ascribes not to judgment but to “patient effort” (“oeffeninghe gheduldich”), which is to say, to diligent practice; moreover, he identifies unvarnished nature, uncontrived and true to life (“Gaet van de vercieringhe totter waerheyt, dat is, tot het leven”), as the ultimate source of grace, i.e., “unaffected sweetness” (“soetheyt eenvuldich”).

⁸⁹ Van Mander connects the phonemic and graphemic functions of letter forms, which communicate hidden thoughts through the silent representation of speech, to the descriptive function of lines: in transcribing and circumscribing forms, such lines serve to represent forms, just as letters serve silently, in this sense hiddenly, to represent thoughts.

⁹⁰ Textbook examples of this device, which facilitates the depiction of figures in motion seen from various angles and variously foreshortened, may be found in Heinrich Lautensack’s drawing manual, Dess Circkelss und Richtscheyts, auch der Perspectiva, und Proportion der Menschen und Rosse (Frankfurt: Georg Rab für Sigmund Feyerabend, 1564; reprint ed., Frankfurt: Egenolff Emmel, 1618), fols. 48v–50v. On this manual, see C.O. Fowler, Drawing and the Senses: An Early Modern History (Turnhout: 2016), 63–65. In Livre de pourtraicture de maistre Jean Cousin (Paris: David Le Clerc, 1595), fols. Aiij v–Biv r, cruciform axes superimposed on an ovoid constitute the basis for positioning, tilting, and rotating the head. On this simplified geometrical drawing book, much consulted by Van Mander, see J. Bolten, Dutch and Flemish Method and Practice: Drawing Books, 1600–1750 (Landau, Pfalz: 1985), 179–187.

⁹¹ Van Mander adumbrates the fuller discussion of figural contrapposto (antithesis) to come in chapter 4. On opposition or contrast as principles of bodily attitude, and on its relation to the competing criteria of conspicuous artifice and decorum, see D. Summers, “Contrapposto: Style and Meaning in Renaissance Art,” Art Bulletin 59 (1977): 336–361.

⁹² The term “in sned’,” which I have translated “of prints,” can refer either to woodcut or engraving.

⁹³ In “On Apelles, Prince of Painters,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 77r, Van Mander states: “He produced various books wherein were compiled all the knowledge and secrets of the arts: Pliny often drew upon his writings.” In “On Parrhasius, excellent Painter of Ephesus,” in ibid., fol. 69r, he writes: “But Antigonus and Xenocrates, both of whom wrote books on the art of painting, praise Parrhasius for these reasons, rating him above all artful painters and therein avowing him to have been perfect.”

⁹⁴ Van Mander refers to the notion that a clay pot absorbs the smell of whatever is first stored or cooked in it.

⁹⁵ On Van Mander’s use of the term manier, see section 4.b., “Manier,” of my “Introduction,” supra.

⁹⁶ The Thesaurus Theutonicae linguae, fol. B1 verso, defines aerdich as “ingénieux, artificiel” in French, “ingeniosus, artificiosus, artificialis” in Latin, with the additional connotation of venustus (graceful, beautiful, elegant). “Subtly drawing where the light strikes” (“Aerdich trecken op den dagh”), in conjunction with the closing line of stanza 9, refers to thinning and blending one’s hatches so that they become barely discernible where the surfaces are brightly lit, and increasingly visible where the shadows deepen. Many of Goltzius’s red chalk drawings after the antique, executed in Rome between 1590 and 1591, were rendered in this way: Flora Farnese, for example (Teyler’s Museum, Haarlem, N029) (Fig. 10). As Miedema points out in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:432, this technique probably derives from the brothers Zuccaro by way of Bartholomeus Sprangher. Van Mander’s black chalk study of the left-hand putto from Raphael’s Isaiah in S. Agostino, Rome, is drawn in the same technique (Prentenkabinet, Universiteit Leiden). On the term aerdigh (and its substantive aerdicheyt), with reference both to figural action and to circumstantial detail as pictorial ornaments, also see H. Miedema, Fraey en aerdigh, schoon en moy in Karel van Mander’s Schilder-Boeck (Amsterdam: 1984), 12–13, 16–17; and C. Göttler, “Fire, Smoke, and Vapour: Jan Brueghel’s ‘Poetic Hells’: ‘Ghespoock’ in Early Modern European Art,” in Göttler and W. Neuber, eds., Spirits Unseen: The Representation of Subtle Bodies in Early Modern European Culture, Intersections 9 (Leiden and Boston: 2008), 19–46, esp. 19.

⁹⁷ The term conterfeyten can refer to the process of portraying something, such as the human face, after the life, but in this context appears simply to refer to the notion of imitating or copying something and transferring it to paper.

⁹⁸ Schilder-Boeck, Book IV places a premium on mellifluous transition: see, for instance, Van Mander’s remark that Van Heemskerck’s second manner was better than his first only in so far as “he no longer cut off his highlights so sharply” (fol. 246r), or his praise of Goltzius for avoiding “to shadow harshly” (“hardt te schaduwen”) in the faces and nudes populating his Allegory of the Bride of Christ (fol. 286r), or his favorable observation that Cornelis Cornelisz. acquired a “sweeter, more flowing manner of painting” after apprenticing to Gillis Coignet (fol. 292v). Also see his admonition in chapter 12, stanza 27 of the Grondt, against demarcating highlights sharply, and, in stanzas 35–38, his equation of a good manner with soft, flowing application of colors in the Italian manner.

⁹⁹ On the chiaroscuro woodcut, its derivation from the technique of brush drawing on prepared paper, and its relation to chiaroscuro pen drawing, see D. Landau and P. Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 1470–1550 (New Haven and London: 1994), 183–184, 270; and Parshall, “The Origins of the Chiaroscuro Woodcut,” in N. Takahatake, ed., The Chiaroscuro Woodcut in Renaissance Italy, [exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.] (Munich and New York: 2018), 34–41, esp. 40. On the chiaroscuri produced by the Bolognese printmakers Antonio da Trento and Niccolò Vincentino after designs by Parmigianino, see ibid., 98–99, 104–125, 131–147. Van Mander, even though he must have known Vasari’s account of the close working relationship between Parmigianino and Antonio, probably considered both his prints and Niccolò’s equally authoritative sources of the master’s teyckenconst.

¹⁰⁰ Van Mander’s term daghen (lights) indicates that he is talking here about natural light, i.e., effects of daylight.

¹⁰¹ This passage, read in tandem with the prior stanza’s exhortation to “go from contrivance to the naked truth,” underscores the foundational importance of study after nature, especially the nude model. The notion that nature is the authoritative source not only of truth but also sweetness of effect derives from Vasari, who states in his introductory remarks on disegno, in Vite, 1:171, that “the things which come from nature (dal naturale) … in themselves [possess] a certain grace and liveliness, an easy, sweet simplicity that may perfectly be learned only from her.” Devised images, i.e., images fashioned by invention or contrivance, if they are to appear true, must originate from prior images made after the life and then marshaled from memory during the process of drawing. According to the Thesaurus Theutonicae linguae, fol. Nn3 verso, versieren, the verb that closes stanza 14, signifies “controuver, feindre” in French (fabricate, feign), “ementire, fingere, confingere” in Latin (feign, fashion, fabricate, in the sense of contrive, design, devise, invent).

¹⁰² Whereas omtreck (contour) refers to shapes in profile or silhouette, binne-werck (cross-contour, interior work) refers to overlapping shapes. The distinction is between external and internal articulation of forms by means of hatches.

¹⁰³ On the critical category uyt zijn selven doen, and the allied categories naer t’leven and uyt den gheest, see section 4.c., “Uyt zijn selven doen,” of my “Introduction,” supra.

¹⁰⁴ In addition to working after the life, as recommended in stanza 15, aspiring picturers must also cultivate their powers of invention, which entails working from the treasure-house of memory; the images stored there are the building blocks out of which novel constructions arise, in the manner licensed by the Horatian dictum ut pictura poësis. See R.W. Lee, Ut pictura poësis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting (New York: 1967); and L. Golden, “Reception of Horace’s Ars Poetica,” in G. Davis, ed., A Companion. to Horace (Chichester and Malden, MA: 2010), 391–413, esp. 400.

¹⁰⁵ The equation of ordineren (ordonnance) with inventy, and the warning that failure to exercise one’s power of invention will lead to “qualijck ordineren” (inept ordonnance), reveal the degree to which Van Mander conceives of invention, here and in much of chapter 5, as the disposition and distribution of human figures. Chapters 8–10, and the digressive emphasis on byvoechsels (ornaments) in chapter 5, greatly expand the scope of invention, encompassing landscape, animals, and textiles, amongst other appurtenances.

¹⁰⁶ Whereas chapter 1, stanza 46 invokes Rapiamus, urging the young picturer to imitate other masters’ figures, here Van Mander warns against a paucity of invention, which leads to overreliance on another’s images. The metaphor of plundering others’ storehouses or granaries derives from such biblical passages as Jeremiah 50:26, where the prophet foresees the destruction of Babylon. In “Life of Michelangelo, Florentine Painter, Sculptor, and Architect,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fol. 172v, Van Mander offers an ironic anecdote about overreliance on rapen: asked to evaluate a painting “entirely appropriated from the works of others” (“die al uyt anderen gheraept was”), Michelangelo answers that he wonders what its fate will be when at the Last Judgment every person’s bodily parts are restored to them.

¹⁰⁷ Whereas in line 2 Van Mander uses the term conterfeyten (to counterfeit) for “to portray after,” here he uses it as a verbal noun to signify “copies.” Literally translated, “uyt t’conterfeyten” could be read as “from their copying.”

¹⁰⁸ Velum is Latin for “veil.”

¹⁰⁹ Poeseligh’ signifies “soft, supple” and gladdighe “smooth,” but since they are here used to argue that figures should be ample rather than lean, I have translated them respectively as “fleshy” and “sleek.” In “Life of Maarten [van] Heemskerck, artful, esteemed Painter,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 246v, Van Mander praises the flesh effect of the nudes in the master’s Bacchanal, describing them as “seer morbido, oft poeselich” (very tender, or fleshy). Appositional to poeselich, the term morbido derives from the Italian morbidezza (suppleness, tenderness). Van Mander then continues that Van Heemskerck sometimes erred in giving his figures that “characteristic Netherlandish dryness, or meagerness” (“Nederlandtsche aenhanghende dorheyt, oft magherheyt”).

¹¹⁰ Van Mander uses the West Flemish adjective rueselich (from reuzen, reuzelen), which can refer to grain, seeds, ashes, etc. and, more generally, to their property of being crumbly or granular; on this usage, see L.L. de Bo, Westvlaams idioticon (Bruges: 1873; reprint ed., Ghent: 1892), 933–934; and Miedema, ed. and trans., Van Mander, Den grondt, 2:442.

¹¹¹ Van Mander canonizes the type of swelling and tapering line perfected by Lucas van Leyden in his late prints, systematized by Cornelis Cort in his reproductive prints of the 1570s, and heightened by Hendrick Goltzius in his prints and drawings of the 1580s and (in more tempered form) of the 1590s; see W.S. Melion, “Hendrick Goltzius’s Project of Reproductive Engraving,” Art History 13 (1990): 458–487. Here and elsewhere in the Grondt, Van Mander, more than his Italian predecessors such as Vasari, pays close attention to handelen / handelingh (handling), the skilled manipulation of appliances and pigments by the master’s hand, as an index of artistic authority; in stanza 9 supra, for instance, he lists “handling” along with “disposition,” “contour,” “projection,” and “placement of light and shade” as hallmarks of a “good Master” (“goet Meester”) who commands a “good manner” (“goede manier”). As Achim Stanneck affirms, in Ganz ohne Pinsel gemalt: Studien zur Darstellung der Produktionsstrukturen niederländischer Malerei in Schilder-Boeck von Karel van Mander (1604), Europäische Hoschsulschriften 393 (Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, et al.: 2000), 112–114, Van Mander attends to the characteristic materials and handling of teyckenconst no less thoroughly than to those of “wel schilderen, oft coloreren” (painting well, or coloring). He thus treats drawing, both in theory and practice, as a self-sufficient pictorial function or, better, mode, rather than as a mere stepping stone to painting in oil colors. It is also true, however, that the sequence of materials and techniques described in chapters 2 and 12, on teyckenconst and “wel schilderen, oft coloreren” respectively, parallel the sequence in which a painting would be made, leading by steps from sketch and finished drawing to underdrawing, preparation of a cartoon, priming, and the application of paint layers; on this organizational analogy, see ibid., 105.

¹¹² The term “crayon,” as Miedema notes in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:442, derives from the French “coroyons,” coined by Petrus Gregorius, on which also see C. Corrigan, “Drawing Techniques,” in C. James, C. Corrigan, M.C. Enshaian, and M.R. Greco, Old Master Prints and Drawings: A Guide to Preservation and Conservation, trans. and ed. M.B. Cohn (Amsterdam: 1997), 73. “Pastel” is another term for a crayon composed of powdered pigment mixed with a binder such as gum Arabic or animal blue; Van Mander’s term for the binder, lijm, signifies both gluten (glue) and colx (lime), according to Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonicae linguae, 286. Stanneck convincingly speculates, in Ganz ohne Pinsel, 114, that Van Mander endorses the pastel technique precisely because it results in a drawing whose coloristic effects are so fully formed as to pass muster with any painting. This is why stanza 21 concludes by stating that nothing could resemble painting more than such a drawing, which does not simply adumbrate painting in oil colors but veritably produces it, as a father generates a child.

⁹¹¹² See “On Lucius Scipio, Brother of Scipio Africanus, Painter of Rome,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 89r.

Chapter 3: “Analogy, Proportion, or measurement of the Parts of a Human Body”

¹¹³ “Gelijckmatigheyt puere” signifies something like “pure consonance”; to align the phrase with the gist of chapter 3, which construes proportion as the relational system that mutually binds the body’s constituent parts, I have translated it as “correspondent relation.”

¹¹⁴ See Plutarch, Moralia, id est opera, exceptis vitis, reliqua, 5 vols. (Leipzig: 1796–1834), 5:117: “God was the father and framer not simply of mass or matter, but of bodily concinnity, beauty, and analogy” (“non corporis simpliciter, non molis, non materiae, sed concinnitatis in corpore, pulcritudinis, similitudinisque deum fuisse patrem et opificem”).

¹¹⁵ In De architectura, Book III, chapter 1:1, Vitruvius defines proportion—analogia, from the Greek—as a principle of symmetry and correlative measurement. He then states on this basis: “Without symmetry and proportion there can be no principles in the design of any temple; that is, if there is no precise relation between its members, as in the case of those of a well shaped man.” See Vitruvius, Ten Books of Architecture, trans. M.H. Morgan (Cambridge, MA and London: 1914), 72.

¹¹⁶ John 2:19–22.

¹¹⁷ The proportional measurements of one-tenth, one-eighth, one-sixth, and one-third derive from Vitruvius, De architectura, Book III, chapter 1:2. Vitruvius measures the forearm and the breadth of the breast as one-fourth the body’s total height, whereas Van Mander measures from the summit of the chest to the crown of the head. In stanza 6, however, returning to Vitruvius, he construes the distance from wrist to elbow, i.e., the forearm, as a module of one-fourth; see Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Morgan, 72.

¹¹⁸ On the cubit, see Vitruvius, De architectura, Book III, chapter 1:7; and Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Morgan, 74: “And further, as the foot is one sixth of a man’s height, the height of the body as expressed in number of feet being limited to six, they held that this was the perfect number, and observed that the cubit consisted of six palms or of twenty-four fingers.”

¹¹⁹ The notion that a well-proportioned man’s extended hands and feet delimit both a circle and a square wherein the fingertips and toes may be circumscribed derives from Vitruvius, De architectura, Book III, chapter 1:3; see Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Morgan, 73. As Miedema points out in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:445, Van Mander would have known the illustration of the Vitruvian man in Gualtherus Rivius, Der furnembsten, notwendigsten, der gantzen Architectur anghörigen Künst (Nuremberg: Iohan Petreius, 1547), 445.

¹²⁰ Pliny, Naturalis historia 7:17; see Pliny, Natural History, trans. H Rackham, W.H.S. Jones, and D.E. Eichholz, 10 vols. (Cambridge, MA and London: 1938–1963), II.vii:17, 557.

¹²¹ In “Life of Albert Dürer, excellent Painter, Engraver, and Architect of Nuremberg,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 208v, Van Mander cites the Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion (1528), calling it a “Daedalian work on Analogy, or Proportion,” in which “every form of measurement of the human body is truly portrayed, set forth, and taught in writing.”

¹²⁴ These measurements, as Miedema notes in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:446, partially correlate to those listed for the palm of four fingers and the finger of four grains, in Petrus Mexía’s De verscheyden lessen …, 257. By Miedema’s calculation, according to this system of ratios a quarter-foot = 1 palm = 4 fingers = 3 thumbs.

¹²² I have translated Van Mander’s “onvoeghlijcke spooren” (ill-suited spoor) as “inimitable traces,” because his imagery of young painters as hunters tracking the spoor left by their prey—namely, the masters whose works they hope to emulate—warns them against imitating what lies beyond their capacity to imitate.

¹²³ Van Mander implicitly warns against trying to emulate Dürer’s expertise, both theoretical and practical, in proportional mensuration.

¹²⁵ Whereas Vitruvius, in De architectura, Book III, chapter 1:2, describes the head as one-tenth the body’s length, most Italian art theoreticians favored a ratio of one-ninth. Van Mander instead endorses a canon of one-eighth, which he borrowed, as Miedema and Bolten demonstrate, from Cousin’s Livre de pourtraicture; see Miedema, Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:446 and Bolten, Drawing Books, 186–187. This system of measurement in turn derives, by way of Dürer, from the popular practical canon attributed by Gulielmus Philander in 1544 to Marcus Terentius Varro and thus nicknamed the [pseudo-] Varronian canon. Van Mander perhaps also consulted Giovan Paolo Lomazzo, Trattato dell’arte della pittura, scoltura, et architettura (Milan: Paolo Gottardo Pontio, 1584), chapter 9 of which enumerates the constituent elements of a male body eight heads high. Typically, however, Lomazzo relativizes this canon, devoting parallel chapters to male bodies of differing ages, ranging from ten to seven heads high. On Van Mander’s probable familiarity with Lomazzo’s L’idea del tempio della pittura (Milan: Paolo Gottardo Ponto, 1590), with specific reference to his “Ideal des synthetischen Bildes” unifying the disegnare of Michelangelo, the colorire of Titian, and the convenienza of Raphael, see Müller, Concoria Pragensis, 61.

¹²⁶ Cousin, “For the figure of the man seen from the front, or forward-facing,” in Livre de pourtraicture: “In this first figure seen from the front, we specify the measures to be observed from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, numbering eight measures of the head, with the head [numbering] four measures of the nose. Mark the measures on a perpendicular line, whereof the head is the first; the second [reaches] to the nipples; the third to the navel; the fourth to the genitals, which makes half the body; the fifth to midway down the thighs; the sixth to just below the knees; the seventh to just below the shins; the eighth to the heel and the soles of the feet.” Amongst the reasons why Van Mander preferred Cousin to contemporary exponents of the canon of nine, such as Vasari, are first, the book’s clear and practical address to ouvriers (artisans), whom Cousin teaches to draw the human body on the plane, in space, and foreshortened; second, Cousin’s conception of the illustrative plates accompanying his short texts as figural exempla comprised by varieties of drawn line—straight or curved; vertical, horizontal, diagonal, or rounded; continuous or interrupted; isolated or intersecting. He diagrams these assorted strokes in the drawing book’s final chapter, “Advertissement touchant les lignes et intersections qui sont aux figures de ce livre” (Notice concerning the lines and intersections in the figures of this book). Cousin’s attention to the lines he utilizes may have struck Van Mander as analogous to his own definition of teyckenconst as the process of “drawing, drawing over, drawing round / All that [the sense of] sight may apprehend / Within the limits of the World, / Above all, the Human form, most precious of all created things.”

¹²⁷ Note the distinction between the head and the face as units of measurement. See Cousin, “Proportion and measure of the woman seen from the front,” in Livre de pourtraicture: “The proportion and measure of the woman seen from the front are similar to those of the man, except that the width of the woman’s shoulders contains no more than two measures of the face … and the hips at the buttocks [contain] two measures of the head …; the arms, legs, and thighs must be fuller and more ample than the man’s …: similarly, [her] muscles must not be fashioned like the man’s.”

¹²⁹ Although the term ronder means “rounder,” I have translated it as “fuller” to comply with Van Mander’s implicit sense of the voluptuous qualities of female flesh.

¹²⁸ Cousin, “Proportion et mesure de l’enfant veu par le devant,” in Livre de pourtraicture: “The proportion and measure of the child contains no more than five measures of the head, that is, three from the crown of the head to the genitals, and two more comprising the thighs and legs.”

¹³¹ Vasari, Vite, ed. Milanesi, 7:270: “For he used to make his figures nine, ten, and twelve heads high, seeking only, when putting them together, that there be a certain concordance of grace in the whole, and saying that the compass must be in the eyes not the hand, since the hands labor, and the eye judges.” Van Mander incorporates the anecdote into “Life of Michelangelo Buonarrotti, Florentine, Painter, Sculptor, and Architect,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fol. 171v.

¹³⁰ Pliny, Naturalis historia 7:73; see Natural History, trans. Rackham, II.vii.16, 553.

Chapter 4: “On the Attitude, decorum, and decorous motion of a Human Figure”

¹³² On welstandt and its rich array of entwined connotations, see section 4.d., “Westandt,” of my “Introduction,” supra.

¹³³ Not only can the rational principles on which welstandt rests be deduced from the study of nature, but also, as Van Mander will presently argue in stanza 2, the reasons for deficits of figural decorum.

¹³⁴ Van Mander here distinguishes between handeling[h], which sets the figure’s form and describes its volume, and actitude, which stirs the figure to action and equilibrates it. According to the Thesaurus Theutonicae linguae, fol. v3 verso, the term roerlijck signifies mobilis (mobile) as well as movens (moving, in an affective sense).

¹³⁵ Van Mander here attaches welstandt to the decorum (bienséance) of cleaving closely to the figural rules of art.

¹³⁶ In stating that deference to nature is the sine qua non for the acquisition of welstandt in posing figures, Van Mander follows Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc2r, as Miedema observes in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:450. Rivius in turn paraphrases from the Basel edition of De pictura (1540), conflating the references to nature as the painter’s ultimate guide in Books 2:42 and 3:55–56. See Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting: A New Translation and Critical Edition, trans. R. Sinisgalli (Cambridge et al.: 2011), 62: “It is necessary, therefore, that the movements of the body are well known to the painter; I maintain that they must be obtained certainly, with great skill, from Nature. It is a very difficult [condition], in fact, to diversify, according to the almost infinite movements of the mind, also the body movements.” In addition to consulting Rivius, who translates from the Latin, Van Mander would have known the Venetian edition of 1547, translated by Lodovico Domenichi, as well as the many Albertian precepts concerning the [h]istoria incorporated by Vasari into the prefaces to the Vite’s three parts. Rivius’s treatise, ostensibly a theoretical text on architecture, consists of three parts, the first of which contains the translation of Alberti’s Book I, the third the translations of Books II and III.

¹³⁷ The Latin term corpus (body) applies to the structural elements of both a body and a building, thus implying that the (Vitruvian) rules of proportion equally pertain to architecture and the human figure.

¹³⁸ The comparison of the human figure to a column, with head and foot as capital and base, respectively, is traceable to Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc2r, which paraphrases Alberti, On Painting, ed. Sinisgalli, 64: “If now the same [individual] will rest with [his] whole body on a single foot, this foot is always set like the base of a column, vertically in respect to the head.”

¹³⁹ A more literal translation of “datmens’ in den sin imaginere” would be “that one imagine to oneself in mind.”

¹⁴⁰ Other possible readings of “vastelijcken wel considerere” are “determine carefully” or “continually / assiduously see to it.”

¹⁴¹ Stanzas 8–9 concern the disposition of the body according to the rhetorical principle of contrapposto, on which see Summers, “Contrapposto: Style and Meaning,” 336–361. Van Mander insists that the torso and limbs bend in opposing directions; equilibrium of the body in rest or in motion results from strict adherence to the principle of counterposition. As Miedema notes in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:451, stanza 8 diverges from Rivius and Alberti on this point; whereas they advise that the positions of the head and the upright body be coordinated, Van Mander states that they “should incline oppositely” (“contrarie malcander moeten helden”). See Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc2r; and Alberti, On Painting, trans. Sinisgalli, 64: “Indeed, the face of him who is standing almost always turns toward the direction in which the foot itself is pointed.”

¹⁴² Stanzas 10–14, elaborating upon the rule of contrapposto promulgated in stanzas 8–9, prescribe that figures be turned so that their limbs are mutually opposed in a swaying motion, “always crosswise” (“altijt cruyswijs”); in stanza 13, Van Mander states that he considers such an attitude so paradigmatic that its authority contravenes even the example of nature, where head and body are usually seen to turn in concert. He thus endorses the forma serpentinata ordained by Giovanni Lomazzo as the epitome of graceful motion in Trattato dell’arte, Book VI, chapter 4, “Rules of motion of the human body,” 192–196, esp. 196. However, Lomazzo unlike Van Mander construes the corpo serpentinato (serpentine body) as a thing of nature; see Trattato, 196: “Moreover, all the above-mentioned motions, with whatever others can be made, should always be represented in such a way that the body possesses something serpentine (“habbi del serpentinato”), toward which thing nature easily disposes herself.” On the figura serpentinata as an epitome of figural beauty that reconciles the antithesis of rest in motion, see D. Summers, “Maniera and Movement: The Figura Serpentinata,” Art Quarterly 35 (1972): 269–301; and idem, “The Archaeology of Fire: Pyramidal Composition and the Figura Serpentinata,” Source: Notes in the History of Art 36.3/4 (2017): 149–158. The figura serpentinata, as codified by Leonardo, perfected by Raphael, and harnessed to effects of difficultà by Michelangelo, involves rotating and counterrotating a figure’s limbs around a helical bodily axis that itself rotates. Throughout the second half of Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, which contains the biographies of living masters, Van Mander repeatedly commends figural works that consist of figure serpentinate; see, for example, “Life of Bartholomeus Sprangher, excellent Painter of Antwerp,” fol. 274r, in particular the lavish commendation of the divinities in Sprangher’s Banquet of the Gods (Wedding of Cupid and Psyche), engraved by Hendrick Goltzius (1587), “each [god] executing its action with the utmost grace” (“elck beeldt om te gracelijckste actie doende”) (Fig. 3).

¹⁴³ That Van Mander’s term for “with success” is welstandich, the adjectival form of welstandt, emphasizes how the successful picture will consist of figures whose attitudes are well ordered according to the criteria he is here defining.

¹⁴⁴ Amongst the works eulogized in “Life of Raphael Sanzio of Urbino, Painter, and Architect,” the Galatea, an epitome of the figura serpentinata, receives special praise for its exceptional grace; see Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fol. 119r. In “Life of Michelangelo Buonarruotti, Florentine Painter, Sculptor, and Architect,” Van Mander celebrates the Florentine David, which displays the master’s ability to fashion figures del serpentinato that eclipse every ancient statue; see ibid., fol. 165v: “But certainly this statue was such that robbed all other statues, modern or antique, Greek or Latin, of their fame: one might well say that the Marforio in Rome, the Tiber and the Nile in the Belvedere, the Giants of Monte Cavallo, have nothing to compare in respect of proportion, beauty, and welstandt: for in the legs of this statue, one sees a beautiful silhouette and hips that spring out; and further, one also sees wonderful grace and sweetness in the pose (standt), as well as perfect goodness in the feet, hands, face, and all the other limbs.” Amongst the antique exemplars, as Miedema opines in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:452, Van Mander must have had the Torso Belvedere in mind. Miedema also points out that he must have seen the recently completed Venus of Grotticella in the Boboli Gardens during his visit to Florence in 1573.

¹⁴⁵ I have translated “beste welstandicheyt” as “best effect,” which fits Van Mander’s sense here, although a more literal translation would be “best decorum” or “best disposition.”

¹⁴⁶ On Orpheus’s facility at modal change and his by turns “heavier strain” and “gentler touch,” see Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. F.J. Miller, ed. J.P. Goold, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA and London: 1916; reprint ed., 1984), 2:75.

¹⁴⁷ Van Mander’s term veranderinghen (adjustments) also signifies “transformations,” in the sense of “metamorphoses,” and thus connects to the example of Orpheus who sings in Book X of the Metamorphoses about the transformation of intemperate Myrrha into the myrrh tree and of wanton Atalanta into a lion.

¹⁴⁸ Van Mander paraphrases Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc2r, who cites Alberti; see De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 65.

¹⁴⁹ Miedema, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:454, draws attention to a ribald anecdote in “Life of Cornelis Ketel, excellent Painter of Gouda,” which centers on precisely this breach of decorum: upon seeing Ketel’s Danaë, “who lay naked with her legs apart,” a peasant asks the artist’s wife, “Little lady, can you do likewise? Then would you well earn your keep.” The same peasant then transgresses again by mistaking Danaë for the Virgin Mary, and an airborne Cupid for an angel. See Schilder-Boeck, fol. 280r: Van Mander implicitly characterizes decorum as a contingent virtue, since what is right for Danaë is wrong for Mary.

¹⁵⁰ Van Mander paraphrases Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc2v, which compares such figures to Morris dancers; Rivius in turn expands on Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 65–66.

¹⁵¹ The term might best be translated “forcibly dislocated.” Alberti asseverates, in ibid., that such movements are “overly violent” and lack “grace and beauty.”

¹⁵² Here and in stanza 26 Van Mander paraphrases Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc2r–v, which derives from Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 64–65.

¹⁵³ This precept goes back to the rhetorical rules of gesture, codified by Quintilian in De institutione oratoria XI.iii. 113, on which see R. Hoecker, Das Lehrgedicht des Karel van Mander: Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar nebst Anhang über Manders Geschichtskonstruktion und Kunsttheorie, Quellenstudien zur holländischen Kunstgeschichte 8 (The Hague: 1916), 412 n. 74; and Miedema, Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:455.

¹⁵⁴ To wit, Alberti and Rivius.

¹⁵⁵ Van Mander quotes Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc2v, which closely follows Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 65.

¹⁵⁶ The opening two lines of stanza 29 continue the thought begun in the closing two lines of stanza 28.

¹⁵⁷ Van Mander paraphrases Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc2v, which elaborates upon Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 65.

¹⁵⁸ On the nymph as a licentious embodiment of youth, grace, and feminine charm, see K.A.E. Enenkel, “Salmacis, Hermaphrodite, and the Inversion of Gender: Allegorical Interpretations and Pictorial Representations of an Ovidian Myth, ca. 1300–1770,” in Enenkel and A. Traninger, eds., The Figure of the Nymph in Early Modern Culture, Intersections 54 (Leiden and Boston: 2018), 53–148.

¹⁵⁹ Statuarius signifies “sculptor.” On Canachus, scultor of the bronze Apollo Philesius at Didyma, and of the accompanying stag “so lightly poised in its footprints as to allow a thread being passed underneath its feet,” its “ ‘heel’ and ‘toes’ holding to the base with alternate contacts, the whole hoof being so jointed in either part that it springs back from the impact alternately,” see Pliny, Natural History, trans. Rackham, IX.xxxiv.75, 183.

¹⁶⁰ Van Mander paraphrases Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. bbb2r, which elaborates upon Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 57.

¹⁶¹ On the painter-sculptor Demon, famed for his ability to portray every quality of the Athenian character, and whose Soldaten (soldiers, i.e., hoplites) were seen as epitomes of intense exertion, see “On Demon, Painter of Athens,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 69v. Miedema, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, identifies Du Pinet, L’histoire du monde, 2:644, as the ultimate source of stanza 33.

¹⁶² Van Mander excerpts the famous couplet from stanza 16 of the Furioso, part of the long effictio, comprising stanzas 11–16, on Alcina’s irresistible charms; see John Harington, trans., Orlando Furioso in English Heroical Verse (London: Richard Field, 1607): “She had on euerie side prepar’d a net, / If so she walke, or laugh, or sing, or stand.”

¹⁶³ Stanzas 35–40 treat age and gender as determinants of bodily decorum, with special reference to characteristic action and deportment; Van Mander’s sources were Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc2v; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 66.

¹⁶⁴ On this archetypal pairing of virginal with sensual beauty, see Pliny, Natural History, trans. Rackham, XXXV.vi.17, 273.

¹⁶⁵ Van Mander assumes that the Penelope, which Pliny praises for its portrayal of the heroine’s morality, was produced in the same manner as the famous picture painted for the temple of Lacinian Hera in the city of Girgenti, for which Zeuxis combined the “most admirable points” to be seen in five “maidens of the place”; see ibid., XXXV.xxxvi.63–64, 309. Cicero in De inventione II.i.1 identifies the latter painting as a Helen and places it not in Girgenti but in Croton.

¹⁶⁶ Van Mander refers to the well-known passage from Baldassare Castiglione, Il cortegiano, Book III, in which the Court Lady is advised to cultivate “an air of womanly sweetness in her every movement”; see The Book of the Courtier by Count Baldesar Castiglione (1528), trans. L.E. Opdycke (New York: 1901), 175.

¹⁶⁷ In faulting Zeuxis for following Homer, Van Mander paraphrases Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc2v; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 65.

¹⁶⁸ The precept to distinguish robust men from youths and elders derives from Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc2v, which expands on Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 65.

¹⁶⁹ The precept to correlate strength and temperament to active pose and gesture derives from Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. bbb2r, which paraphrases Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 57. In Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, “Life of Cornelis Cornelisz., Excellent Painter of Haarlem,” fol. 292v, Van Mander adverts to his mastery of decorum, praising Officers of the Riflemen’s Company of Haarlem (1583) for its diversified actions that convey the sitters’ respective “conditions and inclinations.”

¹⁷⁰ Van Mander refers here to the rhetorical gesture of ticking off the points of an argument, finger by finger, as one pleads one’s case.

Chapter 5: “On the Ordonnance and Invention of Histories”

¹⁷¹ J. Verdam, Middelnederlandsch handwoordenboek, ed. C.J. Ebbinge Wubben (The Hague: 1932; reprint ed., 1979), 204, supplies the terms “orde, regelmaat” as cognates for gheregheltheyt (arrangement). Throughout chapter 5, I use the term ordonnance—the arrangement or disposition of a structure’s parts—to translate ordinantie; the Dictionarium tetraglotton, fol. 98r, gives dispositio as the meaning of ordinantie, while the Thesaurus Theutonicae linguae, fols. P4 verso-P5 recto, defines it as ordonnance in French, constitutio in Latin. For inventy, the latter source, fol. Z4 verso, assigns the terms invention in French, “inventio, inventus, machinatio (artificial contrivance)” in Latin. In turn, the Dictionarium, fol. 170r, utilizes vindinghe or vont to translate inventio, terms that refer to an object or thought that is found in the sense of discovered, or devised in the sense of contrived or concocted. Van Mander treats invention as indivisible from or, better, a function of ordonnance: the disposition of a picture’s constituent parts—its figures first of all, but also its other elements, not least the features comprised by the natural setting wherein the figures find themselves—is the chief expression of the schilder’s powers of invention. Underlying this treatment of inventive disposition is his conviction, voiced in the Preface to the Grondt, fol. * vi r, that the well-disposed picture must demonstrate “singular mastery in our Arts,” by which Van Mander means figural History combined with the verscheydenheden (varieties of pictorial subject matter): Animals, Kitchens, Fruits, Flowers, Landscapes, Buildings, Perspectives, Cartouches, Grotesques, Night Scenes, Fires, Portraits after the life, Sea Pieces, Ships, et al. History on this account can be construed as one of these varieties, but the Grondt as a whole, in particular its various chapters dealing with attitudes, affects, reflections, landscapes, and animals, makes patently clear that History, in that it integrates figures with these other genera of schilderconst, constitutes the preeminent subject category precisely because of its congruent variety. The close association of invention with disposition was codified by Vasari in his “Life of Raphael” (Vite, ed. Milanesi, 4:375–376), the crucial passage from which Van Mander paraphrased in his “Life of Raphael Sanzio of Urbino, Painter and Architect,” fol. 121r. Here he collapses inventie into the process of by-een-voeginge (compiling, assembling, piecing together), with a view to cementing Raphael’s reputation as the finest of inventors: “And Raphael, realizing that excellence in Painting consists not solely in fashioning nudes, found a wide-open field wherein to advance in many things: as in Invention and the piecing together of Histories, making the same neither confounding nor confusing with too much, nor miserable and poor with too little. He also exerted himself to enrich his work with circumstances of every sort, with ornaments (bywercken, i.e., corollary or supplementary works) that give pleasure to the beholder: especially beautiful, graceful faces of women, children, youths, and elders, giving them all the movements they need to function; also fine veils, trains, clothing, and jewelry, until it be all but unknown what more beauty to confer; horses in flight, the cruelty of soldiers, landscapes, varied weather, perspectives, and much like this. Finally (to speak briefly) I say this: that Raphael was graceful in all things, familiar with everything or universal, and knew how to bring to pass whatever a painter needs to be considered good.”

¹⁷² On ordeningh, a cognate of ordineringe, from ordineren—“ordonner, mettre en ordre” in French, “componer, constituere” in Latin—see Thesaurus Theutonicae linguae, fol. q1 recto.

¹⁷⁴ Here and in stanzas 3 and 4, Van Mander draws an analogy, ultimately borrowed from Alberti, between bodily consonance, the formation of a body from its coalescent limbs, and pictorial composition, the formation of a picture from its constituent figures and setting. On this analogy, the connate terms of which are comprised by ordinantie (ordonnance), see note 7 infra, and on the term composity, note 6 infra. On Van Mander’s use of composity to designate ordonnance of the picture as a whole, see P. Taylor, “Composition in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art,” in Taylor and F. Quiviger, Pictorial Composition from Medieval to Modern Art (London and Turin: 2000), 146–171, esp. 150–151.

¹⁷³ A more literal translation of “verstandts doorgronden” would be “profundity of understanding.”

¹⁷⁵ Van Mander here switches from Schilder to the adjectival noun Pictoriale, a derivative from the late Latin adjective pictorius (pictorial). The Latin anticipates the preponderance of ancient examples of good ordonnance invoked in stanzas 69 to 87. Here my use of the term “picturer” is meant to register Van Mander’s shift in usage.

¹⁷⁶ Composity derives from the Latin term compositio. According to the Dictionarium tetraglotton, fol. 62v, compositio nominalizes the verb compono which signifies “composer, mettre ensemble proprement (put together properly), assembler” in French, “tsamen setten, tsamen stellen (put together, construct, fabricate), by een voeghen (assemble, piece together), schicken (coordinate)” in Dutch.

¹⁷⁷ The notion that a pictorial narrative, i.e., an historia (in Dutch, historie), consists of concatenating elements—mobile figures that enact a coherent story, their bodies formed from congruous limbs, the limbs formed from congruous surfaces—comes from Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. bbb1r–v, by way of Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 55. Alberti argues that such a history, its every part comprised by the action of the whole, conforms to the structural principle of nature herself; see ibid., 77.

¹⁷⁸ Van Mander’s immediate sources for the canon of seven motions were Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc2r; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 64. Their source was Quintilian, who states in Institutio oratoria XI.iii.105 that though six motions are commonly recognized—namely, forward or backward, right or left, up or down—circular motion, i.e., turning, must be added as the seventh; see The Orator’s Education, trans. D.A. Russell, 5 vols. (Cambridge, MA: 2001), 11:139.

¹⁷⁹ The admonition to give figures room to move, not cramming them into the corners, comes from Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. bbb4r; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 59. Taylor points out, in “Composition in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art,” 155 n. 39, that Van Mander differs from his sources in referring explicitly to the panel as a pictorial field delimited by a frame—the perck (panel, in the sense of demarcated enclosure)—rather than to a discrete building or chamber situated within the fictive space of the image.

¹⁸⁰ On the importance of reading to painters of history, see Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ddd1v; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 76–77. Alberti stresses that the painter must reconcile what he has read with what he observes in nature; see ibid., 77: “Let the principle be that all levels of learning must be claimed from Nature herself.”

¹⁸¹ The Thesaurus Theutonicae linguae, fol. O1 recto, equates imaginacy, from the Latin term imaginatio, with fantasie and provides as further cognates the Dutch terms beeldenis and beeldinghe (fol. D3 verso). That the latter terms also signify pictorial and sculptural images, i.e., “icon, depicta figura, statua,” speaks to the fact that picturing, sculpting, and imagining are linked image-making processes. The Dictionarium tetraglotton, fol. 145r, likewise underscores this connection, defining imaginare as “Iemants ghelijckenisse oft schijn representeren / ghelijck eenen spiegel doet” (To represent someone’s likeness or appearance, as a mirror does). Van Mander’s locution, “ws sins imaginacy,” might also be translated as “imagination [issuing from] your sense,” or alternatively, “imagination by your will / desire / inclination.”

¹⁸² The neologism ghestenteert, as Miedema notes in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:466, derives from the Italian term stentato (labored, overwrought). One of Van Mander’s chief sources, Lodovico Dolce’s L’Aretino, ovvero Dialogo della pittura, utilizes the term to disparage Michelangelo’s unvarying love of conspicuous difficulty, contrasting it to Raphael’s “marvellous variety” and “facile ease” (“varietà tanto mirabile” and “facilità”), which make his pictures appear as if “produced without thought, neither labored nor overwrought” (“fatte senza pensarvi, non affaticate, ne istentate”). On the antithesis of difficultà and facilità, see M. Roskill, Dolce’s Aretino and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento (Princeton: 1968), 176–177, 229.

¹⁸³ Van Mander circles back to nature, even at the cartoon stage of a painting, thus emphasizing that ordonnance must have a natural appearance. The precept originates with Alberti; see De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 78–79:

¹⁸⁴ The term welstan[d]t, as noted above, is often used by Van Mander to refer to harmony or concinnity of a figure’s, a landscape’s, or a picture’s parts; more generally, the term can also signify “fineness of form.”

¹⁸⁵ Stoffacy (staffage) might be translated more neutrally as “elements”; the term is a nominative derivation from stofferen, which the Thesaurus Theutonicae linguae, fol. Ee1 recto, defines as “garnir de quelque chose” (garnish with some thing) in French, “munire, vel suppeditare” (fortify, secure the borders, or supply, furnish in abundance) in Latin. Stoffacy is also an abstract of “stof, materie” (stuff, matter, material), which the Thesaurus defines as “materia, vel materies,” i.e., the “matter / material out of which a thing is made.” Combined with Van Mander’s use of the term to describe figures and things that bracket a view into the middle or far distance where some key protagonist is set, these linguistic roots serve to underscore the dual function of staffage—as framing device and as ornament. Stanzas 12 and 13 also introduce the topic of the inextricable relation between the ordonnance of history and that of landscape, which he further develops in stanzas 46–58 and chapter 8. Ulrike Kern, in Light and Shade in Dutch and Flemish Art (Turnhout: 2014), 51, makes the important observation that in applying the term welstandt to the method (or, better, mode) of historical ordonnance recounted in stanzas 11 and 12, Van Mander was expanding the term’s scope to include the illusion of a distant view. I construe stanzas 11–12 as a first foray into the topic of the connection between history and landscape later developed at greater length in stanzas 45–59, on which see section 6 of my “Introduction” and note 73 infra.

¹⁸⁶ Van Mander uses welstandt here in the auxiliary sense of fine-featured, harmonious, opportune.

¹⁸⁷ The emphasis Van Mander places on “seeing into or through” (“insien, oft doorsien”) has to do with his sense that a persuasive pictorial fiction will result when the beholder’s eyes are compelled to enter the space of the image, passing from foreground to background by way of some scene that awaits to be viewed in the middle distance. Here and elsewhere in chapter 5, Van Mander stresses the importance of mobilizing the viewer’s gaze. As Miedema observes in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:468, there appears to be no counterpart to this emphasis on optical articulation elsewhere in contemporary art theoretical writing.

¹⁸⁹ This is one of several places in chapter 5 where Van Mander imputes the success of a history picture to the landscape it comprises, in particular to the way the figures inhabit and open out onto their setting.

¹⁸⁸ Van Mander’s term ploegen (to plough, i.e., pierce or penetrate) suggests that an optical furrow or corridor is being opened up, through which the eyes may pass into the middle and far distance. Significantly, ploughing is also a term evocative of landscape.

¹⁹⁰ The term achter-uyten, coined by Van Mander, signifies “backgrounds” but also connotes extension of the gaze beyond the threshold set by the nominal background.

¹⁹² On leaving intervals of space empty of figures and things, see Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. bbb4r–v; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 60.

¹⁹¹ As Miedema points out in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:468–469, Van Mander was the first writer in Dutch to utilize the term groepen to refer to clustering of figures as a key instrument of ordonnance. Vasari uses gruppo in this way throughout the Vite, and Van Mander, following him, introduces variants of groep—“groeppe, groppe, gruppe”—to praise the ordering of figural groups in Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari and Michelangelo’s Battle of Cascina; see Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fols. 117r and 166r. Amongst the Netherlanders, Bartholomeus Sprangher is praised for his Wedding Feast of Cupid and Psyche (1585), engraved by Hendrick Goltzius, and Cornelis Ketel for his terracotta Parable of the Wedding Feast, comprising four entwined figures; see ibid., Book IV, fols. 274r and 277v.

¹⁹³ In “Life of Jacopo Tintoretto, Venetian Painter,” in ibid., fol. 177v, Van Mander commends the “witty and merry assemblage of the ordonnance of his histories, excellently varied and beyond the common usage of all other [painters].”

¹⁹⁴ Van Mander’s phrase “niet en zijn insightighe ganghen” (literally, “there are no observable passageways”) faults Michelangelo for providing no spatial corridors along which the eyes may traverse the image, from the foreground to the distant background. About the Last Judgment Van Mander writes in “Life of Michelangelo Buonarotti, Florentine Painter, Sculptor, and Architect,” in ibid., fol. 170r, that “he attended solely to the beauty, perfect proportion, and form of the human figures, in every sort of attitude, herein surpassing everyone else, while leaving to one side cheerful coloring and a thousand other pleasantries that other painters practice for the sake of pleasing decorum, along with a measure of graceful invention in the ordering of his histories.”

¹⁹⁵ I have translated fatsoen as “facture” since the term signifies both vorm (form) and manier van doen (method of action, execution). A more periphrastic translation might be “form and action.”

¹⁹⁶ A more literal translation of “s’Wets ordinanty” would be “ordinance / ordonnance of the Law”: that ordinanty can signify both “ordinance” and “ordonnance” confers on the term the connotation of a precept.

¹⁹⁷ The use of ordineren in this context clearly signifies that the practice of ordonnance, pace Michelangelo, encompasses not only figures but also objects and environs.

¹⁹⁸ The reference, in stanza 19, line 4, to welstandicheyt (seductive charm) as an effect of variety comprised by copious ordonnance reveals that welstandt, which Van Mander construes in chapter 4 as the chief characteristic of a well-formed figure, may likewise be appreciated as a property of the well-ordered or, better, well-ordonnanced historie. He devotes more than twenty stanzas to the allied themes of copiousness and variety, on which see Taylor, “Composition in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art Theory,” 152.

¹⁹⁹ This apothegmatic statement is a commonplace distilled from Augustine’s famous paean to the beauty of creation, in Confessions XXII.24, which celebrates natural variety as an expression of divine beauty. The comparison of the colors and perfumes of flowers to the splendor of the sun, moon, and stars also stems from this passage. In stanza 21, which completes the argument of stanza 20, variety as the chief criterion of beauty is seen equally to apply to beelden (human figures). Van Mander circles back to the topic of verscheydenheyt (variety) as the principal source of beauty, in Grondt, chapter 8, stanza 23, where he enjoins the painter of landscape to imitate nature’s variety of color and form (“verw’ als wesen”). As the beauty of history issues from the natural variety of its figures and setting, so the beauty of landscape results from the variety of its constituent parts. This is to say that Van Mander places the beauty of history on par with that of landscape, applying a comparable criterion to both subject categories, and thus giving them equal weight amongst the verscheydenheden available to the painter, i.e. “Animals, Kitchens, Fruits, Flowers, Landscapes, Buildings, Perspectives, Cartouches, Grotesques, Night Scenes, Fires, Portraits after the life, Sea Pieces, and Ships.” Verscheydenheyt as a criterion of history and landscape is comprised by this encompassing notion of the verscheydenheden, each of which the painter who heeds Van Mander’s advice must strive to make as varied as possible. The mixed formats of history and landscape he particularly endorses—the history in a landscape, and the landscape sown with small historical scenes—are evaluated first and foremost according to the benchmark of verscheydenheyt. The most various of all pictorial types, as Van Mander argues in the Preface to the Grondt, is the historie that is historical in a major rather than minor key: rather than merely featuring human figures (the more restricted sense of “history”), it encapsulates the full range of the verscheydenheden. On the verscheydenheden, see “Voor-reden,” fol. * vi recto; on Van Mander’s equivalent treatment of history and landscape and his refusal to distinguish them respectively as ergon and parergon, see B. Bakker, Landscape and Religion from Van Eyck to Rembrandt, trans. D. Webb (London and New York:2011; reprint ed., 2016), 182–185, esp. 183–184.

²⁰⁰ In calling for an abundance of various things, Van Mander, like Rivius and Alberti, endorses the principle of varietas in copia, advising the painter to leaven copiousness with variety. The Dictionarium tetraglotton, fol. 75v, renders copia as “abondance ou affluence de quelque chose que ce soit” (abundance or affluence of anything whatsoever) in French, “overvloet van eenich dinc” (plenitude of some thing) in Dutch, and associates copiousness with the acquisition of “pouvoir et puissance” (power and strength) and “macht, moghe, gewalt” (power, capacity, and force). As one of the most desirable effects of history painting, variety issues first and foremost from a full complement of figures that enact variations on the seven canonical motions, which in turn convey various affects, as Alberti states in De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 60. Crucially, Alberti then avers that all the historia’s components, not just the figures, are comprised by the canon of variety, a rule Van Mander applies throughout chapters 5 and 8, “On Landscape”; see ibid., 66–67: “Let these [occurrences], briefly analyzed concerning the movement of living beings, suffice. Now, instead, because I also think that in a painting of inanimate [objects] all those movements which we have spoken of are necessary, I maintain that one must say under what condition [they] develop from there. Certainly, the represented movements of the hair, leaves, and of clothes give a pleasing impression in a painting.” The comparison of history to a banquet table also comes from Alberti who, citing Varro’s Historia Augusti, Verus (Iuli Capitolini) V.1, compares a well-disposed historia to a well-ordered banquet at which no more than nine guests are seated comfortably; see ibid., 60.

²⁰¹ On the seven motions, see stanza 4 supra. As Leesberg notes in New Hollstein: Karel van Mander, xxxiii, these seven motions are variously exemplified in the series of Twenty Gods, designed by Van Mander, engraved by Nicolaus Braeu and Cornelis Drebbel, and published by Hendrick Goltzius in 1598, on which, see ibid., 138–159, nos. 122–141 (Figs. 12 & 13).

²⁰² The variations on the seven axes of motion discussed in stanzas 21 and 22 are enumerated in Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. bbb4v; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 64–65.

²⁰³ Van Mander coins the terms Ordineerders, which I have translated literally as “makers of Ordonnance.”

²⁰⁴ Scopus, in Latin, is the target at which one shoots or the goal one strives to reach.

²⁰⁵ That the scopus or “Centre punct” (central point), far from determining the position of corollary figures, instead receives emphasis from the way they encircle and direct their attention toward it, goes hand in hand with the admonition in stanza 11 to position foreground figures at the sides of the picture, from where they function as repoussoirs, leaving the middle and far distance unencumbered. Van Mander elaborates upon Alberti’s recommendation that the painter incorporate depicted spectators who mediate between the picture and its beholders; see De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 63: “It seems opportune then that in the historia these is someone who informs the spectators of the things that unfold; or invites with the hand to show … or indicates a danger or another [attribute] over there to observe …. It is necessary, in the end, that also all [the occurrences] that these painted [characters] made with the spectators and with themselves concur to realize and explain the historia.” Miedema, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:472, finds no art theoretical precedents for Van Mander’s view of the importance of figures that ring the scopus. Kern, Light and Shade, 51, argues that whereas stanzas 11–12 associate welstand[t] with the provision of a spatial view, i.e., an insien or doorsien, stanza 23 identifies an alternative mode of well-ordered historical composition, focusing on foreground figures constitutive of a scopus. Although Van Mander is indeed talking about a scopus, it becomes clear elsewhere in chapter 5 (as also from his prints, drawings, and paintings) that the scopus can be situated as well in a picture’s middle-ground or distant background. In fact, it is stanzas 28–31 on “simple” historical construction that delineate the alternative historical mode, on which see note 41 infra.

²⁰⁶ This call for an abundance of figures varied by age and sex, along with animals of all kinds, paraphrases Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. bbb4r; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 59–60.

²⁰⁷ Fantasije is the nominative of the verb fantaseren, which the Thesaurus Theutonica linguae, fol. O1 recto, defines as phantastiquer in French, “phantasticari, imaginari” in Latin. Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London: Adam Islip, 1611; rep. ed., Hildesheim and New York: 1970) renders phantasie: “A fancie, or fantasie, a conceit, an imagination.” The reference to the harmony that results from an abundance of varied things implies that they will be deployed in a mutually complementary way, i.e., fitted to the narrative subject, whatever it might be.

²⁰⁹ In “Life of Leon Battista Alberti,” in Vite, ed. Milanesi, 2:537, Vasari gives 1481 as the date of Cosimo Bartoli’s Italian translation of De pictura.

²⁰⁸ The reference is to Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. bbb4r; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 59–60.

²¹⁰ On the Velum, Latin for “veil,” see chapter 2, stanza 18.

²¹¹ A more literal translation of the final line would be: “And singly they rejoice to do well with little” (“En in’t wynich eensaem, weldoen verblijden”). Whereas the previous stanzas placed a premium on copia and verscheydenheyd, stanzas 28–31 digress on the alternative pictorial mode of simplicity; however, at stanza 32 and thereafter, Van Mander resumes course, expatiating upon the many advantages of painting in a manner both copious and diverse. His discussion on making the most of limited means originates from Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. bbb4v; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 60, which praises the dignity to be derived from populating the historia with a scarcity of figures. In both Rivius and Alberti, this kind of sobriety is treated as an exception to the rule of copious variety, which is sanctioned for the hold it exercises on the viewer’s attention and its power of eliciting consent; see ibid.: “It happens, in fact, that not only the observers linger in examining objects, but that the painter’s richness also gains the consent [of the people].” The “Life of Jan and Hubrecht van Eyck, brothers and Painters from Maseyck,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 200v, concludes with a veritable hymn to the copious variety on show in the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb from the Ghent Altarpiece; lauding the panel for its contravention of Pliny’s dictum that no painter could portray faces as variously as does nature, Van Mander then adds: “In the landscape there are many foreign, exotic trees: small plants can be recognized, and the blades of grass are subtle and precise: so, too, one could hardly count the little hairs on the figures, in the horses’ tails and manes, which are so finely and subtly executed that it astonishes every artist; indeed the whole work amazes and pleases in the beholding.” Simple history, in that it focuses on figural representation, is constitutive of one of the specialized subject categories enumerated at the close of the Preface to the Grondt; this is first in the list of what, in the generation following Van Mander, would be codified as genres of Dutch and Flemish art: “beelden en Historien.” By contrast, the copious mode of historical construction, in that it can potentially encompass several or even all of the specialties denominated by the term verscheydenheden (varieties)—not only figures but also architecture, animals, landscape, etc., or, as Van Mander puts it, “all that Nature most readily offers” (“t’ghene Natuere meest aenbiedt”)—constitutes a higher order or nobler genus of history, as chapter 5 of the Grondt makes apparent. This is the kind of historie already exemplified by Jan and Hubert van Eyck in the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, on which see “Life of Jan and Hubert van Eyck,” fols. 200r–202r.

²¹² Just as the term eensaem, in line 1, signifies “simple” in the sense of “single” or “solitary,” so eensaemheyt, in line 6, means “simplicity” in the sense of “singleness” or “solitariness.”

²¹³ A more literal translation of Personnages would be “personages” or “personae.” The analogy to playwrights who favored a small complement of actors is borrowed from Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. bbb4v; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 60.

²¹⁴ On Varro’s paradigmatic banquet, see note 30 supra.

²¹⁵ Van Mander lists various Ovidian subjects appropriate to history in a copious rather than simple mode. In Wtlegghingh, fol. 67v, Van Mander calls Flora “Mother of the Winds” who accompany the dawn, sallying forth with her.

²¹⁶ Adonis was transformed by Venus into the anemone. In Wtlegghingh, fol. 88v, Adonis is associated with the Venusian fecundity of summer that causes fields to green and to bloom.

²¹⁷ Crocus was transformed by the gods into the flower that bear his name; Smilax into the bindweed.

²¹⁸ Ajax, like Hyacinth before him, was transformed by the gods into the purple hyacinth.

²¹⁹ The commonplace of eyes grazing like bees in a field of flowers occurs in two loci classici: in Seneca’s Epistulae morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius) LXXXIV.3, the bees exemplify the poet’s emulative transformation of other poets’ pollen into inimitable nectar, whereas in Macrobius’s Saturnalia I.5, they stand for distinctio, a method of imitation that aggregates discrete sources, reveling in their diversity. Van Mander’s emphasis on the beauty of Pictura’s garden with its many places, which he compares to the distinctive savors of multifarious dishes, betrays his strong interest in Macrobian distinctio. On Macrobius as source of the imitative practice underlying the commonplace-book model of education, see A. Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford: 1996), 14.

²²⁰ Here the term eensamer (simpler, more solitary) clearly refers to a subject arranged with a minimum of ornament—hence, “more austere.”

²²¹ The reference to figures above, below, and at the sides augments the earlier remarks, in stanzas 11 and 23, about ringing the scopus with onlookers and placing foreground figures at either side, from where they guide the viewer’s eyes toward a crucial scene in the middle-ground. That Van Mander compares these foreground figures to wares displayed on high and low shelves, or laterally, speaks to the correlative, as opposed to corollary, visual interest he grants them: like a peddler’s stock they are there to be seen, even if the viewer’s eyes, trained on the scopus, ultimately look beyond them. They contribute in no uncertain terms to the effect of copious variety after which he enjoins the schilder to strive. The trope of marketing, when viewed in light of Van Mander’s emphasis in chapter 1, stanzas 5 and 73–74, on selling one’s art, identifies figural enrichment of ordonnance as a crucial component of a picture’s marketability. By specifically mentioning trees and hills, and stone steps, he enlists landscape and architecture as key instruments whereby to vary ordonnance. Moreover, the analogy of figures to things—commercial wares evocative of the keuckens (kitchen pieces) described in “Life of Pieter Aertsen, excellent Painter of Amsterdam,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 243v—suggests that still life is another touchstone for making a well-ordered history picture. Indeed, in ibid., fol. 244r, Aertsen is praised for the ingenuity he showed in populating his large religious panels with “architecture and perspectives,” “animals and other such things,” and in “adorning the figures with exotic ornaments” (“zijn beelden seer vreemdlijck cierende”). In Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:476–479, Miedema draws attention to the sui-generis nature of the comparison between a history painter and a stallholder hawking his merchandise, plausibly suggests that Taddeo Zuccaro’s frescoes in Cappella Mattei in Santa Maria della Consolazione may exemplify the pictorial type that prompted Van Mander’s thoughts on multifigural ordonnance, and adduces Hendrick Goltzius’s Passion series in the manner of Lucas van Leyden (1596–1598) as picture-perfect exempla of the “market-stall composition.” On this series, see M. Leesberg, comp., The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts 1450–1700: Hendrick Goltzius, ed. H. Leeflang, 4 vols. (Ouderkerk aan den IJssel and Amsterdam: 2012), 1:45–69, nos. 17–28. Further examples are Goltzius’s Adoration of the Magi of ca. 1593 from the Life of the Virgin, on which see ibid., 1:20, 27; and Karel van Mander’s Judgment of Midas of 1589, engraved by Nicolaes Clock, on which see Leesberg, comp., Karel van Mander, 162–163. Van Mander would have encountered works such as Taddeo’s during his three-year sojourn in Rome (1574–1577). On the practical value of the kind of ordinantie purveyed in stanza 34, see E. van de Wetering, Rembrandt: The Painter Thinking (Amsterdam and Berkeley: 2016), 133–134.

²²² Van Mander’s term for comic actors—Comedianten—derives from the poetic usage of the chambers of rhetoric. The Thesaurus Theutonicae linguae, fol. K1 verso, define comediespel (comic play) as a “poem or play wherein the common course of the life of the world is shown” (“ghedicht oft spel daer den ghemeynen loop des werelts leven inne ghetoont wert”). In his paintings, drawings, and prints, Van Mander consistently followed his precept concerning the higher placement of primary figures; see, for instance, the Judgment of Midas, cited in note 50 supra. He diverged from this usage to heighten the effect of peripeteia in the Conversion of St. Paul of 1595–1596, engraved by Jacques de Gheyn II or Zacharias Dolendo, or the effect of comic disorder in Peasant Kermis of 1593, engraved by Noclaes Clock, on which see Leesberg, comp. Karel van Mander, 86–87, 132–133, nos. 86 and 118.

²²³ The criteria of graceful motion are set forth in chapter 4: in stanza 14, the counterbalancing turn of head and torso; in stanza 28, movement that even when energetic is neither strenuous nor extravagant; in stanza 29, the swiveling curves of the figura serpentinata; in stanza 34, relating to Ariosto’s Alcina, with a view to instilling love, the functional coordination of the figure’s every action. Gathered together, these criteria identify grace with sinuous, unforced movement, balanced antithesis, and concordant decorum of use.

²²⁴ Van Mander’s terminology “t’Gemhaels beschouwer” derives from the German Gemälde (picture, painting).

²²⁵ On mediating figures as conveyers of affect, see Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc1v; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 63.

²²⁶ In “Life of Jacopo Pontormo, Painter,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fol. 148r, his infamous Last Judgment is faulted for its “confused ordonnance, full of entanglements (haspelinghe) and nudes undifferentiated by flesh tint or changes of face”; in “Life of Jacopo Tintoretto,” in ibid., fol. 178v, his Last Judgment is likewise impugned for its “deviceful ordonnance and invention, unguided by measured and comprehensible drawing,” and for the “attention paid solely to the whole, not its discrete parts, in bodying forth of the confusion, tumult, and horror of that last day.”

²²⁷ On the related precept against encumbering a naked Corpus, see chapter 4, note 17 supra.

²²⁸ See chapter 2, stanza 11.

²²⁹ Here and elsewhere in the Grondt, Van Mander uses the color brown (bruyn) to stand for deep shadow. In advising painters to avoid sharp demarcations of light and dark, he paraphrases Vasari who champions unione (tonal gradation of tints) in his extended preface on painting, in Vite, ed. Milanesi, 1:180. On this stanza, see Kern, Light and Shade, 31, where “herde bruyn” is translated as “unmodulated dark colours” and “graeuwen” as “half-tints.” As she plausibly suggests, Van Mander likely associates the massing of shadows with the gathering of figures rather than with tonal convergence as an end in itself.

²³⁰ “D’Italy Mezza tinten” (middle-tints of Italy) likely refers to the relief effects achieved in the chiaroscuro prints of masters such as Antonio da Trento, Niccolò Vincentino, and Ugo da Carpi after Parmigianino, on which see Takahatake, The Chiaroscuro Woodcut in Renaissance Italy, 98–163, and chapter 2, note 17 supra. As Miedema notes in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:481–482, Van Mander also exemplifies this practice of tonal gradation in “Life of Polidoro of Caravaggio, Painter in Lombardy,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fol. 128v: “Polidoro employed such discretion, advancing flat lights in a few foreground groups, and letting his gray[s] blend increasingly into brown, losing themselves in each other: also allowing the background figures with their middle-tints and gray[s] to recede, while bringing others to the fore.”

²³¹ On Andromeda, chained to a seaside cliff where a monster sent by Juno threatened to devour her, see Wtlegghingh, fol. 41r.

²³² See Horace, “De arte poetica,” in Satires, Epistles, The Art of Poetry, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough (Cambridge, MA: 1926), 451: “ ‘Painters and poets,’ you say, ‘have always had an equal right in hazarding anything.’ ”

²³³ The term byvoechselen (adjuncts, additions, appurtenances)—byvueginghe in the Thesaurus Theutonicae linguae, fol. I3 recto—signifies “adionction, adioustement” in French, “adiunctio, addition, adiectio” in Latin. Van Mander uses it to mean something like an enriching ornament that adds verscheydenheyd (variety) to the historical ordonnance.

²³⁴ Namely, Naples, originally known as Partenope. Van Mander’s example, taken from Jacopo Sannazzaro’s Arcadia (Naples: Sigismund Mayr, 1504), consists of a long paraphrase, fifteen stanzas long, comprising most of the third prose chapter; see Arcadia and Piscatorial Eclogues, trans. R. Nash (Detroit: 1966), 41–46. This chapter, which follows the “Eclogue of Montano and Uranio” and precedes the “Eclogue of Galicio,” takes the form of an extended ekphrasis: the narrator and his fellows visit the shrine of the Arcadian tutelary goddess Pales, where, upon crossing the threshold, they see hanging above them an intricate landscape painting. For a fuller discussion of Van Mander’s clever paraphrase from Sannazzaro, see section 6 of my introductory essay, supra.

²³⁵ Carpinus is a species of maple known as the hornbeam maple.

²³⁶ Charged by Jove to guard the herds of King Admetus of Thessaly, Apollo, playing upon the seven-reed syrinx, is distracted by thoughts of love and fails to see Mercury stealing cattle from the Messenian fields; see Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Miller, 1:107–109.

²³⁷ On Battus, whose venality prompted him to betray the theft of Admetus’s cattle by Mercury, who in punishment turned him into stone, see Wtlegghingh, fol. 20r. Van Mander’s source was Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Miller, 1:109.

²³⁸ On Mercury’s deception of many-eyed Argus, whom Juno had set to guard Jove’s lover Io disguised as a heifer, see Wtlegghingh, fol. 9r. Van Mander’s source was Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Miller, 1:49–53.

²⁴⁰ Cerrus is Latin for a species of oak, sometimes called “Turkey Oak.”

²³⁹ Beloved by the goddess of the moon, the shepherd Endymion was made to sleep eternally, his youthful beauty perpetually intact; on Endymion and Luna, see Wtlegghingh, fol. 64r. Van Mander’s source was probably a mythographic treatise, e.g., Vincenzo Cartari, Le imagini de i Dei de gli Antichi (Venice: Francesco Ziletti, 1580), 107.

²⁴¹ On the nymph Oenone, wife of Paris, who carved her name into the trunks of beeches to declare his supposedly undying love, see Ovid, Heroides, trans. Showerman, 57–69, esp. 59.

²⁴² On the judgment of Paris or, rather, on his injudiciousness in allowing himself to be tricked by Venus, whose “gift” of Helen will cause the destruction of Troy, the chief sources are Iliad XXIV.25–30, Ovid, Heroides XVI, and Apuleius, Golden Ass X.33, which includes a famously cynical assessment of his verdict; see Apuleius, Metamorphoses, trans. J.A. Hanson, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: 1996), 2:231–233: “Why are you so surprised, you cheap ciphers—or should I say sheep of the courts, or better still, vultures in togas—if nowadays all jurors hawk their verdicts for a price, since at the world’s beginning an adjudication between gods and men was corrupted by beauty’s influence, and a country shepherd, chosen judge on the advice of great Jupiter, sold the first verdict for a profit of pleasure, resulting in the destruction of himself and his entire race?” Van Mander was intimately familiar with Les XXIII. Livres de l’Iliade d’Homère, Prince des Poëtes Grecs (Paris: Lucas Breyer, 1580), which contains Hugues Salel’s translation of the first ten books and Amadis Jamyn’s of the last thirteen. His own translation of the first twelve books into Dutch, De eerste XII. Boecken vande Ilyadas (Haarlem: Adriaen Rooman, 1611), was taken from this edition. In Wtlegghingh, fol. 29v, he comments on Venus’s deceptive nature by quoting Homer’s description of the zone of Venus: she is the mistress of “geveynsde zeden” (feigned, deceptive mores), the “verleyder der gemoeden” (seductress of hearts). Wtlegghingh, fol. 31r, also briefly recounts how Venus gathers a triumphal train of divinities—Hymeneus, Cupid, Erotes, and the Graces—upon winning the apple from Paris. Van Mander, who cites Lilio Gregorio Giraldi and Vincenzo Cartari in “On Venus,” consulted the chief mythographic handbooks: in addition to Giraldi’s Historia de deis gentium and Cartari’s Imagini de gli dei delli Antichi, also Giovanni Boccaccio’s Genealogia deorum and Natale Conti’s Mythologia, on which see J. Mulryan, “Venus, Cupid, and the Italian Mytholographers,” Humanistica Lovaniensia 23 (1979): 31–41.

²⁴³ On the Scopus, see stanza 23 supra. The type of ordonnance licensed by Van Mander’s ekphrasis, its scopus forestalled to the end of a circuitous route punctuated by numerous intriguing divagations, each of which commands attention, differs radically from the kind of centralized composition enjoined by Lomazzo in Trattato, 282: “One ought chiefly to take note of the point from which all the lines derive, going thither from their place on the circumference, as in the case of the triangle, square, circle, and all other forms. And the point is properly the principal figure which is positioned at the center of the above-mentioned forms …. In the triangle, [for example,] which has three parts, the figures positioned over each of these must look equally toward the point, just as in the square which has four corners, and finally the circle: however many figures as they wish to place round about, all must look toward the point, as if it were the principal cause and premier subject wherefrom all the other parts derive. For this reason, the main figures will be placed in the middle, and all the other parts round about.” By contrast, Van Mander, who undoubtedly knew this passage, recommends that the number of corollary elements be greatly amplified and varied, and perhaps more importantly, he interprets nel mezzo to mean not at the midpoint of a foreground wherein figures are disposed within a triangle, square, or circle, but rather, at a distant point somewhere in the middle ground, relatively far from the front of the image. Although in stanza 23 supra, he adheres to Lomazzo’s precept that the flanking figures should cast their gaze in the direction of the key figure[s], he not only situates these figures more distantly but also, in stanzas 46–58, makes them harder to spot, greatly deferring their final discovery. He maintains the rule of decorum, i.e., thematic coherence, but has a higher tolerance than did Lomazzo or his fellow theorist Giovan Battista Armenini for the dispersal of visual interest throughout the historie. See, for instance, Armenini’s injunction that the principal figures be conspicuous, in De’ veri precetti della pittura (Ravenna: Francesco Tibaldini, 1586/87), 144, as cited in L. Pericolo, Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative: Dislocating the Istoria in Early Modern Painting (London and Turnhout: 2011), 97–98: “Therefore, the main figures should be composed with colors that are naturally more beautiful, attractive, and brighter, these [figures] being of more importance than the others for they practically serve as the ground [campo] for the entire work …, and since it is necessary to make the other figures on their sides of a lesser size, in accordance with the configuration of the pictorial plane, they [also] ought to lose their colors and dim little by little.” As Pericolo puts it, the pivotal figure is designed to “reverberate its sense upon the other actors in a condensed yet paradigmatic manner.” On this account, and as discussed in section 6 of my Introduction supra, the Judgment of Paris can indeed be seen to underscore the theme of deception, but it does so neither centrally nor determinatively—before the fact, as one might say—but instead retrospectively or recursively. On analogies between Lomazzo’s Trattato and the Grondt, especially as regards ordinantie and reflexy-const, the subject of chapter 7, see R. Hoecker, Das Lehrgedicht des Karel van Mander, Quellenstudien zur Holländischen Kunstgeschichte (The Hague: 1916), 430 n. 71, 432 n. 100, 433 n. 106; B. Becker, “Karel van Mander, Den grondt der edel vrij Schilderconst. Hrsg. v. Hessel Miedema (Utrecht 1973),” Kritische Berichte: Mitteilungen des Ülmer Vereins 3.5–6 (1975): 103–109, esp. 107; and Müller, Concordia Pragensis, 61–63, 74 n. 162, 81, 131.

²⁴⁵ Van Mander makes explicit the pictorial comparison that underlies Sannazzaro’s account of the Judgment of Paris; on Timanthes’s adroit portrayal of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia, in which, having shown Calchas sad, Ulysses heartsore, Menelaus mournful, and Ajax railing against the gods, he then educed the greater sorrow of Agamemnon by showing his face hidden beneath a cloak, see Wtlegghingh, fol. 70r. With reference to the Judgment of Midas, his point is that by withholding the object of sight, the painter can make it more intensely present to the mind’s eye.

²⁴⁴ Whereas Sannazzaro says, in Arcadia, trans. Nash, 44, that the circumspect painter, “mistrusting his ability to make Venus as beautiful as necessity required, had painted her with her back turned, thus with his shrewdness excusing his insufficiency,” Van Mander unqualifiedly extols the painter for implementing a pleasurable trick of artifice (liste) that causes the viewer to visualize the goddess’s inimitable beauty as if it were actually being shown. The painter’s clever device, in that it appears to instantiate or actualize a quality that is seen only virtually, can be construed as a species of trompe l’oeil, albeit a peculiar one; the pictorial liste also functions as an analogue to the ekphrastic trick of conjuring up such a picture with mere words.

²⁴⁶ The term Buffonsch, as Miedema notes in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:485, transliterates the Italian buffone.

²⁴⁷ In the Dutch, the stanza concludes with the phrase “sonder additien oft adjecten” (lacking additions or supplements), thus emphasizing that the absence of such ornaments is an impediment to delight.

²⁴⁹ Van Mander avers in no uncertain terms that Sannazzaro was knowledgeable about painting: the ekphrastic image he has just relayed epitomizes criteria of vermeeren (amplification) and byvoeghen (embellishment, ornamentation) that apply equally well to both poetry and painting.

²⁴⁸ On Van Mander’s use of the term schilderachtig (painterly, painter-like) to characterize Sannazaro’s ekphrases as veritable pictures, see Bakker, “Schilderachtig,” 151.

²⁵⁰ For “slaughter,” Van Mander uses the term kelen, which specifically refers to cutting the pig’s throat.

²⁵¹ The reference to the “World’s stage” in stanza 63, to “terrestrial Theater” in stanza 64, and to personifications of Abraham’s virtues in stanza 65 are allusions to the dramatic usage of the Dutch and Flemish chambers of rhetoric Van Mander knew at first hand as a practicing poet-playwright, on which see chapter 1, note 4 supra. Personifications played a major role in the staged performance of affective dialogic argument, on which see B. Ramakers, “Embodied Wits—The Representation of Deliberative Thought in Rhetoricians’ Drama,” Renaissance Studies 32 (2018): 85–105. It is noteworthy that Van Mander endorses the use of personification to amplify the historie, converting it from simple in format to rich and various.

²⁵³ “Accounting that God is able to raise up even from the dead. Whereupon also he received him for a parable.” The term voorbeeldt in this context signifies a moral exemplum based in life, hence a “parable.”

²⁵² Van Mander cites Hebrews 11:19, in Den Bibel, inhoudende dat Oude ende Nieuwe Testament (Prope Emdem: Nicolaes Biestkens, 1560), changing the narrative voice from third person to first. The Biestkens Bible was much favored by his Mennonite co-religionists as well as by Lutherans; see A. Jaap van den Berg and B. Thijs, Uitgelezen: Bijbels en prentbijbels uit de vroegmoderne tijd (Heerenveen: 2010), 47–59.

²⁵⁴ On Federico Zuccaro’s Annunciation with Prophets of the Mystery of the Incarnation, once displayed on the apse wall of the now demolished Jesuit church of Santa Maria Annunziata, Rome, see “Life of Federico Zuccaro, Painter from Sant’ Angelo in Vado,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fols. 185v–186r. Van Mander, though he summarily praises the fresco’s ordonnance, refrains from describing it in any detail, instead adducing Cornelis Cort’s reproductive print to justify the work’s high reputation. He also adds that a few years after completing the fresco, Federico retouched it in tempera, also glazing the earth reds and greens with red lake and azure green respectively. On Cort’s print, see M. Sellink, comp., The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, 1450–1700: Cornelis Cort, ed. H. Leeflang, 3 vols. (Rotterdam and Amsterdam: 2000), 1:54; and W.S. Melion, “Cornelis Cort, Annunciation with Prophets of the Incarnation,” in Melion and J. Clifton, Scripture for the Eyes: Bible Illustration in Netherlandish Prints of the Sixteenth Century [exh. cat., Museum of Biblical Art, New York City; Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta] (London and New York: 2009), 133–134.

²⁵⁵ On this painting, one of four cartoons executed for the church of Santa Maria delle Lagrime in Arezzo, see “Life of Rosso, Florentine Painter and Architect,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fol. 130v. Van Mander paraphrases Vasari, Vite, ed. Milanesi, 3:208.

²⁵⁶ As Van Mander explains in Wtbeeldinghe der figueren, Book VI of the Schilder-Boeck, fols. 124r and 135r, he uses the term wtbeeldingh to signify a figurative image, i.e., the concrete image of a person, animal, or thing that serves, without the aid of collateral texts, to body forth an allegorical conceit; by combining these images, the schilder can transmit increasingly elaborate arguments, the meaning of which the viewer must carefully parse. Citing Coornhert, whose admonition, “No gallows stands before the door,” Van Mander interprets as a call to be unconstrained in one’s invention of such conceits, he provides the following neo-Petrarchan example of the most complex form of wtbeeldingh: “Peace brings industry, industry riches, riches pride, pride discord, discord war, war poverty, poverty humility, [and] humility brings peace.” The term advijs, as the Middelnederlandsch handwoordenboek indicates (48), can likewise refer to a conceit, in the sense of something thought up, a contrivance. Unlike Giovanni Andrea Gilio, whose Degli errori e degli abusi de’ pittori circa l’istorie of 1564 attacks Michelangelo for mixing sacred history and poetic fiction, religious truth and mythological allegory in his Last Judgment, Van Mander, who adhered to the allegorical practices of his fellow rederijkers (poet-rhetors), clearly has no reservations about using personifications to comment on biblical events. Van Mander would have become familiar with the gist if not the letter of Gilio’s arguments during his years-long stay in Rome; on the significance of Gilio’s art criticism for post-Tridentine painting in Rome, see C. Dempsey, “Mythic Inventions in Counter-Reformation Painting,” in P.A. Ramsey, ed., Rome in the Renaissance: The City and the Myth (Binghamton: 1982), 55–75.

²⁵⁷ In “On Nealces, Painter,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 84r, Van Mander praises him for being uncommonly versierich (ingenious, inventive, resourceful at fabricating devices), with specific reference to his ability circumstantially to distinguish between fresh- and saltwater.

²⁵⁸ In this context, wtbeeldinghe (effigy) might also be translated “personification,” in the sense of a human figure that hypostatizes a body of water.

²⁵⁹ Having licensed the use of allegory to augment the historie, Van Mander now launches a thirteen-stanza exemplum of how to develop a richly various personification, i.e., a figurative image made up of mutually complementary poetic contrivances, on which see stanza 68 and note 86 supra.

²⁶⁰ As Miedema observes, in Van Mander, Grondt, 2:489, Van Mander’s reference derives neither from the works of Heroidanus Historicus nor Herodianus Technicus; as far as I know, it does not appear in any of the standard mythographic handbooks.

²⁶¹ Although Philostratus, Imagines I.5 mentions the children who frisk about the Nile, it is Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXVI.xi.58, who describes sixteen children, each of whom measures one cubit, while together they signify the river at full flood.

²⁶² On the correct form of the sphinx, which has a “maiden’s head and hands, a dog’s body, a man’s voice, a dragon’s tail, and a lion’s claws,” see Wtlegghingh, fol. 80v.

²⁶³ See Pliny, Naturalis historia V.x.56–58 and XVIII.xlvii.167–168.

²⁶⁴ Colocasia is the species name of the elephant’s-ear plant.

²⁶⁶ The references to Ptolemy’s Geographica, as Miedema notes in Van Mander, Grondt, 2:490, came partly from Du Pinet, L’histoire du monde, 1:310–311. For the reference to Pliny, see note 91 supra.

²⁶⁵ On the men of the island of Tentyrus who though small in stature valiantly hunt the Nile crocodile, see Pliny, Naturalis historia VIII.xxxviii.92–94. Miedema, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:490, identifies the anonymous engraving of the Nile statue in Antoine Lafreri’s Speculum Romanae magnificentiae, along with its lengthy inscription, as a further source of Van Mander’s detailed iconography of the river god.

²⁶⁷ On Nilotic basalt and the statue Vespasian caused to be carved, see Pliny, Naturalis historia, XXXVI.xi.58–59.

²⁶⁸ With reference to the title of Book VI of the Schilder-Boeck (Wtbeeldinge der Figueren: waer in te sien is, hoe d’Heydenen hun Goden uytghebeelt, en onderscheyden hebben), I have translated uytbeeldinghen, in line 6, as “figured images.”

²⁶⁹ Van Mander circles back to the principle he has been exemplifying, namely, the freedom of the painter to embellish his image copiously, variously, and judiciously, as he sees fit, in the manner of the Judgment of Paris, as described by Sannazzaro, and the effigy of the Nile and its attendant allegories. Van Mander’s use of the Latin liber for “free” perhaps evokes Ars poetica 10, which insists that poets and painters are free to exercise their imaginative faculties, venturing to portray what they will (“semper fuit aequa potestas”); see Horace, “De arte poetica,” trans. Rushton Fairclough, 450–451.

²⁷⁰ Both the Nile and the Tiber were formerly exhibited in the Vatican Belvedere. For his description, Van Mander consulted the anonymous print in Lafreri’s Speculum Romanae magnificentiae, on which see note 96 supra.

²⁷¹ Van Mander elaborates upon Pliny’s description of Eutychides’s Tiber, in Naturalis historia XXXIV.xix.78, and Du Pinet, L’histoire du monde, 2:144.

²⁷² On the horned river god Numicius, who obeys Venus in washing away the mortal parts of Aeneas, see Ovid, Metamorphoses XIV.599–604.

²⁷³ Van Mander, in “Life of Demon, Painter of Athens,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 69r–v, warns against confusing Parrhasius with Demon who first found a way of distilling a people’s character, portraying the true nature of the Athenians, whom he showed to be “fickle, choleric, unjust, yet also obliging, merciful, charitable, courageous, self-important, humble, unmindful, timorous.” Nevertheless, stanza 86 follows Dupinet, L’histoire du monde, 2:643, in attributing this achievement to Parrhasius. In “Life of Parrhasius, excellent Painting of Ephesus,” fol. 69r, Van Mander states that he invented a way of depicting the “proportions, forms, actions, and essential nature of [human] faces.”

²⁷⁴ Van Mander’s iconography of Rome triumphant derives from Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, especially his description of the goddess who accompanies the personified province of Latio; see Iconologia, overo, Descrittione di diverse imagini cavate dall’antichità (Rome: Lepido Facii, 1603), 260–261. Conversely, stanza 87 appears to have served as the basis for Roma Victrix in Dirck Pietersz. Pers, Iconologia, of uytbeeldingen des verstands (Amsterdam: Dirck Pietersz. Pers, 1644), 229.

Chapter 6: “Portrayal of the Affects, passions, desires, and sorrows of Persons”

²⁷⁵ At the start of Wtbeeldinge der figueren, Book VI, fol. 127v, Van Mander recalls that in Grondt, chapter 6, he had promised to discuss figuration at fuller length. In fact, he makes this promise at the close of chapter 5; as Miedema conjectures, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:460, this may indicate that the order of chapters 5 and 6 was ultimately reversed: whereas Van Mander had previously thought to discuss the expressive possibilities of the human face and figure before examining invention and history, he finally decided to expound the multifigure historie before turning to its affective building blocks.

²⁷⁶ Affecten (Affects) encompasses the unitary passions and the more labile, mixed states of feeling that Van Mander connects in stanza 35 not simply to fixed attitudes but to motions of body. In the glossary appended to Jan van Mussem, Rhetorica, dye edele const van welsegghene (Antwerp: Weduwe van Henric Peetersen, 1553), a Flemish rhetorical treatise Van Mander certainly knew, affectie is defined as genegentheyt (liking, inclination) and begheerte (desire, appetite), passie as “een lijden” (suffering, endurance of some thing), but also as genegentheyt. On this account, the two terms are near cognates, though passie implies greater intensity and impact.

²⁷⁷ On the primary task of pictured history, which is “to stimulate the observers’ hearts” by showing them the “motions of the mind … known from the movements of the body,” see Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc1r; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 61–62. Underlying their conviction that the motions of the body directly express the passions of the soul is Quintilian’s account, in Institutio oratoria VI.ii.1–35, of affect and moral feeling as both cause and effect of the closing peroration of a well-orchestrated speech. Affects and morals must be enacted by the orator, in whom they should actually be felt in some form if they are properly to be expressed so as to induce an affective, felt response in the auditor. Insitutio oratoria XI.iii.65–100 then focus on the motions and gestures, especially of the face, eyes, and hands, that a skilled rhetorical performer must master in order to be efficacious. Quintilian states, in VI.ii.29–32, that fantasia, the faculty of imagination, when it resolutely brings forth a stirring image, can make it appear so vivid and actual that the very affects and feelings it depicts are stirred in us. And having been moved by such an image, we shall find ourselves capable of producing an oratorical image that moves our audience in the like degree. Quintilian calls such an image an enárgeia which, citing Cicero, he defines as “illumination and actuality.” His conception of enárgeia, like his terminology, since it concerns the process of emotive image-making, proved easily transferable to the visual arts. His special relevance to art theorists anchors as well in the explicit parallel he draws between styles of oratory and styles of painting and sculpture, in XII.x.3–9: for example, he distinguishes between the “simple coloring” of Polygnotus and the “dignity and grandeur” of Zeuxis, based on the heroic style of Homer, and discriminates between the “rude” simplicity of the sculptor Callon and the “majesty” of Phidias, concluding that just as there are “Polygnoti” and “Callones” of oratory, so there are orators whose eloquent refinements correlate to the richer pictorial and sculptural styles of other painters and sculptors; see Institutio oratoria, trans. H.E. Butler, 4 vols. (Cambridge, MA and London: 1920–1922), 4:451–457.

²⁷⁸ As Miedema states, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:495, Van Mander combines the lists of affects enumerated in Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc1v–2r; Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 62; and Pliny, Naturalis historia, trans. Rackham, 3:519, 523. In addition, by placing love at the head of the list, he alludes to 1 Corinthians 13:13: “… but the greatest of these is charity.” Van Mander presumably places love first amongst the affects he enumerates because it is the most visual of all the passions, making its presence felt in and through the motions of the eyes, whereby, as he implies in stanza 18, love functions as an analogue to painting, “limn[ing]” itself. He devotes twenty-three stanzas to love, after which there follow one or more stanzas on each of the other affects or passions listed in stanza 2, starting with desire. Desire, joy, and sorrow, are three of the four Stoic passions (the fourth is antipathy), on which see N. Schiller, “Desire and Dissimulation: Laughter as an Expressive Behavior in Karel van Mander’s Den grondt der edel vry schilder-const (1604),” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 60 (2010): 83–107, esp. 83.

²⁷⁹ The reference to ethoi reveals that Van Mander’s topic here and throughout chapter 6 is ethopoeia—the depiction of characteristic affects, i.e., affects as indices of character—broadly defined in one of the most widely distributed rhetorical handbooks, Cyprian Soarez, S.J., De arte rhetorica libri tres ex Aristotele, Cicerone et Quinctiliano praecipue deprompti (Coimbra: Ioannes Barrerius, 1562; reprint ed., Paris: Thomas Brummenius, 1576), fol. 45v, as the “imitation of life and the behavior of others, a certain great ornament of oratory, supremely well suited to the winning over of spirits, but oftentimes to moving them deeply.” Van Mander’s usage of the term ethopoeia functionally embeds an allied rhetorical figure, pathopoeia—the portrayal of an emotion in such a way as to elicit a like response from the auditor-beholder. Both ethopoeia and pathopoeia require the orator to demonstrate performatively and verbally, in action and speech, the affects being called forth as instruments of persuasion. On Aristides’s newfound ability to represent the “mind’s intentions” (“voornemens der ghedachten”), “motions of sense” (“beroeringen der sinnen”), and “inclinations of the heart” (“des ghemoedts gheneghentheden”), see “Van Aristides, Painter of Thebes”, in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 71r.

²⁸⁰ Van Mander’s implication is that Aristides looked both to nature and the arts for inspiration. Pliny, in Naturalis historia XXXV.xxxvi.96 (trans. Rackham, 9:333–335), invoking the Greek term ēthē, states that Aristides was the first to paint the motions of the mind and of sense, as well as the passions or emotions (peturbationes).

²⁸¹ On the face as the chief bodily locus of affective expression, see Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc1r–v; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 62–63.

²⁸² In avowing Nature’s peerless ability to externalize the motions of the heart in the movements of the body, and calling upon painters to reproduce these affects in their painting, thereby to induce them in their viewers, Van Mander emulates Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc1r; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 61: “… one can find nothing more covetous than [Nature] regarding [emotions] similar to ourselves—that we cry with those who cry, we laugh with those who laugh, we grieve with those who suffer.”

²⁸³ Van Mander uses the term Histrionica to refer to the stagecraft of actors whose poses convey the passions, and who emote by means of movement.

²⁸⁴ The eleven stanzas devoted to the story of Seleucus, Antiochus, and Stratonice derive from the “Life of Demetrius,” in Plutarch, Vitae [Demetrius] xxxviii; see Plutarch’s Lives, trans. B. Perrin (London: 1914–1926), 9:93–97. Van Mander utilizes the anecdote to demonstrate that if painters are as observant of Nature’s affects as was the shrewdly observant doctor Erasistratus, they will discern how she discloses even the most deeply hidden stirrings of the mind and heart; although these symptoms are discernible equally to touch (pulse), the ears (voice), and the eyes (complexion), it is the visual signs in particular that testify to Nature’s powers of artifice, her signature skill at rendering love’s effects (“dat liefd haer selven wrought”).

²⁸⁵ Plutarch mentions the “tell-tale signs of which Sappho speaks”; see ibid., 9:93.

²⁸⁶ On pain and the hand, love and the eye, see Harrebomée, Spreekwoordenboek der Nederlandsche taal, 1:276, 2:28, 2:145, and 3:214–225.

²⁸⁷ On Clytie whose love of Apollo caused her to follow him with her eyes, whithersoever he went, as the heliotrope and the Torn-al-Sole (sunflower) follow the sun, see Van Mander, Wtlegghingh, fol. 31r.

²⁸⁸ In Ovid, Heroides XVII.75, Helen complains to Paris about the wanton gazes with which he was wont to assail her in the house of her husband Menelaus; see Heroides, trans. Showerman, 231.

²⁸⁹ On this vase (in fact, a maplewood bowl), one of the prizes offered by Ergasto at the funeral games staged in honor of Massilia, see the eleventh prose chapter of Sannazzaro, Arcadia and Piscatorial Eclogues, trans. Nash, 124: “… on which by the hand of the Paduan Mantegna (an artist cunning beyond all others and most ingenious) were painted many things: but among others a naked Nymph.” Also see O. Kurz, “Sannazaro and Mantegna,” in Studi in onore di Riccardo Filangieri, 3 vols. (Naples: 1959), 2:277–283.

²⁹⁰ Van Mander introduces one of the primary themes of chapter 6—the portrayal of mixed emotions—here joy mingled with sorrow.

²⁹¹ The reference to Euphranor as a master at portraying mixed emotions derives from Pliny XXXIV.xix.77, by way of Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc1r; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 62. Van Mander greatly amplifies all three accounts; indeed, Euphranor’s ability to admix a multiplicity of diverse affects goes further even than Mantegna’s. The emphasis on mixed emotion is one of the hallmarks of humoral theory, which paid close attention to the mixture of humoral fluids, on which, with specific reference to compounds of anger, see J. Kromm, The Art of Frenzy: Public Madness in the Visual Culture of Europe, 1500–1850 (London: 2002), 1–38; and eadem, “Anger’s Marks: Expressions of Sin, Temperament, and Passion,” Nedelands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 60 (2010), 35–51, esp. 39. Van Mander’s chief source was probably Lomazzo, Trattato dell’arte, Book II, especially chapter 8, “How all the motions may accidentally befall any man, though diversely”; see Richard Haydocke’s condensed translation of Lomazzo’s treatise, A Tracte Containing the Artes of Curious Paintinge, Carvinge and Buildinge (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1598), II.23: “Hence then the Painter may learne how to expresse not onely the proper and natural motions, but also the accidentall: wherein consisteth no small part of the difficulty of the Arte, namelie in representing diversities of affections and passions in one bodie.” Like Lomazzo, Van Mander calls upon the examples of Euphranor, Parrhasius, and Aristides. Lomazzo keeps circling back to this topic, which forms part of his discussion of mirth in chapter 12, of flattery in chapter 13, and of deceit in chapter 14, and is one of the principal themes of chapter 18, “On the concord and discord of the motions, and of their uniting”; see ibid., II.77: “Wherefore (according to the fore-sayed order of the originall of the passions of the minde together with the foure humors, and their agreements) we must proceede, by making them spring forth like branches; from their bodie.”

²⁹² Stanzas 24 and 25 apply the term affecten to affects such as desire, but also to character traits such as ready wit and virility. Since the term ethos signifies “character,” ethopoeia was commonly seen to apply to the representation of characteristic affects, on which see note 5 supra.

²⁹³ Van Mander uses the subjunctive to indicate that he is visualizing how the image must have looked.

²⁹⁴ On the amorous cast of Paris’s mouth, as depicted by Euphranor, see Schiller, “Desire and Dissimulation,” 88–89.

²⁹⁵ In this respect, desire resembles love.

²⁹⁶ See Pliny, Naturalis historia XI.liv.145–146 (trans. Rackham, 3:523): “No other part of the body supplies greater indications of the mind—this is so with all animals alike, but specially with man—that is, indications of self-restraint, mercy, pity, hatred, love, sorrow, joy. The eyes are also very varied in their look—fierce, stern, sparkling, sedate, leering, askance, downcast, kindly: in fact the eyes are the abode of the mind.”

²⁹⁷ See Albertus Magnus, De animalibus I.ii.3, in Opera omnia, ed. A. Borgnet (Paris: 1891), 37.

²⁹⁸ Latae frontis signifies “of happy face” or “of carefree brow.”

²⁹⁹ On genius (“genius” in the sense of inward or innate wit, but also of “animating spirit”) and its close association with ingenium (“ingenuity” in the sense of “natural capacity or talents”), see M. Bass, Insect Artifice: Nature and Art in the Dutch Revolt (Princeton and Oxford: 2019), 37–39.

³⁰⁰ The eyes that in stanza 27 prove capable of unleashing an unimaginably copious flow of tears are here companioned by the brow that discloses what a person’s other features conceal. Van Mander reveals his interest in a person’s capacity bodily to express divergent affects, either consecutively when antithetical emotions come seriatim to the surface, or jointly when one emotion is feigned while a quite different one is felt, or again, multiply when affects are mixed or compounded, as in the case of Pieter Bruegel’s herald, marshaled in stanza 57, whose rigor is tempered by barely suppressed compassion. Quintilian, in Institutio oratoria I.ix.27–28, stresses the importance of feigned emotion in oratory, praising Gaius Gracchus for his ability to terrify the patrician party even while feeling fearful of their power.

³⁰¹ Van Mander treats Pride as a personification that bodies forth a person’s prideful thoughts.

³⁰² See [Phocion] v, in Plutarch’s Lives, trans. Perrin, 8:155.

³⁰³ Physiognomia (Physiognomics) refers to the art of reading a person’s character from the features of that person’s face.

³⁰⁴ Van Mander paraphrases Pliny’s rejection of the physiognomics of Trogus, Adamantius, and Aristotle, in Naturalis historia XI.cxiv.273–275; see Natual History 3:605.

³⁰⁵ For “motions,” Van Mander appropriates the Latin term motus (motions, emotions, gestures, impulses), which was codified by Leon Battista Alberti who used it in De pictura to refer to Giotto’s Navicella, specifically his ability precisely to portray affective states; see Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 63; and C. Grayson, ed. and trans., On Painting and On Sculpture: The Latin Texts of Alberti’s De pictura and De statua (London: 1972), 82. On Alberti’s definition of motus, see J.A.W. Heffernan, “Alberti on Apelles: Word and Image in De pictura,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 2.3 (1996), 345–359, esp. 350.

³⁰⁶ On the difficulty of disentangling a face that laughs from one that cries, see Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc1r.

³⁰⁷ On Praxiteles’s Matron Weeping and its pendant, a Merry Courtesan based on his mistress Phryne, see Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXIV.xix.70, in Natural History, trans. Rackham, 9:181.

³⁰⁸ Van Mander extols the artist’s power to express his love in and through the joyful features of his lover’s countenance: the Merry Courtesan is thus a double portrait and, in that it portrays both the lover’s love and his beloved’s mirth, yet another epitome of mixed emotion. On reflexive portraiture of this type, especially mirthful tronien (facial studies of character), see Schiller, “Desire and Dissimulation,” 92–93, which calls attention to Van Mander’s development of this theme in “Life of Hugo van der Goes, Painter of Bruges,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 204r.

³⁰⁹ As Euphranor surpasses Mantegna in the depiction of mixed emotions, so Demon outshines Euphranor by portraying the contradictory ethoi of the Athenian citizenry. On Demon’s ability to characterize the complex genius of Athens, see “On Demon, Painter of Athens,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 69r–v. Whereas Pliny, in Naturalis historia XXXV.xxxvi.69 (trans. Rackham, 9:313), attributes to Parrhasius the “picture of the People of Athens,” Van Mander follows Rivius in ascribing it to Demon; see Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc1r, which is based on a misreading of Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 61–62.

³¹⁰ On the varieties of sorrow displayed by Timanthes in his Sacrifice of Iphigenia, see “On Timanthes, the very artful Painter,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 70r. Stanzas 40–43 derive from Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc1v; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 63.

³¹¹ On Timanthes’s predilection for encoding implied meanings, see “On Timanthes,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 70r, which paraphrases Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXV.xxxvi.74.

³¹² On Colotes, see Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc1v; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 63.

³¹³ The analogy between the signs of sorrow and symptoms of sickness derives from Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc1r; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 61–62.

³¹⁴ Van Mander paraphrases Virgil, Aeneid VI.273–281, in Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid, Books 1–6, trans. H.R. Fairclough, ed. G.P. Goold (Cambridge, MA and London: 1999), 551–553.

³¹⁵ On the Roman goddess of sickness, see Pliny II.v.15–16, in Natural History, trans. Rackham, 177–179; and Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia II.v.6, in Valerii Maximi factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri novem, ed. C. Kempf (Leipzig: 1888), 74.

³¹⁶ On Aristides’s painting of a sick man, see “On Aristides,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 71 v, which paraphrases Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXV.xxxvi.100 (trans. Rackham, 9:335).

³¹⁷ On the Meleager, Van Mander paraphrases Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. bbb2r; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 57; like his sources, he praises the artist for distinguishing between living corpora and a dead corpus, and between complementary actions—namely, grieving and carrying—that are jointly enacted. His emphasis here on the composite nature of the portrayed activity supplements the larger theme of chapter 6: the complex enactment of mixed emotions.

³¹⁸ “Modern” in the sense of post-antique.

³¹⁹ On the momentary elation of the Albans and the horrified dejection of the Romans upon seeing the two fallen Horatii, see Livy, Ab urbe condita I.xxvi, in History of Rome, trans. B.O. Foster, 13 vols. (Cambridge, MA and London: 1926), 1:87–89. Like Timanthes’s Sacrifice of Iphigenia, this modern picture lodges its affects not in actors per se but rather in the witnesses to an anticipated event: in one case this event, which one might designate the proleptic scopus, using the terminology of chapter 5, is the death of Agamemnon’s daughter; in the other, it is the dreaded death of the last Roman standing. Similarly, in depicting Paris, Euphranor describes his multifaceted facial features, wherein, in a paradox of simultaneity, seemingly contradictory actions are merely latent. So, too, Demon’s Athenians are seen at one and the same time to be multifarious not because of what they do, but in the set of their eyes and how they cast their gaze. This is to say that for Van Mander, the face (aenghesichte, aenschijn, troenge, ghesicht) is the primary conveyor of affective motion. Frans Floris’s Man with a Sword over his Shoulder of ca. 1554 (Kassel, Staatliche Gemäldegalerie), on the subject of which see “Life of Frans Floris, excellent Painter of Antwerp,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 241r, attests to the status of such faces as pictorial subjects in their own right; on the multiple registers of affect layered in this troenge, i.e., festive mirth, choler, and melancholy, see Kromm, “Anger’s Marks,” 39. In the marginal gloss to stanza 4, Van Mander coins the phrase “leden des aenschijns” (limbs, features of the face) to characterize facial particularities as the chief instruments whereby affect is portrayed.

Throughout chapter 6, the presentation of affective subjects is for the most part ekphrastic: this is true, for example, of the evocations of the paintings by Euphranor and Timanthes, and even the story of Seleucus, Antiochus, and Stratonice is presented as source material for a painting in potentia. The persuasive emotional effect of such ekphrastic images—their energeia—was thought to result from the impression of actual presence (enárgeia) the description elicits, as Quintilian explains in Institutio oratoria VI.ii.29–32, in The Orator’s Education, trans. D.A. Russell, 5 vols. (Cambridge, MA: 2002), 3:59–61:

The person who will show the greatest power in the expression of emotions will be the person who has properly formed what the Greeks call the phantasiai (let us call them ‘visions’), by which the images of absent things are presented to the mind in such a way that we seem actually to see them with our eyes and have them physically present to us …. The result will be enárgeia, what Cicero calls illustratio and evidentia, a quality which makes us seem not so much to be narrating something [dicere, in the sense of “talking about,” “telling a story”] as exhibiting it [ostendere]. Emotions will ensue just as if we were present at the event itself.

Amongst the events Quintilian gives as examples is an assassination, at which one man having struck the fatal blow, his fallen victim lies bleeding, pallid, and groaning as he breathes out a final gasp. Citing Aeneid XI.43, he later adds, as a kind of supplement: “On his smooth breast, the gaping wound.” Blood, pallor, and breath are made present to the mind’s eye, as also is the antithesis of silken flesh and cavernous lesion, through the suspensive device of showing forth these particulars, exposing them to view. Ekphrasis, so construed, privileges the illustrative or evidentiary display of narrative circumstances over narration proper; an event’s constituent details, its pregnant accessories, more than the event itself, are what bring the attendant affects to life. In stanza 53, Van Mander thus refers to the “still presence” (“wesen stille”) of the modern picture (“Moderne stuck”) that stanzas 51 and 52 conjure up. His reliance on an ekphrastic mode of presentation provides the rhetorical context for his association of affect with the precise, nuanced portrayal of faces, more than with storied bodily attitudes and gestures. On the relation between ekphrastic enárgeia and energeia, with specific reference to the passage from Quintilian cited above, see U. Heinen, “Huygens, Rubens, and Medusa: Reflecting the Passions in Paintings, with some Considerations of Neuroscience in Art History,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 60 (2010), 151–176, esp. 159–160.

³²⁰ Van Mander conjugates the last six lines of this stanza in the present tense to emphasize how vivid was the experience of viewing this otherwise old-fashioned picture: its subject, he implies, appeared to unfold in the present time, before one’s very eyes. This powerful effect of presence, as noted above, results from the painter’s descriptive dilation upon constituent features of the historie that momentarily transfix its narrative flow in order finally to intensify its affective impact upon the beholder. On this account, enárgeia describes to narrate; see note 3 supra.

³²¹ The erratum (fol. [Pp ix] recto) corrects verw-werck (color-work, coloring), changing it to t’verwerck (workmanship, [paint] application); see Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonicae linguae, 611: verwercken = “insumere materiam operi” (apply matter to the work), “impendere laborem vel in laborem” (expend labor, engage in work, to make by craftsmanship, workmanship, esp. that of an artist).

³²² The herald combines the two registers of expression codified by Quintilian, in Institutio oratoria VI.ii.8–9: pathos, i.e., adfectus (passion), which he defines as the description of “the more violent emotions,” and ethos, i.e., mores (morals, habits of conduct, standards of behavior based in felt experience), which he characterizes as more “subdued,” “calm and gentle.” Whereas pathos aims to “command and disturb,” ethos aims to “persuade and induce a feeling of goodwill.” He adds, in VI.ii.12, that pathos and ethos are often linked, being different more in degree than kind; see Institutio oratoria, trans. Butler, 2:423: “Indeed I would add that pathos and ethos are sometimes of the same nature, differing only in degree; love for instance comes under the head of pathos, affection of ethos.” Disturbed by his own cruelty, the herald is thus an epitome of mixed emotion: feeling a modicum of compassion, yet constrained to show no mercy, and troubled as a result by fruitless compunction, he holds true to a habit of conduct even while falling prey to the vagaries of pathos. As mentioned in note 5 supra, Van Mander, though he appears to refer to pathopoeia at several points in chapter 6, especially when his theme is the arousal of empathy, never distinguishes it explicitly from the overarching category of ethopoeia (although see the discussion of the painting by Aristides in note 60 infra). The encounter between Bruegel’s herald and the peasants who accost him became a commonplace for the depiction of emotions jostling for the upper hand, or, alternatively, of admixed emotions—implacable cruelty tempered by the mortifying sensation of compassion—as is evident from the pen-and-ink drawing by Rubens after this episode from the Massacre of the Innocents, on which see J. Muylle, “Ethos en pathos: de literaire appreciatie van expressie in het werk van Metsijs en Bruegel,” Nederlands kunsthistorisch jaarboek 60 (2010): 19–33, esp. 21. On Carolus Scribanus, S.J.’s more elaborate and pathopoeic ekphrasis of the picture in his epideictic poem Antverpia (1610), see ibid., 21–23.

³²³ The erratum (fol. [Pp ix] recto) changes Lernen (instruction, learning) to Kernen (kernel); see Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonicae linguae, 219: kaerle = kerne = nucleus (kernel, nucleus).

³²⁴ Stanza 55 constitutes a plea to the aspiring schilder to allow pictorial affects to enter his heart, on the model of Quintilian’s dictum that what is not felt cannot persuasively be portrayed (on which see note 3 supra). If the painter wishes to produce an ethopoeic picture, in other words, he will first allow exemplary pictures to exercise a pathopoeic effect upon himself.

³²⁵ The sculptor Aristonidas’s clever use of iron to mimic rubicund cheeks supplies a material analogue for painters striving to imitate this symptom of strong emotion.

³²⁶ Following from the material analogy of cheeks as red as rusty iron, Van Mander urges painters to paint eyes glaring as hotly as burning coals. He draws on Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc1r; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 62.

³²⁷ On the Dantean origins of devilish Caron and his burning gaze in the Last Judgment, see “Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti, Florentine Painter, Sculptor, and Architect,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fol. 170v. Van Mander’s source was Vasari, Vite, ed. Milanesi, 7:213.

³²⁸ Van Mander refers to the celebrated ekphrasis of venomous Envy, whose dreadful appearance causes Minerva to avert her gaze, in Metamorphoses II.760–782 (trans. Miller, 1:115).

³²⁹ On Lucas’s print, which portrays Saul in the thrall of murderous envy, see “Life of Lucas van Leyden, excellent Painter, Engraver, and Glazier,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 214r. On David and Saul, see C. Vegelaar, J.P. Filedt Kok, H. Leeflang, and I.M. Veldman, Lucas van Leyden en de Renaissance [exh. cat., Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden] (Leiden: 2011), 128, 242.

³³⁰ Dootverwe (dead color) is the term for a painting’s ground color, generally applied in a mat earth tone admixed with white, upon which the “living” colors and glazes are applied; see the entries doodverf, doodverwen, in C.H.Ph. Meyer, Woorden en uitdrukkingen verklaard (Amsterdam: 1919); and doodverf, in M. Philippa, F. Debrabandere, A. Quak, T. Schoonheim, and N. van der Sijs, Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands (Amsterdam: 2003–2009). This material analogy complements the earlier reference to eyes like burning coals in stanza 59: whereas the latter are portrayed by layering and overlayering glazes and pigments, pallid envy is better described by dead color since it lurks deep in the heart, hidden like a painting’s underlayer.

³³¹ On Giotto’s Navicella, in particular the “affectie eens enghelenden Visschers” (the affect of a fisherman fishing), a reference to the fisherman seated on the shore at left, from where he responds to the miracle, see “Life of Giotto, Painter, Sculptor, and Architect,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fol. 96v. Van Mander’s praise of Giotto’s mosaic echoes that of Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc1v; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 63.

³³² Van Mander’s account of Zeuxis’s painting derives from both Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXV.xxxvi.63 (trans. Rackham, 9:309) and Dupinet, L’histoire du monde 2:642, as Miedema points out in Karel van Mander, Den grondt, 2:509. On the terror evinced by both Amphitrion and Alcmene, see “On Zeuxis of Heraclea Painter,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 67r. The emphasis on depicted witnesses as principal conveyors of affect hearkens back to chapter 5, stanzas 34–35, which assert the structural importance of such witnesses within a complexly ordered historie. Chapter 6 also adduces Timanthes’s Sacrifice of Iphigenia and Giotto’s fisherman as examples of the affective value of responsive witnesses; these figures fulfill the function of pathopoeic signposts.

³³³ On Parrhasius’s priority in portraying the “symmetries, proportions, features, motions, and innate qualities of faces” (“gelijckformicheden, maten, ghestaltenissen, werckinghen, en wesens der aensichten”), see “On Parrhasius, excellent Painter of Ephesus,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 69r. Whereas Van Mander’s sources—Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXV.xxxvi.67 (trans. Rackham, 9:311) and Dupinet, L’histoire du monde 2:643—praise Parrhasius for the liveliness of his faces, he utilizes the more specifically affective term beweeghlijckheden (motions, agitations, emotions), a cognate of beweginghe, which the Thesaurus Theutonicae linguae, fol. G2 recto, defines in Latin as “agitation, motio, motus, incitation, excitatio,” and in French as “agitation, desmenée, esmouvement,”

³³⁴ Stanzas 66–69 supply the climactic example epitomizing the representation of mixed emotion. On Aristides, see stanzas 5 and 6 supra; on his painting of a mother poised between life and death, in whom pain gives way to anxious care, and insentience and sentience alternate, see “On Aristides,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 71v, which paraphrases Pliny XXXV.xxxvi.98 (trans. Rackham, 9:335) and Dupinet, L’histoire du monde, 2:648. Alexander’s affection for this picture, and the pleasure he takes in viewing it, serve to emphasize that the quality of pathos can itself be profoundly mixed: the horror of a fraught subject, even while being felt, can yet produce an experience of appreciative delight. In fact, Van Mander’s extended ekphrases, here and in the “Life of Aristides,” which greatly amplify Pliny’s and Dupinet’s, are amongst his most explicit exercises in pathopoeia. They combine empathy for the mother’s pain and solicitude with dismay at the plight of both mother and child. Van Mander also plays on an analogy between Aristides and his picture: as the mother jointly partakes of life and death, so Aristides continues to live even after having died, thanks to the consummate art with which he has portrayed her. On horrific imagery as a “school of the passions” (“palaestra affectuum”) and on the therapeutic properties ascribed to such images, in the context of Aristotelian poetics and the neo-Senecan doctrine of consolation, see Heinen, “Huygens, Rubens, and Medusa,” 153–157, 167–168.

³³⁵ The phrase “t’verstants beroeren” (motions / movement of the mind / intelligence) conflates the chief accomplishments of Aristides, as described in Pliny, Naturalis historia, trans. Rackham, 332–335: he first “expressed the dispositions of the mind” (“sensus hominis expressit”) and also its “motions, perturbations,” i.e., the emotions (perturbationes).

³³⁶ I have translated soch (mother’s milk) as pap to underscore Van Mander’s notion that the milk, contaminated by blood, has become a poisonous meal for the child.

³³⁷ In imagining the face (troenge) of Aristides’s maternal exemplum, Van Mander diverges from Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXV.xxxvi.98, as noted in Muylle, “Ethos en pathos,” 20. Indeed, he devotes an entire stanza to describing how the faces of mother and child must have looked. On his handling of the expressive power of faces throughout chapter 6, see note 45 supra.

³³⁸ On the god Morpheus, the son of Sleep, who populates dreams with human forms and figures, see Ovid, Metamorphoses XI.633–638 (trans. Miller, 2:165), and, on his cavernous lair in Cimmeria (Crimea), XI.592–615. Van Mander, who explains in Wtlegghingh, fol. 97v, that Morpheus signifies “form or figure” (“ghedaent, oft beeldt”), condenses Ovid’s description of the god as source of the imitative impulse in men (2:165): “But the father rouses Morpheus from the throng of his thousand sons, a cunning imitator of the human form. No other is more skilled than he in representing the gait, the features, and the speech of men; the clothing also and the accustomed words of each he represents. His office is with men alone.” In calling upon schilders to dream Morphean dreams, Van Mander invites them to imagine newly mixed varieties of affect, on the model of Aristides.

³³⁹ Van Mander means that if a master has brought one branch of schilderconst to perfection—say, teyckeconst—then most likely, even if unbeknownst to him, he will have become practiced in other branches as well, such as the portrayal of affects. On secrecy as a recurrent theme in the Schilder-Boeck, and on the relation between secret knowledge and natural philosophy, see C. Göttler, Tales of Transformation: Hendrick Goltzius’s Allegory of the (Alchemical) Arts in the Kunstmuseum Basel, 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual 1.2 (2020): 403–446, esp. 403–404.

³⁴⁰ The verbal noun verstercken (affirm / affirmation, augment / augmentation, magnify / magnification) alludes to epideictic oratory, which increases (or detracts from) a person’s reputation by amplifying (or diminishing) it rhetorically; so, too, by affirming or amplifying the painter’s achievements, his clever viewers will substantiate, i.e., give substance to his fame. On the relation between verstercken and amplificeren (amplify), see Miedema, Karel van Mander, Den grondt, 2:510–511. Van Mander may also be implying, in another register, that the picture’s effect on these viewers is so forceful that they respond to its pictured affects as if experiencing them truly, that is, substantively rather than ostensively.

³⁴¹ On Michelangelo’s ability to distinguish amongst sinful affects in the Last Judgment, see “Life of Michelangelo,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fol. 170v, which distils Vasari, Vite, ed. Milanesi, 7:214.

³⁴² The ancient masters and Giotto, just cited in stanza 63, give the lie to Vasari’s statement about the inimitability of Michelangelo; throughout the Grondt, the Leven der moderne … Italiaensche schilders, and the Leven der doorluchtighe Nederlandtsche, en Hooghduytsche schilders, Van Mander repeatedly contradicts Vasari’s claims, put forward with special force in the 1568 edition of the Vite, for the incomparable superiority of Roman-Florentine maniera as epitomized by Michelangelo. Instead Van Mander asserts that there are numerous handelinghen (styles, manners of hand), past and present, worthy to be imitated, as witness his laudatory description of Hendrick Goltzius’s Life of the Virgin series, each plate of which distills the distinctive handelingh of a different school; see “Life of Hendrick Goltzius,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fols. 284v–285r. On Goltzius’s Life of the Virgin, see W.S. Melion, “The Meditative Function of Hendrick Goltzius’s Life of the Virgin of 1593–1594,” in R. Falkenburg, W.S. Melion, and T. Richardson, eds., Image and Imagination of the Religious Self in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Turnhout: 2008), 379–426; and P. Wandrey, Ehre über Gold: Die Meisterstiche von Hendrick Goltzius: Biltheorie und Ikonografie um 1600 (Berlin: 2018), esp. 123–337.

³⁴³ See note 66 supra.

³⁴⁴ As Eupompus directed Lysippus to take nature as his master, so Van Mander likewise privileges nature above any master, even Michelangelo; see Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXIV.xix.61 (trans. Rackham, 9:173).

Chapter 7: “On Reflection, Reverberation, re-reflected luster, or re-reflection”

³⁴⁵ The terms teghen-glans and weerschijn connote the action and effect of reflected light or re-reflected light, as in the case of a highlight reflecting from a primary surface onto a secondary, adjoining one. The definitions for weder-glantsen and its cognate weder-glinsteren, and for weder-schijnen, in Henry Hexham, Het groot woorden-boeck: gestelt in ‘t Nederduytsch, ende in ‘t Engelsch (Rotterdam: Arnout Leer, 1648), underscore this sense of re-reflected light through their use of “againe”: “Weder-glantsen, ofte weder-glinsteren. To give a glanse againe, to give a lustre, be Resplendent” (*611); “Weder-schijnen. To Shine againe, or to be Resplendent” (*612). Also see “den weder-schijn der Sonne. The Reverberation of the Sunne, or the Beating back thereof” (*612). Unlike Kern, who states in Light and Shade, 149 n. 15, following Miedema, Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:162, that Van Mander’s terms are relatively vague and comprisable by a general notion of “bijzondere lichtreffekten,” I take his terminology on reflexy-const, combined as it is with multiple collateral references to illustrative pictorial examples—for instance, Hendrick Goltzius’s Venus, Bacchus, and Ceres (a penwerck dated 1593), Pieter Aertsen’s kitchen pieces, or Bassano’s night scenes (see stanzas 39–40, 48, and 54–55 infra)—to be both descriptive and nuanced. For an emblematic still life by Van Mander, which displays his command of daghen (highlights), glansen (sheens), and wederglansen, see the reverse of Before the Flood, painted on copper and dated 1600: the effect wederglans occurs on the foremost of three apples, the lustrous surface of which reflects the brightly lit rim of the acanthus-scroll cornucopia beneath (Städelsches Kunstinstitut, inv. no. 2088) (Fig. 33). The obverse, which depicts humankind nonchalantly feasting before the flood, not only reveals Van Mander’s ability to portray varieties of human flesh, diversely lit and shaded, but is also an epitome of the kind of open-view ordonnance ratified in chapter 5, stanza 12: the distant landscape, framed at left and right by entwined figures, incorporates the work’s barely discernible scopus—the building of Noah’s ark (Fig. 32). This cabinet picture thus epitomizes his mastery of actitude, ordinantie, reflexy-const, and, through its portrayal of flesh tints requiring complex mixtures of color, coloreren (on which see chapters 12 and 14 infra). On the meaning of the hieroglyphic emblem and its combined mottos, “Ex bello pax” and “Ex pace ubertas” (From war, peace; from peace, plenty), and its relation to Before the Flood, see H. Miedema, “Een schilderij van Karel van Mander de Oude (1548–1606); een doopsgezinde interpretatie,” Doopsgezinde bijdragen 16 (1990): 113–128, esp. 126–128.

Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc4r, diverges from the text of Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 68, in calling upon painters to attend to effects of widerglast and gegenschein, as well as glast, glantz (glow, shine, luster) and durchsichtigkeit (transparency). Whereas Alberti focuses on the reception of light and the production of tonal effects, Rivius instead brings reflections to the fore, stressing that they must result from close observation of nature and the rules of perspectival optics. On this crucial passage interpolated by Rivius, see P. Weiss “We(d)erschijn als Kernbegriff der Diskussion des malerischen Lichts bei Karel van Mander,” in C. Fritzsche, K. Leonhard, and G.J.M. Weber, eds., Ad Fontes! Niederländische Kunst des 17. Jahrhunderts in Quellen (Petersberg: 2013), 35–53, esp. 40–41; also see Miedema, Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:513–514. As Weiss notes, in “We(d)erschijn,” 46–47, Alberti makes passing mention of the coloristic properties of re-reflected light; with respect to faces that appear greenish when lit by sunlight reflected from a meadow, he writes, in De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 33: “… the reflected rays are impregnated, for no small part, of that color which they have found on the surface from which they are reflected.” As Weiss further observes, in ibid., 47–48, 50, Van Mander’s interest in the contingent effects of transmitted light greatly exceeds that of Alberti or Rivius; so, too, he diverges from them in treating reflective phenomena as key sources of spatial and textural articulation. Van Mander and his contemporaries held that shifts in color resulted from two causes: on one hand, biological processes intrinsic to objects in nature, such as growth, maturation, and decay; on the other, optical events extrinsic to the objects they influence, which play out in the human eye. On these two conceptions of Farbveränderung, see K. Leonhard, “Verf, kleur: Farbtheorie und Stilleben im 17. Jahrhundert,” in Fritzche et al., eds., Ad Fontes!, 55–81, esp. 66; and eadem, Bildfelder: Stilleben und Naturstücke des 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin and Altenburg: 2013), 332–361. Van Mander, in paying close attention to types of reflected light and color, focuses on the optics of reflexy-const. On these types, with specific reference to perspectival optics and speculari (catoptric phenomena), see S. Dupré, “The Historiography of Perspective and Reflexy-const in Netherlandish Art,” Nederlands kunsthistorisch jaarboek 61 (2011): 35–60, esp. 51; and, with reference to the taxonomic display of processes of reflection and refraction in still life, C. Brusati, “Willem Kalf on Reflexykonst: The Aesthetics of Transformation in Still Life,” in M. Baker and A. Hemingway, eds., Art as Worldmaking: Critical Essays on Realism and Naturalism (Manchester: 2018), 147–164, esp. 152.

On reflecty (reflection) and reverberacy (reverberation), see notes 5 and 7 infra. Leonardo, who discusses kinds and degrees of reflected light in his Trattato della pittura (Codex Urbinas Vaticanus Latinus 1270), distinguishes between the repercussive effects of riverberazioni bouncing off planar, semidense surfaces, and reflessi, which assimilate the characteristics of the polished surfaces they strike; see C. Farago, J. Bell, and C. Vecce, eds., The Fabrication of Leonardo da Vinci’s Trattato della pittura, Brill’s Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History 263/18, 2 vols. (Leiden and Boston: 2018), 2:659–660. Van Mander is unlikely to have known the Trattato at first hand, since it remained unpublished until 1651, although he perhaps had access to commonplace excerpts or knew Leonardo’s views from a combination of hearsay and current workshop practice. More plausible is that he had some degree of familiarity with Lomazzo’s Trattato dell’arte, the fourth book of which examines the nature of light, its essential or contingent properties, and its behavior upon striking various materials and superficies. The bulk of Book 4 concerns what Lomazzo calls secondary lights: these he subdivides into three species of reflected light—first, “direct lights,” i.e., highlights cast by objects positioned directly opposite a source of illumination; “reflected lights,” i.e., ancillary lights cast by these highlights and scattered diffusely around them; and “refracted or broken lights,” i.e., re-reflected lights that bounce off lustrous materials—glass, crystal, armor, water—and strike adjacent surfaces, “reverberat[ing] the same upon al other things neere about” (Trattato, 226; Tracte Containing the Artes, trans. Haydocke, 154). Lomazzo distinguishes in Book 4, chapter 20, “How bodies require but one principal light above the rest,” between a picture that appears merely painted and one that qualifies as a true counterfeit, addressed not to the common viewer but to persons endued with the “conceit of the iudicious” (ibid., 168). For both him and Van Mander, who praises Pieter Aertsen as a “great, skillful, cunning deceiver” in stanza 55, the ability to paint reflected light enables the production of truly dissimulative, as opposed to simply simulative, pictorial fictions. On this distinction, see section 6 of my “Introduction,” supra. On Van Mander’s likely familiarity with Lomazzo, in particular his discussion of light and reflection in the Trattato, see Dupré, “Historiography of Perspective,” 37; conversely, on Lomazzo’s familiarity with northern art, filtered through his close reading of Domenicus Lampsonius’s Pictorum aliquot celebrium Germaniae Inferioris effigies, see R. van Son, “Lomazzo, Lampsonius en de noordelijke kunst,” Nederlands kunsthistorisch jaarboek 44 (1993): 185–196.

³⁴⁶ The Thesaurus Theutonicae linguae, fol. T2 recto, defines glans as splendor in Latin, and “resplendeur, lueur” in French, i.e., splendor, gleam, shine, luster. Wederglans (or alternatively, weerglans) signifies a re-reflected version of this range of reflective effects, on which see note 1 supra.

³⁴⁷ Stanza 1 paraphrases the hymn to the sun as the “soul, or more precisely, the mind of the whole world,” in Pliny, Naturalis historia, II.iv.12–13, on which see Miedema, Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:514.

³⁴⁸ Re-reflection refers here to reflexes of light caroming from one cloud to another.

³⁴⁹ Having introduced the term Reflexy (reflection) in stanza 1, Van Mander now specifies how it operates, by describing the reflective properties of the sky at dawn: struck by the rising sun’s red- and purple-golden rays, the azure sky’s color changes, glowing with floral reds and purples. Throughout chapter 7, reflexy, reflecty refers both to the action of light that illuminates and colors the surfaces it strikes, and to the reflective reaction of these surfaces to light which they not only retransmit but also tinge with their local color. On the term schilderachtig, its derivation from workshop practice, general meaning (“typical of a painter,” “worthy of being painted”), and particular reference to curious, eye-catching motifs, see Bakker, “Schilderachtig,” 147–162; and idem, Landscape and Religion, 219, 255–256. In “On Aurora,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book V, fol. 66r–v, Van Mander cites Hesiod, Homer, Virgil, and Theocritus as his chief poetic sources on the light of the rising sun.

³⁵⁰ In Ovid, Metamorphoses VII.701–704, Cephalus, speaking to Phocus, son of King Aeacus, recounts how he was abducted by Aurora, goddess of dawn, who first espied him from the flowery slopes of Mount Hymettus. On Aurora’s rubicund lips, see Wtlegghingh, “On Aurora,” fol. 67r.

³⁵¹ Van Mander’s term for “coming into view” is kippen (hatching, i.e., in the manner of a chick emerging from its egg).

³⁵² That is, where the sun’s rays produced an effect of reflected light. On stanza 6 as an example of Van Mander’s principal interest in colores apparentes, which result from contingent effects of reflected and / or refracted light, and differ in this respect from colores propria, which inhere in objects and materials, see Leonhard, “Verf, Kleur,” 58, 67–68.

³⁵³ Van Mander develops this theme in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, where, in “Life of Goltzius” and “Life of Francesco Badens, Painter of Antwerp,” fols. 285v and 298v, he commends them for their ability to paint glowing reddish flesh tints that remain luminous even when darkly shaded. Stanza 6 makes clear that this effect of living flesh is an expression in reflexy-const. On Goltzius and Badens as masters of “glow” and, in particular, on their use of reflections (or, rather, wederglansen) to render shaded flesh lustrous, see P. Taylor, “The Glow in Late Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Dutch Paintings,” Leids kunsthistorisch jaarboek 11 (1998): 159–178, esp. 166. Taylor points out, in ibid., 168, that Van Mander’s notion of “glow” has no precise equivalent in Italian art theoretical literature; the closest approximation, Vasari’s acceso (fiery), connects more to the discourse of forza (force) and rilievo (relief) than of reflection.

³⁵⁴ On the epithet Phoebus, given to Apollo to mark his “radiance and clarity” (“blinckentheyt en claerheyt”), see Wtlegghingh, “On Apollo, or Phoebus,” fol. 53r.

³⁵⁵ On the chameleon as an allusion to the changeable properties of colores apparentes, see Leonhard, “Verf, Kleur,” 72–81, esp. 79–80; Van Mander, in urging young painters to observe how sunset tints the sea, implicitly encourages them to mimic such chameleonic effects, turning the chameleon into a mimetic epitome of schilderconst.

³⁵⁶ On Tithonus, the immortal, age-old consort of Aurora, see “On Aurora,” in ibid., fol. 66v.

³⁵⁷ On Aeolus as master of the four winds, see “On Aeolus,” in ibid., fol. 111r–v.

³⁵⁸ The term weerkaatsen, used here as a verbal noun, signifies “reflection”; it derives from caetsen, kaatsen, which the Thesaurus Theutonicae linguae fol. I3 verso, translates as “jouer à la paulme” (play handball) in French, “ludere pila palmaria” in Latin. A more literal translation of the verb weerkaatsen would therefore be “to bounce back.” As a gloss on stanza 9, the word serves to emphasize that reverberacy connotes a reverberant reflection, i.e., the caroming of reflected light. This meaning resurfaces in stanza 25 where the repercussion of sharply delineated nocturnal lights—moonlight, fire, lightning, candlelight, and the flame of a forge—is described. Reverberacy also refers back to the opening lines of stanza 9, which evoke a different kind of visual resonance—the natural mimicry of clouds whose shifting shapes appear to echo the appearance of various entities and things.

³⁵⁹ Pliny, Naturalis historia II.lx.150–151, states that rainbows appear directly opposite the sun when its rays, admixed with vaporous mist, fire, and air, reflect off of hollow clouds; ancient theories of the rainbow ultimately derive from Aristotle’s Meteorologica and the commentary tradition, on which, see C.B. Boyer, “Refraction and the Rainbow in Antiquity,” Isis 47 (1956): 383–386.

³⁶⁰ See Genesis 9:12–17, in [Biestkens] Bibel, fol. 3v [O.T.].

³⁶¹ Van Mander insists on the distinction between a momentous heavenly portent sent by God to signal his divine will and a mere natural phenomenon that carries no such weight of meaning. In viewing the first rainbow through the lens of Scripture and eschewing the value of the second as a divinely sanctioned portent, Van Mander aligns himself neither with the popular authors of prodigy books nor with learned men such as Johannes Heurnius who argued, on the basis of Isaiah 13:9–10, that all exceptional heavenly events must be read as God-given signs of his intentions toward humankind. Instead, his position resembles the “middle way” mapped out in the much reprinted pamphlet Aenmerckinghe op de tegenwoordige steert-sterre (Observations on latter-day comets), sometimes ascribed to Jacob Cats: even while recognizing that extraordinary natural phenomena testify to the omnipotence of the Creator, Van Mander refrains from interpreting them in toto as fearful portents predictive of future calamities. On reception of portenta and prodigia such as comets in the early modern Low Countries, see E. Jorink, Het Boeck der Natuere: Nederlandse geleerden en de wonderen van Gods Schepping, 1575–1715 (Leiden: 2006, reprint ed. 2007), 115–151, esp. 132–139; and, with specific reference to Van Mander and Goltzius in Haarlem, W.S. Melion, “Prodigies of Nature, Wonders of the Hand: Political Portents and Divine Artifice in Haarlem, ca. 1600,” in The Anthropomorphic Lens: Anthropomorphism, Microcosm, and Analogy in Early Modern Thought and Visual Arts, Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture 34, ed. Melion, B. Rothstein, and M. Weemans (Leiden and Boston: 2014), 277–322.

³⁶² On Van Mander’s rejoinder to Pliny’s explanation of the rainbow’s semicircular form, see U. Kern, “Samuel van Hoogstraeten and the Cartesian Rainbow Debate: Color and Optics in a Seventeenth-Century Treatise on Art Theory,” Simiolus 36 (2012): 103–114, esp. 103–104.

³⁶³ On the frequency of rainbows at Locri and the Veline Lake, see Pliny, Naturalis historia II.lxii.153.

³⁶⁴ Before going to Rome in 1573, Van Mander visited Terni, where he painted a Bartholomew Night’s Massacre for the Count of Terni, on which see “The Pedigree, birth, place, time, life, and works of Karel van Mander, Painter and Poet,” in Schilder-Boeck (Amsterdam: Jacob Pietersz. Wachter, 1618), fol. R3v, reprinted in Miedema, ed., Karel van Mander, The Lives, 1:17; and Leesberg, “Karel van Mander as Painter,” 17–18.

³⁶⁵ The opening two lines provide the conclusion to stanza 17.

³⁶⁶ See note 15 supra.

³⁶⁷ See Ezechiel 1:28.

³⁶⁸ See Apocalypse 4:3.

³⁷⁰ The reference is to Ecclesiasticus 43:12 and 50:1–2, 5–7, which verses are numbered 43:24 and 50:1–2, 5–7 in the [Biestkens] Bibel, fols. 125v and 127v–128r.

³⁶⁹ See Ecclesiasticus 43:12, 50:8, and, on the colors of the tabernacle’s ten curtains—blue or violet, purple, and scarlet—see Exodus 26:1.

³⁷¹ The scope of Van Mander’s comparisons now expands from Scripture to poetic fiction: whereas stanzas 19 and 20 referred to the visions of Ezechiel and Jesus Sirach, stanza 21 begins by invoking Iris to personify the rainbow’s spectrum of colors. On Iris as the rainbow born of the mingling of sun and water, see Wtlegghingh, “On Iris,” fol. 97r.

³⁷² In fact, Van Mander here uses the male subject pronoun hy rather than the female pronoun sy, thus eliding his description of Iris into his account of the rainbow (male).

³⁷³ The topic shifts from the rainbow to the representation of its colors, with an allusion to the ordering of pigments on the painter’s palette as the hinge. As Leonhard duly notes in “Verf, Kleur,” 70, whereas Aristotle, Plutarch, and authors writing in the tradition of the Pseudo-Aristotelian De coloribus denied that painters could portray the rainbow, Van Mander takes it for granted that the rainbow’s luminous spectrum of colors falls fully within the purview of schilderconst.

³⁷⁴ Incarnatich is the adjectival form of the noun incarnatie (incarnation, from the Latin in carni, in the flesh), which the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal identifies as a transliteration of the Latin incarnatio (incarnation); see https://gtb.ivdnt.org/iWDB/search?actie=article&wdb=WNT&id=M027284&lemma=incarnatie&domein=0&conc=true (accessed 16 August 2022). The term denominates the mystery of the Incarnation, by which the divine Word is made flesh in Christ Jesus. As a workshop term for flesh color, incarnatie retained its association with enfleshment. Cennino Cennini’s Libro dell’Arte codified the use of incarnazione to connote the medial processes whereby drawing and painting give bodily form to previously unseen things, on which see C. Kruse, “Fleisch werden—Fleisch malen: Malerei als ‘incarnazione.’ Mediale Verfahren des Bildwerdens im Libro dell’Arte von Cennino Cennini,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeshichte 63 (2000): 305–325. Also see Miedema, Van Mander, Den Grondt, 2:602, on the possible derivation of the associated term carnaty (incarnadine) from the Italian carnagione.

³⁷⁵ As poetry has its rhymes, so painting, which is known as doode Poetery (dead, i.e., mute poetry), has its color consonances. Miedema, Van Mander, Den Grondt, 2:519, identifies Mexía, De verscheyden lessen, 249, as Van Mander’s source for the notion that “painting is known by the name of ‘dead poetry.’ ”

³⁷⁶ On ash blue, see M.P. Merrifield, Original Treatises, Dating from the XIIth to XVIIIth Centuries, on the Arts of Painting, 2 vols. (London: 1849), 1:cc–ccii; D.V. Thompson, The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting (London: 1936; reprint ed., 1956), 130–132, 151–153; and Miedema, Van Mander, Den Grondt, 2:519–520. The networks of affinity into which Van Mander sorts the rainbow’s colors ultimately derive from Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 72.

³⁷⁷ On the arrangement of pigments on the painter’s palette, starting with white and ending with black, see E. Berger, Quellen für Maltechnik während der Renaissance und deren Folgezeit (Munich: 1975), 260 nr. 195; and Kern, “Van Hoogstraeten and the Cartesian Rainbow Debate,” 108–109. The sequence is: white, vermilion, lake, yellow ocher, yellow lake, brown-red, brown ocher, ivory black, and lamp black.

³⁷⁸ Miedema, in Van Mander, Den Grondt I:190, and J.W. Noldus, Karel van Mander, Principe et fondement de l’art noble et libre de la Peinture (Paris: 2008), 111, translate bruyn as “saturated,” whereas I have rendered it as “darker shade,” in line with Hexham, Groot woorden-boeck, *83, which defines bruyn as “A Browne colour, or Russet.”

³⁷⁹ Miedema, Van Mander, Den Grondt, 2:520, draws a parallel between the organization of the palette’s hues and tones here and in Vasari’s “Technical Preface,” where each set of three colors is subdivided into further corollary tints; see G. Baldwin Brown, ed., Vasari on Technique, Being the Introduction to the Three Arts of Design, trans. L.S. Maclehose (New York: 1960), 209.

³⁸⁰ On these specific reverberative effects, see stanza 9 and its marginal gloss supra.

³⁸¹ On the twin effects of illumination in this famous painting by Antiphilus—the lighting of an “insien oft prospectijf” (foreshortened view or perspective) and “gilding” of the boy’s distended cheeks—see “On Antiphilus,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 85r.

³⁸² On Echion’s painting of a matron lighting the way to a bride’s marriage bed, see “On Echion,” in ibid., fol. 72v.

³⁸³ For the episode in Canto VII, stanzas 22–23, where Ariosto describes the radiance of the torchlight cast by pages as they lead Ruggiero to the sorceress Alcina’s bedchamber, see L. Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, trans. W.S. Rose (London: 1858), 103–104; whereas Ariosto points up the feel of finely woven silks, Van Mander implies that they shimmer in the nighttime firelight.

³⁸⁴ On Vulcan’s association with fire fueled by gross earthly matter, which differs from the higher, purer flames of the celestial sun, see “On Vulcan,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 14v. In portraying Vulcan’s ire and showing how he materializes fire, feeding his forge with various stuffs, Van Mander fashions an analogy to the painter whose pigments, forged from various minerals and compounds, are then transformed by him into the image of flames. The phrase “Poets’ Hells” refers to such loci classici as Aeneas’s journey through the underworld in Virgil’s Aeneid, Book 6, Orpheus’s visit to Hades in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 9, and Virgil’s Georgics 4, but it also alludes to the representation of hellfire as a trope for troubled conscience. In “On Pluto,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 32r, Van Mander construes “poets’ hells” as visual allusions to the torments sinners feel when their conscience is wracked by the memory of evil deeds they have committed: “Now, concerning Poets’ Hells: they are nothing other than various sins and the miseries and disasters that overcome and strike reckless and ungodly men through their evil deeds, and the gnawing, tormenting conscience that punishes and condemns them.” On this passage, see Göttler, “Fire, Smoke, and Vapour,” 43.

³⁸⁵ On Vulcan’s forge, lodged in the depths of Mount Aetna, whence red- and purple-tinted rocks are blasted skyward, and by day a black cloud of mist ever rises, see “On Vulcan,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 14v, and “On Aeolus,” in ibid., fols. 111r. The same flames pierce the dark of night, as if by the halting light of the sun (“daer men soo qualijck op con sien, als op de Sonne”). On the appreciation of Jan Brueghel’s hell scenes as epitomes of the “Poeetsche Hellen” touted by Van Mander, see Göttler, “Fire, Smoke, and Vapour,” 38–39; and E.A. Honig, Jan Brueghel and the Senses of Scale (University Park: 2016), 93–94.

³⁸⁶ On the fiery workshop of Vulcan and the Cyclopes in the depths of Mount Gibellus, i.e, Aetna, where the gods’ weapons were forged, along with figural works such as the living effigy of Pandora, see ibid., fol. 14v.

³⁸⁷ Dach, dagh (plural daghen) can signify “daylight” or “highlight”; in this context, Van Mander is implying that the reflected and re-reflected lights, seen within the gloomy environs of Vulcan’s cave, have the concentrated force of fiery daylight.

³⁸⁸ Namely, for its source or point of origin.

³⁸⁹ The term Dorpman signifies “villager,” but since Bassano, where Jacopo resided, is more a town than a village, I have translated it “townsman.” To render the sense of “wel verwenden Dorpman,” literally “well-coloring Townsman,” I have interpolated the phrase “and expert colorist.”

³⁹⁰ In “Life of Jacopo Bassano, Painter,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fol. 180 r, Van Mander lavishes praise on the painter’s mastery of reflexy-const. He states that Jacopo has a distinctive manner of painting such nocturnal Historien as the Nativity, in which the clarity of angelic light illuminates the shepherds and glistens on copper or metal pots and kettles lying about the shepherds’ huts. Equally noteworthy are his nocturnes painted on slate: “raylets of light emanating from firebrands, torches, and lustrous reflections were drawn in gold metalpoint on the black stone ground, and the [golden] hatches were then varnished” (“al waer lichten quamen van Fackels, Toortsen, of schijnsels, daer waren de straelkens getrocken op den swarten steenen grondt met gouden pennekens, en op dese streken vernist wesende”). On Bassano’s nocturnes, with specific reference to Van Mander’s chapter on Bassano, see H. Noë, Carel van Mander en Italië: beschouwingen en notities naar aanleiding van zijn “Leven der dees-tijtsche doorluchtighe Italiaensche Schilders” (The Hague: 1954), 161; and Miedema, Van Mander, Den grondt, 2:525.

³⁹¹ On the legendary avarice of Battus, i.e., his love of gold, see “On Chiron,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 20r.

³⁹² For one such painting on slate, lit by gold highlights, see the Lamentation by Candlelight, 1570s, in J.W. Mann, ed., Paintings on Stone: Science and the Sacred, 1530–1800 [exh. cat., St. Louis Art Museum] (Munich and St. Louis: 2020), 118–119; this painted stone likely once belonged to the series of twelve Passion pictures on slate mentioned by Van Mander in “On Jacopo Bassano,” fol. 180r. Also see, in ibid., 120–121, Francesco Bassano the Younger’s Christ on the Road to Calvary with the Veil of St. Veronica, 1580s; and, on the technique of painting on slate, J.M. Reifsnyder, “Observations on Preparation Techniques for Painting on Stone Surfaces,” in ibid, 77–85, esp. 80–82.

³⁹³ On Coignet, in particular his luminous Historikens (small history paintings), night scenes lit by candles, torches, and lamps, their flames rendered in raised strokes of gold gilt (“ghebruyckende veel tijt verheven vergulde lichten van den Keersen, Frackelen, oft Lampen”), see “Life of Gillis Coignet, Painter of Antwerp,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 262r. Van Mander, after affirming the natural effect (“seer natuerlijck stondt”) of such works, mentions that some viewers criticized Coignet for portraying these lights not with paint, the province of any true painter, but with actual gold. He then concludes by stating that there are others who appreciate these pictures for their “improved welstandt,” measurable by the power the gilt lights display to deceive the viewer’s eyes (“doch ander houden al goet wat den welstandt verbetert, en d’ooghe des aensienders best can bedrieghen”).

³⁹⁴ Sy (they) refers to the colors whose obedience to Coignet’s every wish stanza 42 has just affirmed.

³⁹⁵ On Prometheus, son of Japetus, who stole heavenly fire from the chariot of the sun, using it to bring to life the lifeless effigy of the first man, fashioned by him, and then used that same fire to make the first works of art, showing that “without it no art can be practiced anything but poorly” (“sonder welck qualijck eenige Const gheoeffent can worden”), see “On Prometheus,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 2v. As Miedema points out, in Van Mander, Den grondt, 2:526, Van Mander thus claims that light effects such as these enliven the paintings they grace.

³⁹⁶ On this night scene, currently in the Amsterdam Museum, which depicts the nighttime lottery of 1592, staged on behalf of the Madhouse of Amsterdam, see N. Middlekoop, “Gillis Coignet and the Amsterdam Lottery of 1592: Locating an Extraordinary Night Scene,” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art (2010), DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2010.2.1.4 (accessed 20 August 2021).

³⁹⁷ On Sicyon, admired above all other Greek cities as a center of painting in the time of Pamphilus, see “On Melanthus, Painter,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 76r.

³⁹⁸ On Haarlem as home to the best painters in the Netherlands, see “Life of Dirck [Bouts] of Haarlem,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 206r; and “Life of Jan Mostaert Painter of Haarlem,” in ibid., fol. 229r: “Just as Sicyon was held famous for Schilder-const amongst the Greeks, and afterwards Florence and Rome amongst the Italians, so too in Holland was the noble city of Haarlem admired of old, for having brought forth many very good spirits of our Art.”

³⁹⁹ On this lost painting, preserved in an engraving by Jan Saenredam, see P.J. Vincken, “H.L. Spiegel’s Antrum Platonicum,” Oud Holland 75 (1960): 125–142; and P.J.J. van Thiel, Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem 1562–1638: A Monograph and Catalogue Raisonné (Doornspijk: 1999), 202–205, nr. 114 (Fig. 23). Van Mander’s interest in the parable of Plato’s Cave, as Müller astutely observes, in Concordia Pragensis, 137, may have been instigated by Socrates’s definition of the image, in Republic VI.509e–510a, as “first, shadows, and then reflections in water and on surfaces of dense, smooth, and bright texture”; see Plato’s Republic, trans. and ed. P. Shorey, 2 vols. (London: 1930–1935), 2:108–109. On this account, the process of reflection can be viewed as fundamentally constitutive of the process of image-making tout court.

⁴⁰⁰ Although Van Mander uses the past tense here and in line 5 to emphasize that he is talking about a picture he has actually seen, in English the present tense is not only less awkward but also does nothing to contravene his pseudo-ekphrastic description of Cornelis’s picture.

⁴⁰¹ On this closing disclaimer, see Miedema, Van Mander, Den grondt, 2:528. Hendrik Laurensz. Spiegel, the likely source of the print’s Platonic subject, harbored strong reservations about certain kinds of allegorical reading, and Van Mander may be adverting to these, or he may be gesturing discreetly toward Spiegel’s authority as the print’s primary reader-sponsor.

⁴⁰² The other Haarlemer is Hendrick Goltzius, and the epitome of art described in stanzas 47–49 is his pen-werck, Venus, Bacchus, and Ceres of 1593 (British Museum 1861,0608.174), executed in pen and brown ink on vellum (Fig. 22). For “of line-drawing,” Van Mander uses the Latin genitive Linearis, which perhaps derives from Pliny’s reference to pictura linearis in Naturalis historia 35:5. For “engraving,” Van Mander uses the Latin term Clypeus (shield), which likely derives from Pliny’s account, in ibid. 35:3–4, of the origins of painting from commemorative portraits painted or carved on shields. He implicitly analogizes these ancient shields to contemporary chased and engraved armor. Having used the Latin terms Linearis and Clypeus for drawing and engraving respectively, he then designates his painting Pictura, and thereby draws the inference that Goltzius’s art has the canonical status and authority of ancient art. In “Life of Hendrick Goltzius,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 285v, he tacitly refers back to stanza 47 when he avers that Goltzius resembles Michelangelo in many respects: whereas the latter excels at the sister-arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, Goltzius is a consummate draftsman, engraver, and painter. On the parallel between Goltzius and Michelangelo, see W.S. Melion, “Karel van Mander’s ‘Life of Goltzius’: Defining the Paradigm of Protean Virtuosity in Haarlem around 1600,” in S.J. Barnes and Melion, eds., Studies in the History of Art 27: Cultural Differentiation and Cultural Identity (Washington, D.C.: 1989), 112–133.

⁴⁰³ The term pennen (pinions, i.e., the flight feathers that together constitute the outer rear edge of a bird’s wing) puns on “pens,” and thereby alludes to Goltzius masterful penmanship, both pictorial and calligraphic.

⁴⁰⁴ The phrase “t’eenich golt” (singular gold) puns on the homonymic presence of gold (gold) in the name Goltzius.

⁴⁰⁵ On the phoenix, which here functions as a metaphor of Goltzius, see Van Mander, Wtbeeldinge der figueren, fol. 134v.

⁴⁰⁶ The Greek term for “phoenix,” Φοίνιξ (Foínix), also signifies “palm tree,” on which see Van Mander, Wtbeeldinge, fol. 134v.

⁴⁰⁷ As Miedema notes in Van Mander, Den grondt, 2:529, the attribution of the invention of parchment to King Attalus of Pergamon derives from a marginal note in Du Pinet, L’histoire du monde, 2:631. Miedema further suggests that Van Mander may be playing on the association between “Attalus vliesen” and the reference, in chapter 14, “Interpretation of Colors,” stanzas 7–8, to cloth of gold as “Attalus werck.” The Attalid connection between parchment and cloth of gold invites the reader to construe Goltzius’s parchment drawing of Venus, Bacchus, and Ceres as a latter-day golden fleece. On Attalus and the mythic discovery of parchment, see R.R. Johnson, “Ancient and Medieval Accounts of the ‘Invention’ of Parchment,” California Studies in Classical Antiquity 3 (1970): 115–122.

⁴⁰⁸ Van Mander, in coining the nickname Vinde-wijn (Find-wine), uses “find” in the sense of “invent” to credit Bacchus with the discovery of wine. Intoxicating wine also incites desire, as well as allowing the drunkard to forget her / his troubles, and thus Bacchus receives the additional monikers “Give-lust” (Gheve-lust) and “Escape-care” (Sorghe verliesen). The monikers “Find-wine” and “Escape-care,” by alluding to the carefree gifts of Bacchus and Ceres, encapsulate the Terentian epitome, cited in “On Venus,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 29v: “For Venus grows cold when she has neither Liber nor Ceres at hand” (“Want Venus is coudt, wanneer sy / Noch Liber noch Ceres heeft by”). Van Mander’s source was Terence, The Eunuch IV.732.

⁴⁰⁹ Ceres, the benevolent goddess of agriculture, is characterized allegorically as the personification of Overvloedt (Abundance).

⁴¹⁰ In calling reflection “Echo’s offspring,” Van Mander is surely referring to the exquisitely reverberant effects of re-reflected light visible on the flesh of Venus (and elsewhere) in Goltzius’s pen-werck (Van Mander’s term for drawings executed in the manner of his engravings on parchment or canvas supports). On the pen-werck as a distinct pictorial category, defined by its materials and technique, and on the Venus, Bacchus, and Ceres in particular, see “Life of Hendrick Goltzius” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 285r. Kern, in Light and Shade, 149, argues, wrongly in my view, that the reference to Reflexy in stanza 48 connotes direct light only. The reference to re-reflected light is enhanced by the allusion to Echo, on whose meaning as a trope of painting Van Mander expatiates in “On Narcissus, and Echo,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 26r–v, where he cites an epigram by Ausonius addressed to the would-be painter of an image of Echo. Spoken as if by Echo herself, Van Mander’s long periphrasis of the epigram turns on the theme, “Echo is not to be painted” (“Echo is niet te schilderen”):

Aye, heedless Painter, why do you labor with all your might

To portray me, whom no member of the human race

Did ever see. Neither form nor body, or being,

Or color have I. I grow day and night,

As the daughter of Air and gentle Speech.

Not by its own power, nor from out of me does speech come forth on every side.

But rather, it awaits another’s voice, to counterfeit some part thereof;

From what was spoken, the last word is that which altogether

Quickly melts into the air. But would you be prized

For fashioning my likeness on some panel:

Then paint in effigy with your clever brush

The voice or power of speech which sounds in one’s ears: these things,

If you but do them, shall make of you a painter above all painters.

In stanza 48, Van Mander implicitly acclaims Goltzius’s ability to meet head-on the challenge posed by Ausonius: if “reflected light” is Echo’s child, then Goltzius, in capturing its resonant passage from one surface to another, proves his mettle incontrovertibly. Wielding the “art of line,” he fashions the likeness of something so fleeting and ephemeral that it might otherwise melt into thin air. Goltzius thereby gives the lie to Ausonius’s notional painter.

⁴¹¹ In Schilder-Boeck, Book II, “Preface to Lives of the Illustrious Ancient Painters, both Greek and Roman,” fol. 61r, Van Mander compares Homer’s famous ekphrasis of the shield of Achilles in Iliad XVIII, specifically the scene of Ariadne encircled by dancing youths and maidens, to a pre-Homeric picture of the same subject painted by Daedalus, rightly valued, as he avers, at the extraordinary price of one hundred oxen. In fact, Homer identifies Daedalus as the architect who designed an open-air dance floor for Ariadne and her pastoral courtiers. Van Mander, by converting him into a painter whom he describes as “exceptionally skilled in the art of painting” (“in de Schilder-const uytnemende ervaren”), implies that Homer based his poetic image of Ariadne on the earlier picture by Daedalus. Furthermore, in “Life of Jan and Hubert van Eyck, brothers, and Painters of Maseyck,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 201r, quoting Lucas de Heere’s “Ode on the Ghent Altarpiece,” he eulogizes this fountainhead of northern painting as a “Daedalian work, a treasure, a noble gage.” Within the intertextual fabric of the Schilder-Boeck, the epithet “Daedalis stuck” (Daedalian opus) confers on Goltzius’s Venus, Bacchus, and Ceres an Homeric ekphrastic pedigree and a canonical status equivalent to that of the altarpiece Van Mander considered the founding work of the Netherlandish canon.

⁴¹² The Hesperides, as nymphs of the sunset, are embodiments of the kind of light described in stanzas 6 and 7 supra; on the Hesperides, also known as the Atlantides, who dwell in the far west where the chariot of the sun daily descends into the sea, see Natalis Comes, Mythologiae sive explicationum fabularum libri decem (Venice: Comin da Trino, 1567; reprint ed., 1581), 482.

⁴¹⁴ See Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXV.xxxvi.63.

⁴¹³ On Zeuxis’s Wrestlers, inscribed by the artist himself with the epitaph, “One can rashly contemn this: but / To do anything as good, ‘twere the greater labor truly,” see “On Zeuxis of Heraclea, Painter,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 67r.

⁴¹⁵ The phrase “weerschijnich smetten,” a response to direct observation, implies that light has passed through the wine held in the wineglass and, having been refracted, transmits the liquor’s color to the table linen, “staining” it as if the wine had actually dripped onto the cloth. The stain is weerschijnich in the sense that light, reflected and colored by the glass and its contents, has been relayed, in a secondary process of reflection, onto and by yet another surface.

⁴¹⁶ On Pieter Aertsen, the assured handling of whose paintings nae[r] t’leven (after / to the life) results from his unsurpassed ability to mix and temper colors, see “Life of Pieter Aertsen,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 243v. Van Mander explicitly praises a kitchen scene (keucken) in the Amsterdam collection of Jacob Rauwaert, which incorporates the flayed head of a recently slaughtered ox, along with a childhood portrait of Aertsen’s second son, Aert Pietersz.

⁴¹⁷ On this kitchen scene, see note 72 supra; also see E.M. Kavaler, “Pieter Aertsen’s Meat Stall: Divers Aspects of the Market Piece,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 40 (1989): 67–92; and C. Houghton, “This Was Tomorrow: Pieter Aertsen’s Meat Stall as Contemporary Art,” Art Bulletin 86 (2004): 278–300.

⁴¹⁸ Van Mander refers to the fifth vault, where Isaac and Rebecca make love by the raking coronal light of a solar eclipse, while King Abimelech spies upon them.

⁴¹⁹ On the intense popularity of Albrecht Dürer’s Saint Jerome in His Study of 1514, which was appreciated throughout the sixteenth century as an epitome of his art, see G. Bartrum, Albrecht Dürer and His Legacy: The Graphic Work of a Renaissance Artist [exh. cat., London, British Museum] (London: 2002), 189.

⁴²⁰ Van Mander paraphrases Orlando Furioso, Canto I, stanzas 33, 35, and especially 37–38: Ariosto describes tufts of “flowering thorn and vermeil rose” reflected from a winding stream overshadowed by tall oaks; seeking shelter there, Angelica’s fear subsides amongst the sights, sounds, and scents. As the stream mirrors its environs, so the landscape mirrors Angelica’s emotions: its wind-swept trembling leaflets initially match her consternation, but her anxiety gradually abates as she penetrates deeper into the beguiling locus amoenus. The poet’s vividly evocative hypotyposis functions as a preface to chapter 8, on the encompassing sensory and emotive effects of landscape.

⁴²¹ On Giges, the putative first practitioner of Teyckenconst and Schilder-const, see “On Gyges of Lydia, the first Painter in Egypt,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 62r–v. This “Life,” which inaugurates the sequence of biographies of ancient Greek and Roman painters, begins by avowing the therapeutic properties of noble arts such as drawing, painting, song, and drama: only by exercising themselves therein can persons hope to raise their dejected spirits and make glad their flagging senses (“t’zy in Consten, die wonderlijck oft t’ghesicht, oft t’gehoor, oft anderen sin verheughen”). Van Mander, by placing painters in a lineage from Giges, anticipates one of the key arguments of chapter 8, “On Landscape,” which is that this branch of art has the power to refresh and enliven the viewer’s body, mind, and heart.

⁴²² In “On Daedalus,” in ibid., fol. 70r, Van Mander infers that the “Daedalian skein” (“het Dedaelsche clouwen”), with which Ariadne assisted Theseus to extricate himself from the Cretan labyrinth built by Daedalus, was likewise fashioned by him. It, too, is a work of artifice. The “skein of Nature” (“t’clouwen der Natueren”), whereby the aspiring painter negotiates Pictura’s labyrinth, may thus be construed as an epitome of artifice or, better, an allusion to natural artifice. By contrast, Müller, Concordia Pragensis, 139, reads the “skein” as a Sinnbild, not Abbild, of painting as a contemplative instrument or, better, process whereby the Creator, divine source of Creation, is ascertained.

Chapter 8: “On Landscape”

⁴²³ Hesperus, son of Eos, goddess of Dawn, is the Evening Star. On Morpheus, the god of Sleep, son of Night, and brother of Lethe, the river of Oblivion, see “On the God of Sleep and Dreams,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 98r.

⁴²⁴ Saffranich is the term for croceus (yellow-gold, orange-gold); see J. André, Études sur les termes de couleur dans la langue latine, Études et commentaires 7 (Paris: 1949), 153–155.

⁴²⁶ In the poem “Etymology, or explanation, where the word Schilder, or Schildery, took its origin,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. Hij verso, Van Mander states that the term schillede, which he defines as “multi- or particolored,” derives from the ancient custom of painting memorial shields, known as schilden. Schilder (painter) and schilderj (painting) are likewise traceable to schild.

⁴²⁵ On Tithonus and his spouse Aurora, who as goddess of the Dawn leaves her saffron-colored marriage bed and climbs heavenward at the start of each day, rising from out of the ocean in the company of the sun-god, see “On Aurora,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 66v; and P. Vergilius Maro, Bucolica en Georgica, dat is, Ossen-stal en Landt-werck. Nu eerst in rijm-dicht vertaelt, door K.V. Mander (Haarlem: Gillis Rooman, 1597), 193. Eurus is the East Wind who dwells in the far east where the sun-god daily rises. Stanza 4 also paraphrases Virgil, Aeneid IV.584–585. As Miedema points out in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:541, Van Mander’s Virgilian paraphrase closely corresponds to a passage in Cristoforo Sorte, Osservazioni sopra la pittura (Venice: Girolamo Zenaro, 1580), which in turn derives from a poem by Bernardo Tasso; see P. Barocchi, ed., Trattati d’arte del Cinquecento fra manierismo e controriforma, 3 vols. (Bari: 1960), 1:285–286.

⁴²⁷ Van Mander may be using Morghen-stondt (early morning) to refer to Lucifer, herald of Aurora and the rising sun; see Wtlegghingh, fol. 66v.

⁴²⁸ On azurite, a blue mineral pigment sometimes confused with ultramarine (made from ground lapis lazuli), see R.D. Harley, Artists’ Pigments c. 1600–1835, Technical Studies in the Arts, Archaeology, and Architecture (London, Boston, et al.: 1970; reprint ed., 1982), 47. Van Mander may simply be using asuerich to evoke an intense blue color. On red lake, of which there were two kinds—lac or purplish Indian lake and cochineal or carmine lake (of a strong redder cast)—see ibid., 131–138. The phrase “asuerich laken” (azure lake), which for the sake of clarity I periphrase as “azure of lake pigments,” evokes the intensely blue-red effect of the rising sun.

⁴²⁹ On Tellus, goddess of Earth, whom Van Mander considers identical with Cybele, Rhea, Vesta, and Ops, see “Cybele,” in Wtbeeldinge der figueren, fol. 125v.

⁴³⁰ Stanzas 6–8 describe the coloristic effects of the sun at different phases of its rising as its light illuminates the countryside. In his notes on painting materials and techniques, Theodore Turquet de Mayerne, physician-chemist to Charles I of England, closely acquainted with court painters such as Anthony van Dyck, enumerates the colors and color mixtures whereby a landscape lit by the sun at dawn, midday, and dusk may be portrayed; see Pictorja, sculptorja et quae subalternatum artium (On Painting, Sculpture, and the Corollary Arts), in E. Berger, ed. and trans., Quellen für Maltechnik während der Renaissance und deren Folgezeit (Munich: 1901), 123. De Mayerne’s technical precepts offer many parallels to Van Mander’s evocation of the colors of a sunlit landscape.

⁴³¹ Stanzas 4–7, especially stanza 7 on the effect of the rising sun upon greenery, puts one in mind of Lomazzo, Trattato dell’arte, 474, where in Book VI, chapter 61, “Composition of painting and fashioning diverse landscapes,” he commends Titian above all other landscapists for his ability to paint a field as if its greenery, marked by diverse pathways, were resplendently lit by the sun from within.

⁴³² On diminution of the brightness and color of visual rays as they interact with the air, taking on its properties as they travel through the atmosphere, finally becoming indistinguishable from it, see Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. aa4v; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 29 (cf. 69). As Miedema notes, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:543, Rivius attends to the ways in which optical rays assimilate the colors of nearby objects.

⁴³³ The simile to floor-tiles derives from Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. bb3r, cc1r–v; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 34, 41.

⁴³⁴ Van Mander uses the term Orisont which, as Miedema opines in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:544, must have been common parlance and perhaps derives from Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. bb1v–2r.

⁴³⁵ In “Life of Gillis van Conincxloo, Painter of Antwerp,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fols. 267v–268r, Van Mander makes reference to Italian paragoni, treatises on the relative superiority of painting or sculpture, claiming that Conincxloo’s landscapes confirm the victory of painting over its sister art: “… the painter fashions everything which the human eye apprehends by sight: heaven, air, various changes of weather, the sun sending down its rays through clouds upon cities, mountains, and valleys, occasional dark, cloudy rain, hail, snow, every variety of green in trees and fields, when laughing springtime incites and rouses birds to sing, [all] which remains impossible for the sculptor to fashion in stone …. This the artful works of the excellent landscapist Gillis van Conincxloo help to confirm and attain.” Conincxloo’s ability to portray a wide array of topographical features and atmospheric effects, most prominently the interaction of sun and cloud, correlates to the desiderata described in stanzas 10–12. So, too, his mastery of greenery aligns with the emphasis on kinds and degrees of the color green in stanzas 6, 7, 26–27, 30–31, 35, 38–40, and 42. On the paragoni consulted by Van Mander, who mentions having seen The Dialogue (T’saemspraeck)—probably Benedetto Varchi, Due Lezzioni (Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino, 1549)—as well as “description[s] by other [authors]” (possibly Paolo Pino, Anton Francesco Doni, Michelangelo Biondo, Benvenuto Cellini, or Raffaele Borghini), see Miedema, Karel van Mander, Lives, 75. In “Life of Abraham Bloemaert,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 298r, Van Mander singles the painter out for his ability to portray sunshine and dark or fiery skies. On Van Mander’s general reluctance, elsewhere in the Schilder-Boeck, to engage in the disputatio atrium, see section 5 of my introductory essay supra.

⁴³⁷ See Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXV.xxxvi.96.

⁴³⁶ On the ancient painters Apelles, Echion, and Nicomachus, who used a palette of four colors only—“white, yellow, red, and black”—see “On Melanthus,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 75v. On Apelles’s skill at painting fugitive effects of weather that had formerly appeared inimitable, such as thunder, lightning, and thunderbolts, known by the epithets Brontes, Astrapes, and Ceraunobolus, see “On Apelles, Prince of Painters,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 81v.

⁴³⁸ On Eolus, lord of the four winds who like messengers do his bidding, see “On Aeolus,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 111r.

⁴³⁹ The erratum (fol. [Pp ix] recto) changes wercken (works) to swercken (clouds); see Etymologicum Teutonicae linguae, 544: swaercke = swercke = nubes (clouds).

⁴⁴⁰ On the identification of Apollo with the sun as the “heart of heaven, the soul or life of the world, and the eye of Jupiter,” see “On Apollo, or Phoebus,” in ibid., fols. 52v–53r.

⁴⁴¹ Van Mander perhaps refers to Apollo’s displeasure at seeing his mother Latona denied water by the Lycian peasants, or Niobe denying due worship to Latona and her children, on which, see ibid., fols. 53v and 50v, respectively.

⁴⁴² On Clytië, who pined for Apollo and was finally turned into the heliotrope or sunflower (in Italian, “Torn al Sole”), which ever turns its face to the sun, see Wtlegghingh, fol. 31r.

⁴⁴³ Van Mander uses the term asuyren (azure) to signify the deep blue color of ultramarine or azurite, on which see note 6 supra. On smalt, made from oxidized cobalt ore mixed with silica, see Harley, Artist’s Pigments, 53–56. The quality of Dutch and Flemish smalt was considered exceptional throughout the sixteenth century. On the need to ensure that the ground layer absorbs excess oil when painting with smalt, see stanza 43 of chapter 12, “On painting well, or Coloring,” fol. 50r; also see M. van Eikema Hommes, Changing Pictures: Discoloration in 15th-17th-Century Oil Paintings (London: 2004), 26–27.

⁴⁴⁴ The reference to a purplish cast indicates that Van Mander is talking about Indian or lac lake, on which see Harley, Artist’s Pigments, 131–135. On the distinction between lake- and vermilion-based flesh tints, see stanza 29 of chapter 12, fol. 49r.

⁴⁴⁵ On Prometheus, who enlivened humankind with the stolen gift of divine flame, and, in another interpretation of the ancient myth, first modeled effigies of men and inaugurated the practice of various arts, see “On Prometheus,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 2v.

⁴⁴⁶ The term hardt (hard, forceful) denotes in this context something sharply defined. Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonicae linguae, 185, gives the cognates durus (hard), fortis (strong, forceful), and robustus (firm, solid, strong); the Thesaurus Theutonicae linguae, fol. X2 recto, gives the cognate durus (hard, harsh, severe).

⁴⁴⁷ The majority of Pieter Bruegel’s Great Landscapes of ca. 1555, a series of twelve prints engraved after his designs by Joannes and Lucas van Doetecum, contains a large, conspicuous foreground element, either at the left or right; see J. van Grieken, “De grote landschappen,” in M. Bassens and Van Grieken, Bruegel in zwart en wit: het complete grafische werk [exh. cat., KBR, Brussels] (Brussels: 2020), 76–97.

⁴⁴⁸ Here I have translated welstandt as “well-being,” in line with Hexham’s definition of the adjectives “Wel-staende, ofte fraey” as “Well-becoming, Well-beseeming, or Fine”; see Hexham, Groot woorden-boeck, *617. Alternatively, one could render it as “pleasing impression” or “pleasing appearance,” to emphasize that its scope extends beyond the paradigm of figural disposition to encompass the concinnity of landscape.

⁴⁴⁹ The term slanghen signifies “winding like a serpent,” but in this context, with reference to the maritime motion of waves, it might best be translated “to undulate.” The serpentine relation amongst fore-, middle-, and background, as a structural feature of landscape, is analogous to the rotational attitude of the body and its limbs which anchors the conception of welstandt in chapter 4; especially see stanzas 10 and 12, notes 11, 12, and 13 supra. Throughout chapter 8, Van Mander implicitly expresses his high regard for landscape as a pictorial subject by calling attention to those respects in which it resembles the human body: as its slanghende grounds call to mind the figura serpentinata, so in its power to communicate affect it correlates to the human figure (see, for example, stanza 27 on joy, stanzas 13, 24, and 47 on fear, and stanza 45 on delight), and in its ability to mobilize the eyes moves according to the seven bodily motions distinguished in chapter 5, stanzas 4 and 5 (see chapter 8, stanza 25, on Bruegel’s Alpine vistas that cause the eyes to ascend and descend, shuttle from place to place, shift between near and far, and trace the presumably winding course of rushing streams).

⁴⁵⁰ The emphasis Van Mander places on integrative articulation of the fore-, middle-, and background of a landscape recalls Lomazzo’s discussion of the landscapist’s chief occupation, which is to distinguish amongst the visibility of the foreground, the diminution of clarity in the middle-ground, and the evanescence of the background, while also showing how each zone connects to the next, so that their adjacency produces a just effect of perspectival recession. See Lomazzo, Trattato dell’arte, 473.

⁴⁵¹ In “Life of Hans Bol, Painter of Mechelen,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 260r–v, Van Mander lavishes praises on a large Daedalus and Icarus by Bol, painted in watercolor on canvas, which combines superbly rendered foreground and distant views, with a rocky cliff, presumably in the middle-ground: “A rock lay in the water, atop which was set a fortress … the stone subtly and precisely covered with moss, overgrown, its every little color rendered in a sure manner; likewise that strange old fortress, as if growing from the rock, wonderfully devised. Furthermore, the distant landscape was very well handled, as also the water wherein the rock was mirrored, and in the shadowy brown one saw floating on the water, very naturally, feathers fallen from Icarus’s wings when the wax melted. There were also some fine foregrounds and other landscape elements.”

⁴⁵² On this compositional mode, comprised half by landtschap, half by historie, see the Sannazaran excursus on the overdoor from the Arcadian temple of Pales, in chapter 5, stanzas 47–60

⁴⁵³ On Van Mander’s embrace of verscheydenheyt (variety) as the hallmark of landscape painting in the northern manner, see Bakker, Landscape and Religion, 185–186. Variety, as we have seen, likewise governs the production of history painting in the North, on which see Grondt, chapter 5, stanza 20, and notes 29 and 30 supra. Stanza 24, by contrast, summarizes the very different landscape criteria that obtain in Italy.

⁴⁵⁴ Here and in the prior stanza, Van Mander endorses variety while distinguishing it from copiousness, a distinction that goes back to Augustine, The City of God (Edinburgh: 1871), XXII.xxiv.528, by way of Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 60: “… variety carries beauty. I hate emptiness in a[n] historia; nevertheless, I praise very little [any] richness which opposes dignity.” But whereas Alberti primarily refers to “expressions and movements of the bodies” in an historia, Van Mander applies the criteria of variety and richness equally to landscape, history, and history in landscape. On Van Mander’s conception of variety and its basis in Bruegel’s landscapes, wherein divine order becomes discernible in and through the matrix of natural variety, see B. Bakker, “Order or Variety? Pieter Bruegel and the Aesthetics of Landscape,” in K. Enenkel and W.S. Melion, eds., Landscape and the Visual Hermeneutics of Place, 1500–1700, Intersections 75 (Leiden and Boston: 2021), 158–194, esp. 185–189.

⁴⁵⁵ I have translated “welstants ghenietens” as “pleasurable consonance” to evoke Van Mander’s sense here of a landscape fittingly various but not disaggregated by a superabundance of variety.

⁴⁵⁶ As Miedema points out, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:550, Van Mander implies that northern landscapists, unlike their Italian counterparts, are skilled at incorporating multiple distant views. In “Lives of Matthijs and Hieronymus Cock, Painters of Antwerp,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 232r, Van Mander credits Matthijs with having introduced the “new Italian or Antique manner” of landscape to the Low Countries. This novel manner features “more variety” (“meer veranderingen”) and “ingenious and inventive ordonnance or gathering of parts” (“versierigh en vondigh in’t ordineren oft by een voegen”). According to Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonicae linguae, 581, the term veranderingh signifies mutatio, immutatio (interchange, exchange, substitution of one thing for another) and vicissitudo (alternation). The Thesaurus Theutonicae linguae, fol. Kk1 recto, supplies the French cognates “mutation, rechangement, conversion,” terms that connote the change of one thing into another, and the Latin cognates “mutatio, variatio, immutation, conversion, alternatio,” and, most interestingly, commutatio (reciprocal opposition or change). Miedema, in Karel van Mander, Lives, 3:241–242, plausibly suggests that Van Mander may have had in mind the drawings and prints of Domenico Campagnola, composed in a pastoral mode: punctuated by Virgilian poetic devices such as conversing, courting, or music-making shepherds, flocks grazing peaceably, characterful trees, and age-old rustic dwellings, these landscapes also feature formal elements that alternate in mutual contrapposto: for example, in Landscape with a Foreground Tree, a Building, and Distant Mountains (British Museum, Ff, 1.69), a Campagnola-school drawing in pen and ink, the tall vertical tree at left is counterposed to the low-lying horizontal hills and house in the middle ground at right, which are then juxtaposed to the looming mountains on the distant horizon; so, too, the strong tonal variation of the tree gives way to the middle register’s less forceful range of tones and to the more brightly and uniformly lit background. This immutatio / commutatio of shape and tone is matched by the distribution of varieties of pen stroke: extremely varied in the foreground, yet with hatches applied at regular intervals, less various and more loosely applied in the middle ground, and most loose yet uniform in the background. This mutual variety of form, tone, and stroke, combined with the allusions to ancient pastoral, likely constitutes the “Italian or Antique manner” of landscape that Matthijs Cock, in his landscape drawings, and Hieronymus Cock, in his prints after Matthijs, disseminated in Antwerp. They must also have studied Titian’s use of landscape in his paintings, drawings, and prints.

⁴⁵⁷ Curiously, landscape comes up only once in the “Life of Jacopo Tintoretto, Venetian Painter,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fol. 178v, where Van Mander mentions a sacra conversazione with a “bit of landscape” (“een stuck landtschap”) in the church of St. Job, Venice.

⁴⁵⁸ In “Life of Titian of Cadore, Painter,” in ibid., fol. 174v, Van Mander, paraphrasing Vasari, states that the young Titian painted a Flight into Egypt in the manner of Giorgione, with a great forest and a fine landscape, at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice; for the purpose of rendering landscapes, a task that absorbed much of his time, he retained “several fine Netherlandish masters of landscape and greenery,” hosting them at his house.

⁴⁵⁹ On the “excellent landscape painter” Girolamo Muziano, whose manner of landscape Van Mander describes as “forceful, sure, and splendid” (“gheweldighe, vaste, en heerlijcke maniere”) and markedly “different from that of Netherlandish masters,” see “On Various Italian Painters in Rome during my time there,” in ibid., fol. 192v. In particular, he praises Muziano for his superior handling of “grounds and foregrounds” and his skillfully rendered trees, their leaves reminiscent of the chestnut tree, their roots and trunks artfully contrived (“wortelen en stammen seer versierich”). Van Mander’s teacher, Pieter Vlerick, had collaborated with Muziano at the Villa d’Este, Tivoli, adding staffage to his landscape murals; see “Life of Pieter Vlerick of Kortrijk,” in ibid., fol. 250v. Moreover, Van Mander’s close friend Hendrick Goltzius knew Muziano well in Rome, where he drew his portrait after the life; see ibid., fol. 192v. The “Life of Muziano” contains a telling disclaimer that reveals Van Mander’s high regard for landscape painting: commenting on Muziano’s ambition, later in his career, to become a figure painter, he deplores the artist’s misguided attempts to abandon landscape. Why should any master abjure his natural endowments, presuming to favor an acquired skill in beelden over a God-given proclivity for landtschap, asks Van Mander: “Girolamo, because he reckoned figures the noblest branch of our arts, or considered them more profitable, totally gave himself over to them, painting large canvases and panels in oil color, some of which I have viewed: yet in virtue and value his figures remained greatly deficient, far behind his landscapes. Thus goes it when one seizes upon something other than what nature has willingly bestowed.”

⁴⁶⁰ The term trootsich (proudly) also signifies “in a spirit of competition.”

⁴⁶¹ On the motions of the eyes activated by Bruegel’s landscapes, and their analogy to the seven bodily motions, see note 27 supra. On Bruegel’s Alpine vistas, their mountains and boulders drawn after the life during his journey to Italy, as if swallowed whole, and later painted on canvas and panel as if “spat out,” see “Life of Pieter Bruegel, excellent Painter from Brueghel,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 233r. Although the panoramic format of Bruegel’s landscape drawings, prints, and paintings allows the eyes to range freely, they maintain the fiction of a single vantage point, on which, see Bakker, “Order or Variety?,” 179.

⁴⁶² Cancer, Leo, and Virgo are the zodiacal signs of the summer season.

⁴⁶³ For the comparison of well-watered greenswards to the color of emeralds, see Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXVII.xvi.62. Stanzas 26–28 concentrate on the landscape’s middle-ground, which Dutch and Flemish masters generally worked up over a green base color, whereas brown was reserved for the foreground, blue for the distance and sky; see E.M. Clifford, “Style and Technique in Dutch Landscape Painting in the 1620s,” in A. Wallert, E. Hermens, and M. Peek, eds., Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice (University of Leiden, the Netherlands, 26–29 June 1995) (Los Angeles: 1995), 140–147, esp. 141.

⁴⁶⁴ On sapphire green emeralds, which are tinted blue like lapis lazuli, see ibid. XXXVII.xviii.71.

⁴⁶⁵ Cf. chapter 7, stanza 57, on the mirroring surface of “clear standing water.”

⁴⁶⁶ Van Mander refers to Zephyr, god of fructifying springtime breezes.

⁴⁶⁷ Hinniden is Van Mander’s term for the Epimelides, the meadow nymphs of Greek mythology.

⁴⁶⁸ See Jacopo Sannazzaro, Arcadia, di nuovo ristampata, con le annotationi di Thomaso Porcacchi (Venice: Pietro Marinelli: 1589), 70.

⁴⁶⁹ On Ceres, goddess of the harvest, who taught men how to sow, plant, thresh, grind, and bake, see “On Ceres, and Triptolemus,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 48v.

⁴⁷⁰ Eurus is the god of the autumnal east wind.

⁴⁷² On vermilion, the brightest red, also known as cinnabar, in both its natural and artificial forms, see Harley, Artists’ Pigments, 125–128; Van Eikema Hommes, Changing Pictures, 27–28, identifies vermilion as red mercury sulphide. On menie (minium), also known as red lead, more orange than vermilion and occasionally used to adulterate it, see Harley, Artists’ Pigments, 123–125. On Van Mander’s advice against using pure, saturated reds to depict rustic elements, such as roofs, which lack such colors, and his emphasis on cleaving to the likeness of life (“ghelijck het leven”), see B. Bakker, Landscape and Religion, 186.

⁴⁷¹ Van Mander may be referring to blue ash, since the term as, assche was used to designate azurite, lesser ultramarine, or copper-based blue verditer, on which, see Van Eikema Hommes, Changing Pictures, 30, 46 n. 91.

⁴⁷³ On the bluish tint of ash, see note 50 supra and chapter 7, note 32.

⁴⁷⁴ In “Life of Hans Holbein, Excellent Painter,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 220v, Van Mander coins the phrase “immovable as the Swiss cliffs” (“onbeweeghlijck als de Switsersche rootsen”) to refer to the impassibility of the Alps. On this passage, see Miedema, Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:554. For “Italian,” Van Mander here uses the term Welsch.

⁴⁷⁵ In calling upon painters to visualize Echo, Van Mander urges them to rise to the challenge posed by Ausonius in his epigram, “To a Painting of Echo”; see Ausonius, Books I–XX, trans. H.G. Evelyn White, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: 1921), 2:174–175. In “On Narcissus, and Echo,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 26r–v, Van Mander says about this epigram, spoken in Echo’s voice, that it apostrophizes any and all painters who would presume to paint a reverberant sound or echo. He then provides a Dutch periphrasis of the epigram, accompanied by the marginal gloss, “Echo is not to be painted”:

Yea, rash Painter, why do you expend all your strength

To portray me, whom no member of the human

Race has ever seen? Neither form nor body, or being,

Or color have I. I grow day and night,

As gentle daughter of the Air and Tongue.

Not from me alone does speech everywhere sally forth.

It but awaits another’s voice, thereafter to counterfeit

The last word spoken, which altogether

Swiftly disperses into the [surrounding] air. But would you be prized

For making my likeness in a Panel:

Then paint with your resourceful brush a portrait of

The voice or sound that rings in the ears: doing these things

Shall make of you the foremost Painter.

Stanza 34, by advising or, better, daring the painter to depict the echoing rush of a waterfall, gainsays Ausonius, insisting that nothing in nature is so fugitive or evanescent that it surpasses the painter’s powers of description. Van Mander’s tacit conviction that this is the case prepares the way for his assertion in stanza 37 that even the most spirited effects of nature—the motion of myriad leaves, of strands of hair, of airy clouds—can be portrayed by a painter capable of rendering them uyt den gheest. No phenomena are beyond the scope of his brush.

⁴⁷⁶ On the Hamadryads, woodland nymphs closely associated with trees, the oak above all, see “On the Nymphs, Dryads, Hamadryads, Oreads, Naiads, and suchlike,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 12r. Van Mander’s emphasis in stanzas 36–40 on trees as the chief source of a landscape’s cracht (power, forceful effect) derives from three sources: the gathering of the trees in Ovid, Metamorphoses X.86–105, where Orpheus’s power to sing various species of tree into sensate life stands for the life-giving properties of poetic song; the prominence of shade-giving trees as metapoetic markers of Virgil’s literary program throughout the Eclogues and in Georgics 2, where their presence serves to evoke various genres of pastoral lyric upon which he drew—Theocritean bucolic, Callimachean and Gallan elegiac, and Hesiodic didactic; and Pierre Ronsard’s famous ode, “A la forest de Gâtine” (To the Forest of Gâtine), which pays homage to this woodland’s sheltering arboreal bowers where, freed from base care, the poet delivers himself to the pleasure of the book and communes with the Muses. As trees are a sign of lyric poetry in Ovid, Virgil, and Ronsard, so they index the landscapist’s art in stanzas 37–40. On Ovidian and Virgilian trees and their metapoetic significance, with specific reference to an elegiac print by Goltzius and its basis in the pastoral poetics of Van Mander, see W.S. Melion, “The Trope of Anthropomorphosis in Hendrick Goltzius’s Venus and Cupid (1590), Venus, Bacchus, and Ceres (1593), and Portrait of Frederick de Vries (1597),” in Melion, J. Woodall, and M. Zell, eds., Ut pictura amor: The Reflexive Imagery of Love in Artistic Theory and Practice, 1500–1700, Intersections 48 (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2017), 158–228. On arboreal symbology in Virgilian pastoral, see J.H. Henkel, Writing Poems on Trees: Genre and Metapoetics in Vergil’s Eclogues and Georgics, Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2009. For Ronsard’s poem, see Oeuvres complètes de Ronsard: tome troisième, les Odes, ed. H. Vaganay (Paris: 1923), 114; addressed to the forest’s trees, the two key stanzas read as follows:

You who under the shelter of your trees

Refresh me, rapt in spirit,

You who cause the Muses at every turn

To respond to me.

You through whom, free from base care,

I wholly deliver myself,

When having lost myself deep within you,

I converse with a book.

⁴⁷⁹ Amongst the most exemplary painters of leaves, Van Mander singles out Muziano, on whose finely brushed leaves that put foliage and brushstrokes jointly on display (“seer fraeyen slagh van bladeren”), see Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fol. 192v, and Cornelis Molenaer, on whose brushed leaves / leafy brushstrokes, “finer and more painterly” (“fraeyer en schilderachtiger slach van bladen”) than those of any other landscape painter, see “Life of Cornelis Molenaer, nicknamed squint-eyed Neel, of Antwerp,” in ibid., Book IV, fol. 256v. On Van Mander’s application of the term schiderachtig to Muziano’s and Molenaer’s handling of foliage, and his complementary use of it elsewhere to connote the variety of form and color and the natural appearance of depicted landscape—as in his paraphrase of Homer’s ekphrasis describing the landscape on Achilles’s shield, in ibid., Book II, fol. 60v, his description of Joris Hoefnagel’s topographical city views, in ibid., Book IV, fol. 262v, or his appreciation of the landscape ekphrases in Sannazzaro’s Arcadia, in Grondt, chapter 5, verse 62, fol. 20v—see Bakker, “Schilderachtig,” 150–151. More often than not, Van Mander associates the term with landscape painting, and in particular with richly variegated landscapes into which the eyes may roam, passing across gronden, through doorsienen, and into verre verschietens (far distances).

⁴⁷⁷ In “Life of Herri met de Bles, Painter of Bouvignes, near Dinant,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 219v, Van Mander praises Joachim Patenir (the painter most closely imitated by Bles) for his small landscapes, executed with “patience and diligence” (“patientie oft gedult”), and for the “enormous time and labor expended … on trees, rocks, towns, crowds of figures.” Earlier, in “Life of Joachim Patenir, Painter of Dinant,” he endorses his “distinctive manner of painting landscapes, very subtle and precise, with trees somewhat stippled.” The emphasis throughout falls on his exceptionally “subtle, fine manner,” and on the “good stroke” evidenced by his foliage. In certain contexts, the term aerdig (subtle), whether used alone or together with fraey (fine), as in stanza 36, line 6, can also signify “beautiful, attractive, or handsome”; see P. Taylor, “Boekbespreking: Karel van Mander, The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, ed. H. Miedema,” Oud Holland (2001), 131–154, esp. 132.

⁴⁷⁸ Alternatively, if line 8 is taken to refer to landscape as a whole, it might be translated: “For know this, that therein lies the force [of your landscape].”

⁴⁸⁰ On the closing couplet and its reference to gheest (spirit), see section 4.e., “Leven and Gheest,” of my “Introduction,” supra.

⁴⁸¹ Stanzas 38–41, on various species of trees, their patterns of furcation, and their respective motions, correspond to many features of Lomazzo, Trattato dell’arte, Book II, chapter 23, “On the motions of trees, and all other things that are moved,” 184–186. Furcation determines how a tree bends when blown by the wind, argues Lomazzo, who then goes on to distinguish the willow from other kinds of tree. See A Tracte Containing The Artes, trans. Haydocke, 90–91: “The boughes growing from thence, begin a little to bend, and the others which proceede from them a little more, so that in the end they shew the same agility, in the leaves most of all. It is true that all trees have not a like motion: for the Willowe mooveth and is shaken extremely.”

⁴⁸² I take kasboom for a contracted form of kastijn-boom (chestnut tree). Whereas Van Mander describes Muziano as a specialist in portraying chestnut trees and their foliage, he praises Frans Pourbus for his ability to portray numerous species of trees, amongst which the pear, the apple, and the walnut (or hazelnut); respectively see stanza 24, note 34, supra, and “Life of Pieter and Frans Pourbus, Painters of Bruges,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 257v.

⁴⁸³ The paradigm of the well-turned tree is analogous to the welstandt of the well-turned figure on which Grondt, chapter 4, stanzas 5–12, largely concentrates; see chapter 4, note 1 supra.

⁴⁸⁴ In “Life of Gillis van Conincxloo,” fol. 268r, Van Mander lauds the example set by Conincxloo’s trees, imitation of which has caused the former dryness of Dutch painters’ trees to abate.

⁴⁸⁵ In “Life of Joachim Patenir,” fol. 219r, Van Mander praises the painter for the way he combines trees with “deftly painted little figures.”

⁴⁸⁶ Citing E.M. Tillyard’s classic study, The Elizabethan World Picture (Harmonsworth: 1966; reprint ed., 2011), Miedema, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:557, interprets the phrase “cleen Weerelt” (little world) as a reference to the microcosm and its relation in small to the macrocosm by which it is comprised. It is important to note, however, that the moniker “little world,” as applied in such texts as Raymond de Sebonde’s Theologia naturalis sive liber naturae creaturarum (translated by Montaigne in 1569), refers not to the natural world but to man, the highest of four linked classes of being that lead from inanimate, vegetative, and sensitive to the human, and thence to the highest class, the angelic, which mediates between the human and the apex of this chain, namely, God. By contrast, Van Mander transfers the appellation “cleyn weerelt” to landscape, thus privileging landtschap, which now occupies the link conventionally held by beelden, as if to argue that the two pictorial subjects share a like significance. On humankind’s place in the chain of being, see Tillyard, Elizabethan World Picture, 27–28. “Cleen weerelt,” in its application to landscape, may also refer to the notion of the “green world,” discussed by Northrop Frye, in Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: 1957; reprint ed., 2000), 183: “green world” refers to a convincing mimetic fiction that stands proxy for the world it purports to portray but in fact epitomizes, as that world’s archetype. In Frye’s formulation, the term “landscape” can be substituted for “literature,” as follows: “the archetypal function of literature / landscape is visualizing the world of desire, not as an escape from ‘reality,’ but as the genuine form of the world that human life tries to imitate.” On this account, the painted world exceeds its fictional status as a mere representation of the world, instead becoming truly representative, that is, exemplary of that which it portrays.

⁴⁸⁷ Featured in Eclogues 1, 3, 6, and 8, Tityrus, a goatherd, is one of Virgil’s key dramatis personae; since he gives voice to much of the verse, he is often identified with Virgil himself. Amaryllis, the wayward lover of Tityrus in Eclogue 1, also appears in poems 2 and 3 as the fickle paramour of Corydon and Damoetos, and in poem 8 as a caster of love spells.

⁴⁸⁸ On Ludius, the inventeur (inventor) of mural landscape painting, famed during the reign of Emperor Augustus for his countryside and seaside views, and for populating them with amusing anecdotes of all kinds, see “On Ludius, Landscape Painter,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fols. 87v–88r.

⁴⁸⁹ On Ludius (or Studius, or again, Spurius Tadius), see Pliny, Natural History, trans. Rackham, 9:346–349.

⁴⁹⁰ See Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fols. 87v–88r.

⁴⁹¹ As Miedema notes, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:558, this line is taken directly from Du Pinet, L’histoire du monde, 2:632. Miedema also draws attention to the many parallels between Ludius’s pictures, as described in stanzas 43–47, and those of David Vinckboons, who intersperses scenes from Scripture and peasant life throughout his landscapes drawn or painted in various media—watercolor, gouache, and oil—in a manner reminiscent of his ancient forebear; see “Life of David Vinckeboons, Painter of Mechelen,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 299r–v.

Chapter 9: “On Cattle, Animals, and Birds”

⁴⁹² Chapter 9 focuses on animals that receive special attention in Virgil’s poems on pastoral labor, the Georgics, especially Book 3, in which the poet describes the forms and functions of cattle and horses. Van Mander had recently translated both the Eclogues and Georgics; on his Bucolica en Georgica, dat is, Ossen-stal en Landt-werck (Haarlem: Gillis Rooman, 1597), see L. Wood Ruby, “Sebastiaen Vrancx as Illustrator of Virgil’s Aeneid,” Master Drawings 28 (1990): 54–73, esp. 54, 63; J. Benjamin Schmidt, “ ‘O Fortunate Land!’ Karel van Mander, ‘A West Indies Landscape,’ and the Dutch Discovery of America,” New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 69 (1995): 5–44, esp. 27–28; and Melion, “Trope of Anthropomorphosis,” 177–221.

⁴⁹³ Playing upon the theme of animal husbandry, the phrase “te voorschijne teelden,” in line 5, can also signify “to bring forth,” “to bring to fruition,” or “to propagate.”

⁴⁹⁴ On the ancient painter Dionisius Anthropographus, famed for painting human figures but deficient at every other subject, see “On Dionisius,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 84v. Van Mander contrasts him with Pyreicus Rhyparographos, who painted small, keen-witted scenes of everyday life full of circumstantial detail, and Serapio, who painted theatrical scenography at very large scale; neither could portray noteworthy persons in a manner itself worthy of note. As he goes on to emphasize in stanza 2, the truly estimable schilder must be “practiced in all things” rather than a mere specialist, even if that specialty consists of “Beelden der Menschen” (figures of persons), the topic of chapter 4.

⁴⁹⁵ This conception of the mutualism between horse and master, and of the reciprocal nobility they jointly express, was codified in Federico Grisone’s quintessential treatise of horsemanship, Gli ordini di cavalcare (Naples: G. Suganappo, 1550; reprint ed., Venice: Giovanni Andrea Valuassori detto Guadagnino, 1571), on which see, E.M. Tobey, “The Legacy of Federico Grisone,” in P. Edwards, K.A.E. Enenkel, and E. Graham, eds., The Horse as Cultural Icon: The Real and the Symbolic Horse in the Early Modern World, Intersections 18 (Leiden and Boston: 2011), 143–171. On maneggiare (in French, manège), the art of equine handling and training, Grisone states (fol. 10v): “And do not think that the horse, although he is well put-together by nature, can work well on his own, without human aid and true teaching. It is necessary to awaken the parts of his body and the hidden virtues that are within him through means of the art of riding, and through true order and good discipline his goodness will become manifest to a greater or lesser degree …. Even and regal, he becomes one with the will of the rider who sits upon him.” On this passage, which affirms the nobility of the horse, construing it as subordinate not subservient to its rider, see Tobey, “Legacy of Federico Grisone,” 151. In applying the manège, the achievement of a balanced body and mind was the aim for both horse and rider; see P.E. Cuneo, “Visual Aids: Equestrian Iconography and the Training of Horse, Rider, and Reader,” in Edward, Enenkel, and Graham, eds., The Horse as Cultural Icon, 71–97, esp. 79. On the faithfulness of the dog and the horse, see Pliny, Naturalis historia VIII.lxi.142.

⁴⁹⁶ On the hart’s habit of recklessly holding its ground when sweet trumpet calls captivate it, see Van Mander, Wtbeeldinge der figueren, fol. 128v.

⁴⁹⁷ Much of stanza 4 paraphrases Job 39:21–28, which praises the martial temperament of the war horse, but also contrasts the equine tractability of the horse with the obduracy of the falcon and the eagle. Cf. [Biestkens] Bibel, fol. 198v [O.T.].

⁴⁹⁸ On the horse of Caesar, which allowed only him to mount, see ibid., VIII.lxiv.155; on the loyalty of Nicodemes’s steed, see ibid., VIII.lxiv.157–158.

⁴⁹⁹ On the horse of the king of the Scythians, which slew its master’s murderer, see ibid., VIII.lxiv.156.

⁵⁰⁰ On the suicide of Centeretus, the horse of King Antiochus, see ibid., VIII.lxiv.158.

⁵⁰¹ On Bucephalus, round whose tomb Alexander built a city, see ibid., VIII.lxiv.154–155.

⁵⁰² I have used the periphrasis “locked storage” to translate cassen, which literally means “strongboxes.”

⁵⁰³ On Pliny’s lost book, Use of the Javelin by Cavalry, see ibid., VIII.lxv.162.

⁵⁰⁴ Miedema, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:561, plausibly suggests that this tricircular proportional schema derives from printed German model books, such as Heinrich Lautensack, Des Circkels unnd Richtscheyts, auch der Perspectiva, and Proportion der Menschen und Rosse (Frankfurt: Georg Rab für Sigmund Feyerabend, 1564) or Sebald Beham, Kunst und Lehr Büchlin, Malen und Reissen zu lernen (Frankfurt: Christian Egenolffe Erben, 1582). Van Mander may also have consulted chapters 19–21 of Lomazzo’s Trattato, 68–74, on the bodily parts and proportions of the horse, although he states in stanza 9 that he is chiefly interested not in specific measurements but in the “circumstantial details” of equine appearance. “Bend” was a central concern of horsemen such as Grisone and his French counterpart Antoine de Pluvinel: it refers to proper curvature of the horse’s body, honed by horse and rider through the training regime of the manège; see Tobey, “Legacy of Federico Grisone,” 153. Grisone, in Gli ordini, fols. 13v and 14r, utilizes the printmaker’s term stampare (print, imprint) to describe training of this sort, implicitly construing it as a form of imagemaking.

⁵⁰⁵ Much of stanzas 10–12 paraphrases Virgil, Georgics, III.79–88; see Van Mander, Bucolica en Georgica, 122.

⁵⁰⁶ On these colors, see Virgil, Georgics, III.81–83.

⁵⁰⁷ As Miedema observes, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:562, Van Mander, in distinguishing between Spanish, Turkish, and Neapolitan horses, may have relied upon the series Equile Ioannis Austriaci, engraved by Adriaen Collaert, Philips Galle, Hendrick Goltzius, and Hieronymus Wierix, and published by Galle in 1578; see M. Leesberg, comp., The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, 1450–1700: Johannes Stradanus, ed. H. Leeflang, 3 vols. (Ouderkerk aan den Ijssel: 2008), 3:232–264.

⁵⁰⁸ On the color “apple-gray,” see Miedema, Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:562, which cites Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonicae linguae, 19, “appelgrauw verwe”: in Latin, “scultulatus color” (checkered color) and “pomaceus, pomulatus,” i.e., “which imitates the pale color of a Cydonian apple.”

⁵⁰⁹ The image of a galloping steed’s foamy traces derives from Virgil, Georgics III.111; see Van Mander, Bucolica en Georgica, 123.

⁵¹⁰ Taken from Valerius Maximus, Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri IX, VIII.xi(2).ext. 7, this anecdote reappears in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 84r, where Nealces, exasperated at his inability to paint a horse’s foaming mouth, inadvertently succeeds after throwing his paint-soaked sponge against his wall-painting. The anecdote, as Van Mander indicates, resembles the story of Protogenes and his painting of a dog, in ibid., fol. 82v.

⁵¹¹ Whereas stanzas 42–46, on which see infra, exemplify how art can reproduce the appearance of nature, and gheest elicit a naer t’leven effect, this anecdote instead shows how a spontaneous event, natural in the sense of unselfconscious, can produce an effect of art. The artifice of chance, of unregulated natural forces, can be indistinguishable from the painter’s high artifice, as Van Mander takes great pains to avow.

⁵¹² As Miedema notes in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:563, Van Mander may be referring to the flecks of foam visible on the chest collars of the two horses flanking Constantine in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in the Sala di Costantino.

⁵¹³ On Protogenes’s picture of a dog foaming at the mouth, “painted by art and good fortune jointly,” see Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXV.xxxvi.102–103; and note 17 supra.

⁵¹⁴ See note 20 supra.

⁵¹⁵ On Apelles’s equine competition piece, see Pliny, Naturalis historia, XXXV.xxxvi.96; and Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 241v.

⁵¹⁶ Van Mander refers to the four bronze horses above the loggia porch of Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice, formerly part of a Neronian quadriga brought to Constantinople by Constantine the Great.

⁵¹⁷ Van Mander refers to the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius installed on the Capitol in Rome in 1538; he may have known Goltzius’s drawings after it, made naer t’leven in Rome, one in black chalk, the other in red, on which see E. Reznicek, Die Zeichnungen von Hendrick Goltzius, 2 vols. (Utrecht: 1961), 1: 332, nr. 218–219; and H. Miedema, “Het voorbeeldt niet te by te hebben: Over Hendrik Goltzius’ tekeningen naar de antieken,” in Miedema, R.W. Scheller, and P.J.J. van Thiel, eds., Miscellanea I.Q. van Regteren Altena. 16.V.1969 (Amsterdam: 1969), 74–78, 289–291. As Miedema mentions, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:565, the brief epigram that closes stanza 26 previews the epigrams on Myron’s heifer in stanzas 42–46.

⁵¹⁸ The Quirinal Dioscuri were formerly ascribed to Phidias and Praxiteles respectively.

⁵¹⁹ Van Mander’s version of the ideal bull resembles the description of the quintessential steer in Charles Etienne (Kaerle Stevens) and Jan Libaut, De Velt-bouw, oft Landt-winninghe (Amsterdam: Michiel Colijn, 1622), 26, on which see A. Chong, “In ‘t verbeelden van Slachtdieren: Associaties en betekenissen, verbonden aan het Hollandse veestuk in de zeventiende eeuw,” in C. Boschma et al., eds., Meesterlijk vee: Nederlandse veeschilders, 1600–1900, [exh. cat., Fries Museum, Leeuwaarden; Dordrechts Museum] (Zwolle and The Hague: 1988), 56–86, esp. 63, 83 n. 18. First published as Praedium rusticum (Paris: Charles Estienne, 1554), Estienne’s text was translated by Libaut in 1566; numerous editions followed the first Amsterdam printing of 1588.

⁵²⁰ The Mantuan is Virgil, who describes the paradigmatic cow in Georgics III. 51–59; see Van Mander, Bucolica en Georgica, 121. On Van Mander’s use of the Georgics, see Chong, “In ‘t verbeelden,” 63. Interpolated into the Virgilian paraphrase, the reference to cultivating a breed of cow encapsulates Georgics III.69: “Ever will there be some kine whose mould you would wish to change.”

⁵²¹ Van Mander paraphrases Aristotle, Physiognomica V.809a–b, on the tamer, gentler, and more slender disposition of female animals.

⁵²² The Latinate verbal noun speculeren (speculation, contemplation) derives from the Latin deponent verb speculari, for which the Dictionarium tetraglotton, fol. 285v, provides the cognates “wachten, bespieden” (attend, descry, observe). A related term is spectare, “to look at or observe certainly and attentively” (“vastelick ende aendachtelick aensien oft aenschouwen”). Kiliaan, Etymologicum Theutonicae linguae, 42, connects bespieden and speculari, and adds the verbs explorare (to explore, investigate), dispicere (to descry, discern), observare (to observe), insidiari (to watch for, turn to one’s advantage), and insidere (to seize upon, take possession of) as analogues. Kiliaan associates the term spieden (511) with speculari, explorare, sciscitari (examine, investigate), indagare (search into), and inquirere (inquire into). Another allied term is beschowuen, which signifies contemplari (to contemplate), intueri (to behold), lustrare (to survey, observe, examine), and, of course, speculari. These linked constellations of terms turn on the notion that speculation / contemplation involves close observation of some object of sight, which through watchful examination is claimed for the beholder’s use. Stanza 34 goes on to link speculeren with the portrayal of the various colors of cattle after the life. On the roots of speculation in contemplative practices of devotion whereby the sense of sight is mobilized for the purpose of knowing God, see J. Hamburger, “Speculations on Speculation: Vision and Perception in the Theory and Practice of Mystical Devotion,” in W. Haug and W. Schneider-Lastin, eds., Deutsche Mystik im abendländischen Zusammenhang: neu erschlossene Texte, neue methodische Ansätze, neue theoretische Konzepte (Tübingen: 2000), 353–408.

⁵²³ Van Mander here states the obvious: it is possible to paint ill-proportioned animals after the life, so, the painter should avoid them, instead focusing on cattle fine of form and color. The graceful appearance of such animals is produced nae[r] t’leven.

⁵²⁴ See, for example, the reference to the four bronze horses of St. Mark’s and the Dioscuri of Phidias and Praxiteles, in stanzas 26–27 supra. That chapter 9 closes with a cluster of ekphrastic epigrams on yet another work of sculpture, Myron’s famous heifer, reveals the degree to which Van Mander, his deprecatory remark about sculpture aside, relies upon ekphrases to generate pictorial paradigms. It is as if ekphrasis has the power to convert anything it describes into a picture suitable for painting. On Jacopo Bassano’s exceptional ability to paint animals and their coats of fur, see “On Jacopo Bassano,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fol. 180r: “And he had a distinctive, particular manner of fashioning beasts, horses, dogs, sheep, and suchlike, with exceptionally fine and very subtle locks: the young sheep and lambkins so soft and downy that it seemed, were the hand to stroke them, one would feel nothing but fleece; also taking care to observe their ringlets and strands, such as was a wonder to see.” In singing the praises of Bassano’s depiction of fur and hide, Van Mander extends his prior eulogy of the still-life elements, such as lustrous copper and metal pots and kettles, in his Annunciation scenes.

⁵²⁵ On the foreshortened ox of Pausias, the precise length and breadth of which could be discerned head-on, see “On Pausias,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 73r–v.

⁵²⁶ On the Diana, the Callisto, and the Io of Nicias, and on his exceptional skill at portraying four-footed animals of all kinds, including the famous Bull of Marathon, see “On Nicias,” in ibid., fol. 74v.

⁵²⁷ On Zetus, Amphion, Dirce, and the Bull, sculpted by Apollonius and Tauriscus, see Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXVI.34. Van Mander accepts the identification of the Farnese Bull with the sculptural group described by Pliny, who states, in Natural History, trans. Eichholz, 10:27, that the ardent enthusiast Asinius Pollio acquired it for his collection in Rome.

⁵²⁸ The twelve epigrams enumerated in stanzas 32–46 are closely based on “Traduction de quelques épigrammes grec, sur la Jenisse d’aerain de Myron, excellentement bien gravée,” in Pierre Ronsard, Continuation des Amours (Paris: Vincent Certenas, 1555), 53–55, selected by Ronsard from the first sequence of thirty epigrams on Myron’s heifer, in The Greek Anthology, 5 vols. (London: 1948), trans. W.R. Paton III, 3:392–403, epigrams 713–742; an additional sequence of six completes the set of thirty-six in toto (428–431, epigrams 793–798). On Van Mander’s compressed sequence of ekphrastic epigrams, see section five of my “Introduction,” supra. On the ekphrastic form and function of the epigrams on Myron’s heifer in the Greek Anthology, and the interpretative significance of their presentation in an anthology, see M. Squire, “Making Myron’s Cow Moo? Ecphrastic Epigram and the Poetics of Simulation,” American Journal of Philology 131 (2010): 589–634, esp. 612–616.

Chapter 10: “On Fabrics or Drapery”

⁵²⁹ I translate Laken as “stuffs” when Van Mander’s emphasis appears to fall on materials—weight, density, texture—but as “fabrics” when the emphasis shifts to the function of these materials as clothing. These are merely inflections of the same word, however, rather than categorical distinctions. Very occasionally, as in stanzas 28 and 29, where the reference is clearly to the movement of cloth, I translate Laken as “drapery.” Depending on context, laken could specifically signify “wool,” as was the case in Leiden where laken referred to pure wool, on which usage see L.A. Stone-Ferrier, Images of Textiles: The Weave of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Society, Studies in the Fine Arts: Art Patronage 4 (Ann Arbor: 1985), 1–40.

⁵³⁰ For his conception of the antipodes and their shame-free inhabitants, Van Mander drew on Pedro Mexía and Girolamo Benzoni; see Mexía, De verscheyden lessen, 705, and Ieronimus Benzonius, De historie, van de nieuwe weerelt, te weten, de beschrijvinghe van West-Indien (Haarlem: Paschier van Wesbus, 1610), 23. Van Mander associates the antipodes with the kingdom of Saturn, which he construes, in Wtlegghingh, fol. 3v, as a synonym for the “Golden Age.” These indigenous peoples, he thus implies, live a “peaceable, tranquil, happy life” under the rule of “upright, wise” leaders, or rather, lived such a life before the incursions of their latter-day Spanish overlords.

⁵³¹ See Grondt, chapter 14, stanza 28.

⁵³² As Miedema points out, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:573, the association of the color gray with common folk had already been codified in Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonicae linguae, 159, where grauw is defined both as “ash-gray” (leucopaeat[us]) and as “rabble, lees/dregs of the people,” “people of slender means/poorer fortune” (“popellus, faex plebis, tenuioris fortunae vulgus”).

⁵³³ On the legendary weaver Arachne, discoverer of spun linen, see Wtlegghingh, fol. 49r.

⁵³⁴ The term saeye is defined in Thesaurus Theutonicae linguae fol. x2 recto, both as sarge (serge) and sayette (a blend of silk and wool); in English, it might also be translated “say.” On Dutch and Flemish production of say, see Stone-Ferrier, Images of Textiles, 23–29.

⁵³⁵ On the workshop practice of draping damp paper on manikins to study fold patterns and their lighting and modeling, see Miedema, Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:574.

⁵³⁶ As Van Mander declares in “Life of Albrecht Dürer, excellent Painter, Engraver, and Architect of Nuremberg,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 208r, Dürer’s ability to describe the texture and drape of woven cloth, like his mastery of ordonnance and figural disposition, is remarkable for appearing jointly to derive from close imitation of nature and from creative invention (“uyt der Natuer, oft als uyt zijn selven”): “It is very much to be admired how he brought forth or discovered out of Nature so many properties of our art, as if from out of himself, both with regard to felicity of figural action and to ordonnance, and also to evenness and beauty of the fabrics, observable in his last Marian images, where one sees a fine nobility of attitude, and, in the rich draperies, great expanses of bright light beside praiseworthy shadows and a few deep darks.” Fabrics and draperies, then, testify to the singular finesse with which Dürer reconciles nature and art, fabricating lakenen that seem accurately lifelike. This reference to Dürer anticipates the discussion, in stanza 8, of the complementary relation between portraying fabrics naer t’leven and depicting them uyt den gheest.

⁵³⁷ “Fijn dwadighe doecken” (finely spun / finely threaded cloth) would include fabrics such as silk, satin, and velvet, on the relatively wide availability of which amongst “urban middling groups” and “wealthier families of merchants, innkeepers, and thriving craftsmen,” see I. Sturtewagen, “Clothing Rubens’s Antwerp: Everyday Urban Dress in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,” in A.D Newman and L. Nijkamp, eds., Undressing Rubens: Fashion and Painting in Seventeenth-Century Antwerp (London and Turnhout: 2019) 7–30, esp. 22–27.

⁵³⁸ On the exceptionally well painted “fabrics and folded draperies” (“lakenen, en ghecrockte doecxkens”) in a Deposition by Jan Gossart, and on the “lustrous blue” mantle in a Marian image made for the Marquis of Veere, so fine in coloring it still looked “freshly painted / woven” (“schoon, oft versch ghedaen”), see “Life of Jan de Mabuse, Painter,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 225v. The term schoon signifies mundus (fine, elegant) or nitidus (lustrous, shining).

⁵⁴⁰ The erratum changes “Grauw laken” (gray stuffs, fabrics) to “Grover laken” (rough stuffs, fabrics).

⁵³⁹ On Lucas’s prints, in which “one sees varieties of faces and clothing after the old manner, hats, caps, and veils, every one unlike every other,” see “Life of Lucas van Leyden,” in ibid., fol. 212r, where Van Mander also praises the large engraved Ecce Homo for its figures costumed in the “finery of various peoples” (“versieringhe der cleedingen van verscheyden volcken”). Van Mander states that Italian masters borrowed profitably from such works. For an extended digression on the vagaries of modern fashion—French, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch—which particularly deform the female body, squeezing it into pinched bodices and inflating it at the hips with “cach’enfants,” see “Life of Lucas de Heere, Painter and Poet of Ghent,” in ibid., fols. 255v–256r. Van Mander exonerates the Germans and the Swiss, whom he characterizes as content to remain clothed in their old-fashioned broeck / bruyck (breeches / customs). The pun associates customary dress with customary morals, although Van Mander wittily credits these views to Elizabeth I of England, herself a legendary clothes horse.

⁵⁴¹ On Lucas’s continual habit of “drawing everything after the life—faces, hands, feet, houses, landscape, and every manner of fabric,” see “Life of Lucas van Leyden,” in ibid., fol. 211v. Miedema, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:575, plausibly suggests that the “someone” mentioned in stanza 8 may be Dürer, on whose meeting with Lucas and admiration for him, see “Life of Albrecht Dürer,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 209v; on their mutual portraits after each other, drawn during Dürer’s visit to Holland, see “Life of Lucas van Leyden,” in ibid., fol. 212v.

⁵⁴³ This gloss looks backs to Van Mander’s remarks about the depiction of leaves and hair, in chapter 8, stanzas 36 and 37, on which see note 54 supra. Kiliaan, Etymologicum Theutonica linguae, 148, gives aerdigh (subtle, artful) as one of the meanings of gheestigh, which also comprises “ingeniosus, solers, argutus” (ingenious, cleverly skillful, sharp-witted). In Thesaurus Theutonicae linguae, fol. P3 recto, geestich is defined as “qui a de l’esprit” (he who/that which has spirit/is spirited) and as “promptus ingenio, acris ingenij vir” (of ready wit, a man of keen wit). Stanza 8 in conjunction with its two glosses asserts that varieties of fabric and stuffs, though one learns to portray them nae[r] t’leven, are best depicted uyt den gheest, i.e., from “spirited conjecture” (“gheestich soecken”) and “clever invention” (“versierich vinden”). This is true, too, of foliage and hair, and presumably also of skies, as Van Mander argues in chapter 8, but more than they, fabrics and drapery are sourced from gheest, yet produce a descriptive effect of leven.

⁵⁴² An alternative translation of “gheestich soecken, jae versierich vinden,” in line 7, would be “spirited discovery, yes a clever devising / contriving.”

⁵⁴⁴ The seven types of motion exemplified by the human figure and by landscape (respectively see chapter 5, stanzas 4–5, chapter 8, stanza 25, and chapter 5, notes 8 and 30 supra and chapter 8, notes 27 and 39 supra), are now seen to apply also to drapery.

⁵⁴⁵ Van. Mander’s term for harshness, hardicheyt, more literally translates as “hardness.”

⁵⁴⁶ The comparison between furcation and fold patterns derives from Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc3r; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 67.

⁵⁴⁷ On Aldegrever’s otherwise praiseworthy prints featuring “exotic costumes” (“vreemde cleedinghen”) that drape confusedly with an overabundance of “creases and folds” (“kroken en vouwen”), see “Life of Aldegrever, Painter and Engraver of Soest,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 227v.

⁵⁴⁸ On these Marian images, see note 8 supra.

⁵⁴⁹ On Dürer’s prints as models of ordonnance and drapery, much emulated by the Italians, see “Life of Albrecht Dürer,” in ibid., fol. 208r. On Lucas’s prints as models for the Italians, who emulate his artful drapery and tronien (faces), introducing only minor variations, see “Life of Lucas van Leyden,” in ibid., fol. 212r. Stanza 15 implies that the Italians have failed fully to acknowledge their debts to Lucas and Dürer.

⁵⁵⁰ Kiliaan, Etymologicum Theutonicae linguae, 492, defines sleur (sloer) as tractus (a train, track, or course drawn, pulled, or stretched); with reference to the notion of a “track or course drawn or pulled” across/through something, an alternative translation might be “hollows.” A related term, syrma, designates an item of clothing with a long train. In “Life of Antonio of Correggio,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fol. 116r, Van Mander praises the painter’s drapery for its “schoon sloeren en swieringen” (fine trailing and turning, or alternatively, fine hollows and curves). Kiliaan, Etymologicum, 546, defines swier as gyrus (circle, circuit) and circumvolutio (circling, turning round).

⁵⁵¹ On the Worldly Life of the Magdalene, Triumph of Mordecai, and Temptation of Christ, see Vogelaar et al., Lucas van Leyden en de Renaissance, 264, 252; and J.P. Filedt Kok, The Hew Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts 1450–1700: Lucas van Leyden, ed. G. Luijten (Rotterdam and Amsterdam: 1997), 69, nr. 41.

⁵⁵² On Lucas’s “animated and flowing draperies, as considered as they are artful” (“drijvende en vloeyende lakenen soo verstandich als constich”), see “Life of Lucas van Leyden,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 212r.

⁵⁵³ A commonplace for emulative imitation, the trope of bees that suck nectar, converting it into honey, derives from Seneca the Younger’s Epistle LXXXIV; see Seneca, Epistles, trans. R.M. Gummere, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: 1917), 2:276–285, esp. 276–281. It may be significant that Van Mander identifies Lucas’s prints not merely as nectar, which the bee must transform into honey, but as themselves a honeyed source, thus implying that his draperies brook no adjustments: perfect in themselves, they require only to be imitated.

⁵⁵⁴ A more literal translation of “weerschijnsels verscheyden” (various lustrous stuffs) would be “various re-reflections,” i.e., the caroming of light from fold to fold.

⁵⁵⁵ Lodovico Dolce, in L’Aretino, his treatise on the distinctive qualities of Venetian colorito (coloring and its constituent elements, i.e., hue, tone, and brushwork), considers drapery—its color, weave, weight, and texture—one of the greatest difficulties of art, second only to the description of human flesh. Van Mander subscribes to the view that the Venetians are chiefly masters at painting changeant and compound silks, i.e., silks that combine various weaves, threads, and heights of pile, such as lampas, damask, and figured velvet (and presumably also cloth of gold). See L’Aretino, ovvero Dialogo della pittura di Lodovico Dolce, ed. C. Téoli (Milan: 1863), 67; M.W. Roskill, ed. and trans., Dolce’s “Aretino” and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento, Monographs on Archaeology and the Fine Arts 15 (New York: 1968), 154–155; and Aretin: A Dialogue on Painting, from the Italian of Lodovico Dolce, trans. W. Brown (London: P. Elmsley, 1770), 158–159: “It is also necessary to know the colour of the draperies, silks, gold, etc. with such precision, that one may seem to see the hardness or softness more or less, according to the nature of the stuff … that they may all appear natural, and not satiate the eyes of the spectator. And let no one think the force of colouring consists in the choice of beautiful colours; as fine whites, beautiful azures, greens, or the like, for these are equally beautiful before they are made use of; but in knowing how to manage them properly.” Also see Roskill, ed. and trans., Dolce’s “Aretino,” 150–151: “Where clothes are concerned, the painter should also pay attention to the matter of quality; for velvet and watered silk, a fine linen and a coarse cloth, all produce folds of different kinds.” On Van Mander’s close study of Dolce’s L’Aretino, see W.S. Melion, “Karel van Mander et les origines du discours historique sur l’art dans les Pays-Bas au XVIIe siècle,” in E. Pommier, ed., Histoire de l’histoire de l’art de l’Antiquité au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: 1996), 1–49.

⁵⁵⁶ Miedema astutely observes, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2: 578, that Van Mander’s closing remark about adjacent colors, though it derives from Vasari, Vite, ed. Milanesi, 1:49, changes Vasari’s meaning: instead of focusing on textile colors that enhance the color of flesh when placed beside it, Van Mander lists various colors (and shades of color) suitable for depicting effects of shot silk. Stanza 19 then offers specifics about some of these color combinations, pairings that best describe the reflective properties of cloth. At issue, then, as the first marginal gloss to stanza 19 clearly states, is the application of relfexy-const to the depiction of draperies. On color combinations that best describe the appearance of changeant fabrics in light and shade, see Berger, ed., Quellen für Maltechnik, 286–287.

⁵⁵⁷ Van Mander is finishing the thought launched at the end of stanza 18.

⁵⁶⁶ In fact, Van Mander uses the term weerschijnen (re-reflections) to indicate that he is talking about the way light, when it strikes lustrous folded silk, resonates from surface to surface. On weerschijn, see chapter 5, note 1 supra.

⁵⁵⁸ Lac (lake) is the term for various shades of red pigment: if made from lac or kermes, it tends to have a purple cast; if made from cochineal, it is a redder carmine; see Harley, Artist’s Pigments, 131–138. As Harley notes (131), unless the pigment is identified by its source-name, the raw material used in its manufacture is almost impossible to determine; also see D.V. Thompson, The Materials of Medieval Painting (London: 1936), 111; and Van Eikema Hommes, Changing Pictures, 13, 26, 28.

⁵⁵⁹ Lichte blaeuwen (light blues) probably refers to blue made from azurite, smalt, or ultramarine; that the next line begins with a reference to smalt may indicate that this is the pigment Van Mander has in mind here.

⁵⁶⁰ Smalt (smalt) is the term for a blue pigment, often with a slight purple cast, made from oxidized cobalt ore mixed with silica; see Harley, Artist’s Pigments, 53–56; and Van Eikema Hommes, Changing Pictures, 18, 22, 30, 39.

⁵⁶¹ Lacke witten (lake whites) may be the term for a range of pigments now known as rose pink or light red, made from various organic materials, such as buckthorn berries, broom, or weld; see Harley, Artist’s Pigments, 107–112

⁵⁶² Masticot (massicot) is the term for a lead-based yellow pigment, generally lead-tin or, occasionally, lead monoxide; see ibid., 95–96; and Van Eikema Hommes, Changing Pictures, 30, 77.

⁵⁶³ Groen (green) probably refers to verdigris, a copper-based pigment used for glazing; however, Van Mander may mean a green mixed from yellow (lead-tin yellow or yellow lake) and blue pigments (azurite, smalt, or ultramarine); see Harley, Artist’s Pigments, 80–83; and Van Eikema Hommes, Changing Pictures, 78–80.

⁵⁶⁴ Schiet-geel (yellow lake) is a lake pigment of yellow or pink-yellow color, made from various organic yellow dyes, such as tincture of broom; see Harley, Artist’s Pigments, 111–112; and Van Eikema Hommes, Changing Pictures, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 36, 70, 77.

⁵⁶⁵ The term graeuwen (grayish tints), as Miedema surmises in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:579, most likely refers to half-tints, i.e., colors intermediate between the brightest lights and deepest shadows.

⁵⁶⁷ In the “Life of Brother Filippo Lippi, Florentine Painter,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 103v, Van Mander praises Lippi for the “astonishingly beautiful folds” (“wonder schoon ployen”) that crease the monks’ cowls in his Death of St. Bernard, painted for a patron in Prato (Germiniano Inghirami); see Miedeman, Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2: 579.

⁵⁶⁸ In the “Life of Frans Badens” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 298v, Van Mander commends the painter for his skilled depiction of “nocturnal banquet scenes and masquerades” populated by revelers in “modern and up-to-date costumes” (“oock veel bancketten, en Mascaraden op den nacht, en op zijn Moderne, oft dees-tijtsche wijse van cleedinghe, daer hy seer fraey van in”). Miedema, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2: 579, notes that Van Mander, in ibid., fol. 223v, approves Holbein’s prints of David and Abisag and Solomon with the Hiram’s Emissary from the Icones (1538) for their portrayal of David and Solomon in “rich, regal robes,” i.e., in the modern manner, rather than “draped round with a blanket in the Antique manner, [and] with arms bared, made to look impoverished” (“niet met naeckte armen, met een deken om oft ghelijck men die op zijn Antijcksche soo beroyt”),

⁵⁶⁹ Van Mander’s use of the term raept (seize) hearkens back to Grondt, chapter 1, stanza 46, where he counsels the aspiring draughtsman to play the part of Rapiamus, seizing upon the body’s various parts and combining them into a well-cooked stew—a figure whose limbs are consonant rather than disparate. Here, in chapter 10, the emphasis falls not on harmonizing various kinds of cloth, drapery, and patterns of fold but on sampling a wide range of types and aggregating them into mixtures and combinations (verminghen), almost as if assembling a patchwork garment.

⁵⁷⁰ For a complex example of single- and double-glazing used to describe the textural and coloristic properties of double-pile red brocade, see M. Gifford, “Van Eyck’s Washington Annunciation: Technical Evidence for Iconographic Development,” Art Bulletin 81.1 (1999): 108–116, esp. 108. To describe Gabriel’s cope of velvet and cloth-of-gold, Van Eyck applied a red lake glaze deepened with black, over a preliminary layer of vermilion; he then added a second layer of glaze to distinguish the raised tufts of double-pile at the center of the crimson florets. Moreover, a copper-green glaze intensifies the green velvet color of Gabriel’s dalmatic; see ibid., 116 n. 5.

⁵⁷¹ Jan van Eyck’s Virgin and Child with the Chancellor Nicholas Rolin (ca. 1435) provides an example of such a technique, in which a layer of opaque brown paint describes the velvet of Rolin’s houppelande, its bouclé wefts highlighted with thin strokes of bright yellow; see L. Monnas, Merchants, Princes, and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings, 1300–1550 (New Haven and London: 2008), 110–116; as Monnas points out, Van Eyck tends to paint gold weft threads diagonally, i.e., not as they are actually woven (vertically) but as they appear when seen by an eye attentive to their reflective properties. On Van Mander’s “reverse procedure,” see Van Eikema Hommes, Changing Pictures, 13.

⁵⁷² On the different modes of painting used by Raphael to depict textural effects—simplified in altarpieces such as the Saint Cecilia, detailed and more pronounced in small devotional works painted for a domestic setting—see R. Duits, Gold Brocade and Renaissance Painting: A Study in Material Culture (London: 2008), 239–240. On the “simplicity and dignity” (“simpelheyt en eerbaerheyt”) of Mary’s clothing in the Madonna dell’Impannata, see “Life of Raphael Sanzio of Urbino, Painter and Architect,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fol. 120r; and, on the rich fabrics in Raphael’s Portrait of Leo X with Two Cardinals, especially the “natural velvet[s], pelts, and damasks” (“fluweel, vellen en damast”) and the “gold and silk, the whole of which rustles, gleams, and resonates” (“goudt en sijde, dat het al ruyscht, blickt en clinckt”), see ibid.; also worthy of note, he continues, is the cloth of gold hung upon the papal chair, wherein flickers the light re-reflected from the pope’s garment, the light of a window, and the image of the room in which he sits (“daer men in siet vlickeren het weerschijn van des Paus cleedt, t’licht van de venster, end de ghedaente van de Camer”). Like much of Book III, the “Life of Raphael” was distilled and redacted from the 1568 edition of Vasari’s Vite. On Van Mander’s insertions and adjustments, see H. Miedema, Karel van Manders Leven der modern, oft dees-tijtsche doorluchtighe Italiaensche schilders en hun bron: een vergelijking tussen van Mander en Vasari (Alpen aan den Rijn: 1984), 5–21, esp. 19–21; and S. Cohen-Willner, “ ‘Between painter and painter stands a tall mountain’: Van Mander’s Italian Lives as a Source for Instructing Artists in the deelen der consten,” in F. Scholten et al., eds., Art and Migration: Netherlandish Artists on the Move, 1400–1750 (Leiden and Boston: 2014), 348–383. In addition to selecting excerpts from the Vite, Van Mander composed and interpolated seven new chapters—the lives of Jacopo Basano, Federico Zuccaro, Federico Barocci, Jacopo Palma Giovane, Giuseppe Cesari Cavalier d’Arpino, Italian masters active in Rome during Van Mander’s extended stay (1573–1577), and Italian masters active in Rome ca. 1603—on which, see Noe, Carel van Mander en Italië, 208–324; and P. Taylor, “Introduction,” in P. Arblaster, trans., “Excerpts of the ‘Lives of Italian Artists’ from the Book of Painters,” Art in Translation 6.3 (2014): 245–270.

⁵⁷³ Van Mander, finishing the thought launched at the end of stanza 24, implies that Michelangelo, in the Moses and elsewhere, diverges from nature when he allows deep drapery folds to cut across body parts, such as knees and thighs, ostensibly projecting outward. However, in “Life of Michelangelo, Florentine Painter, Sculptor, and Architect,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 166r, he lauds the Moses for its exceptionally artful drapery (“untnemende Const”).

⁵⁷⁴ In “Life of Titian Vecellio, of Cadore, Painter,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fol. 174v, Van Mander states that from an early age, in paintings imitating the manner of Giorgione, Titian showed his mastery of “costumes and silks, fashioned livingly” (“cleederen en sijden, seer levende ghedaen”). Amongst the woodblock prints made at Titian’s behest after his paintings, Van Mander adduces two in particular: Triumph of the Faith (fol. 175r) and Virgin and Child with Saints Nicholas, Francis, Catherine, and Sebastian (fol. 175v), both of which feature varieties of fabric and drapery.

⁵⁷⁵ In “Life of Andrea del Sarto, Excellent Florentine Painter,” in ibid., fols. 124r, 125r, 125v, 126v, Van Mander adduces many examples of expertly painted fabrics: the clothing of Saint Anne’s attendants dressed in the modern manner in Nativity of the Virgin (Chiostro dei Voti, Santissima Annunziata), the Magdalene’s fine drapery in Disputation on the Trinity (San Gallo), the strip of finely folded cloth on which Jesus lies in Mary, Joseph, and John the Baptist Contemplate the Boy Christ, and the costume of Abraham in Sacrifice of Isaac.

⁵⁷⁶ In “Life of Jacopo Tintoretto, Venetian Painter,” in ibid., fol. 178v, Van Mander speaks highly of the many circumstantial details that enrich such paintings as the Miracle of St. Mark in the Scuola di San Marco, but specifically mentions neither fabrics nor drapery.

⁵⁷⁷ In “Life of Paolo Caliari, Painter of Verona,” in ibid., fols. 179v–180r, Van Mander frequently commends his well-painted stuffs, citing amongst other examples the “fine silk fabrics, portrayed very naturally” (“seer fraeye sijden lakenen, seer natuerlijck uytgebeeldt”) in his Altarpiece of the Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine. He returns to this theme in the “Life of Hendrick Goltzius,” in ibid., fol. 285v, where he states that Goltzius returned from Italy with Veronese’s “fine silks and well-painted stuffs” (“schoon sijdekens en wel gheschilderde dinghen”) “imprinted in his memory, as if in a mirror.”

⁵⁷⁸ In “Life of Federico Zuccaro, Painter from San Agnolo in Vado,” in ibid., fols. 185v–186r, Van Mander praises the “fine draperies” (“schoon Lakenen”) in Federico’s Annunciation with Prophets of the Mystery of the Incarnation, formerly in the Jesuit church of the Collegio Romano, Rome; as proof, he cites Cornelis Cort’s print of 1571, after the fresco. He also says that Federico later retouched the fresco, glazing the original layer of water-based earth pigments (terra rosa and terra verde) with red lake and azure green respectively (“Lacke … Asuyr groen”). In “Life of Taddeo Zuccaro, Painter from San Agnolo in Vado,” Van Mander characterizes the artist’s manner as “sweetly tender / supple” (“soete poeselig”), calling his “faces, hair, hands, and nudes” “very skillful” (“seer aerdigh”), but does not comment on his draperies.

⁵⁷⁹ In “Life of Federico Barocci, excellent Painter of Urbino,” in ibid., fol. 187v, Van Mander praises Barocci’s “flowing and spirited” (“vloeyende en geestich”) draperies, which he further characterizes as “unruffled” (vlack), “neither inept nor confused in their folds and wrinkles” (“niet onverstandich, noch confuys in vouwen en kreucken”), and “made with good judgment very attentive to life” (“gebruyckende met goet opmerckigh oordeel veel het leven”). He also states that Barocci, who placed a premium on “flowing brushwork” (“schilderen seer vloeyende”), avoided sharply delineated contours, painting across borders to unify garments with the adjacent ground (“hy de boorden der Lakenen op den gront liggende oock niet onverdreven liet”) (fol. 186v).

⁵⁸⁰ The term pinsueren, in line 5, which I have translated as “ridged folds,” most likely derives from the nouns poyntsoen and poentsoen (needle, pin); it would seem generally to refer to point work and may have the more specific connotations of pintucking or stitched-in pleats; see Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonicae linguae, 410.

⁵⁸¹ Miedema plausibly suggests that Van Mander has in mind such statues as the Vatican Ariadne (then known as Cleopatra); see Miedema, Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:582.

⁵⁸² Miedema, in ibid., conjectures that Van Mander may be referring to the two Maenads, formerly on display in the Palazzo Farnese, both of which are carved from a dark stone that resembles bronze. On the “upper gallery,” probably the loggia mentioned by Vasari in Vite, ed. Milanesi, 7:222–223, see ibid.

⁵⁸³ Van Mander refers to the Flora Farnese, now in the Museo Nazionale, Naples.

⁵⁸⁴ See Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc3r; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 66.

⁵⁸⁵ Van Mander’s invokes Geest, circling back to his reference to “spirited conjecture” in stanza 8, on which see note 14 supra.

⁵⁸⁶ See Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc3r; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 66.

⁵⁸⁷ On Apelles, son of Pythius, whose paintings were esteemed for their singular quality of “loveliness” (Venus), called Charis (grace) by the Greeks, see “On Apelles, Prince of Painters,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book 4, fol. 77r. Van Mander capitalizes “Venus” and “Charis,” thus implying that the goddesses of Beauty and Grace themselves inhabit Apelles’s paintings, like tutelary genii loci. In stanza 30, he invokes the Charites (Three Graces), urging painters to let them preside over pictures in which drapery is seen to flutter with consummate grace.

⁵⁸⁸ The context in which the term idee (idea) is invoked, a chapter on the depiction of fabrics and drapery, makes clear that it refers not to the Platonic doctrine of ideal Form but to the Aristotelian notion that mimetic form expresses that which one knows about the object of imitation; such knowledge, though it resides in the inferior parts of universal reason, arises from the particular reason and its parts, i.e., from sensation, especially from the images produced by vision and stored in the memory. On this conception of the Idea, which underlies Vasari’s understanding of Disegno as a principle of universal reason and licenses its connection to disegno as the manual practice of drawing, see Barzman, The Florentine Academy, 145–151; also see E. Panofsky, Idea: A Concept in Art Theory (Columbia, SC: 1968), 60–68. Van Mander underscores the connection between idee and the imaginative, mnemonic, and manual functions of image-making by stating in the second marginal gloss to stanza 30 that “idea” signifies “imagination” (imaginaty) and “memory” (ghedacht). The representation of drapery, like the portrayal of leaves, hair, and sky, thus occurs at the threshold between the universal and the particular reason.

⁵⁸⁹ On ivy, sacred to Bacchus, and on the Bacchantes who dance and spring in eager service to their god, see “On Bacchus, or Dionysus,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 25r–v.

⁵⁹⁰ Cf. the famous closing line of Ovid, Metamorphoses, II.875 (trans. Miller, 120–121): “tremulae sinuantur flamine vestes” (And her fluttering garments stream behind her in the wind).

⁵⁹¹ Van Mander issues yet another ekphrastic call to arms.

⁵⁹² Van Mander refers to polychrome silk damasks woven from warps and ground wefts of contrasting colors, on which see Monnas, Merchants, Princes, and Painters, 295–296; damasks of this sort could also be brocaded. The reversible weave of these figured textiles would have enhanced the effect of varied color patterns.

Chapter 11: “On Sorting, and combining Colors”

⁵⁹³ In conjunction with the collateral reference to sorteren (sorting) in line 4, the term schackieren (apportion) indicates that the distributed colors will be clearly demarcated; Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonicae linguae, 453, gives variegare (variegate), alternare (alternate), and variare (vary) as cognates, adding the more colloquial scacare (to chequer, to reticulate into squares, as on a chessboard). Van Mander has in mind the apportionment of colors on a painter’s palette as this relates to the perspicuous disposition of adjacent colors in a painting. De Mayerne provides various schemes for laying out a palette calibrated to specific descriptive tasks, e.g., for the painting of a nude, in the extensive manuscript notes he compiled on pictorial materials and practices, dated 1620; see Pictorja, sculptorja, 260–261, 288–291, and chapter 8, note 8 supra. The simplest of De Mayerne’s diagrams identifies the sequence from arm rest to thumb hole as “white, vermilion, lake, yellow earth ocher, yellow lake, brown-red, ivory black, and lamp black,” on which see Kern, “Van Hoogstraeten and the Cartesian Rainbow,” 109–110. As Van Mander’s marginal note on color combination declares, adjacency of hue is his subject here. The final line of stanza 1 clarifies the connection between chapters 10 and 11: the “sorting and combining colors” of laken (stuffs) is his chief concern.

⁵⁹⁴ Stanzas 2 and 3 recount the story of the ancient painter Pausias and his beloved Glycera, another version of which appears in “On Pausias, Painter of Sicyon,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book 2, fol. 73r. There we learn that Pausias became enamored of the inventive variety of Glycera’s bouquets, chaplets, and wreaths, whose miscellaneous blooms she assembled with such subtle art (“seer aerdigh was, en thien duysent invention hadde”). Her multiplicitous color combinations (“soo menichvuldich de byeenvoeginghen der verwen”) inspire him to keep apace by replicating in paint, after the life (“conterfeyten nae t’leven”), what she achieved by manipulating the colors of nature (“met haer bloemen te vermenghen”), pitting his artifice against her natural art (“het natuerlijck werck van Glycera, tegen de Const van den Schilder Pausias”). Only after painting the Stephanoplocos, his celebrated portrait of Glycera plaiting her wreaths, does Pausias finally win the contest, having turned her floral devices, epitomes of nature’s artifice, into his true objects of imitation. The inclusion of Glycera implicitly previews a pair of new topics—the painting of flesh tints and the color mixtures upon which such tints are based—to be treated in chapter 12. Van Mander drives home his point about the power of erotic desire to supercharge mimetic feats of daring in stanza 3, where he analogizes Glycera’s color combinations and Pausias’s imitations of them to congress, compares his portrait painting to ploughing, and avows the “utmost pleasure” he derived from painting the Stephanoplocos.

Stanzas 2 and 3 adumbrate a procedure for learning how to handle colors, more fully enunciated in the “Life of Jacques de Gheyn, Painter of Antwerp,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 294v: wishing to learn how to paint in oil colors, De Gheyn begins with schackieren and sorteren, subdividing a panel into one hundred numbered squares and then filling them with “various grays, greens, yellows, blues, [and] reds,” and “flesh tints and other mixed colors” (“verscheyden graeuwen, groenen, ghelen, blaeuwen, rooden, carnatien, en ander vermengselen”). Next he paints a small vase of flowers, and afterward a second larger bouquet, at the same time compiling a volume of floral and animal specimens painted in gouache after the life. Now deciding that he has taken “precision [of observation and execution] in his studies [after nature]” (“netticheyt in‘t vervolghen van zijn studie”) as far as it could go, and wishing to introduce “boldness” and “scale” (“stouticheyt … en wat groots”) into his painting, he portrays the fine horse captured by Archduke Albert from Count Maurice of Nassau at the Battle of Nieuwpoort, spirited and large as life. Finally, he masters flesh tints, painting a life-size Sleeping Venus with Cupid and Two Satyrs, which Van Mander calls “exceptionally fine and marvelous in ordonnance, attitudes, proportion, handling, and fluency” (“van ordinantie, steldsel, proportie, handelinghe, en vloeyentheyt, uytnemende volcomen en verwonderlijck”). On the works itemized by Van Mander, see Miedema, ed., Van Mander, Lives, 6:48–50.

⁵⁹⁵ The association of the vale of Tempe with floral plenitude derives primarily from Catullus, Carmen LXIV.279–286, an epyllion centering on the glorious marriage feast of Peleus and Thetis; see Catullus, Poems, ed. and trans. G.P. Goold (Cambridge, MA: 1913), 116–117. The poet describes the god Chiron’s wedding gift of mixed floral garlands, comprising countless blossoms plucked from the “face of Thessaly”; here they grow in such abundance that when blown by the west wind’s fruitful breezes, the flower heads appear to billow like the waves of a stream. On the vale of Tempe, the other loci classici are Aelian, Varia historia, III.1; Ovid, Metamorphoses, I.568; Pliny, Naturalis historia, IV.8 and IV.15; and Virgil, Georgics, II.469.

⁵⁹⁶ Van Mander means that the local colors remain clearly sorted, i.e., discernible, never eliding into the green of the grassy background field.

⁵⁹⁷ The reference to sorteren, in line 3, ascribes to the Dawn the power of sorting colors.

⁵⁹⁸ As Miedema observes in Van Mander, Grondt, 2:585–586, the paired, strongly complementary colors cited in this stanza differ from those associated with the dawn in chapter 7, stanzas 3–6, and chapter 8, stanzas 4–6, where the emphasis falls on transitions from orange to red, and red to purple, against an azure sky. The combinations of red and green (and blue) and of green and white (and purple) appear, too, in Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc4v; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 72.

⁵⁹⁹ The reference to flesh tints, which are mixed colors par excellence, introduces the topic of the relation between mixed and unmixed colors, and how they may be harmonized. Van Mander visualizes the interaction of flesh and fabrics.

⁶⁰⁰ Whereas the prior stanzas discuss contrastive complementary colors, stanza 9 instead considers juxtapositions of colors situated adjacently in the spectrum.

⁶⁰¹ As Miedema notes in Van Mander, Grondt, 2:587, the reference to woven fabric brings to mind the fluctuating colors of changeant silks.

⁶⁰² Van Mander’s reference to grays “shaded without shadows” (“schier gheschaduwt sonder schaeuwe”), i.e., without blacks, indicates that he is using graeuwe not in the specific sense of “gray in hue,” but in the more general sense of “dusky, tawny, dun- or dark-colored.” On these two senses of grauw, see Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonize linguae, 159: on one hand, canus, cinereus, cineraceus (hoary, ash-colored); on the other, leucophaeus, pullus, pullulus, fuscus (dusky, etc.). On Van Mander’s use of Grauwe in this context to signify “half-tints” comparable in effect, though not actual hue, to gray and brown, see Miedema, Van Mander, Grondt, 2:587.

⁶⁰³ On Raffaellino da Reggio’s “subtle lap-fabrics” (“aerdich schoot-laken”), frescoed in the loggia of Gregory XIII, and the “beautiful stuffs” (“schoon lakenen”) in his Peter and John Healing the Crippled Man, formerly above the main doorway to St. Peter’s, Rome, see “On various Italian Painters during my time in Rome, between 1573 and 1577,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fol. 193r. Raffaellino, even while adopting elements of the cangiante technique, whereby juxtapositions of color are used to model forms, mainly attempts to harmonize his colors by tempering the transitions of value and hue amongst them. In lavishing praise on this painter, whose first significant Roman work Van Mander identifies as a façade notable for its “little grays / half-tints and temperings [of color]” (“graeuwkens, oft temperinghen”), he encourages his readers to strive for coloristic harmony rather than dissonance. In effect, rather than endorsing cangiante modeling and its hallmarks—namely, hue shift and an overall blonde tonality—ultimately perfected by Michelangelo, he declares his strong preference for the unione method of coloring, perfected by Raphael, which features lively colors mutually balanced by tone. On Raffaellino’s papal commissions for Gregory VII, see J. Marciari, “Raffaellino da Reggio in the Vatican,” Burlington Magazine 148, no. 1236 (2006): 187–191. On the distinction between the unione and cangiante modes, and their relation to two further modes, sfumato and chiaroscuro, which are based on tonal coloring, see M. Hall, Color and Meaning: Practice and Theory in Renaissance Painting (New York, Port Chester, et al.: 1992), 92–115; and, on Van Mander’s preference for tempered rather than contrasting colors, see Miedema, Van Mander, Grondt, 2:587.

⁶⁰⁴ Cf. chapter 10, stanza 16, note 25 supra.

⁶⁰⁵ On Phaëton, who lost control over the chariot of the sun, allowing it to wander off course with disastrous consequences, see “On Phaëton,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 13v. Van Mander, in comparing himself ironically to the wayward Phaëton, declares that he intends to keep instead to his allotted path and bring his four-part excursus on handling colors to a suitable conclusion. He also subtly adverts to a change of theme in chapter 11: having begun by describing the complementary colors of the dawn, he now evokes the mutually correspondent colors of the sun from dawn to dusk. As Van Mander states in “On Phaëton,” the youth’s four horses—Pirois, Eous, Ethon, and Phlegon—stand for the changing colors and intensities of sunlight over the course of a day: red at dawn, glittering as it rises higher, fiery at midday, and yellow-black as it sets.

⁶⁰⁶ The closing reference to hard-won rest, as Miedema hypothesizes, in Van Mander, Grondt, 2:310, may indicate that the subsequent chapter, “On painting well, or Coloring,” was to have been the poem’s last, chapters 13 and 14 having then been added ex post facto. He further suggests that by increasing the total number of chapters, Van Mander was able to impose a clear symmetrical structure, with stanzas 1–7 focusing on the person of the schilder and his depiction of the human figure, rooted mainly in teyckenconst, and stanzas 8–14 focusing on the figure’s circumstances and appurtenances—landscape, animals, stuffs, etc.—as well as the pictorial means, rooted mainly in schilderconst, whereby the figure and setting are brought to life. Attractive as this hypothetical scheme is, it is probably too determinate: the substance and argument of chapters 5 and 8, for instance, as I contend in the “Introduction,” supra and the annotations to both chapters, are in many respects imbricated, and chapter 7, on the reflective properties of colored light, lays the groundwork for the discussion of painting and coloring in chapter 12. More convincing is Miedema’s grouping of chapters 2 and 3–6, which discuss how the human figure may be delineated, and 12 and 8–11, which discuss how a picture’s more geestig constituent parts—the texture and motion of greenery, the fall of hair and fur, the weave and drape of cloth—may be painted. Chapter 7 on light and color would then constitute the transition leading from the chapters largely concerned with teyckenconst to those on schilderconst proper. But even this scheme may be too circumscribed, given Van Mander’s organic method of argumentation, by turns anticipatory and recursive.

Chapter 12: “On painting well, or Coloring”

⁶⁰⁷ On wel schilderen (painting well) and coloreren (coloring) as categories of pictorial excellence, see section 4.f., “Wel schilderen,” of my “Introduction,” supra.

⁶⁰⁸ Codified by Aristotle, in On the Soul II.412a–b, the philosophical doctrine that defines the soul as the life of the body undergirds Van Mander’s conception of color as the life of “drawing’s dead strokes.” Chapters 2, “On Drawing,” 3, “On Proportion,” and 4, “On Attitude,” largely concern the delineation of the human body; chapter 12, which focuses on flesh tints, now purveys the means whereby the drawn body may be enlivened. On the soul’s life-giving properties, see Aristotle, On the Soul, Parva naturalia, On Breath, trans. and ed. W.S. Hett (Cambridge, MA: 1957), 68–69: “The soul may therefore be defined as the first actuality of a natural body potentially possessing life.” Also see, ibid., 70–71: “That which has the capacity to live is not the body which has lost its soul, but that which possesses its soul.” However, in claiming that painted color can animate inert lines, Van Mander controverts a key Aristotelian analogy between the soul and the living eye, which turns on the further distinction between the living eye and the painted eye; see ibid.: “If the eye were a living creature, its soul would be its vision: for this is the substance in the sense of formula of the eye. But the eye is the matter of vision, and if vision fails there is no eye, except in an equivocal sense, as for instance a stone or painted eye.” On the analogy between color and soul, see V. Krieger, “Die Farbe als ‘Seele’ der Malerei: Transformationen eines Topos vom 16. Jahrhundert zur Moderne,” Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 33 (2006): 91–112

In stanza 1, the alterity of the draughtsman’s strokes and the painter’s colors also recalls Dolce’s distinction between contour lines, which inhibit the portrayal of nature and life, and unified colors, whose diffusion ensures a painting’s appearance of nature; see Roskill, ed. and trans., Dolce’s Aretino, 154–155. The association between colors and life constitutes an assertion of the ultramimetic functions of color, both for Van Mander and Dolce. Typical of Dolce’s conviction that colors are life-giving in a mimetic sense is his statement, in ibid., that the painter “should know how to simulate the glint of armor, the gloom of night and the brightness of day … flowers and fruits, buildings and huts, animals and so on, so comprehensively that all of them possess life.” Lomazzo, in Trattato, 187, similarly states that color perfects the mimetic properties of painting, making it appear truly natural; see Lomazzo, Tracte Containing the Artes, trans. Haydocke, 93: “It is manifest, that all those things which are first proportionably drawne, and then artificially coloured, will beare the true and natural resemblance of the Life, by expressing all the actions and gestures thereof.” The conflation of life and lifelikeness in Dolce, Lomazzo, and Van Mander, like the antithesis of line and color, ultimately derives from Plutarch who argues, in his moral discourse “How the young man should study poetry,” that just as color-painting is more stirring than line-drawing, so “fabulous narrative” leavens the dryness of a veridical oration, making it more lively, appealing, and thus persuasive; see Plutarch, Moralia, trans. and ed. F.C. Babbitt, 15 vols. (Cambridge, MA: 1927), 1:16c: “But, just as in pictures, colour is more stimulating than line-drawing because it is life-like, and creates an illusion, so in poetry falsehood combined with plausibility is more striking, and gives more satisfaction, than the work which is elaborate in metre and diction, but devoid of myth and fiction.” Van Mander draws three parallel distinctions in stanzas 1, 2, and 3 respectively: as inert lines are to vibrant colors, so the lifeless effigy made by Prometheus is to that same effigy now enlivened by heavenly fire and christened Pandora, and so, too, the melodious sound of the lyre is to the livelier, more concordant harmonies of lyric song.

⁶⁰⁹ The notion that the colors of painting have the power to confer life or, better, an afterlife, goes back to Petrarch’s Canzone 308, in which the poet dwells on the colors of poetry, asking whether his poem, by painting a virtual image of Laura, has the power to restore her to life. His term for [re]enliven—incarnare, to incarnate—comes from the theology of the mystery of the Incarnation. Implicit in his use of “incarnate” is the conviction that just as the invisible, unrepresentable Godhead became visible and representable in / through Christ incarnate, so, too, that which is otherwise lifeless and indiscernible is restored to life, made newly discernible through the colors, the figures, of poetry, as if reclothed in flesh and blood. Of course, Petrarch ultimately acknowledges that the currency of poetry is mere lifelikeness, the insubstantial fiction of life, but his poetics of color, in association with the doctrine ut pictura poesis, appears to have become a commonplace of sorts by the turn of the fifteenth century, judging from Cennino Cennini’s use of the incarnation trope in his Libro dell’arte. The use of incarno, incarnare to signify the mixing of flesh tints in Italian art treatises dates from around this time. The priority Van Mander grants to flesh tints—that is, to carnaty and vleeschich coloreren—and to the painterly process of incarnation throughout chapter 12, suggests that the analogy between Incarnation and incarnation, the mystery of enfleshment and the production of a flesh-effect, underlies his association of color with embodied life (or enlivened body) in stanza 1. On the theological etymology and medial significance of incarno, incarnare in Italian poetics and Cennnini’s Libro, see Kruse, “Fleisch warden: Fleisch malen,” 314–322.

⁶¹⁰ See “On Prometheus,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 2v: assisted by Minerva, Prometheus steals a spark of the heavenly flame whereby all things are ensouled, using it to animate the newly wrought but lifeless effigies of humankind he has just fashioned from earthly matter. For his pains, as Van Mander recounts in “On Pandora,” in ibid., fol. 3r, Prometheus is punished eternally by Jupiter, who also takes revenge upon Promethean humanity, sending Pandora to unleash the contra-gift of universal vices. Van Mander draws a parallel between color and heavenly fire, and more extraordinarily, construes Pandora positively. As he explains in “On Pandora,” her name—“All Gifts,” from Pan (all) and Dora (gifts)—refers to the box she carried, which held every virtue and vice; after she liberated the contents, the virtues flew back to their heavenly source, leaving behind only the vices to populate the earth and contaminate its inhabitants. In stanza 2, however, Pandora stands for the capacity of colors to impart motion and life to everything the painter portrays. On Van Mander’s positive association of Pandora with teyckenconst, brought to a plenitude of life through the animating colors of schilderconst, see Göttler, Tales of Transformation, 33–37. Van Mander conflates the Promethean effigy, fashioned from lifeless clay, with Pandora who, as he notes in “Van Pandora,” was in fact made by Vulcan at the behest of Jupiter; by the same token, he subsumes Prometheus into Vulcan, Vulcan into Prometheus. He thus alludes to the power of coloring to convert titanic teyckenconst into divine schilderconst. For another possible reading of Pandora, one that places greater weight on her fatal allure and associates her with the seductive charm of schilderconst, its power to deceive the viewer’s eyes, mind, and heart, see C. Göttler, “Yellow, Vermilion, and Gold: Colour in Karel van Mander’s Schilder-Boeck,” in S. Burghartz, L. Burkart, Göttler, and U. Rublack, eds., Materialized Identities in Early Modern Culture, 1450–1750: Objects, Affects, Effects (Amsterdam: 2021), 233–280, esp. 249–250.

⁶¹¹ Van Mander changes tack, emphasizing that teyckenconst and schilderconst must be fully reconciled if a work of art is to come alive for the beholder. The effect of lifelikeness is now seen to inhere not in the work itself but in the eyes struck and animated by it. Implying that drawing and painting together bring the viewer’s eyes to life, Van Mander diverges somewhat from Lodovico Dolce who, even while insisting on the collaborative relation between disegno and colorito, credits coloring with the power to animate; see, for example, Roskill, ed. and trans., Dolce’s Aretino, 116–117: “The whole sum of painting is, in my opinion, divided into three parts: invention, design, and coloring. The invention is the fable or history which the painter chooses … as material for the work he has to do. The design is the form he uses to represent this material. And the coloring takes its cue from the hues with which nature paints (for one can say as much) animate and inanimate things in variegation.” In ascribing the optical illusion of life to both Teyckeningh and Schilderen, Van Mander more closely concurs with Lomazzo, as cited in note 2 supra. More original is Van Mander’s dual analogy between poetic verse and drawing, musical setting and coloring, which, as Miedema notes, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:593, derives from Ronsard’s Abbregé de l’art poétique français (Compendium on the French Art of Poetry), whrein he avers that poetry without instrumental and vocal accompaniment lacks in agreeableness, just as any instrumental melody will be enlivened by the human voice; see Ronsard, Abbregé, in Oeuvres complètes, ed. P. Laumonnier, 20 vols. (Paris: 1914), 1:9.

⁶¹² On Van Mander’s conception of the idea, see chapter 10, stanza 30, note 60 supra. Here his use of Ide’ resembles Vasari’s, which designates an image formed in the artist’s mind and, as Panofsky argues, in Idea, 66, is equivalent to the expressions pensiero and concetto. Van Mander differs from Vasari, however, in equating the idea to a pictorial image, i.e., a mental image that appears fully painted, on which the painter then bases his underdrawing; the painter, on this account, strives to imitate coloristic effects even before laying brush to panel.

⁶¹³ The technical term doot-verwe (dead color) is used here to refer to the sketchlike underpainting applied directly onto the ground and the underdrawing before application of the final surface layers. Earlier in the sixteenth century, as Hessel Miedema explains in “Over kwaliteitsvoorschriften in het St. Lucasgilde: over ‘doodverf,’ ” Oud Holland 101 (1987): 141–147, with specific reference to the quality-control statute issued by the painters’ guild of Den Bosch in 1546, doot-verwe denoted the local colors applied in a thin monochrome layer over the underdrawing, which were then overpainted by multiple layers of translucent glaze. The process Van Mander describes is more abbreviated and sketchy, involving relatively opaque colors mixed on the palette rather than modulated by the interaction of light, tinted oil-glazes, and a polished reflective ground. With respect to this revised technique, doot-verwe is closely associated with the process of painting “all in one go,” described in stanza 18 infra. This involves completing the picture surely and speedily with a thin layer of paint whose variations of tone and hue result from color combinations mixed on the palette. Van Mander identifies Bosch, Dürer, Lucas, and Bruegel as masters of this concise, virtuosic technique. In the seventeenth century, dead-coloring came to designate the process of setting out the color scheme, usually in thin, muted, grayish shades of pigment that then served as the underlayer for a picture’s middle tones, lights, and darks; see Van Eikema Hommes, Changing Pictures, 14, 144–146.

⁶¹⁴ Van Mander here initiates his discussion of the bold manner of painting, which he then amplifies in stanzas 21–26 infra, where it is presented as an alternative to the fine manner which the student should first master. In practice, the addition of a second layer of underpainting, as Stanneck remarks, in Ganz ohne Pinsel, 152–153, assimilates the bold manner of coloring to the more meticulous technique of the fine, allowing the reader to infer that the appearance of boldness is painstakingly produced, a point Van Mander develops explicitly in his discussion of Titian’s late works (see stanza 23).

⁶¹⁵ Like the Roman emperor Augustus, founder and first holder of the imperium, the most accomplished painters will execute their ideas directly on the panel, transferring them presently from mind to hand. Van Mander adverts to the processes of underdrawing and underpainting that initiate the process of painting proper. Amongst the masters whom he praises in this respect for their sureness of hand are Apelles, “Prince of Painters” (fol. 76v), and Goltzius, “Monarch” of pen-handling (fol. 285v). Implicit here, once again, is the pacifying conversion of the warrior’s heroic deeds into those of the painter, of weaponry into the painter’s colors, of war into schilderconst.

⁶¹⁶ On this bold method of painting, which involves direct application of the topmost layers of color without benefit of the preliminary dead-coloring stage, see Van Eikema Hommes, Changing Pictures, 39.

⁶²⁰ The term net can mean “neat,” “precise,” “detailed,” so I have translated netlijck as “precisely” in the stanza, and net as “neatly” in the marginal gloss.

⁶¹⁷ Van Mander uses the term rapen (gather or, translated more forcefully, seize, appropriate), on which see chapter 1, stanza 46, notes 37–38 supra. The implication is that these more timid painters will assemble their composition by aggregating from these drawn templates. On this method, see Van Eikema Hommes, Changing Pictures, 14, which cites Vicente Carducho’s Diálogos de la pintura of 1633: “The expert painter’s tasks are to make sketches, to study every part of a composition separately, and then to join all the parts in a finished cartoon or drawing, arriving at the composition according to the precepts of good art.”

⁶¹⁸ On Van Mander’s use of the term primuersel in two senses—for the polished and lime-coated gesso ground (in Italian, ingessatura) upon which the priming layer or layers of thinned paint were laid, often in a brown, gray, ocher, or pale pink color, and for the priming layer itself (imprimatura)—see Miedema, Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:594–595. On the likelihood that primuersel also refers to the semitransparent priming layer applied over the underdrawing by early Netherlandish masters, see R. Billinge, L. Campbell, J. Dunkerton, S. Foister, J. Kirby, J. Pilc, A. Roy, M. Spring, and R. White, “Methods and Materials of Northern Europea Painting in the National Gallery, 1400–1550,” National Gallery Technical Bulletin 18 (1997): 6–55, esp. 24. Peter Paul Rubens typically used both types of primuersel; see N. van Hout, “Rubens and Dead Colouring: Some Remarks on Two Unfinished Paintings,” in H. Vlieghe, A. Balis, and C. Van den Velde, eds., Concept, Design, and Execution in Flemish Painting (1550–1700) (Turnhout: 2000), 279–288. Although the surface layers of his Battle of Henry IV of France (Antwerp, Rubenshuis) are boldly brushed, the panel shows many traces of the kind of brush drawing described in stanza 7, executed with thinly tempered paint in a single color.

⁶¹⁹ The term potloot may refer either to a lead- or graphite-based stylus or to a stick of black chalk; see Miedema, Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:597. In both cases, residual grains would have been cleared away, sometimes with the help of a feather. On these materials, which were sometimes also used as the basis for black pigments, see Harley, Artist’s Pigments, 156–158.

⁶²² On precise paint-application after the dead-coloring stage, as a preventative of discoloration, see Van Eikema Hommes, Changing Pictures, 39, 49 n. 159. On the regulation passed by the ‘s-Hertogenbosch Guild of St. Luke in the mid-sixteenth century, requiring painters first to dead-color and forbidding them from completing pictures with only a single layer of paint, see Miedema, “Over kwaliteitsvoorschriften.”

⁶²¹ On the procedures used by painters to combat the discoloration of binding media and pigments, see Van Eikema Hommes, Changing Pictures, 26–43, 47–50, esp. 26–27 on Van Mander’s technique of ensuring that the oil sinks in when painting with smalt. Wel ghetempert (well tempered) signifies that the pigments have been properly prepared, admixed with oil (or another binding agent), and, for color mixtures, blended.

⁶²³ Van Mander exemplifies the use of cartons (cartoons) in the “Life Raphael Sanzio da Urbino,” where he describes the twin impact on Raphael of the cartoons by Leonardo (Battle of Anghiari) and Michelangelo (Battle of Cascina), formerly housed in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence (fol. 117r). He then discusses Raphael’s cartoon for the Deposition that previously hung in the Baglioni Chapel, Perugia, and the cartoons used by Raphael’s workshop—Polidoro da Caravaggio, Pellegrino da Modena, Giovan Francesco Penni, Giulio Romano, and Perino del Vaga—to paint the Vatican Loggie. On the technique of tracing through the cartoon, see Vasari on Technique, ed. Baldwin Brown, trans. Maclehose, 215.

⁶²⁴ Already in Vasari’s time, the use of cartoons to prepare oil-paintings had become quite rare, as he attests; see ibid. According to Van Mander (stanza 16 infra), the early Netherlandish masters were wont to use the transfer method he describes here, for the preparation of panel paintings. Also see C. Currie, “The Final Piece of the Puzzle: Bruegel’s Use of Cartoons in the Battle between Carnival and Lent and Reflections on His Preparatory Work for Painting,” in Currie, ed., The Bruegel Success Story: Papers Presented at Symposium XXI for the Study of Underdrawing and Technology in Painting (Brussels, 12–14 September 2018) (Paris, Leuven, and Bristol, CT: 2021), 81–104.

⁶²⁵ Reacting against the initial terms of the commission to paint the Sistine Last Judgment in oils on plaster, Michelangelo is reputed to have made this gendered distinction between oil painting and fresco painting; see “Life of Sebastiano del Piombo, Venetian Painter,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fols. 138v–139r. Van Mander adds that Michelangelo broke with his protégé Sebastiano for having convinced the Pope (Clement VII) to request this technique that he himself had pioneered.

⁶²⁶ On hard-hearted Boreas, god of the fierce north wind, see “On Boreas,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 57r.

⁶²⁷ On cleaving closely to the cartoon’s colors and values, see Vasari on Technique, ed. Baldwin Brown, trans. Maclehose, 209.

⁶²⁸ Early Netherlandish panels were generally prepared with a ground of natural chalk of calcium carbonate, usually applied in several layers, then scraped and polished until level; see Billinge, Campbell, Dunkerton, et al., “Methods and Materials,” 20–24. In stanzas 16–18, Van Mander implicitly contrasts two methods of underdrawing: whereas the Italians are said merely to trace their design from a cartoon, following it like a template, the early Netherlandish masters, though they too used traceable cartoons, painstakingly added to the tracing, drawing in pencil or chalk and shading with wash; once the priming layer had been applied, the end result appeared barely less finished than the painting to follow. These two approaches testify to the perfection of the northern manner of painting founded by Jan van Eyck and his followers; see Stanneck, Ganz ohne Pinsel, 148–150.

⁶²⁹ Technical analysis of several paintings in the National Gallery, London—Simon Marmion’s The Soul of Saint Bertin Carried up to God and A Choir of Angels, for example—reveals that the underdrawing, as a whole or in part, was applied by mechanical transfer, either by tracing from a drawing or pouncing from a pricked cartoon; see Billinge, Campbell, Dunkerton, et al., “Methods and Materials,” 27, and L. Campbell, “Memling’s Creative Processes as Seen in His Paintings in the National Gallery, London,” in H. Verougstraete and R. Van Schoute, eds., Le dessin sous-jacent dans la peinture. Colloque X: Le dessin sous-jacent dans le processus de création (Université Catholique de Louvain, 5–7 September 1993) (Louvain-la-Neuve: 1995), 149–152. In “Life of Pieter Aertsen, excellent Painter of Amsterdam,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 244r, Van Mander records the existence of a cartoon at one-to-one scale for Aertsen’s Altarpiece of the Nativity, formerly in the New Church of Amsterdam, comprising an Annunciation, Circumcision, Epiphany, and Martyrdom of Saint Catherine.

⁶³⁰ On underdrawing in dry charcoal or black chalk, sometimes strengthened with thin black paint, in early Netherlandish painting, see Billinge, Campbell, Dunkerton, et al., “Methods and Materials,” 28. On discernible distinctions amongst underdrawn lines executed in black chalk, charcoal, and lead point, see J.P. Filedt Kok and P. Wardle, “Underdrawing and Other Technical Aspects in the Paintings of Lucas van Leyden,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 29 (1978): 1–84, esp. 160 n. 66. On Jan van Eyck’s use of detailed underdrawing in the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, see C. Périer-D’leteren, “Le rôle du dessin sous-jacent et de l’ébauche préparatoire au lavis dans la genèse des peintures de l’Agneau Mystique,” in C. Currie, B. Fransen, V. Henderiks, C. Stroo, and D. Vanwijnsberghe, eds., Van Eyck Studies: Papers Presented at the Eighteenth Symposium for the Study of Underdrawing and Technology in Painting (Brussels, 19–21 September 2021), Underdrawing and Technology in Painting Symposia, 18 (Paris, Leuven, and Bristol, CT: 2017), 121–136.

⁶³¹ The fluid medium in which black pigment was suspended for use in painted underdrawing has proved difficult to characterize; see Billinge, Campbell, Dunkerton, et al., “Methods and Materials,”28. On Lucas van Leyden’s use of detailed underdrawing in several of his paintings, and its determinative relation to shading in the paint layers, see Kok and Wardle, “Underdrawing and Other Technical Aspects,” 16, 18–36 (Chess Players [Berlin], Potiphar’s Wife Showing Joseph’s Robe, Card Players [Wilton House]), 49–56 (Virgin and Child with Saint Mary Magdalene and a Donor), 72–77, 90–93 (Last Judgment). Whereas the brush underdrawing of the foreground figures in the interior of the Last Judgment is richly detailed, executed with a great variety of strokes in black and gray, the figures in the middle and far distance are more summarily handled (73–74). In places, Lucas mixes brush drawing with drawing in red and black chalk (73). To cite a different example, Joachim Beuckelaer’s black chalk underdrawing, though looser in handling than Lucas’s, tended to be more detailed before 1565, more abbreviated afterward; see M. Wolters, “Drawing to Underdrawing to Painting: Compositional Evolution in the Working Process of Joachim Beuckelaer,” in Journal of the Historians of Netherlandish Art 4.2 (Summer 2012), DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2012.4.2.2 (accessed 15 May 2021). Surviving ink-and-wash modelli indicate that Beuckelaer often introduced changes at the underdrawing and painting stages.

⁶³² On the various colors used by early Netherlandish masters for the semitransparent primuersel or priming layer, including lead white tinted with red and black, and pale pink—perhaps Van Mander’s flesh-tint—see Billinge, Campbell, Dunkerton, et al., “Methods and Materials,” 22–24, esp. 24. In certain cases—Hans Holbein’s Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling, for instance—the priming layer is surprisingly rich in medium (22). As Stanneck argues, in Ganz ohne Pinsel, 142–144, Van Mander’s treatment of the priming layer differs considerably from Vasari’s in the technical preface to the Vite, on which, see Vasari on Technique, ed. Baldwin Brown, trans. Maclehose, 230. Van Mander conceives of the preliminary stages of a painting as fully representational, rather than merely preparatory: just as the underdrawing can be resolved to such an extent that it brings the picture near to completion, so too, the priming layer can make a picture appear “as if already half painted.” Stanneck further points out that Van Mander considered these effects of virtual finish desirable and achievable irrespective of the manner in which the northern master draws or paints, rough or fine, broad or precise; see ibid., 124–127, 143.

⁶³³ On the phrase “net aenlegghen ginghen, en teen eersten op doen” (applied everything neatly, all at one go), which may signify that each part of the picture was completed before the painter moved on to another part, see Miedema, Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:598. Miedema further reads the verb opdoen as a likely reference to the application of the final paint layers; this reading would correlate to such meanings of opdoen as recondo (lay in place), pando (spread out), and recludo (close off), in Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonicae linguae, 375.

⁶³⁴ See the references to finely painted strands of fur and / or hair as the final perfection of painting in Jan van Eyck’s Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, in “Life of Jan and Hubert van Eyck,” fol. 200v, and in Dürer’s Four Apostles, in “Life of Albrecht Dürer,” fol. 209r. Viewed through the lens of Van Mander’s remarks on hair and fur in chapter 8, stanza 37, and throughout chapter 9, these “whitish little hairs limned subtly with finesse” (or alternatively, “drawn subtly [with the brush]”) should be appreciated as epitomes of gheest.

⁶³⁵ Van Mander cites Dürer’s Heller Altarpiece, once housed in the Dominican Church, Frankfurt, on which see “Life of Albrecht Dürer,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 209r: “… an Assumption of Mary, wherein … everything is handled neatly and subtly, the hairs very surely drawn, entwined with lively (cluchtigh) strokes of the brush, as in his praiseworthy prints.” Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonicae linguae, 243, defines the term kluchtigh (lively) as gestuosus (full of action, gestural), festivus (lively, gladsome), facetus (elegant, fine, witty), and lepidus (neat, fine, charming). In applying it to Dürer’s hayrkens, Van Mander wanted to indicate that these hairs are lively traces of the painter’s manual dexterity that equally testify to his fine liveliness of mind.

⁶³⁶ On Bruegel’s (spelled Brueghel by Van Mander) net (precise) yet gheestigh (spirited) paint handling, see C. Currie, S. Saverwyns, L. Depuydt-Elbaum, P. Fraiture, J.-A. Glatigny, and A Coudray, “Lifting the Veil: The Dulle Griet Rediscovered through Conservation, Scientific Imagery, and Analysis,” in Currie, ed., The Bruegel Success Story, 19–44. On his use of black chalk (identified as a “greasy, naturally occurring graphite, found in Piedmont …, Cumbria … and other regions”), to articulate myriad details in the underdrawing that are then refined in the painting, see Billinge, Campbell, Dunkerton, et al., “Methods and Materials,” 28. On practices of underdrawing and painting in Leiden consonant with Van Mander’s remarks in stanzas 16–19, with particular reference to Cornelis Engebrechtszoon, Aertgen van Leyden, and Lucas, see J.P. Filedt Kok, E. van Duijn, A. Bandivere, A. Wallert, and M. Woters, “De Leidse schilders aan het werk,” in Vogelaar et al., Lucas van Leyden en de Renaissance, 78–101. On Lucas’s “diligent and meticulous” application of “clear and pure colors” (“vlijtich en sorghvuldich,” “verwen schoon en suyver”), see “Life of Lucas van Leyden,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 212v. On his Healing of the Blind Man of Jericho, with its “environs [painted] clearly and luminously” (“gronden … schoon, en gloeyende”), “precisely rendered and true to nature” (“net en eyghentlijck ghehandelt”), see ibid., fol. 213r.

⁶³⁷ The famous motto “Plus ultra,” often combined with the pictorial device of the pillars of Hercules, encapsulates the Habsburg imperial idea that no curbs can be placed on their territorial ambitions; so, too, the achievements of Bruegel, Lucas, and other northern colorists know no bounds.

⁶³⁸ On Jan van Eyck’s supple manipulation of oil colors and glazes, and on early appreciation of his peerless skill at harnessing these media to descriptive ends, see A. Roy, “Van Eyck’s Technique: The Myth and the Reality, I,” in S. Foister, S. Jones, and D. Cool, eds., Investigating Jan van Eyck (Turnhout: 2000), 97–100; and R. White, “Van Eyck’s Technique: The Myth and the Reality, II,” in ibid., 101–106. On the link made by Jan’s early admirers between his oil-glazing technique and the purifying effects of medical alchemy, see N. Turel, Living Pictures: Jan van Eyck and Painting’s First Century (New Haven and London: 2020), 84–95, esp. 94. Van Mander, like Vasari, attributes the invention of oil colors to Van Eyck, stating that he thereby made his “colors much livelier, giving them an inherent luster” (“de verwen veel levender maeckten, en van selfs een blinckentheyt deden hebben”). The phrase “van selfs” (inherent) implies that the reflective properties of such colors made them particularly apt for the depiction of extrinsic effects of reflection. Van Mander then elaborates upon other practical advantages of this new medium: pigments mixed with oil are easier “to apply and work” than colors bound in “egg or glue,” and can be brushed onto the panel “rather than requiring to be hatched” (“niet en hoefde so ghetrocken te zijn gedaen”); see “Life of Jan and Hubert van Eyck,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 199v. When handled consummately, oil colors produce an effect of exceptional precision (“uytnemende netticheyt”), even while liberating the brush from the gestural marks of the stylus; “subtle and meticulous,” “finely and subtly worked” (“aerdich en net,” “dunne en aerdich gedaen”), Jan’s Adoration of the Mystic Lamb combines gheesticheyt and netticheyt, and abounds in deftly rendered trees, hair, and fabrics (fol. 200r–v). Van Mander asserts that even at the dead-coloring stage, Jan’s pictures were “clearer and sharper than the finished works of other masters”; see ibid., fol. 202v. On Van Eyck’s legendary status as a learned painter-alchemist and the first to distill oil colors, see L. Davis, “Renaissance Inventions: Van Eyck’s Workshop as a Site of Discovery and Transformation in Jan van der Straet’s Nova Reperta,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 59 (2009): 222–247.

⁶³⁹ The term cloeckheyt, in this context, can refer to both manual and mental ingenuity, dexterity of the hand and mind. Van Mander calls for brushwork that is precisely applied and yet gheestigh (subtle, spirited, ingenious), so that the picture retains its “concinnity” (welstandt), i.e., consonance of its component parts, when viewed either from near or far.

⁶⁴⁰ “Concinnity” might also be translated as “coherence.” Rendered more literally, line 5 states that such works “renounce their concinnity neither from far nor near.” Van Mander adapted this criterion of pictorial excellence from a poetic dictum codified by Horace in Ars poetica 361–362; see Horace, Satires, Epistles, The Art of Poetry, trans. and ed., Rushton Fairclough, 480–481: “A poem is like a picture: one strikes your fancy more, the nearer you stand; another, the farther away.” Van Mander, who paraphrases Horace after having canonized Jan, Lucas, Dürer, and Bruegel for their handling of colors, implies that their pictures cohere from any vantage point, attracting the eyes whether seen from a distance or close at hand. On the meaning of Horace’s couplet, which argues the merits both of the highly wrought style of love poetry and of the forceful, less finished style of Homeric epic, see W. Trimpi, “Horace’s ‘Ut pictura poesis’: The Argument for Stylistic Decorum,” Traditio 34 (1978): 29–73. Miedema, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:599–600, cites Jacques de Hemelaer’s translation from Latin into Dutch, dedicated to Van Mander: Q. Horatius Flaccus, De arte poetica, dat is: Vanden wel-dichtens kunst, aende Pizones toegeschreven, ende in Nederlandschen rijme tot een proef stuxken van des gheest-spelige oeffenynge vertaeld (Haarlem: Vincent Kasteleyn voor Daniel de Keyzer, 1612), fol. B3r:

’Tgedicht is even eens gelijk de Schilderij.

Het eene konstig stuk beschauwt wil zijn van by,

Het ane’r heft meerder aerds indien men’t ziet van wyde.

[Poetry is just like Painting.

Whereas one artful work will wish to be viewed from nearby,

Another [will] have greater quality when seen from afar.]

⁶⁴¹ Stanzas 22–25 closely follow Vasari, Vite, ed. Milanesi, 7:452. Van Mander provides an abbreviated account in “Life of Titian Vecellio of Cadore, Painter,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book III fol. 177r: “For he first made his works very precisely (‘heel net’), so that one gladly beheld them from near or far: but at last, he fashioned them with bold brushstrokes, and patchily (‘cloecke pinceel-streken henen, en ghevleckt’), so that from close by they had no perfection, but when seen from afar, possessed good concinnity.” By contrast, Michelangelo is a painter whose late works—above all, the Last Judgment—appear fully resolved from whatever vantage point one views them, as Van Mander emphasizes in the “Life of Michelangelo,” fol. 170v. But for all that, he follows Vasari in making clear that from close up, the fresco is handled like a drawing, “retouched, the shadows completed with very precise hatches, not just below [i.e., where they were patently visible] but also above, all the way at the top.” This kind of drawn painting (or painted drawing) is quite different from the paradigm of spirited netticheyt put forth in stanza 21, underlying which is the conviction, more fully developed in “Life of Jan and Hubert van Eyck,” that oil colors allow for precise, supple handling that appears painted rather than delineated; see note 31 supra.

⁶⁴² What Vasari construes as the “great art” (“grande arte”) of Titian’s late works, the deception they perpetrate by concealing the painter’s “diligence” (diligenza) and “effort” beneath a veil of macchie (stains, spots, blots, splotches), was seen in the Venetian art theoretical tradition as an expression of Titian’s inimitable sprezzatura. Dolce in the Aretino defines sprezzatura as a “certain proper casualness” (“certa convenevole sprezzatura”) in the handling of colors, so that they seem to show “neither too much beauty … [nor] too high a finish.” The Aretino’s interlocutors, Aretino and Fabrini, argue for the virtues of sprezzatura by disparaging “overconscientiousness” (“troppa diligenza”) and “excessive meticulousness” (“soverchia diligenza”) in painting; see Roskill, ed. and trans., Dolce’s “Aretino,” 156–157. Whereas Vasari, in discussing Titian’s late style, concentrates on the theme of concealed effort (“nascondendo le fatiche”), Van Mander, by invoking the antithesis between “facile” handling (“lichtveerdich”) and “painful effort” (“ghedaen met pijnen”), couches his defense of Titian in terms of Dolce’s opposition of ease to difficulty, facility to effort, casualness to conspicuous diligence. The notion that Titian disguised his effortful technique so thoroughly that it completely eluded the epigones who presumed to copy him, gives evidence of his inimitable sprezzatura, characterized by Dolce in the Aretino as a “certain proper casualness” (“certa convenevole sprezzatura”) in the handling of colors, so that they seem to show “neither too much beauty … [nor] too high a finish.” Dolce’s interlocutors Aretino and Fabrini argue for sprezzatura by disparaging “overconscientiousness” (“troppa diligenza”) and “excessive meticulousness” (“soverchia diligenza”); see Roskill, ed. and trans., Dolce’s “Aretino,” 156–157. In the “Life of Titian,” fol. 177v, however, Van Mander incorporates Vasari’s ambivalent remark that the master’s later commissioned works did damage to his reputation as the foremost painter of Venice. Spirited netticheyt, as stanza 21 affirms, and such paragons as Jan van Eyck, Pieter Bruegel, and the young Titian certify, was clearly the ideal after which the aspiring schilder should aspire. On Vasari’s defensive account of Titian’s two styles, early and late, and of the macchie and colpi (forceful blows, strokes) so prevalent in the latter, see P. Sohm, Pittoresco: Marco Boschini, his Critics, and their Critiques of Painterly Brushwork in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Italy (New York, Port Chest, Melbourne, and Sydney: 1991), 46–53; his conception of Titian’s early diligence and late effort-concealing facility, derives from the Aristotelian distinction between forensic and epideictic oratory (the former finely detailed in argument, the latter more broad and bold because addressed to a crowd of people rather than a knowledgeable judge and jury). Van Mander, in describing Titian’s late works as beautiful, pleasing, and lively, praises them in precisely the terms he applies to Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece, in “Life of Jan and Hubrecht van Eyck,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 200v. That Titian’s “rough strokes” (“rouw’ streken”) and Jan’s netticheyt elicit a like response testifies to Van Mander’s conviction that the Venetian master’s patches and strokes, visible as they are, yet testify to his infinite care and surpassing diligence. On the complementarity of the fine and rough manners, the former of which is seen in stanzas 22–25 to incubate the latter, see Stanneck, Ganz ohne Pinsel, 126–127. Stanza 24 leaves it to the virtuoso, i.e., the liefhebber (lover of art), to discern this connection, as Stanneck asserts.

⁶⁴³ Titian’s two manners are presented as two modes to be exercised according to inclination and / or choice, the chief criterion being enlivenment: the painter must pick the mode that most animates him, imparting the spirit and resolve to produce a lively picture. As Miedema points out, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:600, the two modes are emphatically demarcated in “Life of Jacques de Gheyn,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 294v: having painted small floral and insect subjects marked by exceptional nettichheyt in the portrayal of nature after the life, he then endeavors to improve himself by painting “in a different way” (“op een ander wijse”), and portrays “with greater boldness, at nearly life-scale” (“tot meerder stouticheyt … en tot wat groots”) the horse recently captured by Count Maurits of Nassau at the battle of Nieuwpoort. The master whom Van Mander most praises for his equal skill at painting small and precisely, as well as large and boldly, is Joachim Wtewael; see, for example, “Life of Joachim Wtewael, Painter of Utrecht,” in ibid., fol. 296v: “So, too, one would hardly know to say whether he was more excellent at [painting] large or small, which is a sign of having in one’s possession a very good judgment and understanding, something rarely found amongst painters: for one often sees large and small works and figures by one and the same hand, which one would think had been done by two masters, being very disparate in virtue of art.” In almost the same breath, Van Mander cites large paintings, “loosely ordonnanced” yet “excellent in drawing and coloring” (“los geordineert, uytnemende in zijn teyckeninge en coloreringe”), such as the Nativity with Adoration of the Shepherds in the Amsterdam collection of Joachim’s cousin Lucas (resident at the house known as Apelles), and “small works, exceptionally sharp and precise” (“van uytnemende scherpheyt en netticheyt”), such as the “richly detailed, very subtle and polished” (“aerdigh en suyver ghedaen”) Banquet of the Gods on copper, in the Amsterdam collection of Joan Ycket. The term suyver can mean mundus (pure, clear), but also nitidus, splendidus (bright, shining, polished) as well as lautus (neat, elegant) and integer (fresh, spotless, blameless, irreproachable); see Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonicae linguae, 542. As Göttler ascertains, in “Yellow, Vermilion, and Gold,” 255, Van Mander himself essayed the two manners of painting—precise and bold—in his Continence of Scipio of 1600, the finely painted obverse of which depicts the eponymous exemplum, whereas the reverse, an allegory of natural law (but also of nature as source of the rules of art) is more boldly and loosely painted, both with the brush and, in places, directly with the fingers. As Göttler further indicates, Van Mander may have been imitating his friend Cornelis Ketel, whose ability to paint broadly, not only with his thumb and fingers but also his feet, he describes in “Life of Cornelis Ketel, excellent Painter, of Gouda,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 278r.

⁶⁴⁴ In “Life of Lucas van Leyden,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 213v, Van Mander deprecates the nude figures in the Last Judgment, too sharply silhouetted on the side from which the light falls: “… as was then the custom amongst painters … these nudes were lit very sharply, or rather, cut off” (“op den dagh wat seer centich, oft ghesneden”). In “Life of Maarten [van] Heemskerck, artful, esteemed Painter,” in ibid., fol. 245r, he levels the same criticism against the master’s Saint Luke Painting the Virgin and Child, which he characterizes as painted “in the manner of Scorel, very sharply demarcated on the daylit side” (“seer cantich afgesneden op den dagh”). His repudiation of sharply lit and demarcated forms, recalls Dolce’s injunction to avoid silhouetted colors, either bright or shaded; see Roskill, ed. and trans., Dolce’s Aretino, 154–155: “Now the blending of the colors needs to be diffused and unified in such a way that it is naturalistic, and that nothing offends the gaze such as contour lines, which should be avoided (since nature does not produce them), and blackness, a term I use for harsh and unintegrated shadows.”

⁶⁴⁵ This is a typical example of Van Mander’s tendency to give prosopopoeic agency to a picture’s constituent elements. Miedema, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:601, cites the column rising above the Virgin in Van Heemskerck’s Annunciation from the Drapers’ Altarpiece (Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem) as a textbook example of the lighting scheme Van Mander here codifies. Added by Cornelis Corneliszoon, the topmost segment of the column follows this scheme even more closely.

⁶⁴⁶ Red lake was generally mixed with a blue pigment such as azurite to produce various shades of purple; see Billinge, Campbell, Dunkerton, et al., “Methods and Materials,” 37. Van Mander counsels against modulating the flesh-tint too far in this direction, which can result from using red pigments other than vermilion. De Mayerne, in Berger, ed., Quellen für Maltechnik, 110–111, indicates that mixing lake and white, or lake, cinnabar, and white, presumably for flesh tints, was standard practice in the early seventeenth century. De Mayerne considers lake (unlike vermilion) one of several colors lacking in body; see ibid., 132–133. Starting with stanza 29, where he turns from preliminary topics such as ground colors, priming, and shading to coloring proper, Van Mander focuses primarily on flesh tints, virtually equating carnaty with “wel verwen, oft coloreren.” Citing H. Miedema, “Koloriet, lichtval en stofuitdrukking,” in idem, Kunst, kunstenaar en kunstwerk bij Karel van Mander: Een analyse van zijn levensbeschrijvingen (Alphen aan den Rijn: 1981), 156–162, Lehmann acutely observes that the construal of coloreren as wel verwen in chapter 12 also fully informs the Netherlandish and German lives in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, where every specific reference to color has to do with flesh color; see Lehmann, “Fleshing Out the Body,” 99, 108, n. 82. Typical is the “Life of Joos van Cleef, called jester Cleef, Excellent Painter of Antwerp,” fol. 227r: “He was the master who, in his day, was rightly [considered] the best colorist, who modeled his works very subtly, and painted them very fleshily, solely using the flesh-tint itself to heighten them.”

⁶⁴⁷ Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonicae linguae, 708, defines incarnaet as ruffus (red, reddish), purpureus color (purple, reddish violet), and colloquially, as incarnatus (from incarno, incarnari, to make flesh, become incarnate, in the theological sense), “colorem vivae carnis referens” (referring to the color of living flesh), and “ex albo rufescens” (to become red from white). The premium Van Mander places on a blooming / blushing flesh-tint, and on a color shading toward lustrous vermilion rather than consisting of a generic mixture of lake and white, aligns with the two latter connotations. His investment in generating a persuasive flesh-tint corresponds to the emphasis on becoming flesh, explicit in the derivation of incarnatus from incarno, incarnari. However, here (in the phrase “incarnaten carnaty”) and elsewhere in the Schilder-Boeck, he distinguishes between carnaty (flesh-tint) and incarnaten (carnation, incarnadine). On the distinction between flesh-tint, mixed from vermilion, lead white, and other colors, and carnation, mixed from red lake and lead white, see Lehmann, “Fleshing Out the Body,” 106, n. 35. Van Mander’s acute interest in flesh tints partially derives from his first-hand familiarity with Venetian and Lombard coloring as well as with Dolce’s discussion of colorito in the Aretino, on which see Melion, “Karel van Mander et les origines du discours historique sur l’art,” passim. On the art theoretical connection between colorito and carni, from out of which Dolce was writing, see D. Bohde, “ ‘Le tinte delle carni’: Zur Begrifflichkeit für Haut und Fleisch in italienischen Kunstraktaten des 15. bis 17. Jahrhunderts,” in Bohde and M. Fend, eds., Weder Haut noch Fleisch: Das Inkarnat in der Kunstgeschichte (Berlin: 2007), 41–63.

⁶⁴⁸ Van Mander advises that vermilion, or a combination of orange-tinged madder lake and opaque vermilion, should form the basis of a blooming, i.e., blushing, flesh-tint; see ibid. 38–39. On the term gloeyen (luster), which can also be translated “glow,” and Van Mander’s use of it to refer to glowing shadows warmed by the action of re-reflected light, see Taylor, “The Glow in Late Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Dutch Paintings,” 173–174. In paintings by Hendrick Goltzius, for example, weerglans is one of the chief devices whereby shadowed flesh is both enlivened and warmed. As Taylor shows, Van Mander also considered “glow” a means to enhance the rounded appearance of a figure’s limbs. On the nomenclature around lake pigment, which extends from lac and kermes to cochineal, see Harley, Artists’ Pigments, 131–135; and H. Schweppen and H. Roosen-Runge, “Carmine—Cochineal Carmine and Kermes Carmine,” in B.H. Berrie, R.L. Feller, E.W. Fitzhugh, and A. Roy, eds., Artists’ Pigments: A Handbook of Their History and Characteristics, 4 vols. (Washington, D.C.: 1993–2007), 1:255–265. On vermilion (red mercuric sulphide), which was available in both natural and manufactured forms, see Harley, Artists’ Pigments, 125–128; and R.J. Gettens, R.L. Feller, and W.T. Chase, “Vermilion and Cinnabar,” in Roy, ed., Artists’ Pigments, 2:159–167. Vermilion was also used to reproduce the lustrous glow of shaded flesh, a pictorial device that goes back to Jan van Eyck and Geertgen tot Sint Jans; Lehmann, in “Fleshing Out the Body,” 100–101, calls attention to the fact that in using a red paint layer to shade flesh tints, Goltzius and his followers were, unbeknownst to them, reviving and adapting an early Netherlandish pictorial technique. As she further observes (103), the terminology Van Mander and later Dutch art theorists use to talk about coloreren derives from workshop practice, focuses on materials and techniques, and turns flesh color into a synecdoche for coloring at large. Van Mander’s discussion of glowing flesh tints (more precisely, of “flesh-like luster” [“vleeschigher gloeyen”]) in stanzas 29 and 30, should be read in tandem with his treatment of an allied category of luster—blinckentheyt—in the “Life of Jan and Hubrecht van Eyck” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 199r–v, as Christine Göttler has recently pointed out. Whereas gloeyen and gloeyentheyt refer specifically to the warm glow of flesh tints and evoke the tactile sensation of warmth also associated with fiery hot coals or metals, blincken and blinckentheyt refer to the cool “shine and sparkle of metallic or crystalline surfaces”; see Göttler, “Yellow, Vermilion, and Gold,” 241, 244–245. The joint appeal of gloeyentheyt to sight and touch qualifies it, in Aristotelian terms, as a common sensible that activates two senses and can properly be perceived only when these senses operate in conjunction with the cognitive faculty of judgment, known as the “common sense”; on common sensibles as a theme of art in Antwerp painting of the early seventeenth century, see Honig, Brueghel and the Senses of Scale, 53–54.

⁶⁴⁹ Cf. Grondt, chapter 10, stanza 22, in which Van Mander advises painters to rely on glazes if they wish to produce an effect of “glowing transparency” (“gloedich doorschijnen”). In “Life of Hendrick Goltzius,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 285v, Van Mander lauds to Goltzius, newly returned from Italy, for inspiring his fellow masters to fix their attention on glowing flesh tints: “It was a joy to [other] painters, a source of nourishment, to hear him speak about such things: for his every word was a glowing flesh-tint, a glowing shadow, and [full of] other such rare, little heard-of tales.” Goltzius thus finds himself impelled to turn from his former practice of teyckenconst to drawing in colored crayons, and then to painting in oils.

⁶⁵⁰ As Miedema remarks, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:602, Van Mander’s insistence that flesh tints be varied in respect of age and station accords with Vasari’s similar advice regarding varieties of flesh-tint, in the technical preface; see Vasari on Technique, ed. Baldwin Brown, trans. Maclehose, 220. Vasari encourages painters to vary the colorings of flesh to such an extent that they achieve an effect of “concordant discord” (“fa nel dipinto una discordanza accordatissima”); see Vasari, Vite, ed. Milanesi, 1:181. In “Life of Cornelis Corneliszoon, excellent Painter of Haarlem,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 293r, Van Mander extols Cornelis for his ability to describe “various flesh tints” (“verscheyden carnatien”), praising his Massacre of the Innocents of 1591 for differentiating between male and female flesh (“van mannen, vrouwen”), between young and old (“van verscheyden ouderdommen”), and for describing the “tender young flesh” of infants (“dat teer jongh vleesch der kinderen”) as well as the bloodless complexion of the murdered children (“den uytgebloedde lichamen”).

⁶⁵¹ Cf. Roskill, ed. and trans., Dolce’s Aretino, 152–153: “It is true that their tones should vary and equally display a respect for the sexes, age, and station.”

⁶⁵² In “Life of Pieter Bruegel,” in ibid., fol. 233v, Van Mander extols the master’s “very subtle” (“seer aerdigh”) Peasant Wedding for its peasants whose faces and bodies are painted in “yellow and brown, as if burned by the sun, their skin ugly unlike that of city folk” (“gheel en bruyn, als van de son verbrandt, en leelijck van huydt wesende, den stee-luyden niet ghelijckende”). In “Life of Dirck Barendszoon,” Van Mander praises the “tanned faces of several old sailors” in Barendszoon’s Civic Militia Company of Saint Sebastian, on which see Miedema, ed., Van Mander, Lives, 4:200.

⁶⁵³ Van Mander equates cleaving close to the appearance of nature, in line 2, with pleasing the eye of the ordinary viewer, in line 3, and presumes that mimetic truth will elicit a positive response from the “common eye” (“de ghemeen ooghe”). Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ddd4r, likewise invokes the “common eye” as a judicious judge of a picture’s worth. The conception of the common eye goes back to the anecdote, told by Pliny in Naturalis historia XXXV.xxxvi.84, and codified by Alberti in De pictura, that Apelles was wont to display his paintings in a public gallery to solicit the opinions of common men. See Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 83–84: “… one also needs to receive all observers from everywhere during the execution of the work itself and [to] listen to them. This way, in fact, the painter’s work will be pleasing to a great number of people. Therefore, one will not refuse [the] criticism and judgment of a great number of people, when it is still possible to meet with suggestions. They say that Apelles used to hide behind the picture both in order that the observers spoke more liberally and that he personally listened to them while they showed in a more sincere way faults of his work. Therefore, I wish that our painters both listen more often freely and ask all people what they think, since this is an aid not only for definite objects but also to catch favor with respect to the painter.” Van Mander incorporates this anecdote into “Life of Apelles,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 78v, stating that Apelles “held the judgment of many a poor, common man in no contempt,” and further, that “he frequently placed the judgment of common men above his own.”

⁶⁵⁴ Throughout Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, Van Mander returns frequently to the topic of “flesh-colored highlights”: see, for example, “Life of Jacques de Backer, excellent Painter of Antwerp,” fol. 232r, on pictures such as Venus, Juno, and Pallas, in which De Backer secures his reputation as one of the best colorists in Antwerp through his “fleshy manner of painting” (“vleeschachtighe manier van schilderen”), and by “heightening not only in white but with flesh tints” (“soo niet met enckel wit, maer met carnatie verhoogende”); “Life of Hendrick Goltzius,” fol. 286r, on Goltzius’s Allegory of the Church as Bride of Christ and its “flesh-colored highlights” (“carnatiachtighe hooghselen”) in high relief; and “Life of Francesco Badens,” fol. 298v, on the “luminosity of [Badens’s] flesh tints” and his “flesh-colored shading” (“de gloeyentheyt in lijf-verwe en vleeschachtighe diepselen”) which counter the tendency of many Netherlandish painters to paint flesh as if it were “a stony gray, or pale, fish-like, chilly in color” (“van een steenachtige graeuwicheyt, oft bleecke Vischachtighe, coudtachtighe verwe”).

⁶⁵⁵ Although I have translated in’t leven as “in living persons,” a more literal translation would be “in the life.” By white, Van Mander probably means lead white, which is formed from lead, in the form of an acetate or a carbonate, although he may also be referring to ceruse, a pigment made from lead or tin with an admixture of chalk; see Harley, Artists’ Pigments, 165–166 (on ceruse), 166–172 (on lead white), and R.J. Gettens, H. Kühn, and W.T. Chase, “Lead White,” in Roy, ed., Artists’ Pigments, 2:67–69. Also see De Mayerne’s remarks on the common colors lead white and ceruse (which consists of half chalk), in Berger, ed., Quellen für Maltechnik, 118–119.

⁶⁵⁶ Stanza 33 largely paraphrases Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc4v; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 71. Rivius and Alberti are surely the “several writers” to whom Van Mander refers in line 4. On ultramarine, see Harley, Artists’ Pigments, 43–46 (natural), 58–59 (artificial); and J. Plesters, “Ultramarine Blue, Natural and Artificial,” in Roy, ed., Artists’ Pigments, 2:37–44.

⁶⁵⁷ Van Mander comments on Goltzius’s high regard for Titian’s “advancing lights and receding, blended darks,” in “Life of Hendrick Goltzius,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 285v, on which see note 42 supra. Van Mander’s description precisely matches no surviving picture by Titian: the Nativity with Adoration of the Shepherds in the Pitti, identified as the picture in question by Helen Noë, in Carel van Mander en Italië, 99–100, includes no shepherd with a spotlit brow; Miedema, in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:603, adverts to the second king in Titian’s Adoration of the Magi in the Prado, who is no shepherd but does have a spotlit brow. Van Mander’s information came from Goltzius, who perhaps misremembered a picture by Titian or misattributed to him a picture by someone else.

⁶⁵⁸ See, for example, the canon of Italian masters—Raphael, Correggio, Titian, Veronese, et al.—cited by Goltzius for their wel verwen, in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 285v. The larger context for this canon is Van Mander’s conviction that the Venetians are the supreme colorists; see “Life of Jacopo Bassano,” in ibid., fol. 180r: “Just as the art of painting had finally chosen Venice as her well-pleasing home.” Also see “Life of Jacopo Palma,” fol. 187r: “So may no city proclaim itself above Venice for having had for so long a time so many fine, eminent colorists and well-coloring painters.”

⁶⁵⁹ Van Mander deplores lighting and shading that are too even and unmodulated, preferring the sorts of tonal variation endorsed in Grondt, chapter 7, stanzas 30–45, and chapter 8, stanzas 10–12, amongst others.

⁶⁶⁰ On the recent resurgence of coloreringhe in the Netherlands, see the exordium to “Life of Francesco Badens,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book III, fol. 298v: “We have lately seen an improvement and change in the better appearance of coloring, flesh tints, and shading in our Netherlands, which have increasingly abandoned the [former] stony grayness, the pale, piscine, chilly colors, in that glowing flesh tints and flesh-colored shading have now very much come into use.” One of several predecessors celebrated for their fine figures, which is to say, implicitly for their masterful flesh tints, is Frans Floris, whom Van Mander cites to contest Vasari’s deprecating remarks about northern figure painters; see “Life of Frans Floris, excellent Painter of Antwerp,” fol. 239r.

⁶⁶¹ Amongst the Italian masters, Van Mander particularly praises Federico Barocci for the graceful audacity of his paint handling; see “Life of Federico Barocci, outstanding Painter of Urbino,” in ibid., fol. 186v: “In his painting he has ever been very flowing, diffusing [oil colors] so subtly, that he works them even a ways across drapery hems into the ground upon which they trail, finding it intolerable that anything should be sharply cut off.” The phrase “aerdich verdrijvende” (diffusing subtly) evokes the swaying motion of Barocci’s brush that imbricates fields of color, causing them to flow seamlessly (“schilderen seer vloeyende”). On the term verdrijven and the brushwork it betokens, see chapter 1, stanza 29, note 18 supra.

⁶⁶² Just as in chapters 4 and 8, the reader learned that the motions of the human body are analogous to the ways in which a varied landscape mobilizes the viewer’s eyes, so the colors of the human face are now seen to be analogous to the full spectrum of a landscape’s many colors. The parallel Van Mander draws between facial complexion and multicolored landscape somewhat recalls Palma Giovane’s account of Titian’s late manner of coloring; printed posthumously in the foreword to Marco Boschini’s Ricche minere della pittura Veneziana (Venice: Francesco Nicolini 1674), fols. B4v–b5r, Palma’s text describes how Titian crafts the illusion of living flesh by building layers of colors upon a particolored ground. Flesh color thus incorporates a full assortment of hues. For a translation, see U. Birkmaier, A. Wallert, and A. Rothe, “Technical Examinations of Titian’s Venus and Adonis: A Note on Early Italian Oil Painting Technique,” in Wallert, Hermens, and Peek, eds., Historical Painting Techniques, 117–126, esp. 120: “He used to sketch his pictures with a great mass of colours, which served as a base for the compositions he had to construct …. When he wanted to apply his brush again … he would treat his picture like a good surgeon would his patient, reducing if necessary some swelling or excess of flesh …. Thus he gradually covered these quintessential forms with living flesh, bringing them by many stages to a state in which they lacked only the breath of life.” De Mayerne, by contrast, limits the flesh tints to combinations of lead white, yellow, ocher, and brown-red, and even allows ivory-black, presumably for the deepest shadows; see Berger, ed., Quellen für Maltechnik, 254–255. In recipe books on color, flesh tints often require the most complex mixtures: in the Schedula of Theophilus Presbyter, for example, the chapter on the flesh-tint olchus states that it is made from vermilion, lead white, and green earth, while mensch incorporates a bluish hue; see Lehmann, “Fleshing Out the Body,” 89–90. On the wide variety of pigments mixed and layered to produce different shades of flesh tints in miniatures, see N. Turner, “The Manuscript Painting Technique of Jean Bourdichon,” in T. Kren and M. Evans, eds., A Masterpiece Reconstructed: The House of Louis XII (Los Angeles: 2005), 63–80; A.S. Lehmann, “Jan van Eyck und die Entdeckung der Leibfarbe,” in Bode and Fend, eds., Weder Haut noch Fleisch, 21–40, esp. notes 28, 31, and 51; and eadem, “Fleshing Out the Body”, 93. On the equally wide variety of pigments used to portray flesh in the medium of oil painting, see E. van de Wetering, “Reflections on the Relation between Technique and Style: The Use of the Palette by the Seventeenth-Century Painter,” in Wallert, Hermens, and Peek, eds., Historical Painting Techniques, 196–201.

⁶⁶³ The phrase “moet … zijn al in een verdreven,” which I have adjusted from passive to active for the sake of sense, more literally translates “must be driven / pressed / blended into one.” Van Mander envisages forceful handling that yet produces an effect of sweetness.

⁶⁶⁴ The admonition not to paint patchily paraphrases Vasari, Vite, 1:179; and Vasari on Technique, ed. Baldwin Brown, trans. Maclehose, 218. Also see Dolce’s remarks on unified diffusion of colors in note 38 supra; and, on the unione mode of coloring, chapter 11, stanza 12, note 11 supra.

⁶⁶⁵ In the closing lines of stanza 37, Van Mander speaks modally in the voice of an experienced, well-traveled painter, as Miedema aptly observes in Karel van Mander, Grondt, 2:605. Whereas publications such as his 1602 Dutch translation of Dirk Philips’s rigorist tractate (1602) on congregational discipline indicate that he espoused the orthodox views of the Mennonite sect known as Oude Vlamingen (Old Flemings), here he compares bad coloring to sectarian obstinacy and counsels the aspiring colorist to jettison false doctrines, indeed to “give free rein to infidelity [against such doctrines].” Literally translated, “overspeelt hier vry” signifies “freely commit adultery.” For a devout Mennonite such as Van Mander, it was inquisitorial Catholics, the Walloon Malcontents, and hard-line Calvinists who would have been viewed as obstinate sectarians. David A. Shank has shown, in “Karel van Mander’s Mennonite Roots in Flanders,” in Mennonite Quarterly Review 79 (2005): 231–249, that Van Mander, who came from a prosperous noble, Catholic family, probably converted to Mennonitism soon after his return from Italy in 1577. His assertion, in the Preface to Book IV, that in writing the Schilder-Boeck he has deliberately chosen “not to assemble a Heroes-Book (Helden-Boeck) of war, or of gun-powder’s exploding cruelties, but rather to describe brush-strokes and painted panels,” can be seen to express the avowed pacifism of a full-fledged member of the Mennonite gemeente (community); see “Voor-reden op t’Leven der Nederlandtsche en Hooghduytsche vermaerde schilders” (Preface to the Lives of the Netherlandish and High German Painters), fol. 198r. On Van Mander’s pacifism as it relates to other strictly held tenets of the Old Flemish congregation, see Shank, “Van Mander’s Mennonite Roots,” 233–241. Other coded references to Mennonitism punctuate the Schilder-Boeck, on which see ibid., 245 n. 39: for instance, there is Van Mander’s predilection for nuptial imagery. To cite one salient example, he reads Hendrick Goltzius’s Heaven or Heavenly Joy, painted for Jan Mathijssen Ban (and now lost), as a nuptial allegory of the Church of God as the bride of Christ, in the guise of St. Catherine. On this painting, see “Life of Hendrick Goltzius,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 286r–v. Menno Simons taught, on the basis of Ephesians 5:25, that the brethren are the Church of God or gemeente Christi, the “holy and blameless bride of Christ.” Shank argues plausibly that Van Mander, throughout his writings, speaks in dual modes of address. We might apply this insight as follows: at the end of stanza 37, his curious use of a facetious sectarian metaphor, along with his witty tone, accords with the Mennonite belief that it is permissible to accommodate one’s voice to the expectations and usage of nonbelievers; but in throwing his support behind Bishop Hans Busschaert and defending Dirck Phillips’s call for strict discipline and excommunication of apostates, he speaks in the voice of a Mennonite brother addressing his fellow brethren. This modal binary arises from the Mennonite doctrine of the duality of church and world; see Shank, “Van Mander’s Mennonite Roots,” 239.

⁶⁶⁶ Van Mander affirms that practical experience, and trial and error, are the sure bases of understanding (verstande).

⁶⁶⁷ Dolce issues a similar prohibition against using black pigment to portray human flesh; see Roskill, ed. and trans., Dolce’s Aretino, 154–155. On lampblack, the blackest version of which comes from charred ivory, see Berger, ed., Quellen für Maltechnik, 104–105, 274–275, and, on using ivory-black to shade lampblack, 110–111; and Harley, Artists’ Pigments, 159–161. Lampblack is one of a family of carbon-based pigments, on which, see J. Winter and E.W. Fitzhugh, “Pigments Based on Carbon,” in B.H. Berrie, ed., Artists’ Pigments, 4:1–37.

⁶⁶⁸ On the natural and burnt forms of umber-earth, see Berger, ed., Quellen für Maltechnik, 106–107, 120–121; on umber and its relation to brown ocher, see Harley, Artists’ Pigments, 148–149. Umbers are members of the iron-oxide family of pigments, on which, see K. Helwig, “Iron Oxide Pigments (Natural and Synthetic),” in Berrie, ed., Artists’ Pigments, 4:39–109.

⁶⁶⁹ On bitumen, also known as asphaltum, a dark brown pigment used for shading and glazing, see Berger, ed., Quellen für Maltechnik, 270–271; and Harley, Artists’ Pigments, 150–152.

⁶⁷⁰ On Cologne earth, a reddish brown, see Berger, ed., Quellen für Maltechnik, 106–107; and Harley, Artists’ Pigments, 149–150.

⁶⁷¹ On terre verte, a mineral pigment also known as bol vert, see Berger, ed., Quellen für Maltechnik, 142–143; Harley, Artists’ Pigments, 76–77; and C.A. Grissom, “Green Earth,” in Berrie, Feller, et al., eds., Artists’ Pigments, 1:141–146.

⁶⁷² On the dangers of lampblack, with specific reference to its deleterious effect on Raphael’s Transfiguration in San Pietro in Montorio, see Vasari, Vite, ed. Milanesi, 4:378.

⁶⁷³ On massicot, a lead-based yellow, sometimes called lead-tin yellow, see Harley, Artists’ Pigments, 95–98; and H. Kühn, “Lead-Tin Yellow,” in Roy, ed., Artists’ Pigments, 2:83–93. De Mayerne, rather than using it to brighten flesh tints, recommends massicot as the base color for the bright green of sunlit trees; see Berger, ed., Quellen für Maltechnik, 118–119.

⁶⁷⁴ On yellow ocher and its use as a bright underlayer, see Berger, ed., Quellen für Maltechnik, 104–105, 336–337; on the many types of yellow iron oxide known as ochers, which can vary from dull yellow to red, see Harley, Artists’ Pigments, 89–91.

⁶⁷⁵ On lampblack and its liability to degrade, see stanzas 39 and 40 supra.

⁶⁷⁶ On minium, an orange-red pigment also known as red lead, see Harley, Artists’ Pigments, 123–125; and E. West Fitzhugh, “Red Lead and Minium,” in Berrie, Feller, et al., eds., Artists’ Pigments, 1:109–118.

⁶⁷⁷ On Spanish green, a copper acetate also known as verdigris, see ibid., 80–83; Van Eikema Hommes, Changing Pictures, 78–80; and H. Kühn, “Verdigris and Copper Resinate,” in Roy, ed., Artists’ Pigments, 2:131–136.

⁶⁷⁸ On yellow sulphide of arsenic, known as orpiment, see Harley, Artists’ Pigment, 93–94; and E. West Fitzhugh, “Orpiment and Realgar,” in West Fitzhugh, ed., Artists’ Pigments, 3:47–51. In the “Life of Hendrick Goltzius,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 282r, Van Mander mentions that during Goltzius’s childhood, his father Jan had once unwittingly let him put auripigmentum (orpiment) in his mouth

⁶⁷⁹ Van Mander refers here to such treasurable colors as ultramarine and azurite, on which see Berger, ed., Quellen für Maltechnik, 110–111, 226–227, 250–253; Harley, Artists’ Pigments, 43–49; and Billinge, Campbell, Dunkerton, et al., “Methods and Materials,” 34–37.

⁶⁸⁰ On smalt, made from cobalt mixed with silica, see Berger, ed., Quellen für Maltechnik, 110–111, 270–271, 332–333; Harley, Artists’ Pigments, 53–56; Billinge, Campbell, Dunkerton, et al., “Methods and Materials,” 36; and B. Mühlethaler and J. Thissen “Smalt,” in Roy, ed., Artists’ Pigments, 2:113–115.

⁶⁸¹ Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonicae linguae, 237, defines cladtpapier both as charta emporetica (packing-paper) and papyrus bibula (blotting-paper).

⁶⁸² On these various techniques of ensuring that smalt mixes properly with oil, becoming suffused by it, see Van Eikema Hommes, Changing Pictures, 26–27. On Peter Paul Rubens’s method of mixing smalt with varnish and applying it thinly to preserve its brightness and stabilize its oil-saturation, see Berger, ed., Quellen für Maltechnik, 332–333.

Chapter 13: “On the origin, nature, force, and effect of Colors”

⁶⁸³ Chapter 13 opens and closes with brief accounts of the ontologies of color, at the creation of the world and at its end, when colors, ceasing to be phenomenal, will achieve their final perfection in the celestial Jerusalem. The middle stanzas concern the affective and cognitive functions of colors as well as their seductive properties and the need for an appropriate moral response to colors’ effects on the senses, mind, and heart.

⁶⁸⁴ Like much of chapter 13, the opening couplet originates from Hyppolyte Cocheris Sicille’s popular book on heraldic blasons, devices, and impresae; see Le blason des couleurs en armes, livrées et devises. Livre tres-utille et subtil pour sçavoir et congnoistre d’une et chacune couleur la vertu et propriété. Et la manière de blasonner, et faire livres, devises, et leur blason (The Blasons of Colors and Arms, Liveries and Devises. A very Useful and Subtle Book for Knowing and Recognizing the Virtue and Property of Each and Every Color. And the Manner of Blazoning, and Fashioning Liveries, Devices, and Their Coats of Arms.) (Paris: Anthoine Hoüic, 1582), fol. 21r. On Sicille, see C. Göttler, “ ‘Sicille’: Les metaulx en Grec, in Le blason des couleurs en armes, livres & devises, 1540?,” in L. Markey, ed., Renaissance Invention: Stradanus’s Nova Reperta, exh. cat., Newberry Library (Evanston: 2020), 229.

⁶⁸⁵ The conception of God as a divine painter and / or sculptor derives from the metaphor of Deus Artifex (God the Artificer) in Lactantius, De opificio Dei, vel de formatione hominis (On the Workmanship of God, or the Formation of Man) II, VIII, IX, X, for which, see P.E Herbert, ed., Selections from the Latin Fathers (Boston, New York, et al.: 1924), 43, 48, 49, 50; and in Ambrose, Hexaemeron III, for which, see ibid., 52. On the significance of the trope for the visual arts, see E. Østrom, “Deus artifex and Homo creator: Art between the Human and the Divine,” in S.R. Havsteen, N.H. Petersen, H.W. Schwab, and Østrom, eds., Medieval Rituals, the Arts, and the Concept of Creation, Ritus et Artes 2 (Turnhout: 2007), 15–48. God is characterized as Deus Artifex in Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. mmm1v; and Vasari, Vite, ed. Milanesi, 1:215–216.

⁶⁸⁶ Van Mander paraphrases Genesis 1:2, in [Biestkens] Bibel, fol. 1r [O.T.], as well as Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.7, in Metamorphoses, trans. Miller, 1:3: “Before the sea was, and the lands, and the sky that hangs over all, the face of Nature showed alike in her whole round, which state have men called chaos: a rough, unordered mass of things, nothing at all save lifeless bulk and warring seeds of ill-matched elements heaped in one.” In Wtlegghingh, fol. 1r, Van Mander gives Demogorgon as an alternative name for Chaos, also citing Hesiod, Euripides, and other wise pagan poets: “Therein [the poets] devise to say either that the all-powerful Creator had somewhere a passel of stuff with which to construct the world, or, that same stuff being merely unformed, disposed it in its proper place, making the inapt apt. For they opine that there was but one form in the whole of nature, which was a rough, formless heap, everything lying altogether conjoined, awaiting to be arranged in a better order. This was Chaos, which some call Demogorgon, father of all things, older than the gods.” Van Mander borrowed the term Demogorgon from Boccaccio, Genealogia deorum gentilium, “Prohemium” and I.vi; see Genealogie deorum gentilium libri, ed. V. Romano, 2 vols. (Bari: 1951), 17, 19, 33. On Van Mander’s portrayal of Chaos as a Titanesque old man exhaling a cloud of formless vapor, and his exposition of this figure as an embodiment of the ancient secrets and mysteries he proposes to unfold in the Wtlegghingh (fol. * 4v), see C. Göttler, “Imagination in the Chamber of Sleep: Karel van Mander on Somnus and Morpheus,” in C. Lüthy, C. Swan, P. Bakker, and C. Zittel, eds., Image, Imagination, and Cognition: Medieval and Early Modern Theory and Practice, Intersections 55 (Leiden and Boston: 2018), 147–176, esp. 170–172. On the iconography of Van Mander’s title-page, engraved by Jacob Matham, see A. Hamilton and J. Becker, “From Mythology to Merchandise: An Interpretation of the Engraved Title of Van Mander’s Wtleggingh,” Quaerendo 14 (1984): 18–42. Van Mander plays wittily upon notions of divine artifice and manufacture, on which see M. Thimann, “Weltschöpfung—Werkschöpfung: Zur Metaphorik von Chaos und Kosmos im 16. Jahrhundt am Beispiel des Archäologen Jean Jacques Boissard,” in G. Guthmüller, B. Hamm, and A. Tönnesmann, Künstler und Literat: Schrift- und Buchkultur in der europäischen Renaissance (Wiesbaden: 2006), 253–295.

⁶⁸⁷ Van Mander conceives of color as an inherent quality that lodges in objects even when darkness makes their colored surfaces indiscernible to the human eye. The same principle underlies chapter 8, stanzas 1–6 supra, which recount how “fine things in every place on the face of the Earth are unveiled once again,” along with their proper colors, at daybreak when the sun rises. On the Aristotelian-Thomist notion that color is a complete quality of the natural existence of a colored body, see C.A. Decaen, “The Viability of Aristotelian-Thomistic Color Realism,” The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 65.2 (2001): 179–222.

⁶⁸⁸ As Miedema observes in Van Mander, Grondt, 2:609, although the ascription of color to elemental composition is Aristotelian (De coloribus 791a), the version of this theory in stanza 4 paraphrases Sicille, Le blason, fol. 21r, by way of Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. bb1v; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 31–32. In saying that colors are elemental by origin, and then adding that they result from the fall of light, namely, the kind and degree of sunlight, Van Mander changes tack, referring to colors not as essential qualities but as phenomena contingent on visual perception. Van Mander may also have consulted the discussion of elemental color in Raffaello Borghini, Il riposo in cui della pittura, e della scultura si favella (Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1584), 229.

⁶⁸⁹ Van Mander may be implying that color is an essential quality that also carries accidental properties, as in the case of a pale complexion that looks rosy at dawn or dusk.

⁶⁹⁰ To insist on the process of substantiation, Van Mander utilizes anaphora; line two literally translates; “Of any body from within which it is embodied.” The definition of color as materialized clarity comes from Sicille, Le blazon, fol. 21r–v. He argues that the absence of color in darkness pertains not to the color itself but to the optics of the eye, since acuity of vision depends upon clarity of illumination (“il ne tient pas à la couleur: mais à la veuë qui n’est pas assez suffisante et aguë”).

⁶⁹¹ On the virtue of colors, see Sicille, Le blazon, fol. 22r.

⁶⁹² As light makes the beauty of colors apparent, so the colors proper to things are quintessential to securing a proper likeness. This notion comes from Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. bb1v; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 32.

⁶⁹³ See Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXV.xii.30 (Natural History, trans. Rackham, 9: 282–283) for the distinction between natural and artificial colors.

⁶⁹⁴ The reference to the “eye’s hungry gaze” recalls chapter 5, stanza 33 supra, where Van Mander compares the eyes, “hungry for more to see,” to pampered guests “sampling all kinds of dishes,” and insists that the history painter must compile many “varieties of things” if his ordonnance is to prove beguiling to the beholder. Also see chapter 5, stanza 34, which develops the trope of the hungry eye by drawing an analogy between a complex, multilayered ordinantie and a market-stall.

⁶⁹⁵ On the power of colors to differentiate one thing from another, including metals, or, in another reading, the likeness of one thing from the likeness of another, see Sicille, Le blason, fol. 22v. De Mayerne gives various recipes and techniques for producing the pictorial illusion of lustrous gold; see Berger, ed., Quellen für Maltechnik, 284–285, 336–337, 340–341. In “Life of Gillis Coignet, Painter of Antwerp,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 262r, Van Mander confirms that the ability to paint a convincing likeness of gold was considered a key measure of pictorial excellence; reacting against Coignet’s ingeniously painted night scenes, in which he frequently applied raised gold to represent candle-, torch-, and lamplight, some of his viewers expressed their disapproval, saying that “painters ought to portray everything with colors.” Van Mander concludes in a typically eirenic vein, stating that other viewers, well satisfied with such pictures, countered that “whatsoever improves concinnity (welstandt, i.e., good appearance overall) and best deceives the eye of the beholder is good” (“al goet wat den welstandt verbetert, en d’ooghe des aensienders best can bedrieghen”).

⁶⁹⁶ Anaphora is used to stress the powerful agency of colors, their capacity to produce this vast range of antithetical effects.

⁶⁹⁷ On the power of colored things, imagined or actually seen, to induce a change in the appearance of an unborn child, see Sicille, Le blason, fol. 22r, with specific reference to a child born black to a woman who while pregnant had envisaged the head of a black person. The ultimate source was Pliny, Naturalis historia VII.xii.52; see Natural History, ed. Rackham, 2:540–541: “Also a thought suddenly flitting across the mind of either parent is supposed to produce likeness or to cause a combination of features, and the reason why there are more differences in man than in all the other animals is that his swiftness of thought and quickness of mind and variety of mental character impress a great diversity of patterns, whereas the minds of the other animals are sluggish, and are alike for all and sundry, each in their own kind.”

⁶⁹⁸ Van Mander documents a striking instance of maternal impression in “Life of Gillis Coignet,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 262r: Coignet was nicknamed “Gillis with the spot” because of a birthmark on his cheek, “hairy as a mouse because his mother had been frightened by one” during pregnancy.

⁶⁹⁹ On birthmarks induced by the sight of blood, see Sicille, Le blason, fol. 22r–v. Sicille cites Genesis 30:37–43, the story of Jacob and the flocks to prove the power of spotted plants and bark to imprint their many colors by force of sight; Van Mander paraphrases this story in stanza 12 infra.

⁷⁰⁰ As Miedema notes, in Van Mander, Grondt, 2:611, the phrase “in the East” is interpolated from Genesis 29:1; see [Biestkens] Bibel, fol. 11r [O.T.].

⁷⁰¹ See [Biestkens] Bibel, fol. 12r [O.T.].

⁷⁰² On the multifarious colors adorning various birds and beasts, see Sicille, Le blason, fol. 29v–30r.

⁷⁰³ On the phoenix, gold at the neck, purple in body, and azure at the tail, see Pliny, Naturalis historia X.ii.3–4 (Natural History, ed. Rackham, 3:292–295).

⁷⁰⁴ On the peacock’s plumage which gleams like jewels when struck by sunlight, see Pliny, Naturalis historia X.xxii.43–44 (Natural History, ed. Rackham, 3:316–319); and Sicille, Le blason, fol. 30r.

⁷⁰⁵ On the parrot, “stained with diverse colors,” see ibid., fol. 29v.

⁷⁰⁶ On the dove’s multicolored throat feathers, see ibid., fols. 29v–30r, the ultimate source of which is Isidorus, Etymologiae XII.vii.61, as Miedema notes in Van Mander, Grondt, 2:611. However, the reference to “shining golden throats” appears to have come from firsthand observation.

⁷⁰⁷ See the parable of the lilies in the field, Matthew 6:28–29, in [Biestkens] Bibel, fol. 4r [N.T.].

⁷⁰⁸ The sudden shift of theme from pleasurable Graces to “fell wars” recalls chapter 6, stanzas 19–20 supra, where Van Mander associates an adage about the connection between pain and desire, the hand and the eye, with the story Paris and his illicit desire for Helen, sparked by his roving eye and fed by his imploring gaze. Also see chapter 5, stanza 57–59, where the judgment of Paris is seen to license visual pleasure but also to epitomize trickery and deception.

⁷⁰⁹ On the continence of Scipio Africanus, who returned a captive Carthaginian woman to Allucius, her husband-to-be, see Livy, Ab urbe condita XXVI.50. Valerius Maximus, in Facta et dicta IV.iii.1, converted the story into an epitome of abstinent continence; see Valerii Maximi factorum et dictorum memorabiium libri novem, ed. C. Kempf (Leipzig: 1888), 177–178. On the continence of Alexander who treated the captive mother, wife, and two unmarried daughters of King Darius like “sacred and inviolable virgins,” see Plutarch, “Life of Alexander” XXI–XXII (Plutarch’s Lives, trans. B. Perrin, 11 vols. [Cambridge, MA: 1914–1926], 7:282–287). Scipio and Alexander also feature prominently in Mexía, Silva de varia lección II.xxix; see idem, De verscheyden lessen, 304–307. In “Life of Apelles,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 79r, Van Mander lauds Alexander for having gifted his beloved mistress Campaspe to the lovesick Apelles: “… thus did he confer [on Apelles] his most beloved possession, thereby showing that his heart was noble and strong, that he had command over himself and had mastered his desires; for which, being lord over himself, he is as worthy to be honored, as for his conquest of the Persians, Medes, and other peoples, cities, and lands. This was an uncommon courtesy, to have given away that which he esteemed more than high estate or riches, thus subduing his very nature and love [itself].” Van Mander diverges from his source text (Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXV.xxxvi.86–97) by adding that Alexander’s “self-conquest,” in that it surpasses every martial virtue, exceeds his victories over the Persians, Medes, and others. The distinction between the two kinds of conquest—moral and martial—correlates to the larger distinction between schilder-boeck and helden-boeck, on which, see chapter 12, stanza 37, note 59 supra.

⁷¹⁰ Van Mander refers to Democritus who blinded himself to safeguard his thoughts from visual distractions of every kind; see Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae X.xviii (Attic Nights, trans. J.C. Rolfe [Cambridge, MA: 1927], 258–261).

⁷¹¹ The term boden can also be translated “messengers,” which would emphasize that written words have a kind of embodied agency. As is patently clear from texts such as Lomazzo, Trattato dell’arte, 191–192 (A Tracte Containing the Artes of Curious Paintinge, trans. Haydocke, 99), and De Mayerne, Pictoria, sculptoria, fol. 8r, 10v–11r (Berger, ed., Quellen für Maltechnik, 108–111, 118–119), black and white were considered colors. Van Mander, in addressing the dedicatory preface of Schilder-Boeck, Book II, to Jacques Razet, a notary and secretary of the Amsterdam Convoy (naval fleet and warships), celebrates his dedicatee’s equal love of Pictura (Painting, Picturing) and Schrijf-const (Calligraphy, Art of Writing), which are designated sister-arts (“Pictura, en haer suster de Schrijf-const”). Stanza 18 complements chapter 2, stanza 2 supra, in which writing, construed as a branch of Grammatica, is said to enable distant parties to communicate and differing opinions to be reconciled. On the appreciation of calligraphy as teyckencost, see W.S. Melion, “Memory and the Kinship of Writing and Picturing in the Early Seventeenth-Century Netherlands,” Word & Image 8 (1992): 48–70.

⁷¹² This anecdote about the foreignness of European writing and the inability of Native Americans to understand how it functions as a kind of silent speech derives from Jerónimo Benzoni, Historia del mondo nuovo (Venice: Francesco Rampazetto, 1565), fols. 108v–109r; see Benzonius, De historie, van de nieuwe weerelt, trans. Van Mander, 245.

⁷¹³ Benzoni, Historia del mondo nuovo, fols. 121v–122r, was the source of the anecdote relayed by Van Mander in stanzas 20 and 21; see Benzonius, De historie, van de nieuwe weerelt, trans. Van Mander, 276. Atabaliba is Benzoni’s fractured version of Atahualpa.

⁷¹⁴ On the quipos camâyos and their dual function as “memorialen ofte registeren” (memorials or registers), see Josephus de Acosta, Historie naturael ende morael van de Westersche Indien, trans. Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, (Enkhuizen: Jacob Lenaertsz. Meyn, 1598), fols. 294v–295r.

⁷¹⁵ Van Mander may have learned about the affective significance of white and black in Java from someone connected with the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie), which founded a trading post in Banten, West Java, in 1603.

⁷¹⁶ See chapter 2, stanza 2 supra.

⁷¹⁷ Van Mander presumably refers to the colors black (ink) and white (paper), although there were other shade of paper and ink, of course; see stanza 18, note 29 supra.

⁷¹⁸ Van Mander reports in “On Euphranor, Painter, Sculptor, Bronze Founder, and Engraver,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 74r, that Euphranor wrote about Schilder-const, specifically, on measure and proportion, and on mixing and tempering of colors (“mate en proportie, en van de temperinghe der verwen”). Unlike his source texts—Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXV.xl, 128–129; Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ccc4v; and Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 46—Van Mander specifies that the book on colors focused on temperinghe. Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonicae linguae, 554, defines temperen as temperare (mix, mingle in due proportion), moderare (moderate, temperate, regulate), and convenienter miscere (mix fitly, accordantly).

⁷¹⁹ See Revelation 21:18–21, in [Biestkens] Bibel, fol. 107v [N.T.], although Van Mander’s selective sequence diverges from the biblical series of twelve precious stones: jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonix, sardius (carnelian), chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysopase, hyacinth (jacinth, zircon), and amethyst.

Chapter 14: “On the Interpretation of Colors, and what they can signify”

⁷²⁰ Miedema convincingly argues, on the basis of discrepancies of style and iconography with the rest of the Schilder-Boeck, that this was the first chapter of the Grondt to be written.

⁷²¹ On the incomparable clarity of gold, ranked first amongst metals, see Sicille, Le blason, fol. 3r–v. Miedema, in Van Mander, Grondt, 2:615, identifies the version of Sicille’s treatise consulted by Van Mander as one that also included an anonymous Aristotelian treatise on colors. Chapter 14 follows Sicille’s sequence of colors, which starts with gold and silver, before proceeding from red to purple; the Aristotelian sequence begins with white and red and concludes with blue and mixed colors. Van Mander diverges from both Sicille and the Pseudo-Aristotle in that rather than focusing on gold qua gold and its intrinsic meaning, he instead lays stress on the issue of representation, and doubly so, first by likening gold to the appearance of radiant light, and then by likening yellow to the appearance of gold. He thus emphasizes that the meanings he is about to unfold attach to or, better, underscore the representational function of colors. His insistence, in stanzas 17–21, that paintings (as opposed to frames) not be dressed with actual gold, and the close attention he pays, from stanza 15 on, to types of pigment, such as the five species of yellow, and their representational properties, demonstrate the degree to which Van Mander like Vasari before him (though without Vasari’s academic commitments) espoused a view of the arts based in Aristotelian epistemology—namely, in the conviction that schilderconst is a rational activity that even while dealing mainly with particulars yet partakes of an understanding of universals. Williams argues in Art, Theory, and Culture in Sixteenth-Century Italy, 35, that the Aristotelian conception of art fully informs Vasari’s doctrine of disegno, as worked out in the theoretical statements incorporated into the technical preface of the Vite and the proem to part III on the third age of art, both of which first appeared in the second edition of 1568. According to Aristotle, art originates in and issues from the mind’s deliberative faculty, which is attuned to variable, i.e., terrestrial things. This faculty consists of two parts: prudence (phronesis) is active in that it concerns the action of doing, whereas art (techne) is factitive in that it concerns the action of making. Doing and making are seen as somehow complementary to the activities that result from the mind’s speculative faculty, which is attuned not to variable things but to eternal verities: science (episteme) discovers necessary truths, intelligence (nous) apprehends first principles, and wisdom (sophia) approaches to the perfection of divine knowledge. Crucially, these faculties and their respective activities, since all are considered to be rational, are appreciated as essentially related. As Williams felicitously puts it, the speculative and the factitive are construed as “different aspects of an essentially similar mental function” (36), susceptible to analogical elaboration.

When Van Mander states, in stanza 6, that the “most beauteous beauty lies in what is invisibly beautiful, the gracious fountainhead of all beauty,” i.e., the Godhead, and then adds, “whereto the bright sun, not to be outshone, is likewise compared,” he enters into a chain of association eventually leading from the universal to the particular, from God and the sun to the uses of the color yellow, and conversely, from kinds and degrees of yellow to various intensities of sunlight, and thence to light as an index of divine presence. The ease with which Van Mander moves back and forth along this graduated scale testifies to his belief, anchored in Aristotle, especially the Nicomachean Ethics, that the faculties of mind are relational, and that the particularities of artistic practice are entirely compatible with the speculative discernment of universals. In this respect, my reading of the Grondt differs fundamentally from that of Jürgen Müller, whose alternative view, set forth with considerable eloquence and force in Concordia Pragensis, esp. 123–144, is that the poem embeds, which is to say, conceals at its heart, a neo-Platonic argument about the relation between matter and spirit, or, in the words of Marsilio Ficino’s Commentarium in convivium Platonis de amore (Commentary on the Symposium of Plato on Love), about the dichotomous relation between light in nature and the light of God, corporeal and spiritual vision, the vita activa and the vita contemplativa. For Müller, the Grondt is composed of two halves: focusing on technical matters bound up with teyckenconst, chapters 1–7 enact a kind of descensus (descent) into the flawed material world, whereas chapters 8–14, focusing on issues around schilderconst—notionally the art of painting, but more precisely, painting as an allegorical apparatus that instrumentalizes the recognition of God—enact a kind of ascensus (ascent) from the contingent realm of artistic production to the philosophical or even theological realm of pure speculation. An discussed supra (chapter 7, stanzas 45–46, note 55, and stanza 61, note 78), Müller interprets two key extended metaphors invoked in chapter 7—the philosophical parable of Plato’s Cave and its symbolic counterpart, the ball of twine with which Ariadne ensured Theseus’s safe passage through the labyrinth—as meta-allegories of the Grondt itself, in particular of the epistemological itinerary it tracks from descensus to ascensus: the Platonic journey from darkness into light, leading from the misapprehension of shadows to the recognition of the mimetic relation between objects and their images, and finally to the cognition of real things, like the journey out of the labyrinth, stands for the transition from a material and technical discourse on picturing (chapters 1–7) to a transcendental discourse on the ethical truths that schilderconst enshrines (chapters 8–14). As Müller puts it (139): “The way out of Plato’s Cave is analogous to the task of extricating oneself from the ‘Labyrinth of Painting.’ Ariadne’s thread exists in the recognition that painting—rightly understood—is a symbol (Sinnbild) not a likeness (Abbild).” My quite different sense of the Grondt is that far from fleeing the labyrinth of nature and art, Van Mander revels in their material and technical complexities, as witness his reference to Gotzius’s Venus, Bacchus, and Ceres of 1593, an ink-on-parchment penwerck (drawing rendered in the manner of an engraving), as a “Daedalian opus … full of the mysteries of Art” (“Dedalis stuck … vol Consten mistery”); see chapter 7, stanza 49 supra. Daedalus was the inventor of the labyrinth, of course, and in calling Goltzius’s astonishing command of reflexy–const Daedalian, Van Mander asks us to dwell in this artistic maze, at least for a time, and thereby to bear witness to the draftsman’s incomparably painterly teyckenconst. Rather than advocating that this mistery be allegorized, seen as a placeholder for higher mysteries of a different order and kind, he invites us to consider by what mysterious means Goltzius, to quote stanza 46, has depicted the “shadows of Figures projected by [fire]light.” The emphasis falls on “Reflections slip[ping] away in every direction,” on “figures together with the shadows” they project. It is as if the definition of “image” with which Socrates prefaces the parable of the cave in the Republic has become the true subject of Goltzius’s labyrinthine penwerck; see Plato’s Republic, trans. Shorey, 2:108–109: “By images I mean, first, shadows, and then reflections in water and on surfaces of dense, smooth, and bright texture, and everything of that kind.”

⁷²² On yellow as the color most like gold and sunlight, see Sicille, Le blason, fol. 26r. De Mayerne’s notes describe massicot, yellow ocher, and minium as the colors best suited for imitating gold; see Berger, ed., Quellen für Maltechnik, 265. On Jan van Eyck’s technique of painting wet-in-wet with various tones of black and yellow to render the reflective properties of gold brocade, see Gifford, “Jan van Eyck’s Annunciation: Developments and Alterations,” in H. Verougstraete and R. van Schoute, eds., Le dessin sous-jacent dans la peinture (Colloque X, 5–7 septembre 1993) (Louvain-la-Neuve: 1995), 85–93, esp. 87; eadem, “Van Eyck’s Washington Annunciation,” 108; and Monnas, Merchants, Princes, and Painters, 110, 113.

⁷²³ Van Mander’s imagery of the earth’s golden entrails derives from both Ovid, Metamorphoses I.137–140 and Ovidius, Metamorphoses dat is, die Herscheppinge oft veranderinghe, trans. Johannes Florianus (Amsterdam: Harmen Jansz. Muller, 1588), fol. B2r.

⁷²⁴ See 1 Timothy 6:10, in [Biestkens] Bibel, fol. 87v [N.T.].

⁷²⁵ On the insatiable longing for gold that permeates avaricious men, penetrating more deeply than the earth’s deepest recesses, and yet looming over them, higher than its highest heights, see Van Mander’s allegorical reading of the tale of Jupiter and Danaë, in “On Danaë, and Perseus,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 39r–v.

⁷²⁶ On Cadmus as the discoverer of gold, Miedema, in Van Mander, Grondt, 2:616, identifies Van Mander’s source as Carolus Stephanus (Robert Estienne), Dictionarium historicum, ac poeticum (Geneva: Jacobus Stoer, 1579), vide “Cadmus.”

⁷²⁸ More commonly known as Saulaces.

⁷²⁷ Van Mander, like most of his contemporaries, misreads Pliny’s reference to “Colchis Saulaces Aeetae suboles” (Saulaces the descendant of Aeetes), translating it “Salauces, and Ebusopes”; see Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXIII.xv.52 (Natural History, trans. Rackham, 9:42–43). On this myth of origin, also see Ottavio Antonio Bayardi, Prodromo delle antichità d’Ercolano alla maestà del re delle due Sicilie. Parte IV (Naples: Stampería Palatina, 1752), 1850.

⁷³¹ On these supposed co-authors of the Argonautica, see “On the Painter Cydias,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 74r; Cydias was renowned for his painting of the Argonauts. Miedema, in Van Mander, Grondt, identifies Stephanus, Dictionarium historicum, vide “Argonautae,” as Van Mander’s source.

⁷²⁹ Van Mander insinuates that the fable, little worthy of belief, should be read as an allegory of the search for gold. In “On Jason,” in Wtlegghingh, fol. 62r, he states that the voyage of the Argo signifies the alchemist’s struggle to find the philosopher’s stone that transforms base metals (“lichamen der stoffen,” i.e., material bodies) into gold. Medea, viewed through this lens, is the book of secrets (“pergamijnen Boeck,” i.e., parchment book) “wherein the true art of making gold was described” (“waer in de rechte Const om goudt maken in was beschreven”).

⁷³⁰ Miedema, in Van Mander, Grondt, 2:616, cites two sources for this remark about Hippocrates: Stephanus, Dictionarium historicum, vide “Aurum”; and / or M. Verrius Flaccus, Quae extant; et Sex. Pompei Festi de verborum significatione, libri XX. (Lyons: Petrus Santandreanus, 1593), vide “Aurum.” On safferanich (yellow-gold, orange-gold), see chapter 8, stanza 4, note 2 supra. Underlying Van Mander’s etymological allusion to Aurora is the supposed derivation of the Latin aurum from both aura (gleam, glow, bright light) and Aurora; see Göttler, “Yellow, Vermilion, and Gold,” 256.

⁷³² On the etymology of aurum from aura, and its source in Isodorus, see Sicille, Le blason, fol. 4r.

⁷³³ On Gregory’s association of gold with radiance, see ibid.

⁷³⁴ The locus classicus for the definition of God as radiant, essential beauty is Augustine, Confessiones IV.x and IV.xvi; Confessions, trans. and ed., C.J.-B. Hammond and W. Watts, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: 2014), 1:172–175: “Turn us, O God of Hosts, show us the light of thy countenance, and we shall be whole. For which way soever the soul of man turns itself, unless toward thee, it is even riveted into dolours: yea, though it settles itself upon beautiful objects without thee, and without itself: which beauties were no beauties at all unless they were from thee.” Also see ibid., 198–199: “… O my God (whose essence is most wonderfully simple and unchangeable): imagining whatsoever had being, to be comprehended under those ten Predicaments; as if thyself had been subject to thine own greatness or beauty; and that these two had an inheritance in thee, like accidents in their subject, or as in a body; whereas thy greatness and thy beauty is in thy essence.” In Schilder-Boeck, Book VI, Wtbeeldinge der figueren, fol. 133v, the sun is said to signify the “one, true God, also righteous truth.”

⁷³⁵ In turning suddenly from the godly significance of golden sunlight, to “golden-haired” Apollo, Van Mander compiles, in the sense of aggregates, another connotative analogical device for gold. These devices operate paratactically rather than hypotactically, since he declares in the Wtlegghingh, Preface, fol. * 4v, that “ ‘twould be “indecorous to interpret pagan fables in a spiritual or Christian sense” (“niet docht te behooren, te weten, dese Heydensche Fabulen te trecken op eenen gheestelijcken sin, en op Christum te duyden”). Sicille, Le blason, fol. 3v, licensed the paratactic parallels Van Mander draws between gold and the supraluminous light of the sun, and between the divine radiance of sanctity and both the luster of gold and the clarity of sunlight.

⁷³⁶ On golden accoutrements of state and their associations with royalty, see Sicille, Le blason, fol. 5v.

⁷³⁷ On Attalus, during whose reign gold embroidery was ostensibly invented, see Pliny, Naturalis historia VIII.lxxiv.196 (Natural History, trans. Rackham, 3:136–137); and Du Pinet, L’histoire du monde, 1:330. In Grondt, Preface, fol. * 4r, and “Life of Aristides, Painter of Thebes,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 71v, Van Mander invokes Attalus to underscore the fame of Aristides and, more generally, to attest the high status of the art of painting; with reference to Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXV.xxxvi.101, he recounts that Attalus offered six thousand sesterces to ransom the painter’s Bacchus from Lucius Mumnius, the conqueror of Achaia.

⁷³⁸ On Babylon as the place of origin for the weaving of multi-colored stuffs, which Van Mander amplifies to include cloth of gold, see Pliny, Naturalis historia VIII.lxxxiv.196 (Natural History, trans. Rackham, 3:126–137); and Du Pinet, L’histoire du monde, 1:331.

⁷⁴⁰ See Josue 7:21, in [Biestkens] Bibel, fol. 82v [O.T.].

⁷³⁹ On Nero’s extravagant love of cloth of gold, see Pliny, Naturalis historia VIII.lxxiv.197 (Natural History, trans. Rackham, 3:138–139); and Du Pinet, L’histoire du monde, 1:331.

⁷⁴¹ See 3 Kings 6:21–23, 28–30 [Vulgate], in [Biestkens] Bibel, fol. 129v [1 Kings 6:21–23, 28–30].

⁷⁴² Van Mander paraphrases Sicille, Le blason, fol. 5v, incorporating his reference to Psalm 44:10 [Vulgate], in [Biestkens] Bibel, fol. 207r [Psalm 45:10].

⁷⁴³ See Genesis 24:22, in [Biestkens] Bibel, fol. 8v [O.T.].

⁷⁴⁴ See Revelation 3:18, in [Biestkens] Bibel, fol. 102v [N.T.].

⁷⁴⁵ On the bough “golden in leaf and pliant stem” and its “golden-tressed fruitage,” see Virgil, Aeneid VI.136–139 (Aeneid: Books 1–6, trans. H.R. Fairclough, ed. G.P. Goold, 1:542–543). In Wtlegghingh, fol. 110r, Van Mander states that the golden bough, which allows Aeneas, guided by the Cumaean Sibyl, to visit both Hell and Elysium, stands for “true wisdom” (“rechte wijsheyt”), without which the “hellish miseries, soul-tormenting desires, and specious joys of the inconstant world” cannot be bypassed. The term gloseren (ponder over) calls to mind the writing of a philological gloss.

⁷⁴⁶ On the noble attributes of gold, Sicille, Le blason, fol. 26r.

⁷⁴⁷ On the meanings of gold when it combines with other heraldic colors, see ibid., fol. 26r–v. Van Mander’s paraphrase of Sicille extends into stanza 13.

⁷⁴⁸ As Miedema plausibly suggests, in Van Mander, Grondt, 2:619, by reference to Hadrianus Junius, Nomenclator, omnium rerum propria nomina variis linguis explicata indicans (Antwerp: Christopher Plantin, 1567), 181, the term levreye (livery), as used here by Van Mander, simply signifies a “richly or diversely colored garment.”

⁷⁴⁹ On these meanings of gold respectively adjacent to blue, gray, green, violet, and black, see Sicille, Le blason, fol. 26r–v.

⁷⁵⁰ On the golden topaz, see ibid., fol. 3v.

⁷⁵¹ On yellow’s proximity to white (and red), see ibid., fol. 26r.

⁷⁵² On the temple veil made from the colors yellow, scarlet, and rose-red, combined with twice-spun white silk (or linen), see Exodus 26:31 and 2 Chronicles [Paralipomenon] 3:14, in [Biestkens] Bibel, fol. 31r, 163r [O.T.].

⁷⁵³ On the four-color palette used by the ancient Greek and Roman painters—white, yellow, red, and black—see “On Melanthus, Painter,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book II, fol. 75v, which paraphrases Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXV.xxxii.50 (Natural History, trans. Rackham, 9:298–299).

⁷⁵⁴ On yellow ocher, see chapter 12, stanza 41, note 68 supra.

⁷⁵⁵ On massicot, see chapter 12, stanza 40, note 67 supra.

⁷⁵⁶ Another term for schiet-geel is “Dutch pink”; see T. Primeau, “The Materials and Technology of Hand-Colored Prints,” in S. Dackerman, ed., Painted Prints: The Revelation of Color in Northern Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts [exh. cat., Baltimore Museum of Art; Saint Louis Museum of Art] (University Park, PA: 2002), 49–78, esp. 59.

⁷⁵⁷ On orpiment, see chapter 12, stanza 42, note 72 supra. The two orpiments were orpiment proper (auripigmentum) and realgar, also known as rosgeel (rose yellow) and rubis d’orpiment. On these four colors, also see Göttler, “Yellow, Vermilion, and Gold,” 257–262, esp. 260–261 on the two kinds of orpiment.

⁷⁵⁸ On minium, see chapter 12, stanza 42, note 70. Here, Van Mander appears to describe orange lead or orange mineral (mine orange), which is closely related to minium and prepared from fine, pure red pigment and lead white. As West Fitzhugh explains, in “Red Lead and Minium,” in Berrie, Feller, et al., eds., Artists’ Pigments, 1:110, orange lead was held to have a finer texture and lighter color than minium.

⁷⁵⁹ This injunction against the use of actual gold in a painting derives from Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ddd1r, who greatly expands upon the prohibition in Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 72–73; with reference to the famous description of gold-bedizened Dido, in Virgil, Aeneid IV.138–139, Rivius avers that the painter who portrays her golden ornaments with oil colors, eschewing gold gilt, shows himself to be “more skilled [in practice] and elevated in understanding” (“würde er solches goldt mit farben zuwegen bringen, welches vil küntlicher und ein höchern verstandt anzeigt”). Perhaps thinking of Gillis Coignet’s predilection for gilded highlights (see chapter 13, note 13 supra), Van Mander tempers Rivius’s prescriptive tone, declining to forbid the use of gold and adding in the marginal gloss that “all’s well that ends well.”

⁷⁶⁰ Miedema, in Van Mander, Grondt, 2:620–621, makes the credible suggestion that Van Mander moderates his initial objections to gold, in recognition of recent technical developments in Antwerp, such as Gillis Coignet’s use of gold to depict firelight and Frans Francken II’s enhancement of reflective effects through the experimental application of glazes over locally applied gold grounds. De Mayerne records various techniques of laying glazes and varnishes over gold; see Berger, ed., Quellen für Maltechnik, 192–195, 224–225, 258–259.

⁷⁶¹ This line finishes the sequence of golden accoutrements adapted from Virgil.

⁷⁶² See Plutarch, Lives, trans. Perrin, 1:480–481.

⁷⁶⁵ Van Mander again uses bruyn (brown) for “dark.”

⁷⁶³ Van Mander’s terminology for “fall darkly” (“bruyn vallen”) translates literally as “fall brownly.” On the inverse effects of gold-leaf, which makes a light-painted surface look dark and a dark-painted surface light, see Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ddd1r, which greatly expands upon the prohibition in Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 72–73.

⁷⁶⁴ The term vlicken, here translated as “lighten,” more specifically signifies “flicker, glitter.” Gold-leaf, warns Van Mander, deadens the effect of daylight.

⁷⁶⁶ Whereas bendich signifies “pennon-like, ribbon-like,” Miedema proposes that t’jotsels (ribbons) likely transliterates the Italian term chiocciola (spiral, volute, whorl): hence my rendering of “t’jotsels bendich” as “fluttering ribbons.” In “Life of Maarten van Heemskerck, artful, esteemed Painter,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 245r, Van Mander uses t’Iotselen to describe the curving ornamental bands woven into the Virgin’s mantle and draped across her lap, which leads Miedema to surmise that the term also refers to strapwork-like curls.

⁷⁶⁷ Rivius, Der furnembsten … Künst, eygentlicher Bericht, fol. ddd1r, urges that gold be confined to the frame, where it best serves as a precious ornament, signaling a painting’s great worth; also see Alberti, De pictura, trans. Sinisgalli, 73.

⁷⁶⁸ See note 48 supra.

⁷⁶⁹ Van Mander’s account of silver derives from Sicille, Le blason, fol. 6r.

⁷⁷⁰ On silver as an honorific sanctioned by Moses, with specific reference to Exodus 36 and 38, see ibid.

⁷⁷¹ See Song of Songs 5:10, in [Biestkens] Bibel, fol. 239r [O.T.].

⁷⁷² See Mark 9:3, in [Biestkens] Bibel, fol. 6r [N.T.].

⁷⁷³ See Acts 1:10, in [Biestkens] Bibel, fol. 48v [N.T.].

⁷⁷⁴ The loci classici for the association of Truth with spotless purity, i.e., whiteness (“sine macula, candida”), are Revelation 14:5 and 19:8 in the Vulgate, but [Biestkens] Bibel, fols. 105r and 107r directly translate neither term.

⁷⁷⁵ On white as the color of blameless boys and innocent maidens, see Sicille, Le blason, fol. 35r–v.

⁷⁷⁶ Van Mander amalgamated the two lists of “vertus mondaines” (mundane virtues) respectively signified by the colors gold, silver, red, blue, green, purple, and black, in Sicille, Le blason, fols. 15v–16r.

⁷⁷⁷ On these rules for the heraldic use of gold, silver, and adjacent colors, see ibid., fol. 13v.

⁷⁷⁸ On the seven principal planets and their associated colors, see ibid., fol. 20v.

⁷⁷⁹ On the colors of the days of the week, see ibid., fol. 19v.

⁷⁸⁰ On the theological and cardinal virtues and their associated colors, see ibid., fol. 19r–v.

⁷⁸¹ By contrast, Sicille states that the prior six colors, when mixed together, produce a seventh that in armorial usage is called purple; see ibid., fol. 12v.

⁷⁸² On the colors of the seven ages of man, set forth in stanza 28, see ibid., fol. 16r.

⁷⁸³ On the colors of the four tempers, see ibid., fol. 16r–v.

⁷⁸⁴ On the colors of the four elements, see ibid., fol. 16v.

⁷⁸⁵ On the colors of the seasons, see ibid., fol. 20r.

⁷⁸⁶ Having fulfilled the task inaugurated in chapter 1, stanza 83, where he declared his intention “to put the natural feature [of schilderconst] on show,” Van Mander, master of the Grondt, now takes his leave, inviting the reader to embark upon the Lives, Books II–IV of the Schilder-Boeck. He jointly portrays himself as author in his study and master in his workshop, washing his “ink-stained hands.”

⁷⁸⁸ See Hans Blum, Quinque columnarum exacta description (Zürich: Christophorus Froschoverus, 1550), and, in Dutch, Vande vijf colomnen van architecture, te weten, Tuscana, Dorica, Jonica, Corinthia ende Composita (Antwerp: Hans Liefrinck, 1562).

⁷⁸⁹ See, for example, the handbooks, treatises, and print series listed in “Life of Hans Vredeman de Vries, Painter of Leeuwarden,” in Schilder-Boeck, Book IV, fol. 266r.

⁷⁸⁷ Van Mander likely alludes to the multiple editions of Sebastiano Serlio’s Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere de gliedifici (Venice: Francesco Marcolini da Forlì, 1537), as translated into Dutch, French, and German by Pieter Coecke van Aelst, beginning with Generale reglen der architecture op de vyve manieren van edificie (Antwerp: Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Gillis II Coppens van Diest, 1539).

⁷⁹⁰ “Scherpen ingangh” (forbidding threshold) more literally translates as “sharp- or razor-edged entryway.” Having shown his wards how to cultivate their inborn gifts of nature (see chapter 1, stanza 5 supra), Van Mander lays down the Grondt and invites his readers to occupy themselves with the tripartite sequence of parallel lives that follows.