October 2013 I visited the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, Italy. After having seen many great Italian masterpieces my eye caught something different. "This is not Italian, this looks more Northern European" I mumbled to myself.
Lo and behold, it was a painting by a Dutch master called Jacob-Cornelisz van Oostsanen. To my shame I have to admit, I had not heard of him before. I did like the painting though, and looked at it in detail. I also took a photograph and then went on to see many more Italian masterpieces ... To my great surprise a couple of months later I saw the very same painting in a large article about a new exhibition opening in both Amsterdam and Alkmaar. Here was the chance to see this painting again, apparently cleaned and accompanied by a great many other works by Van Oostsanen from all over the world. What an unique opportunity! So I went to the Amsterdam Museum to see "my painting" again. It is called "The Nativity with the Boelen family as donors". The colors were much brighter than I remembered them. This is the effect of the painting having been cleaned. This time I studied the painting in even more detail and thoroughly enjoyed doing so. In this painting Bethlehem is situated in a very Dutch looking coastal landscape. Cool!
A weekend later I went to Alkmaar to see the rest of the exhibition. The painting I liked best is on view at the Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar and it is called "Noli me Tangere" (Latin: Do Not Touch Me). The colors are spectacular and the detail is unbelievable. Apart from the main scene there are many more smaller scenes in the painting. The smallest is Jesus sitting down at a table with others in one of the buildings in the city in the background. It is too small to see on this photograph! The painting just does not look like it was made in 1507. So who was Jacob-Cornelisz van Oostsanen? Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (1475-1533) is the earliest artist in Amsterdam that we know by name he was a celebrated artist in the early sixteenth century. His studio on the Kalverstraat, then already a fashionable street, developed into a highly productive workshop, taking commissions from patrons in Holland and beyond. He provided portraits and religious pictures, as well as combinations of the two, whether in print or oils. Van Oostsanen is one of the great masters from the Northern Netherlands who laid the foundation for the flourishing success of Dutch art that followed. His works show how art developed during his lifetime from the late medieval style to the early Renaissance. His taste for unexpected details and the exceptional quality of the thirty or more surviving paintings, as well as his two hundred woodcuts, are spectacular to view.
Key to understanding why Jacob-Cornelisz van Oostsanen is relatively unknown in the Netherlands today, is the fact that he lived and worked in a Roman-Catholic Amsterdam just decades before the Protestant Reformation. Protestant reformers were sharply opposed to what they considered the idolatry of the Host. In 1566 during the "Beeldenstorm" (Iconoclastic Fury) a lot of Dutch Catholic art was destroyed by militant Calvinists. On May 26, 1578 a bloodless revolution turned Amsterdam from a Catholic city into a Protestant one. The Catholic town council was expelled, and from then on Catholics were no longer allowed to worship in public. Civic authorities also dissolved the convents and monasteries, and their properties — along with all Catholic churches — were confiscated. Moveable goods, like paintings, were mosty sold to foreign buyers and thus saved from destruction.
Please do not forget to take a look at the ceiling paintings in the St Lawrence's church, next to the museum in Alkmaar. They are recently restored and awesome! It is Jacob-Cornelisz van Oostsanen's interpretation of The Last Judgement. Shown here is a tiny detail of this vast work of art. The photograph was taken with my new Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens with an EF 1.4x III extender fitted.
The exhibition is on show until June 29, 2014 at three separate locations: The Amsterdam Museum Amsterdam, the Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar and the St Lawrence’s church in Alkmaar.
