Jan de Beer

This article assembles the evidence for the lifetime reputation of the Antwerp painter Jan de Beer (ca. 1475–1527/28), rediscovered by Georges Hulin de Loo and Max J. Friedländer in the early twentieth century. At the time of their publications little was known about the artist’s life, but the evidence now available concerning his important reputation includes archival sources published since Friedländer’s day, an unpublished contract, early literary sources, and reevaluations of the artist’s work for the guild and church. The factors involved in his late sixteenth-century disappearance from the historical record are also analyzed. Fig. 1 Jan de Beer, Sketch of Nine Male Heads, ca. 1515–20, British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, London Fig. 1 Jan de Beer, Sketch of Nine Male Heads, ca. 1515–20, British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, London Fig. 1 Jan de Beer, Sketch of Nine Male Heads , ca. 1515–20, brush and dark brown-black ink, black chalk, and white heightening on prepared purplish-brown paper, 20.1 x 25.9 cm. British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, London, inv. 1886.0706.7 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer] Building on Hulin’s discovery, Max J. Friedländer, in publications on Antwerp Mannerism in 1915 and 1933, reconstructed Jan de Beer’s oeuvre and reintroduced the artist to the history of early Netherlandish painting.4: 65–91; Max J. Friedländer, Die altniederländische Malerei, vol. 11, Die Antwerpener Manieristen – Adriaen Ysenbrant (Leiden: A. W. Sijthoff, 1933).") When Friedländer undertook this difficult task, the only biographical information available about the artist was the five references in the Liggeren plus a nineteenth-century annotation added by the editors.5 Additionally, Friedländer drew attention to the fact that Lodovico Guicciardini had listed “Giovanni di Ber” in his compilation of famous Netherlandish artists, as part of his 1567 Descrittione . . . di tutti i Paesi Bassi. 6 Guicciardini’s Descrittione included the first systematic, published canon of Netherlandish artists, almost certainly assembled in response to Vasari’s Vite of 1550.7, ed. Bart Ramakers (Leuven: Peeters, [click note to read more…]") Thanks to a body of De Beer and De Beer-related documents discovered since Friedländer’s day, including a teaching contract being published here for the first time (see Appendix), and a reevaluation of an early literary source as well as selected works from the artist’s oeuvre, it is now possible to define the important reputation the artist enjoyed during his lifetime.8: 50–53; Dan Ewing, “Some Documentary Additions to the Biography of Jan de Beer,” Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerpen (1983): 95–103; and Dan Ewing, “Archival Notes: Jan de Beer and Hendrik [click note to read more…]") Additionally, light can be shed upon the circumstances that led to the erasure of his memory immediately after the appearance of Guicciardini’s book. Among the multiple indications from Jan de Beer’s career that evoke his lifetime prominence are his service and work for the Antwerp painters’ guild. In 1509, a short five years after joining the St. Luke’s guild as a free master, De Beer was elected to the important guild office of elder ( ouder or ouderman ). This was unusually quick for such a high honor, and it positioned him in the midst of venerable company. The relevant information comes from a 1509 municipal document concerning the appraisal of a large sculpted altarpiece by the Antwerp carver Peter Pauw, commissioned by the city of Dunkerque. The appraisal was carried out by the guild’s two deans, two sworn members, and three elders.9 Information exists for only five of these Antwerp guild officials, but relative to the other four, De Beer was conspicuously young. Quentin Metsys, one of the elders, had joined the guild eighteen years earlier; Cornelis de Geet, another elder, thirty-tw