Karel van Mander on his Deathbed
Jacques de Gheyn (II), 1606
Städel Museum, Frankfurt
From a slightly raised standpoint, as if standing by the bed, De Gheyn drew two views of a man on his deathbed with bold pen and ink lines that simultaneously define volume and create texture. As a draftsman, Jacques de Gheyn II’s innovation stemmed in part from his impulse to draw observable reality in a naturalistic mode. Karel van Mander on his Deathbed, from 1606, perfectly illustrates the artist’s commitment to drawing near het leven (from the life), a term the drawing’s supposed sitter, the artist, poet, and biographer Karel van Mander, promoted. A harp lays foreshortened and out of scale across the man’s chest. Likely added after the initial sketches, it is a clue (if not definitive) in helping to identify the sitter, who completed a book of hymns titled De gulden harpe. De Gheyn’s friend is memorialized by the careful attention of the artist’s hand, an act inimitably human in scale and scope, and a herald to the advance of naturalism in the seventeenth century.
— Emily J. Peters, Curator of Prints and Drawings, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland
Object details
Karel van Mander on his Deathbed 1606
Pen and brown ink | 142 x 177 mm | inv. no. 800
Städel Museum, Frankfurt
Jacques de Gheyn (II)
Antwerp 1565 – 1625 The Hague
Gallery
