SCOREL, Jan van

(1495-1562)

Jan van Scorel, a major painter in the city of Utrecht from 1524 until his death, was largely responsible for the introduction into the northern Netherlands of the ideas of the Italian Renaissance, such as movement, proportion, architec­tural forms, and perspectives, all of which he had the opportunity to study firsthand during a four-year stay in Rome. A native of Schoorel, near Alkmaar in the Netherlands, van Scorel was illegitimate, the son of a priest. His talent was noticed by Jan van Egmond, who sent him to work with an Alkmaar painter. In 1516 van Scorel moved to Utrecht, a center of Catholicism in the northern Netherlands, in order to study with the late Mannerist painter Jan Gossaert (called Mabuse). In 1519, probably encouraged by Gossaert, he left on a long trip that took him to Venice, the Mediterranean islands, and the Holy Land. Finally making his way back to Rome, he was taken into the household of the Dutch pope Adrian VI, who was himself a native of Utrecht, and who appointed van Scorel curator of the Vatican collections. Adrian VI died in 1523, and van Scorel returned to the Netherlands, settling permanently in Utrecht by 1528.

Little of van Scorel's larger-scale works survives today, though he painted several great altarpieces, all destroyed, but there are enough smaller paintings to give a sense of his style and its influences. His Death of Cleopatra is derived from the reclining Venus of Giorgione; his Presentation of Christ in the Temple of 1530 shows his debt to Italian architecture; and the calm monumentality of his figures displays none of the frenetic late Mannerism of Gossaert. He was also a fine portraitist in the Flemish tradition, both of single figures and groups, the latter to be an important component of Dutch art in the next century.

Van Scorel's pupils included Maertin van Heemskerck,* best known today perhaps for his drawings of Rome, and Antonio Mor,* a fine portraitist who spent his career working for the Spanish Habsburg court of Philip II.* According to Karel van Mander, van Scorel became famous in the Netherlands for im­porting a new style of painting, Mannerism, from Italy, which he described as an "extraordinary beautiful and novel manner of painting which made a great impression on everyone."

Bibliography

J. Snyder, Northern Renaissance Art, 1985.

W. Stechow, ed., Northern Renaissance Art, 1400-1600: Sources and Documents, 1966.

Rosemary Poole