GERARD OF HAARLEM
The influence of these painters and Dierick Bouts is seen in the rare works of Geertgen tot S. Jans, or Gerard of Haarlem (1465–1493) whose Raising of Lazarus (No. 2563a) in this collection is an achievement of the highest order, and was purchased as recently as 1902 for £4000 from Baron d’Albenas, after having been for many years in Spain. This pupil or follower of the Ouwater master was a native of Leyden, and worked at Haarlem. He took his name from the commandery of the Knights of St. John at Haarlem for whom he worked, as we see from the careful inscription, “Gerardus Leydanus pictor ad S. Io. Baptist. Harlem pinxt,” on his triptych at Vienna.
Among his contemporaries were Cornelis Engelbrechtsen, who was born in 1468 at Leyden, where he died in 1533, and Lucas van Leyden (1494–1533). The latter played an important part as an engraver quite as much as a painter in the university town of Leyden, which now possesses his large Last Judgment and became famous as the birthplace of Rembrandt in 1606. The Louvre possesses no picture by either Engelbrechtsen or Lucas van Leyden.
Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (fl. 1470–1533) is also unrepresented here. Portraits by painters in this group are often confused, as in the case of the Portrait of the Duke of East Friesland, in the Oldenburg Gallery, which has been attributed to both Lucas van Leyden and Jacob Cornelisz. A pupil of the latter may have painted the Cana of Galilee (No. 2640c). It is safe to assign to “the Master of the Female Half Figures,” the Young Lady Reading (No. 2641c), which has a close analogy with the well-known picture in the Harrach collection at Vienna, representing half-length figures of three young ladies in crimson velvet dresses cut square at the neck, and singing to the accompaniment of a flute and a lute. The name of this painter is not known, but his pictures, which are neither numerous nor of any conspicuous merit, are easily recognisable.
To this period of transition and mediocre painting belongs Jan Scorel (1495–1562), whose Portrait of Paracelsus the Doctor (No. 2567a) is inscribed:
“FORMOSO DOCTOR PARASELSUS,”
and is in every way superior to the Portrait of a Man (No. 2641b), which is labelled with the name of Scorel, but catalogued as being by an unknown artist. From Scorel, a much travelled Dutch artist, who at one time worked at Nuremburg with Albrecht Dürer and visited Venice and the East, we naturally pass to Jan Mostaert of Haarlem. Mostaert of Haarlem is unrepresented at the Louvre, a remark which equally well applies to the anonymous “Pseudo-Mostaert,” who painted so much in his style that a large number of inferior productions have been credited to him from time to time. Pictures of this type vary so considerably that the name “Pseudo-Mostaert” is little more than a generic designation for unassignable Flemish and Dutch pictures of the middle of the sixteenth century; such pictures bear some relationship to the Christ bearing His Cross (No. 2299), and the Abraham’s Sacrifice (No. 2300), officially attributed to the little-known and quite negligible painter Alart Claeszoon (1498–1564) of Leyden.