5 Masterpieces from the Hermitage

The State Hermitage Museum / Государственный Эрмитаж has been open to the public since 1852.

It was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired a collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky.

The museum celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day.

Caravaggio | Lute-Player, 1595-1596

"The Lute-Player", painted by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in 1595-96, is the only work by the famous master in Russia and it is considered without any exaggeration to be one of the gems of the Hermitage Museum collection.

The Hermitage painting is known to have belonged to Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani.

The Giustiniani collection was put up for sale in Paris and came into the Hermitage in 1808 through the mediation of the director of the Louvre, Dominique Vivan Denon. | © Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio) (1571-1610) | The Lute Player, 1596 | Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

Sir Anthony Van Dyck | Baroque painter

Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) was the most important Flemish painter of the 17th century after Rubens, whose works influenced the young Van Dyck.

He also studied and was profoundly influenced by the work of Italian artists, above all, Titian.

Anthony van Dyck studied under Peter Paul Rubens and was one of his most accomplished students.

Pieter Bruegel il Vecchio | Il viaggio in Italia

Pieter Bruegel o Brueghel (1525/1530-1569) fu tra gli artisti più significativi della pittura rinascimentale Olandese e Fiamminga, pittore ed incisore, noto per i suoi paesaggi e scene contadine (la cosiddetta pittura di genere); fu un pioniere nel presentare entrambi i tipi di soggetti come dipinti di grandi dimensioni.

È generalmente indicato come il Vecchio per distinguerlo dal figlio primogenito, Pieter Bruegel il Giovane.

Anche il secondogenito Jan Brueghel il Vecchio, seguì le orme paterne e così pure il nipote Jan Brueghel il Giovane.

Pieter Bruegel il Vecchio | Naval Battle in the Gulf of Naples, 1560

Pieter Pourbus | Renaissance painter

Pieter Jansz. Pourbus (1523-1584) was a Flemish Renaissance painter, draftsman, engineer and cartographer who was active in Bruges during the 16th century.

He is known primarily for his religious and portrait paintings.

Pourbus was the leading figure of his generation in Bruges, often pioneering techniques.

Stylistically speaking, he is part of the generation of Frans Floris.

Emily Dickinson: The Poets light but Lamps / Accendere una lampada e sparire..

The Poets light but Lamps

- Themselves - go out -

The Wicks they stimulate

If vital Light

Peter Paul Rubens | Saint Simon, 1610-1612 (detail) | Museo Nacional del Prado

Hans Laagland, 1965 | Neo Baroque style

Hans Laagland was born in Koersel (Belgium) to Ludo Laagland, a professional painter.

His father trained Hans throughout his childhood.

At the age of ten, Hans completed his first oil painting and two years later held his first solo exhibition.

As he continued to develop his skills, he became enthralled with the works and techniques of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), and at fifteen he set out to study those masterful techniques.

Cornelis de Heem | Baroque painter

Cornelis de Heem (8 April 1631 (baptized) - 17 May 1695 (buried) was a still-life painter associated with both Flemish Baroque and Dutch Golden Age painting.

He was a member of a large family of still-life specialists, of which his father, Jan Davidszoon de Heem (1606–1684), was the most significant.

Cornelis was baptised in Leiden on 8 April 1631, and moved with his family to Antwerp in 1636.

Matthias Stom | Baroque painter

Matthias Stom or Matthias Stomer (1600-1652) was a Dutch, or possibly Flemish, painter who is only known for the works he produced during his residence in Italy.

He was influenced by the work of non-Italian followers of Caravaggio in Italy, in particular his Dutch followers often referred to as the Utrecht Caravaggists, as well as by Jusepe de Ribera and Peter Paul Rubens.

Michaelina Wautier | Baroque painter

Michaelina Wautier, also Woutiers (1604-1689), was a painter from the Southern Netherlands.

Only since the turn of the 21st century has her work been recognized as that of an outstanding female Baroque artist, her works having been previously attributed to male artists, especially her brother Charles.

Wautier was noted for the variety of subjects and genres that she worked in.

This was unusual for female artists of the time who were more often restricted to smaller paintings, generally portraits or still-lifes.

Jan Brueghel the Elder | Baroque painter

Biography from: The National Gallery, London

Jan Brueghel the Elder was born in Brussels in 1568, the son of Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

He is said to have been taught in Antwerp by Pieter Goetkint and to have visited Cologne.

From 1589-1596 he worked in Italy, mainly in Naples, Rome, and Milan where he met one of his most important patrons, Cardinal Federico Borromeo, who remained a lifelong friend.

Gustave de Jonghe (1829-1893)

Gustave Léonard de Jonghe, Gustave Léonard De Jonghe or Gustave de Jonghe (4 February 1829 – 28 January 1893) was a Flemish/ Belgian painter known for his glamorous society portraits and genre scenes. After training in Brussels, he started out as a painter of historical and religious subjects in a Realist style. After moving to Paris where he spent most of his active career, he became successful with his scenes of glamorous women in richly decorated interiors.

Life

Gustave Léonard de Jonghe was born in Kortrijk as the son of the prominent landscape painter Jan Baptiste de Jonghe.

He received his first art lessons from his father. He continued his studies in Brussels at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts where leading Belgian painter François-Joseph Navez was one of his teachers.

The history painter Louis Gallait was his close friend and mentor. When de Jonghe’s father died when he was only 15 years old, his native city granted him a scholarship.

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder | Baroque painter

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573-1621) was a Flemish-born Dutch still life painter and art dealer.

He is recognised as one of the earliest painters who created floral still lifes as an independent genre.

He founded a dynasty of painters who continued his style of floral and fruit painting and turned Middelburg into the leading centre for flower painting in the Dutch Republic.

Levina Teerlinc (1510-1576) | Renaissance miniaturist

Levina Teerlinc was a Flemish Renaissance miniaturist who served as a painter to the English court of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.

She was the most important miniaturist at the English court between Hans Holbein the Younger and Nicholas Hilliard.

Her father, Simon Bening was a renowned book illuminator and miniature painter of the Ghent-Bruges school and probably trained her as a manuscript painter. She may have worked in her father's workshop before her marriage.

Catharina van Hemessen (1528-1587) | Renaissance painter

Caterina or Catharina van Hemessen was a Flemish Renaissance painter.

She is the earliest female Flemish painter for whom there is verifiable extant work.

She is mainly known for a series of small scale female portraits completed between the late 1540s and early 1550s and a few religious compositions.

Van Hemessen is often given the distinction of creating the first self-portrait of an artist (of either gender) depicted seated at an easel.

David Teniers the Younger | Baroque painter

Biography from: Museo del Prado

Teniers the Younger, David (Antwerp, 1610 - Brussels, 1690) was born into a family of artists and his father, David Teniers "the Elder", was his first master; indeed, he is referred to by scholars as "David Teniers II".

He joined the Guild of St Luke in 1633 and began to sign and date his paintings that same year.

During the early stage of his career his genre paintings were inspired by Brouwer and his landscapes display the influence of Momper and Bril.

Abraham Brueghel (1631-1690) Baroque painter

Abraham Brueghel was a Flemish painter from the famous Brueghel family of artists.

He emigrated at a young age to Italy where he played an important role in the development of the style of decorative Baroque still lifes.

Early life

Abraham was born in Antwerp, the son of Jan Brueghel the Younger, the grandson of Jan Brueghel the Elder and the great-grandson of Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Much of his artistic training came from his father Jan Brueghel the Younger, prolific painter and regular collaborator with Rubens.

Abraham showed great promise as an artist from an early age, and started to make a name for himself in his teenage years. His father sold one of Abraham's floral still lives when he was only 15 years old.

Flemish Art History and Sitemap

Peter Paul Rubens | Old Woman and Boy with Candles, 1616-1617

Flemish painting flourished from the early 15th century until the 17th century, gradually becoming distinct from the painting of the rest of the Low Countries, especially the modern Netherlands.

In the early period, up to about 1520, the painting of the whole area is (especially in the Anglophone world) typically considered as a whole, as Early Netherlandish painting.

This was dominated by the Flemish south, but painters from the north were also important.

David Vinckboons (1576-1632) | Dutch Golden Age painter

Popular and prolific, David Vinckboons trained with his painter father, who brought the family to Holland to escape religious persecution in Flanders. Despite having ten children, Vinckboons's life appears relatively uneventful.

He stayed in Amsterdam, where his family had settled years before, and he must have died before January 1633, when his widow appeared before Amsterdam's orphan committee.

Artus Wolffort | Baroque painter

Artus Wolffort, Artus Wolffaert or Artus Wolffaerts (1581-1641) was a Flemish painter known mainly for his history paintings depicting religious and mythological scenes.

Wolffort and his work were not well known until the late 1970s and some of his paintings were even classified as early works by Rubens.

His oeuvre was reconstructed from a fully signed work (Esther's Toilet in the Harem of Ahasuerus, original untraced, 10 copies of which one fully signed in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London) and various paintings bearing a monogram.

Hendrick van Steenwyck II | Baroque painter of architectural interiors

Hendrick van Steenwijk the Younger's (1580-1649) early style resembled that of his father, an architecture painter.

He likely spent several years in Antwerp, though he apparently was not enrolled in its painters' guild.

Van Steenwijk's architectural interiors of this period are frequently populated with figures by Jan Brueghel the Elder and other Flemish painters who worked in Antwerp.