Object data
oil on panel
support: height 27.2 cm × width 43.3 cm
outer size: depth 3.5 cm (support incl. frame)
David Vinckboons
The Preaching of St John the Baptist
c. 1610
Technical notes
The support is a single oak panel with a horizontal grain. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1502. The panel could have been ready for use by 1513, which indicates that Vinckboons used a very old panel. The back of the support is bevelled on all sides, and has a reddish coating or stain. The ground layer is probably thin and whitish. Scanning with infrared reflectography revealed a sketchy underdrawing, probably executed in a fluid medium. The underdrawing roughly outlines the landscape and figures without any detailing. Distinctive features are the scribbled brushmarks in the centre and right foreground, indicating the placement of the meticulously painted plants. The small background scene with the baptism of Christ was not prepared in the underdrawing. The position of the head of the Pharisee on the right in the underdrawing was changed in the painted surface. The painting was meticulously executed with slight impasto for highlights, particularly in the foliage.
Scientific examination and reports
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 14 February 2002
- technical report: L. Sozzani, RMA, 6 May 2002
Condition
Fair. The varnish is discoloured.
Provenance
...; from F. Le Cocq, Brussels, fl. 600, to the museum, with support from the Vereniging Rembrandt, 1898
Object number: SK-A-1782
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
David Vinckboons (Mechelen 1576 - Amsterdam 1630/33)
David Vinckboons was baptized in Mechelen on 13 August 1576. His father, the watercolourist Philip Vinckboons, was probably his only teacher. The family lived in Antwerp from 1579 to 1586 before emigrating to the northern Netherlands for religious reasons. At first they lived in Middelburg, but in 1591 they settled permanently in Amsterdam. His father died in 1601, and in 1602 in Leeuwarden David Vinckboons married the wealthy Agneta van Loorn, the daughter of a notary and solicitor. It is known from archival records that he had pupils, probably including his sons and Esaias van de Velde (1587-1630). In 1611 he bought a house in St Anthonisbreestraat in Amsterdam, which after his death served for a long time as a studio for his sons. Pieter, Philips, Johannes, Justus and David the Younger worked mainly as architects and cartographers; only his eldest son Philips was a painter as well. David Vinckboons died between 1630, the date of his latest painting, and 12 January 1633, when his wife was recorded as a widow by the municipal orphanage.
David Vinckboons specialized in landscapes with small-figured scenes of biblical episodes, peasants and groups of people out of doors. He also made a few history paintings with large figures, and probably large watercolour canvases in his father’s tradition. He occasionally added small figures to paintings by other masters, such as Gillis van Coninxloo. Vinckboons’s surviving oeuvre consists largely of drawings, chiefly designs for print series, book illustrations and the border decorations of maps of the world.
Yvette Bruijnen, 2007
References
Van Mander 1604, fol. 299r-v; Thieme/Becker XXXIV, 1940, pp. 387-88; Van Eeghen 1952; Goossens 1954, pp. 2-5; Lammertse 1989, pp. 13-41; Briels 1997, pp. 400-01; Schapelhouman in Turner 1996, XXXII, pp. 586-88
Entry
As usual, the preaching of John the Baptist is depicted in a woodland setting. The scene in the background on the right shows the baptism of Christ, with the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove above Christ. Vinckboons’s composition fits within a visual tradition shaped by the monumental Preaching of St John the Baptist of 1566 by Pieter Brueghel the Elder,1 which was largely popularized by the many copies of it produced by Pieter Brueghel the Younger.2 The woodland setting, the diversity of the listeners, and details like the figures in the trees were all influenced by Brueghel’s invention. The crowd is more modest in size in this relatively small painting by Vinckboons, and a more prominent role is given to the woodland, which is close to those by Gillis van Coninxloo. In another painting by Vinckboons of the same subject, the figures are made more subordinate to the landscape.3
Within Vinckboons’s oeuvre, The Preaching of St John the Baptist is closely related in style to his Fête Champêtre (SK-A-2109), and for that reason can be dated to the same period, probably around 1610. It has been suggested that the two paintings are companion pieces, with The Preaching supposedly proclaiming that even the merry sinners of The Fête Champêtre were capable of repentance.4 This, though, is very unlikely. In the first place, there are no other examples of such iconographically different pendants. Moreover, dendrochronological examination of both paintings has shown that the supports are from different trees, with The preaching being on a considerably older panel than the one used for The Fête Champêtre.5 The latter is also far more coarsely finished on the back, is 1.3 cm higher, and the two works have different provenances.
Infrared reflectography shows that the position of the head of the Pharisee on the right differs from that in the underdrawing. Another version of John the Baptist preaching6 follows the painted surface of the Rijksmuseum picture, which must thus have been the first version.
Yvette Bruijnen, 2007
See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements
This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 314.
Literature
Goossens 1954, pp. 114-15; Amsterdam 1989a, p. 101, no. 7
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 285, no. 2558; 1934, p. 303, no. 2558; 1960, p. 328, no. 2558; 1976, p. 580, no. A 1782; 2007, no. 314
Citation
Y. Bruijnen, 2007, 'David (I) Vinckboons, The Preaching of St John the Baptist, c. 1610', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6458
(accessed 2 June 2024 14:06:12).