Portrait of a Man, Standing Three-quarter Length

Johannes Leupenius (Amsterdam 1643-1693 Amsterdam)

Leupenius’s father, the clergyman and linguist Petrus Leupenius (1607-1670), was born in Colchester, Essex, the son of Flemish parents, who for religious reasons had fled to England at the end of the sixteenth century.¹¹G. Geerts, Genus en geslacht in de Gouden Eeuw. Een bijdrage tot de studie van de nominale klassifikatie en daarmee samenhangende adnominale flexievormen en pronominale verschijnselen in Hollands taalgebruik van de zeventiende eeuw, Brussel 1966 (Bouwstoffen en studiën voor de geschiedenis en de lexicografie van het Nederlands, vol. 10), p. 96. In 1622 Petrus was back in the Netherlands and enrolled as a student at the University of Leiden. He was subsequently appointed as a clergyman in ‘s-Hertogenrade (1633), Hattem (1637) and Amsterdam (1642). In 1634 he married Sara Bekou (before c. 1615-1678), the daughter of the Flemish ‘beaytrapier’ (textile merchant) Pauwels Bekou (c. 1570-1634). Johannes Leupenius was their third son. He was baptized on 10 May 1643 in the Zuiderkerk in Amsterdam, together with his twin sister Suzanne (1643-before 1683).²²Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, DTB 93, p. 32.

Unlike his father and his older brother Paulus (1636-1676), Johannes did not pursue a religious career, but worked as a land surveyor and cartographer for the city council of Amsterdam. From circa 1670 until his death, he made several maps, including the Map of the Coast between Calais and Cadiz (1676) (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-67.829),³³Hollstein, X (1954), p. 54, no. 7. the Map of the Hoogheemraadschap of the Krimpenerwaard (1683) (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-AO-14-5B) and an atlas of 1693 with twenty-eight coloured maps and drawings of buildings and mills in Oostzaan in the Gemeentearchief, Zaanstad (inv. no. 50.2901). In 1677 Johannes married the twenty-two-year-old Maria Minuit (1655-1750), a daughter of the wine merchant Esaias Minuit (?-?).⁴⁴Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, DTB 503, p. 577. The couple moved in with his parents, who were living in the house In de Witte Gans at Prinsengracht 142. Between 1667 and 1691, they had six children, of which two died in infancy.

Johannes was also an amateur draughtsman and printmaker. Though undocumented, he is traditionally said to have studied with Rembrandt (1606-1669) around 1660.⁵⁵Sumowski, Drawings, VII (1983), p. 3451. However, the approximately twenty-five landscape drawings attributed to Johannes are more likely to have been inspired by landscape drawings by Rembrandt’s early friend and colleague Jan Lievens (1607-1674), who moved from The Hague to Amsterdam by 1659.⁶⁶A.K. Wheelock, Jr, ‘Jan Lievens; Bringing New Light to an Old Master’, in A.K. Wheelock, Jr, with S.S. Dickey et al., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Milwaukee (Milwaukee Art Museum)/Amsterdam (Rembrandthuis) 2008-09, p. 22. The connection with Lievens is strengthened by Johannes’s signature on his drawing of 1667 in the famous album amicorum of Jacob Heyblocq (1623-1690) in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague (inv. no. KW 131 H 26:277).⁷⁷K. Thomassen and J.A. Gruys (eds.), The Album Amicorum of Jacob Heyblocq: Introduction, Transcriptions, Paraphrases & Notes to the Facsimile, 2 vols., Zwolle 1998, no. 192. According to the accompanying poem, Leupenius was a former pupil of Heyblocq at the Amsterdam Grammar School. It is signed and dated ‘ILeupe / 1667 / Filius / PLeupe / nii’ with the ‘IL’ written in the same manner as the monogram of Lievens.

Marleen Ram, 2019

References
J. Immerzeel, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1842-43, II (1843), p. 190; C. Kramm, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters van den vroegsten tot op onzen tijd, 7 vols., Amsterdam 1857-64, IV (1860), p. 966; A.D. de Vries, ‘Biografische aanteekeningen betreffende voornamelijk Amsterdamsche schilders, plaatsnijders, enz. en hunne verwanten (II)’, Oud Holland 3 (1885), p. 159; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, II (1906), p. 30; M.D. Henkel, ‘Leupenius (Leupe), Johannes’, in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXIII (1929), pp. 145-46; B.P.J. Broos, ‘Leupenius, Johannes’, in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., London/New York 1996, XIX, p. 258