Gaspar de Crayer

The Adoration of the Shepherds

c. 1640 - c. 1650

Inscriptions

  • inscription, top centre, on the banderole held by the angels:GLORIA IN EX.E LCIS DEO(Glory to God in the Highest)

Scientific examination and reports

  • technical report: I. Verslype / M. Chavannes, RMA, 26 mei 2009

Provenance

…; the dealer Van Eijck, The Hague; from whom, fl. 5,500, with SK-A-75, by Willem I, King of the Netherlands, for the museum, 1818;1E. Bergvelt, Pantheon der Gouden Eeuw: Van Nationale Konst-gallerij tot Rijksmuseum van Schilderijen (1798-1896), Zwolle 1998, p. 401. on loan to the Dutch embassy, Brussels, 1936-2008; on loan through the DRVK, since 1953

ObjectNumber: SK-A-74

The artist

Biography

Gaspar de Crayer (Antwerp 1584 - Ghent 1669)

The figure painter, Gaspar de Crayer, was born in Antwerp, the son of his homonymous father, and baptized in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk on 18 November 1584. It is not known who his master was. He may have been apprenticed in Brussels, for he became a master in the Brussels guild of painters, gold beaters and glaziers in 1607 and remained based there until he settled in Ghent in 1664, in which city’s Dominican Church he was buried on 27 January 1669.

During his long career De Crayer took on fourteen apprentices, the first in 1610. His extant oeuvre, including oil sketches and drawings, consists of some 277 items. There are early records of a further 118 works apparently no longer extant. There was no decrease in his activity as he advanced in years; on the contrary, it has been calculated that the number of works executed in the last twenty years of his career amounts to nearly half of his extant production.

De Crayer specialized in religious works, often scenes of martyrdom of relatively obscure saints as altarpieces for village churches. But he also worked for the Benedictines at the prestigious Afflighem Abbey. Indeed he received commissions from the main churches and religious orders, not to speak of other notable centres in the southern Netherlands – in Antwerp, Brussels and Ghent. His most important profane commission was the decoration of the 'Arcus Caroli', the triumphal arch erected for the Joyous Entry of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand into Ghent on 28 January 1635.

Although De Crayer had earlier painted portraits of the archducal couple Albert and Isabella in Brussels, he was not appointed court painter until the accession of Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand as governor, a post he retained during the rule of the Archduke Leopold-Wilhelm (1647-56). The accompanying fiscal privileges were honoured after he moved to Ghent in 1664. He declined an invitation to participate in the decoration of the Oranjezaal in the Huis ten Bosch in 1649.

De Crayer seems to have early mastered a fairly straightforward method of working; there is evidence of his having executed head studies and compositional drawings. There is only the word of the Cardinal-Infante that his relations with Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) were not good; certainly the art of the elder man influenced De Crayer, as did that of Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641). But against these powerful influences De Crayer sustained his own idiosyncratic, easily legible style that did not result from any dependence on them. His oeuvre shows affinities with the followers of the Bolognese Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), and De Crayer is known to have copied a work by Guido Reni (1575-1642) early in his career. Whether these affinities are fortuitous, or due to some further indirect contact, remains as yet to be determined.

REFERENCES
H. Vlieghe, Gaspar de Crayer: Sa vie et ses oeuvres, 2 vols., Brussels 1972, I, pp. 33-75; H. Vlieghe, ‘Gaspar de Crayer: Addenda et Corrigenda’, Gentse Bijdragen 25 (1979-80), pp. 158-208

Entry

The account of how the shepherds, having heard the good tidings from the angel of the Lord, went to Bethlehem and ‘found Mary, and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger’ is told in Luke 2:15-16. The words on the banderole, held by the angels above, are those which had earlier been proclaimed to the shepherds by a ‘multitude of the heavenly host praising God in the highest…’, Luke 2:13-14. Here Gaspar de Crayer follows the by then accepted formula for the depiction of the subject: the shepherds have brought gifts of a lamb, eggs and a brass churn of milk.2E. Mâle, L’art religieux de la fin du XVIe siècle, du XVIIe siècle et du XVIIIe siècle: étude sur l’iconographie après le Concile de Trente, Italie, France, Espagne, Flandres, Paris 1951 (ed. princ. 1932), pp. 242-49; L. Réau, Iconographie de l’art chrétien, 3 vols., Paris 1955-59, II (2), pp. 233-36. Rubens furnished a recent precedent for the provision of milk in a churn in, for instance, the predella panel of the Adoration of the Shepherds in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Marseilles; M. Jaffé, Rubens. Catalogo Completo, Milan 1989, no. 482F.

There is no reason to doubt Gaspar de Crayer’s authorship of this Adoration. Vlieghe dates it to the decade after circa 1638, pointing out that the composition and protagonists relate quite closely to De Crayer’s Adoration of the Shepherds in the Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Doornik.3H. Vlieghe, Gaspar de Crayer: Sa vie et ses oeuvres, 2 vols., Brussels 1972, I, no. A83, II, pl. 82. There, Mary also faces to the right, and lifts up the swaddling cloth. For the rest the protagonists have been reversed. The shepherd with the lamb and the boy are repeated, as is the kneeling shepherd who holds a houlette that rests against his shoulder. Vlieghe dates the Doornik picture circa 1638-42. That the far arm of the shepherd holding the lamb is covered in the Doornik Adoration might argue for the precedence of the Amsterdam painting where his arm was first depicted uncovered; indeed there are other small, detail pentiments in this composition executed with reserves.

The head of Mary is similar to that of the Virgin’s in the Virgin and Child Adored by Saints at Ghent,4H. Vlieghe, Gaspar de Crayer: Sa vie et ses oeuvres, 2 vols., Brussels 1972, I, no. A73, II, pl. 80. which Vlieghe dates to the same decade. St Joseph seems unusually young (he is more mature in the Doornik altarpiece). His upward glance is to be compared with that of the acolyte in the Ecstacy of St Augustine in Valenciennes.5H. Vlieghe, Gaspar de Crayer: Sa vie et ses oeuvres, 2 vols., Brussels 1972, I, no. A120, II, pl. 117. Unusual too is St Joseph’s tethering of the ox.

Vlieghe points to a possible influence of Anthony van Dyck’s Adoration of the Shepherds at Dendermonde.6Vey in S.J. Barnes, N. de Poorter, O. Millar and H. Vey, Anthony van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, New Haven (Conn.)/London 2004, III.2. De Crayer’s composition is calmer and both may owe the placement of the ox and ass and of the kneeling shepherd to a common source, perhaps Jacopo Bassano (active c. 1535-died 1542) or a print after him.7Conveyed by Sadeler’s print of 1599; L. Brown and P. Marini, Jacopo Bassano c. 1510-1592, exh. cat. Bassano del Grappa (Museo Civico)/Fort Worth Texas (Kimbell Art Museum) 1992, no. 7.

The Rijksmuseum Adoration is about the same size as De Crayer’s Descent from the Cross (SK-A-75) with which it was acquired by King William I (1772-1843). From this it has been supposed that they might have been painted as altarpieces in the same church.8N. van Hout, Flemish Masters: Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens and their Contemporaries, Amsterdam/Zwolle 2002, p. 36. Perhaps they were intended to replace each other during the course of the liturgical calendar.9As was the case with De Crayer’s Descent from the Cross and Theodore van Loon’s lost Nativity in the Jesuit Church at Ghent; H. Vlieghe, ‘Gaspar de Crayer: Addenda et Corrigenda’, Gentse Bijdragen 25 (1979-80), pp. 158-208, esp. p. 161.

What remains obscure is the provenance of the two works prior to 1818. Very probably they were an ecclesiastical commission, but they cannot be identified in Descamp’s long review of 1753 of De Crayer’s works for religious institutions in the southern Netherlands.10J.B. Descamps, La vie des peintres flamands, allemands et hollandois, avec des portraits, 4 vols., Paris 1753-64, I, pp. 350-56. It may be that the commission was for a Catholic institution outside the region.

Gregory Martin, 2022

Literature

H. Vlieghe, Gaspar de Crayer: Sa vie et ses oeuvres, 2 vols., Brussels 1972, I, no. A105, II, fig. 102; E. Bergvelt, Pantheon der Gouden Eeuw: Van Nationale Konst-gallerij tot Rijksmuseum van Schilderijen (1798-1896), Zwolle 1998, pp. 103, 105, 129

Collection catalogues

1832, p. 15, no. 60; 1843, p. 13, no. 60; 1853, p. 8, no. 55 (fl. 2,000); 1858, p. 25, no. 55; 1880, p. 395, no. 462; 1904, p. 77, no. 736; 1976, p. 180, no. A 74

Citation

G. Martin, 2022, 'Gaspar de Crayer, The Adoration of the Shepherds, c. 1640 - c. 1650', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6664

(accessed 31 May 2025 02:39:20).

Footnotes

  • 1E. Bergvelt, Pantheon der Gouden Eeuw: Van Nationale Konst-gallerij tot Rijksmuseum van Schilderijen (1798-1896), Zwolle 1998, p. 401.
  • 2E. Mâle, L’art religieux de la fin du XVIe siècle, du XVIIe siècle et du XVIIIe siècle: étude sur l’iconographie après le Concile de Trente, Italie, France, Espagne, Flandres, Paris 1951 (ed. princ. 1932), pp. 242-49; L. Réau, Iconographie de l’art chrétien, 3 vols., Paris 1955-59, II (2), pp. 233-36. Rubens furnished a recent precedent for the provision of milk in a churn in, for instance, the predella panel of the Adoration of the Shepherds in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Marseilles; M. Jaffé, Rubens. Catalogo Completo, Milan 1989, no. 482F.
  • 3H. Vlieghe, Gaspar de Crayer: Sa vie et ses oeuvres, 2 vols., Brussels 1972, I, no. A83, II, pl. 82.
  • 4H. Vlieghe, Gaspar de Crayer: Sa vie et ses oeuvres, 2 vols., Brussels 1972, I, no. A73, II, pl. 80.
  • 5H. Vlieghe, Gaspar de Crayer: Sa vie et ses oeuvres, 2 vols., Brussels 1972, I, no. A120, II, pl. 117.
  • 6Vey in S.J. Barnes, N. de Poorter, O. Millar and H. Vey, Anthony van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, New Haven (Conn.)/London 2004, III.2.
  • 7Conveyed by Sadeler’s print of 1599; L. Brown and P. Marini, Jacopo Bassano c. 1510-1592, exh. cat. Bassano del Grappa (Museo Civico)/Fort Worth Texas (Kimbell Art Museum) 1992, no. 7.
  • 8N. van Hout, Flemish Masters: Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens and their Contemporaries, Amsterdam/Zwolle 2002, p. 36.
  • 9As was the case with De Crayer’s Descent from the Cross and Theodore van Loon’s lost Nativity in the Jesuit Church at Ghent; H. Vlieghe, ‘Gaspar de Crayer: Addenda et Corrigenda’, Gentse Bijdragen 25 (1979-80), pp. 158-208, esp. p. 161.
  • 10J.B. Descamps, La vie des peintres flamands, allemands et hollandois, avec des portraits, 4 vols., Paris 1753-64, I, pp. 350-56.