Vanitas Still Life

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been preserved and there is a selvedge at the bottom.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends up to the tacking edges. The first, thick, orange layer consists of orange, red and a few yellow and tiny black pigment particles. The second, thin, warm grey layer contains white, black and minute orange pigment particles.
Underdrawing Infrared reflectography faintly revealed fine lines of underdrawing in the skulls, describing their contours and indicating some elements, most clearly the eye sockets of the skull in the centre foreground. Several short, horizontal lines mark the separate parts of the candlestick.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the tacking edges. Two tones were used to block in the basic forms: a coarse white underpaint for the skulls and bones, and a finely ground beige one for the flowers and leaves. The background and architecture were brought up to and slightly over these forms, leaving them as reserves. The shapes were refined by working back and forth between the background and the objects. Addition and modelling of the shadows and highlights further defined the objects and only partially covered the underpaint, which serves as a mid-tone. The flowers and leaves were clearly completed over the reserved underpaint and the background. The seals, candle, paper and books were all placed wet in wet over the completed background. In the final stage the small shadows and details of the skulls were applied, with the highlights of the skull in the centre foreground added as the finishing touch. The cover of the book leaning against two others was first a light sandy brown colour and was later changed to red.
Laurent Sozzani, 2024

Good. Small nail holes along the perimeter on the front are the result of stretching after a previous lining. The varnish is oxidized and discoloured.

…; ? anonymous sale [section Rotteveel], Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 26 January 1869 sqq., no. 213 (‘Doodshoofden’), fl. 5.25, to Hopman;¹¹Copy RKD. sale, Jan Hendrick Cremer (1813-1885, Arnhem and Ixelles), Amsterdam (F. Muller et al.), 26 October 1886, no. 81, fl. 149.50, to R.W.P. de Vries, for the museum²²NHA, ARS, IS, inv. 166, nos. 100-01 (25 October 1886), 102 (26 October 1886).

ObjectNumber: SK-A-1342

This depiction of six skulls arranged so as to be seen from multiple angles represents a virtuoso tour de force within this otherwise conventional vanitas still life by Aelbert van der Schoor. While the hourglass, roses, candle, books and documents constitute typical vanitas iconography, there is no known parallel in seventeenth-century Dutch painting to Van der Schoor’s complex configuration of human skulls and bones.⁵⁵For an overview of vanitas iconography and its various interpretations, see A. Chong, ‘Contained under the Name of Still Life: The Associations of Still-Life Painting’, in A. Chong and W.T. Kloek (eds.), Still-Life Paintings from the Netherlands 1550-1720, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Cleveland (The Cleveland Museum of Art) 1999-2000, pp. 11-37, esp. pp. 13-15. Very few vanitas scenes were painted in Utrecht. An exception is one by Abraham Bloemaert with a skull, bones and hourglass,⁶⁶Present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in M.G. Roethlisberger, ‘Abraham Bloemaert’s Vanitas Representations’, Delineavit et sculpsit, no. 5 (1991), pp. 20-27, esp. p. 22, fig. 4. which was reproduced in an engraving and may have influenced Van der Schoor’s decision to explore this genre.⁷⁷It has been suggested that there was once a second vanitas still life painting by Bloemaert; M.G. Roethlisberger, ‘Abraham Bloemaert’s Vanitas Representations’, Delineavit et sculpsit, no. 5 (1991), pp. 20-27, esp. p. 21.

The present composition contains many of the same objects that feature in Van der Schoor’s only other extant vanitas, which is from 1662 and shows, unlike here, a bust.⁸⁸Present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in P. van den Brink, ‘Aelbert Jansz. van der Schoor, een Utrechts schilder en zijn werk’, Jaarboek Oud-Utrecht 1998, pp. 139-68, esp. p. 144, fig. 4. They include an hourglass, roses and the two large red seals. The latter, displayed prominently in both of his works, are unusual among contemporary still lifes. It has been suggested that they are official Utrecht seals, although there is no evidence for this.⁹⁹P. van den Brink, ‘Aelbert Jansz. van der Schoor, een Utrechts schilder en zijn werk’, Jaarboek Oud-Utrecht 1998, pp. 139-68, esp. p. 145. While the clearly visible coat of arms on the left-hand one in the 1662 picture may represent the city of Utrecht, the seal on the left in this vanitas has a more ambiguous architectural structure that has yet to be identified. The compositional sophistication of the Rijksmuseum scene compared to Van der Schoor’s earliest still life of 1657,¹⁰¹⁰Present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in P. van den Brink, ‘Aelbert Jansz. van der Schoor, een Utrechts schilder en zijn werk’, Jaarboek Oud-Utrecht 1998, pp. 139-68, esp. p. 144, fig. 5. as well as its similarities to his 1662 vanitas with a bust, suggest that it probably also dates from the very end of his career. A painting of multiple skulls by Van der Schoor listed in an 1869 sale catalogue may be the present canvas.¹¹¹¹See Provenance.

It has been suggested that the intricate configuration of skulls and bones was inspired by Barthel Beham’s memento mori engravings from the first half of the sixteenth century.¹²¹²R.A. Koch (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, XV, New York 1978, pp. 19-20, nos. 27, 28; Tapié in A. Tapié (ed.), Les vanités dans la peinture au XVIIe siècle: Méditations sur la richesse, le dénuement et la rédemption, exh. cat. Caen (Musée des Beaux-Arts)/Paris (Musée du Petit Palais) 1990-91, p. 280, no. O.29. Van der Schoor’s limited palette and close attention to the interplay of light and shadow on each individual skull translate Beham’s prints effectively into another medium. Strikingly similar in composition, Van der Schoor’s painting and Beham’s engravings underscore the virtuosity of the artist by tackling the difficult rendering of a skull seen from below. Another device adopted by both of them is the intersection of skulls and other bones, such as femurs, at various angles. In the Rijksmuseum work there is an added trompe l’oeil effect where the bones and flowers project illusionistically over the edge of the table. Van der Schoor also used this motif in his 1657 painting of a young boy with fish as well as in his 1662 vanitas with a bust, and it can be traced back to Bloemaert’s aforementioned still life with a skull, bones and hourglass. The artist’s ambitious composition is also reminiscent of vanitas scenes by the Spanish painter Antonio de Pereda (1611-1678), who frequently employed highly detailed and complex arrangements of skulls.¹³¹³See, for example, W.B. Jordan (ed.), Spanish Still Life in the Golden Age 1600-1650, exh. cat. Fort Worth (Kimbell Art Museum)/Toledo (Toledo Museum of Art) 1985, p. 216, no. 40, p. 217, no. 41; W.B. Jordan and P. Cherry (eds.), Spanish Still Life from Velázquez to Goya, exh. cat. London (The National Gallery) 1995, p. 82, no. 59. It cannot be demonstrated, though, that Van der Schoor knew Pereda’s work, so it is more plausible that both of them were influenced by Beham’s sixteenth-century precedent.¹⁴¹⁴A connection between Pereda’s paintings and Beham’s engravings was proposed by Díaz Padrón in M. Díaz Padrón (ed.), El arte en la época de Calderón, exh. cat. Madrid (Palacio de Velázquez) 1981-82, pp. 77-78, no. 47.

Nadia Baadj, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Tapié in A. Tapié (ed.), Les vanités dans la peinture au XVIIe siècle: Méditations sur la richesse, le dénuement et la rédemption, exh. cat. Caen (Musée des Beaux-Arts)/Paris (Musée du Petit Palais) 1990-91, pp. 280-81; P. van den Brink, ‘Aelbert Jansz. van der Schoor, een Utrechts schilder en zijn werk’, Oud Holland 108 (1994), pp. 37-58, esp. p. 57, no. 31; P. van den Brink, ‘Aelbert Jansz. van der Schoor, een Utrechts schilder en zijn werk’, Jaarboek Oud-Utrecht 1998, pp. 139-68, esp. p. 162, no. 34; A. Chong, ‘Contained under the Name of Still Life: The Associations of Still-Life Painting’, in A. Chong and W.T. Kloek (eds.), Still-Life Paintings from the Netherlands 1550-1720, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Cleveland (The Cleveland Museum of Art) 1999-2000, pp. 11-37, esp. pp. 13-15, 30

1887, p. 155, no. 1312; 1903, p. 243, no. 2165; 1976, p. 507, no. A 1342

Nadia Baadj, 2024, 'Aelbert Jansz. van der Schoor, Vanitas Still Life, c. 1660 - c. 1665', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5422