Cornelis Ketel
Encyclopedia
Cornelis or Cornelius Ketel (18 March 1548 – 8 August 1616) was a Dutch
Mannerist
painter
, active in Elizabethan
London
from 1573 to 1581, and in Amsterdam
from 1581 to the early 17th century, now known essentially as a portrait-painter, though he was also a poet and orator, and from 1595 began to sculpt
as well.
According to Ketel's biography, written by his contemporary Karel van Mander, he seems to have wanted to concentrate on the most prestigious of the hierarchy of genres
, history painting
, which included mythological subjects, but after he left France he is known almost entirely as a portrait-painter. Neither England nor Holland had much demand for large history paintings during his lifetime, and none of Ketel's histories or allegorical paintings are known to have survived intact, although drawings and prints survive. He did however significantly influence the development of the largest type of painting commonly produced in the United Provinces
at this period, the civic group portrait.
Ketel was born out of wedlock in Gouda
in 1548 and apprenticed to his uncle Cornelis Jacobsz. Ketel (died c. 1568) at age 11. He is said to have been encouraged to pursue a career in painting by the stained glass
painter Dirck Crabeth, whose brother Wouter's wife may have been related to Ketel. He studied under Anthonie Blocklandt
in Delft
, c. 1565, before travelling to Paris
where he lived with Jean de la Hame, glass-painter to King Charles IX
. From Paris he went to Fontainebleau
, where he was working in 1566, in the final years of the First School of Fontainebleau
, a sojourn which was no doubt decisive in forming his taste for Mannerist allegory. He was forced to leave France
in 1567 when all citizens of the Habsburg Netherlands
were expelled.
He returned to Gouda, but the economy there was severely hit by the occupation of the city in 1572 by the Geuzen
or rebels, followed in 1573 by a plague which killed 20% of the population; the Dutch Revolt
was entering a new and deeper phase that destabilised daily life throughout the Netherlands. By 1573 Ketel is recorded in England
, and was one of several exiled Netherlandish artists active at the Tudor court
in the 1570s. His friend Carel van Mander notes his portrait of Sir Christopher Hatton
, of the Earl of Oxford
, and various noblemen, their wives and children. In 1578, permission was granted for a portrait of Queen Elizabeth
, when on a visit to the duchess of Somerset at Hamworth House.
Finding no market in England for his preferred allegorical subjects, Ketel returned to the Low Countries before 1581, where he later introduced the full-length group portrait format to the Dutch burghers with great success, and seems still to have been mostly commissioned as a portraitist. The Dutch taste emerging from the revolt was hostile to Mannerist allegory and even to simpler mythological subjects in art, which were widely associated with the hated Habsburg
s, the rulers against whom the Dutch were rebelling. He also painted some religious subjects.
Cornelis van der Voort
(born ca. 1576) is thought to have been a pupil of Ketel's; he became a successful Amsterdam portraitist. The Danish-born Pieter Isaacsz
was certainly a pupil, and van Mander mentions others. The early 18th-century Gouda historian Ignatius Walvis says that the artist Wouter Pietersz. Crabeth (1594–1644), grandson and namesake of the glass-painter, studied under Ketel. Ketel suffered a stroke in 1613 and died in Amsterdam
in 1616.
Ketel quickly established himself as a successful painter of portraits in London. Karel van Mander records that Ketel was patronized by the prosperous German Hansa
merchants of the Steelyard
and that a Force overcome by Wisdom and Prudence commissioned from him and presented to Sir Christopher Hatton
introduced him to court circles. Hatton commissioned a portrait and Queen Elizabeth I
sat to him in 1578. Ketel's large output in these years, much of which is now lost, can be estimated by the quantity of his known commissions. In 1577 Ketel was commissioned to paint a series of 19 portraits for the Cathay Company, one of which is the famous (but very damaged) full-length of Martin Frobisher
now in the Bodleian Library
. and several "great" paintings of the Inuit man Frobisher had brought back to England. Ketel's self-portrait, which was engraved by Hendrick Bary, is in the Royal Collection
. Recently, a series of head-and-shoulders paintings of members of the family of Thomas "Customer" Smythe
dated 1579, now widely dispersed, has been identified as the work of Cornelis Ketel.
Records indicate that Ketel charged ₤1 for a head-and-shoulders
portrait and ₤5 for a full-length. Nicholas Hilliard
, then in his prime as a painter of portrait miniature
s, typically charged £3 for a miniature.
Some of Ketel's history paintings are documented in various ways, including a Democritus
and a Heraclitus
copied very brilliantly by Rembrandt aged around thirteen, when he was training with Pieter Lastman
in Amsterdam. These were perhaps tronie
s, the Dutch genre of imaginary portraits of mythological or historical persons. A van Mander story describes a peasant trying to explain a Ketel Danae
to his wife, and getting it confused with an Annunciation
.
Ketel's 1588 The Company of Captain Rosecrans, the earliest Dutch group portrait where the figures are shown standing and full length, "greatly influenced later artists of militia pieces, such as Rembrandt in his Night Watch
of 1642."—to whom one should add Frans Hals
and Bartholomeus van der Helst
—and set an Amsterdam tradition; Hals's Harlem groups are from knee-height only, but his great Amsterdam group is full-length. However, Ketel, like Hals, spread his sitters laterally at irregular intervals, but kept them all in a row at the front of the picture space; it was left to Rembrandt to spread his subjects deep into the picture-space as well. The picture has been trimmed on all sides, especially above; originally the city gate in front of which the group are standing was much more prominent, and in this respect closer to the Night Watch. The group also carry their weapons indoors, another innovation.
Together with Pieter Pietersz, Ketel was the leading portraitist in Amsterdam for many years, and one of the generation of Dutch portrait-painters whose increasingly sophisticated work laid the foundations for their much more famous successors. Whereas in England portraits in oils remained mostly confined to the court and gentry, in the Netherlands they were already common among the prosperous mercantile classes. Ketel lived near Oude Kerk, where he bought in 1593 a house on the so-called "Velvet Canal". Both Ketel and Pietersz developed an Amsterdam style often marked by depicting sitters "very close to the picture plane, from an unusual angle, and cropped closely by the frame" (see Double Portrait of a Brother and Sister, below). Ketel seems to have kept a stock of drawings of poses, from which a patron might choose, and which could be worked up by studio assistants without the sitter's presence being required. Van Mander records that around 1600 he at times discarded his brush and painted directly with his fingers, and even developed the trick of painting with his feet and toes—presumably just for short periods. This may have been to amuse himself and his sitters, to relieve boredom. An alternative, perhaps more likely, explanation, is that he was forced to do so by a progressive paralysis, perhaps arthritic
, which finally completely overcame him by 1610–1613.
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
Mannerist
Mannerism
Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, active in Elizabethan
Elizabethan era
The Elizabethan era was the epoch in English history of Queen Elizabeth I's reign . Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history...
London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
from 1573 to 1581, and in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
from 1581 to the early 17th century, now known essentially as a portrait-painter, though he was also a poet and orator, and from 1595 began to sculpt
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
as well.
According to Ketel's biography, written by his contemporary Karel van Mander, he seems to have wanted to concentrate on the most prestigious of the hierarchy of genres
Hierarchy of genres
A hierarchy of genres is any formalization which ranks different genres in an art form in terms of their prestige and cultural value....
, history painting
History painting
History painting is a genre in painting defined by subject matter rather than an artistic style, depicting a moment in a narrative story, rather than a static subject such as a portrait...
, which included mythological subjects, but after he left France he is known almost entirely as a portrait-painter. Neither England nor Holland had much demand for large history paintings during his lifetime, and none of Ketel's histories or allegorical paintings are known to have survived intact, although drawings and prints survive. He did however significantly influence the development of the largest type of painting commonly produced in the United Provinces
Dutch Republic
The Dutch Republic — officially known as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands , the Republic of the United Netherlands, or the Republic of the Seven United Provinces — was a republic in Europe existing from 1581 to 1795, preceding the Batavian Republic and ultimately...
at this period, the civic group portrait.
Life
Gouda
Gouda is a city and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. Gouda, which was granted city rights in 1272, is famous for its Gouda cheese, smoking pipes, and 15th-century city hall....
in 1548 and apprenticed to his uncle Cornelis Jacobsz. Ketel (died c. 1568) at age 11. He is said to have been encouraged to pursue a career in painting by the stained glass
Stained glass
The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works produced from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings...
painter Dirck Crabeth, whose brother Wouter's wife may have been related to Ketel. He studied under Anthonie Blocklandt
Anthonie van Montfoort
Anthonie Blocklandt van Montfoort, Anthonie van Blocklandt or Anthonie van Montfoort was a Dutch painter-Life:...
in Delft
Delft
Delft is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland , the Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam and The Hague....
, c. 1565, before travelling to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
where he lived with Jean de la Hame, glass-painter to King Charles IX
Charles IX of France
Charles IX was King of France, ruling from 1560 until his death. His reign was dominated by the Wars of Religion. He is best known as king at the time of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.-Childhood:...
. From Paris he went to Fontainebleau
Château de Fontainebleau
The Palace of Fontainebleau, located 55 kilometres from the centre of Paris, is one of the largest French royal châteaux. The palace as it is today is the work of many French monarchs, building on an early 16th century structure of Francis I. The building is arranged around a series of courtyards...
, where he was working in 1566, in the final years of the First School of Fontainebleau
School of Fontainebleau
The Ecole de Fontainebleau refers to two periods of artistic production in France during the late Renaissance centered around the royal Château de Fontainebleau, that were crucial in forming the French version of Northern Mannerism....
, a sojourn which was no doubt decisive in forming his taste for Mannerist allegory. He was forced to leave France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
in 1567 when all citizens of the Habsburg Netherlands
Habsburg Netherlands
The Habsburg Netherlands was a geo-political entity covering the whole of the Low Countries from 1482 to 1556/1581 and solely the Southern Netherlands from 1581 to 1794...
were expelled.
He returned to Gouda, but the economy there was severely hit by the occupation of the city in 1572 by the Geuzen
Geuzen
Geuzen was a name assumed by the confederacy of Calvinist Dutch nobles and other malcontents, who from 1566 opposed Spanish rule in the Netherlands. The most successful group of them operated at sea, and so were called Watergeuzen...
or rebels, followed in 1573 by a plague which killed 20% of the population; the Dutch Revolt
Dutch Revolt
The Dutch Revolt or the Revolt of the Netherlands This article adopts 1568 as the starting date of the war, as this was the year of the first battles between armies. However, since there is a long period of Protestant vs...
was entering a new and deeper phase that destabilised daily life throughout the Netherlands. By 1573 Ketel is recorded in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, and was one of several exiled Netherlandish artists active at the Tudor court
Artists of the Tudor court
The artists of the Tudor court are the painters and limners engaged by the monarchs of England's Tudor dynasty and their courtiers between 1485 and 1603, from the reign of Henry VII to the death of Elizabeth I....
in the 1570s. His friend Carel van Mander notes his portrait of Sir Christopher Hatton
Christopher Hatton
Sir Christopher Hatton was an English politician, Lord Chancellor of England and a favourite of Elizabeth I of England.-Early days:...
, of the Earl of Oxford
Earl of Oxford
Earl of Oxford is a dormant title in the Peerage of England, held for several centuries by the de Vere family from 1141 until the death of the 20th earl in 1703. The Veres were also hereditary holders of the office of master or Lord Great Chamberlain from 1133 until the death of the 18th Earl in 1625...
, and various noblemen, their wives and children. In 1578, permission was granted for a portrait of Queen Elizabeth
Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
, when on a visit to the duchess of Somerset at Hamworth House.
Finding no market in England for his preferred allegorical subjects, Ketel returned to the Low Countries before 1581, where he later introduced the full-length group portrait format to the Dutch burghers with great success, and seems still to have been mostly commissioned as a portraitist. The Dutch taste emerging from the revolt was hostile to Mannerist allegory and even to simpler mythological subjects in art, which were widely associated with the hated Habsburg
Habsburg
The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...
s, the rulers against whom the Dutch were rebelling. He also painted some religious subjects.
Cornelis van der Voort
Cornelis van der Voort
Cornelis van der Voort or van der Voorde was a Dutch Golden Age portrait painter from the early 17th century.-Life:...
(born ca. 1576) is thought to have been a pupil of Ketel's; he became a successful Amsterdam portraitist. The Danish-born Pieter Isaacsz
Pieter Isaacsz
Pieter Isaacsz , was a Dutch Golden Age painter.-Biography:According to van Mander his father was from Haarlem and he learned to paint in Amsterdam for a year and a half by Cornelis Ketel, and later by Hans von Achen...
was certainly a pupil, and van Mander mentions others. The early 18th-century Gouda historian Ignatius Walvis says that the artist Wouter Pietersz. Crabeth (1594–1644), grandson and namesake of the glass-painter, studied under Ketel. Ketel suffered a stroke in 1613 and died in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
in 1616.
London years
Hanseatic League
The Hanseatic League was an economic alliance of trading cities and their merchant guilds that dominated trade along the coast of Northern Europe...
merchants of the Steelyard
Steelyard
The Steelyard, from the German Stalhof, was in the Middle Ages the main trading base of the Hanseatic League in London.-Location:It lay on the north bank of the Thames by the outflow of the Walbrook, in the Dowgate ward of the City of London. The site is now covered by Cannon Street station and...
and that a Force overcome by Wisdom and Prudence commissioned from him and presented to Sir Christopher Hatton
Christopher Hatton
Sir Christopher Hatton was an English politician, Lord Chancellor of England and a favourite of Elizabeth I of England.-Early days:...
introduced him to court circles. Hatton commissioned a portrait and Queen Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
sat to him in 1578. Ketel's large output in these years, much of which is now lost, can be estimated by the quantity of his known commissions. In 1577 Ketel was commissioned to paint a series of 19 portraits for the Cathay Company, one of which is the famous (but very damaged) full-length of Martin Frobisher
Martin Frobisher
Sir Martin Frobisher was an English seaman who made three voyages to the New World to look for the Northwest Passage...
now in the Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library
The Bodleian Library , the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library...
. and several "great" paintings of the Inuit man Frobisher had brought back to England. Ketel's self-portrait, which was engraved by Hendrick Bary, is in the Royal Collection
Royal Collection
The Royal Collection is the art collection of the British Royal Family. It is property of the monarch as sovereign, but is held in trust for her successors and the nation. It contains over 7,000 paintings, 40,000 watercolours and drawings, and about 150,000 old master prints, as well as historical...
. Recently, a series of head-and-shoulders paintings of members of the family of Thomas "Customer" Smythe
Customer Smythe
Thomas "Customer" Smythe was the collector of customs duties in London during the Tudor period. His son and namesake Sir Thomas Smythe was an active supporter of the Virginia colony.-Early life:...
dated 1579, now widely dispersed, has been identified as the work of Cornelis Ketel.
Records indicate that Ketel charged ₤1 for a head-and-shoulders
portrait and ₤5 for a full-length. Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard was an English goldsmith and limner best known for his portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I of England. He mostly painted small oval miniatures, but also some larger cabinet miniatures, up to about ten inches tall, and at least two famous...
, then in his prime as a painter of portrait miniature
Portrait miniature
A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, watercolour, or enamel.Portrait miniatures began to flourish in 16th century Europe and the art was practiced during the 17th century and 18th century...
s, typically charged £3 for a miniature.
Later works
Democritus
Democritus was an Ancient Greek philosopher born in Abdera, Thrace, Greece. He was an influential pre-Socratic philosopher and pupil of Leucippus, who formulated an atomic theory for the cosmos....
and a Heraclitus
Heraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom...
copied very brilliantly by Rembrandt aged around thirteen, when he was training with Pieter Lastman
Pieter Lastman
Pieter Lastman was a Dutch painter . Lastman is considered important because of his work as a painter of history pieces and because his pupils included Rembrandt and Jan Lievens...
in Amsterdam. These were perhaps tronie
Tronie
A tronie is a common type, or group of types, of works of Dutch Golden Age painting and Flemish Baroque painting that shows an exaggerated facial expression or a stock character in costume...
s, the Dutch genre of imaginary portraits of mythological or historical persons. A van Mander story describes a peasant trying to explain a Ketel Danae
Danaë
In Greek mythology, Danaë was a daughter of King Acrisius of Argos and Eurydice of Argos. She was the mother of Perseus by Zeus. She was sometimes credited with founding the city of Ardea in Latium....
to his wife, and getting it confused with an Annunciation
Annunciation
The Annunciation, also referred to as the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary or Annunciation of the Lord, is the Christian celebration of the announcement by the angel Gabriel to Virgin Mary, that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus the Son of God. Gabriel told Mary to name her...
.
Ketel's 1588 The Company of Captain Rosecrans, the earliest Dutch group portrait where the figures are shown standing and full length, "greatly influenced later artists of militia pieces, such as Rembrandt in his Night Watch
Night Watch (painting)
Night Watch or The Night Watch or The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq is the common name of one of the most famous works by Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn....
of 1642."—to whom one should add Frans Hals
Frans Hals
Frans Hals was a Dutch Golden Age painter. He is notable for his loose painterly brushwork, and helped introduce this lively style of painting into Dutch art. Hals was also instrumental in the evolution of 17th century group portraiture.-Biography:Hals was born in 1580 or 1581, in Antwerp...
and Bartholomeus van der Helst
Bartholomeus van der Helst
Bartholomeus van der Helst was a Dutch portrait painter.-Biography:Born in Haarlem, the son of a Haarlem innkeeper, Van der Helst moved to Amsterdam some time before 1636, for he was married there in that year...
—and set an Amsterdam tradition; Hals's Harlem groups are from knee-height only, but his great Amsterdam group is full-length. However, Ketel, like Hals, spread his sitters laterally at irregular intervals, but kept them all in a row at the front of the picture space; it was left to Rembrandt to spread his subjects deep into the picture-space as well. The picture has been trimmed on all sides, especially above; originally the city gate in front of which the group are standing was much more prominent, and in this respect closer to the Night Watch. The group also carry their weapons indoors, another innovation.
Together with Pieter Pietersz, Ketel was the leading portraitist in Amsterdam for many years, and one of the generation of Dutch portrait-painters whose increasingly sophisticated work laid the foundations for their much more famous successors. Whereas in England portraits in oils remained mostly confined to the court and gentry, in the Netherlands they were already common among the prosperous mercantile classes. Ketel lived near Oude Kerk, where he bought in 1593 a house on the so-called "Velvet Canal". Both Ketel and Pietersz developed an Amsterdam style often marked by depicting sitters "very close to the picture plane, from an unusual angle, and cropped closely by the frame" (see Double Portrait of a Brother and Sister, below). Ketel seems to have kept a stock of drawings of poses, from which a patron might choose, and which could be worked up by studio assistants without the sitter's presence being required. Van Mander records that around 1600 he at times discarded his brush and painted directly with his fingers, and even developed the trick of painting with his feet and toes—presumably just for short periods. This may have been to amuse himself and his sitters, to relieve boredom. An alternative, perhaps more likely, explanation, is that he was forced to do so by a progressive paralysis, perhaps arthritic
Arthritis
Arthritis is a form of joint disorder that involves inflammation of one or more joints....
, which finally completely overcame him by 1610–1613.