Matthias Withoos also known as Calzetta Bianca and Calzetti, was a Dutch painter of still lifes and city scenes, best-known for the details of insects, reptiles and undergrowth in the foreground of his pictures.

Biography

Withoos was born in Amersfoort

Amersfoort

Amersfoort is a municipality and the second largest city of the province of Utrecht in central Netherlands. The city is growing quickly but has a well-preserved and protected medieval centre. Amersfoort is one of the largest railway junctions in the country, because of its location on two of the...

. He studied under Jacob van Campen

Jacob van Campen

Jacob van Campen , was a Dutch artist and architect of the Golden Age.-Life:He was born into a wealthy family at Haarlem, and spent his youth in his home town. Being of noble birth and with time on his hands, he took up painting mainly as a pastime...

, at his painters' school just outside the city at his country house, and then with Otto Marseus van Schrieck

Otto Marseus van Schrieck

Otto Marseus van Schrieck was a painter in the Dutch Golden Age.-Biography:Marseus van Schrieck spent the years 1648-1657 in Rome and Florence with the painters Matthias Withoos and Willem van Aelst, after which he settled in Amsterdam. He is best known for his paintings of forest flora and fauna...

. When he was 21, Withoos made a trip to Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 with Van Schrieck, and Willem van Aelst

Willem van Aelst

Willem van Aelst was a Dutch artist who specialized in still-life painting with flowers or game.-Biography:...

. There they joined the group of northern artists known as the "Bentvueghels

Bentvueghels

The Bentvueghels were a society of mostly Dutch and Flemish artists active in Rome from about 1620 to 1720. They are also known as the Schildersbent .-Activities:...

" ("Birds of a feather"), and Withoos went by the alias "Calzetta Bianca" ("White Hose

Hose (clothing)

Hose are any of various styles of men's clothing for the legs and lower body, worn from the Middle Ages through the 17th century, when the term fell out of use in favor of breeches and stockings. The old plural form of "hose" was hosen...

")—a translation of his name into Italian. Withoos' work caught the eye of the cardinal Leopoldo de Medici, who commissioned various paintings from him.

In 1653, the artist returned to Amersfoort. When French troops occupied Amersfoort in the "Disastrous Year" of 1672, Withoos fled from Amersfoort to Hoorn, where he would remain until his death in 1703. Following the artist's career as a painter of cityscapes, his student Caspar van Wittel

Caspar van Wittel

Gaspar van Wittel was a Dutch Golden Age landscape painter.-Biography:Van Wittel was born in Amersfoort...

 was instrumental in developing the genre of architecture vedute in Rome. Many of Withoos' seven children also followed in his footsteps, including the botanical artist Alida Withoos

Alida Withoos

Alida Withoos was a Dutch botanical artist and painter. She was the daughter of the painter Matthias Withoos.-Life:...

.

Works

Still life paintings by Withoos, like those of his teacher Van Schrieck, are notable for their close-ups of dark and mysterious wild plants and undergrowth inhabited by insects, reptiles and other creatures from the natural world. These paintings, many of which have a vanitas

Vanitas

In the arts, vanitas is a type of symbolic work of art especially associated with Northern European still life painting in Flanders and the Netherlands in the 16th and 17th centuries, though also common in other places and periods. The word is Latin, meaning "emptiness" and loosely translated...

 motif, were popular with collectors of cabinet painting

Cabinet painting

A cabinet painting is a small painting, typically no larger than about two feet in either dimension, but often much smaller. The term is especially used of paintings that show full-length figures at a small scale, as opposed to say a head painted nearly life-size, and that are painted very...

s.

Additionally, he painted numerous large cityscapes, such as the View of the city of Amersfoort acquired in 2001 by the Museum Flehite in Amersfoort. This 2.5 x 4 m work was part of the largest city view in the Netherlands. Two versions of "De Grashaven" (Grashaven) by him were in the Westfries Museum

Westfries Museum

The Westfries Museum is a museum of regional history established in the Dutch city of Hoorn.It was opened on 10 January 1880 and has been established in a monumental building dating to 1632. This building originally belonged to the Gecommitteerde Raden van West-Friesland en het Noorderkwartier, as...

in Hoorn until they were stolen at the end of 2005.

External links

• http://www.vtha.nl/toposite/nieuws/02-12/2leden.pdf