Vincent van der Vinne
Encyclopedia
Vincent Laurensz van der Vinne (Haarlem
, 1628–1702) was a Dutch Mennonite painter, linen-weaver, and writer.
for nine months in 1647. In 1649 he became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke
. In 1652 he left on a Grand Tour
through Germany
, Switzerland
and France
. For part of the trip he was accompanied by fellow painters Dirck Helmbreker
, Cornelis Bega
, Joost Boelen, and Guillam Dubois. This trip was recorded in Vincent van der Vinne's diaries and form an important archival record for the city of Haarlem.
in Haarlem in 1604, most young Haarlem painters wanted to see the Italian paintings in real life, and it became a common rite of passage, but not without dangers. Van der Vinne endured many hardships on his journey, including being kidnapped for a short period. He even stopped making sketches of the countryside at one point, because he feared to be mistaken for a military surveyor. Judging from a map of his travels, he seemed daunted by the Alps
, skirting them for weeks but never making the crossing, despite what appears to be 3 attempts to cross over to Turin
. He nevertheless makes no mention of this in his diaries, and seems to feel that his sole purpose all along was to explore Germany
and Switzerland
. He became embroiled in the Swiss peasant war of 1653
. On 10 May, Van der Vinne and his companions Boelen and Bega left Basel
for Bern and were taken prisoner by a group of farmers. The leader of these farmers, Niklaus Leuenberger
, let him and his companions go the next day. They returned to Basel and set off for Geneva
, sticking as much as possible to trails on the Burgundian side of the troubles, through Vaud
. This experience clearly cut off any plans of crossing the alps in the ways normally suggested by Van Mander's book, and Van der Vinne thus records an unusual journey that goes much farther west than his contemporaries from the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke
were accustomed to travelling. Cornelis Bega, who spoke no French at all, returned home, but Van der Vinne and Boelen stayed in Geneva for 15 months. The next spring they traveled further south to Lyon and spent some months in Tournon
. On the way back to Geneva, Boelen was molested by soldiers, having departed a few weeks before Van der Vinne. The borders were still very unsafe for travelers. Van der Vinne returned to Geneva on 12 April.
commanded the Waldensians
to attend Mass or remove to the upper valleys, giving them twenty days in which to sell their lands. In the name of his father, the Duke of Savoy
he sent an army and on 24 April, at 4 a.m., the signal was given for a general massacre so brutal, that it aroused indignation throughout Europe. Oliver Cromwell
began petitioning on behalf of the Vaudois, and John Milton
wrote his famous poem about this, "On the Late Massacre in Piedmont
." Just as Milton did, Van der Vinne expressed his own disgust and horror in a long poem, and the next month he decided to go home.
industry, van der Vinne quickly took to painting, and would take on any painting job no matter how small. According to Houbraken, this led to an oft-quoted comment by Job Adriaenszoon Berckheyde
, who claimed that he was "the Raffael
of sign-boards". When he spoke of his own work, van der Vinne often repeated the advice of his teacher Frans Hals, saying that "one must boldly smear the paint on; when you become confident in the art, then neatness will follow". What survives today from his hand are mostly still lifes and genre scenes, often with a similar arrangement of a vanitas items, and many include a trompe l'oeil portrait sketch on a paper hanging off a desk. In one of these, he has copied a crumpled drawing of himself by Leendert van der Cooghen
. His style was copied by Evert Collier
, Pieter van Eisen, and Barent van Eisen.
(1658–1729), Maeijke (1659–1689), Jan
(1663–1721), and Isaac (1665–1740). His sons all became successful painters.
In 1668 he remarried, to Catalijntje Boeckaert, with whom he had four more children who died in infancy. In 1676 he became a member of the fire department (pompmeester). In 1689 he became deacon of the Haarlem Mennonite community known as "de Blok". On 9 September 1693 he celebrated his 25th wedding anniversary, which was highly unusual.
, who added these painters to his list. Much later Vincent's grandson Vincent Jansz. van der Vinne (1736–1811), himself a painter, used this list again to compare the names with the dates of painters who had joined the Guild of St. Luke in Haarlem.
, Pieter Claesz
, Guillaum Dubois, and by himself and his sons.
Haarlem
Haarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland, the northern half of Holland, which at one time was the most powerful of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic...
, 1628–1702) was a Dutch Mennonite painter, linen-weaver, and writer.
Biography
He lived and worked in Haarlem and was a student of Frans HalsFrans 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...
for nine months in 1647. In 1649 he became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke
Haarlem Guild of St. Luke
The Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke was first a Christian, and later a city Guild for a large number of trades falling under the patron saints Luke the Evangelist and Saint Eligius.-History:...
. In 1652 he left on a Grand Tour
Grand Tour
The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...
through Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
and 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...
. For part of the trip he was accompanied by fellow painters Dirck Helmbreker
Dirck Helmbreker
Dirck Helmbreker, Theodor Helmbreeker, or Teodoro Elembrech was a Dutch Golden Age painter of Italianate landscapes.-Biography:...
, Cornelis Bega
Cornelis Pietersz Bega
Cornelis Pietersz Bega, or Cornelis Pietersz Begijn was a Dutch painter and engraver.He lived and worked in Haarlem and was the son of sculptor and goldsmith Pieter Jansz. Begijn. His mother Maria was the daughter of the Haarlem painter Cornelis van Haarlem. He assumed the name Bega when he...
, Joost Boelen, and Guillam Dubois. This trip was recorded in Vincent van der Vinne's diaries and form an important archival record for the city of Haarlem.
Grand tour
The purpose of a grand tour in those days was Italy, but van der Vinne never made it there. Since Karel van Mander published his Schilder-boeckSchilder-boeck
The Schilder-Boeck is a book by the art historian Karel van Mander written in 1604. It was actually compiled from three books in total; the first was a translation from Giorgio Vasari's list of artist biographies called the Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, the...
in Haarlem in 1604, most young Haarlem painters wanted to see the Italian paintings in real life, and it became a common rite of passage, but not without dangers. Van der Vinne endured many hardships on his journey, including being kidnapped for a short period. He even stopped making sketches of the countryside at one point, because he feared to be mistaken for a military surveyor. Judging from a map of his travels, he seemed daunted by the Alps
Alps
The Alps is one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west....
, skirting them for weeks but never making the crossing, despite what appears to be 3 attempts to cross over to Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
. He nevertheless makes no mention of this in his diaries, and seems to feel that his sole purpose all along was to explore Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
. He became embroiled in the Swiss peasant war of 1653
Swiss peasant war of 1653
The Swiss peasant war of 1653 was a popular revolt in the Old Swiss Confederacy at the time of the Ancien Régime. A devaluation of Bernese money caused a tax revolt that spread from the Entlebuch valley in the Canton of Lucerne to the Emmental valley in the Canton of Bern and then to the cantons of...
. On 10 May, Van der Vinne and his companions Boelen and Bega left Basel
Basel
Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...
for Bern and were taken prisoner by a group of farmers. The leader of these farmers, Niklaus Leuenberger
Niklaus Leuenberger
thumbNiklaus Leuenberger was a leader of the Swiss peasant war of 1653.He signed the Treaty of Mellingen along with Christian Schybi on June 4, 1653....
, let him and his companions go the next day. They returned to Basel and set off for Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, sticking as much as possible to trails on the Burgundian side of the troubles, through Vaud
Vaud
Vaud is one of the 26 cantons of Switzerland and is located in Romandy, the French-speaking southwestern part of the country. The capital is Lausanne. The name of the Canton in Switzerland's other languages are Vaud in Italian , Waadt in German , and Vad in Romansh.-History:Along the lakes,...
. This experience clearly cut off any plans of crossing the alps in the ways normally suggested by Van Mander's book, and Van der Vinne thus records an unusual journey that goes much farther west than his contemporaries from the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke
Haarlem Guild of St. Luke
The Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke was first a Christian, and later a city Guild for a large number of trades falling under the patron saints Luke the Evangelist and Saint Eligius.-History:...
were accustomed to travelling. Cornelis Bega, who spoke no French at all, returned home, but Van der Vinne and Boelen stayed in Geneva for 15 months. The next spring they traveled further south to Lyon and spent some months in Tournon
Tournon
Tournon is the name or part of the name of several communes in France:* Tournon, in the Savoie département* Tournon-d'Agenais, in the Lot-et-Garonne département* Tournon-Saint-Martin, in the Indre département...
. On the way back to Geneva, Boelen was molested by soldiers, having departed a few weeks before Van der Vinne. The borders were still very unsafe for travelers. Van der Vinne returned to Geneva on 12 April.
Massacre of the Waldensians
On 4 April 1655, Thomas Francis, Prince of CarignanoThomas Francis, Prince of Carignano
Thomas Francis of Savoy was an Italian military commander, the founder of the Savoy-Carignano branch of the House of Savoy which reigned as kings of Sardinia from 1831 to 1861, and as kings of Italy from 1861 until the...
commanded the Waldensians
Waldensians
Waldensians, Waldenses or Vaudois are names for a Christian movement of the later Middle Ages, descendants of which still exist in various regions, primarily in North-Western Italy. There is considerable uncertainty about the earlier history of the Waldenses because of a lack of extant source...
to attend Mass or remove to the upper valleys, giving them twenty days in which to sell their lands. In the name of his father, the Duke of Savoy
Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy
Charles Emmanuel I , known as the Great, was the Duke of Savoy from 1580 to 1630...
he sent an army and on 24 April, at 4 a.m., the signal was given for a general massacre so brutal, that it aroused indignation throughout Europe. Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....
began petitioning on behalf of the Vaudois, and John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
wrote his famous poem about this, "On the Late Massacre in Piedmont
On the Late Massacre in Piedmont
On the Late Massacre in Piedmont is a sonnet by the English poet John Milton inspired by the massacre of Waldensians in Piedmont by the Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy in April 1655.-The sonnet:Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones...
." Just as Milton did, Van der Vinne expressed his own disgust and horror in a long poem, and the next month he decided to go home.
Works
Though he started as a weaver working in Haarlem's famous white linen damaskDamask
Damask is a reversible figured fabric of silk, wool, linen, cotton, or synthetic fibers, with a pattern formed by weaving. Damasks are woven with one warp yarn and one weft yarn, usually with the pattern in warp-faced satin weave and the ground in weft-faced or sateen weave...
industry, van der Vinne quickly took to painting, and would take on any painting job no matter how small. According to Houbraken, this led to an oft-quoted comment by Job Adriaenszoon Berckheyde
Job Adriaenszoon Berckheyde
Job Adriaenszoon Berckheyde was a Dutch artist of the 17th century, active in Haarlem, Amsterdam, and The Hague.-Biography:...
, who claimed that he was "the Raffael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
of sign-boards". When he spoke of his own work, van der Vinne often repeated the advice of his teacher Frans Hals, saying that "one must boldly smear the paint on; when you become confident in the art, then neatness will follow". What survives today from his hand are mostly still lifes and genre scenes, often with a similar arrangement of a vanitas items, and many include a trompe l'oeil portrait sketch on a paper hanging off a desk. In one of these, he has copied a crumpled drawing of himself by Leendert van der Cooghen
Leendert van der Cooghen
-Biography:According to the RKD he was a painter of landscapes, portraits, and genre pieces, trained by Jacob Jordaens. According to Houbraken, he was descended from the Beresteyn family, and thus had enough money that he painted more as a hobby than as a profession. This was the reason that he...
. His style was copied by Evert Collier
Evert Collier
Evert Collier was a Dutch painter known for vanitas still-life and trompe l'oeil paintings...
, Pieter van Eisen, and Barent van Eisen.
Family of painters
He finally returned to Haarlem in 1655 and married Anneke Jansdr de Gaver in 1656, a widow with two small children. It was at this time that his portrait was painted by Frans Hals, probably as half of a pair of wedding portraits. When she died in 1668, he was left with four young children; LaurensLaurens van der Vinne
Laurens Vincentsz van der Vinne , was an 18th century painter from the Northern Netherlands.-Biography:According to Houbraken he was the oldest and artistically most gifted son of the painter Vincent van der Vinne. Laurens helped his father draw up the list of 173 members of the Haarlem Guild of...
(1658–1729), Maeijke (1659–1689), Jan
Jan Vincentsz van der Vinne
Jan Vincentsz van der Vinne , was an 18th century painter from the Northern Netherlands.-Biography:According to Houbraken he was one of the three sons of Vincent van der Vinne, "the one working more, and the other working less", in the arts.According to the RKD, except for a short stay in England...
(1663–1721), and Isaac (1665–1740). His sons all became successful painters.
In 1668 he remarried, to Catalijntje Boeckaert, with whom he had four more children who died in infancy. In 1676 he became a member of the fire department (pompmeester). In 1689 he became deacon of the Haarlem Mennonite community known as "de Blok". On 9 September 1693 he celebrated his 25th wedding anniversary, which was highly unusual.
Important archive source for Haarlem guild
By the time he became a widower, Van der Vinne was an established painter in Haarlem and had served on the board of the St Luke's guild in 1661 and 1662. In their archives is a list in his hand of 173 painters he considered competent. This list was edited by his son Laurens in 1702 with 157 'd's to indicate which of these artists had died before his father, and added to his Geslagt-Register, which was a description of active painters from the Haarlem guild. This list was used as a source for Arnold HoubrakenArnold Houbraken
Arnold Houbraken was a Dutch painter and writer from Dordrecht, now remembered mainly as a biographer of artists from the Dutch Golden Age. He had ten children. His son Jacobus Houbraken was an engraver of portraits and book illustrations, including books by his father...
, who added these painters to his list. Much later Vincent's grandson Vincent Jansz. van der Vinne (1736–1811), himself a painter, used this list again to compare the names with the dates of painters who had joined the Guild of St. Luke in Haarlem.
Source for Arnold Houbraken
Van der Vinne's diaries, which he embellished on his return, were never published in his lifetime, but were used by Houbraken for his great work on Dutch painters, the Schouburg. The Vincent van der Vinne diaries, accompanied by modern commentary were published in Dutch in 1979. When Van der Vinne died he left a will of 20 pages, and among several properties, he owned paintings by Karel van Mander, Hans Gillisz. BollongierHans Gillisz. Bollongier
Hans Gillisz. Bollongier or Boulenger was a Dutch Golden Age still life flower painter.-Biography:Bollongier was born in Haarlem. According to the RKD little is known of his early life. He became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St...
, Pieter Claesz
Pieter Claesz
Pieter Claesz was a Dutch Golden Age still life painter.-Biography:He was born in Berchem, Belgium, near Antwerp, where he became a member of the Guild of St. Luke in 1620. He moved to Haarlem in 1621, where his son, the landscape painter Nicolaes Pieterszoon Berchem was born...
, Guillaum Dubois, and by himself and his sons.
External links
- Memento Mori, a still life in the Permanent Collection of the Utah Museum of Fine ArtsUtah Museum of Fine ArtsThe Utah Museum of Fine Arts is Utah's primary resource for culture and visual arts. It is located in Salt Lake City, Utah on the University of Utah campus near Rice–Eccles Stadium. Works of art are displayed on a rotating basis. It is a university and state art museum...