Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
Samuel van Hoogstraten
Introduction à la haute école de peinture [Introduction to the High School of Painting]
Edited by Jan Blanc
Librarie Droz S.A. 2006
Isbn 2-600-01068-8
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| Samuel van Hoogstraten, Self-portrait, 1647 ca, Hermitage, St, Petersburg Source: Wikimedia Commons |
[1] In Book IX (The theory of art of XVII and XVIII centuries), Chapter III (The theory of the baroque art of other regions - in addition to Italy and France -) of his Letteratura artistica, Schlosser wrote (p. 641): "Very sober in their manifestations are the Low Countries (and in particular the Netherlands), namely the land that had developed a totally original and unique art, opening and preparing the work of the moderns. The great didascalic poem by Samuel van Hoogstraten in Dordrecht (1641), a pupil of Rembrandt, reveals him as a rhetorician with a classical and Romance formation, which makes him look substantially similar to the academician Gérard de Lairesse from Wallonia, whose Schilderboeck had reached a very large diffusion. These representatives of the official theory tell us little or nothing new. We very strongly feel the lack of direct manifestations of the artists in this environment, who in their extreme soberness - think of the few letters of Rembrandt - detached themselves so sharply from the profusion not only of southerners, but also of a Rubens. These artists diligently painted in their ateliers, but rarely spoke, and they were miles away from any literary aspiration. The little loquacious Holland almost muted, in the eighteenth century, with its art, to fall afterwards in a complete silence."
True, as already Schlosser wrote in his dedication of the work to Karl Vossler, the Letteratura artistica focused mainly on Italy, "with which only I wanted to deal first", but the opinion expressed on the Netherlands, though perhaps not without some underlying truth, is however substantially unsatisfactory and rushed. The only few words devoted to the work of van Hoogstraten show that Schlosser’s assessment was too hasty: while we can agree that it is indeed not a poem (but simply a treatise in which some poems are published too), we cannot refrain from thinking that dating the edition in 1641 was a clamorous mistake. This cannot be true, as van Hoogstraten (1627-1678) would have published the Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst when he was only fourteen. The authority unanimously recognized to Schlosser (it must be indeed said that his mistakes can be counted on the fingers of one hand) also meant that this misunderstanding on van Hoogstraten was often perpetuated over time.
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| Samuel von Hoogstraten, Still Life, 1664, Dordrechts Museum Source: Wikimedia Commons |
[2] The first translation from Dutch into French of the Inleyding (edited by Jan Blanc) allows us to shed light on many aspects about the life and the work of Samuel van Hoogstraten . Coming from a family of artists, Samuel was early directed towards that profession from his father Dirck. In his artistic training years, the time spent in the studio of Rembrandt (1642-1647) undoubtedly had a fundamental weight. The artistic career of Samuel seems to have been quit satisfying, allowed him to travel to Vienna, Italy and London and was full of economic satisfactions, a non-secondary aspect. Van Hoogstraten returned to his native Dordrecht only in 1671 and devoted the last years of his life to write the Inleyding. The work was published in Rotterdam in 1678 (a few months before his death) by François van Hoogstraten (Samuel's brother) without any particular success, as the 1678 one is the only edition before this modern version, edited by Jan Blanc.
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| Samuel van Hoogstraten, View of a Corridor, 1662, National Trust, Dirham Park Source: Wikimedia Commons |
[3] The full title (translated into French) of the work of van Hoogstraten is as follows: Introduction à la haute école de l’art de peinture ou le monde visible, divisée en neuf classes, chacune dirigée par une des Muses, tres nécessaire, pour l’enseignement à toux ceux qui pratiquent cet art noble, libre et haut, à ceux qui cherchent à l’apprendre avec diligence ou à ceux qui l’aiment quelque peu décrite par Samuel van Hoogstraten. The reference to the "visible world" becomes understandable if one takes into account that - as pointed out by the author in the work and also as reported by Arnold Houbraken, Hoogstraten's biographer - a second work should have been be added to the Inleyding, dealing with the "invisible world" (see p. 20-21 for the only presumed contents of the "invisible world").
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| Samuel van Hoogstraten, The Anemic Lady, 1667 ca, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam Source: Wikimedia Commons |
[4] “L'Inleyding est constitué de deux parties principales: une partie introductive, constituée d’un commentaire du frontispice principal de l’ouvrage, d’une dédicace adressée aux bourgmestres de Dordrecht, d’une serie de poèmes d’éloge... et d’une préface; et le texte à proprement parler, divisé en neuf livres successivement patronnés par le Muses Euterpe (I), Polymnie (II), Clio (III), Erato (IV), Thalie (V), Terpsichore (VI), Melpomène (VII), Calliope (VIII) et Uranie (IX). Une table des matières exhaustive et des errata complètent le volume” (p. 39). The author is not interested in designing ‘biographical medallions’ on the great art masters of the Netherlands, following the examples of Vasari and van Mander, but rather shapes a two-fold project: representing, on the one hand, a moment of theoretical reflection on the art of painting and, on the other hand, informing about art techniques, even with didactic purposes. He mainly aims at defending the social position of the artist, to cope with the risk that his work would be debased to the level of a mechanical art. “...chaque livre de l’Inleyding est divisé en une dizaine de chapitres, parfois précédés par une courte introduction. Dans le livre premier, dédié à Euterpe, Van Hoogstraten justifie son ouvrage, explique comment il est possible de reconnaître chez une jeune garçon les capacités d’un futur peintre, et aborde la question du dessin. Au livre II de Polymnie, le théoricien traite des problèmes de l’anatomie ainsi que de la répresentation du corps humain – en particulier des proportions et du portrait. Le livre III de Clio et le livre IV d’Erato sont consacrés à la rèvue des différents genres de la peinture, et en particulier de l’histoire, que Van Hoogstraten érige au sommet de la peinture, en tant qu’art universel, et auquel il impose un certain nombre de règles et de principes. Dans le livre V de Thalie, il est question de composition, au livre VI de Terpsichore, de couleur et de coloris, au livre VII de Melpomène d’ombres et de lumières ainsi que de perspective. Le livre VIII de Calliope voit Van Hoogstraten revenir sur certains points qu’il avait laissés en suspens regardant la peinture d’histoire et réfléchir sur la problématique de la beauté et de sa détermination par des règles. Enfin, le livre IX est consacré à un inventaire des peintures, de leurs formes et de leurs usages, ainsi qu’à une présentation des motivations de l’artiste”(p. 42).
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| Samuel van Hoogstraten, Man at a Window, 1653, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna Source: Wikimedia Commons |
[5] An original booklet containing 16 pages of errata is conserved in the book, since “lors de l’impression, les lignes se trouvant avant et après les illustrations des pages 399, 409, 410 et 412 ont malencontreusement disparu. L’intégralité du texte est restitué dans le présent cahier [n.d.r. reproducing pages from 399 up to 412], à conserver encarté dans le volume.” "
[6] In December 7, 2006 Alexis Merle du Bourg published a review of the book on the site www.latribunedelart.fr: the text, which you can read it here is not particularly forthcoming either on Van Hoogstraten’s work or on the work of the curator of this edition.
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