Allegory of Paintingca. 1675–79

Jacob Toorenvliet(Leiden 1640 – 1719 Leiden)

oil on copper
24.6 x 31 cm
possible traces of signature, bottom left
JT-106

How To Cite
Aono, Junko. "Allegory of Painting." In The Leiden Collection Catalogue. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
New York, 2017.
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Allegory of Painting
Page 2 of 9

A recurrent theme in Jacob Toorenvliet’s oeuvre is that of common people

Comparative Figures

engaged in everyday activities, but on at least six occasions he painted
abstract allegories, one of the finest of these being Allegory ofPainting.[1] Although seemingly situated within an ordinary Dutch interior
complete with a table covered with a colorful carpet, bookshelf, hanging
curtain, and an inquisitive dog, numerous pictorial elements in this work
have symbolic associations that distinguish it from Toorenvliet’s genrepictures. The objects near the woman in the light blue dress, including apalette with brushes, a mahlstick, and a painting on an easel in thebackground, indicate that she is an allegorical figure personifying the art ofpainting. As she points to the open book she holds with her left hand, sheturns her head toward the old man in a mantle who is about to crown her
with a laurel wreath. He wears a similar wreath and rests his hand on acelestial globe, as if trying to draw the viewer’s attention to it.

Fig 1. Detail of plaster castof Bacchanal with Children and a
Goat in Jacob
Toorenvliet, Allegory ofPainting (JT-106)

The identity of the bearded old man is made clear through a comparison ofthis painting with Toorenvliet’s Allegory of Painting Inspired by Poetry .[2] In
this latter work, a bearded man similarly adorns a female personification ofpainting with a wreath of laurel, but here he not only wears a laurel branch
but also a label identifying him as Poesia (Poetry). The message is clear:
poetry inspires the art of painting, a conceit that had its origins in Horace’s
dictum that poetry and painting should be considered as sister arts (utpictura poesis).[3] The relationship of painting to poetry was articulated as

Fig 2. Detail ofsketchbook in Jacob Toorenvliet,
Allegory of Painting (JT-106)“Poetry in painting keeps silent, while painting in poetry speaks” in the text
describing the allegorical concept of Painting in Cesare Ripa’s popular
Iconologia,an[4]acquainted.

emblembookwith

whichToorenvlietwaswellThe celestial globe on which the old man rests his hand isalso an appropriate attribute for an allegorical figure of Poetry. In hisdiscussion of the concept, Ripa describes Poetry as wearing a laurel
wreath, since the origin of verse is in Heaven.[5] Furthermore, the book towhich the woman points signifies that the art of painting should be basedon literary tradition, thereby proclaiming the absolute superiority of thecategory of history painting.
Toorenvliet probably executed this skillfully finished painting in Vienna
around 1675–79, where he lived and worked from the late 1660s until
1679. He produced most of his copper paintings during that period of hiscareer.[6] In Vienna, moreover, Toorenvliet further developed his ability todistinguish between a wide variety of materials and textures, evident here
© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Allegory of Painting
Page 3 of 9in the smooth surface of the plaster, the soft fluff of the carpet, the sharp
highlight on the brown skull, and the slightly creased pages of the oldsketchbook. At the same time, he became interested in rendering complex
allegorical subjects. Here, for example, he purposely juxtaposed a skull
with a plaster cast of a classical female head, thereby contrasting thesymbol of the transience of human existence with the ideal of timelessbeauty, a fundamental concern for the art of painting. The small, brown
sculpture of a male figure behind the plaster head is most likely an
example of an écorché, a model of the body with its skin removed andouter muscles displayed. Such models were important for the study ofhuman anatomy, which was of vital interest for artists working within theclassical tradition.[7]The relief behind these objects is a partial plaster cast ofBacchanal withChildren and a Goat (fig 1), one of the most famous works by theillustrious seventeenth-century classicizing Flemish sculptor, François
Duquesnoy (1597–1643).[8] Duquesnoy’s contemporaries so esteemed his
sculptural works that they described them as rivaling those of the ancientmasters.[9] Plaster casts of his sculptures were made for artists to study
alongside casts of classical sculpture, as can be seen in a painting by
Michiel Sweerts (1618–64), Painter’s Studio with a Model.[10] Bacchanalwith Children and a Goat was well known to Dutch painters, and Gerrit
Dou (1613–75), Toorenvliet’s uncle-in-law, often incorporated an image ofthis relief sculpture into his paintings.[11] One reason Dou chose to include
this relief in his work was to display his ability to simulate different
materials and objects, including stone sculpture, but another was
undoubtedly the allegorical message about the power of illusionism that itconveyed. In this relief, the realistic appearance of the mask held by aputto at the left so fooled a goat that he had to be restrained by a host of
putti from charging it.
It is thus fully understandable that Toorenvliet, who so emulated Dou,inserted this relief into his picture.[12] Remarkably, however, Toorenvliet
omitted the left portion of Duquesnoy’s relief that included the image of theputto holding a mask to “deceive” a goat. One explanation for thisomission is that Toorenvliet sought to extend Duquesnoy’s allegory into thebroader pictorial image. The goat now appears to rush toward the woman,
who, having the ability to create compellingly illusionistic images, bothliterally and symbolically takes the putto’s place.
© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Allegory of Painting
Page 4 of 9

The open sketchbook, which practically slides off the table, is the lastpiece of the pictorial puzzle in Toorenvliet’s intriguing allegory. On the rightpage are several sketches of human eyes and ears (fig 2). Such sketchesof individual body parts had their origin in Italian drawing books of thesixteenth century, and were important in studio practice as well as in art
theory.[13] This kind of drawing book could also be found in northernEurope, for example Abraham Bloemaert’s (1566–1651) famous
sketchbook,engravedandpublishedbyFrederik

Bloemaertininstallments beginning around 1650.[14] Toorenvliet’s depiction of thesketchbook shows his interest in the art of disegno as important forcomprehending both human anatomy and ideal proportions of the humanbody.
Toorenvliet left Vienna and returned to the Netherlands around 1679,
subsequently moving around 1686 from Amsterdam to his native Leiden,
where he helped to establish a drawing academy.[15] Toorenvliet, anesteemed artist of international experience, founded this academy for “finepainters” with the younger artists Carel de Moor (1655–1738) and Willem
van Mieris (1662–1747). Toorenvliet’s great emphasis on drawing as thepractical and theoretical foundation of painting must have been stimulatedby the growing taste for classicism during this period, partially inspired byGerarddeLairesse’sguiding

principles.

De

Lairesse’s Grootschilderboek (1707) recommended that painters use books and plastercasts of ancient sculpture to learn the general principles of classicalbeauty and the perfect proportions of the human body. Allegory ofPainting, which Toorenvliet probably painted before he returned to hisnative country, can be considered a prelude to the role this important
painter and draughtsman had in founding this new drawing academy.
-Junko Aono

© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Allegory of Painting
Page 5 of 9Endnotes
1. Susanne Henriette Karau, Leben und Werk des Leidener Malers Jacob Toorenvliet(1640–1719) (Ph.D. diss., Universität Berlin, 2002), 134, nos. A56 and 57 (as a pendant),
91, B12, 13, 14, 15.
2. Jacob Toorenvliet, An Allegory of Painting Inspired by Poetry , ca. 1680, oil on panel, 39 x
29 cm, present location unknown. Susanne Henriette Karau, Leben und Werk des Leidener
Malers Jacob Toorenvliet (1640–1719) (Ph.D. diss., Universität Berlin, 2002), 147–48, no.
B14.
3. Horace, Ars Poetica, v. 361. Ut pictura poesis (poetry is like painting) is considered a key
concept in Renaissance artistic theory, though the inverse form of “painting is like poetry,” ismore often encountered in the humanistic tradition. For seventeenth-century Dutch painting,this concept offers the important theoretical foundation for the iconographic interpretation ofdidactic meaning of the visible world. See Eddy de Jongh, Tot Lering en Vermaak:
Betekenissen van Hollandse genrevoorstellingen in de zeventiende eeuw (Exh. cat.
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) (Amsterdam, 1976), 20–26.
4. Cesare Ripa, Iconologia of Uytbeeldinghe des Verstands (Amsterdam, 1644; reprint, Soest,1971), 452–53. Toorenvliet’s familiarity with Ripa’s Iconologia is confirmed by his Allegory ofRhetoric, in which a figure holds a copy of the volume. See Susanne Henriette Karau, Lebenund Werk des Leidener Malers Jacob Toorenvliet (1640–1719) (Ph.D. diss., UniversitätBerlin, 2002), B12.
5. Appropriately, Ripa’s Poetry wears a blue dress embroidered with stars. Ripa’spersonification of Poetry is a woman, which Toorenvliet changed into an old man, a figurethat is often found in his paintings from around 1675 to 1679. Cesare Ripa,Iconologia ofUytbeeldinghe des Verstands (Amsterdam, 1644; reprint, Soest, 1971), 88–89; andSusanne Henriette Karau, Leben und Werk des Leidener Malers Jacob Toorenvliet(1640–1719) (Ph.D. diss., Universität Berlin, 2002), 148.
6. I am grateful to Susanne Karau for updated information on the possible dating of this picture.
For newly confirmed information about Toorenvliet’s stay in foreign countries, see Piet
Bakker’s biography in this catalogue.
7. Charles Avery and Anthony Radcliffe, Giambologna 1529–1608: Sculptor to the Medici(Exh. cat. Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Museum; London, Victoria & Albert Museum; Vienna,
Kunsthistorisches Museum) (London, 1978), 198–99, no. 192; Laura Olmstead Tonelli,“Academic Practice in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Children of Mercury:
The Education of Artists in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries , ed. Laurie Rubin (Exh.
cat. Providence, R.I., Brown University and the Museum of Art) (Providence, R.I., 1984),
104–6, figs. 77, 80. Examples of écorché have survived in a variety of materials, like plaster,© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Allegory of Painting
Page 6 of 9bronze, wax, terra cotta, ivory, and wood.
8. François Duquesnoy, Bacchanal with Children and a Goat , marble, 62.5 x 87.5 cm, Galleria
Doria Pamphilj, Rome. See Marion Boudon-Machuel, François du Quesnoy 1597–1643(Paris, 2005), no. 64b.
9. Michael Sweerts, Painter’s Studio with a Model , oil on canvas, 82 x 106 cm, Fondation Rau
pour le Tiers-Monde, Zürich. See Peter Hecht, “Art Beats Nature, and Painting Does So
Best of All: The Paragone Competition in Duquesnoy, Dou and Schalcken,” Simiolus 29(2002): 192–93; Marion Boudon-Machuel, François du Quesnoy 1597–1643 (Paris, 2005),45–47, 175–86. Duquesnoy arrived in Rome in 1618 and became one of the key figures ofclassicism in that city, together with the French painter Nicolas Poussin, who moved toRome in 1624.
10. Rolf Kultzen, Michael Sweerts: Brussels 1618–Goa 1664 (Doornspijk, 1996), no. 1. The
presence of Duquesnoy’s popular relief in this picture may even reflect actual studio practicethat Toorenvliet encountered during his visit to Italy in the 1660s.
11. In their paintings, Dou and his followers used the relief to decorate the lower wall of a stone
window, which framed a genre scene. Marion Boudon-Machuel, François du Quesnoy
1597–1643 (Paris, 2005), 53–55, 204–7.
12. By depicting the relief, Dou probably intended to demonstrate the superiority of the art ofpainting over that of sculpture, a traditional theme of the Paragone. Ronni Baer, “ThePaintings of Gerrit Dou (1613–1675),” 3 vols. (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1990), forinstance, no. 63. Eric Jan Sluijter, ed., Leidse Fijnschilders: Van Gerrit Dou tot Frans vanMieris de Jonge, 1630–1760 (Exh cat., Leiden, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) (Zwolle,1988), 101–3; Peter Hecht, “Art Beats Nature, and Painting Does So Best of All: TheParagone Competition in Duquesnoy, Dou and Schalcken,” Simiolus 29 (2002): 194–97;
Annegret Laabs, ed., De Leidse Fijnschilders uit Dresden (Exh. cat. Leiden, StedelijkMuseum De Lakenhal) (Zwolle, 2001), 41; Marion Boudon-Machuel, François du Quesnoy
1597–1643 (Paris, 2005), 205–6.
13. Chittima Amornpichetkul, “Seventeenth-Century Italian Drawing Books: Their Origin andDevelopment,” in Children of Mercury: The Education of Artists in the Sixteenth andSeventeenth Centuries, ed. Laurie Rubin (Exh. cat. Providence, R.I., Brown University andthe Museum of Art) (Providence, R.I., 1984), 110–12. A famous example isIl vero modo etordine per dissegnar tutte le partie et membra del corpo humano (1608) by Odoardo
Fialetti. Johannes Gellee’s Tyrocinia artis pictoriae caelatoriae ac sculptoriae is one
example of the northern copies executed after early seventeenth-century academic drawing
books from Italy (mainly that of Fialetti), which were published by Claes Jansz. Visscher inAmsterdam. See Jaap Bolton, Method and Practice: Dutch and Flemish Drawing Books,1600–1750 (Landau, 1985), 132–35.
14. Jaap Bolton, Abraham Bloemaert c. 1565–1651: The Drawings , 2 vols. (2007), 1:366, no.
© 2017 The Leiden CollectionAllegory of Painting
Page 7 of 91152; 2:391.
15. Rudi Ekkart, “Van Willem van Mieris tot Cornet,” in Leids Kunstlegaat: Kunst en historie
rondom Ars Aemula Natura, ed. R. E. O. Ekkart (Leiden, 1974), 7–14; and Eric Jan Sluijter,ed., Leidse Fijnschilders: Van Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge, 1630–1760 (Exh.
cat. Leiden, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) (Zwolle, 1988), 33.

Provenance
Private collection, Europe (sale, Sotheby’s, London, 4 December 1997, no. 135 [BernheimerFine Old Masters, Munich, 1998–2002; Bernheimer-Colnaghi, London, 2002–5; JackKilgore, New York, 2002–3]).
Private collection, Europe, by 2005 [Bernheimer-Colnaghi, London, by 2008].
From whom acquired by the present owner.

Exhibition History
Munich, Bernheimer. “Musen, Mütter, Models: Das Bild der Frau in der Kunst,” 22 June–3
August 2007, no. 3.
London, Colnaghi, “The Artist in Art,” 26 November 2007–1 February 2008, no. 63.

References
Bernheimer Fine Old Masters, Paintings. Munich, 1999, 38–39.
Karau, Susanne Henriette. Leben und Werk des Leidener Malers Jacob Toorenvliet(1640–1719). Ph.D. diss. Universität Berlin, 2002, 146–48, no. B13.
Musen, Mütter, Models: Das Bild der Frau in der Kunst . Exh. cat. Munich, Bernheimer.
Munich, 2007, 3, 12, no. 3.
The Artist in Art. Exh. cat., London, Colnaghi, in association with Emanuel von Baeyer.
London, 2007, unpaginated, pl. 12, no. 63.

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Allegory of Painting
Page 8 of 9Versions
Versions and Copies
1. Jacob Toorenvliet, An Allegory of the Art , oil on panel, 23.5 x 30 cm, present location
unknown (sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 5 June 2002, no. 25).

Versions Notes

Technical Summary
The support, a rectangular copper sheet, has subtle undulations, a slight convex bow, and flexes
when handled. Two shallow diagonal creases emanate from the left vertical edge and intersect
left of the female figure’s upper arm. There is one paper label, a black stencil, and numericalinscriptions but no wax seals or maker’s marks.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied with vertical brushwork. The paint has
been extremely smoothly applied with delicate modeling, intricate detailing, and lowbrushmarking through the light highlights, flesh tones, and blue drapery.
The painting is recorded as having traces of signature in the lower left, however these traces are
not readily apparent.[1]No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers.
Compositional changes visible in the images include a change in position of the female figure’s
proper right arm, which had originally been outstretched, her hand by the dog’s head, a slightshift of her profile to the viewer’s right, and a shift in position of the male figure’s entire proper left
hand, i. e. his pointer finger, his bent knuckles, and the angle of the back of his hand. Apentimento through the mahlstick indicates it was added after the book was painted.
The painting has not undergone conservation treatment since its acquisition in 2008 and remains
in a good state of preservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. Not readily apparent. Possibly in brown paint along the brown vertical plane between therow of books and the dog’s head.

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