Pieter van Laer(Haarlem 1599 – 1642 Italy?)

How to cite
Bakker, Piet. “Pieter van Laer” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd ed. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. andLara Yeager-Crasselt. New York, 2020–23. https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/ (archived December 2023).
A PDF of every version of this biography is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed bya permanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

Pieter van Laer—or Pieter Boddingh, as he was originally called[1]—was baptized in Haarlem on 15 December 1599. Hisparents were the schoolmaster Jacob Boddingh (b. ca. 1571) of Haarlem and Magdalena Heyns (b. ca. 1573), whose father
was a respected literary scholar and a schoolmaster in Antwerp, Pieter Heyns (1537–98).[2] Van Laer’s older brotherRoeland (1598–ca. 1635) also became a painter and later accompanied Pieter to Italy where, according to Theodorus
Schrevelius (1572–1649), he suffered a tragic fall with his mule from a bridge in Genoa. Pieter’s younger brother Nicolaesfollowed in his father’s footsteps and became a schoolmaster and later a minister. He also enjoyed a modicum of fame as awriting master, in which capacity he published two books.
According to the Italian biographer Giovanni Battista Passeri (1610–79), Van Laer learned to paint in Holland.[3] Histeacher was not recorded, but judging from a drawing signed “P. Boddink inventor” from before 1625, the most plausible
candidate is Esaias van de Velde (1587–1630), who was active in Haarlem between 1611 and 1618.[4] No paintings from
Van Laer’s first Haarlem period have been identified; however, in addition to the drawing just mentioned, there areanother dozen sheets in a songbook, the provenance of which is not known.[5]Van Laer’s stay in Haarlem was brief. Following a trip through France, in 1625 he settled in Rome, on the Via Margutta,
the very heart of the Roman painters’ community, which was close to the Piazza del Popolo.[6] Van Laer joined theSchildersbent, the famous artists’ fraternity in Rome whose members called themselves the Bentvueghels (“birds of afeather”), and was nicknamed “de Snuffelaar,” or the sniffer, doubtless on account of his oversize nose.[7]Disproportion characterized Van Laer’s entire body. According to Arnold Houbraken, who relied on Joachim vonSandrart’s (1606–88) Teutsche Academie, Van Laer’s “lower body was three times larger than his torso, [and he] had a shortchest, with a head that sunk into his shoulders and no neck.”[8] This odd physique led the Italians to dub him “ilBamboccio,” a name, according to Houbraken, “they use to call such people, which in the manner of Italian jest means astrange way of bending or twisting of the body, and striking amusing poses.”[9] This sobriquet would come to stand for an
entirely new type of painting “patented” by Van Laer, which earned him great fame both in Rome and in the Netherlands.
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These bambocciante—Roman street scenes with genre figures such as beggars, peddlers, vendors, and artisans—aregenerally painted in dark tones and with a Caravaggesque chiaroscuro. Van Laer attracted many followers in Italy, known
as the Bamboccianti. The association of his nickname with this genre is not without irony. In the 1960s a serious attempt
was made to chart his oeuvre, from which it emerged that this definition applies only to a small part of it. The subjects aremostly taken from life in the Campagna: Italian landscapes populated with men on horseback, farmers, and herdsmen.
Thus Albert Blankert’s observation that, in addition to being a genre painter, Van Laer was an important landscape painteris entirely apt.[10]Van Laer met with great success in Rome; buyers were eager to purchase his work, which allowed him to charge
substantial prices.[11] He also shipped part of what he produced to the Netherlands, where it fetched even higher prices.[12]Van Laer regularly kept company with fellow countrymen, including Herman van Swanevelt (1603–55), Leonard Bramer(1596–1674), and Andries Both (1612/13–42), and also had contact with the French painters Claude Lorrain (1604/05–82)
and Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), with whom he ventured into the countryside around Rome to paint or draw landscapesfrom life.[13] Another good friend was Sandrart who lived in Rome between 1629 and 1635. Sandrart drew a portrait of
Van Laer in his workshop, which he later included in his Teutsche Academie.
Finally submitting to Sandrart’s repeated insistence that he return to his fatherland because there he “could live more
comfortably than in Italy,” Van Laer left Rome in 1639. After a brief stop in Amsterdam, where he “was well received andduly shown all honor, affection and good wishes,” he arrived in Haarlem and moved in with his brother Nicolaes.[14] He
met Sandrart again, with whom, according to Houbraken, he “once visited Gerrit Dou [in Leiden], who received them andshowed them some of his works which he had partly or entirely finished, and which they praised.”[15]Little else is known about Van Laer’s second sojourn in Haarlem. What is certain is that he did not stay there long.
According to Schrevelius, he left the city again shortly after he had arrived “and where he went and where in the world hemay be, following the example of Empedocles, is not known to this day.”[16] This is confirmed by Van Laer’s sister who, in
her will of 1654, noted that he had already been abroad for twelve years and that she had not heard from him in all thattime.[17] Van Laer must have left in or shortly after 1641, for a drawing by him from that year occurs in the same
songbook to which he contributed before his first departure from Haarlem.[18]Van Laer’s work exerted a powerful influence on other Haarlem landscape painters, such as the celebrated Philips
Wouwerman (1619–68). The latter responded to Van Laer’s bambocciatas, or depictions of ambushes and scenes oftravelers at rest, to such an extent that one wonders if Houbraken’s comment that Wouwerman had appropriated Van
Laer’s drawings contains a kernel of truth.[19] The veracity of Houbraken’s information is doubtful, however. At the time ofhis death in 1667, the Haarlem painter Frederick Vroom (ca. 1600–67), whose father was the famous marine painterHendrick Vroom (ca. 1563–1640), possessed two little books with sketches, twenty-one loose sheets with primarily studiesof animals, and a few paintings including a tronie by Van Laer and “een groor paert” (a large horse) by his brotherRoeland.[20] Before leaving Haarlem, Van Laer evidently either sold or gave the contents of his workshop to Vroom.

- Piet Bakker, 2017

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Pieter van Laer
Page 3 of 6Endnotes
1. Albertus Welcker, “P. Boddink alias Pieter van Laer, Orlando Bodding alias Roeland of Orlando vanLaer, Nicolaes Bodding alias N. Boddingh van Laer of Ds. Nicolaes Boddingius,” Oud Holland 59(1942): 80–89.
2. Heyns opened a school in Antwerp in 1555 and was also dean of the education guild, lieutenant in thecivic guard, a district supervisor, and a member of the Berchem chamber of rhetoric De bloeyende
Wyngaert. He fled his native city in 1585 and subsequently, certainly as of 1594, was working in
Haarlem, once again as a schoolmaster. Heyns provided French and Dutch translations of geographicalworks, and also wrote books for educational purposes.
3. On Giovanni Battista Passeri as a biographer, see Ernst Wilhelm Moes, “Een te weinig opgemerkte bronvoor het leven van Pieter van Laer,” Oud Holland 12 (1894): 95–106.
4. Albertus Welcker, “P. Boddink alias Pieter van Laer, Orlando Bodding alias Roeland of Orlando vanLaer, Nicolaes Bodding alias N. Boddingh van Laer of Ds. Nicolaes Boddingius,” Oud Holland 59(1942): 89; Albertus Welcker, “P. Boddink alias Pieter van Laer,” Oud Holland 62 (1947): 207. That thedrawing was made before 1625 can be inferred from the copy that his brother Roeland made datingfrom that year.
5. D.P. Snoep, “Een 17de eeuws Liedboek met tekeningen van Gerard ter Borch de Oude en Pieter vanLaer,” Simiolus 3 (1968–69): 77–134. See also the biography of Gerard ter Borch the Elder in thiscatalogue.
6. G.J. Hoogewerff, “Pieter van Laer en zijn vrienden [Part 1],” Oud Holland 49 (1932): 3–4.
7. For example, see his Self-Portrait in Galleria Pallavicini, Rome, illustrated in Ludovica Trezzani, “PieterBoddingh van Laer,” in I Bamboccianti: Pittori della vita quotidiana a Roma nel Seicento, ed. GiulianoBriganti, et al. (Rome, 1983), 77.
8. “[Was] zyn onderlyf driemaal grooter dan zyn bovenlyf, [en] had [hy] een gans korte borst daar’t hoofttusschen de schouders inzonk, en over zulks geen hals.” Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh derNederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen (Amsterdam, 1718–21; rev. ed., The Hague, 1753; reprint,Amsterdam, 1980), 1: 360; Joachim von Sandrart, Joachim von Sandrarts Academie der Bau-, Bild- undMahlerey-Künste von 1675: Lebem der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. Arthur R. Peltzer(Nuremburg, 1675–79; reprint, Munich, 1925), 184.

9. “Daar [mee] zy zulke luiden [benoemen], die zig op ’t maken der Italiaansche grappen, vremden aart van
buigingen of vervringingen der lichamen, en geestige figuurmakeryen verstaan.” Arnold
Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen (Amsterdam,1718–21; rev. ed., The Hague, 1753; reprint, Amsterdam, 1980), 1: 360.
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10. Albert Blankert, “Over Pieter van Laer als dier- en landschapschilder,” Oud Holland 83 (1968): 117–34;
Ludovico Trezzani, “Pieter Boddingh van Laer,” in I Bamboccianti: Pittori della vita quotidiana a Romanel Seicento, ed. Giuliano Briganti, et al. (Rome, 1983), 41–42.
11. G.J. Hoogewerff, “Pieter van Laer en zijn vrienden [Part 1],” Oud Holland 49 (1932): 219; G.J.
Hoogewerff, “Pieter van Laer en zijn vrienden [Part 2],” Oud Holland 50 (1933): 250.
12. G.J. Hoogewerff, “Pieter van Laer en zijn vrienden [Part 1],” Oud Holland 49 (1932): 17.
13. Joachim von Sandrart, Joachim von Sandrarts Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künstevon 1675:
Lebem der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. Arthur R. Peltzer (Nuremburg, 1675–79;
reprint, Munich, 1925), 184.
14. “Mehr vergnügt leben könte als in Italien”; “wol empfangen und ihm alle Ehr, Liebs und Guts [wurde]erwisen.” Joachim von Sandrart, Joachim von Sandrarts Academie der Bau-, Bild- und MahlereyKünstevon 1675: Lebem der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. Arthur R. Peltzer(Nuremburg, 1675–79; reprint Munich, 1925), 184; Albertus Welcker, “P. Boddink alias Pieter vanLaer, Orlando Bodding alias Roeland of Orlando van Laer, Nicolaes Bodding alias N. Boddingh vanLaer of Ds. Nicolaes Boddingius,” Oud Holland 59 (1942): 80.
15. “Gerard Dou eens ging bezoeken [in Leiden], die hen wel ontfing, en vertoonde, ’t gene hy van zyne
konstwerken zoo ten halven als ten vollen voltooit had, ’t welk zy presen.” Arnold Houbraken, De grooteschouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen (Amsterdam, 1718–21; rev. ed., The Hague,1753; reprint, Amsterdam, 1980), 2: 3.
16. “En waarheen hij gegaen is en waar ter wereld hij vertoeft, weet men, naar het voorbeeld vanEmpedocles op de huidige dag nog niet.” This is taken from Welcker’s Dutch translation of
Schrevelius’s text about Pieter van Laer in his 1647 city chronicle of Haarlem, which he wrote in Latin.
See Albertus Welcker, “P. Boddink alias Pieter van Laer, Orlando Bodding alias Roeland of Orlandovan Laer, Nicolaes Bodding alias N. Boddingh van Laer of Ds. Nicolaes Boddingius,” Oud Holland 59(1942): 84. According to Passeri, without mention of a year, Van Laer died of syphilis in Haarlem. See
Ernst Wilhelm Moes, “Een te weinig opgemerkte bron voor het leven van Pieter van Laer,” OudHolland 12 (1894): 96; G.J. Hoogewerff, “Pieter van Laer en zijn vrienden [Part 1],” Oud Holland 49(1932): 8. Sandrart reported that Van Laer died a natural death, but had been diminished by melancholy.
See Joachim von Sandrart, Joachim von Sandrarts Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von1675: Lebem der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. Arthur R. Peltzer (Nuremburg,1675–79; reprint, Munich, 1925), 184. Houbraken believed that the artist had returned to Italy, wheresuffering from melancholy, he took his own life between 1670 and 1675. See Arnold
Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen (Amsterdam,1718–21; rev. ed., The Hague, 1753; reprint, Amsterdam, 1980), 1: 363. In his biography of Philips
Wouwerman, Houbraken mentions Van Laer’s death again, this time placing his suicide in Haarlem. Themelancholy underlying this act was thought to have been reinforced in his second Haarlem period by thefollowing conditions: “1. Dat hy niet spaarzaam was wanneer hy geld had, 2. Dat hy syn geld niet tot
lager prys geven wilde, dan hy gewoon was te Rome daar voor t’ontfangen, 3. Dat hy weinig voorkruyers© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Pieter van LaerPage 5 of 6had, 4. Dat hy voor keelbeulen (konsthandelaren wilde ik zeggen) niet wilde schilderen of hun eenig
voordeel geven, die hem dan ook gevolgelyk lieten driven” (1. That he was not thrifty when he hadmoney, 2. That he did not want to lower his price below what he had been accustomed to receiving inRome, 3. That he had very few people to promote his interests, 4. That he did not want to paint for
cutthroats [I meant to say art dealers] or give them any special treatment, and who as a consequence
turned their backs on him). For instance, Van Laer refused the art dealer Jan de Wet’s offer of 200
guilders for one of his paintings. See Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche
konstschilders en schilderessen (Amsterdam, 1718–21; rev. ed., The Hague, 1753; reprint, Amsterdam,1980), 2: 74–75. Van Hoogstraten, to whom Houbraken refers, also suggests that Van Laer took his own
life out of “mistroosticheyt” (dejection). See Samuel van Hoogstraten, Inleyding tot de Hooge Schoole derSchilderkonst. Anders de Zichtbaere Werelt (Rotterdam, 1678), 311; Hoogerwerff, “Pieter van Laer enzijn vrienden [Part 1],” Oud Holland 49 (1932): 9.
17. G.H. Kurtz, “Archiefsprokkeling. Nog eens: Bodding (van Laer),” Oud Holland 73 (1958): 232.
18. He may have spent some time in Utrecht in 1640. There, on 18 August of that year, a deed was drawn
up by notary Hendrick Ruysch concerning a debt that a certain Steven Huyberts of Culemborg owed
Van Laer. He stated that he was “woonachtich tot Haerlem” (living in Haarlem) at the time. Paul Huys
Janssen, “Pieter van Laer, Benjamin Cuyp, Gerard Douffet, and Karel Dujardin in Utrecht,” The
Hoogsteder Mercury 11 (1990): 53.
19. Arnold Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen (Amsterdam,1718–21; rev. ed., The Hague, 1753; reprint, Amsterdam, 1980), 2: 75. Houbraken suggests in thispassage that Wouwerman had unjustly appropriated these drawings after Van Laer’s “schandige dood”(scandalous death), which, following the reasoning of the text, must have taken place after 1640. Thisdate differs greatly from that in Van Laer’s biography (see note 16) and also contradicts the testimony ofVan Laer’s sister (see note 17). For Van Laer’s influence on Wouwerman, see Frederick J. Duparc,“Leven en werk van Philips Wouwerman (1619–1668),” in Philips Wouwerman 1619–1668, ed. Quentin
Buvelot (Exh. cat. Kassel, Gemäldegalerie; The Hague, Mauritshuis) (Zwolle, 2009), 23.
20. G.J. Hoogewerff, “Pieter van Laer en zijn vrienden [Part 1],” Oud Holland 49 (1932): 17. On Van Laer’s
paintings and drawings, and other studio equipment, in Vroom’s estate, see Pieter Biesboer, Collectionsof Paintings in Haarlem 1572–1745, ed. Carol Togneri (Los Angeles, 2001), 196–204.

Literature
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Von Sandrart, Joachim. Joachim von Sandrarts Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675:© 2024 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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Lebem der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister. Edited by Arthur R. Peltzer, 183–84.
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Welcker, Albertus. “P. Boddink alias Pieter van Laer.” Oud Holland 62 (1947): 206–8.
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Michalkowa, Janina. “Quelques remarques sur Pieter van Laer.” Oud Holland 86 (1971): 188–95.
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