Jan Adriaensz van Staveren(Leiden 1613/14 – 1669 Leiden)

How to cite
Bakker, Piet. “Jan Adriaensz van Staveren” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 2nd ed. Edited byArthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artists/jan-adriaensz-vanstaveren/ (archived June 2020).
A PDF of every version of this biography is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive ismanaged by a permanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrativeoccurs.

Jan Adriaensz van Staveren was born in 1613 or 1614. His parents were Adriaen Jansz van Staveren (d.
1651) and Machtelt Symons van Borsen (d. 1640), an oil miller and soap boiler.[1] Evidently Adriaen was notsatisfied with these occupations alone, for his name appears in connection with a wide variety of public offices.
He was a member of the Leiden city council in 1621 and was elected alderman no less than ten times andmayor five times between 1626 and 1646.[2] Although little is known about Adriaen’s financial situation, given
his highly successful administrative career, Jan and his siblings most likely grew up in comfortable
circumstances.[3]Van Staveren was registered in the Album Studiosorum of the Leidse Academie (Leiden University) in October
1628. This did not mean that he enrolled as a student; after all, he was just fourteen at the time. It wascustomary to enter in the Album the names of not only regular students, but also the pupils of the highest
class of the Latin school, which was the gateway to the university.[4] However, like Rembrandt van Rijn(1606–69) eight years earlier, Van Staveren elected to pursue an artistic rather than an academic education.[5]Who taught Van Staveren to paint cannot be firmly established, but on the basis of his style and subject
matter, he is generally thought to have trained with Gerrit Dou (1613-75).[6] This must be taken with a grain ofsalt, for the two painters were almost the same age. In 1644 Van Staveren was involved in founding the Guildof Saint Luke in Leiden. When the Guild was finally organized in 1648, he registered as a member and isrecorded as paying his guild dues until his death.
In addition to his skill as a painter,Van Staveren was also an accomplished administrator. Following in hisfather’s footsteps he eventually rose to become mayor in 1667. To that end he followed a career path typicalof many young patricians. He started out in 1641 as captain of a civic militia guard, a position he held for eight© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Jan Adriaensz van Staveren
Page 2 of 5years. In 1651 he became a member of the city council and by 1656 had served ten terms as alderman. His
appointment as mayor in 1667 was the crowning achievement of his administrative career.[7] Van Staveren
must have been an influential man, especially after 1648, when his younger sister Cunera married Pieter vanAssendelft (1622–88), scion of an eminent patrician family that had been spawning city administrators since
the mid-sixteenth century.[8] In 1674 Van Assendelft, a draper and owner of a stone quarry, was taxed on acapital of 35,000 guilders.[9] Van Staveren, too, was a man of means. In the will he and his sister Alida, withwhom he lived until she married in 1663, drew up in 1650, they bequeathed 12,000 guilders to theirrelatives.[10]Van Staveren is known primarily for his genre scenes and portraits, as well as a few other subjects. His
depictions of hermits in caves, many versions of which have been preserved, are entirely in keeping with theDou tradition. This affinity, however, is less evident in his history pieces and landscapes, which often include
anachronistic-looking castles. His work varies in quality and generally lacks the high level achieved by some ofDou’s other followers. Perhaps it was his average talent that forced him to pursue an administrative career.
The fact that he gained professional momentum in the mid-1650s may not have been a coincidence, forprecisely in those years it became increasingly difficult for a painter to make a decent living in the Leiden art
market.[11] For Van Staveren painting may, thus, have increasingly become an (important) side job. If so, then
Van Leeuwen’s omission of the artist in his city chronicle of 1672 is quite understandable. His name is also
missing from Arnold Houbraken and Jacob Campo Weyerman’s publications. Van Staveren appears only inan anonymous manuscript with biographies of Leiden painters, which was probably written by a Leiden art
lover in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.[12] About Van Staveren he noted that: “many splendid works
by him [could once] be seen in this country, which were said to have been finished by his master. The art
dealers already acquired the most and best [works] long ago, as well as many others by various pupils of Dou,and sold them abroad as paintings by Dou.”[13]If his biographer is correct, Van Staveren’s best works could well lie hidden in the oeuvre of his putative
teacher.[14] Van Staveren died at the end of April in 1669 and was buried in the Pieterskerk in Leiden. He
never married, and as his sole heir, his sister Alida inherited all of his paintings. After the death of Alida’s
husband, the minister Eduardus Westerneyn, an inventory of his possessions was drawn up in 1674. It
appeared that the couple owned more than 200 paintings, 72 of which were by Van Staveren.[15] That so muchof his work remained unsold suggests that it was not in demand. Yet this also illustrates his success as anadministrator. Given the time and energy required by his career, selling his work would have become less of apriority. Clearly he did not need to sell his paintings, since he died a wealthy man.

- Piet Bakker, 2017

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Jan Adriaensz van Staveren
Page 3 of 5Endnotes

1. He gave his age as fourteen when he enrolled in the Album Studiosorum of the Leidse
Academie (Leiden University) on 28 October 1628. See Eric J. Sluijter, Marlies Enklaar, andPaul Nieuwenhuizen, eds, Leidse fijnschilders: Van Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge
1630–1760 (Exh. cat. Leiden, Museum de Lakenhal) (Zwolle, 1988), 226. No birth certificate
has been found. His parents married in 1606 and the Leiden baptismal registers have beenpreserved only from 1621 on. Thus, the number of children born between 1606 and 1621
cannot be determined. From later sources we learn that in that period not only was Jan born,
but his brother François and sister Alida as well. His sister Cunera was baptized on 22
December 1622. Furthermore, there are records of two Aeltjes, in 1624 and 1626, and aMarrigje in 1621, all three of whom probably died shortly after birth.
2. Naamwyser, Waar in vertoond werden de Naamen van de Ed. Achtbare H. H. Regenten derStad Leyden (Leiden, 1688–99), covering the period 1641–99. From the same list of names itemerges that from 23 July 1637 to 1640 he served as a delegate of Leiden on the board of
the Amsterdam Admiralty, and in 1643 as head of an orphanage. Other sources relate that hewas head of poor relief for homebound people in 1623. See Regionaal Archief Leiven,Notarial Archives, Notary J. Mote,,inv. 284, deed 23. He was also a member of the Council ofForty in 1626
3. While his father indeed served as a city administrator for a large part of his adult life, this does
not necessarily mean that he derived his wealth from this position. In the first half of the 17th
century patricians generally held these offices alongside their actual profession, and anacademic background was not yet considered a prerequisite. Only after 1650 did thepatriciate in Leiden evolve into an academically educated governing elite and amass theenormous fortunes nowadays perceived as characteristic of this social class. See Jaap Moesand Dirk Jaap Noordam, Macht, aanzien en welzijn. Nieuwelingen in het stadsbestuur,1200–1795 (Leiden, 2003), 56.
4. Willem Frijhoff, Wegen van Evert Willemsz. Een Hollands weeskind op zoek naar zichzelf,1607–1647 (Nijmegen, 1995), 125.
5. Gary Schwartz, The Rembrandt Book (Zwolle, 2006), 42. See also the biographyof Rembrandt van Rijn in this catalogue.
6. Eric Jan Sluijter, Marlies Enklaar, and Paul Nieuwenhuizen, eds, Leidse fijnschilders: VanGerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge 1630–1760 (Exh. cat. Leiden, Museum deLakenhal) (Zwolle, 1988), 226.
7. Furthermore, he was regent of the Elisabeth Gasthuis from 1654 to the end of 1656,“Commissaris van de Echt-saecken” (commissioner of marital affairs) in 1655 and 1656, and© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Jan Adriaensz van Staveren
Page 4 of 5“royeermeester” (comptroller general) in 1666. See Naamwyser, Waar in vertoond werden deNaamen van de Ed. Achtbare H. H. Regenten der Stad Leyden (Leiden, 1688–99).
8. Dirck Jaap Noordam, Geringde buffels en heren van stand. Het patriciaat van Leiden
1574–1700 (Hilversum, 1994), 36–41.
9. Gerrit J. Peltjes, Leidse Lasten. Twee belastingkohieren uit 1674 (Leiden, 1995), 41. Other
family members were taxed for far greater amounts.
10. Stadsarchief Amsterdam, Notarial Archives, Notary F., inv. 2092, (film 2234) deed 67, p. 134,
22

July1655.

Thiswill(butnotitscontent)

ismentionedinAbraham

Bredius, Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländischen Kunst des XVIten,XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts (The Hague, 1916), 2: 187.
11. Piet Bakker, “Crisis? Welke crisis? Enkele kantteteningen bij het economische verval van deschilderkunst in Leiden na 1660,” De Zeventiende Eeuw 27 (2011), 232–69.
12. See Eric J. Sluijter, Marlies Enklaar, and Paul Nieuwenhuizen, eds, Leidse fijnschilders: VanGerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge 1630–1760 (Exh. cat. Leiden, Museum deLakenhal) (Zwolle, 1988), 40. This manuscript is in the library of the Gemeentearchief Leiden
254 (portefeuille 41a). The biographies of Leiden painters such as Jan Adriaensz vanStaveren, Abraham de Pape (before 1621–66), Dominicus van Tol (ca. 1635–76), Jacob vanSpreeuwen (1611–ca. 1665), Adriaen van Gaesbeeck (1621–50), Quiringh Brekelenkam(after 1622–ca. 1669), and Bartholomeus Maton (1641–after 1684), who were ignored byearlier biographers, are in a dust jacket bearing the title “Adversaria Leidsche schilders.”
13. Gemeentearchief Leiden 254 (portefeuille 41a) “Hier te lande veele fraaije stukjes van hem tezien [waren], waar in men zeyde dat zijn meester de laatste hand zoude gelegd hebben. Dekonsthandelaars hebben de meesten en besten, benevens meer anderen van verscheijde
leerlingen van Douw, al overlang opgekogt en buijtenlands voor schilderijen van Douwverkogt.”
14. For an illustrative example, see Jan Adriaensz van Staveren (?) after Gerrit Dou, The Doctor,
1650–69 (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum); see Eric J. Sluijter, Marlies Enklaar, and Paul
Nieuwenhuizen, eds, Leidse fijnschilders: Van Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge
1630–1760 (Exh. cat. Leiden, Museum de Lakenhal) (Zwolle, 1988), 267.
15. Regionaal Archief Leiden, Notarial Archives, Notary Van der Stoffe, inv. 1192, deed 34, 22
February 1674. This inventory is also in Abraham Bredius, Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zurGeschichte der holländischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts (TheHague, 1916), 2: 183, but is far from complete: he forgot to include fifteen works by VanStaveren.

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Jan Adriaensz van Staveren
Page 5 of 5Bredius, Abraham. Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländischen Kunst desXVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts. The Hague, 1916, 2: 183–88, n218.
Sluijter, Eric Jan, Marlies Enklaar, and Paul Nieuwenhuizen, eds. Leidse Fijnschilders: Van
Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge, 1630–1760. Exh. cat. Leiden, Museum De
Lakenhal. Zwolle, 1988, 226–29 and 266–67.

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