Herman Posthumus

Herman Posthumus (* around 1512 / 1514 in East Friesland , † before 1588 in Amsterdam ) was a Dutch painter and architect.

Life

Herman Posthumus was trained in Jan van Scorel's workshop in Utrecht . In 1535, together with Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen , he accompanied Charles V's Tunis campaign . For Charles V's solemn entry into Rome on April 5, 1536, Posthumus designed the decoration. From 1540 to 1542 he worked on furnishing the Landshut residence of the Duke of Bavaria. He was the second highest paid painter on the project. He may have lived and worked in Mantua for some time before, as Wilhelm IV invited several artists from the Gonzaga court in Mantua to work at the Landshut Residence and Posthumus' works in Landshut also show influences from Giulio Romano . While he naturally adorned the court chapel with pictures from the Christian thematic area, he opted for some mythological depictions to decorate the state rooms.

In Landshut, Herman Posthumus lost his Dutch wife Petronella and his young son Hercules. The tombstone has been preserved and bears the following inscription in Latin: “Leaving home behind, she followed me, pregnant, and died shortly after the birth with Hercules, a very sweet and innocent child. You rest here in strange earth, between unknown corpses [...] She lived 30 years, he ten days and ten hours [...]. "

Works

Tempus edax rerum

In the 1980s, a Roman landscape of ruins with the title Tempus edax rerum from 1536, which Posthumus created during his stay in Italy, was rediscovered. The painting is now in the Liechtenstein Collection in Vienna . In 2005, Cees Nooteboom wrote an article in the NRC Handelsblad's September 9 cultural supplement about this painting, which he saw at an exhibition in Barcelona . He called the painting “een ill-pinned verzameling monumentaal bric à brac” , but paid his respects to the painter, who was evidently an adventurous type and kept his eyes open.

The court chapel of the Landshut residence of Duke Ludwig X. was designed by Herman Posthumus. A description from 1761 shows that the chapel was once completely painted in bright colors; Parts of these frescoes have been lost, however, as most of the pictures in the chapel were painted over by Augustin Demel towards the end of the 18th century . Changes were also made to the interior design later. The main picture of the altar retable by Herman Posthumus shows an adoration of the shepherds in front of ancient ruins. The model was the caves of the Domus Aurea des Nero . The predella shows the adoration of the kings. Camels can be seen in the background; possibly Herman Posthumus processed here his impressions of the campaign against the Ottoman Empire in Tunis. He depicted the baby Jesus lying on an ancient altar, which he also used as the bearer of his signature. The altar of the Landshut court chapel had been moved to Trausnitz Castle for about a hundred years and returned in the 1920s. On the occasion of the exhibition "Eternal Bloom Bavaria - Duke Ludwig X. and the Renaissance " in 2009, the altarpieces were examined and restored.

literature

• Alfons Beckenbauer, a Welscher painter in Landshut and his personal suffering. Notes on a newly discovered epitaph in St. Martin , in: Negotiations of the Historisches Verein für Niederbayern 105, 1979, pp. 15-19
• Clifford Malcolm Brown, Gifts from the Gonzaga court for Ludwig and Wilhelm of Bavaria , in: Civiltà mantovana , 3rd Ser. 29, 1994, 11, pp. 23-25
• Nicole Dacos, Herman Posthumus et l'entrée de Charles Quint à Rome , in: Bulletin de l'Association des Historiens de l'Art Italy, 5.1998 / 99 (1999), pp. 2-13
• Nicole Dacos, Herman Posthumus in Landshut , in: The Landshuter Stadtresidenz. Architecture and equipment , ed. by Iris Lauterbach; Klaus Endemann et al., Munich 1998 (= publications of the Central Institute for Art History in Munich 14), ISBN 3-9806071-1-9 , pp. 233–248
• Nicole Dacos, Roma quanta fuit. Tre pittori fiamminghi nella Domus Aurea , Rome (Donzelli) 1995, ISBN 88-7989-148-0
• Nicole Dacos, Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen, Martin van Heemskerck, Herman Posthumus. On the subject of deux livres récents , in: Revue belge d'archéologie et d'histoire de l'art 60, 1991, pp. 99–113
• Nicole Dacos, Hermannus Posthumus. Rome, Mantua, Landshut , in: The Burlington magazine 127, 1985, pp. 433-438
• Hubertus Günther, Herman Postma und die Antike , in: Yearbook of the Central Institute for Art History 4, 1988, pp. 7–17 ( online )
• Gerhard Hojer, Illicitum non sperandum. An allegory by Hermannus Posthumus that has returned to Landshut. With an excursus on the architecture and decoration of the Bishop's Palace in Trento , in: The Italian building. Materials and studies on the Landshut city residence , ed. by Gerhard Hojer, Landshut / Ergolding (Arcos Verlag) 1994 (= exhibition catalogs / Bavarian Administration of State Palaces, Gardens and Lakes), ISBN 3-9803285-4-6 , pp. 173–200
• Ruth Rubinstein, “Tempus edax rerum”. A newly discovered painting by Hermannus Posthumus , in: The Burlington magazine, 127.1985, p. 425-433
• Roberto Sarzi, New Research on the Building History of the Landshut City Residence , special print from: Negotiations of the Historical Association for Lower Bavaria , Vol. 110/111, 1984/85, pp. 121–163
• Egon Verheyen, Athena and Arachne. A little-known cycle in the city residence in Landshut , in: Journal of the German Association for Art Science 20, 1966, pp. 85–96

Web links

Commons : Herman Posthumus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Short biography
• Virtual tour through the Landshut residence

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.schloesser.bayern.de/deutsch/presse/archiv08/landshut/altar.htm
2. ↑ "a crazy collection of monumental odds and ends"
3. ↑ http://home.planet.nl/~posth144/Posthumus/Rubriek/Reacties.htm
4. ↑ http://www.schloesser.bayern.de/deutsch/ueberuns/rz/rz_altar.htm  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.