Jacob van Utrecht

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Possible self-portrait of Jacob van Utrecht in the crucifixion retable in the sacristy of the Jakobikirche (Lübeck) (approx. 1525)

Jacob van Utrecht , according to his signature Jacobus Traiectensis (* around 1479 probably in Utrecht ; † after 1525) was a Dutch painter of the early Renaissance who worked in Antwerp and Lübeck .

Life

The living conditions of this important Flemish artist, largely in the dark, have only been explored and interpreted since the end of the 19th century. His origin from Utrecht has not yet been fully verified. He is likely to have obtained citizenship of Antwerp around 1500 and was led as a freelance master of the Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp from 1506 to 1512 .

From 1519 to 1525 he was recorded as a member of the Leonard Brotherhood in the Hanseatic City of Lübeck. After that, his trail is lost in the dark.

signature

In addition to Jacobus Traicetensis , he also signed with the name Claez.

Works

Portrait "Member of the Alardes Family", Stockholm National Museum
Annunciation altar
Crucifixion altar

History of the Kerckring Altar

Kerckring altar (1520): Maria lactans in the middle part, outside the pictures of the donors

The work of art created in 1520 as a house altar for the Lübeck councilor and merchant Hinrich Kerckring shows the founder and his wife as a triptych on the outer wings . On the central panel, the nourishing Mother of God with the baby Jesus. The Kerckring family was a Lübeck-based council family from the Westphalian aristocracy, who can be traced back to the Lübeck City Council from the end of the 14th to the beginning of the 18th century and had belonged to the influential circle society since the late Middle Ages . This altar is no longer mentioned in the will of Hinrich Kerkring, but instead, for example, all the jewelry of his wife shown there. This is the beginning of the previously unresolved mystery of the provenance of this altar, which today is one of the most important items in the collection of the St. Anne's Museum in Lübeck.

It was first mentioned today in 1893 in the old Hanseatic city of Riga in the Baltic States . The German-Baltic merchant Friedrich Wilhelm Brederlo (1779–1862), as an art collector in Riga, had amassed a large art collection of over two hundred paintings. His will from 1852 stipulated that the collection of his daughters, administered by his son-in-law Wilhelm von Sengbusch, would remain "undivided in its existence" and would remain linked to Riga, otherwise it would be offered to the city of Riga. A catalog of the Brederloschen collection compiled in 1893 mentions the Kerckring altar from 1520 for the first time. There is no mention of the origin of this piece, which is atypical for the rest of the collection, in the papers left behind. When the Art Museum in Riga opened in 1905, the entire collection was taken over as a permanent loan from the von Sengbusch family and was henceforth a central part of the painting collection of this museum (today in the Museum of Foreign Art (Riga) ).

The expulsions on the basis of the German-Soviet border and friendship treaty also affected the von Sengbusch family, who were of German descent and were allowed to take seven of the paintings with them when they were forced to resettle in 1940. The remaining items in the collection were then transferred to Latvian state ownership by the government under Kārlis Ulmanis , i.e. expropriated.

After the invasion of the German Wehrmacht in the Baltic States, Latvia was subordinated to Otto-Heinrich Drechsler , General Commissioner for Latvia in the Reichskommissariat Ostland , who was also mayor of Lübeck. The appointed German mayor of Riga, Hugo Wittrock , now tried to win his favor for his own political intentions in 1942 by giving him the Kerckring altar as a gift after the war destruction of the great bombing raid on Lübeck in March 1942 and the associated immense loss of cultural property offered. This altar became famous in the 1920s because the art history literature had increasingly dealt with it. The handover of the looted art took place in June 1943 in Riga. The altar was returned to the collection of the St. Anne's Museum in Lübeck during the Second World War . There it was discovered by chance as an exhibit by the von Sengbusch family after the war in 1965. The legal disputes lasted until 1992. After almost thirty years, despite all legal reservations, the Hanseatic city of Lübeck recognized the ownership rights of the von Sengbusch family, who in turn immediately transferred ownership of the Kerckring altar back to the Hanseatic city of Lübeck, with the obligation to grant this altar received to exhibit it and in future appropriately point out the known part of its fate.

literature

  • Uwe Albrecht : Precious winged altar from the 16th century returns - Lübeck acquires the Gavnø reredos in London. In: Lübeckische Blätter 2012, pp. 44–45.
  • Joanna Barck: The Kerkring Triptych by Jacob van Utrecht or The bourgeois secularization of medieval pictorial spaces , Frankfurt a. a .: Lang 2001 (European University Theses: Series 28, Art History; Vol. 364) ISBN 3-631-36829-1 .
  • Anna Lena Frank: so-called Kerckring retable in: Jan Friedrich Richter (ed.): Lübeck 1500 - Art Metropolis in the Baltic Sea Region , catalog, Imhoff, Petersberg 2015, pp. 328–331 (No. 57).
  • Max J. Friedländer : News about Jacob van Utrecht. In: Oud Holland 58 (1941), pp. 6-17 ( digitized version , JSTOR )
  • Rainald Grosshans: Jacob van Utrecht: the altar from 1513. Berlin-Dahlem: Gemäldegalerie, Staatl. Museums Preuss. Kulturbesitz 1982 ISBN 978-3-88609-095-2
  • Friederike Schütt: so-called Gavnø retable in: Jan Friedrich Richter (ed.): Lübeck 1500 - Art Metropolis in the Baltic Sea Region , catalog, Imhoff, Petersberg 2015, pp. 332–333 (No. 58).
  • Hildegard Vogler: Madonnen in Lübeck , Lübeck 1993.
  • Hildegard Vogler: The triptych of Hinrich and Katharina Kerckring by Jacob van Utrecht , Lübeck 1999.

Web links

Commons : Jacob van Utrecht  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fig. In the picture index of art and architecture
  2. ↑ Uwe Albrecht (Ed.): Corpus of medieval wood sculpture and panel painting in Schleswig-Holstein. Volume 2: Hanseatic City of Lübeck, The Works in the City Area. Ludwig, Kiel 2012, ISBN 978-3-933598-76-9 , No. 42 p. 170
  3. ↑ Important medieval altar back in Lübeck  ( 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. (sh: z of February 10, 2012)@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.shz.de  
  4. ↑ Entry in the lost art database, accessed on March 8, 2019
  5. ^ Renaissance and Baroque: in the Westphalian State Museum for Art and Cultural History Münster. Münster: Landesmuseum 2000 ISBN 9783887891374 , p. 94
  6. ↑ Crucifixion altar in Nødebo  ( 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.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.noedebosogn.dk  
  7. ^ Uwe Albrecht , Ulrike Nürnberger, Jan Friedrich Richter , Jörg Rosenfeld, Christiane Saumweber: Corpus of medieval wood sculpture and panel painting in Schleswig-Holstein. Volume II: Hanseatic City of Lübeck, The Works in the City Area. Ludwig, Kiel 2012, ISBN 978-3-933598-76-9 , pp. 303-311, no. 98
  8. ^ Emil Ferdinand Fehling : Lübeck Council Line. Lübeck 1925.
  9. ↑ Holger Walter: Where there's a will, there's a way. Restitution experience in a municipal administration. as PDF
personal data
SURNAME Utrecht, Jacob van
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Traiectensis, Jacobus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch early Renaissance painter
DATE OF BIRTH around 1479
PLACE OF BIRTH uncertain: Utrecht
DATE OF DEATH after 1525