Lucas van Leyden

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Lucas Hugensz van Leyden , also known as Lucas von Leyden (* late May / early June 1494 in Leiden ; † late May / early August 1533 ) was a Dutch painter and engraver of the Renaissance .

Aristotle and Phyllis ("The Subjugated Husband"), 16th century

Life

At first he had his father Hughe Jacobsz as his teacher and at the age of twelve he caused a sensation with a depiction of the legend of St. Hubertus with watercolors on canvas. A sheet depicting the monk Sergius, whom Mohammed murdered in his drunkenness, which Lucas stabbed in his fourteenth year, is executed with great dexterity of the burin. In 1509 he published nine engravings in the form of round medallions with scenes from the life story of Christ; 1510 an engraving on which a naked woman frees a dog from insects, which is one of his rarest leaves. After the death of his father, Lucas still enjoyed the lessons of the painter Cornelis Engelbrechtsen . His Ecce homo appeared in 1510, and one work of art quickly followed another. His greatest composition is the Kalvarienberg (1517), which is considered to be his masterpiece because of the wealth of figures (80). Lucas van Leyden worked with a passionate diligence, but a tendency to sadness clouded his life. In 1521 Albrecht Dürer met him in Antwerp , in whose guild Lucas was enrolled in 1522. In 1527 he toured Belgium with Jan Mabuse and performed with great luxury.

On that journey, however, he suffered an illness that never left him. He spent the last six years of his life on the sickbed, but was also able to draw or engrave in copper while lying down. During this time (1531) he also painted his last oil painting depicting the healing of the blind by Christ ( Hermitage in Petersburg).

The fortune teller , ca.1508, Louvre in Paris

plant

Among the painter's creations, the genre painting, which he first treated with awareness, claims an excellent spot. His religious images are also permeated by a genre-like being. The directions of life at that time, especially the Dutch folk life, the keenly understanding and the fantastic are fused into a whole in Lucas' works. The technique in his paintings is fine and meticulous. In his last pictures, e.g. B. the triptych with the Last Judgment in the middle and hell and purgatory on the wings, in the town house to Leiden, one recognizes a desire to approach the Italians.

His copperplate engravings and woodcuts (more than 200) testify to an extraordinary lightness and yet great care in the handling of the engraving; in it he was under the influence of Dürer. He lags behind this in terms of finer feeling and variety of invention, but surpasses him in painterly treatment and richness of composition. Main leaves are besides the named:

  • The raising of Lazarus (1508)
  • The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1509)
  • The Adoration of the Magi (1513)
  • Esther before Ahasver (1518)
  • Mary Magdalene (1519)
  • Emperor Maximilian (1520)
  • the genre pictures: The Dentist, The Surgeon and The Eulenspiegel.

In addition to the above, the following of paintings can be ascribed to him with some certainty:

  • The game of chess (in Berlin)
  • a similar representation and St. Jerome in penance (in the Museum zu Berlin)
  • Moses knocking the water out of the rock (1527, in the Villa Borghese near Rome)
  • Adoration of the Magi (in Buckingham Palace, London).
Triptych in the Saardom

literature

Web links

Commons : Lucas van Leyden  - album with pictures, videos and audio files