Circle of Cornelis Cornelisz. van Harlem (1562- 1638), Study of a Model (formerly known as portrait of Lasse Lucidor (1638–1674), Oil on canvas, 84 x 64 cm, The National Museum, Stockholm
Circle of Cornelis Cornelisz. van Harlem (1562- 1638),’ Study of a Model (formerly known as portrait of Lasse Lucidor (1638–1674),’ Oil on canvas, 84 x 64 cm, The National Museum, Stockholm
The painting offers a revealing example of how misattribution can shape cultural memory. For much of its history, it was identified as a portrait of the Swedish poet Lars ‘Lasse’ Johansson (1638–1674), called Lucidor. This ascription is chronologically impossible, as the painting predates Lucidor’s lifetime, yet the error persisted through copies and engravings that came to define his supposed likeness. The result was the invention of an enduring but fictitious visual identity for the poet, demonstrating the authority of erroneous cataloguing and the role of reproductive media in fixing mistaken traditions.
The misattribution was encouraged by the painting’s typological features. Its pose, controlled expression, and antique look align with pictorial conventions long associated with the representation of poets. These generic attributes made the sitter readily adaptable to a biographical label, even where no evidence supported it. The case highlights how generic artistic types could easily be transformed into supposed portraits, complicating the task of distinguishing between imaginative studies and true likenesses in early modern art.
Jan Massys ( 1509- 1575), Venus Cythereia with the view of Genoa, 1561, Oil on Baltic oak, 130 x 156 cm, The National Museum, Stockholm
Jan Massys, a son of the influential early 16th-century Antwerp artist Quentin Massys, established his own artistic identity during the onset of the Reformation, a period marked by the beginnings of significant religious turmoil and diverse theological debates. Initially following in his father’s footsteps, Massys’s career faced a considerable challenge in 1544 when he was condemned for associating with Eligius Pruystinck’s group. This group advocated for personal exploration of faith, challenging traditional views on sin and sacraments and promoting the idea of universal salvation.
Forced into exile for nearly a decade with his brother, Massys was exposed to various artistic influences in places like Genoa and possibly Fontainebleau. Upon his return to Antwerp in 1555, he integrated these influences into his work, producing seductive, intellectually engaging figures that blended Fontainebleau’s sensuality with Mannerist fantasy and classical learning. This approach reflected Renaissance ideals that intertwine physical beauty with intellectual depth, suggesting that for Massys, focusing on sensual imagery was safer than engaging in religious painting during such contentious times.
This beautiful Venus, created in 1561 against a backdrop of Genoa, is considered one of his masterpieces. Recently Italian scholars established that it was commissioned but Genoan banker Ambrogio Di Negro, a discerning collector active in the major banking centres of Genoa and Antwerp. Venus, central in the composition, symbolises more than love, beauty and divinity but also the conception of Humanitas, at that time understood as spiritual beauty that represents purity, simplicity, and nobility of the soul, which protects humanity. Massys chose the theme that suggests the transfiguration of living beauty into ideal beauty, with the centrally placed Venus surrounded by a nearly mystical Genoese landscape, indicating that intellectual dialogue on humanistic ideas could persist even when embracing new ideas was a significant risk.
Jan Massys ( 1509- 1575), Venus Cythereia with the view of Genoa, 1561, Oil on Baltic oak, 130 x 156 cm, The National Museum, StockholmJan Massys ( 1509- 1575), Venus Cythereia with the view of Genoa, 1561, Oil on Baltic oak, 130 x 156 cm, The National Museum, StockholmJan Massys ( 1509- 1575), Venus Cythereia with the view of Genoa, (fragment with Genoa) 1561, Oil on Baltic oak, 130 x 156 cm, The National Museum, Stockholm
Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617), Vertumnus and Pomona, 1615. Oil on canvas, 90.4 × 104 cm. The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617), Vertumnus and Pomona, 1615. Oil on canvas, 90.4 × 104 cm. The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Hendrick Goltzius was among the most celebrated Dutch printmakers of the late sixteenth century. His engravings, produced with extraordinary technical finesse, were avidly collected across Europe and provided a model for artists from Haarlem to Rome. Large workshops assembled portfolios of such prints as repositories of motifs and inventions, and Goltzius’s work circulated more widely than many of his painted contemporaries. Trained initially within Haarlem Mannerism, he developed the distinctive exaggerated musculature and restless poses that defined the style. A journey to Italy in 1590–91, however, transformed his outlook. Encounters with antiquity and with the work of Raphael and Michelangelo prompted him to abandon Mannerist distortion for a new classicism. Around 1600 he shifted from engraving to painting, convinced that the higher status of the medium would allow him to claim a more elevated place within the artistic hierarchy.
Vertumnus and Pomona is among his mature mythologies, conceived with the precision of a draughtsman but animated by painterly depth and colour. The subject derives from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a key textual reservoir for Renaissance and Baroque artists. Pomona, the nymph of orchards, devoted herself to tending fruit but shunned male company. Vertumnus, the god of seasonal change, pursued her relentlessly, assuming successive disguises—ploughman, vinedresser, reaper—each embodying a stage of nature’s cycle. She resisted until he finally appeared as an old woman, gained her trust, told a tale of love’s rewards, and then revealed his true youthful form.
Goltzius captured this moment of persuasion with a balance of sensuality and allegory. Pomona is shown with the fruits of her garden, emblems of fecundity and also of transience, while Vertumnus, vigorous yet cloaked in disguise, embodies both desire and transformation. The theme of youth yielding to age—and of constancy beneath mutable appearances—resonated with Goltzius’s own artistic trajectory, from Mannerist virtuosity to classical restraint.
A closely related version, painted in 1613 and now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, reveals the artist’s sustained interest in the subject during his final years. Together these canvases testify to his ability to translate the incisive line of the engraver into the layered textures of oil, and to his ambition to elevate Dutch painting through the learned treatment of classical myth.
