Jan Thomas - Gundakar, Prince of Dietrichstein

Jan Thomas or Jan Thomas van Ieperen (5 February 1617 – 6 September 1673) was a

Flemish Baroque painter Flemish Baroque painting refers to the art produced in the Southern Netherlands during Spanish control in the 16th and 17th centuries. The period roughly begins when the Dutch Republic was split from the Habsburg Spain regions to the south with ...

draughtsman A draughtsman (British spelling) or draftsman (American spelling) may refer to: * An architectural drafter, who produced architectural drawings until the late 20th century * An artist who produces drawings that rival or surpass their other types ...

and

printmaker Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proce ...

. He was first active in

Antwerp Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,

where he worked in the workshop of Rubens. He later became court painter at the

Habsburg The House of Habsburg (), alternatively spelled Hapsburg in Englishgerman: Haus Habsburg, ; es, Casa de Habsburgo; hu, Habsburg család, it, Casa di Asburgo, nl, Huis van Habsburg, pl, dom Habsburgów, pt, Casa de Habsburgo, la, Domus Hab ...

court in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

. He is known for his portraits of the rulers of Austria as well as for his pastoral, mythological and religious scenes.Hans Vlieghe. "Thomas, Jan." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 4 April 2020

Life

Jan Thomas was born in

Ypres Ypres ( , ; nl, Ieper ; vls, Yper; german: Ypern ) is a Belgian city and municipality in the province of West Flanders. Though the Dutch name is the official one, the city's French name is most commonly used in English. The municipality co ...

Flanders Flanders (, ; Dutch: ''Vlaanderen'' ) is the Flemish-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, ...

. Ypres is called Ieper and Ieperen in Flemish. The addition 'van Ieperen', which means 'from Ypres' was added to his name to indicate this. Little is known about the artist's training. The 17th century Flemish biographer

Cornelis de Bie Cornelis de Bie (10 February 1627 – ) was a Flemish '' rederijker'', poet, jurist and minor politician from Lier. He is the author of about 64 works, mostly comedies. He is known internationally today for his biographical sketches of Flemish ...

wrote in his ''

Het Gulden Cabinet ''Het Gulden Cabinet vande Edel Vry Schilder-Const'' or ''The Golden Cabinet of the Noble Liberal Art of Painting'' is a book by the 17th-century Flemish notary and ''Chamber of rhetoric, rederijker'' Cornelis de Bie published in Antwerp. Writte ...

'' that Jan Thomas was a pupil of

Peter Paul Rubens Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque traditio ...

. There is evidence that he spent time in Rubens' workshop at the end of Rubens' life or shortly thereafter. There are stylistic grounds to consider Thomas as a pupil of Rubens as he was familiar with Rubens' late works and translated some of them to smaller scale paintings. Modern scholarship tends to regard Jan Thomas as one of the many collaborators in Rubens' workshop who assisted with large commissions such as the decorations for the

Torre de la Parada The Torre de la Parada is a former hunting lodge that was located in present-day Monte de El Pardo in Fuencarral-El Pardo, near the Royal Palace of El Pardo, some way outside Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain ...

, the hunting lodge of the Spanish king (1636-1638). It is possible that upon Rubens' death Thomas was the 'primer official' of Rubens' workshop, i.e. the chief assistant in charge of executing paintings after the designs of the master.Arnout Balis, ''Rubens and his Studio: Defining the Problem'', in: Joost vander Auwera, Rubens: A Genius at Work: the Works of Peter Paul Rubens in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium Reconsidered, Lannoo Uitgeverij, 2007, p. 47 Thomas, Jan - Shepherd and Shepherdess - Google Art Project

Thomas, Jan - Shepherd and Shepherdess - Google Art Project

Jan Thomas became a master in the Antwerp

Guild of Saint Luke The Guild of Saint Luke was the most common name for a city guild for painters and other artists in early modern Europe, especially in the Low Countries. They were named in honor of the Evangelist Luke, the patron saint of artists, who was ide ...

in 1639/1640. Two years later he acquired Antwerp citizenship.Ph. Rombouts and Th. van Lerius, ''De liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche sint Lucasgilde''
Volume 2, Antwerp, 1864, pp. 110 In 1641/1642 he took Andris Lamberechts on as an apprentice. The next year Andries de Coninck and Jacob Sons joined his workshop as pupils. In 1642 he married Maria Cnobbaert, daughter of the Antwerp book dealer

Joannes Cnobbaert Jan or Joannes Cnobbaert (1590–1637) was a Flemish printer, publisher and bookseller who was active in Antwerp in the early 17th century. Life Cnobbaert was born in Antwerp in 1590. He married Maria de Man.Jan Thomas
at the

Netherlands Institute for Art History The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center i ...

In 1652 Jan Thomas' third child was baptized in the St. James' Church in Antwerp, which is evidence that he was then still living in that city. It is believed that Jan Thomas left Antwerp in 1654 to work as a painter for the bishop of Mainz

Johann Philipp von Schönborn Johann Philipp von Schönborn (6 August 1605 – 12 February 1673) was the Archbishop-Elector of Mainz (1647–1673), the Bishop of Würzburg (1642–1673), and the Bishop of Worms (1663–1673). Life Johann Philipp was born in ...

one of the important courts at that time.Hans Vlieghe, ''Flemish Art and Architecture, 1585-1700'', Pelican history of art, New Haven: Yale University Press (1998): 111–112. Jan Baptist de Ruel was his pupil during his stay in this city. Around 1658 he was in

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

at the time of the coronation of Leopold I as emperor of the

Holy Roman Empire The Holy Roman Empire was a Polity, political entity in Western Europe, Western, Central Europe, Central, and Southern Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, dissolution i ...

and painted a (now lost) portrait of the emperor. In that period he also received commissions from the

Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria (5 January 1614 – 20 November 1662), younger brother of Emperor Ferdinand III, was an Austrian soldier, administrator and patron of the arts. He held a number of military commands, with limited success, and ...

. From the latter part of the 1650s Jan Thomas certainly lived with his family in Vienna. He is documented in Vienna when a child of his was baptized there on 8 December 1663. He is recorded living in the Kärtnerstrasse in 1667. In Vienna he received commissions from the imperial court and painted the portraits of Leopold I and his wife Margaret Theresa in theater costume. These portraits were made at the occasion of the celebrations surrounding the marriage of the imperial couple in 1666. Jan Thomas also received commissions from the higher clergy and the aristocracy, such as the

House of Zrinski Zrinski () was a Croatian- Hungarian noble family, a cadet branch of the Croatian noble tribe of Šubić, influential during the period in history marked by the Ottoman wars in Europe in the Kingdom of Croatia's union with the Kingdom of Hungar ...

or Zrínyi. He painted a

portrait A portrait is a portrait painting, painting, portrait photography, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, Personality type ...

of the general and poet

Miklós Zrínyi Miklós Zrínyi ( hr, Nikola Zrinski, hu, Zrínyi Miklós; 5 January 1620 – 18 November 1664) was a Croatian and Hungarian military leader, statesman and poet. He was a member of the House of Zrinski, a Croatian- Hungarian noble family. ...

a few years before Zrínyi's death in 1664.Júlia Tátrai Júlia Tátrai, ''Wiener Hofkünstler und die Zrínyis. Porträts in der Lobkowicz-Sammlung''
in: Journal of the Institute of Art History (Zagreb), 2018 He died from a stroke in Vienna on 6 September 1673.

Work

In addition to large religious history paintings, Jan Thomas painted landscapes with mythological or pastoral figures and portraits. He made a large number of portraits of Leopold William and Emperor Leopold I and other members of the royal and aristocratic families in the Habsburg territories. His style shows a close relationship to that of Rubens, in particular that of Rubens' later work which was sent directly to Spain. This is evidence that he likely worked in Rubens' workshop at the end of the master's life and/or just after his death. Like his contemporary

Frans Wouters Frans Wouters (1612–1659) was a Flemish Baroque painter who translated the monumental Baroque style of Peter Paul Rubens into the small context of cabinet paintings. He was a court painter to the Roman Emperor and the Prince of Wales and ...

, many of his works translate the monumental Baroque style of

into the small context of

cabinet painting A cabinet painting (or "cabinet picture") is a small painting, typically no larger than two feet (0.6 meters) in either dimension, but often much smaller. The term is especially used for paintings that show full-length figures or landscapes at a s ...

s. This is particularly obvious in his biblical paintings in which he regularly cites from Rubens' works. In his small-scale mythological scenes his style is more reminiscent of the late Mannerist style of

Frans Francken the Younger Frans Francken the Younger (1581 in Antwerp, 1581 – 6 May 1642, in Antwerp) was a Flemish painter who created altarpieces and furniture panels and gained his reputation chiefly through his small and delicate cabinet pictures with historical, m ...

His life-size portraits, which he already made during his stay in Vienna, are consistent with the elegant and, at the same time, decorative portrait style created by Flemish artists working in Vienna in the second half of the 17th century. An example is the ''Leopold I as Acis in the play 'La Galatea (1668, Kunsthistorisches Museum). Around 1658 Jan Thomas began to work in the new medium of the

mezzotint Mezzotint is a monochrome printmaking process of the '' intaglio'' family. It was the first printing process that yielded half-tones without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple. Mezzotint achieves tonali ...

. One of these works in mezzotint is a portrait of

Titian Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italians, Italian (Republic of Venice, Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school (art), ...

from 1661, which was dedicated to Empress

Eleonora Eleanor () is a feminine given name, originally from an Old French adaptation of the Old Provençal name ''Aliénor''. It is the name of a number of women of royalty and nobility in western Europe during the High Middle Ages. The name was introd ...

, widow of the father of Leopold I,

Emperor Ferdinand III Ferdinand III (Ferdinand Ernest; 13 July 1608, in Graz – 2 April 1657, in Vienna) was from 1621 Archduke of Austria, King of Hungary from 1625, King of Croatia and Bohemia from 1627 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1637 until his death in 1657. Fe ...

. Besides engravings in mezzotint Jan Thomas also worked as an etcher and engraver. He made engravings of his own compositions as well as of the works of other artists such as Rubens,

Anthony van Dyck Sir Anthony van Dyck (, many variant spellings; 22 March 1599 – 9 December 1641) was a Brabantian Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England after success in the Southern Netherlands and Italy. The seventh c ...

Gerard Dou Gerrit Dou (7 April 1613 – 9 February 1675), also known as Gerard Douw or Dow, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, whose small, highly polished paintings are typical of the Leiden fijnschilders. He specialised in genre scenes and is noted for his '' ...

and

Giovanni Ambrogio Figino Giovanni Ambrogio Figino (1548/1551 – 11 October 1608) was an Italian Renaissance painter from Milan. Biography An important representative of the Lombard school of painting, he had been taught by Gian Paolo Lomazzo. Best known as a draft ...

. In his graphic work he also made genre and allegorical works as in the ''Woman with the portrait of a man in her hand'' (

Rijksmuseum The Rijksmuseum () is the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch arts and history and is located in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough of Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the St ...

), which was published by

Frans van den Wyngaerde Frans van den Wyngaerde or Frans van den WijngaerdeHis name is sometimes also spelled Francis vanden Wyngaert ( Antwerp, 8 July 1614Antwerp 17 March 1679) was a Flemish printmaker, draughtsman and publisher.vanitas A ''vanitas'' (Latin for 'vanity') is a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often contrasting symbols of wealth and symbols of ephemerality and death. Best-known are ''van ...

allegory reminding the viewer of the temporary nature of all humanly endeavors.Jan Thomas van Ieperen, ''Woman with the portrait of a man in her hand''
at the Rijksmuseum

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Thomas van Ieperen, Jan 1617 births 1673 deaths Painters from Antwerp Flemish Baroque painters Flemish portrait painters Flemish printmakers Flemish history painters Artists from Ypres