Joos van Cleve

Joos van Cleve (1485 - 1541) was a painter active in Antwerp around 1511 to 1540 He is known for combining traditional Netherlandish painting techniques with influences of more contemporary Renaissance painting styles

Joos van Cleve (or Joos van der Beke, alias of Cleve) (ca 1485/1490 - 1540 or 1541) was a South Dutch painter who worked in Antwerp between 1511 and 1540 He was a flexible painter who could be his style Adapt to the wishes of the commissioners and painted in the style of the great Bruges painters as well as in the fashionist style of his time and in the Italian renaissance style for works ordered by Italian clients Joos van Cleve was a very Productive painter there are over three hundred works attributed to him and his studio of which a large number of religious themes Typical of Van Cleve are the backgrounds with vast landscapes He also painted several portraits for European royal houses

An active member and co-deacon of the Guild of Saint Luke of Antwerp, he is known mostly for his religious works and portraits of royalty As a skilled technician, his art shows sensitivity to color and a unique solidarity of figures He was one of the first to introduce broad landscapes in the backgrounds of his paintings, which would become a popular technique of sixteenth century northern Renaissance paintings

He was the father of Cornelius or Cornelis van Cleve who was also a painter and is believed to have suffered from a mental illness and was therefore referred to as 'Sotte Cleef'

oos van Cleve was born around 1485 The birthplace of Joos van Cleve is not precisely known In various Antwerp legal documents he is referred to as ‘Joos van der Beke alias van Cleve’ It is therefore likely that he came from the Lower Rhenish region or city named Kleve, from which his name is derived It is assumed that he began his artistic training around 1505 in the workshop of Jan Joest, whom he assisted in the panel paintings of the high altar for the Nikolaikirche in Kalkar, Lower Rhine, Germany

Joos van Cleve is believed to have moved to Bruges between 1507 - 1511 since his painting style is similar to that of the painters of Bruges Later he moved to Antwerp, and in 1511 became a free master in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke He was co-deacon of the guild for several years around 1520, along with presenting pupils between 1516 and 1536 It is possible he spent time in France at the court in 1529 or 1535 He may also have made a trip to Italy around this time and to London (England) around 1535-1536

He had two children from his first marriage, a daughter and a son His son Cornelis (1520) became a painter Although the date of his death is unknown, Joos van Cleve drew up a will and testament on 10 November 1540, and his second wife was listed as a widow in April 1541

Work:
Alias and identity:
From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, the name of Joos van Cleve as an artist was lost The paintings now attributed to Joos van Cleve were, at that time, known as the works of “the Master of the Death of the Virgin,” after the triptych currently in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum (Cologne) In 1894 it was discovered that the monogram on the back of the triptych was that of Joos van der Beke, an alias of Joos van Cleve

Artistic influences:
The influence of Kalkar and Bruges are seen in many of Joos van Cleve’s early works, such as Adam and Eve (1507) The Death of the Virgin (1520) shows the combined influence of several artists It has the intense emotionality of Hugo van der Goes, and iconographic ideas of Jan van Eyck and Robert Campin A strong influence of Italian art combined with Joos van Cleve’s own color and light sensitivity make his works especially unique The “Antwerp Mannerist” style is identifiable in the Adoration of the Magi It is thought that the “Antwerp Mannerists” were in turn influenced by Joos van Cleve

Like Quentin Matsys, a fellow artist active in Antwerp, Joos van Cleve appropriated themes and techniques of Leonardo da Vinci This is apparent in the use of sfumato in the Virgin and Child Multiple versions of a soft, sentimental Madonna and Child and the Holy Family were discovered, produced in his workshop

Royal portraits:
Joos van Cleve’s skills as a portrait artist were highly regarded as demonstrated by a summons to the court of Francis I of France There he painted the king (Philadelphia Museum of Art), the queen Eleanor of Austria (Kunsthistorisches Museum) and other members of the court His portrait of Henry VIII of England is of comparable size to that of Francis I (721 x 592 cm) and the compositions and costumes in both portraits are similar Some historians have interpreted this as evidence that the portraits were pendants painted to commemorate the meeting of the two kings in Calais and Boulogne on 21 and 29 October 1532 Other historians have proposed the alternative view that van Cleve based the Henry VIII portrait on that of Francis I without meeting the English king He may have hoped that this gesture might earn him English royal commissions in future

Virgin and child and Holy Family:
Joos van Cleve produced many versions of the Virgin and Child, the Holy Family and the Virgin and Child with St Anne, which were very popular In some instances the original has been lost, but the type can be recovered through the numerous replicas produced by his workshop and copyists There exist very similar versions of the composition of the Virgin and Child, of which one is held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest and another was sold at Sotheby's on 30 January 2014 It is full of charm and tenderness and was popular in his own time as well as with later collectors The composition shows the Virgin with a brilliant red cloak, lined with fur and elaborately embroidered with pearls along the outside edge The Virgin is seated in a loggia-like space with open windows through which a distant mountainous landscape is visible She has her lips parted in a slight smile while she helps the Christ Child drink from a glass with red wine, a symbol of Christ's future suffering and blood and the Eucharist Characteristic of Netherlandish painting of this period are the jewel-like colours and the details of the Virgin’s costume and brocade pillow in the foreground

The pose of the Holy Family in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (c 1518–20) is quoted from Jan van Eyck's Lucca Madonna of c 1435 (Städel, Frankfurt) The scene is placed in a domestic setting and the Virgin is only depicted at half-length Another change in the composition is the addition of Joseph The wine and fruits on the foreground are a reference to Christ's incarnation and future sacrifice They also hint at the emerging genre of still-life painting in Flanders

Style:
Describing the style of Joos van Cleve is not a simple matter because it was quite eclectic He painted in the fashionist style, popular in Antwerp of his time but equally well in the Bruges tradition of Jan van Eyck and Gerard David Also Rogier van der Weyden, Robert Campin, Hans Memling and Joachim Patinir are easy to find in his work For his Genuese customers, he went to the Renaissance style that was popular in Genoa at that time He was a painter who was home to many markets and Works delivered in the style ordered by the commissioner In this connection, Van Mander made a beautiful statement in his Schilderboeck, namely: "The revered glorious city of Antwerp, through coopmanship in sprouting, has already had a long time ago Consten, many of whom have gone to oer oock, that the Const is nailed to the rijckdom "In other words, the good artist gave the rich k Lant what the early! Thus, the two triumphs of the Death of Mary were ordered in the first years of Joos's freedom of liberty by the Nicasius brothers and Georg Hackeney from Cologne, realized in the typical German format that was unusual in Joos's studio From Cleve but also not in the Southern Netherlands The material used for the signature is in line with German tradition and differs from what Joos does in his other works The attitudes of the apostles on the middle panel of both works are related to Antwerps maniaism , The composition, on the other hand, reminds of the same theme of Hugo van der Goes and Peter Christ In contrast, another work ordered from Cologne by the councilor Gobel Schmitgen, namely the triptych with the Creation of Christ, was written in 1524 in the Saint Mary in Lyskirchen, because of its bright colors and the big haligours, is very Italian The work also shows great overe Arrivals with the Maria della Pace altar piece (now in the Louvre) painted by Joos van Cleve on behalf of Italian Nicolò Calvi Bellogio

The style of Joos van Cleve's work is also not easy to indicate chronologically There has been no evident evolution in his painting style over the years A beautiful example of this is the worship of the Kings ordered by Oberto de Lazario Cattaneo for his chapel in the Chiesa Di San Luca di Albaro near Genoa (now in the Gemälde Gallery Alte Meister in Dresden) In the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Geneses ordered paintings in Antwerp in the absence of good local artists but expected the style to be in agreement with the Great Italian artists This work was installed in Genoa about 1518 and was thus painted in the same period as the two tripods with the death of Mary The composition of this work is totally different from that of the German tribe and is very similar to Leonardo da Vinci's work Vinci and Francesco Sacchi Also the use of models, which were evidently used frequently in Joos's studio of N Cleve, Enhances Chronological Posting of Works Thus, the figure of Balthasar was copied to the worship of the kings (Dresden) on the works that were preserved in Naples and Detroit that came about 10 years later

A chronological element that is clearly apparent in Joos van Cleve's work is the influence of Joachim Patinir at work Patinir settled in 1515 as a freelance in Antwerp and remained active until his death in 1524 Before 1515, in the 1515 Joos van Cleve's work not to notice the influence of Patinir Neither in the triptych with the death of Mary nor in the Reinhold altar piece nor in the Madonna's with Child, which came into existence before 1515, Patinir's wide landscapes can be found After the establishment of Patinir in Antwerp, Joos van Cleve will imitate and assimilate a very fast-paced style of landscapes The landscape of the rest in flight to Egypt at the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels is almost a literal copy of that on the same-name work of Patinir in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid The composition of the main theme is then derived from Gerard David's equivalent work and for the Virgin Mary we were Rk of Rogier van der Weyden model

In summary, it can be said that the works produced by Joos van Cleve's workshop were the products of a craft perfection Their high quality put the majority of his contemporaries in Antwerp in shadow, although his working methods were not significantly different from those of the other Antwerp masters The criticism that Joost van Cleve was a genius copyist but few real self-created work created inept by moving our contemporary art views to the early sixteenth century At that time it was referring to the great masters of the previous period, the fifteenth century, Quite normal and did not call the idea of plagiarism but rather of tribute to an illustrious predecessor The renaissance art of the North puts its authority out of repetition

Studio production:
In addition to the great assignments that Joos van Cleve realized, we also know a lot of works that were realized in the master's studio There are Mary and Child with cherries, possibly based on a lost panel of Leonardo da Vinci twenty-five panels known Associated with Van Cleve of Christ and John the Baptist as a child also to Da Vinci, fifteen versions were recovered from the Holy Hieronymus in his study based on a work by Albrecht Dürer thirteen and the Holy Family over thirty and The list is far from full Fifty-fifth of the three hundred works attributed to Van Cleve and his studio are such series productions Joos formed his entire career five students and three of them were adopted in the second half of the 1530s It's exactly in this period That a large number of the works we can label as series production came about

To make these works, models and cartons were used to make production as efficient and prompt as possible The signatures that came about that way could hardly be assigned to a particular artist, any student could be problem-free with a punch or print carton Make a signature on the prepared panel

The quality of the finishing touches of these works is very different Some paintings are very detailed and refined, while others have been paid less attention Most works were not painted by one artist but by a studio But although there was a difference between the artists Work realized is demonstrable, it can be said that Joos van Cleve's workshop was responsible for quality
The Holy Family is a theme that was very popular in Joos van Cleve's studio and takes a separate place From this subject, which, in view of the large number of copies kept, must have been quite popular in the early sixteenth century is neither No versions of Joos contemporaries like Bernard van Orley, Jan Gossaert, Quinten Massijs or predecessors such as Hans Memling and Gerard David Joos van Cleve designed his own compositions, even though he drew attention to the details of the work of illustrious predecessors such as Jan van Eyck And Rogier van der Weyden The madonna on the Holy Family at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is clearly inspired by the Lucca Madonna of Jan van Eyck at the Städelsches Museum in Frankfurt am Main and Joseph can be found in several works by Rogier Ven Der Weyden

Works List:
In chronological order:
The Holy Family (1515), Akademie der bildenden Kunste, Vienna
Saint Reinhold Altar (before 1516), National Museum, Warsaw
Triptych Centre: the Deposition from the Cross; Left wing: St John the Baptist with a Donor; Right wing: St Margaret of Antioch with a Donatrix (1518-1519), National Galleries Scotland, Edinburgh
Self-Portrait (1519), Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
The Death of the Virgin (1520), Alte Pinakothek, Munich
Man with the Rosary (1520), National Museum, Belgrade
Altarpiece of the Lamentation (1520–25), Musée du Louvre, Paris
The Suicide of Lucretia (1520–25), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Portrait of a Man and Woman (1520 and 1527), Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
The Annunciation (1525), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Infants Christ and Saint John the Baptist Embracing (1525–30), Art Institute, Chicago
Adoration of the Magi (1526–28), Gemaldegalerie, Dresden
Saint Jerome in his Study (1528), Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton
Portrait of Eleonora, Queen of France (1530), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Virgin and Child (1535), Landesmuseum, Oldenburg
Madonna and Child against the renaissance background (c 1535), Museum of King Jan III's Palace at Wilanów, Warsaw
Dates unknown:
Death of the Virgin, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne
The Holy Family, The Hermitage, St Petersburg
Mona Vanna, National Gallery, Prague
Portrait of Agniete ven den Rijne, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede
Portrait of Anthonis van Hilten, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede
St Anne with the Virgin and Child and St Joachim, Musee Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
Virgin and Child, Szepmuveszeti Muzeum, Budapest
Triptych of Saint Peter, Saint Paul and Saint Andrew, Museu de Arte Sacra do Funchal
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