Karel van Mander

Karel van Mander (I) or Carel van Mander I (May 1548 – 2 September 1606) was a Flemish painter, playwright, poet, art historian and art theoretician, who established himself in the Dutch Republic in the latter part of his life. He is mainly remembered as a biographer of Early Netherlandish painters and Northern Renaissance artists in his Schilder-boeck. As an artist and art theoretician he played a significant role in the spread and development of Northern Mannerism in the Dutch Republic.

Most of the information about Karel van Mander's life is based on a brief and anonymous biographical sketch included in the posthumous second edition of the Schilder-boeck published in 1618 by Jacob Pietersz Wachter. It is not certain who wrote this biographical sketch with the title t Geslacht, de geboort, plaets, tydt, leven, ende wercken van Karel van Mander, schilder, en poeet, mitsgaders zyn overlyden, ende begraeffenis (The lineage, birth, place, time, life, and works of Karel van Mander, painter and poet, including his death and burial). Various candidates have been proposed including his brother Adam van Mander and the author Gerbrand Adriaensz. Bredero. It has been argued more recently that his son Karel van Mander the Younger was the author of the biographical. He would have relied on biographical information that Karel van Mander had written himself as well as on his own recollections and notes. The information in the biographical sketch is not entirely reliable but is still regarded as the best source of information on van Mander's life.

Van Mander was born into a noble family in Meulebeke, in the County of Flanders. He studied under Lucas de Heere in Ghent. De Heere was a versatile artist who was painter, watercolorist, print artist, biographer, playwright, poet and writer. During the period 1568-1569 van Mander studied with the painter Pieter Vlerick in Kortrijk. The next five years he was less occupied with painting than with the writing of religious plays for which he also painted the scenery. He built quite a reputation in Flanders with his theatre productions.

In 1573 he travelled to Rome in the company of some young nobles. He stayed in Rome for more than three years. There he was active as a painter and became acquainted with patronage. For the Italian count Michelangelo Spada he made some frescoes with scenes of the Parisian blood wedding of 1572 in the Palazzo Spada in Terni. He also received commissions for frescoes with landscapes from several cardinals. He studied and became proficient in the painting of grotesques during his Roman residence.

His biographical sketch refers to van Mander as the discoverer of "caves" in Rome. This may be a reference to the Catacombs of Rome although the exact meaning of the reference is unclear. In Rome he may also have come into contact with fellow Flemish painter Bartholomeus Spranger, who left Rome in 1575 for Vienna to enter into the service of the emperor. On his return journey he passed through Vienna, where, together with Spranger and the sculptor Hans Mont, he made the triumphal arch for the royal entry of the emperor Rudolf II.

Van Mander settled back in his native Meulebeke in 1578 where he was active as a painter and writer. He married an 18-year-old local girl, with whom he had a son. In 1580 he left for Kortrijk due to religious troubles caused by Catholic zealots in Meulebeke. Karel van Mander had at some point become a Mennonite and was therefore a possible target of these zealots. In Kortrijk he got a commission for an altar piece. In Kortrijk another son was born. He left Kortrijk for Bruges in 1582 because of an outbreak of the plague and other reasons. In Bruges, he worked with the painter Paul Weyts. Because of the threat of religious troubles and the plague, Karel fled with his family and his mother-in-law by ship to the Dutch Republic where he settled in Haarlem in the province of Holland in 1583.

Here he worked for 20 years on a commission by the Haarlem city fathers to inventory "their" art collection. The city of Haarlem had confiscated all Catholic religious art after the satisfactie van Haarlem, which gave Catholics equal rights to Protestants, had been overturned in 1578. Van Mander used his work on the commission in his "Schilder-boeck". While in Haarlem he continued to paint, concentrating his energy on his favourite genre: historical allegories. In 1603 he rented a fortified manor ("het Huis te Zevenbergen"), later renamed Marquette Castle in Heemskerk to proofread his book that was published in 1604. He died soon after it was published in Amsterdam at the age of 58.

Karel van Mander was the founder, together with Hubertus Goltzius and Cornelis van Haarlem, of an "academy to study after life". It is not entirely clear what this academy did but it is believed it was an informal discussion group which may have organised drawing classes with life models. It has also been claimed that the nature of the academy was more of a literary nature.