Otto Naumann Ltd.

Exhibitions:
Worcester Art Museum, The Collectors Cabinet: Flemish Paintings from New England Collections, 1983

Best known as one of the teachers of Rubens, Otto van Veen led a life similar to that of his most famous pupil. Born into a family of some distinction, he studied in the Netherlands and Italy, traveled rather extensively, and spent most of his years in Antwerp, where he had a large studio and painted for the court. A distinguished and scholarly artist, Van Veen strongly influenced Rubens, who studied with him from 1596 to 1598 and then assisted him for two more years before leaving for Italy.

The Adoration of the Shepherds, which appears to date just after 1600, exhibits the mild classicism characteristic of figure painting in Antwerp during the first decade of the seventeenth century. Like many of his contemporaries, Van Veen arrived at this style after gradually abandoning Mannerism. To appreciate the change, one should compare this painting to another Nativity by him completed shortly before 1600 (panel, 230.5 x 204.5 cm, Maagdenhuis, Antwerp). In the earlier work the figures are restless and contorted and appear to float across the picture plane, whereas in the later painting they are much more solid and relate more clearly to each other. Although both works incorporate dramatic lighting, in the earlier painting it is used for decorative and ambiguous effects, while here is serves to model the figures and organize them into a coherent design.

With its dense, solidly constructed forms and figures that appear frozen in space, Van Veen’s Adoration is somewhat static. The rigid, formal design is relieved by only a few small details, like the angels holding hands and the shepherd at the lower left, who smiles at the viewer while caressing the woman next to him. This kind of stiff, Flemish classicism was soon to be transformed by Rubens into much more painterly and spirited art of the Baroque.

In Van Veen’s earlier painting, the angel’s announcement to the shepherds, inscribed on a banderole, is combined with the Nativity scene in the foreground. Here the announcement takes place on a distant hillside, where additional shepherd watch over their flocks.

The Adoration of the Shepherds is closely related to another nativity by Van Veen in the Gemäldegalerie, Schleissheim (copper, 23.5 x 32 cm), which is part of a series of fifteen paintings on the life of the Virgin. The Schleissheim painting, a much smaller work, includes many similar figures and animals. The shepherd kneeling at the right, for example, is virtually identical. And in both, Van Veen shows the shepherds presenting the Christ Child with their humble gifts: apples, eggs, birds, and a lamb. The apples probably refer to Christ as the new Adam, and the bound lamb to His future sacrifice.

The Adoration of the Shepherds is painted on an unusually large and thick piece of copper. A popular paintings support among Flemish artists during the seventeenth century, copper was valued for its fine surface and was, for the most part, used for smaller, highly detailed works. Punched into the back of this panel is the mark of the Antwerp coppersmith Pieter Stas, which consists of his initials inside a heart-shaped design. The mark appears twice, along with two hands, symbols of the Antwerp guild.

The paintings are all the same size, 23.5 x 32 cm, and on copper.

In the smaller work, the shepherd kneels against a mound of earth, which is missing in the larger painting, making his pose somewhat uncertain.

Some of Stas’s copper panels also include a date. Although this one does not, one can assume it was made before 1608, for on panels of that year and later and later, Stas used a more eleborate mark that spells out his name.