Scorel, Jan van

(1495-1562)

   Dutch Romanist painter from Schoorl, a village near Alkmaar; the bastard son of a priest, his birth legitimized by Emperor Charles V in 1541. While attending Latin school in Alkmaar, Jan van Egmond, who later became the city's burgomaster, recognized van Scorel's talent and sent him to study with Cornelis Buys, Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen's brother. Some scholars believe that van Scorel also studied with van Oostsanen himself in 1512 and that he may have gone to Utrecht in c. 1517-1518 where he would have met fellow Romanist Jan Gossart. In c. 1518-1519, he also went to Venice and, in 1520, he left for the Holy Land with a group of pilgrims. Two years later, he was in Rome where the Dutch Pope Hadrian VI put him in charge of the antiquities housed in the Belvedere, a position he lost when the pope died in 1523. Five years later, van Scorel settled in Utrecht where by 1551 he owned three houses and acted as canon of the local parish church. He died in Utrecht in 1562.

   Some of van Scorel's works show the influence of Venetian art, as seen in his Death of Cleopatra (c. 1522; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), a Giorgionesque reclining nude in a landscape, and Mary Magdalen (c. 1529; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), a three-quarter sculptural figure set outdoors that recalls some of the compositions of Palma Vecchio and Lorenzo Lotto, both active in Venice. Van Scorel's Baptism of Christ (c. 1528; Haarlem, Frans Halsmuseum) is a landscape populated by seminude figures inspired by Michelangelo, and his Presentation in the Temple (c. 1530-1535; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) unfolds within a Bramantesque architectural setting that recalls Raphael's School of Athens in the Stanza della Segnatura at the Vatican (1510-1511). Van Scorel's eclecticism no doubt resulted from his enthusiasm for the many lessons the Italians had to offer. He was responsible for the artistic training of Anthonis Mor and Maerten van Heemskerck, who owe their interest in the Italian idiom to their master.