Jan van den Hecke


Jan van den Hecke or Jan van den Hecke the Elder was a Flemish Baroque painter, draughtsman, printmaker and engraver mainly known for his still lifes, landscapes and battle scenes. After training in Antwerp, he spent time in Rome where he had important patrons. After his return to Flanders he worked for a while in Brussels likely painting flower still lifes for Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, the Austrian governor of the Spanish Netherlands, before returning to work in Antwerp.

Life

Jan van den Hecke was born in Kwaremont near Ronse, about 10 km from Oudenaarde, East Flanders. He was registered in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke as an apprentice in 1636. He was a pupil of Abraham Hack, who also taught his contemporary, the flower painter Hieronymus Galle. He became a master in the Antwerp Guild in the year 1641-1642.
He travelled to Italy where he resided in Rome but the exact dates of his trip are unclear. Alternative dates proposed are from 1644 to 1659 and 1653 to 1658. In Rome he enjoyed the patronage of Paolo Giordano II Orsini, the duke of Bracciano. He may also have travelled in France during the 1650s.
Jan van den Hecke spent time in Brussels in the mid 1650s. During his stay in Brussels in the mid 1650s he may have worked for Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, the Austrian governor of the Spanish Netherlands. who resided in Brussels and was an avid art collector. A number of van den Hecke's still life paintings found their way into the Archduke's collection and from there into the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Archduke Leopold Wilhelm must have particularly liked his flower pieces as all of van den Hecke's paintings which he collected were pictures of flowers in vases and baskets and garland paintings. Van den Hecke returned to Antwerp around 1657.
In 1660 he married Maria Adriana Heyens with whom he had three children. His son, known as Jan van den Hecke the Younger, was born in 1661 and became a popular painter of flowers, other types of still life as well as of landscapes.
His two known pupils were Peeter vander Elstraeten and Peeter de Clerc.
He died in Antwerp in 1684.

Work

General

Jan van den Hecke was a versatile artist working in many genres and techniques. He made still lifes of flowers, fruit and game, paintings of animals, landscapes, genre scenes, military scenes and allegorical paintings.

Still lifes

He was a gifted flower painter. As in the work of other Antwerp painters of his generation such as Jan Brueghel the Younger and Philips de Marlier, some of the flower paintings of van den Hecke were dedicated to the presentation of a single variety of flowers: tulips and wallflowers. Some of his flower still lifes, such as the Flowers in a Vase with the Siege of Gravelingen, include a view onto a landscape or a battle scene, two genres in which van den Hecke was skilled.
Jan van den Hecke made a number of works in a distinctively Flemish genre, which is referred to as 'garland painting'. Garland paintings are a special type of still life developed in early 17th century Antwerp by Jan Brueghel the Elder at the instigation of the Italian cardinal Federico Borromeo. Other artists involved in the early development of the genre included Hendrick van Balen, Andries Danielsz., Peter Paul Rubens and Daniel Seghers. Garland paintings typically show a flower garland around a devotional image or portrait. The genre was initially connected to the visual imagery of the Counter-Reformation movement. It was further inspired by the cult of veneration and devotion to Mary prevalent at the Habsburg court and in Antwerp generally. Garland paintings typically show a flower garland around a devotional image, portrait or other religious symbol.
Garland paintings were typically collaborations between a still life specialist and a figure painter. As van den Hecke was a gifted figure painter he may have painted both the still life elements as the figures in some of his garland paintings. This may have been the case in his :File:Jan van den Hecke - Rosary Madonna in a Garland.jpg|Rosary Madonna in a Garland. A collaboration with the figure painter Jan Lievens is the :File:Jan Lievens and Jan van den Hecke - Portrait of a Young Man in Flower Garland.jpg|Portrait of a Young Man in Flower Garland.
Van den Hecke also painted still lifes of game with dogs in the style of Jan Fyt and pronkstillevens with ostentatious objects, a genre invented in Antwerp. He was particularly skilled at painting gold, silver, crystal and porcelain.

Landscapes and military scenes

His landscapes often include battle or military scenes with many figures. His landscapes are in an Italianate style. One of his paintings representing a Market in the Roman Campagna was formerly attributed to the Flemish Italianate painter Anton Goubau. Other of his landscapes tend towards the genre scenes painted by the group of Flemish and Dutch painters in Rome known as the Bamboccianti. The Bamboccianti comprised mostly Dutch and Flemish artists who had brought existing traditions of depicting peasant subjects from sixteenth-century Netherlandish art with them to Italy, and generally created small cabinet paintings or etchings of the everyday life of the lower classes in Rome and its countryside.

Prints

In the mid 1650s he made a number of etchings depicting various animals and battle scenes. He collaborated with other printmakers on publishing projects. In 1654 he made the designs for a series of 10 plates which were engraved by the Dutch engraver Theodor van Kessel and were entitled Alcune Animali. This series depicted various animals. He created another series of 11 prints plus a title page referred to as the Zoographia, which also depicted different animals and was printed in 1656. It was dedicated to van den Hecke's patron in Rome, Paolo Giordano II Orsini, the duke of Bracciano.
He made a topographical drawing of the Castle of Reet that was :File:Jacob Neefs, Jan van den Hecke - A view of the Castle of Reed.jpg|engraved by Jacob Neefs as an illustration in the Antwerp historian Jacob Le Roy's Notitia Marchionatus Sacri Romani Imperii, a book with engravings of secular and religious landmarks or points of interest in the Spanish Netherlands.