Jan Soens (Boi-Le-Duc 1547 ca. Parma 1611/1614)

Jan Soens (Boi-Le-Duc 1547 ca. Parma 1611/1614) Landscape with Saint Martin and the Beggar Oil on panel, cm. 40 × 52.7 This refined and unusual panel, painted with the speed of a sketch or a study for a larger composition, is truly a rarity, given the era to which it can be clearly dated, the second half of the sixteenth century. The artistic language that informs the rendering of the figures shows the clear influence of Parmigianino's art, allowing us to place the work in the Parma area: as we shall see, precise stylistic reasons and more than convincing comparisons allow us to attribute it to the Netherlandish Jan Soens, a figure of uncommon level, especially in landscape painting. The first information on his biography is provided by Karel Van Mander in the “Lives of the illustrious Flemish, Dutch and German painters” of which I report some passages: « he visited Italy during my stay, so I could frequent him amicably. He performed many works there, especially small works on copper [...] I was able to admire these works closely, executed with astounding skill and speed, for which they were criticized by some painters [...] There is also one of his works kept in one of the antechambers of the Royal Room: a graceful painting on the wall, in which a rooster appears [...] He currently works in Parma [...] he was very gifted in the representation of small figures, as I could see in Rome: minute figures, admittedly, but rendered with grace and skill.[...] Thanks to his merits, he must be counted among the most illustrious Netherlandish artists, especially in landscapes ». Even today the painting with the ‘rooster’ mentioned is kept in the Ducal Hall in the Vatican and is also the first of Soens to have reached us: in it the influence of both the works of the ‘Brill factory’ and of Girolamo Muziano is evident; we are in 1574. In 1575 Jan Soens is already in Parma if the following year he is paid for the purchase of colours by Duke Ottavio. His position, in a short time, must have become more than remarkable: in 1579 he was given not only the task of enlarging the organ doors already painted by Parmigianino, but to complete them, on the inner side, with the depiction of the Flight into Egypt. This painting is one of Soens' masterpieces and it is striking how the priors of the Steccata granted the painter the freedom to execute a landscape of such large dimensions for a church building. Between 1578 and 1582 the painter is among the ‘provisionati’ of the duke, that is among his closest employees: in 1586 he is compensated for the expenses incurred in the fresco decoration of the Porta di Santa Croce near the Ducal Garden. In 1586 we find Jan in Venice where he goes to buy colours. Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo cites him in the Idea del Tempio della Pittura of 1590 as: «Giovanni Fiammingo, very rare in making small figures and landscapes, who now serves Alessandro, Duke of Parma ». It is at the turn of the new century that Soens' figure began to be eclipsed by that of younger and more innovative artists such as Giovanni Battista Trotti called the Molosso and, above all, the Carracci: in fact, it does not appear that he had any more important commissions. The sources report a his to Cremona, where he would then have died; a news that would seem denied by his will, where there is also an interesting list of assets. Inside the workshop are mentioned, among others: «17 paintings of various paintings [ ... ] 4 sketched paintings 3 landscape paintings [...] a landscape painting guacio». I would not be surprised if our panel was part of this work material, which remained in Soens' atelier at his death. The artist skillfully alternated a more emphatic painting and a greater figural robustness, explained above all in the altarpieces, to refined images in small format, painted with the tip of a brush, with a vivid and skillful rendering of the views, distinguished by an uncommon sensitivity for the luminous data. In our panel there is a landscape formed with considerable freedom and speed of execution: the slope of a hill stands out against the sky that seems about to cloud over. A tree placed diagonally closes this first part of the image and constitutes the limit of the same, ordering the entire lower area of the composition: from the vertical edge of the small height to the path, to the thick bushes, which border what would seem the trunk and the gnarled roots of another plant. The greenery in the lower left closes the scene. It is precisely from these last, which almost act as a backdrop, that our gaze begins to penetrate the pictorial space, meeting the two small figures in the centre: the sudden interruption of the path and the vertical coast make the ascending movement of the image end; after having met the fronds above we are brought to observe the flourishing lawn above the characters, which continues beyond the right edge. These fine devices in orchestrating the composition, if on the one hand avoid making it statically and predictably, on the other hand give a certain breath to a simple and small representation: in fact it seems that it continues beyond the limits of the tablet that seems almost a window open on an episode of everyday life, on the edge of the anecdotal. Remarkable is the dexterity of the brush that spreads the pasty material, at first, immediately highlighting the incidences of light on the vegetation, with the fronds that have the ends in clusters and the herbs formed with a simple flourish of the brush, tone on tone, without intermediate passages . It is also striking the almost liquid matter that sustains the trunks as well as the choice to depict the two characters in the centre, almost monochrome, in a rather unnaturalistic way; it is a trick used especially to give them the greatest possible evidence. The synthesis with which the forms are captured is typical of a sketch, as if the artist had wanted to stop here an idea that he would then develop on a larger support: in the current state of knowledge, since the finished work has not been received, it is quite difficult to establish the precise function of our panel, which could also be a ‘memory’ made by the painter for himself, in memory of a particularly valuable work, which could serve as a source of inspiration for him as for his workshop assistants. The protagonists of the work are a knight, with a halo, intent on donating his cloak to a naked child: we are therefore in front of the known episode of Saint Martin and the poor. The man, who lived in the fourth century after Christ, son of a soldier of the Roman army, had his name in honour of Mars, God of war, and was in turn a soldier for most of his existence. In 335 the episode remembered in our panel took place: one winter Martin met a beggar almost without clothes; moved by his condition he cut a part of his cloak to allow him to cover and warm himself. At night he dreamed of Jesus wearing that overcoat. The following Easter Martin was baptized starting an intense work of evangelization and a bitter fight against Arian heresy. This episode is iconographically one of the most represented in Western art: the fact that in the painting sub judice the scene is placed in a landscape context, rendered in a rather fabulous way, denotes the Nordic culture of the author strengthening my attribution to Jan Soens. Undeniable are the affinities between the monochrome figures and those on the bottom of the aforementioned Flight into Egypt: the clothes formed by slightly squared planes that almost tighten the bodies are the same, as are the elongated folds; moreover, the way so typical of painting the halo, as if it were a golden plate placed on the head of the characters – a rather archaicizing and quite unusual detail at the time – seems to me to make this comparison even more convincing. The profile of the beggar is quite similar to that of this Madonna in private collection, characterized by the Greek nose, the slightly protruding chin, round at the end, the small and thin lips. We can also make further comparisons between the way of painting the fronds of the trees: convincing are those with some details taken always from his works: note the way in which the leaves end in drop, vibrating in the backlight, particularly vivid, sketched light tone on dark tone, almost crackling with life. It is worth emphasizing that all these assonances are between finished and larger works of our tablet, and that therefore any differences are precisely due to the format of the medium, not than to the technique with which our fascinating table was created. It is very difficult to date with relative certainty the works of Soens, both for the lack of many documented works and because many of the easel works that have reached us are neither signed nor dated: in my opinion the high quality and safety with which the brush is used push me to date this unpublished Landscape with San Martino and the poor in the central part of the career of our artist, after the organ door for the steccata and before the decline of his career, so between 1580 and 1600. Bibliography: unpublished. Alessandro Agresti