Lucas van Leyden

/looh"kahs vahn luyd"n/, (Lucas Hugensz)

1494-1533, Dutch painter and engraver.

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▪ Dutch artist

also called  Lucas Huyghensz(oon) 

born 1489/94, Leiden [Netherlands]

died before August 8, 1533, Leiden

 northern Renaissance painter and one of the greatest engravers of his time.

      Lucas was first trained by his father, Huygh Jacobszoon; later, he entered the workshop of Cornelis Engelbrechtsz(oon), a painter of Leiden. Lucas is more highly regarded today as a printmaker than as a painter. He was extraordinarily precocious. Even such early prints as Muhammed and the Monk Sergius (1508) are compositionally clear and direct and show great technical skill. Such engravings as Susanna and the Elders (1508), St. George Liberating the Princess (c. 1508–09), and his famous series The Circular Passion (1510) are notable for their accurate rendering of space and subtly composed landscapes. In 1510, under the influence of Albrecht Dürer (Dürer, Albrecht), Lucas produced two masterpieces of engraving, The Milkmaid and Ecce Homo, the latter much admired by Rembrandt. Their sureness of line and modeling complement their strong, simple compositions and place them among the most forceful engravings of their time. But engravings such as the Adoration of the Magi (c. 1512), cluttered with awkward figures and architectural backgrounds, indicate a decline in conceptual power that lasted until about 1519, when he engraved the Dance of the Magdalene. This work also has a large number of figures, but they are tranquil and are lucidly composed in small groupings.

      In 1521 Lucas met Dürer in Antwerp and again fell under his influence, as can be seen in the Passion series of the same year. Lucas may have learned the technique of etching from Dürer, for he produced a few etchings after their meeting. But Lucas himself is thought to have developed the technique of etching on copper, instead of iron, plates. The softness of the copper made it possible to combine etching and line engraving in the same print. His well-known portrait of the emperor Maximilian (1521) is one of the earliest examples of the use of that technique. Lucas was also among the first to employ aerial perspective in prints. Impressed with the Italianate style of Jan Gossart (Gossart, Jan), Lucas produced engravings, such as The Poet Virgil Suspended in a Basket (1521), characterized by a contrived monumentality. Such late prints, which often show the influence of the Italian engraver Marcantonio Raimondi (Raimondi, Marcantonio), are generally considered to be his least successful.

      Lucas's paintings are of uneven quality and seldom attain the power of his best engravings. The most notable of his early works is doubtless his Self-Portrait (c. 1508). It shows remarkable objectivity and is given a bizarre cast by its garish red-orange background. The loose, spontaneous technique used in this work is unusual for its time. Such early works as The Chess Players (c. 1508) reveal a predilection for narrative painting and characterization, which he used often at the expense of compositional unity. That was largely overcome in his Moses Striking the Rock (1527), the Worship of the Golden Calf, and above all in his masterpiece, the Last Judgment (commissioned 1526), in which the composition is unified by the clear, dominant rhythm of the figures and the logically rendered space.

Additional Reading

Ellen S. Jacobowitz and Stephanie Loeb Stepanek, The Prints of Lucas van Leyden & His Contemporaries (1983); Elise Lawton Smith, The Paintings of Lucas van Leyden (1992).

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