Artists do not always fulfil expectations in looking at surprising subject matter along with more conventional scenes, particularly if it touches on the erotic. This was certainly explored by the Flemish artist Jan Gossaert, who is regarded as the most startling and versatile of artists seen as part of the Northern Renaissance.
One of his most spectacular painting in Hercules and Deianeira, a married couple from mythology who were untrusting of each other, resulting in far from happy relationship. Little of this can be detected in the painting. The naked couple, he bronzed, she virginally white like marble, sit intimately entwined, with Hercules holding a giant club with one end heavily spiked – a weapon that can be seen literally to wield physical force and, symbolically, as evidence of power.
Little is known about Gossaert’s early life, other than he showed great talent as a young man and rapidly gained an impressive reputation. In his early 20s, he was a member of the Antwerp painters’ guild, where he employed two apprentices. More familiar and earlier artists such as Jan van Eyck are credited with originating a style of painting characterised by minutely realistic depictions of surface effects and natural light. This was made possible by using an oil medium, which allowed the building up of paint in translucent layers or glazes. Gossaert took this further, evolving a style that was highly detailed and carefully observed without losing its freshness, appearing to glow on the canvas.
In his late 20s, he travelled to Italy as part of the entourage of his patron, the admiral and churchman Philip of Burgundy. This was a flourishing time for Italian art. Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling in the Vatican, while Raphael was commissioned by Pope Julius to decorate the papal apartments. Dürer, an artist Gossaert greatly admired, was working in Venice completing an altarpiece. Fascinated, Gossaert made copies of antique sculpture without attempting to emulate the idealised approach of Italian artists. One sheet of detailed drawing, including a male nude, is a dazzling demonstration of Gossaert’s graphic skill.In Northern Europe, he introduced the Italian Renaissance manner in his own meticulous style, depicting classical and mythological subjects with sensuous nude figures. Earthy and ungainly, and inclined to be overweight, the nudes tend to look more like real, imperfect people than Roman statues – a long way from the elegant, perfected bodies of Raphael or Michelangelo.
Philip of Burgundy was delighted by these pieces of Renaissance erotica, as was the worldly Bishop of Utrecht who had in his possession “two expensive, well-made paintings of illicit love affairs” and “a large painting of a nude woman”, thought to be for personal viewing and concealed by a curtain.In addition to erotic art, Gossaert painted religious images, such as Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane and Virgin and Child, as well as stunning illusionistic portraits of significant figures. With great imagination, Gossaert played intriguing spatial games, often setting the subject in a frame from which he appears to emerge. In Portrait of a Merchant, the figure, shown holding a pen, is surrounded by bills of business, his look enigmatic in suggesting attention to trade.
With a reputation as an ostentatious and flashy dresser who favoured courtly costume of gold damask, Gossaert looked like one of the figures in magnificent paintings such as Adoration of the King. As an artist with a strong sense of himself and his art, he expressed this in his work, affirming himself as a leader of the Northern Renaissance.
