RKD STUDIES

During the period 1648 to 1651, Van Hoogstraten will also have been preparing for his great international adventure: a trip to Italy. He left Dordrecht on the sixteenth of May 1651 and travelled via Germany to Vienna. There, he was granted an audience with Emperor Ferdinand III (1608-1657) on the sixth of August. On that occasion, Van Hoogstraten presented him with three paintings: an ‘Edelmans pourtret, (...) een doornekroning van Christus (...) [and] een Stilleven’ (Nobleman’s portrait, a Crowning with thorns, and a Still life).¹ Only the last painting can be identified with a high degree of probability, as the illusionistic letter board that is in Prague today, and which has a long provenance within the Imperial collection [19]. The emperor was so impressed by it – as he said he was visually ‘deceived’ by it – that he kept the painting and gave Van Hoogstraten a gold medallion as a token of appreciation.² It seems possible that Van Hoogstraten created this artwork in Vienna, shortly before his visit to the emperor, yet this cannot be verified. Technical research might provide more insights in the future. With this illusionistic painting, Van Hoogstraten launched a successful new branch of production. Even though he was not the first artist to paint a deceivingly realistic letter board, he would become the leading proponent of this type of painting.³ To this day, it is uncertain what gave him the idea for such a genre, but it was his work that sparked an international tradition that continues into the present day.

Illusionism remained a major focus in the paintings Van Hoogstraten produced during his stay in Vienna. And for these works he drew on the lessons and examples of his second teacher Rembrandt. In 1652, Van Hoogstraten painted a full-length, nearly life-sized portrait of a Viennese count [20]. For the man’s pose he combined those of the two main figures in Rembrandt’s Night Watch, including the illusions of the outstretched hand and the foreshortened weapon, and the subtle but significant concept of the shadow the outstretched hand casts on a significant detail: in the Night Watch it marks the coat of arms of Amsterdam, in Van Hoogstraten’s portrait it points to the family crest of the sitter.⁴

Later in 1652, Van Hoogstraten travelled on to Italy, where he visited several cities and stayed in Rome with the Bentveughels, in the house of the artist Otto Marseus van Schrieck (c. 1619/20-1678).⁵ There is perhaps only one extant artwork from the Italian period: a portrait with Roman monuments in the distance [21]. Since it is not dated, we cannot exclude the possibility that it was painted later, as was a portrait of 1670 with a similar background. In 1653, Van Hoogstraten travelled back north again, to the German city of Regensburg. There, he received a commission from the Benedictine monastery in Weingarten for an altarpiece. Van Hoogstraten then returned to Vienna, where in the meantime his brother Jan (1629/30-1654) had also arrived. In the following period, Samuel van Hoogstraten created several illusionistic paintings featuring objects on a flat surface, such as one now in Kroměříž, in which objects are attached to a cupboard door [22], or another one of a toiletry cloth and brush on a wooden wall. But his most iconic illusionistic work dates from 1653: a depiction of an old man poking his head out of a Viennese window [23]. Here, Van Hoogstraten developed a concept he had seen and practised in Rembrandt’s studio, of figures looking out of windows, into an illusionistic joke. Again, by making the suggested space in the depiction as shallow as possible and depicting objects or figures full-size.

With these innovative illusionistic artworks, Van Hoogstraten clearly had immediate success. The emperor’s praise for the first letter board painting obviously helped. But the works also dovetailed with current interests within Viennese intellectual circles, such as amongst Jesuit scholars. The growing knowledge of optics, partly as a result of studies with the camera obscura, did not escape Van Hoogstraten. His apparent fascination with illusionism and optics is demonstrated in a painting depicting the Hofburg in Vienna, which displays a play with perspective, perhaps generated using a camera obscura, combined with the illusion of a view through a painted picture frame [24]. This painted frame, in turn, bears another painted illusion of a cartelino, with the painter’s signature and dating. The illusionistic joke of this painting originally extended even further, in that there was a real clockwork behind the bell tower. The sonic experience of the striking of the clock would have further enhanced the deceptive effects of the artwork. Thus, Van Hoogstraten experimented to his heart’s content, in an intellectually stimulating environment. And in doing so, he built on Rembrandt’s fascination with the (im)possibilities of painting.

19
Samuel van Hoogstraten
Trompe l'oeil still life of a letter rack with a rosary and playing cards, 1651
Prague, Prague Castle Picture Gallery, inv./cat.nr. O /108

20
Samuel van Hoogstraten
Portrait of Count Ferdinand von Werdenberg (1625-1666), dated 1652
Winterthur (Switzerland), Museum Briner und Kern, inv./cat.nr. SJB 148

21
attributed to Samuel van Hoogstraten
Portrait of a man, c. 1653
London (England), National Portrait Gallery, inv./cat.nr. NPG1617

22
Samuel van Hoogstraten
Trompe l'oeil with a lettre, comb and other utensils, c. 1653-1654
Kromeriz, Zámek Kroměříž, inv./cat.nr. KE 3193, O 35

23
Samuel van Hoogstraten
Old man in a window, dated 1653
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv./cat.nr. GG 378

24
Samuel van Hoogstraten
View of the Hofburg in Vienna, dated 1652
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv./cat.nr. Gemäldegalerie, 1752