Exhibitions Huon Mallalieu
MY FAVOURITE DUTCH PICTURE
I have a particular pleasure when I accompany Oldie groups to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Oldies are not mere tourists to be herded, but travellers, in the 18th-century sense. So I give an introduction in the Hall of Fame and the Night Watch Room; then they roam at will.
However, I do point them to one other painting. Badly hung, the Allegory of Temperance is little known, and the postcard does it no justice. But it is the only known work by the greatest of all still-life painters, and one of my very favourite paintings. He would not divulge his methods, and his pictures were so perfect that only magic could explain them.
Among scandalous artists, perhaps not even Cellini or Caravaggio could match Jan Simonsz van der Beeck (‘of the Stream'), who Latinised himself as Johannes Torrentius (1589-1644).
The fledgling Dutch Republic was at war with Spain, and he was a Catholic – so he was suspect to both the Calvinist parties vying for supremacy. His father had the distinction of being the first occupant of Amsterdam's new jail. In 1612, Torrentius contracted a brief marriage, and soon he too was imprisoned, for non-payment of alimony.
After moving to Haarlem, he got into much more serious trouble. In 1627, he was charged with, inter alia, being ‘a seducer of burghers, a deceiver of the people, a plague on the youth, a violator of women, a squanderer of his own and others' money'.
After torture, he was found guilty on 31 counts, including ‘godlessness, abominable and horrifying blasphemy, and also for terrible and very harmful heresy'. The prosecutor demanded the stake but, thanks to the Prince of Orange and other powerful patrons, he merely got 20 years – with costs against him, and all his paintings to be burned as obscene.
Two years later, another powerful patron, Charles I, arranged for him to be exiled to London. The inventory of Charles's collection recorded seven Torrentius paintings, including the Rijksmuseum's Temperance: ‘On a round bred [board] donne 1614 is his fynest piece which is a glass with wyne in it very well donne, between a tynne pott and an errthen pott, a sett song under it and a bitt of a Brydle over it.'
In the sale after Charles's execution, it made £15, with the most expensive royal Rembrandt at £5. In the mid-19th century, it surfaced in a Dutch bakery, and until 1913 a grocer was using it as the lid for a raisin barrel. Charles I's seal was still on the back. It was spotted by an art historian, who passed it to the Rijksmuseum.
The allegory itself is fascinating, and a major theme in the book I am working on. I long to see it again.