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The art of the Low Countries underwent a change in the sixteenth century which involved the abandonment of the devotional and intimate formats which had been so brilliantly deployed by Flemish artists during the fifteenth century. As in other artistic centres, Flanders introduced Italian Renaissance models during the course of the century and Flemish painting gradually incorporated motifs derived from this new aesthetic. Within this phenomenon were artists who succeeded in combining the new Italian elements with their traditional formats, while others set a new trend in motion by adding the most superficial elements of the new style to their works.
Heemskerck worked with Jan van Scorel, an artist who had visited Italy and studied the art of Raphael, Michelangelo and the Venetians. The influence of Scorel on Heemskerck was particularly profound at the time that the present work was painted, which would explain its previous attribution to Scorel. By 1941 Jonge had correctly attributed the painting, which has generally been dated around 1531, before Heemskerck's trip to Italy. The painting has been compared with his Portrait of Anna Codde, dated 1529, which also shows the sitter spinning in an interior. In the present panel the finely constructed spinning wheel at which the sitter works is placed in the foreground. The setting is a one of plain bare walls with a work basket hanging in the background containing scissors, and on the left a spool for thread.
It has been suggested that the portrait could be part of a pair, the other panel representing the sitter's
husband, as is the case with the famous portrait of Anna Codde who forms a pair with a portrait of her husband Pieter Bicker. The fact that the woman is painted at work in a domestic interior as a virtuous housewife has been connected with the Proverb "In praise of the virtuous woman" (31, 13 19) which exalts the merits of the good wife. The image of the woman spinning was a recurring motif in Dutch painting and was used to emphasise the virtue and chastity of wives in the face of temptation. This is the meaning of a print in the Louvre in which a child, seated on the ground, offers an apple, symbol of Original Sin, to a woman who concentrates on her wheel and pays no attention to the child. This symbolism is more obvious in the painting by Pieter Pietersz. in the Rijksmuseum in which a maid, with spindle and spool, ignores the young man seated at her side who is trying to seduce her by offering her a jug of wine.
The present sitter has been identified as the wife of Pieter Jan Foppesz., a member of the City Council of Haarlem, who appears in a family portrait together with her husband and children, but this proposal has not been widely accepted. The arms which appear in the background on the right, as well as the woman's elegant and finely made clothes with their delicate details such as the buttons, the neck of the blouse and the tags at the end of the belt cords, have led to the suggestion that she could be a member of one of the landowning families of Van Dordt, Van Voerst or Van Voorst.
Mar Borobia
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