The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Mander, Karel Van

(also Carel van Mander). Born in 1548 in Meulebeke, Flanders; died Sept. 2, 1606, in Amsterdam. Dutch painter, poet, art historian, and art theorist.

Between 1569 and 1573, van Mander wrote religious dramas. He lived in Rome from 1573 to 1577. Upon his return to the Low Countries in 1583, he founded in Haarlem the first Dutch academy of arts with H. Goltzius and Cornelisz van Haarlem. Van Mander wrote The Painter’s Book, whose most interesting section was a collection of biographies of Dutch and German artists that was modeled on Vasari’s Lives. The book is an extremely important source for the study of 15th- and 16th-century Northern European art. Van Mander’s work as a theorist and painter (mythological and genre compositions) showed a tendency toward mannerism.

WORKS

Het schilderboeck. Haarlem, 1604.
Het schilderboeck. [Utrecht, 1969.]
In Russian translation:
Kniga o khudozhnikakh. Moscow-Leningrad, 1940.

REFERENCE

Noë, H. Carel van Mander en Italië. The Hague, 1954.

Mentioned in

Art Studies

References in periodicals archive

IN 1604, the Dutch painter-theorist Karel van Mander (1548-1606) exhorted young artists to travel to Rome to drink in the beauty of the countryside, the splendid ruins of antiquity, and the loveliness of its people.

All Roads (Do Not) Lead to Rome: The Artist's Journey South in the Seventeenth Century

Nature found and struck wonderfully well with her man [...] when she went to pick him out in Brabant, in an obscure village, among peasants.' That is how Karel van Mander, the Vasari of the Netherlands, opened the brief life of Pieter Bruegel in his Schilderboek (1604).

BECOMING BRUEGEL

Among their topics are imaginatio and visual representation in 12th-century cosmology and astronomy: Ibn al-Haytham, Stephen of Pisa (and Antioch), (Ps.) Masha'allah, and (Ps.) Thabit ibn Qurra; Minerva in the forge of Vulcan: ingegno, fatica, and the imagination in early Florentine art theory; imagination in the chamber of sleep: Karel van Mander on Sumnus and Morpheus; views on mathematical imagination during the 16th and 17th centuries, and Aristotle's proportioned images and Descartes' dynamic imagining.

Image, Imagination, and Cognition: Medieval and Early Modern Theory and Practice

Este pintor, segun Karel van Mander, recibio su primera formacion en Bruselas con Bernard van Orley (1488-1541) (6).

Una Santa Maria Magdalena del circulo de Jan van Dornicke o Maestro de 1518

Karel van Mander, writing in 1604, distinguished between painting 'naer het leveri (from life) and 'uyt den gheesf (from the imagination).

Drawings for Paintings in the Age of Rembrandt

String (on the real significance of Karel van Mander's comments on Holbein's Whitehall Mural).

Henry VIII and the Court: Art, Politics and Performance

Pieter Cornelisz van Rijck was one of the "important contemporary Painters" listed by Karel van Mander, artist biographer and chronicler of the Dutch Golden Age.

One rotten apple infects all in the basket

As Todd Richardson points out in his preface, the paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder have been the subject of continuous research since Karel van Mander first included him in his account of Dutch and Flemish painters in 1604.

Richardson, Todd M., Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Art Discourse in the Sixteenth-Century Netherlands

In this detailed exploration of seventeenth century notions of connoisseurship, the author draws on treatises from such art theorists and artists as Karel van Mander (1548-1606), Giulio Mancini (1558-1630), Abraham Bosse (c.1604-1676), Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678) and Rogier de Piles (1635-1709), to name only the key voices, as well as many other primary source documents.

The Eye of the Connoisseur: Authenticating Paintings by Rembrandt and His Contemporaries

The young Hals displayed his talent for portraiture early on, and recognizing this gift, his parents secured his training with the most highly regarded local artist of the time, Karel van Mander. He joined the painters guild of Haarlem at age 27, fairly old to be a new member.

Frans Hals: Haarlem's Rembrandt

The expression "air of liberty" comes from Karel van Mander's training book for painters, Het Schilderboek (1604).

The 'Air of Liberty': Narratives of the South Atlantic Past

Finally, Visser brings his analysis into line with the Old Flemish Mennonite Karel van Mander's (1548-1606) painting "Crossing of the Jordan."

Tod und Jenseits in der Schriftkultur der Fruhen Neuzeit

Karel Van Mander

Mander, Karel Van

WORKS

REFERENCE