An Italianate landscape – Hendrik Frans van Lint

Description

Van Lint was specialized in landscapes which fall globally in two categories: idealized landscapes of people in nature and “vedute”, landscapes or town views that are mainly topographical in conception. Among his earliest dated works produced in Rome are paintings from 1711, including View of a monastery on the Aventine, now in the collection of the Galleria Doria Pamphili. It has been suggested that this was the year in which he left van Wittel’s workshop to strike out on his own.

His idealized landscapes follow less the style of his contemporaries and compatriots Abraham Genoels and Jan Frans van Bloemen, who specialized in this subject matter. Van Lint went in a different direction under the influence of Claude Lorrain’s Arcadian landscapes. Van Lint may have studied Lorrain’s works in numerous Roman collections. It has been suggested that van Lint started out as a reluctant copyist of the work of Lorrain whose work was in strong demand but unavailable on the market. It was only later that he started to paint his own compositions inspired by and dotted with references to Lorrain as well as Nicolas Poussin.

A good example of the influence of Lorraine on his idealized landscapes are the pair of paintings entitled Landscape with a Watermill and Dancing Figures (The Wedding of Isaac and Rebecca) and Landscape with the Nurture of Jupiter (private collections). The two compositions are directly inspired by Lorrain’s monumental pair of landscapes in the Galleria Doria Pamphilij, Rome.

In particular, the first work is directly based on Lorrain’s Landscape with Dancing Figures (The Mill), while the second is only inspired in its overall design by Claude’s original of the View of Delphi with a procession. Van Lint was no slavish follower of Lorrain but rather an inventor of his own as shown by the fact that he introduced a number of elements that are absent from Claude’s work, such as the hound in the centre or the shepherd leading his flock over a bridge.

Van Lint also shows that he is at heart a vedute painter who preferred realistic views by substituting for Claude’s fantastical domed palace a representation of the Colosseum and a monument that he had depicted on numerous occasions in his Roman vedute and may be based on an existing feature in Rome. Like Lorrain, van Lint paid particular attention to the trees in his compositions. His wide open compositions are imbued with silence and invite contemplation. It has been argued that van Lint adapted Lorrain’s style to 18th-century taste by using paler and clearer tones, prettier colours and sharper handling.

In his topographical views van Lint was first directed by his experience working for van Wittel. His earliest topographical views (vedute dal vero) of Rome included sweeping panoramic views of the city from many different approaches and locations. Eventually he painted everything worth seeing in Rome which resulted in many views of similar subjects such as the Colosseum, the Arch of Constantine, the Pyramid of Cestius, and the Baths of Diocletian and Caracalla. Van Lint painted many views of Rome’s bridges, which he rendered with a mixture of naturalism and poetry. His sharp powers of observation make him stand out as a vedute painter in the 18th century.