Artistic mastery of Jacob Van Loo

Description

David Mandrella. Jacob Van Loo. Paris: Arthena, 2011. 32 x 23 cm, cloth binding with dust jacket, 285 pp., 291 illustrations, 69 in color. A painter of exquisite refinement, superb colorist, and virtuosic executor, Jacob Van Loo, born in 1614, spent most of his career in Amsterdam, achieving great success from the early 1640s. Initially inclined towards history painting inspired by pre-Rembrandt painters, he originally distinguished himself in genre painting with charming subjects that rival those of Vermeer, Metsu, and Ter Borch, even preceding them with masterpieces like 'Couple amoureux dans un intérieur' at the Mauritshuis in The Hague. His work features a rich inspiration of portraits that are stylishly worldly and aristocratic, refined genre scenes, and bacchanals with emphasized and stylized nudities set against landscapes, creating a strong unity in style: the suave colors and sumptuous depiction of silky fabrics link the 'Magdalena Stockmans' in Cologne to 'Zorobabel' in Orléans; a splendid fullness of clarity caresses and models, in bright blonde light, the perfect nudities of the timeless 'Diane' and 'Callisto'. The delicacy of the landscape backgrounds is common to genre scenes and fables... A very fine copy.