, 1614 Johannes van der Beeck was born and died in
Amsterdam, where he married in 1612. Relations between himself and wife Neeltgen van Camp eventually soured and ended in a divorce. Van der Beeck was briefly thrown into jail for failing to pay
alimony to his former wife in 1621. His
libertine ways and purported membership in the
Rosicrucian order led to his 1627 arrest and torture as a religious non-conformist and an alleged
blasphemer,
heretic,
atheist, and
Satanist. The 25 January 1628 judgment from five noted advocates of
The Hague pronounced him guilty of "blasphemy against God and avowed atheism, at the same time as leading a frightful and pernicious lifestyle". It was widely believed that the condemned Torrentius' influence had affected
Jeronimus Cornelisz, a trader of the
Dutch East India Trading Company who led a bloody mutiny aboard the
Batavia, a ship of the Dutch East India Company, in 1629. According to the
RKD, Torrentius was tried in 1627, but according to Houbraken, who quoted
Theodorus Schrevelius, he was tried and placed on the
painbench, and thereupon sentenced to 20 years in the
Tuchthuis (the Haarlem house of detention), on 25 July 1630. Although he was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment, King
Charles I of England – an admirer of the painter's works – intervened, and was able to secure his release after two years, hiring Torrentius as Court Painter. He stayed in England for 12 years, returning to Amsterdam in 1642. '' of
Gérard Thibault == Legacy ==