Early life , Madrid; painted before Heemskerck left for Italy in 1532 Heemskerck was born in the village of
Heemskerk,
North Holland, halfway between
Alkmaar and
Haarlem. He was the son of a farmer called Jacob Willemsz. van Veen, later buried in the
village churchyard. According to his biography by
Karel van Mander, he began his artistic training with the painter Cornelius Willemsz in
Haarlem, but was recalled to Heemskerk by his father to work on the family farm. However, having contrived an argument with his father he left again, this time for Delft, where he studied under
Jan Lucasz, before moving on to Haarlem, where he became a pupil of
Jan van Scorel, learning to paint in his teacher's innovative Italian-influenced style. Heemskerck then went to lodge at the home of the wealthy curate of the Sint-Bavokerk, Pieter Jan Foppesz (whose name van Mander writes as Pieter Ian Fopsen). They knew each other because Foppesz owned land in Heemskerk. The artist painted him in a now famous family portrait, considered the first of its kind in a long line of Dutch family paintings. His other works for Foppesz included two life size figures symbolising the Sun and the Moon on a bedstead, and a picture of
Adam and Eve "rather smaller but (it is said) after living models".
Italy He travelled around the whole of northern and central Italy, stopping at Rome, where he had letters of introduction from van Scorel to the influential Dutch cardinal
William of Enckenvoirt. It is evident of the facility with which he acquired the rapid execution of a scene-painter that he was selected to collaborate with
Antonio da Sangallo the Younger,
Battista Franco and
Francesco de' Rossi (Il Salviati) on the redecoration of the
Porta San Sebastiano at
Rome as a triumphal arch (5 April 1536) in honour of
Charles V. Among these are the
Capitoline Brutus, van Heemskerck being the first known artist to make a sketch of this now famous bust. A hypothesis put forward in 2021 and explained in 2024 stating that the drawings in the two Berlin scrapbooks were not executed by Maarten van Heemskerck and the Anonimi A and B, but with a few exceptions entirely by the sculptor
Cornelis Floris II and dated between 1535/36 and 1538, was not taken up by archaeological and art-historical research and was refuted by several contributions to the Berlin exhibition catalog “The Allure of Rome. Maarten van Heemskerck draws the city." Not only the provenance history of the Roman sketchbook, but above all stylistic and handwritten comparisons confirm Van Heemskerck's authorship. In addition, Van Heemskerck often reused Roman motifs from his drawings in later works, which would not have been possible if Cornelis Floris, who worked in Antwerp, had been the author. The results of the art technological examination of 2024 also contradict the hypothesis, as the ink of the drawings in the Roman sketchbook has the same composition as the undoubtedly autograph sheets of larger format, some of which are signed and dated.
Later career On his return to the
Netherlands in 1536, he settled back at Haarlem, where he became president of the
Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke (in 1540), This lucrative and high-profile work in Delft earned Heemskerck a commission for an altarpiece in the
Nieuwe Kerk (Delft) for their
Guild of St. Luke. In 1553 he became curate of the
Sint-Bavokerk, where he served for 22 years (until the
Protestant Reformation). In 1572 he left Haarlem for
Amsterdam, to avoid the
siege of Haarlem which the Spaniards laid to the place. ==Engravings==